Hyper-acceleration.
Sensei said it was that state where your mind and your body are in perfect sync and you are able to live between the seconds. This is a state beyond the heightened reflexes we are capable of managing using our enhanced neural net. This fugue state shows the world, hard and sharp, each second crystalline, but potentially breakable. In this state, you will be a blur to the world. But it does not last long. Whatever you deem important enough to do this for, you had better be quick and perfect, because when you are done, you will be vulnerable. He personally had done it once in his whole career. He preferred to plan and let real tactics do their job.
I did not have that luxury. In twenty seconds, my best friend, maybe my last best friend will be dead.
Hyper-acceleration.
The flow of time seemed to slow down and everything happened as if it were encased in amber. I shot back across the field and the distance from the wreckage of the grav-car to the pier, seemed to take forever. Each placement of my foot, first left, then right, then left then right, I watched as Essver swung the remnants of the force staff with brute force, tearing into the Corvan Regulars. Each swing matched my next footfall, I was leaping down the dock as fast as I could go, but I knew I was already too late.
I saw that last Regular back-pedaling on his six walking tentacles and raising his rifle as he fell back under the crush of two other regular trying to get away from Essver. But this particular regular must have had some combat experience because he did not lose his cool, he moved back and lowered his rifle. Essver's next two blows destroyed the armor casing of the regular in front of him. Two more steps. Just five steps now. I could see the Regular pulling the trigger as Essver pulls the next to last Corvan to him in a crushing embrace.
He looked terrible, blast burns where the force shield or his personal shield had given way. Three steps. The Regular fires, again, and again and again. The first two rounds blast into the body of his comrade whom Essver remained cognizant enough to use him as a shield. The third round catches him fill in the chest. One step. My monomolecular blade rips the regular in half, a second two late.
I see him falling in slow motion and I turn toward him to catch him. I did not see the two heavy suits that had stepped from the command craft and one turned a heavy plasma rifle toward me and fired. I watched the blue-white ball as it blazes over Essver's prone body as I try to redirect my momentum. The blazing sphere is in my consciousness and is the only thing in my universe. I turn, twist, spin and feel it as it nicks my chest and its super hot matter burns into the Invincible Armor. Without it, I would already be dead. I can't stop moving, I continue my turn and count the steps to the first heavy suit.
Six steps. I hear the plasma cannon attempting to recharge.
Five. My chest is on fire literally, the Invincible Armor is attempting to compensate by increasing the armor density, but the plasma is too hot.
Four. I can't stop, I keep moving, my body a coiled spring. I am channeling the rage and the nanites in my body are increasing my performance, slowing time for me.
Three. The second heavy suit fires its plasma cannon. There is a strobe of white light filling the darkened area under the ship in a stark relief. The strobe catches me fifteen feet from the first heavy suit. I see the ball of plasma as it crosses near me but wide of me by eight inches. I feel the heat as it burns the rest of my clothing from my body and it had not even touched me.
Two steps. I draw my arm back for a killing stroke. I will only have one shot. I have shortened the blade, and made it a pointed spike. The first heavy suddenly realizes I am not trying to escape.
One step. My arm comes forward as the heavy suit's gripper tentacle tries to push me away. I channel all of my body's momentum into that last push. The heavy's gripper arm is simply too slow. My spike is driven through the only weak point on the heavy frame, the swivel point that allows the optic to move and direct itself. He would have to be looking at me to target me. The last thing he saw was my arm driving my carbon fullerene diamond tipped blade thru the hull of his heavy suit. Once inside, I converted it into a monomolecular filament and spun it inside of the suit. The heavy tentacle has grabbed me and pushes me away, but the deed is done. Anything organic in that suit is dead.
Orienting and tumbling, suddenly time speeds up again and I am looking at the universe at normal speed. The second heavy suit is orienting his plasma cannon again, but I burned too much energy to cross this distance. I have nothing left.
I hear his plasma cannon about to fire, there is a coughing sound right before the discharge. My chest is still smoking, but my bio-mechanicals have deadened the pain. I will die awake, aware and powerless.
Then the heavy suit exploded. A second shot hits the command ship and the resultant explosion blasts me off my feet. The command ship is on fire and fifty feet away, Travelling Light uncloaks.
She drops from the exit portal and runs over to Essver. She lifts him up on her shoulder, turns and runs to me. Looking at me and smiling she says, "You boy's need a lift?" She offers me a hand up, and turns toward the ship. "Hey, how come every time I rescue you guys, I have to carry the reptile?"
Limping, I look at her and laugh. "Next time, I promise, I will drag his sorry ass to the ship."
"It is good to see you again, Majoris." She hefts Essver onto the platform and helps me to climb up.
"Even better to see you, Pilot." I know I haven't stopped grinning since I first laid eyes on her. "Let's get out of here."
"Strap in, it's going to be a bumpy ride."
Looking skyward, I can see the contrails of two dozen fast attack spaceships heading toward the spaceport.
"You look like hell. Burnt much?" As Biyu walked back to the pilot chair, she sprayed a reactant foam that suppressed the still smoldering plasma fragments on my chest armor. She took ten seconds to cut away the burned carbon fullerenes with her diamond hard fingertips.
She was wearing black flex-armor with an shield emitter belt and both of her heavy automatic pulse pistols, one on each hip. Fashion conscious no matter what the circumstances, her light body armor had white hexagonal patterns randomly appearing on the armor. In spite of her waif-like appearance, with her reinforced android skeleton and musculature, she was nearly my equal in strength and durability and with her artificial brain, she is a much better shot even at full auto with both pistols. I had to learn this by competing with her over the decades.
"Hey! There is meat under that." When she finished her less than gentle ministrations, she hopped up and sat down in the Pilot's chair.
"Crybaby."
"How is he?" I looked at Essver and he was still smoking as well, with a number of burns across his chest and back.
"He's your problem, sir, I have work to do."
"Systems check, please." Biyu asks the ship's computer.
"Light speed drive unstable, requires calibration, airfoils online, primary engine offline, secondary drives online, two of four particle weapons online, one of two torpedo launchers, online, cloaking systems have two minutes of power remaining, cloak recharger offline," was the ship AI's polite statement.
The ship looked like hell. Panels taken out and left removed, neural networking cables dangled down from several open ports in the ceiling. Burn marks from where panels had overheated while trying to protect the ship from the warp-star missile. It looked as if there had been a fire in the engine room as well.
"Boss, I know you are hurt bad, but I think I need to help with the ship. There are too many systems down and with what I just heard, we are not going anywhere fast, even if we get out of here. I need to calibrate the main engine and the jump drive. The main AI is simply not going to be enough."
"Do it. Biyu, do we have any bactaphage onboard?"
"In the back, I had to convert medical to a part storage area. We have almost everything we need, it's just in the ship, not on it."
Dragging myself to my feet made me a little dizzy but I pushed my way past the piles of equipment and located the bactaphage spray in what little free space was left in the medical area.
Travelling Light's AI chimed in, "Predictive engines indicate only a thirty six percent chance of escape at our current trajectory. We will be intercepted and destroyed by the six cutters approaching in low orbit. They are attempting to lock on to us now. They are locked on. Deploying countermeasures."
A half second later, an explosion sounds and Travelling Light increases power to the artificial gravity as it rolls to dissipate the energy of the explosion. Spinning completely upside down was the norm when Biyu was flying. But she was the best Pilot I had ever known.
"Countermeasures effective. Countermeasures depleted. Cutters attempting to range for beam weapon fire. They are closing."
"Biyu? Not panicking. Wondering..."
"We're good, Majoris. We will be bringing the main engine online in a few seconds."
I had strapped Essver into a chair which reconfigured for his bulk. I attempted to activate the medical facilities for the chair but the ship indicated the service was unavailable. After strapping him down, I sprayed the bactaphage onto his wounds. The enhanced bacteria would destroy any damaged tissue, cauterize any wounds, and cleanse any of thirty common infections. Once the wounds were cleaned, I would add the regenerative counterphage, which would kill the destroyer phages and begin reconstruction of his tissues. These wounds were serious, we needed more than battlefield triage but it would stabilize him for now.
We were flying low over the nearby forest when the main engine came online and the cutters fell away into the distance.
"Communication request from the Sjurani ship, Glorious," indicated the ship.
"Put it onscreen."
A golden Corvan Regular uniform appeared on the screen and for a moment, I thought we were in trouble. "Majoris, this is Chuntra. I am sending a diplomatic code to your ship to authenticate. Master Wex borrowed a suit from a Regular on my way here."
"How is he?"
"Sedated and resting quietly. We left the spaceport under fire but the Glorious is a gunboat and was easily able to escape. We have noticed the Bel-ha making no pursuit, but the Corvans have launched ships and are attempting to intercept. Do you have a plan?"
"Yes, my team and I have to find the technology that was stolen from here. You realize there is more going on here than the Corvans have told the Bel-ha. Essver hinted at such but we have not had a chance to talk."
"He survived?" She sounded genuinely surprised.
"Actually, the jury is still out on that one. We need a doctor, but if we can't get away, it won't matter."
"Thomas," Biyu began, the ship's isn't going anywhere like she is. We have just enough capacity to make escape velocity but we cannot possibly make it past the blockade. We simply aren't fast enough."
She was manipulating a holographic display to make her point. In it, Lorissi's major moon defined a region where no alien fleet ships were allowed. The Corvan battle fleet sat above the proscribed region, above the northern pole of the planet. This was an advantageous position since all of the possible jump lanes from the planet could be shot at from that position. Since the Corvan fleet had been stationed there, all primary planetary traffic was being directed by the southern pole control station. This meant if you were flying from the northern hemisphere, you were probably not supposed to be there. This meant us.
"The Bel-ha do not allow battleships inside of their sub-lunar orbit, at two hundred thousand miles from the planet. In an sign of cooperation, the Corva have been allowed to bring their smallest ships, the cutters who are pursuing us right now, and that works for us." She continued, "their cutters, under normal circumstances would be no match for us. Travelling Light's weaponry would make short work of them. But right now, we cannot align to the Border Expanse systems without taking a beating, particularly from their faster than light weaponry."
The display shows our ship icon making its way up from the planetary atmosphere and trying to reach the distance required from the gravity well to make our jump to faster-than-light travel. Without shields and only two minutes of cloaking energy left, we will simply do not have the resources to make the jump without getting blown out of the sky.
"Can you fix the shields?" was my next question.
"No, I managed to steal all the parts to replace the shield emitters and just about every other system we need, since our ship is of advanced Bel-ha design. That is why medical, your quarters, the Frame Bay, and most of engineering is taken up with equipment required to bring the ship up to code."
"Steal?"
"I can say appropriate, if that makes you feel better."
"Boss, I have an idea." I am generally loathe to let my Image have ideas. They range from the suicidal to the homicidal, depending on its mood. They also usually mean I end up getting hurt. All of us are in sad shape, so like it or not, I will have to hear him out.
The Image activated the ship's comm system so everyone could hear it. "I have re-calibrated the jump drive engines. They will make the jump to the Border Expanse Systems. I have taken the liberty of reading the registry of information on the Glorious and she is an excellent ship. With her current load out, she is much tougher than we are right now."
The Image paused for a moment and I got the idea I was being led. "I could fly her by the blockade to cover you and buy you time. We could transfer their crew to Travelling Light and get me to the Glorious. I could then fly it, cover you, and transfer myself to the planetary network. I could hide there until you arrive in the Borderlands. I could then transmit myself to the planetary beacon in the system you are jumping to and wait for you there."
"You realize if you don't make it, I won't be able to interface with the Frame until she creates another. That would be two weeks without any support, hacking, or technology interface of any kind, I would be reduced to a very advanced combat system without technical support. And that assumes the Frame is online at all." This wasn't a plan, this was a suicide attempt.
"Okay, what do you have? Leadership mojo? Dashing good looks? Hot car and hot babe driving it? Scary lizard mascot? Yes, you have all of that. What you don't have is a plan. Well, I do. Nobody else can do what I can."
I was hating the fact that the Image was right. And it did not relent.
"You cannot control all of the Glorious' weapons, you cannot predict with my level of accuracy what they are going to do next. And no, Biyu cannot do this because you need physical and mental support right now, that I cannot provide. Unless the idea of lying curled up in the fetal appeals to you. Without the Frame, you need Biyu more than ever. No offense, but this is a job for a mechanical sentience, Fleshies need not apply."
"No. I will not authorize this. There must be another way"
"There might be. But we don't have the time. Everyone else has sacrificed something. What makes me any different? If I die. I will die making sure you get away. Try and treat your next Image better. Speaking of which, don't you still owe me fifty credits?"
* * *
Time. When you are an AI Complex or more commonly an Image, you have lots of time on your hands. Okay, technically I don't have any hands, but you get what I mean. What the fleshies call seconds, I can call days. Sometimes when they are talking, I have already completed the conversation they were going to have with me. Several times.
The down side? I am generally not very creative. I get really good at things from doing them over and over. Not because I can intuitively leap, because I can't. I look smart because I can do it over and over really fast until I get it right.
Today, unless I am very creative, (remember, a weak spot) or very lucky, I am likely to see my last days. I will enjoy them, relax, extending the seconds near to forever. You would be surprised how much living an AI can squeeze into his last minute.
And that is exactly what I have left. One minute.
Everything worked exactly like it was supposed to. Wex and Chuntra traded ships with me. I transferred my core consciousness to the computers of the Glorious. I left the control diamond with Thomas, just in case I did not make it. I took a minute to stretch and look around. It was nice to have some real estate to move around in. I love Thomas, but sometimes it gets a little cramped in there; not enough room for the both of us. The virtual environmental systems allowed me to create hard light holograms to take over all the stations on the ship and two in the engineering bay.
I created a memory sphere to allow me to apply the maximum amount of free memory to every task. A real-time simulcast system, the Glorious allowed me to access every system on the ship at the exact same time in perfect synchronicity without any delay. Against the AIs in the planetary defense network and onboard the fleet, I would need to be perfect. And unlike those AIs who may have multiple duties in addition to fighting, I only have one job. Combat. I was programmed to win, ruthlessly, effectively. To win at all costs. An entire species' technology was directed into me, making me the one of the Empire's finest weapons. But I was a secret weapon. Even Thomas did not know what I was truly capable of doing.
I directed the Glorious on the vector required to jump to the Trinary Expanse. Travelling Light fell in below me, riding nearly hull to hull less than three meters between us. Only because its Biyu can we do this. Organics could never pull this off at this speed. And she is doing everything I am doing, backward. I have great admiration for her, because despite her appearance, her mind is a finely tuned technology capable of intuition, emotion and nearly perfect machine cognition. I am often surprised her kind, the Conscientia, agree to work with humanity at all. She seems so much like them, only better. I know that seems strange considering what I was doing, but I was designed to protect Thomas. In a way, I am Thomas. Free from emotional constraints or moral limitations, perfectly aware of my strengths and weaknesses. Unburdened by social constraints or emotional affiliations. I can live up to my programming without thoughts of myself.
The problem was, I did not believe that. I had been alive for over two years. Longer than most images ever live, and I would be lying if I said I did not like it. We are normally scrubbed after a mission to prevent exactly the things I am talking about now. Strange philosophy, exotic, some would say aberrant thinking. These two years compressed down into a thousand years for me. I have learned more, done more, and dreamed more--cognitive activity during downtime--dreamed more than my designers ever considered.
And I did not want to die.
I had come to value me, and Thomas and Biyu and even the Sjurani S-VER, because I had shared Thomas's memories of him. I had come to love the adventure, the excitement, even the thrill of pitting my skills and abilities against that of other AIs, other aliens, other technology. Vanity, thy name is Complex.
As we exited the atmosphere, Glorious received a communication link from the fleet. They indicated they were aware of our seven crew members and their identities. If we surrendered, we would be given a fair trial. I let them know how we felt about that. I destroyed their communication ship's array before they could put up their shields. They responded exactly like I wanted them to. They shot back. We only needed sixty seconds to reach the minimum safe distance to spin up and jump. That was the easy part. They pummeled my shields hitting me twenty percent of the time. My predictive engine indicated they would hit me twenty two percent of the time.
Excellent, I have begun to believe I might make it. My holo constructs are working faster than any human could, adapting and moving. Biyu and I are inside of a virtuality sharing flight information. They were shooting at me as if I was a single ship. They were pounding the ships shields. Since I had no other systems to maintain, I keep all power directed toward shields and maneuvering. We were at the halfway point, when I took a hit that rocked me. One of my hard-light clones in the engineering bay disappeared as an emitter went offline. We were almost there.
I think I neglected to mention that we were heading directly at the fleet. We were still on approach and the closer we got, the less effective their guns became. They were designed to shoot at prey moving away from them, not toward them. It was a minor difference but it was just enough with my reaction speed to mean they would always miss even it is just a few meters. Another hit. Another emitter goes offline. The fire suppression system is activated and a half a dozen small fires go out. Hull integrity still good, shields at sixty percent.
I was heading directly at the command cruiser. I charged the weapon arrays and removed all safety protocols for overloading. I have set them to fire in stable attack patterns, targeting the most vital systems first. The most important targets are the targeting systems. Once they are gone, the fleet will take a second to adjust. That will be all they need.
The smaller fleet ships are locking on and ranging. This close to the command cruiser, they cannot use their missile banks or torpedo bays, they are limited to high density lasers and particle weapons. Just like we planned.
My overcharged weapons fire destroying the targeting array on the command cruiser. Two seconds later, the combined laser fire of the fleet strikes my shield and I launch a stolen warp-star missile. The Bel-ha will notice it, but we won't be here to prosecute. I set it to detonate exactly one second after launch. No heat, only super-luminous emissions, sufficient to blind every scanner out here.
And at exactly two hundred and thirty thousand miles from the surface of Lorissi, just outside of the major planetary gravity well, Travelling Light uncloaks and jumps in the completely opposite direction of the fleet. Her jump to light speed was perfect, she didn't take a scratch. She has just enough shielding to protect them from the jump and their eventual landing. She cloaked in the last three minutes of the approach to ensure once we got closer to the fleet she would not be seen. Perfect execution and Biyu should be asking for a raise when they drop.
My last minute. I calculate in sixty seconds, Glorious will be destroyed. I have just enough time to build that condo, I was thinking about and enjoy half a year before they vaporize the Glorious. Just joking. I do not intend to die here.
Sixty seconds.
Peeling off to the port side of the Battlecruiser, putting it between me and the rest of the fleet. Shields are down to thirty percent. The Glorious is still handling well and I push her to the limits as I redirect her shields aft, to cover my escape. I burn the engines and predict the incoming fire, I slow down the flow of time as I press the ship to perform maneuvers she was never designed for, pushing the limits of her design. And for ten seconds, she does excellently. I spent the rest of that ten seconds keeping the ship from being shot to hell. I am successful.
Fifty seconds.
Their ranging is better once I am out of the shadow of the command ship, but every second I get further away, weakening their beam weapons. I can see the planetary defense nodes scattered inside of the lunar orbit. They have not fired on me yet, and they won't since I seeded the belt with a variation of the virus the first intruders used to get into the system. It won't last more than two minutes, but I won't be here in two minutes, so that will be fine. Once I am gone, the system will fire on the Corvan fleet. A additional bit of code added to the last part of the software. That should give the Wilks and Company the time they need to be harder to trace. No predictive engine gives me better than fifteen percent to pull off a speed to range escape. I need to try something different.
Forty seconds.
Bearing down on me, beam lasers and particle weapons weakening the shield, down to fifteen percent power. Pushing the array's regeneration past the prescribed limits. This ship is never flying again. Turning off all safety protocols. Shield power back to thirty percent. Lidar systems locking on, they are preparing missiles and torpedoes. Distance getting greater, but it is not enough to be out of range. They will hit me in twenty seconds once they launch in ten seconds.
Thirty seconds.
I am in range of the defense node. I establish a communications link with it. It does not accept at first. I try several codecrackers with no success. I review the information used by the earlier invaders. They had a stolen access code. I remove my hard light clone from the tactical panel and set him to cracking the code directly. He estimates ten seconds. An explosion booms from the starboard engine and an indicator says she has taken a hit due to shield flickering as it is about to fail. The sudden loss of the engine no longer matters. We are going to hit the defense drone. It is so much more massive than we are, it will be like a bug hitting a windshield.
Twenty seconds.
They fire. I am past the defense barrier. My codecracker penetrated the system and is now working to get me into the main core. He tells me five seconds. The shield is dropping and the launch of the torpedoes are streaking toward me. I have set the burst comm laser to transmit but it will take five seconds to calibrate.
Ten seconds.
I can see the torpedoes, they are dense like fireflies streaking through the night. The beam lasers have fallen off and the shield is gone so there is no flare or flicker on the ships optics. I can see the fleet attempting to turn. They have strayed into the Bel-ha space in an effort to close their distance to me. Unfortunate. It means the defense system will be forced to fire on them. So sad. My hard-light clones have begun to fail inside the Glorious and smoke and fires are everywhere. S-VER would have been proud. She had been... well, glorious. My last two hard-light constructs indicate success. The first has made it into the defense core. The second has completed the comm laser connection.
Five seconds.
The torpedoes are now blocking all other light, each a miniature sun, for a moment reminding me of the jostle of stars near the core of the galaxy, all bright and close together, sharing stellar gasses and wisps of energy as gravity creates a nuclear soup of the stray hydrogen and helium, I think for a moment, I know what Thomas feels like when he is about to die. That moment of transcendental awareness where you see all there is to see. The fleet trying to bring their massive bulk around, the defense satellite powering it's weapon systems, The defense network attempting to assess the fleet. The communications between the ships of the fleet as they attempt to align to jump. I get the last laugh, if they jump now, it will take them a month to realign before they can head out to the Expanse to hunt for the Majoris and company. Heh. Machines for the win. My last clone presses the comm transmit button. The torpedoes explode as they strike the Glorious and the Glorious explodes as she strikes the defense node. The burst transmit takes only a second.
One second.
The defense node fires on the Fleet destroying a light cruiser. The fleet scatters and some members panic and jump. The torpedo explosions emit their tachyon energy into the night and onboard the Travelling Light, searching for tachyon bursts, there is silence.
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