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Quod Olim Erat: Fractal Contact (Chapter 27)
🕑 Added 2023-09-24 14:45:29 +0000 UTCBack when I used to watch entertainment media with Sev, there were frequent references to ghost ships. Something about discovering a vessel with its entire crew missing sparked the imagination of people, satisfying their deep cravings for adventure. When it came to reality, the concept was completely wrong; it was never the ship that was the ghost, but the crew.
It was still difficult to believe that there had been a crew aboard even before I had boarded. One of the first things I had done was use my authority to check Sof’s systems. Nothing had pointed to any inconsistencies and so I hadn’t looked further. Now, it was clear why the bridge had been transformed to my living quarters—the less I had a reason to stroll about the ship, the less likely I was to stumble upon anything that wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Did you join me on the planets?” I turned to one of the soldiers left to guard me. The man likely had gone through my file in depth, for he remained with his helmet at full opacity, refusing to acknowledge my question in any way. None of the squad remaining on the bridge did.
The colonel, who also had refused to share his name, had been the only person who’d spoken to me directly. It had been a brief exchange during which he had stripped me of my rank and placed me in “house arrest” while other matters were dealt with. Everything considered, I was grateful I wasn’t forcefully put into sleep mode; simulations put the chance of that at sixteen percent.
“Sof, care to share a view of the kids?” I asked.
“Sorry, Captain, but I’ve been instructed not to,” he announced.
“I’m not your captain anymore,” I said, then tilted my head to the side. Or was I?
“Confirmation hasn’t come through, which means your status is pending.”
Good old-fashioned bureaucracy. I’d seen it be the key to a lot of mess-ups, but I’d never thought it would end up being to my advantage.
Red messages covered the walls of the bridge, indicating we’d entered a state of red alert. Out of habit, I sent a series of requests to link to the ship’s systems. To no surprise, all requests were denied.
“What’s going on?” I asked, addressing no one in particular. “Did we engage anyone?”
My keepers looked at each other, but didn’t say a word. The moment I stood up from my seat in the dining section of the bridge, five heavy caliber rifles were instantly pointed in my direction.
“I take that as a yes,” I said, remaining in place.
There was a small window of opportunity left for me. According to a thousand simulations, the odds of me succeeding in the available time frame were less than thirteen-point-two percent. Even for an Ascendant, they were quite poor, but the alternative was worse.
Sof, what’s the status? I used my conscience core to establish a direct link with him.
Going against your own rules? The battleship scoffed at me. Grace and Radiance have been engaged by the rest of the ships. I keep getting conflicting zero priority orders on the matter.
Arbiters fighting against each other? If any of this got out, all faith in the Fleet would crumble. The arbiters were supposed to be the ultimate deciders. Their judgment prevailed and to my knowledge there was no Fleet or government body that could supersede it. Yet what would happen if the arbiters failed to reach a consensus? I had seen the consequences of disagreements first hand back during my time aboard Gregorius. In a way, that was the reason that Bavon had gained momentum for giving the go-ahead of my current mission. That was then, though. Everyone against the contact faction had formed a united front, determined to prevent him, and me, from succeeding. As the arbiter himself had mentioned, now that the anti-contact faction knew which star systems to avoid, they had no need to keep playing along.
Sof, full quarantine, I transmitted. I’m designating myself emergency weapons officer, with absolute authority when it comes to weapons and comms matters. How many people aboard?
Twenty-one on the bridge, three squads of thirty-six on decks twenty to twenty-nine. A thousand and fifty-nine have manned the key weapons systems.
No one in the hangars? I asked.
Taking direct control of the weapon systems was an obvious attempt to bypass the arbiter’s instructions by assuming manual control. That was the wrong approach. Anyone with enough experience would have sealed off the hangars, along with the other key areas. If I had been given the job, I would have podded myself the first chance I got.
No, the ship replied.
What about the dome chamber?
No one there, either.
Now that was outright sloppy. They should have at least protected the thing they had come for. As Gibraltar would say: Too bad for them.
Sof, this is a priority zero order with captain’s authority, I transmitted. Grant me full operational authority and go into sleep mode for two hours.
You have been granted full operational authority of the ship, one of Sof’s subroutines transmitted autonomously from him.
Sorry, kid, I thought.
After all this time, I had finally crossed the line that the arbiters and all of humanity feared—I had gone rogue. The ship and all its systems were mine to control. All I had to do was escape the soldiers left to watch me.
“I’m going to the food dispenser,” I said loudly.
One of the soldiers nodded, but still didn’t lower his weapon. It was as good as could be expected. Nodding back in turn, I slowly went to the device. On the way, I activated the mind scalpel once more. A dozen more people appeared, just as I expected. The colonel in charge wasn’t stupid, leaving just enough of his squad visible to give me a false sense of security. Unfortunately, that trick only worked for humans.
“Lemon cherry,” I said upon arriving at the dispenser.
The food portion quickly appeared in the tray area. I grabbed the ceramic container and gave it a brief look.
“Lemon cherry,” I repeated.
A second portion appeared. The bluish green color of the food contents was clearly visible, making it clear that it was anything but what I had requested.
“Lemon cherry.”
I heard one of the soldiers stifle a laugh. Most people in the Fleet had experienced the struggle of getting what one wanted as opposed to what the battleship subroutine considered appropriate. Only captains and command staff had the privilege of getting what they asked. Everyone else was at the mercy of the respective ship and its health protocols. In this case, I was the one controlling what was provided, and the thing I was interested in wasn’t the contents of the food, but their containers.
“Lemon…” I ran half a thousand simulations. Eighty-seven percent of the time, things went my way. In the remaining thirteen, I ended up with a few bullets in my left side, in one instance even fatal. “…Cherry.”
Portions continued pouring out, one after the other.
“What the—” One of the soldiers saw the discrepancy, but it was already too late.
Spinning around, I threw several of the food portions at the ones I had designated the greatest threats and plunged to the ground. All light on the bridge went off, plunging everything into darkness.
Gunfire followed. Based on the pattern, I could assume that the soldiers were murder troops rather than Fleet grunts or security forces. That put me at a slight disadvantage.
I rolled along the floor, transmitting orders to the med bots in the area. Anything that could be mistaken for me in the darkness was my ally.
“Backup team!” someone shouted. “She’s gone active!”
So, there was a backup team, after all? A pity I had put the bridge in comm lockdown mode. No communications would go in or out. I would have felt a lot better if I had a few third-contact rods at hand. With those, I could guarantee that the comms would be unusable. For the moment, standard ship countermeasures would have to do.
Weapon lights lit up. I immediately leapt at the one closest to me. The distance fell well within my estimations, allowing me to grip the weapon before the person could fire.
“She has—” the woman managed to say before I struck her in the back of the helmet.
Dazed, she loosened her grip, allowing me to grab the weapon and strike her again in the same place with it. Ironically, the combat gear the soldiers were wearing made it more difficult to disable people than killing them. A cynical person could say that was the whole point.
The amount of gunfire increased as lights danced about the area in search of me. With all comms blocked, the soldiers had just as much chance at hitting each other as they did hitting me. The notion must have crossed their minds. A few seconds later, the shooting stopped.
“Comm’s down!” someone shouted. “Block the exit!”
Not a bad idea, but already too late. Several seconds were enough for me to reach the bridge door. From my past experience, I knew that the greatest number of casualties during mutinies and breach attempts occurred at exits. They were motionless, well known, and a natural choke point that the active side had to go through. In nearly all cases, the defending side didn’t even need to do anything special, just hunker down, shoot indiscriminately at their targets. Of course, that only worked as long as one could see the actual exit.
Assuming control of the image display system, I created an image-feed of the door opening on one of the bridge walls. Fire resumed as everyone went on full blast, eager to prevent me from escaping.
Sorry for the mess, Sof. I thought as I rushed in the correct direction, triggering the real door to open.
“She’s got system control!” I heard a shout. The soldiers had caught on to what I was doing. At this point, there was a seven percent chance that one of them managed to graze me before I reached the safety of the corridor.
Three bullets flew by, creating the unmistakable sound as they did. Fortunately for me, none of them hit.
Rolling out of their line of sight, I closed off the door again, sealing the bridge. It was impossible to tell if anyone had been injured during the brief moment of chaos. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was on a countdown. It might take minutes or even more for anyone to find out that I had rebelled against my orders, but with each second, the chance increased. One missed checkup, one random attempt to get in touch with anyone on the bridge, and everyone in the system would know I was up to something.
Overriding the safety procedures, I went through Sof’s internal sensors. For the most part, things were as he had told me. The majority of the troops had focused on establishing manual control of the weapon systems. What he hadn’t told me—when he could know—was that there were several more squads in proximity to the artifact chamber. No doubt they had been made invisible due to the thought quarantine.
The low numbers suggested that they were there mostly as an afterthought, but even so, they presented a challenge. Despite my relatively easy escape, the people aboard knew what they were doing; dispenser food potions and a single machine gun weren’t going to be enough to fight off everyone I encountered.
Never thought I’d be starting a mutiny; I opened the elevator door. By all accounts, the cabin was empty, but I chose to climb on top of it. A few subroutines pinged me with safety warnings, but nothing more. Being considered a battleship had its advantages. Interestingly enough, according to the personnel database, I remained listed as the captain. It went to show that even with arbiters, there was always someone slacking somewhere.
The weapon had nine remaining rounds. I switched to single fire and activated the elevator, while making sure that all ship sensors continued to show no movement. Unless I ran across anything unexpected, this ensured I’d reach the deck of the artifact chamber. The greatest issue remained the corridor. Sealing all communications there wouldn’t do much good—I’d have to stop all comms throughout the ship, in which case any of the remaining groups would instantly pick up what was going on.
As the elevator went down, I dedicated half of Sof’s processing power to decipher the comm protocols the soldiers used. While that happened, I created a few voice models based on everyone I’d heard on the bridge. A few separate unrelated phrases and lots of shouts weren’t enough to create a suitable facsimile. I’d have to create a bit of additional tenseness for that to happen.
Outside, the fight between the ships was slowly escalating. Going through the past records, it was clear that it had started with a few warning shots, quickly increasing as the afflicted sides failed to find a resolution.
There always was something sad about ships that had known each other for years engaging in combat, especially when there were people aboard. Such occurrences were frequent on the Scuu front. Even nowadays, there were still cases of ships or crews being driven to insanity and subsequently destroyed.
Simulations ran one after the other, each presenting different outcomes. My only course of action was to shoot my way through the corridor and into the artifact dome. That was the easy part. Reaching a hangar with jump-capable shuttles once I was done would require me to seal off as many parts of the ship as possible without blocking my own path.
If Augustus were here, he’d do something extreme, such as have me initiate a ten-minute self-destruct procedure. In theory, I had the option to do that as well, but I preferred to use it as a final resort.
Reaching the artifact deck took a lot longer than I would have liked. Fortunately, there were no indications that anyone had discovered my escape.
Time for phase two. I covered every wall on the deck with biohazard warning messages. Precisely six hundred milliseconds later, I killed the lights and opened the elevator door.
“What the fuck?” The soldiers sprang into action. Although startled, their movements were slightly sluggish. The faint amount of light coming from the red messages on the walls was just enough to let me see their exact locations and what they were doing. Most of them instinctively turned to each other for unspoken moral support. Two readied their weapons.
Sorry, kids. I fired two shots, hitting both in their leading arms.
The weapon I had acquired tended to drop the shots a bit, but fortunately, that didn’t result in lethal injuries. As the pair screamed in pain, I quickly went onto the next target, taking it out as well.
“We’ve been breached!” I transmitted to their comms, copying the voice of the woman I’d heard on the bridge.
The distraction wasn’t much, but every little bit helped my odds.
Three more shots—two more wounded. Only three remained now. Shifting from foot to foot, I ran forward. By the time I redirected the distance by two-thirds, the first shots echoed in response. They were tough and chaotic, acting more as suppression fire than actual targeting.
I slid along the floor, emptying what was left in my magazine. That only accounted for two more partially disarmed. Two bullets managed to hit me in the right arm. One was more of a graze and the other, while more serious, wasn’t debilitating.
Always a wildcard. I leapt back up, engaging the nearest soldier in hand-to-hand. Wounded or not, I couldn’t afford to leave anyone conscious. The man tried to fight back, which only made it easier for me to move behind him and grab his helmet. Outlines of warnings piled up, visible on the visor as I pulled it off with a faint click.
The firing paused. Evaluating my options, I hit my shield against the side of his head, causing him to drop to the ground like a deflated pillow. Stepping to the side, I threw the helmet at the last armed opponent, then proceeded to knock out the next injured one.
The helmet was deflected without any issue. The one that followed, though, hit its mark, dazing the distant soldier for a few seconds—just enough I needed to get close and make him drop.
The sensation of pain within my body grew—a reminder that I had been too reckless. Less than nine seconds later, it was all over. All of the soldiers lay unconscious and helmetless on the floor. Proper combat training demanded that I tied them up in order to prevent future surprises. Lacking the time, I directly ran into the dome chamber.
“You should have sealed it,” I said, more to myself than to any of them as the door slid open.
The chamber was just as chaotic as I had left it, containing all third-contact artifacts as well as the dead race constructs I had been playing with. More importantly, there were two space suits and enough oxygen canisters for forty-eight hours—more, if I controlled my breathing. It would have been nice to have a med bot, but so would have been a lot of things.
Rushing to the racks of rods, I grabbed two and gently tapped their sides against one another. Immediately, all communications were severed. With that, I had finally earned myself some breathing room.
Proper procedure for a rogue ship was to send a self-destruct command directly to the core. There were no countermeasures, no means to prevent it. As long as the transmission went through, a ship’s subroutines would execute it, shutting it down. Only top Fleet personnel had the authority to issue the command. In the vast majority of cases, other battleships were ordered to immobilize or destroy any suspected rogue vessel. Being in the same system as a few hostile arbiters made me think that they would prefer the direct approach; or rather, they would have preferred it. With all communications out in Sof’s area, no transmission could make it through.
I took off the top of my uniform and checked my wounds. Judging by the amount of blood, I could have used some extra nanites about now. Following the first aid protocols within my database, I applied pressure and made a makeshift tourniquet. If things got worse, I could use an emergency med kit from one of the hangar shuttles. No doubt things could have gone better, but considering the results of my simulations, I wasn’t remotely close to any of the worst-case scenarios.
“You’ve no intention of making things easy for me, do you?” I glanced at the dome. “Now it’s time to finally reveal your secret.”
