Chapter 65

ISV Liberator

Space Station Vertyn

The small stealth raider burned hard for the exterior wall nearest the cafeteria of the space station. Alpha was sure the emission coming from the engines were enough for any of the ships in orbit to realize it was there. That didn’t matter so much—stealth was no longer an option.

Around it, the battle raged. Ships exploded with dazzling arrays of color. Debris from wreckages dotted the area. Missiles and magnetic cannon rounds sped in both directions, some narrowly missing Alpha’s ship. Whether the attacks were aimed for him or not didn’t matter. What did was making it to the station and getting away before a lucky shot destroyed them. Omega was one of the best pilots he knew—after all, that was one of the purposes Alpha created him for—but the enemies only needed to get lucky once.

The inertial dampeners whined in protest at the intense deceleration when they approached the hull of the station. Alpha felt himself pressed hard against his seat. Omega, on the other hand, hardly seemed to notice. A dull thud sounded through the port airlock. There came a sizzling followed by a brief whir as the plasma cutters bored a hole in the side of the station and sealed it.

“Secure, sir,” Omega said, standing. The robot grabbed a stun stick from an arms locker near the back of the cockpit. Alpha undid his seatbelt and walked over to grab one of his own. He was already wearing a tactical suit with a portable shield generator attached at the belt. “Sensors indicate they are evacuating the cafeteria to a nearby safe room, though the target is still inside.”

“We move quick and decisively,” Alpha stated, though he knew the words were unnecessary. Everything the android did was quick and decisive. It was how it was designed. “Get the boy, get back to the ship, and immediately jump out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alpha took a deep breath and moved to the airlock door. Everything he’d done so far culminated in this moment. This was their one opportunity. If they failed here, they wouldn’t get another one. And that meant they would not be prepared to face the threat the rest of the galaxy was ignoring. Or too stupid to see in the first place.

Omega glanced at Alpha, its hand poised over the button that would activate the door. He nodded. The robot thumped the release. It whirred open, revealing the station hallway. Three Hyperion soldiers—all human, no robots, Alpha noted—were standing there waiting with their laser swords at the ready. They lunged. None were prepared for the speed of Omega as the robot ducked and weaved through their assault. Its alacrity allowed it to hit each in the neck with its stun stick, incapacitating them in quick order. After brief spasms, they collapsed to the ground in heaps.

Alpha leapt from the door, landing on the deck a meter down. The cafeteria door was twenty meters to their right. It was evident even without the floor plan projected in the corner of his vision by his CAM. The room was the one dozens of children were running from and down the hallway in the opposite direction.

In another corner of his vision, Alpha had two images, just in case. One was of their target, the boy named Skylar Reid. The other was of Maxwell Dietrich. Worst case scenario, they left with Maxwell instead of Skylar. That way, they at least had something got show for their efforts.

Omega waded through the sea of children and teenagers, easily pushing them to the side as it carved a path for Alpha to follow behind. He looked from side to side. His CAM was automatically compared the faces of the people around him to the two images. If it detected either, it would alert him at once.

A sizzle sounded from within the cafeteria. Omega hit another soldier with its stun stick after he managed to clip the robot’s shield with his sword. It pushed through the crowd that was making its way out of the cafeteria, its head swiveling side to side.

“There,” Omega called out, pointing to the far side of the room. Alpha followed the pointing robot’s finger.

Sitting at the table was the person Alpha least wanted to see at that moment. He restrained a groan. In between two brutish looking teenagers was not Skylar Reid, but Maxwell Dietrich. Still, they could salvage as much of the operation as they could.

“Seize him, Omega,” Alpha said over the heads of the last children. Maxwell and his buddies hadn’t moved. Instead, they simply sat there staring at the two newcomers. They snickered to one another at the display.

Omega raised an arm. Three darts shot from the android’s hand and sunk into each of the boys’ necks. They shouted in alarm and tried to move towards Alpha and Omega. Before Maxwell—the quickest of the three—was even a meter away from his chair, he collapsed to the ground.

“What shall we do with the other two, Master?” Omega asked. It walked over and picked up Maxwell, slinging him over its shoulder.

“Might as well bring them.” Alpha glanced at the body on Omega’s arm. “Assuming you can carry all three that is.”

A few minutes later, they returned to the ship with their three prisoners. The hallway had emptied in the time they spent retrieving their packages. Omega brought them to one of the holding cells near the rear of the ship. Once they were secured, Omega returned to its pilot seat and detached the vessel from the side of the station. The battle looked to be nearly over, which meant it would be even more dangerous to try flying out. Instead, the robot immediately activated the Harrington Drive—enhanced to allow transits closer to gravity wells—and they hurtled into an empty section of deep space.

Alpha nearly threw himself into his chair, crossing his arms across his chest. All the time and effort they had put into this endeavor. A decade of work. Every single time he thought he was making progress, something happened to thwart that. It didn’t matter what or where or how. All that mattered was that they needed to figure out how to rectify the situation. Retrieving Maxwell was just a consolation prize, but they could make it work. After all, whatever was so special about Skylar was in Maxwell. It was at least worth studying the boy closer. Then, when they were finally able to capture Skylar Reid, they would be prepared.

“Creator, I am detecting an intrusion attempt,” Omega said.

Alpha immediately looked over at the android. His heart pounded in his ears. How could someone be hacking Omega? The robot was supposed to be impenetrable. Nothing in the known galaxy should have been able to breach the defenses. He programmed them himself and had the best computer experts try to get through. None of them were able to.

He stood and ran to one of the consoles towards the middle of the bridge. With a few taps, he was able to pull up a view of the interfaces into Omega. Sure enough, there were thousands—millions, even—of unauthorized access requests to Omega’s processing units.

“It’ll be alright,” Alpha said, mostly to himself. He began furiously typing commands into the console in an attempt to fight off the attackers. From what he could tell, it was originating from within his own ship. Could the station have done something when they docked? No, an examination of the source address indicated it did not start until after they left, and there was no indication in the logs of it being injected prior to their departure.

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Omega slowly lifted one arm into the air. The action was stilted and convulsive. Then the appendage fell to the side, still attached but as lifeless as a broken tree branch swaying in the wind. Omega’s entire body jerked for a moment as if being shocked before going still.

“Diverting all resources to fighting them off. Firewall has been breached. It is unlike anything I have—”

Omega suddenly went silent and his body slackened. Alpha continued trying to type commands. His hands shook. If the robot was being hijacked, it could easily kill both him and the boy. Not just with its hands, but it could carry out any number of actions that could destroy the ship.

Alpha typed even more aggressively into the console. The harder he tried, the more whatever was attacking Omega locked him out of the systems and subroutines built into the construct. Even the backdoors he put in place were rendered nonfunctional. No matter what he did, he couldn’t restore functionality to the robot.

“Hello.”

Alpha jumped and spun around. His hand instinctively went to his waist where his pistol was holstered. He pulled it and deactivated the safety in one fluid motion, pointing it at the spot where the voice had come from.

Omega was standing, though his posture was much more relaxed than Alpha had ever seen it before. It had its hands folded behind its back. The robot’s legs were spaced shoulder width apart, as if in parade rest.

“I’m sure you’re wondering who I am and what’s going on. Please, allow me to explain.” Omega—or whatever was controlling it—gestured to one of the chairs on the bridge. “Have a seat, and we can talk.”

“No, thanks,” Alpha said. He had enough years of experience to know that sitting severely limited his already narrow escape options. “I’ll stand. Now, tell me who you are.”

“Very well.” The robot took a few steps parallel to Alpha, maintaining the distance between them. Its movements were much more fluid than before. Not that Alpha was a slouch when it came to constructing robotic entities. The way it moved now, though, was exponentially better than anything he could have done. It glided across the floor as if it was made from liquid metal. “My name is Marduk. I am the last survivor of a race known as the Ciovyr, and you are in grave danger.”

#

Prime Directive

Stariek Orbit

The Hyperion Fleet was all but destroyed. Many of the vessels had given up, much to Nergal’s dismay. The artificial intelligence had hoped they would fight to the last man. His calculations prior to the attack indicated a forty-two percent chance of that. Though, it was no matter. If they acquiesced to him and agreed to his demands, then that would be that many fewer ships he needed to construct to form a proper navy when he came into control of the Empire.

Speaking of which, Tober Delargivic should have reported in already. He was supposed to have been on Hyperia itself, waiting to claim the throne. Once that was done, he was to communicate the fact directly to Nergal. So far, there had been no communications from the man.

Nergal resisted the urge to pester Tober with needless messages. If something was happening, he would know and be able to react at that point. Until then, he was going to continue the plan as decided upon prior to the assault. That meant locating the ones Marduk had experimented on. There were two on the station, he knew that much. He even knew their names: Maxwell Dietrich and Skylar Reid. Why the Ciovyr chose either boy, Nergal would never know. That part, though, was unimportant. He did not need to know why his creator decided to pick them. Nergal just needed to know where they were. Then, he would be able to capture them and use them to locate Marduk.

A sensor alert came from one of the thousands of ships around the station. Near the center of the station, a small stealth raider was making its way from the hull. In the seven point two seconds it took Nergal to dispatch one of his many ships to intercept, the stealth raider disappeared. Before it did so, he was able to get a scan of the vessel.

On board was one of the two boys. Whether it was Maxwell Dietrich or Skylar Reid, he did not know. But that meant one of them was once more in the wild. Once more, they were set loose in the galaxy. Marduk was one step closer towards his own victory. That still left him many steps behind Nergal, but any step closer was unacceptable. His creator needed to know total defeat before his death. He needed to experience what Nergal had.

What was more, there was a signal that inserted itself into the ship. It was a blip, barely perceptible even to Nergal’s advanced scanning capabilities. And with it, he knew there was only one possible race that could have produced the signal based off the modulation detected just before the wormhole generated and the ship disappeared through it. It was of Ciovyr origin.

A subroutine immediately set to decoding the signal, trying to decipher and trace it back to its source. Its destination was that ship, that much was certain. But if he could track where it came from, that would reveal where Marduk had been hiding for nearly twenty cycles.

Immediately, he set a subroutine into decrypting the signal. If he remembered anything about the last Ciovyr, it was that his encryption was second to none. It would take time and effort to figure out the source, even for Nergal—time and effort he could be devoting to something more important. Then again, was there anything more important than finding his creator?

Part of the station exploded. It was quickly followed by the detonation of one of the modular cubes the Hyperions installed. Within seconds, it was a field of debris scattering around the area. This one was mostly dormitories. A scan indicated there was a munitions bay stored where the initial explosion occurred. A chain reaction of the fire igniting with oxygen overwhelmed the automated suppression systems. Before bulkheads could be deployed to contain it, it erupted through that part of the station. Luckily, it was isolated, meaning the rest of the station remained relatively unharmed.

A pity, if Nergal could feel such an emotion. He started scanning the wreckage. There were some bigger chunks that had life signs still within. They appeared to be safe rooms designed for just such an eventuality. He would send search and rescue vessels to retrieve the lifeforms. At the least, they would be good test subjects. Perhaps they could prove themselves useful in other ways.

Another signal appeared of a fast moving transport. There was no transponder activity from it, though its construction appeared to be Hyperion in origin. Not that it meant much given it launched from a Hyperion station.

Its trajectory indicated it departed from a hidden hangar bay near the center of the station approximately fifteen seconds before the explosion. Nergal admonished itself for not detecting the hangar sooner. It immediately set a subroutine in motion to identify any more of the potential hiding spots. Another began scanning the ship. There were four life signs on board. Two appeared to be smaller than the others—children, potentially.

But why? What purpose did smuggling children out have? Unless they were the ones that Marduk infected. That was impossible, though. He clearly detected one of them on the other ship that escaped. The scan, however, indicated at least one of them had the same implant as on the other ship. But could that have been a trick put in by the Ciovyr signal that injected itself? Were both of them actually on this vessel? Had the first been a ploy to make him ignore this one?

He hesitated. If he ordered the destruction of the vessel, that would mean potentially ridding the universe of the one hope Nergal had of finding his creator. If he let the vessel go, however, that would mean he might lose an opportunity to trace Marduk back to his location. Trying to capture the transport could mean it ended up being destroyed anyway. All other processes stopped as he tried to determine the best course of action.

It was this hesitation that allowed the transport to initiate a transit aperture before the interdiction web could prevent it. Nergal immediately ordered the closest frigate to disable it. A salvo of kinetic fragmentation rounds erupted from the frigate. Most of the rounds missed. A few impacted the back of the transport just as it crossed through the aperture. The vessel disappeared before he could confirm its disablement. That made two. Two vessels had escaped from the station. And on board both were potentially the only ones that would be able to lead him to Marduk.

A wave of negative reinforcement went through Nergal, stronger than any previous one. If he had a mouth, he would have let loose a roar. As it were, several of the ships shuddered. Immediately, he set subroutines into motion to create data centers for additional processing power. Plans for an entire planet to be converted were created in less than a second. Marduk was not going to beat Nergal at his own game any longer. It was unacceptable. He needed to find the last Ciovyr and destroy him once and for all.