Singularity (chapters 1 - 3)

ZERO¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬_______________________

AN EASY MISTAKE



A lone figure kneels amongst the debris of a scarred white wasteland.
…Save mankind…
The thought hangs heavily, refusing to drift off with the gusting ice hewn wind.
…I’ve heard that line so many times I can’t help but laugh…
Hollow electronic eyes stare at scarred metal hands, limp and pathetic in its lap.
…Save mankind…
The machine looks up, whining servos protesting at the weight of the dented armour covering the head assembly.
…From who? Ourselves…
The plan had failed. Something had been missed. Now all that was left was the shattered remains of the facility; destroyed from orbit. Obliterated in an instant by the awesome power of the Acheron’s MAC gun.
But even that hadn’t been enough.
…Should just let it flicker out and die like a candle in the dark. Shit, if we weren’t making money off our own misery we probably would…
He looks at his right gauntlet, checking the operability of his primary weapon. The meter is smashed, the display useless. Running an internal test confirms his suspicions, magnetic bottle damaged, integrity compromised. No matter, he’d had worse. He spies a familiar shape under some heavy gauge steel nearby. He moves towards it, inspecting it slowly. The outer casing is undamaged, it should still function correctly.
…Time is supposed to heal all wounds…
There might still be another way.
…Optimistic philosophy…
Thirty six hours ago an anomaly on Europa was recorded, protocols for first contact were enacted. Scientists from a nearby mining facility were commissioned to investigate and document possible alien life on the isolated moon.
Twenty four hours ago Izanami station confirmed its first fatality. Soon after this transmission was received all contact was reportedly lost.
Twenty three hours ago a prototype class A Combat Chassis was activated on the mining support vessel UGS Acheron. Tasked with the investigation of the fate of Izanami station.
Not that his findings would ever be known. Within a matter of hours they’d all be dead. Left floating out there in the dark, their secrets forever sealed in their limp marionette like bodies.
He still had one exit strategy.

I’m all about second chances…

He’d had it from the very start.

Maybe this time I’ll get it right…








































“On the whole I am inclined to think morbidly about our achievements. We have fashioned them after us. But have we fashioned something good? Something just? Or in creating something in our image have we amplified our faults?...
…Have we released an evil upon the world?”

-Irvine Report 2053


































24 HOURS AGO





















ONE____________________________

BUMP IN THE NIGHT



Falga Regio
H hour -6


There was nothing but blackness. No light pierced the abyss, no movement, the only sound came from the gentle hum of the scrubbers as they recycled the stale air. It wasn’t the cramped spaces or long hours that bothered Drace the most-it was the air. It made his skin feel tight and clammy; it almost felt like it increased the ambient tension. Like the atmosphere itself was waiting for something to happen. The simple fact of the matter was that nothing ever did happen. Nothing had happened now for three long months, just endless laps of his allocated survey area.
Checking, and rechecking.

He watched the screen unemotionally as his returns came back-they were all negative. He checked the chrono in his upper right viewing quarter-it was time to report in. Sighing aloud he touched a button on the side of his headset and waited to hear the click of the comm-link opening.
“Overlord, this is sentry one, update over” He’d always thought that the control centre’s choice of call sign was a little self indulgent.
“Sentry one, this is Overlord, wait one over”
Drace’s interest spiked for a moment as he wondered why there was a hold up. All the sentry points had allocated report times; nobody else would be on the net unless something out of the ordinary was happening. In a place where nothing ever happened, something as mundane as a cut finger would have been hot gossip in the mess later. His imagination spiralled out of control as he dreamt up a thousand possibilities for the delay. The daydream was short, however, as the response came back.
"Sentry one, this is Overlord, send over"
"This is Sentry one, all returns for the shift were negative, over"
"Copy that, data has been logged. Prepare for new upload, priority tasking, Epsilon level encryption"
Drace felt the unfamiliar chill of butterflies in the pit of his stomach as he processed what he’d just heard. Epsilon was the highest level of encryption allocated to personal for this mission, but he hadn’t heard of anything ever coming in at those levels. Most of what they dealt with was either Alpha or Beta, very low classification tasks which could be anything ranging from fuel consumption reports to mundane things like lunch orders. Heaven forbid if that information ever got out into the public.
He reprioritised his holo-screen with a few fluid hand motions and brought up a new node to accept the pending data. He enabled the secure channel and waited a moment for the incoming packet to appear in the dues in column.
"Secure channel enabled Overlord, ready to receive"
"Affirmative, Sentry one, uploading. Action and confirm"
Drace brushed the execute key with a wave of his hand and watched the progress bar until it reached one hundred percent. He grabbed the tasking order with his hands and opened it, the encryption software wrestled with it for a moment as it confirmed identities and classification levels. After a few moments it appeared in his holo-pit.
"Packet received, integrity positive"
"Roger Sentry one, Overlord out"
The priority message glared at him from the holo-screen. The boarders were red and reminded him of glowing eyes of some evil demon from children’s fairytales. Drace’s eyes danced swiftly over the contents of the message and quickly located new coordinates for a point of interest he was required to move to. He entered the data into his navigation computer and felt his submersible list to the left as it changed its heading, seeking out its new waypoint. After another quick check of the navigation computer to ensure everything was correct, Drace averted his attention back to the document.
Scanning across multiple incident reports that had been collated together, information that was routine of late-automated and piloted deep submersible robots malfunctioning on tasks. Some reports of automated rovers disappearing altogether, which wasn’t entirely uncommon, although judging by the data on screen he’d obviously only been told a small portion of the truth. The frequency of these occurrences was a lot higher than had been indicated in his weekly briefings. The automated manufacturing deck of the Acheron must be operating at full capacity to replace the losses.
Drace was starting to feel a growing sense of dread; none of this background information would have been attached to this message unless the mission coordinators thought it necessary for him to know. He was the senior pilot for the submersibles, which would make him the obvious point of contact for this kind of issue, but that didn’t comfort him much.
There were other reports as well-message logs from communications monitoring stations that had picked up rogue bursts of unidentifiable content. The transmissions disappeared so quickly that they couldn’t be recorded and processed, let alone triangulated. During the first few reports signals analysts had used the throw away line ‘yet-to-be-identified cosmic event’ to avoid any real work decrypting the content.
There were a lot more than a few incidents, however and supervisors had decided to pass it up the chain of command.
The logs were starting to sound very uncommon.
Further down the message were images that had been salvaged from the malfunctioning rovers. The images were shown in false colours and different spectrums to enhance silhouettes that appeared in the murky distance. None of the shapes were uniform but the frequency of the events coupled with the data of the malfunctions was alarming. Drace didn’t like where this was going. He scrolled down a little further and found a small box depicting the video log from one of the missing rovers; he opened it and viewed the file.
He stopped dead.
For a second he just stared blankly at the screen, unblinking, unmoving in the pit. That couldn’t be right, he thought. He quickly flicked the message aside and enlarged the viewing portal, surrounding himself in the image. Wiping the sweat from around his eyes he opened the file and watched it again, squinting to concentrate on certain point of the playback. Automated sensors that tracked his eye movements pinpointed the section of the screen he was looking at and zoomed in on it.
There.
He paused the video. In the murky lighting there was a strange looking silhouette in the background. It was Indistinct, foreign, alien to him. Something made that thought stick in his mind. He continued the playback but this time, however, he slowed the frame rate down to fifty percent. The silhouette seemed to move in from the lower left of the field of view and advance right into the camera. The next few seconds were just black and then the file terminated. Drace looped the playback and advanced it frame by frame. The period between the dark shape being at the visual limits and the screen going black couldn’t have been more than five frames.
Nothing’s that fast underwater.
Something in the previous frame stirred a memory and he shuffled back to it. There was something strange about the blackness that was advancing on the camera. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He shuffled the frames back and forward for a few minutes studying the screen intently, while another portion of his mind thought of a nature program he’d watched once with his son, Jared. It was a presentation on Barracuda’s, an incredibly fast aggressive fish from the oceans of earth. He stopped on that particular frame.
There was a pattern forming, the thought was right on the tip of his tongue.
He’d barely had time to register the thought when an icon pinged at the lower edge of his Holo. A quick hand gesture brought the message into the viewing template; Coordinates confirmed, Arrived at destination.
Drace activated the surveying suite again and sat back in his chair, scanning the display. All the returns were negative, nothing was making a noise or reflecting anything near his position. But the sense of unease didn’t leave him, that nagging voice in the back of his mind wouldn’t let go.
You’re missing something.
He found himself looking at the frozen image again. There was something about the silhouette, something familiar.
They look like teeth…
Something scraped against the side of the hull. Sounding like paper dragged across a desktop. Drace sat up so fast he nearly smacked his head on the air recyclers. He jerked a display panel into position and began cycling through the external cameras. The Aft camera was down, but the port and starboard cameras very functioning. He spun the little vessel on its axis, trying to find what had struck him with the cameras. Whatever it was, it was fast, just when he though he had it with one camera, it would dodge, then sink back into the darkness.
He hit the floodlights.
Nothing.
No silhouette, no debris, nothing. Whatever it was had just vanished.
Frustrated, Drace turned back to his surveyor suite display. He didn’t understand, there was nothing showing up. No blips, no clicks, no reflections, nothing, not even the usual background hiss of the underwater environment. Then it all made sense. It wasn’t that there was nothing. It was too much nothing. He was being blanketed by negative returns. Something was sending the exact opposite sonar and radar signals back to him.
He was being jammed.
He keyed the comm.-link in his ear.
“Overlord, this is sentry one, over”
No response.
He keyed again, but this time there wasn’t even a preamble from the crypto.
Static screamed through the earpiece, Drace yelled in pain and ripped it out but the static wasn’t coming from the earpiece, it was everywhere. In his stomach, his chest, his head. It increased in pitch until it felt like a drill between his eyes, boring into his brain. He screamed in agony, doubling over in his seat.
Something slammed into the hull. Jostling Drace about the cabin. He barely noticed, clawing at his skull, trying to stop the white-hot pain in his head. The sound of tortured metal joined the cacophony of sounds filling the cabin. An error message appeared on the failing holo screen, something about integrity failure. Drace didn’t care; he was concentrating on the frozen video image. Willing his mind to piece it together, above the lancing pain and terror.
The vessel began to buckle. Something was crushing it from the outside. Alarms wailed, but it was no use. There would be no rescue, not at this depth, not this far under the ice. Drace knew this, and with inhuman resolve he carried out his final tasks, securing the site for the rescue…
For the salvage crew.
He crawled back into his chair, amongst the splitting seams, and bursting pipes. Turning his attention back to the flickering screen, a sense of clarity washed over him, something that only the absolute horror of approaching death could provide.
The thought he’d had a few minutes ago came back to him as he stared at the paused frame. It was disturbing. Not because of the fact that the image seemed so alien.

But because it was alien.






TWO__________________________

BROKEN ANGEL



Low Orbit
H hour -5


It was dark. Dark like the abyss of the ocean, yet somehow it was, different. When compared to the abyss of the survey area this black wasn’t consuming, it didn’t feel like it enveloped you. This blackness was expansive, but it wasn’t empty. This place felt old. Pinpricked with blots of light like someone had flicked the bristles of a paintbrush across a black canvas was the spiral arm of the milky-way.
Through the lens of a ground-based telescope, one could have been mistaken for thinking it was a glowing trail of smoke, broken and drifting on a gentle breeze. Out here, however, beyond the debilitating effects of atmosphere, the naked eye was all you needed to take in the scene.
Something moved across the blackness.
It drifted slowly through the sea of stars. Its flanks seemed to glow silver as they reflected the distant light of the Sun. As it closed in, more detail became evident, large radar and communications dishes threw dark shadows across the titanium skin. Spine-like proximity sensors protruded from the rear decks, they made the ship resemble some kind of futuristic echidna. Running lights created a dull red glow in the areas not bathed in the intense white light of the Sun. Along the side of what could only have been the bridge were stencilled letters; it was a name; Acheron.
A massive super-structure dominated her spine; its unassuming exterior belied the mechanism of this machine. Magnetic arrays as large as multi-story buildings straddled either side of a tunnel that was so long; the blackness of its depths matched the abyss of space. This, however, was not a tunnel.
It was a barrel.
The crew had nicknamed it ‘MAC’. Its technical name was; Mass Accelerator Cannon. The assembly stored incredible amounts of energy in banks of capacitors and then channelled it down the barrel. The electromagnetic field that it generated upon firing could hurl objects at tremendous velocities. At maximum power, packages could reach one-tenth the speed of light. The Acheron frequently sent probes into orbit around planets or into the depths of space with this system. The MAC would also accelerate specially made storage units back to Earth, allowing scientific teams to analyse the raw samples. This was far more efficient than waiting for the mission to finish and the Acheron return home.
Something exploded from the MAC barrel and streaked off into the blackness, so quick that one would be forgiven if they had blinked, missing the whole event and thinking nothing had happened. The super-structure jolted rearwards along a complicated system of recoil dampeners. A split second later, the engines at the rear of the ship flared to life for a moment, correcting the loss of momentum.
"Package away, ETA to orbital insertion is 120 days"
A man in a faded, stained flight suit watched the display in the holo-pit as he waited for the FTL communicator to encrypt and send the message to earth. The sewn nametag on his chest was slightly discoloured and tearing away at the seam, but still legible-Riley. A small pulsing blip representing the samples he’d just sent moved quickly across the screen, tiny three-dimensional coordinates flashed quicker then his eyes could register as the item swiftly moved beyond Acheron’s sensory range. An inquiry box appeared in front of him, it indicated that a new FTL message had arrived and asked if he wanted to access the content. Riley accepted. A slightly degraded video recording appeared in front of him. The lip synch was out by a few milliseconds, enough to make it look like a badly dubbed movie.
"Copy that Acheron, we’ve logged your coordinates for insertion and expect arrival in 120 days. Just some quick house-keeping too, we’ve picked up some harmonic variations from your reactors, make sure you have your technicians take a look at it."
Riley rolled his eyes, they had known about that now for weeks. But there wasn’t much he could do when his technicians were too busy keeping the Manufactory operating at full capacity to replace all the robotic submersibles that didn’t seem to do anything but break, or disappear.
"You’re also due an update for your communications suite, but that’s a low priority, maybe upload it during your next power-plant shake-down. Oh yeah, the CEO wants to do another interview with one of the crew, maybe one of the knuckle draggers from your Manufactory? Other than that, we’ve only got a few bits and pieces to upload to Anni and that’s it for this cycle. Command out."
After the message ended, Riley sat there for a moment, he quickly swiped the holo pit clear and brought up his favourites list on the contacts application.
He quickly scrolled down the list until he found the extension he was after-a small gesture opened the comm-link.
"Anni, you there?" he asked, pressing his headset against his ear.
"As always John, why, may I ask, do I have pleasure of your conversation today?"
Riley grinned, she still sounded pissed from their slightly heated debate the previous day. He was stating how he believed that Batman was clearly the greatest super hero. Evidently she didn't share the same sentiment.
"Just another update from FleetCom for the communications suite. Plus some other random junk. You want this stuff loaded straight to your bus, or do I have to get off my ass and walk the hard transfer up to you?"
There was hardly a pause before she came back over his headset, voice dripping with malevolence. "Why john, you already know the answer to that, besides, we hardly get together anymore; technology has made this place so impersonal"
Riley dipped his head in vanquish "Alright, I’ll be up in a minute" He tapped his headset above his ear, killing the comm-link and then initiated a hard transfer onto a data crystal. A small progress reticule appeared on the holo-screen. It shifted colours through the spectrum as the files were loaded, ending in a cool Blue and accompanying chime to indicate the transfer was complete. Riley ejected the crystal and quickly inspected it before he put it in his breast pocket, it glowed and eerie blue light, hinting at the knowledge contained inside its delicate confines.

It never took Riley long to get to the Central processing room, Zero-G made short work of the long hallways that dominated the Acheron. He could still appreciate the feel of speed he got from gliding through the reprocessed air after so many years of travel. The odd lingering stare from technicians was worth the peace that surrounded him as he'd silently drifted toward the heart of the ship. No one floated around anymore; people avoided the dead zones that the gravity generators didn't cover.
He'd pushed open a dull grey hatch to enter the room, a visitor to the ship would have missed the innocuous door -the label had long ago peeled off- and continued onward but for the word 'CORE' that someone had taken the liberty to write in paint-pen near the handle. The room was dark, the Fluro's had been dimmed, flickering blue light reflected off steel from one of the Holo-Pits in the corner of the room.
Dull orange light from an ancient LCD Screen met the blue in a casual battle towards the centre of the room that neither colour seemed interested in. They both flowed into each other, quite happy to share the turf. The blue-orange light caught cabling bundles that snaked across the floor, throwing deep shadows away from the competing light sources. Riley kicked his legs forward and felt the familiar hold of gravity as it planted his outstretched feet onto the floor. He moved the rest of his body into the field and continued into the room.
"Anni?" He ventured, looking around the dimly lit room. For a few seconds there was no reply, then a muffled reply from one corner down by the Holo-Pit.
"Over here John, I’m just working on the input fields for the Pit, wanna give me a hand?"
"What do you need?" John said as he moved into the Holo's confines.
"Just bring up the initialise frames and variable sphere"
A quick swipe of his right hand brought up a flat board covered in letters and symbols, he reached for one in particular and activated it. The board dissolved away and evolved into a sphere with ten dimples in it. Riley placed the fingers from his right hand into the dimples then moved them around, making sure the ball tracked and aligned with his movements. He inserted his left hand into the other side and then broke the sphere by twisting and moving his hands apart, placing one half flat and leaving the other one vertical.
"Okay, now if you could just adjust plus twenty five, I think that ought to fix the problem"
Riley slowly twisted his fingers until he aligned it correctly then shook off the two sphere halves.
"That should do it"
"Okay" replied Anni "Lets give it a try" She'd barely gotten the last syllable out when the Holo-Pit glared to life, sputtering a bit then dimming into standby as it finished its diagnostic.
John moved out of the pit and took a seat off to the side and waited while Anni finished with what she was doing. He leant back into the worn leather and kicked his feet up onto a console.
"You'd better not let the Captain find you doing that, he’d have kittens," replied Anni's from over by the Holo-Pit.
"Hopefully..." John replied as he groped for something behind the chair, his hand touched a familiar object. He adjusted a little and tried again, the backrest fell back with a clang, he groaned in relaxation, "They're really nice cute ones"
He’d barely leant back for a few moments before he realized one of the underlying reasons he’d come to the Core room in the first place, a smile eased across his lips as he wound up for another intense debate.
“Don’t even start!” Said Anni, cutting him off before he even opened his mouth, “Superman shits on Batman, I mean, come on! He can’t even fly”
“Sure he can” Riley fired back.
“Gliding doesn’t count, and what’s he do the rest of the time? Dangle from a hook, sounds a little flimsy if you ask me”
“You poor misguided thing” Riley said evenly, “Superman is such a pretty boy”
“What do you mean, Pretty boy?”
“Well,” Said John, continuing, “he has all the powers, he can fly, he’s invincible, super strong, faster then a speeding bullet, x-ray and laser vision”
“Heat vision”
“Whatever, he’s too perfect.”
“He gets his abilities from the sun, that’s why he’s so powerful”
“My house and car are powered by the sun Anni, they don’t fly off and save the fucking day”
Anni sighed out loud as Riley droned on.
“And with all his super powers he has the gall to bitch and moan about how hard he has it because he can’t get the one girl he wants. He’s probably gay.”
“He’s not gay”
“Solar panels, flowers and tree huggers are all powered by the sun too. They’re definitely gay, just like superman.”
“Well Bruce Wayne has a different girl every episode, at least Clark Kent isn’t some kind of man-whore.”
“Philanderer. And you say that like it’s such a bad thing.” Riley mumbled as he took an experimental sip from a coke can he’d found on the bench. “Anyway” he continued, flinging his arms out to emphasize his point “at least Batman has a proper Alter-Ego. Not just a pair a glasses and a crappy dress sense”
“I don’t think this is going anywhere” Anni sighed, “So how about we move onto something else.”
“Quitter” replied Riley.
“Have you got the update from FleetCom?”
“Yep, I’ll throw it in the reader now. It’s about time you did some work around here anyway. Its like I can’t get a word in without you yakking in my ear all the time. Guy can’t hear himself think”
“I swear to God, if I could I’d strangle you right now” growled Anni.
“Love you too sweetie” chirped Riley.

Agitated sounds emanated from the darkness, stealthily slipping amongst the gantries and girders. Pneumatic valves hissed. Hydraulic actuators moved impossibly large arms as though they were made of balsa wood. Linear motors attached to nanoweave tendons skittered back and forth along their guide rails, driving pivoting mechanical claws as they placed raw materials under plasma cutters. The cutters blazed with diligent efficiency, jarringly changing direction as they finished a particular line before jolting onto another.
Other automated assemblies held delicate looking frames together as they were bound in spidertec nanoweave. Layer upon layer was attached, strengthening the structure. Other arms guided small needle heads into position with stuttering pidgin like movements as they soldered wires and circuit board assemblies, these having been installed by yet more arms that managed to move unheeded amongst all the chaos.
Moments later broad hydraulic limbs hefted armoured panels into place over the skeletal framework, holding in place long enough for welding heads to stutter down metal seams, heat glistened like lava through tectonic cracks afterwards.
Large prefabricated servo joints were tack welded and bolted into position, hydraulic lines automatically screwing themselves closed. Quick release lines aligned as if of their own free will and rammed home as huge armoured assemblies were connected to either side of the larger module.
Closer inspection would have revealed these assemblies to be powerful limbs were it not for the nauseating flicker of arc welders and plasma cutters. This same inspection would have also noticed the lack of service drone appendages, which were usually geared towards scientific testing. It might have also noted an array of exotic materials in the complex framework that was being constructed, one usually reserved for violent re-entries.
Advanced optics and communications arrays were also finding their way into the chassis, which was quickly veering away from a service drone design like one would move briskly away from someone with a microphone when riot police were deployed.
Something was taking shape on the manufacturing deck and it definitely wasn’t a drone.


The can of coke Riley had been drinking proved to be about as exciting as taxidermy, but he kept drinking it anyway. Something about the stale taste made him reminisce of lazy days on his back veranda at home. Warm thoughts like this stopped him from dwelling on the overtly sterile surroundings he found himself in. At least it kept his mind slightly occupied while he waited for Anni to decrypt the files from the data crystal he’d given her.
¬¬¬“So what’s the hold up? You usually do this in no time” he asked casually as he crushed the coke can and sent it sailing into the bin near the desk.
“Just finalising a few of the updates that FleetCom required me to do, there are a few more running in the background, they’ll take a little longer, pretty technical stuff. Don’t want to bore you with it”
“You know how much I love listening to you ramble on about Falcone algorithms and corruption triage management. Why wouldn’t you tell me all about it?” Riley said sarcastically.
“Pretty much because of the enthusiasm you just showed. It may not be that exciting, but it’s what I do john. Just smile and nod. Lie a little, that’s how you keep a girl happy.¬” Her tone changed, “Got any room for me over there?”
“As always”
The air near Riley shimmered as a figure dissolved out of the air and began to walk towards the desk. With each step, more detail became visible. Long slender legs melting into beautifully curved hips joining a thin waist. Artic white skin crawled with a gull grey static hiss that could almost resemble freckles if only they’d stay still. Dark lines danced and merged along limbs, tracing different patterns every few seconds. Blotchy specks skittered across an exploded tangle of white hair, giving it dirty highlights.
The female form moved with ethereal grace, casting its attention towards Riley as it walked towards him. Fiery orange eyes greeted him warmly as it nimbly swung itself into a sitting position on the desk opposite him, leaning forward on its hands, knees together.
“Hey you” said Riley.
“Hey yourself” said Anni.
“Why is it that you can project yourself almost anywhere on this ship in absolute clarity but you can’t get my Halo games to work?” Riley sighed, dipping his head to the floor. He waited a few moments for the venomous reply that would be coming. Anni hated it when he commented about her capabilities. The retort, however, never came. John looked up to find Anni staring at a wall, head tilted slightly to one side.
“Anni?”
She didn’t do anything for a long moment. Then she slowly turned to face Riley, it took effort for her to focus her gaze on him. Not that he needed to look in her eyes to see what she was thinking, her face reflected the terrified look in them.
Her lips moved and sounds were heard but the details were distant and unimportant. John just sat there staring, feeling that familiar sinking sensation seep up and around him, drawing him in.
There was always something. Always a specific action or precursor that signified a situation was about to decay rapidly. As a Captain, John Riley had always had the tragic ability to recognize such an event. Watch it grow from something tiny and slow before building momentum like a series of dominoes until eventually, it spiralled completely out of control.
Anni looked at John for a moment before she said something that he’d hoped he would never have to hear on a ship again.
“Something’s wrong”

It always started small.

















THREE___________________________

Tapping at my chamber door...



Acheron MANUFACTORING DECK
H hour -4.45


Steve was running. He’d run during the 2090 insurgency of European States. The 2082 collapse of the State of Pakistan, the Great Fall of 2079. He was always running; at work, during training, habitually for his fitness. And on occasion, for his life.
He always seemed to be running the wrong way.
Towards the problem.
This time he was running to the Manufacturing deck, past groups of curious people, quickly moving around obstacles and through open blast-doors. Forcing himself against the current of individuals following the evacuation holos. Stumbling through the dim red glow of the emergency lighting.
His team flowed seamlessly around him, covering doors and fire lanes, shifting arcs of fire without even a word, acting as if they were controlled telepathically. Their silence hadn’t been forced upon them by lack of communications equipment; the harnesses they wore were perfectly equipped for even long-range chatter. But the countless drills and simulations made such chatter useless and obtrusive. Everyone knew their role. They had been doing it their whole lives.
Tiny hand gestures and curt nods were exchanged, awkwardly amplified by the powered exoskeletons the men wore, the team moved on. The heavily armoured suits moved with agility that belied their size and bulkiness. Designed for mostly outdoor and large urban environments, the narrower hallways of the Acheron could sometimes prove to be obstacles themselves. But when you could take a glancing hit from a Javelin 9 anti tank missile and walk away, sometimes you had to compromise.
Rounding a corner, Steve could see the main entrance to the Manufacturing facility. Emergency lighting strips blinked randomly down the length of the corridor, every so often the sequence would light up just right, like landing markers at an old airport, running off down the corridor towards the bulkhead.

Flash

The lights near the door had failed for some reason, shrouding it in deep shadow. A quick mental impulse would have activated his thermal viewer, negating the darkness, but it didn’t do anything to quell his nerves; there was something going on in the manufactory, whatever it was had been bad enough to cause him and his team to move to secure the facility. That made him anxious.

Flash

From the first wail of the Master Alarm to Steve’s team suiting up and arriving at the entrance, a total of two minutes had passed. Whatever had tripped the system must have gone relatively unnoticed judging from the relatively calm and relaxed manner that the crew were evacuating the immediate vicinity. Steve watched as they strolled to their form-up points; laughing at the security team and giving them mock salutes as they walked past.
It wasn’t a well-kept secret that he hated civilians.

Flash

He waited a few more moments, monitoring the distant doorway. Satisfied that nothing was moving for the time being, Steve opened a comm-link to the Acheron’s AI.
“Acheron, this is Foxtrot-One Actual. We are in position at the Manufactory. Preparing to Search and clear. Awaiting Sitrep, over.”
There was the normal click as the cryptographic cipher closed out the transmission, then nothing. A quick acknowledgement from the Acheron’s AI should have come back by now, then a short Sitrep to update him before he began, but not this time.
“Acheron, this is Fox-One Actual, acknowledge my last, over.”
Nothing.

Flash

“Anni, this is Steve, comeback.”

For as long as he could remember, Steve had existed in a world where he could depend on certain things. Reveille was always 0500 hours. The ships Galley always cooked a horrible roast on a Sunday. He knew if he went home his old school friends would still be a bunch of deadbeats. And he knew that if he got on the radio to Anni, he always, always got a reply from her.
Today, however, nothing seemed to be going to plan.
“Foxtrot-One Actual, this is Acheron Actual, say again your last, over”
Steve was taken back for a moment.

Flash

“John? What’re you doing on Tac-Comm? Where’s Anni? Over.”
“Anni is not available. Relay through me, over”
“Isn’t available? She’s a fucking ship-wide A.I. how exactly does she become unavailable?”
“Switch to private channel Foxtrot-One Actual”
Steve was a firm advocate against casual chatter, he knew the longer you transmitted, the quicker someone could fix your position. He’d seen first hand what happened to you once you were triangulated in such a way, but right now he couldn’t care less- he just wanted answers.
His comm chirped as it opened a private link with Riley.
“What the fuck is going on John? I’m waiting to search our own manufactory without any idea of what’s going on in there. I need intel, I need Anni, and I need both of them now.”
“She’s unresponsive. I think she’s being infiltrated. Whatever it is must be coming from the manufactory.”
Steve stood there for a long moment, arm propped against the cold steel wall, steadying himself as he digested this new development.
“Steve, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.” He sighed, sagging his head, “how long?”
“Not long, minutes maybe.”
“Got it” Steve replied, before killing the link.
He resumed his position with his small fire team-a dilapidated group of nomads, Urchins from the old world. Through chance, fate or some sick divine sense of humour, Steve now worked with the men that may once have been his enemies.
Two former soldiers of the European Union, Jamie Kovacs and Aleksey Nizienko. One Czech, the other Russian. Kai Sato; disillusioned child of the Asian Federation’s Forced Integration Act, escaped on the first boat he could. And John Byrnes, a taciturn loner from Canada-about as close as you got to ground zero when the free world suddenly collapsed.
So none of them said ‘bollocks’ or drank warm Guinness, Steve could care less. They all left their differences back home and called him boss. That’s all that he required of them.
One of the armoured helmets turned to look at him and blinked. It was something that always unsettled Steve about the latest exoskeletons, the annoying ‘human’ touches that the engineers had developed. An attempt to make them more likeable, a laughable concept considering what their primary role was.
“We going in or what boss?” Sato asked.
Steve looked at the hulking steel monstrosity that was the Manufactory entrance. Battered and discoloured after years of abuse, paint flaked off from the top edge where the rubber seal didn’t sit properly. Off to one side was a cracked display, stuttering amiably as it tried to function, much like the rest of C deck.
‘Well it ain’t gonna clear itself” he responded dryly.
Kai nodded agreement and both of them postured to cover the entrance. Kovacs and Byrnes quickly shifted their armoured bulk into position and stacked up, ready to breach the door. Aleksey Nizienko, the odd one out, moved swiftly across the doorway and knelt beside the archway, out of the line of fire. Steve gave him a nod and Nizienko slammed the backside of his fist against the manual door release, there was a deafening blast of air as pneumatic dump valves opened. Hundreds of pounds of compressed air that was holding the door up released in a fraction of a second but still the bulkhead remained closed. Sato, anticipating the breach, stumbled mid step and stopped.
“What the fuck?” he swore in frustration, looking over in Nizienko’s vicinity.
“The internal lock is engaged,” Nizienko shrugged, “we’ll have to cut it.”
“Take too long,” Kovacs mumbled, still watching his arc.
“Shit” said Steve quietly, realising that they’d just given themselves away. Whoever was inside the Manufactory now knew they were trying to gain entry. He needed to take the initiative back and take down that room before they had a chance to prepare for his team. Clearing a space was dangerous enough without the enemy knowing where you were coming in from.
“Rig the door” Steve ordered, turning to face Kovacs.
“You sure boss?” Kovacs asked, a tremor of doubt in his voice. Explosives, no matter how small or controlled were never a good idea in space.
“Do it.”





Riley hazarded a glance to his side at the flickering spectral figure of Anni. She’d been like this for the past few minutes, jolting in and out of existence, glitching between movements and gestures, fighting an unseen aggressor. Her voice had become cold and blunt as she re-routed all of her processing power to fighting the infiltration, systematically shutting down her emotional subroutines.
“PENETRATION OF COMMUNICATIONS GRID BY UNKNOWN NODE.”
To Riley, it felt like someone was surgically removing her soul.
“BUILDING FIREWALLS.”
Riley had tried talking to her but to no avail; she was in some kind of processing lock and either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay any heed to what was going on other than in the Manufactory.
“ATTEMPTING TO ISOLATE.”
The hack had her completely distracted; she had started to divert power from second level environmental subroutines to reinforce herself. But as she did so, control of secondary systems all throughout the Acheron was decentralised. They could be restored and controlled manually, but that would take time. Like a person going into hypothermia Anni was sacrificing her extremities to protect the core systems. Riley was losing her.
He was losing control of his ship.
“QUARANTINE FAILED, CUTTING HARDLINE.”
The lighting flickered and died, plunging Riley into inky terrifying darkness. Hours later-or moments, he couldn’t be sure- the emergency lighting exploded into dull red life with a loud click. The ethereal image of Anni, however, wasn’t there.
Riley reacted quickly, manually re-establishing the communications grid and sensor systems. What should have been a simple nod from Anni, indicating that everything was in good order had now become an impossibly complex situation. Silently prioritizing what needed to occur his hands became a blur of motion as they pulled up a cross section of the ship. Sections were pulled apart and laid open with a speed and familiarity that could only exist in a Captains intimate knowledge of his ship. Blips depicting what he was looking for highlighted themselves inside the three dimensional floor-plan.
Rapid fire verbal commands brought several framed video panes into the foreground of his Holo-screen, faces leering towards him like they were pushing through transparent film. A few of them looked ready to explode into anger but stopped mid expletive when they saw Riley’s face. He was the Captain, of that there was no question but the figure-head of the ship was Anni. Her absence was obvious and anxious looks quickly exhibited from the faces of his section heads.
After a brief moment, one of them opened his mouth to speak. Riley cut him off. “Don’t talk, just listen,” his manner sterner now, his voice cool and authoritative, “Something has penetrated our network and taken Anni offline. I need all secondary systems brought back online. Keep your teams as small as possible. Unless we can get Anni back online again, this may be indefinite.”
They all nodded silently, taking in the situation. The worried faces were gone now, pushed below the surface as they steeled themselves for what needed to be done. Systems failures close in were normally nothing to be worried about. Completely isolated and orbiting one of Jupiter’s moons, however, any minor fault could rapidly become a catastrophic and deadly one. This far out, there wasn’t a rescue so much as a cleanup.
“What do we tell them?” one of his subordinates asked.
“Nothing. I don’t have any intel on what’s happened yet and until I do I don’t want a mass panic on my hands. I’ve got Steve Liedecker and his team investigating, but in the meantime get your sections squared away and keep an ear to the ground.”
More nods, and sensing an end to their snap orders the video panes all disappeared except for one. Riley waited for a moment, studying the remaining face. Lean, sharp angled and with a shock of white hair that sat atop his skull. The speckled flesh was pulled taught across the high cheekbones, contrasting against deeply set eyes. Even though shrouded and weary with heavy bags under them, they still sparkled with razor sharp intelligence.
“What is it Epps?”
“I take it you don’t want me in the shop then” Epps replied, a hint of conspiracy in his voice.
Riley nodded silently, not at all surprised that Luc Epps had already guessed the situation. “I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s coming from the Manufactory.”
“How bad is it?” Luc asked, testing the waters.
“Put it this way, when was the last time Anni was taken offline? Or any Tier two A.I. anywhere for that matter? How bad? It’s defiantly not good” Riley responded, a trickle of frustration seeping into his voice.
“Your right,” Luc replied slowly, “it is bad.”