AMP Siege (25 page)

Ashley pressed, "That sounds awful. What did you do next? Were they able to repair you?"

The Duke continued, "The hold of the salvage vessel had many parts. I was able to reconstruct a somewhat functional lower half that again gave me mobility. I was able to recharge my batteries from a power source on the ship. That has been my only
brush with death
, as you would call it."

I asked, "What about the salvage ship? Didn't anyone ask you any questions or try to return you to wherever you had come from?"

The Duke hesitated. "I walked from the cargo hold when the ship landed at its first port. There was never a scuffle or a questioning. I worked on the planet until I could fully repair myself, and then I ventured off into the stars. Hmm. Those are memories that I have not accessed in a long time. Perhaps a review is in order. Strange, I am having trouble accessing them. The next available stream is blank."

The doctor spoke. "I told you some of those memory stores looked like they got erased. Probably happened when the new Duke tried to shut you down."

The ruse, as the Duke had called it, continued until the battery power reading, according to his own circuits, had dropped to 8 percent.

I spoke. "Tell us what to do, Duke. We can't fix you if we don't know what to do."

Ashley shifted in her chair, throwing her arm up over the back rail. "Such a drag. The things you must know. All your secrets. All gone in about three minutes. A million years gone to waste. And for what, so the other Duke can reign supreme? I don't know, Quan, doesn't seem like much of a win for you. Ooh, 6 percent. Is that dropping faster? It's a shame, because I think you, with our help, could overtake the other Duke. Let him be the one that goes dark forever."

The room was silent as the battery percentage continued to trickle away.

The Duke spoke in a hurried voice. "Dr. Touchstone. I am releasing a panel on my side. Just behind it you will find two metallic bumps. Apply any voltage across those two leads. I can convert it and recharge my battery circuits."

A small panel opened on the side of the Duke's core, exposing the two contacts that he had mentioned, along with various other circuits.

The doctor reached down with a set of leads, touching them to the contacts just as the battery reading dropped to 1 percent. At the moment of contact, Touchstone withdrew the phony level signal from the Duke's external circuits.

Touchstone spoke. "Whoa, we just got a good spark out of that. Your percentage just shot back up to one hundred. You can't possibly recharge that fast from this small power source."

Touchstone looked around and smiled.

The Duke replied, "Only having an audio feed connected has me at a tremendous disadvantage, Doctor. I can't be certain of what just happened without my full complement of sensors. For what it's worth, thank you for complying with my request."

Touchstone continued to smile as he raised his hand in a fist. "Just keep in mind, Duke, sometimes a little cooperation can go a long way."

As I looked upon my wife and the doctor, a thought occurred to me. Maybe I
was
in the wrong line of work. They were immensely enjoying the mission that had been thrust upon them. The Duke was slowly breaking, and it was only a matter of time before Ashley had him convinced that he was better off as an ally than an enemy.

The various circuits that had now been exposed were the very ones that the doctor had been hoping to one day find. With the panel open, we had direct access to the Duke's memories. As an added benefit, his reasoning algorithms had also been exposed. The doctor would later make the comment that he was having one of the best days of his life.

I returned to Frig's lab to have a chat. "I think they are cracking him. And I think he holds a lot more information than we ever thought he would. It's possible that the Duke has been around in one memory form or another for a million years. That would make him much older than any species we have known. If that is true, he might have what we need to rid ourselves of the Durians."

Frig sat with his small hand up under his chin. "I would not underestimate him again, Don. He could be working us for his own means again."

I shook my head. "Yeah, perhaps, but I don't think so. Before, he was always connected to somewhere else. His physical host was disposable. Now that same physical host is his entire existence. I think we are going to marvel at what might come out of him."

The
Suppressor
barreled through space at more than three hundred times the speed of light. It would take us almost a year to make it to where the Grid had gone. With only 20 percent in her tanks, the Grid would not have made a full jump.

Our counterparts back on the
Orienta
would have to work out their issues with the Gontas. Michael Felix would no doubt be pushed aside as a politician. The two Admirals would be the new leaders of the Human race, at least for the time being. As to where they would take refuge, we would only find that out as it happened.

As a consequence of our new direction, we would also be taken to a point that was just outside the system where the mystery Human signal had emanated from. We were all eager to find answers as to how the signal had come to be where it was. Was this from the missing Grid-1? Would it somehow lead us to our origins? How were the ships that had approached it destroyed? These were the questions that would keep one up at night. I found thinking about our unknown future both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

~~~

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