Project Starfighter (16 page)

I can help you with this fight if
you like?
the voice of the Firefly came again.

“How?” Chris found himself
asking, automatically. Having previously ignored the AI, he was now
willing to take all the help he could get.

I can set up a bi-lateral path to
your subconscious, and help you to process inputs at an accelerated
rate. It would permit you to make decisions far faster than might
otherwise be possible by your human mind. It would be a strictly
limited interface, meaning that I would not be able to influence your
own decision making, take over your conscious thoughts, or, to put it
simply, to control you.

“I have no idea what any of that
means,” Chris said. The weapons ranges were about to be met. The
Talons would be dispensing missiles any second now.

In that case, it might be better
if I show you.

The most peculiar thing happened.
The world around Chris began to slow, the numbers displayed on the
HUD of the Firefly showing the distance to his opponents not dropping
as quickly as before. Chris looked at the console. The fighter was
still moving at full speed, and so, apparently, were the Talons. He
lifted his hand towards the console. Or, at least, started to do so.
His hand was moving far slower than it ought to. It seemed as though
it might take him a good ten seconds or so just to reach forward.

He heard a noise. It sounded like a
jingle from the fighter’s computer systems, though it was several
octaves lower than it should have been. It was being drawn out, far
from the short, sharp sound he would have expected. He tried to
speak, to ask the Firefly what was happening.

You should speak with your mind
,
the Firefly told him.
Communicating with me the traditional way
will take far too long.

And how exactly can I do that?
Chris wondered.

A little like that
, the
Firefly said.
You can talk to me simply by directing your
conscious thoughts towards me.

Like this?

Exactly.

What was that sound?

We have entered weapons range.
The Talons are preparing to fire.

Chris looked at the fighters, seeing
the tips of their cannons igniting with green sparks. A few moments
later, he saw the bolts of plasma issue forth and start towards him.
They were going to take a long time to reach his position, by his own
estimation. If he were to start taking evasive manoeuvres now, he
might well avoid them. He reached for the stick. His hand moved at a
crawl.

You should control the flight
using your mind
, the Firefly told him.
You can do it much in
the same way as you are speaking to me
, it added, as Chris began
to question how.
Picture yourself as being at one with the ship.

Chris concentrated, imagining
himself being the Firefly and dipping out of the way of the energy
bolts that were streaking in his direction. To his surprise, he found
that the fighter reacted just as he desired, starting to dive. It was
moving just as slowly as everything else. But he did not care; so
long as they escaped those incoming bolts.

At the speed things were moving it
took around ten minutes to evade the incoming fire, time Chris knew
he would not have had if he were experiencing events as normal.
Though grateful for the assistance from the fighter, conducting the
battle this way could become tiring very quickly.

Can we speed things up a little?
he asked.

We can
, the Firefly told him.
But I will set hard limits on just how much we can do so. I sense
that you are a confident, yet inexperienced pilot. We should think
about returning fire. If you wish, I can help.

Please do
, Chris said.

The Firefly arced up, chasing after
the nearest target to them, tagging it in the fighter’s HUD. As
soon as they were aligned, the Firefly instructed Chris on how to
fire, and of the need to anticipate and lead their adversary’s
movements. After what felt like another five minutes, Chris felled
the first target.

I did it!
Chris cried.
Splashed my first WEAPCO fighter!

Congratulations. But don’t get
cocky. There are still thirteen of them left
. The Firefly then
alerted him to incoming attacks, enabling Chris to react. More
evasive manoeuvres were taken, dodging most of the incoming fire and
escaping the rockets and missiles that were fired at him. Two more of
the enemy units fell in that time, the Firefly suffering only very
minor hits to its shields.

Though the ship had promised not to
control him, Chris could feel its closeness, nested alongside his own
consciousness. He wondered whether he was able to hide his feelings
from it.

The battle was far easier than it
should have been, Chris adjusting the timeslip within the limits that
the Firefly had imposed. He almost felt sorry for his opponents. It
seemed that he had considerably longer to process what was going on
around him than the Talons did.

It felt to Chris as though an hour
had passed before the final target was down. At that point, the
Firefly began to slowly withdraw from his mind, the world around
Chris speeding back up, sounds and sights restoring, his vision
sharpening. It was like waking from a dream. He hoped it wasn’t.

“Chris!” Sid’s voice sounded
in his ear immediately. “Chris, what happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Chris said,
looking around himself to the wreckage and debris left over from the
fight he had just won. “Absolutely fine.”

“How the hell did you do that? How
the hell did you flatten all those things so quickly?”

“Quickly?”

“You took down fourteen WEAPCO
Talons in under five minutes!”

Of course. From Chris’ point of
view, the battle had lasted the best part of an hour. The speed at
which he was perceiving the world had been such that at times the
fight was almost tedious. Still, he was grateful to have been able to
take on an enemy that outnumbered him and come out alive. From Sid’s
own point of view it must have appeared as though Chris was reacting
at the speed of light. Perhaps he had been.

He began to explain things to Sid,
but settled for leaving it until they got to the station. “There
are a few things that you should probably hear,” Chris said.

~

“I’ve
never heard of a sentient WEAPCO ship,” Sid told him, taking
another pull on his bottle of beer.

It was his second in just ten
minutes. He had downed the first one quickly, the shock of having to
land the Manx at the space station by himself when the autopilot had
failed having rattled him severely. He had received guidance from the
station staff, the operators telling him what to press, when to press
it, and what kinds of adjustments he needed to make. With their
guidance, he had landed without too many problems, if a little
roughly. The Manx had come in faster than it should have, bouncing as
it made contact with the deck, and receiving some minor damage to its
landing struts as it skidded along. Still, Sid had come out alive,
something he hadn’t expected.

“In fact, I don’t think I’ve
heard of a sentient machine at all,” Sid said, setting the bottle
back down.

“New one on me, too,” Chris
said.

“Think it’s a prototype?”

“More than likely,” Chris said,
taking a swig of his own beer.

“I’m stunned that it was able to
increase your perception of things,” Sid said.

“It said it had something to do
with it being able to perceive the world at a far greater rate than a
human mind can, thanks to its hardware,” Chris said, a little
uncertainly.

Sid pondered things for a bit. “I
think I understand – it comes down to the speed it can crunch
numbers. For instance, its proximity sensors would detect things and
pass that information to its processing cores. That data would be
analysed and decisions would be made within microseconds; maybe even
faster than that. The next piece of information would arrive right
away and similar assessments would be made. It can basically think
much, much faster than we can.”

“The real world must be incredibly
slow and dull for it, then,” Chris said.

“I imagine it can adjust the speed
itself,” Sid said. “If I were able to do that, I’d probably
keep myself at the same speed as everyone else, and only slow things
down when I needed to.”

Chris nodded, but said nothing else.
He was considering what to do next. The mercenaries were about to
spark an all out war with WEAPCO. Things could get extremely messy.

“Does it have a name?” Sid
asked.

“What?” Chris said.

“The starfighter. Does it have a
name?” Sid repeated, his hands no longer shaking quite as much as
they had been doing earlier, the shock of the landing finally leaving
him.

Chris gave a shrug. “I don’t
think so. It’s just ‘Firefly’.”

“Hmm,” Sid said. “Everything
has a name. It will probably want to have one, too.”

“I don’t intend on giving it
one,” Chris shook his head. “It’s an AI—”

“It’s sentient,” Sid corrected
him.

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not. It’s alive,
Chris.”

Chris stared at Sid, incredulous.
“Some would say that WEAPCO drones and bots are alive,” he said.

“No, Chris, this is completely
different. Being sentient means it possesses a rational thought
process, can make decisions of its own, experience emotions—”

“Okay, now you’re wandering into
a territory that we shouldn’t even be considering,” Chris said,
cutting him off. “‘Alive’ or not, that’s WEAPCO technology.
The next time I get into that seat, I’m going to find out if there
is a way to silence it, and simply make use of its abilities.”

Sid look shocked. “Chris, it
helped you to get away from WEAPCO. It helped
both
of us to
escape and get back here safely.”

“Whatever.” Chris didn’t want
to argue about it. “Anyway look, we can’t stay here,” he said,
finishing his beer and getting up. “We don’t know if WEAPCO is
still looking for us. You done?”

“Done,” Sid said, putting his
empty bottle back down. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to go and hide out
on Hail for a bit. Tyler said he was gathering together the Heads of
the Family, the other mercenary groups, and is planning on going
head-to-head with WEAPCO. It would probably be a good idea for us not
to be here when that happens.”

Striding from the bar, Chris came to
a sudden halt, Sid crashing into the back of him. Chris said nothing,
staring up at the mute holographic TV screen that was displaying live
footage of something happening on the surface of Ceradse. A caption
beneath the news report read:

TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE WADE-ELLEN
SPIRE IN TIRA

POSSIBLE CULTIST INVOLVEMENT CITED

The massive WEAPCO tower that
presided over the landscape of Tira was smoking, thick plumes
drifting up from various points along its length, from root to tip. A
fiery explosion then came, followed swiftly by another. A third
erupted from one of the sides, jettisoning out all manner of
materials before the tower began to fall, the lights in the windows
and the lasers shining out from the top cutting out as it collapsed,
a huge wall of dust rising up where it struck the ground.

The camera feed zoomed in on a pair
of craft that could be seen flying nearby. Chris spotted the wolf’s
head emblem on the side of one of them. The TV caption updated
immediately:

MERCENARY GROUP ‘THE WOLF PACK’
CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

WADE-ELLEN TO RESPOND IMMEDIATELY TO
COUNTER TERROR THREAT

Sid swore softly. “I think we
might have left it a little late to leave,” he said.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I think
so, too.”

K
line
Kethlan stood before Ursula Lexx’s hibernation chamber, taking a
few moments to observe the woman before waking her. She was a rather
diminutive woman, with long blonde hair, and ivory-white skin. A
symbol of some sort was tattooed on her stomach around her naval,
which was pierced.

Lexx floated in the liquid-filled
tube in nothing but two pieces of underwear. Why her modesty needed
to be preserved, Kethlan couldn’t imagine; aside from today there
was never anyone here to see her, save for the drones and bots that
ran and monitored the Zetaman Facility. He and Lexx were the only two
human beings in the entire place.

A mask covered Lexx’s nose and
mouth, a long tube snaking from it out of the chamber to a machine
that was supplying her with oxygen. Other wires and feeds were
attached to her head and various other parts of her body. She had
suffered some muscle wastage since being brought in here, her legs
and arms a good deal thinner than they once had been. Only sugars,
vitamins, and minerals were supplied to her, to keep her alive.

The young woman had been hooked into
this system for several months now, having been turned in by a group
of bounty hunters after the Corporation had discovered that she was
an identical twin. Her sister, Phoebe, had eluded them, however. The
bounty hunters had also discovered the little secret about the two
women, and had used the information to make threats against
Wade-Ellen. A stupid mistake. Kethlan had eliminated them the moment
they had departed the WEAPCO starship to which they had brought Lexx.

How well did Ursula Lexx actually
get on with her sister? the commander wondered. Just how similar were
they really? Had they had so much trouble finding Phoebe Lexx because
Ursula was attempting to protect her, or was it because she actually
disliked her twin and wanted nothing to do with her, blocking her out
entirely? Kethlan was curious. He often wondered what the
relationships of others were like.

“Drain Lexx’s tube and release
her,” he ordered the drone that was monitoring the woman’s
condition.