Project Starfighter (27 page)

“How do you feel about this?”
Chris asked of both Sid and Athena. “Hit it, or quit while we’re
ahead?”

“I can help,” Lexx said, before
either could answer.

Chris glanced to his radar, seeing
the woman’s Valkyrie still surrounded by a swarm of WEAPCO
fighters, all of which seemed quite content to follow her about.
“How?” Chris asked.

“Chris, the
Duke
is moving
forward,” Sid warned.

At the same moment, a bright red
beam lanced its way from the bow of the corvette, connecting with the
Artful Dodger
and driving its way through the freighter’s
shields. The beam had been aimed at the cab, where Sid would be
taking command on the bridge. The shields had absorbed a great deal
of the power of the weapon, but they had still buckled, and the
attack had resulted in some significant damage to the bow. A second
or third hit like that would end it, without question.

“Chris—” Sid started.

“Let’s hit the
Duke
,”
Chris said, cutting him off. “Lexx, do whatever it is you do and
help me take that warship down. That freighter is our home. We need
to keep it in one piece!”

“Gotcha,” Lexx responded,
turning and racing immediately towards the
Duke
.

Lexx’s Valkyrie was apparently
faster than the Firefly, or was perhaps just able to accelerate
harder. Chris sped after her an instant later, preparing to activate
the timeslip as he came within range of his opponents. He paused
then, the sight he witnessed finally flooring him.

The WEAPCO fighters that had at one
time loitered around Lexx’s fighter, not attacking and barely even
moving, had followed after her. Around half of them now broke away
from her, bringing themselves into an attack formation. Their cannons
opened up not long after, targeting the few remaining fighters that
were attempting to defend the
Duke
. It was a bizarre sight –
WEAPCO craft opening fire on one another. Chris was more used to
seeing the Corporation’s AI-driven vessels downing other opponents.

Indeed, the
Duke
’s escorts,
as well as the warship itself, seemed to be caught completely by
surprise, hardly returning fire as they were blown to smithereens.
Even then, with its fighter defence eliminated, the
Duke
appeared unsure of what to do. According to Chris’ radar, Lexx’s
Talons and Mirages were continuing to declare themselves as hostile,
and still broadcasting their WEAPCO signatures, but were clearly no
longer playing for the home team.

The
Duke
opened fire on the
former WEAPCO-controlled fighters coming for it, but its efforts
seemed to lack conviction. The same, Chris found, was not true of the
attacks that the corvette was willing to direct against him, and
Athena force-activated the timeslip as the blare of a lock siren
came. As with the
Grand Vizier
, Chris discovered the ease of
aligning himself with the corvette’s cannons, opening fire on their
locations, punching through the defences, and taking the individual
guns down. It meant that the fighters assisting him and Lexx would be
able to work with a much reduced threat.

With several fighters pounding it,
dispatching missiles and dumping torrents of plasma and laser fire on
its shields, the
Duke
did not last long. Sid signalled Chris
at one point during the battle, warning him that the warship appeared
to be powering up its jump drives. It would be preparing to commence
an emergency jump out of the system, to save its own skin. Chris
never gave it the chance.

“That’s two named WEAPCO
warships I’ve scratched in almost as many days,” Chris said, as
the
Duke
came apart in front of him.

“Thank you,” Lexx said. “I owe
you my life.”

I think she owes us something
else as well
, Athena said.

“Yes, yes, I do,” Lexx said.

How was she doing that?
Chris
wondered. For some reason, he got the feeling that the explanation
was going to blow his mind.

T
he
blond-haired Phoebe Lexx was a petite woman. She was smiling
gratefully as she stepped out of her Valkyrie and crossed the hold to
where Chris and Sid were waiting for her.

“Thank you, again,” she said. “I
don’t know how much longer I would have been able to hold them off
if you hadn’t arrived.” She then laughed, adding, “Oh, yes, and
thank you, too.” She rolled her eyes at her apparent forgetfulness.

Chris and Sid looked at one another.
Who?
their expressions asked.

“Who are you, and why were WEAPCO
coming after you?” Sid asked, seeming a little apprehensive. He
had, after all, been hesitant about answering the distress call, in
case it should be a trap. Now things had turned weird.

“I don’t know,” Phoebe
shrugged. “One day I was minding my own business, and the next, I’m
being pursued by drones and bots and all sorts.” She went quiet for
a moment, as though listening. “True, that could be a reason.”

“What could be?” Chris said,
after receiving a shrug from Sid.

“What Athena said,” Phoebe said.

“What do you mean, ‘what Athena
said’?” He looked around for the projection of the Firefly AI,
for the fighter’s Greek goddess-inspired persona. It was nowhere to
be seen.

“Perhaps, but I’ve only just
really noticed,” Lexx said, again to no one.

The penny then dropped. “Phoebe,”
Chris said, pointing to her, “can you talk to machines?”

“Yes, of course,” Phoebe said.
“How else was I able to tell those fighters to leave me alone, and
also to attack the
Duke of Wellington
?” She looked a little
incredulous that it had taken Chris this long to figure it out.

“How? How the hell can you do
that?”

“I don’t know,” Phoebe said.
“But I think it’s possible my sister can do it, too.”

“Your sister?” Sid asked, his
eyes growing wide. “You have a sister?”

“Yes? Why are you acting like
that’s weird?” Phoebe asked. “Her name’s Ursula. She’s my
twin.”

Sid’s jaw went slack.

“Sid?” Chris asked. “What’s
wrong?”

“Come to the bridge,” Sid said,
striding from the cargo hold. “I have a hunch I want to share.”

~

“I
was always crap with machines when I was younger,” Phoebe said. “It
seemed that I would only need to look at one to make it short out. I
lost a lot of office jobs that way. Any time I put my finger on a
computer keyboard or a screen, I would end up costing the company a
few hundred credits. Not a good thing, really.”

“But one day you learned to
control it, right?” Sid asked, handing Phoebe a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” she said. “Sort
of. I can suppress it, so that I can be around electronics without
blowing stuff up. I only found out about doing that in the last month
or so. I mean, I could do it before that but wasn’t fully aware of
what was happening. If any WEAPCO drones or bots came near me, and I
wanted to be left alone, I would just think it, and they would ignore
me.

“I found out I could control them
when a couple of war bots were chasing me. I was cornered and only
wished that I could persuade one of them to destroy the other and
leave me be. I was looking straight at it as I thought it, and that’s
exactly what it did. I thought it had malfunctioned, but then it
started following me. I found I could make it do whatever I wanted.
Well, almost. As soon as I decided to get away from it, it started to
come after me again.”

“Let me guess – you need to
concentrate hard on something like this?” Chris asked.

“Yes,” Phoebe sipped at her
coffee. “I have to keep myself focused on the individual or the
group, if I want them to keep doing what I ask them. It’s sort of
like an override. I’ve even managed to make it permanent in one or
two cases.”

“What’s your limit?” Sid
asked. “You had about twenty or so fighters next to you out there.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’m not
sure,” Phoebe said, blowing a little on the coffee to cool it down.
“To begin with, I was only able to control a single war bot, and
had to work hard at that. If I took my mind off things for even a
moment, it would regain control of itself. It got easier, though. I
was soon able to direct them as though it was second nature. I would
practice on them when they came after me, sometimes turning them on
one another, and at other times making them short out. It was fun for
a while, the whole, ‘
Oh look, here’s another dumb bot, what a
nuisance’
, but then WEAPCO started sending more of them after
me.”

“You don’t belong to a mercenary
group or anything, do you?” Sid asked.

Phoebe shook her head. “No, never
have.”

“And you’re not actually a
pilot, either, are you?”

Phoebe once again shook her head.
Both she and Sid were smiling.

“I didn’t think so,” Sid said.

“Sorry, what?” Chris asked, not
understanding.

Phoebe grinned. “I’m telling the
ship what to do. That’s a Valkyrie, a medium-class WEAPCO
starfighter. Most of them have been retired, since the navy don’t
have much use for a pilot, given that they’re driven by AIs. I
managed to convince some of the drones searching for me to lead me to
the ship, and then I took control of it. At that point, I decided to
experiment with my gift and see what I could do. I felt something
snap
as I pushed my will onto it, and then it never recovered.
The fighter is mine, it will always do whatever I want.”

“So, it’s basically a zombie
machine that you’re ordering around?”

“Essentially.”

Chris nodded, mulling a few things
over.

“Chris, don’t even think about
getting her to do that to Athena!” Sid said.

“Chris!” Phoebe said, looking at
him, horrified. “How could you? She’s alive! I felt her when we
talked!”

Chris threw up his hands. Not this
again
. “Whatever you say. Anyway, look – you said that you
can only exercise control over these things if you concentrate on it.
What about the fighters outside and the ones in the bays? Should we
be bothered by them?”

“They’re under the control of
the
Dodger
at the moment,” Sid said. “Which is under the
control of Athena. It’s possible that they could be overridden at
some point, though, so we need to be careful. WEAPCO could
theoretically cut in between the freighter and Athena, and take back
both of them at once. Or worse – they could tell them to
self-destruct.”

“We’ll have to watch out for
that, then,” Chris said. He looked back at Phoebe. “So, this is
something you’ve always been able to do?”

“Always, from what I understand,”
Phoebe nodded.

“You weren’t part of some secret
experiment when you were little or something? Your parents didn’t
do anything to you at all?”

“Not that I’m aware of,”
Phoebe said, putting down her cup, standing and starting to pace.
“But I never knew my parents; I’m an orphan. I guess it’s
possible that something might have happened to me before I was put
into care. Who knows, maybe my parents were mad scientists.”

Sid rubbed his chin. “Hmm. You
know, I believe it might be something else altogether.”

“What are you thinking, Sid?”
Chris asked.

Sid was silent for a time, as if
thinking of how to phrase what he was about to say. “I think you’ve
found a way to unlock some latent psionic power. I know, I know,”
Sid said, as Chris started to speak. “That all sounds like a load
of mystical mumbo jumbo, but it actually makes sense.”

“Exactly how, Sid?” Chris
couldn’t help but scowl. Sid was a smart guy, but now he sounded as
if he was allowing himself to be railroaded by a load of paranormal
claptrap. Chris hoped that the computer hacker wasn’t about to
suggest they go searching for pieces of an ancient amulet, in a far
flung, unexplored star system, to unite them during a planetary
alignment, so as to bring about the defeat of a greedy, corrupt
company.

“I’ll show you,” Sid answered
Chris, moving to the bridge’s main control console and tapping some
instructions into it.

A projection sprang up in the middle
of the bridge, the image of a man. He was dressed casually, was about
six feet tall and ... quite ordinary looking.

“Who is that?” Chris asked.

“William Benedict,” Sid said.

“For real?” Chris asked,
standing. He moved closer to the projection, walking around it, and
inspecting every aspect of the man. He felt oddly ambivalent. Here
was a legend; the only person in history who had ever single-handedly
stood up to WEAPCO – and nearly succeeded. Yet ... he was so
ordinary-looking. Chris wasn’t sure why he had expected something
more, someone god-like. He stepped back as detailed information of
the man started to appear on the right-hand side of the projection.

“Why didn’t you tell me about
this before?” Chris turned to Sid, a little irritated that he would
withhold something like this from him. “Why didn’t you tell me
that he was real?”

“I’m sorry,” Sid said. “I
... I thought it might lead us on some sort of wild goose chase.
Remember how back in Spirit Hugo told us that heroes are often just
made up? Simply legends created to empower a nation’s people? Well,
I thought that the same might be true of Benedict. And even when I
found his details in the ship’s databanks, I wanted to make sure
who it was.”

“And what convinced you?” Chris
asked, starting to read over the man’s profile.

“Phoebe did,” Sid said, nodding
to the woman.

“Me?” Phoebe asked. “How?”

“Wait a minute,” Chris
interrupted. “This isn’t William Benedict. This is a man named
Leo Benedict.” He pointed to the details on the projection. “You
have
got the wrong guy, Sid.”

“Oh, sorry,” Sid said. “Yes,
you’re right. That
is
the wrong man.” He turned and tapped
away at the bridge console, pulling up a second projection next to
the first. “
This
is William Benedict. Leo is his brother.
His
twin
brother.”