Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (13 page)

In less than a minute, the nondescript male
framework construct drew breath. It was an advanced model, not only
able to materialise flesh and bone while collecting energy from its
surroundings, but capable of materialising a lightly armoured
uniform. It knelt down and picked up its rifle. It stepped into its
boots and put on its helmet.

A shot came from behind them, sizzling
against the framework's box. He took aim and fired at something
that was out of sight, not part of the recording. His grip and
posture was perfect, something common to the basic male soldier
framework model.

A bolt of energy struck its arm, leaving a
burn mark on the light armour. The construct barely flinched.
Before their eyes the damage to his armour was repaired as he
continued to fire. His face began to change colour to match his
uniform. Over the next few seconds, Eve and Lina watched as the
construct's skin turned into the same armoured plating as his
armour and blood began to seep through the cracks.

The construct stopped firing after a moment,
no longer able to see, and fell to his knees. The spectacle became
worse, as the armour softened, shifted, but didn't become proper
skin.

"What's happening to him?" asked Lina,
flinching her gaze away as a low moan escaped the construct's
lips.

"He's trying to re-stabilise his form. I
assume his first instinct was to improvise a better way to protect
himself. His second was to improve his modifications and
survive."

An agonised scream filled the room as the
construct fell forward and his right arm split apart so violently
that something that looked like bone matter erupted from the
inside. It only took Eve a second of closer inspection to realise
he had materialised the front half of a weapon. "It’s the way his
body is communicating. It’s implementing momentary thoughts as
though they were commands. The system can't filter his second to
second impulses."

The image disappeared, replaced by Hampon's
younger self. "I'll spare you the rest. That was one of the most
advanced models, with a cybernetic governor device that tried to
rule out all but final decisions. We even tried to replicate the
custom framework that the Jonas project was built on. For some
reason, framework constructs would not stabilise after their
subconscious directives were modified."

"Except for Jacob Valance."

"Yes. So, now you understand why he has been
allowed to run rampant, and why you need to build a framework that
does not try to go past specification. It must have a limiter chip
as well, to reduce the chance of self-destruction or unnatural
levels of self control," said Hampon.

"While generating flesh in a tenth the time
of the current model and implanting or preserving a set of
memories. The limiter chip will have to be modified," noted
Eve.

"Feel free to do so, but ensure that
stability issues do not arise."

"Don't worry. When you are implanted with
framework technology that works quickly enough to replace all your
cells fast enough to beat temporal radiation without killing you,
the technology will be perfect. I already have workable theories.
This file has given me a few ideas," Eve said.

Jake had to pilot the shuttle around Kambis
to get back to the Enforcer, but he didn’t mind. The passenger
compartment was filled with the ration meal packs he’d commanded
his former captors to empty from a crate before he forced them
inside. It was a tight squeeze, but the crates were still large
enough to fit one man each, and they sealed from the outside.

As the shuttle crossed one of the main
navnet lanes leading out of the system, the shuttle lurched. “Ronin
to shuttle pilot,” announced Minh through the communicator. “This
extended model Uriel fighter has eight engines that can each out
thrust everything your little boat’s got, and I’m latched on.” Jake
leaned back in the pilot’s seat and decided to let Minh finish.
“There’s also an entire wing hiding in orbital traffic,” Minh
continued. “If any further harm comes to Jacob Valance, I’ll drag
your asses back to the Enforcer and we’ll use you for target
practice. It’s been a long, boring salvage, I’m sure they could use
the distraction.”

“Good speech,” Jake said. “I’m
terrified.”

There was an unexpected hesitation before
Minh replied. “You could have stopped me earlier,” Minh said with a
chuckle.

“No, really, it was very good. I especially
like the target practice bit,” Jake replied. “Now that you’re
latched on, let’s get back to the Enforcer at fighter speed. This
shuttle’s a brick strapped to a thruster.”

“You have something in mind,” Minh said,
more of a conclusion than a question.

“I do, it’ll be a surprise.”

“Are you all right?” Minh asked.

“Better than ever,” Jake replied. “Better
than I’ve been for a very long time. How did you sneak up on me, by
the way?”

“Ah, Tamber navnet has been tracking you. I
got under a big freighter hauling hot cargo and waited for you to
pass.”

“I saw that one, you didn’t even come up on
scanners.”

“Well, I was between the main engines,” Minh
replied. “You wouldn’t expect a ship there.”

“I know I didn’t,” Jake replied.

A new navnet route was assigned, and Minh
rolled into a thrusting dive, accelerating to maximum pattern speed
in seconds. Within minutes, the Enforcer 1109 was in sight.

“Welcome back,” Frost said once they were in
proximity radio range. “Still in one piece?”

“New and improved, actually,” Jake said. He
could feel full control of his framework systems come flooding
back, a sensation that made him feel excitable and powerful. He
took a deep, shuddering breath and consciously let it go. The
sensations faded, and he felt normal again.

The subdermal communicator he’d constructed
on a whim worked better than any he’d used before. The tiny
mechanism was nested in his jaw, requiring no more power than his
body could naturally provide. He’d seen a design for one like it
once, and remembered shaking his head at how expensive the
miniaturised stealth technology was. It was tempting to try more,
to push the framework to create other enhancements. He looked at
his hand, squeezed it open and shut, marvelling at how much
stronger he was, at how strange it felt. He could feel the muscles
flexing under his skin, as though they were bands that begged to be
stretched and stressed.

They landed on an elevation pad and emerged
in the main hold. “Time for some discipline,” he said as much to
himself as to anyone listening in.

He opened the side door of the shuttle and
hurled the first crate containing a captor out so hard it bounced
and rolled. The second was right behind it. The outrage at being
captured returned as he grabbed the belt of the captor he’d crushed
under foot and carried him out into the main hold. There was a
crowd gathering, many of them looking at the man he dragged along.
His head was hanging at an awkward, unnatural angle.

Jake dropped him at his feet and retracted
the hood of his own vacsuit. “Get those crates open and bring the
men inside here,” he ordered. He turned to Minh, who was half out
of his fighter. “I’ll need your sidearm for this.”

“We can’t do that, Jake,” Minh whispered
back. “If you execute someone here, then this becomes a crime
scene.”

“And that’ll slow down the sale of the
ship,” Jake finished. “I have another idea, get some sealant
foam.”

“Sealant foam?” Minh asked, cocking his
head.

“It’s good to twenty eight hundred degrees,
right?” Jake asked.

“I know what he’s thinkin’, lad,” Frost
said, grabbing a can of sealant foam from a box nearby. “It so
happens we needed some while we repaired this lift, so there’s some
ready at hand.”

A few crewmen dragged one of the captors,
while the other was dragged by a grinning, broad shouldered crewman
Jake recognised – David, a former slave, then defender of the
Triton under Agameg’s command. “Your luggage, Sir,” he announced as
he pushed the man to his knees. “Crewcast says he’s Regan
Diri.”

Three crewmen forced the other to kneel in
front of Jake. The captors turned captives eyed the crowd warily
and avoided their commander’s eyes.

Jake knelt down. “Who organized this?” he
asked Regan.

He hesitated, glancing at his companion
before Jake caught his forehead in his hand and looked him in the
eye. “This took a long time to put together and you must have had a
plan to get out of the solar system. Who was helping you?”

“We planned it ourselves,” Regan replied.
“The five of us.”

“I killed one of you, put another in stasis,
and there’s you two,” Jake paused a moment, staring at the man, who
was growing more nervous by the second. “That makes four! Who’s
number five!”

“Four!” Regan cried. “I meant four!”

Jake let him go and stepped back. He took a
can of foam sealant from Frost and tossed it to David. “Paste this
guy to the front of my shuttle,” he ordered, gesturing towards the
shuttle behind him, “and use the whole can. I don’t want him
falling off when I enter the atmosphere.”

Some of the people in the crowd surrounding
them were shocked, but most laughed or cheered, including Frost,
whose belly laughter rose above even the hundreds that
gathered.

Regan tried to fight David as he was drawn
up to his feet, but David clutched the man’s suit between the
shoulder blades and shook hard. A few helping hands held Regan’s
arms while they tied his wrists with binding straps.

“Now, what’s your name?” Jake asked the
other one.

“Fullerton, Bernard Fullerton,” replied the
remaining captor. His attention was noticeably split between Jake
and the front of the shuttle, where David and a couple of other
crewmen were spraying sealant beneath the front viewport.

“All right, Fullerton, who was waiting in a
ship with a faster than light drive?” Jake asked him.

“It was a guy named Edward, left the group a
while ago,” Fullerton replied.

“I remember that bastard, Edward Sherman,
set fire to crew quarters in the green section of the Triton,”
Frost said. “Never thought a man of science could be such a pain in
the ass.”

“Where were you going to take me?” Jake
asked, smiling a little.

Fullerton relaxed a little. “Port Sullivan,
in UCW territory; they could pay the full bounty there.”

“How long have you been planning this?”

“Ever since we got aboard the Enforcer,
Sir,” replied Fullerton. “I, I apologise,” he stammered. “This
wasn’t my idea. They needed a good pilot and I didn’t think they’d
hurt you.”

“Well,” Jake said, grinning a little too
much. “It’s good to hear that you weren’t interested in slagging me
or stunning me, just passing me off to my worst enemies for cash.”
He looked to Frost and sighed. “Put him beside his friend there, I
want to ride these morons through the atmosphere and see if the
vacsuits hold up.”

The laughter and excitement filling that
huge hold made Jake feel like things were falling in order again.
“We make the final trip in twenty minutes, load up!” he
ordered.

“Good to have you back, Captain,” Frost said
as he came to stand beside Jake. “Just wondering, what are you
going to do with the broken neck fellow and the corpse?”

“Put them in one of those combat gurneys we
planned to leave behind. We’re going to have to take them with us
so the Carthans don’t have something new to bitch about when they
take possession of the ship.”

Minh took his place on the opposite side of
Jake, shaking his head at the sight of Regan getting pasted to the
front of the shuttle. The crew were behaving as if it was a party
game. “A crew that plays together…” Minh said.

“Stays together,” Frost finished with a
satisfied grin.

"I actually felt guilty for a while after
they gave me my new body. It was so easy when I spent most of my
time with the Child Prophet," Eve said as they strode towards the
airlock nearest to her quarters. The hallways in that section of
the Overlord II were older, the shiny black decks slightly worn
down from being polished thousands of times over the years. It
seemed most of the ship was scrubbed, if not once a day, several
times a week by mindless bots that went out of their way not to be
seen. "They used to call me Nora."

"That was your name before your father-"
Lina started to ask quietly.

"That's in the past now. Hampon hasn't
called me that once since his toy clone was killed."

"Another one is almost finished. He's being
implanted today."

"Why would Hampon create another Child
Prophet? His Victory Machine stopped sending him information weeks
ago."

"I don't know about that, but I think he
wants a live clone so he can properly introduce you to the Order Of
Eden flock."

"Flock. I hate that word. It makes them all
sound so helpless and mindless.”

"Hampon said it was apt, especially from
your point of view."

Eve thought for a moment and nodded. "He's
right. The people below are mindless. They follow their stomachs
and baser needs. I cannot believe that there are nineteen million
of them already. Pregnancy rates are over twenty percent."

"Twenty one point seven percent, actually.
They seem to be embracing the goal of repopulating the galaxy
wholeheartedly," said Lina.

"If there's one thing I've learned, humans
don't have to be told to breed. As far as I'm concerned, the only
reason the pregnancy rate is so high is because we disable
contraception as part of the intake process when someone arrives on
Pandem. Directive or not, that world is about to be awash with
humanity and everything they've rebuilt or are building will look
used and stained within a year," Eve said.