Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (3 page)

The sunlight gleaming down between the
swiftly moving air traffic overhead made that freedom even more
enticing. Stephanie and Captain Valance had a plan, however, and
Ashley wouldn’t be the first to violate it. Hiding in plain sight
had kept them safe from bounty hunters for weeks. There had been
several breaches in their perimeter by people who snuck in to steal
what they could carry, or to bag themselves a Samson
crewmember.

Ashley looked through the crack between the
three metre by three metre storage crates she hid behind. The
landing site Ayan had bargained for weeks before had become a city.
Over two thousand people from the Triton remained, including most
of the slaves they rescued. Staying in the Triton settlement was
safer than wandering out into the dangerous shanty port. After
being there for a few weeks, Ashley started hearing about other
safe havens, however. Drifton was rough, a gutter by most
standards, but she knew she could find work there, possibly get on
with another crew, and it was a social hub. That was the kind of
place where she could endear herself to people who would want her
for themselves, new protectors.

The thought of leaving the Triton crew made
her heart ache, but as time drew on and she continued to fail at
contacting the Trition’s main computer, it became more evident that
her crime against them would get her kicked from the crew.
As
soon as they find out I’ve been holding master control codes
without telling them for weeks, they’ll just put me off. Don’t
blame them though, I should have told Captain right away, but
there’s no knowing where Larry is. If he found out I blabbed about
him and Citadel, he’d kill me in my sleep.

Ashley used her head’s up display as an
interface, gesturing with glances until she managed to open a
secure channel to the Triton through the General Solar System
Network. It was something she tried to do several times a day. She
waited for the ship to reply.

SPECIFIED RECIPIENT IS UNAVAILABLE, came the
reply she had grown accustomed to. Ashley tried Larry.

CREWMEMBER IS OUT OF RANGE, replied Crewcast
after searching for several seconds.

Ashley sighed and shook her head. Just as
she was about to creep out from behind the crates, something in the
corner of her eye drew her attention. A glance through the crack
revealed someone in a black vacsuit looking straight at her.
Without thinking she jerked to the side, hiding completely behind
one of the storage blocks.
Well, that’s not suspicious at
all,
Ashley scolded herself.

She walked out of the narrow lane between
the crates, struggling with the exit because her vacsuit had been
inflated a little in some places to disguise her body shape, but
managed to squeak out without looking too ridiculous. She looked
around and didn’t see Jason. A hand on her shoulder made her
jump.

“It’s me, Steph,” the unmarked worker said.
They were all in bright green suits. “You okay?”

“Fine. Well, really sore, but okay,” Ashley
said, relaxing a little. “Just hard to tell who’s who with all of
us dressed the same.”

“I know, but I don’t mind the work. This
‘different job every day’ stuff is clearing my head and getting me
back in shape,” Stephanie replied. “What hurts? Anything
serious?”

“Everything hurts,” Ashley said, stretching.
“I thought the muscles in the suit were s’posed to take care of all
the work. I didn’t think this would be such a workout.”

They started walking down a street that ran
between five shipping containers that had become home to hundreds.
Workers dressed in green were a common sight, and Triton security
forces in black patrolled leisurely, holding rifles across their
chests. Other numerous workers in grey or blue made their way
around carrying tools and chatting in groups. Along the roadside,
people on their days off and civilians went about their business
taking care of children, chatting their time away, or playing games
some of the former slaves brought with them. Dominos and dice were
favourites.

“Welcome to the world of the labour ranks,”
Stephanie said. “Just moving those muscles of yours is enough to
get you back into shape. Did you hear that Ayan started drilling
with Oz and his troops?”

“No, why would she have to do that?” Ashley
asked.

“I think she’s trying to slim down the hard
way and training muscle memory,” Stephanie said. “Rumour is that
that new body of hers has never jogged or marched in its life, so
she’s trying to get it back up to her standards.”

“That’s gotta suck,” Ashley said.

“Sure, but I’d pay real GC to see her sweat
for a while,” Stephanie chuckled. “I tried to catch them training
outside the main hangar yesterday but just missed them.”

“Do you miss it?” Ashley asked.

“What?”

“The military stuff, training, security and
being in charge.”

“In the mood for poking at open wounds
today?” Stephanie asked.

“Ohmigosh, I’m sorry. I was just askin’, I
mean, I miss flying around, I thought-“

“I’m just buggin’ ya,” Stephanie said,
resting a calming hand on Ashley’s arm. “Are you really okay? You
seem really high strung.”

“It’s just,” Ashley scrambled for the best,
easiest, most believable excuse, glad that Stephanie couldn’t scan
her for signs of deceit. “Since we left the Triton things have
been,” she hesitated, “wrong.”

“We’ll get back up,” Stephanie said. “Don’t
worry. Just take this duty rotation as time to think and learn
about what’s going into that,” she said, gesturing towards the
hangar doors ahead.

They came through the side door of the main
hangar. Ashley looked upon the Samson, where it rested in
scaffolding. The frame of the upper hull was being rebuilt while
crewmembers on the rest of the hull were getting it ready for its
new skin. Uninsulated cables were being anchored to the finished
frame down the length of the ship, while other crewmen welded
plates of activated ergranian steel intermittently across the
ship’s exterior.

Two gutted ships brought down from the
Enforcer 1109 were piled just outside the hangar. They had become
the source of so many of their components since they were flown
down, including new rotary engines for the Samson. They lay at the
rear of the older ship, waiting to be lifted into place and wired
in. Ground crews were pairing them up, welding them together with
heavy bars and wiring them up so the power of two captured ships
would become half the thrust available to the Samson.

“Captain says they’re a week away from her
first flight,” Stephanie said.

“He said that last week,” Ashley sighed.

“This time Laura and Frost are saying it
too,” Stephanie replied. “With all this manpower, I think they’re
right. She’s going to be better than ever.”

“I hope I get to fly her,” Ashley said.

“Who else would?” Stephanie asked, laughing
lightly.

“Break’s over,” announced their boss for the
day.

One metre by one metre doors lined the walls
of the seemingly endless labyrinth of the Rasa Vin Hotel. Few of
the doors to the tiny rooms were open. She was looking for one door
in particular: 3570b. Someone was chasing her. She swore she could
feel their eyes on her bare back right before she rounded the
corner.

The few transients who hung out of their
holes to get some air turned their heads as she ran passed, half
dressed and struggling to hold her jacket as she shoved her arms
into her suit. The door she was looking at wasn't far off. Reaching
it meant escape, and she'd be among friends again.

An explosion of sparks beside her urged her around
the next corner faster than the last, and she cursed the freshly
washed, slick floor as she slid into a ladder.

The dreamt impact jerked Eve awake. Her body
was being held aloft by an antigravity field in a containment
chamber, and she could immediately tell she wasn't connected to any
of the systems around her. The chamber door opened and the field
moved her out of the small cylindrical space where a pair of women
in faded orange technician uniforms waited.

The lighting was subdued but it still took
her a moment to adjust. There were several rows of upright,
cylindrical suspension chambers marked with red, green, and blue on
the top. She remembered what the colour scheme meant from browsing
through the ship's systems. A red designation meant that the
occupant was suspended in liquid for long term, green was for
shorter-term antigravity suspension, and blue meant the occupant
was in accelerated recovery from a medical procedure. She looked
over her shoulder as her capsule closed and was shocked to see blue
markings. As it re-sealed and began self-sterilisation procedures,
the markings faded.

The absence of connectivity put Eve on edge.
The two people that greeted her were a mystery. There was no way to
look them up in a computer system, find out their service history
or glean some sense of their personalities from personal data.
"Where am I?" she asked quietly, as though it was the ultimate
expression of ignorance. Eve felt like she was in the middle of a
tug of war between fear and frustration.

"You're in the Overlord Two's secure
containment facility," one of the female technicians answered as
she helped Eve into a white, fitted short-legged bodysuit made of a
material she didn't recognise. "General Hampon's inner
cloister."

"What is this?" The frustration at having to
ask was maddening.

"It's a personal management suit. It'll
change shape, colour, and temperature depending on your needs. It
also includes all the computing devices you might need; it's
standard on the Overlord. I'm Lina, by the way. General Hampon has
put me in charge of your personal needs," she said as she helped
Eve into a dark green jacket with long tails that reached so far
forward that it was more like a skirt.

"What has he done to me?"

"He saved you. If you'll follow me, you'll
be able to ask him yourself. This room doesn't allow communications
with the outside so everyone in these capsules is protected," she
answered as she helped her put low-topped boots on.

Eve followed Lina down an aisle and when she
saw the door they were headed towards she picked up the pace,
passing the woman. The door opened to a room with a transparent
wall opposite. The green and blue globe of Pandem dominated the
view. A group of Regent Galactic destroyers passed between them and
the atmosphere. She instinctively reached out to identify what she
was seeing and find out more about her own location on the ship but
found nothing to connect with. Her frustration began to grow into
anger.

The room was furnished with comfortable
seating and tables. Some kind of waiting or observation room, she
guessed. Eve called up an interface on the table and tried to
locate herself, to find out why she was in stasis. She only had
access to the older data archive. There was an incredible amount of
knowledge stored there, but she had no way to see scanners, recent
security records, or anything else she wanted at that moment.
"Hampon!" she cried as she whirled about. Her mind worked to find a
way to communicate with any system wirelessly by reflex.

At long last a hologram of his face appeared
in front of her. "I'm here, Eve."

"What did you do to me? Why have you put me
in this prison?"

"I had to isolate you in my section of the
ship for your own safety. Your connection to the Overlord Two woke
something that was buried deep in her systems and there was no
other way of isolating you from it."

"What are you talking about? How could that
help me when I was fighting for control of my body with Gloria? I'd
think the solution would be in sanitising my framework backup
systems or-"

"Let me put it this way; Gloria Parker is
dead. Her mind was scanned years ago to see if she had the
potential to become a candidate for the Jonas program, but she fell
short, so the scans were deleted. When her brain was removed from
the body you occupy, Gloria Parker was killed."

"Then how was she still present?"

"She wasn't. Somehow trace elements of the
DLG virus that infected this ship years ago was interfacing with
you without your knowledge using your neural communications
systems."

"Impossible, I would have sensed it,” Eve
replied.

"Oh? So it's more likely that the ghost of
Gloria Parker was taking control of you whenever you were at rest
or mentally exhausted? No, our theory makes more sense, especially
since we've managed to find evidence that all of Gloria Parker's
records were accessed several times by a program that looks much
like the DLG virus. It wanted you to think a memory imprint from
Gloria Parker was trying to take possession of you while it was
committing sabotage through you."

"Some of the DLG program features were base
components for the Holocaust Virus, but they were so integrated
that it couldn't have acted on its own."

"You're right, that's why I'm of the mind
that the DLG virus was in a dormant system you must have activated
while you were exploring the ship's computers. It infected your
limiter chip and used it to take over whenever it could. It may
have even been watching while you were in control. We were able to
subdue you, place you in a dormant state and then remove your
direct neural computing systems,” Hampon explained.

"Why don't I remember any of this?"

"We had to purge your framework backup
systems completely, deleting several minutes of memory. You
attempted to kill me moments after we met. It took several guards
to subdue you. The only way to render you unconscious was to shoot
you with several electromagnetic rifles. Apparently, whatever was
left of the DLG virus was out for revenge, but that's just an
assumption based on my experience with it and the Jonas
program."