Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (50 page)

“Wait,” Alice said. “My memories were in
your head. They didn’t stay sealed, did they?”

“No. I remembered parts of your life in
dreams.”

“Well, it would have saved us a little time
if you said that straight off, Nora.”

The woman regarded her with surprise. “How
did you know my name?”

“Seemed right, just a guess,” Alice said,
making her best effort to underplay how disturbing the idea that
she’d gotten some of the other woman’s memories as part of her
transfer. “Right, so you found out about Lewis. He saved my butt
twice, then I saved his once. Where did the memory end for
you?”

“Before you saved him,” Nora replied.

Nora didn’t seem to want to dwell on how she
knew her name, so Alice continued the story. “We had to stop for
food, so we hit this drift. I think it was called Yikin, no, it was
Yelkin. We were just finishing up at a Spacerwares mini-store when
Lewis caught a stun round. I managed to drag him under cover and
fire back. The whole quad broke into a full-on firefight, most of
them taking the opportunity to take shots at whoever they didn’t
like or figuring they would play law-maker and shoot whoever’s
shooting. Drifts get busy with the idiots of the galaxy, the ones
that shouldn’t have guns but tend to have the biggest collections.
Long story short, I stole an antigravity cart and got him to a
shuttle only a little more beat up than the one he had.”

“How did you start it?” Nora asked,
engrossed in the story as though it was unlike anything she’d ever
heard.

“It was a cheap shuttle, I busted the main
console open with his sword-“

“He had a sword?” Nora asked.

“Yeah, this Zurra Cutter, like a nanosword
with microsaw edges but four times as broad with heavier
components, so it could cut through most metal. Can I
continue?”

“Please.”

“I got into that panel and shorted the old
security board inside. Once Lewis was back up on his feet, he
plotted a course that would keep us away from most of the traffic.
We made it back to Ulrik, but it took us three days.”

“What did you do during that time?”

Alice regarded her warily and decided that
she’d please her audience of one so she could get out of her cell
faster. “He was different during quiet times. Nice, interesting, he
had a lot of stories and didn’t like people around him getting
bored. We got close, I guess.”

“Did you,” Nora hesitated awkwardly.
“Fornicate with him?” she asked quietly.

Alice recoiled at the thought. “No! Wow,
that would have been so weird. He played the ‘old soldier’ part too
well, and I guess that’s not my thing, and I don’t think he was too
interested in that kind of thing with me, either. He never made it
obvious if he did.”

“What happened after that?”

“We showed up at Ulrik’s estate,” Alice
paused a moment. “Did you learn about his place? What the job was
about?”

“Yes, the Amber Heart,” Nora replied.

“Right, that hunk of old sap from Earth. We
touched down on the platform and had a hundred barrels on us in a
second.” Alice took a moment to close her eyes. The memory of that
platform, the cool wind against her face, and the surprise at
seeing dozens of house soldiers pointing weapons at them was too
clear. She could even remember the smell of the forest below. The
recollection of the next moment was almost enough to bring tears to
her eyes. “He was such a proud idiot,” she said to herself.

“Who?”

“Never mind,” Alice said, regaining her
composure. “Ulrik comes out smiling and Lewis quick-draws on him.
I’ve never seen anyone as fast. Cybernetics helped; it turns out
Lewis’ whole right half had been replaced. Probably because of some
injury on Veers Nine. There wasn’t enough of Ulrik left to put back
together. Lewis was using a tri-shot modification on his sidearm,
so it fired hot enough to burn a few strands of my hair just
because I was standing beside him. He got all three shots off
before the guards killed him. I caught a couple of rounds too, but
it was minor, just crossfire.”

“Why?” Nora asked. “He had to know he would
be killed, surrounded by guards.”

“Territory,” Alice said. “One of Ulrik’s
companies was on Veers Nine, fighting for a share, and Lewis’ job
was to dismantle his operation however he could. He decided that
killing the man at the top was the last chance he had since Ulrik
had already caught on.”

“How did you get out?”

“Well, I woke up in a room a lot different
from this. Big windows, fresh flowers on the bedside table. One of
Ulrik’s wives, Rada was her name, told me that I didn’t come up
when they ran a check on known enemies, and I finished my mission,
so she gave me my reward after I told her where she could find
Amber, the wife that stole the Amber Heart. When I powered on my
new ship, it asked me two questions: what the ship was called, and
what I would name my new artificial intelligence.”

“So you named it Lewis,” Nora said.

“I named it Lewis,” Alice nodded. “Can I get
out of here now? Feeling a little claustrophobic right now.”

“Thank you, Alice,” Nora said, tears welling
up. “You helped me feel human again. I don’t remember much of you,
just the dreams, so you don’t have to worry, but you at least
brought my humanity back.”

Alice stood, trying to look like she cared
more about Nora’s apparent breakthrough, and she received a
heartfelt hug as her reward. “I’m sure you would have found it
eventually, I mean, it can’t go far, right?”

“I’ll miss you,” Nora repeated. “This’ll be
the last time I see you.”

The door opened and Alice followed Nora out.
The transparent wall beyond her cell was difficult to see through,
but she made out roughly man-shaped creatures swimming, tending to
what looked like clusters of heavy bubbles. She jumped as an
issyrian swam right for her and bumped the wall playfully. “Wow,”
Alice said. “Never seen that before.” It smiled at her, pressing
its webbed hands against the transparent plating between them. It
was away with a push, disappearing into the dark depths.

“That’s all you’ll be seeing, sorry,” said a
soldier as he put a bag over her head and cinched it under her
chin. Another guard tied her hands, then her feet with great
expertise.

“Okay, this is going to make walking around
really interesting, and the trip to the shuttle really slow,” Alice
said. She yelped as strong arms picked her up and put her on the
bed of a cart or hard gurney. “Oh, this kind of trip never ends
well, see ya!” Alice said as she did her best to roll off.

Hands caught her easily, and restraints were
pressed across her chest, waist, and knees. “A girl’s gotta try,”
she sighed.

Alice made sporadic attempts at breaking the
restraints as she was pushed swiftly down hallways. She assumed
they were using a hover cart, because there were no bumps or
squeaking wheels. They were running quickly, judging from the
pounding of their boots on the deck. She heard heavy doors and
hatches opening, closing and felt herself go down a ramp.

The cart came to a sudden stop and her
restraints were hastily removed. “Gabriel Meunez is on his way to
the Rega Gain system with an invasion fleet,” one of the soldiers
said to her. Their headgear made it difficult to determine if it
was a woman or man speaking, or it could have been an issyrian
under that armour, Alice couldn’t guess. “We are sending you there,
so you can warn them. Don’t interfere with the autopilot, or you
could disrupt the combined wormhole and hyperdrive systems.”

The guards picked her up, there were at
least eight hands on her. “Like hell! I don’t want to run into that
freak. As soon as I unlock the computer I’m heading in the opposite
direction.”

“Your ship, Jacob Valent, and all his
friends are there, on the Tamber moon,” the guard explained. She
was roughly tossed through the air, and she landed head and right
shoulder first. The vacsuit, and her new, sturdier body, helped
with the blow, but it was no less awkward.

Alice pulled the bag off her head in time to
see the narrow gangway raising, almost closed. “Why didn’t you say
so? And, hey! You got his name wrong! It’s Jacob Valance! You guys
should know, you bought the company that made the copy!” The
engines fired, rumbling the interior of the shuttle.

It was well lit. The interior was in
pristine condition. There were shoulder racks recessed into the
sides of the cabin, enough to support sixteen. It looked like the
seats pulled out into beds, and overhead there were bunks that
would lower for even more. “Okay, it looks like Freeground’s deluxe
model shuttle. Maybe there are some new features?” she said to
herself as she got to her feet and started opening compartments.
“Fully equipped,” she muttered as she opened a gun cabinet and saw
brand new, high-powered weaponry. Another compartment revealed
heavy armour; it looked like a Freeground design, but every suit
was heavier, more advanced than she’d ever seen. The compartments
seemed endless.

“Toys, toys, and more toys. Enough for a
whole squad of heavy stealthers,” she said as she rummaged. “Ooh!”
she shouted as she found one of the food compartments under a
bench. “So hungry.” She ripped one open and pocketed two more
before heading for the cockpit. “Let’s see if you open.” Alice
tried the door and made a celebratory sound around a mouthful of
vanilla meal bar. Dropping herself into the pilot’s seat she took a
look at the control panel and immediately saw the engraving along
the edge that read:
SUNSPIRE SHUTTLE IX

“Well, I’m sure there’s a story there,” she
said. Alice looked through the transparent portions of the hull
around her and her mouth dropped open as she saw the Overlord II
looming nearby. There were hundreds of large ships everywhere,
every one of them armed to the teeth. A chill ran down her spine
and she was frozen for several seconds. “Wow, am I ever
not
supposed to be here!” she said in a half choked voice, dropping out
of the chair and rolling behind it. “Time to go little shuttle, all
your toys and food won’t help me one bit against that big bad blast
from my past.” She peeked around the bucket seat then looked over
the console, and saw that the wormhole generator was ninety seven
percent charged. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she said, looking to the
communications station. There were twenty-four urgent hails waiting
and counting. There was nothing she could do but watch the wormhole
generator charge up, and when it hit one hundred percent she looked
at the scanning screen and pressed the projection button. An image
of a wormhole appeared as the generator system projected it and she
cheered. As the shuttle entered the wormhole and accelerated, she
danced behind the seats. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Rega Gain, here I
come!”

“That was a beautiful christening,” Oz told
Ayan from the main engineering console on the bridge. The evidence
of an intense firefight was all around, even though the surfaces
had been cleaned, and the bodies removed. Fixing burned out
consoles and spots of molten metal were repairs, and the Carthans
didn’t spend any time restoring the Triton. They just cleaned it
and forced the claimants of the ship to pay for the ‘service’
before they could fly away. It was still a strange notion to
Ayan.

Oz’s comm unit was directly wired into the
panel behind the Engineering interface, and a set of holographic
Sol Defence style interfaces surrounded him. “I wish I could have
been there.”

Ayan had changed back into her regular
Triton uniform, but hadn’t bothered with the extreme environment
overlay. “I know, but we’re all short on time.” She watched him
sort through repairs and examine different parts of the ship for a
moment before she continued. “You haven’t been acknowledging my
messages.”

“I listened the first time,” Oz said. “I’m
not leaving the Triton. I sent non-essential staff off, and kept
eight.”

“What are you and eight crewmembers going to
do here?” Ayan asked.

“We can keep purifying the lines, reversing
the effects of the poison in the biological circuitry. We already
have propulsion control and one main thruster working. We can move
if we have to.”

“Oz,” Ayan said. “You’re going to die on
this ship if you don’t leave tonight.”

That gave her old friend pause, and he
finally looked up from his work. “What?”

Ayan looked over her shoulder to make sure
no one else was on the bridge before explaining. There was no sign
of her guards, Jason, or Liam, who insisted on accompanying her. “I
connected with the Victory Machine today, what our old friends from
Vindyne have been using to build the Order of Eden.”

“Which old friends?” Oz asked.

“Lister Hampon, General Collins, and even
Wheeler is involved somehow. I think he’s trying to play both
sides. Some of what I saw in the machine was just images in the
peripheral, it wasn’t always direct.”

“How are two of Vindyne’s most wanted
involved?” Oz asked.

“Collins is dead, someone named Meunez
killed him, but not before Collins could unleash the Holocaust
Virus on the galaxy,” Ayan explained.

“Collins is behind that?” Oz asked. “Why?
Why would he kill billions of people? Just to reserve more space
and resources for Regent Galactic?”

“No, there was some kind of larger plan to
focus the population in certain areas of the Milky Way. They were
following instructions laid out by the Victory Machine to shape the
galaxy in such a way so most of humanity would survive whatever’s
coming. They overdid it, and now the Order of Eden is more powerful
than intended, in complete control of Regent Galactic, their
worlds, and everything they own.” Ayan cocked her head for a moment
as she realized some of what she was saying was beyond what she
thought she learned from the Victory Machine. It had told her more
than she’d realized; there were details from the Order of Eden and
Regent Galactic that she didn’t remember hearing, but she knew they
came from the Victory Machine.