Universe in Flames 3: Destination Oblivion (21 page)

Chase turned to
Aphroditis and she walked to the elevator without saying another word.

“Thank you for
your friendship, each and every one of you. I’m sorry I lied to you. I wish I hadn’t.
I promise to come back when I get Sarah out of danger.”

“Chase wait!”
shouted Daniel.

But Chase entered
the elevator, never turning back to his friends. The elevator’s doors closed
and they were gone.

When Chase
arrived on the
Iron Fire
with Aphroditis, Argos was sitting in the captain’s
chair. His smile conveyed a mix of satisfaction and pure malice.

“Welcome aboard
. . . Your Majesty,” said Argos, making
sure the sarcasm was palpable.

Aphroditis didn’t
answer and simply went to the captain’s ready room.

“How rude. Well,
considering I killed her brother, I guess I should be understanding, shouldn’t
I, Laiyos?”

“I’m not in the
mood for your games. Now what?”

“I’ve already entered
our destination into the jump-drive navigation systems.”

“How did you
manage that?”

“We share DNA,
remember? Your computer thinks I’m you.”

“You’re lucky
they didn’t revoke my security settings then.”

“We both know
that wouldn’t have stopped us.”

“Right.” Chase
knew he could control technology remotely, with or without the help of the
Alliance neuro-link devices now.

“What are we
waiting for?”

“I thought you’d
like the honors,” said Argos, rising from the chair and gesturing Chase towards
it.

Chase simply
closed his eyes and the
Iron Fire
entered hyperspace.

*  
*   *

In the
underground bunker facility, the force field vanished.

“Now what?” said
Keera.

“Now we find out
where they went and go after them,” answered Daniel.

“Is that wise?”
said Tar’Lock.

“Screw wise. He will
need our help.”

“Perhaps, but he
made it clear he doesn’t want us to follow,” said Ryonna.

“I can’t believe
I’m hearing this, especially from you!” shouted Daniel.

Ryonna put her
hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

“Easy, Daniel. I
want to help as much as you do, but may I remind you that we’re officers in the
Earth Alliance, so unless we’re willing to defect, we may want to discuss this
logically.”

“Saroudis won’t
like this one bit. I don’t see him letting us go. And screw logic. None of this
makes sense anyway.”

“Even if he understood,
the admiral never would.”

“Right. Outlaws then?”

“Chase is lucky
to have all of you as friends,” said Keera.

“Too bad he
doesn’t trust us,” said Daniel.

“That’s not true.
I’ve spent the last few days with him and I can tell you he does. He speaks of
you highly. I think he was sincere when he said this is too dangerous for us.”

“You seem like a
nice girl, but you don’t have to come with us. This fight doesn’t concern you.
You should be on your way.”

“Yeah, except
that unless you want to steal one of your Earth Alliance ships I’m the only one
who can provide transport right now, so I’m coming.”

“Where are you
guys going? Is it time to go to the
Destiny
for dinner?” said Fillio, yawning
while emerging from a nearby room.

“Change of plans.
We’re going after Chase and Aphroditis. Feel like betraying the Earth Alliance by
joining us?”

She scrunched up
her face, looked at Daniel, clearly not following. “Alright, what did I miss?”

*  
*   *

On board the
Cronos
,
Saroudis arrived at Admiral Thassos’ ready room.

“What is it that
couldn’t wait for our original meet, Admiral?”

“Adonis, what did
we say about how to address me when we’re alone?”

“Right, sorry
Ally.”

“Better. We have
a problem with Chase. In fact, we have heaps of problems, but right now Chase
is the main one.”

“Does this have anything
to do with the
Iron Fire
entering hyperspace? I didn’t expect that.”

“Yes, I think
Chase took the ship and left.”

“But why? It
doesn’t make any sense!”

“I’m afraid it
does.”

“Can you please
tell me what’s going on?”

“A while ago I
sent a fully armed security team to arrest Chase.”

“What? Are you
nuts?”

“Easy, Adonis.”

“Sorry, but with
all due respect, why would you do that?”

“He took
Aphroditis with him, and I suspect Argos as well.”

“Can you please
start making sense here? Chase is hot headed and, granted, not the most
obedient officer I’ve served with, but I don’t see him doing this.”

“Well,
technically he’s no longer our officer, and Sarah is alive. I should have
started with that, I guess.”

“What? No, that’s
not possible. He killed her himself.”

“Apparently he
killed a clone.”

“Nope, still not
making any sense, I’m afraid. How would you know all of this?”

“You may want to
sit down for this one, my old friend. It’s a long story.”

*  
*   *

Spiros had just
finished installing his new, isolated network aboard the
Cronos
when
Cedric and Yanis walked in.

“Why did you
asked us here?” inquired Yanis.

“Cause from now
on, this is where we’ll work. We can’t take the chance of talking about our
strategies out loud on Earth. The entity might be listening in.”

“What if it’s
also in these systems?”

“I’ve made sure
that won’t be the case. This entire room is fully isolated from the Earth Alliance’s
network, so the entity won’t be listening in. The admiral was also kind enough
to let us disconnect one of the ship’s communications and scanning arrays and
reroute it to this network so we can perform scans as well, without the
entity’s knowledge.”

“It might know it’s
being scanned”

“Perhaps, but it won’t
know by whom, or why it happens.”

“Isn’t that the
type of thing that could set it off?”

“Honestly, at
this point I don’t think we have a choice. We need a safe base of operations.”

“Alright, what’s
the next step?”

“I need you to
conduct scans of the entire armada in orbit. See if you can find traces of
infection within other systems. That includes Earth Alliance ships, satellites,
but also Droxian and Obsidian ships.”

“They agreed to
that?”

“Best they don’t
know for now. Try to be as stealthy as possible. I will help you with that. I
have considerable experience sneaking into remote systems undetected. But I
need you to take the lead on that.”

“Alright,” said
Yanis with a nod.

“What about me?”
Cedric inquired.

 “I need you to
study the entity’s code. I’ve made a copy of some of its matrix, and loaded it
into a non-networked station over there. So if it does overcome the system and
render it unusable, it won’t propagate.”

“What should I
look for?”

“Root pathways
and primary command structures. Try to understand how these operate, and work
on a virus to insert new ones as stealthily as humanly possible. The idea here
is a slow-acting, slow-growing virus that makes very subtle changes, in a
perfectly optimized sequence, so as not to get flagged as an intrusion by the
entity.”

“You do realize
that it might be infinitely smarter than all three of us put together by now,
and anything I come up with it might see right through?”

“I do, so try to
think outside the box. Never use a tactic you would have used normally. Try to
do something opposite to your logic; and whatever you do, don’t use code similar
to what you used when you beamed the bombs. That would be flagged immediately.”

“Alright. Did you
just ask me to dumb myself down?”

“That’s one way
of looking at it, I guess. The less obvious the approach, the less chances of it
being recognized as an attack.”

“That sounds like
fun. Hope you brought a coffee machine, because we’re in for long nights.”

“You can
synthetize anything you need over there. That includes pieces of hardware you
may require to do your job”.

“Kewl. That takes
me back; reminds me of my first LAN party.”

Spiros looked
puzzled. “What’s a—”

“Never mind. It’s
an Earth thing. What about you? What will you be working on?”

“A contingency
plan, a way to use nanites to infect every computer on Earth and the ships
simultaneously, that will delete all systems by scrambling their data with an
unbreakable, multi-layered encryption program; so if it comes to us or the
entity, we can at least disable every piece of technology at once.”

“You do realize
that would render us defenseless?”

“I do, that’s why
I’m also going to work on a second program for the nanites that will quickly
replace the OS of every device with something including just basic operating
commands, so we can at least get manual control. Just enough to restore backups
on every system after the wipe.”

“Ingenious, but
we may have to pray that the Zarlacks don’t attack us before we’re done restoring
backups.”

“I’m hoping Argos’
departure with Chase and Aphroditis is a priority for him and he will leave
Earth alone in the meantime.”

“Wait? What?”
asked Yanis. “Chase is here?”

“Was. He stole
the
Iron Fire
, took Aphroditis with him and left. Pretty sure Argos was
on the ship too.”

“I know my friend.
There’s no way he is working with Argos now.”

“And the entity
showed me he is. Look, I’m tired of explaining this, so the short version: the
Sarah he killed was a clone; she is still alive, and Argos is blackmailing Chase
to do his bidding.”

It took a few
seconds for Yanis to register all that, and his face grew darker. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t
want to be him right now either; but what’s more troubling is that once he’s
done doing whatever Argos needs him for, we may yet face another threat.”

“How did you arrive
at this conclusion?”

“Granted this is
just speculation, but think about it. Argos could have stolen the plans I had, but
he didn’t. He made us think that by forcing Chase to kill the woman he loves at
least he didn’t get his hands on them. That means that whatever he is after,
whatever he needs Chase for, is worth way more than this tech. I have headaches
just thinking about what it could be.”

Yanis swallowed
hard, realizing that Spiros’ logic seemed right on target. “Alright, we’d
better get started then.”

*  
*   *

Daniel sat next
to Keera in the
Valken
’s cockpit.

“Now what?” he
asked.

“I’m running
scans based on the ship’s log of the
Iron Fire
’s departure, but the
computer, as I feared, can’t compute a single destination.”

“How many
possible ones?”

“One hundred and
twenty-seven.”

“Great, how are
we supposed to follow then?”

“I can discard
the ones in Obsidian Space, Droxian Space and ex-Alliance space.”

“How do you
figure?”

“Well, I’m just
speculating, but it’s doubtful that wherever they go now is within these
systems.”

“Okay, for the
sake of argument let’s say you’re right. I see where you’re going with this.
How many destinations left?”

“With my current
star charts, which are top of the line, only eight destinations remain.”

“That could still
be too many.”

“Any better
idea?”

“Yeah. Mind if I
place a call?”

“Be my guest.”

Soon Yanis’ face
appeared on the holo-screen.

“Hi, Daniel, not
the best of times, I’m afraid. Mind if I call you back later?”

“No can do. I
need your help. It’s about Chase.”

“Let me guess,
you need to know where the
Iron Fire
went?”

“How did you
know?”

“Just been
briefed about the whole Sarah-not-being-dead thing. There, I sent you the
Iron
Fire
’s jump destination, but if they stop and make another jump from there,
they’ll be too far out of range to get the next coordinates.”

“Thanks, pal!”

“You’re welcome. Please
be careful. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to follow Chase under the
circumstance, but I understand why you’re doing it.”

Daniel smiled and
nodded. “Will do.”

“If that’s all?”

“It is, thanks;
and Yanis?”

“Yes, I know: I
never got this call.”