Unstable Prototypes (57 page)

"Call Lou," she stated. A few seconds of
waiting earned her a connection.

"Lou," came a gruff smoker's voice. The video
feed showed part of a rolled up sleeve, with a hairy arm protruding
from it. Lou was one of those people who left his slidepad in a
cradle, and hadn't seemed to have noticed that video call etiquette
generally calls for at least pointing the camera in your general
direction.

"Yeah, Lou. Michella again. Listen, have you
been looking at these numbers?"

"The year-to-date record setting traffic
you've been sending our way? I've been kept informed," he said
flatly.

"Well, Trevor is tracking very favorably. I
know that PR is always after you to get me more involved in human
interest. I think there might be some value in doing some deeper
coverage on him. On the two of us. Something to tie him to our
brand."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Maybe you can send us on a press tour once
the main coverage is wrapped up. The two of us together..."

Many believe that they have felt tension, but
if you've never been among soldiers readying for a battle, you
don't know the meaning of the word. It is as though the air itself
is stretched tight as a guitar string, humming with energy. Every
sense is on fire; eyes sharp, ears trained, skin tingling. Words,
if spoken at all, are short and to the point. There is an
unmistakable sense of preoccupation. The coming battle is fought a
thousand times a second, each mind simulating every possible
beginning and formulating every possible defense. They say that
pressure makes diamonds, and it is true... if you are talking about
geology. Psychology, on the other hand, has established that
pressure mostly just makes neuroses.

In Purcell's space station, the atmosphere
was thick with pure, weapons-grade, military anticipation. There
was silence aside from the click and rattle of tightening straps
and fittings, the squeak of boots... and the piercing, off-key
whistle of Karter as he tinkered merrily in the fab lab. In
contrast to the agonizing sense of foreboding weighing down on
everyone else, Karter was happy as an elf in Santa's workshop. Laid
out before him, taking up nearly all of the available space in the
lab, were the unfinished CME Activator cores. They were long, thin
devices, about as thick as a man's leg and maybe three meters long.
Tucked in a corner of the fab lab was a long, low furnace, creaking
and pinging as it slowly cooled. Purcell was pacing outside the
door of the lab, her second in command shadowing her.

"How much longer, Dee?" she demanded.

"They need to drop another seven tenths of a
degree kelvin and they'll be ready to come out. Sixty seconds, give
or take," he answered.

"Only point seven degrees? Surely they can be
removed now."

"Sure they can, if you want them to have
micro-fractures that will cause them to fail while they're passing
through the chromosphere. Don't you have something better to do
than pace around waiting for the cookies to finish?"

"My men are prepared. They are armed with
your equipment and briefed in its usage. All that remains is to see
to it that you fulfill your obligation without further
treachery."

"I'll have you know," he said, tightening a
bolt and holstering the tool, "I am officially done with my
obligations. Once those things come out of the oven, they click
into these reaction chambers, and then these whole assemblies slip
into the superstructures down in the weapons bay. Even your idiots
could do that."

"Get engineering down here," Purcell ordered.
Her lackey quickly began quietly speaking orders into his
communicator.

"There, see? I haven't done anything
treacherous since I sabotaged the power grid."

"... When did you do that?" Purcell
growled.

"Wouldn't
you
like to know," Karter
taunted. He looked over the dial of the furnace. "Just about...
little bit more... There. All done. Hey, out of curiosity, what's
with the red hair? I don't know if you were hoping it was
intimidating or not, but basically you just look like a clown that
was too lazy to put on the makeup."

"Damn it, Karter, tell me what you did!"

"Oh, come on. The fun part is figuring it
out. That's what makes this little game we've got going so
exciting. Sometimes you catch me, sometimes you don't."

"I don't have time for this. Motivate him,"
she ordered.

Her second in command pulled out his slidepad
and began to tap at the screen.

"I wouldn't do that if I were-" Karter
quickly warned.

Before he could finish the sentence, the
lights in the station suddenly dimmed and then shut off. The halls
filled with the muffled commotion of soldiers going through the
well-practiced power failure procedures and learning that it is
considerably more difficult when your anxiety level has already
been ratcheted up to epic proportions.

"Now that's your fault," Karter said,
crossing his arms. "You installed a stun device in my arm. That
gave me access to a high-voltage device with a remote trigger. What
did you think I was going to do with it? And then I
clearly
goaded you into zapping me. Come on. You're supposed to be better
than this!"

"This isn't a game, Karter!" she growled,
drawing her blaster.

Karter didn't even have the decency to
flinch. "You're just saying that because you're losing."

The lights flickered back on.

"There, see? It was just a power surge that
tripped some safeties. It isn't as though I set up a feedback loop
that would blow the reactor in eight minutes."

Purcell's glare managed to become even more
threatening than the weapon she was holding.

"I really didn't," Karter said simply. "That
would kill
me
, and where's the fun in that?"

"You have
not
fulfilled your
obligation. I require the full design."

"Pff. Technicalities," Karter said.

He drifted over to the fabrication computer,
tapped a few buttons, and removed a memory chip from it. With a
flick, he sent it darting in Purcell's direction. When it reached
the artificial gravity of the hallway, it dropped to the ground.
The commander didn't take her eyes off of Karter. A few tense
moments past before the representative from Engineering showed up.
He didn't even open his mouth before Purcell began to issue orders,
still without taking her eyes off of the inventor.

"At my feet you will find a memory chip
containing the completed design for the CMEA. Validate it. Now,"
she commanded steadily.

The engineer collected the chip and inserted
it into the bottom edge of his datapad. Schematics and instructions
filled the screen of the device.

"The schematics for the known portion of the
device seem to match what we've been able to determine. The
schematics for the previously unknown portions pass function
verification analysis and appear to complement the existing
portion. I would say that this is legitimate," remarked the
engineer.

"Excellent. Transfer the design into the main
computer, then get together a team to complete the assembly of the
devices," Purcell ordered. "And as for you, Dee..."

"Yeah, yeah, empty threat time, I know the
drill," he said, turning away.

She pulled the trigger. A bolt of energy
hissed through the air and struck Karter in the small of his back,
filling the room with the stench of singed flesh. The injured
inventor screamed and clutched at the injury. His face, rather than
the usual expression of annoyed disinterest or mischievous glee,
was twisted in pain and surprise.

"That was this weapon's lowest setting. It
isn't supposed to be fatal, but then, this
is
a prototype,
and this design was abandoned for being overpowered, so I wouldn't
be very confident in your chances without treatment," she
advised.

"What are you doing!?" he growled through the
pain, "You need me!"

"No, Karter. You are useful. You are even
irreplaceable, but now that you have given me the CMEA design, you
are
not
necessary. You would be an asset to our cause if you
were cooperative, but your current behavior makes you a much
greater liability. From this moment forward you live or die
depending on how well you can prove your usefulness and loyalty. Do
you understand?"

"What I understand," he coughed, "Is that you
might have just cost me my one natural kidney. That was my favorite
kidney!"

The color was draining from his face, but his
expression had already slipped back to one of its defaults,
anger.

"I want him taken to his cell. Take away his
arm and stabilize him, but no painkillers. He needs to understand
consequences," she dictated to her second in command. "I want there
to be no-"

"Commander," said her assistant urgently,
"We've got a sensor alert. There's a weak signature
approaching!"

"I want one medic and one guard on Dee, and
keep the engineers working on the CMEAs. Everyone else, battle
stations! You're with me," Purcell demanded. She began marching
down the tight hallway as her assistant scurried behind her and
various soldiers scrambled to get back to their posts after the
short blackout. "How many ships have we got?"

"Two gunships, two troop carriers, both in
Docking Bay A. There are also four single man short range fighters
on patrol."

"Where are the rest?"

"The other gunship was destroyed by
Alexander. We left a troop carrier on the surface of Big Sigma. Of
the four remaining, three were sent on surveillance missions, one
was sent to retrieve the alloy. The Manticore surveillance ship was
destroyed, and another has been recalled but has not yet arrived.
That leaves us with the ship that just returned with the alloy, and
the ship that just returned from Proxy-12. We've also got our
support ship and a wing of fighters patrolling Big Sigma."

"Fine. Keep the fighters on patrol. Get one
gunship and one troop ship out there, too. Keep the others for
reserve. Recall the Big Sigma patrol. If this fight doesn't go our
way, we'll need reinforcements, even if it takes them days to get
here. What do the sensors tell us about this approaching
signature?"

"Not much. It is just a minor blip. We've
been getting it for about three minutes, but it wasn't until now
that it was strong enough to suggest it wasn't just background
noise."

"Sounds like a stealth ship. Fine, they want
stealth, let's show them what stealth really is," she said finally
ending her trek across the station on the command bridge.

A far cry from the massive, spacious rooms
with giant view screens and elaborate chairs that one usually
thinks of when a Commander takes the bridge, the space station's
bridge was a match for the rest of the facility. It was a cramped,
darkened room. The only light came from the handful of screens that
dotted one wall, and the innumerable LED indicators that speckled
the walls. There was room enough for the commander, the second in
command, and a single tactical officer, and only if two of them
remained standing. Frankly, it had more in common with the
audio-video room of a public access TV station than an epic place
of command. Purcell looked over the screens, covered with dots
representing her ships, each tagged with designations, technical
readouts, and motion vectors. Carefully her mind formulated a
plan.

"Put me on general broadcast," she ordered,
speaking again when she received a nod. "TC-4, engage cloak and
take up position alpha-6. GS-2, cloak and take up position omega-6.
Target the enemy vessel and fire only when you achieve a weapons
lock. Fighters, pair off and approach the enemy vessel from oblique
angles. Target and pursue. Keep clear of cloaked ship locations to
avoid collision."

Outside the station, the veteran soldiers
swiftly complied. The pair of ships, gunship above and troop
carrier below, assumed their positions and activated their cloaks,
vanishing from sight and sensors. Next, the fighters complied. They
were small, light vehicles with little more than a pilot's cabin, a
pair of small engines, and a pair of oversized cannons. If the
gunship was like an eagle, the fighters were like bees; small and
fragile, but they could easily be deadly if they attacked in large
enough numbers or stung the right target. Two fighters peeled off
and approached the slowly strengthening sensor reading from the
left, the other two veering right. Just as the form of the SOB was
becoming visible on the fighter's visual sensors, though, it
accelerated, pulling a long, gradual turn and picking up speed all
the way.

"Lock and fire!" Purcell ordered, watching
intently at her screens.

"Negative. Can't get a lock. Sensors aren't
getting a strong enough reading," came the reply from the lead
fighter.

"Fine, manual fire, wide spread!" she
ordered.

All four fighters began to unload their
weapons. Piercing dots of purple light fired in staggered,
irregular patterns, trading accuracy for volume. The SOB didn't
even try to dodge, absorbing a handful of hits before tearing past
the fighters.

"Station shields to maximum! Turrets, target
and fire, avoiding top center and friendly ships."

The rattling tractor beam/jackhammer made a
few useless taps at the shield as the SOB whipped past, the massive
but slow-to-target cannons on the station firing vaguely in its
direction without once coming close.

"Target locked, firing," announced the pilot
of the gunship, its more acute sensors finally managing to pick up
the elusive little ship.

The cloaked ship fired a cluster of the same
missiles that had given Lex so much trouble at the array, briefly
becoming visible as it did. For a few seconds the missiles drew
steadily closer to the retreating SOB, then there was a dim flash
of light and the same EMP pulse that had saved him the first time
sent the trailing missiles twirling away uselessly. Purcell barked
coded command shorthand at her pilots, using various meaningless
numbers and letters to coax complex maneuvers out of her men in
order to prepare for the return run by the SOB. This time it came
from below, and it was the troop carrier that sent a volley of
powerful shots in its direction.