Chapter 25
Billy was the first to return fire. His multi-gun burst took the creature’s head clean off at its segmented shoulder area. As the creature died, it slowly contracted back into a ball.
The other pill bugs attacked in force—streams of liquid flew through the air from multiple directions. Within seconds, the acid-like liquid was taking its toll on their battle suits. Jason felt a white hot flash of pain below his left knee. Looking down, he saw that his suit had been completely worn away. Returning fire, Jason and his team advanced. The creatures began to wrap their segments tightly around themselves—creating their own version of an exoskeleton battle suit. Using short bursts to conserve ammunition, both Jason and Billy fired forward while Orion concentrated her fire on the creatures moving up behind. With each burst of rail-gun munitions, large sections of the bugs’ exoskeleton segments exploded into dust—revealing their inner soft body-tissue beneath.
Jason fired double bursts, the second shot mortally wounding them. He noticed Ricket was in the fight as well, shooting forward several bursts, then turning to help Orion destroy the bugs at their rear. Jason stumbled over Stands in Storm’s legs. He was dead. His body was almost completely liquefied; even his bones looked small and insignificant. As the last of the pill bugs died and reflexively contracted back into balls, the team continued forward.
An alarm klaxon had started at some point, but Jason couldn’t remember when. They reached another expansive compartment holding ten security hover drones. The room was square; one wall had floor to ceiling windows. The drones held their position in a straight line several feet in front of the windows. This time prepared, with time to react, both Jason and Billy phase-shifted right behind them. At point blank range, their multi-guns made quick work of four drones. Their shielding and metal housings quickly failed under the barrage of close-range fire. Like a tag team, once Billy and Jason phase-shifted away, Orion phase-shifted in from the other side, keeping up the attack. In minutes, all ten drones were destroyed and lay smoldering on the floor.
“This way,” Ricket said, jumping over one of the drones and entering a door along the glass wall. They followed him and were surprised to see the room busy with many Craing workers. Jason and his team pointed their weapons and ushered them to stay back. Ricket hurried through the middle of the group. Wide-eyed and open mouthed, they moved aside. He rushed to one particular terminal and gestured for the worker to get out of his seat.
“We’re at the sub-station’s hub, I take it?” Jason asked.
“Yes.” Ricket’s fingers flew over an odd-shaped data entry device.
Jason took in the room. Completely circular, with floor to ceiling windows all around, it looked surprisingly modern compared to what he’d seen of the rest of the facility. Large displays encircled the room; each showed one of the eight planets in the solar system. The largest display hung directly above Ricket. There, on what looked to be a video image, showed all eight planets orbiting their red giant sun, each slowly rotating in a counterclockwise spin. An icon hovered a distance away from each of the planets, directly below what would be their southernmost poles.
Ricket must have done something: a blue vector line stemming from the southern pole of each of the planets was now connected to the eight outlying icons below the other planets. From those, more vector lines converged together to a distant point further out in space.
Ricket continued to speak while he worked. “What you are looking at are the eight planets of the Craing worlds. Those eight icons hovering below each planet make up the array subsystem. They are basically large mirrors. The array subsystem tracks the location of not only its own lasers, but those on the other planets as well. They work as a unit, and together they concentrate the beams of all these lasers to a singular point in space—subsequently creating their unified wormhole. There are seven lasers active at any one time. The eighth one shuts down in a set rotation for purposes of maintenance, cooling, repairs and that sort of thing. What makes any kind of sabotage difficult is the redundancy aspect. Every laser sub-station has a room identical to this one. Anything I do here, that deviates from the norm, will trigger this station to be excluded from the Loop.”
Billy and Orion had taken up positions in front of the windows, while Jason leaned in close to Ricket’s shoulder.
“How do we get around that?” Jason asked. “That seems like it would be an insurmountable problem.”
“It is, actually. There is no way to alter their code or to jail-break it, as you would say.”
“So what are you doing then? That obviously hasn’t stopped you.”
“I’m starting over. I noticed their core software allows for periodic soft-updates. In effect, I’ll be replacing one version with a whole new one. I’m writing just enough new code to keep the sub-stations and array operational, but that’s about it. It only needs to operate for several minutes. Enough time to cycle on and off each of the lasers, upload the latest version, and power back on.”
“So how does that help us?” Jason asked, looking back at the window where more security hover drones were lining up.
“When they cycle back on, four of them will no longer be positioning their individual mirrors in the direction of that central point in space. They have been assigned a new set of coordinates. These mirror arrays will now target a sub-station on one of the neighbor planets.”
“Not just one, but four sub-stations will be destroyed?”
“That is correct.”
“Where is Halimar in this scenario?” Jason asked.
“Last, of course, although we will need to make haste to evacuate this facility.” Ricket turned to face Jason, no longer keying in information.
“We’ve got a lot of company out there,” Orion said. “In addition to security hover drones, there’s more pill-bug guys, as well as armed Craing soldiers.”
Jason was hailed.
“Go for Captain.”
“Captain, I guess you could say the shit’s hit the fan,” Rizzo said, sounding out of breath. “We’ve had to pull back; there’s two battle cruisers hovering above the sub-station and one is on the ground. Armed combatants are filing into the facility from multiple sides.”
“Where exactly are you now, Rizzo?”
“We’ve found cover in a barn-like structure—about ten miles away, Cap.”
“Hang tight there—looks like we’re almost finished here.”
“Cap,” Billy said, pointing to another monitor. They were looking at video footage of the outside of the facility. A red banner with bold symbols scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
Ricket said, “That’s local news footage, the equivalent of your CNN.”
The feed changed to what looked like overhead security footage of the inside of a facility.
“That’s us!” Orion exclaimed. The announcer was talking excitedly and the video had zoomed in on Ricket sitting at the workstation.
“What is he saying?” Jason asked.
“They’re reporting that after analysis of the security footage, they’ve definitively concluded it’s Emperor Reechet—that their emperor has returned. Apparently, this is causing quite a stir…”
Jason continued to watch Ricket, his head turned upward toward the display. Time and time again his loyalty had been put to the test. At some level, wouldn’t he have mixed feelings? This is—was—his home wasn’t it? Will there come a time when he chooses Craing over human? There was still so much Jason didn’t know about his father’s relationship with this part alien, part mechanical being. What had inspired Ricket’s seemingly unfaltering allegiance to him fifteen years ago?
The news feed had changed again, this time showing open space and a group of small vessels.
“What’s the announcer saying?” Jason asked excitedly.
Ricket said, “The Emperor’s Guard are minutes from leaving Craing space. They’ve held up temporarily.”
“Because you’re here?” Jason asked.
“That’s a possibility. Me being here has complicated things. Under normal circumstances, their directive is to stay with their charge, the emperor. Leaving the star system would violate that. High Priest Lom’s successor and his brethren without doubt would want the fleet to continue on to Earth. Now that my presence here among the Craing worlds is public knowledge, they have a dilemma,” Ricket said.
“It seems to me we have an opportunity here. If you’re up for it. I mean, as far as the populace is concerned, you are their emperor, yes?”
“Yes. Their perception is that I am Emperor Reechet.”
“Why not give them their marching orders? You … we … may not have an opportunity like this again,” Jason said, wondering if he was crossing the line into an area with which Ricket would be uncomfortable.
The room had gone quiet. Billy and Orion, as well as the Craing lab workers, had their full attention on Ricket. He looked directly at one of the workers and spoke in their native language. Flustered at first, the worker stuttered, hemmed and hawed, then nodded agreeably.
“What did you ask him?” Jason asked.
“If their security system records audio as well as video.”
“… And?”
“Yes, it does,” Ricket replied.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s not for me to tell you to do this,” Jason said.
Ricket got up from his chair and stood beneath the security camera. He began speaking in his native tongue. In unison, the workers in the room fell to their knees with their heads bowed. On the other side of the glass wall, the Craing there did the same. Ricket continued to speak softly but with determination. Jason had no idea what he was saying. The news feed was now live and showing Ricket addressing the Craing populace. It was uncanny how similar this was to a typical Earth news report, even down to multiple video-feed windows being displayed. They showed what appeared to be the reactions from other locations, other Craing worlds. Jason imagined thousands, millions of Craings had stopped in their tracks. The feeds kept changing. Crowd after crowd, all on their knees, heads bowed. Mesmerized, they saw that their emperor had returned and was addressing them. With his palms up, Ricket gestured to the camera for everyone to rise up. Jason watched the Craing workers in the room, their faces expressing a mixture of fear and astonishment. Whatever Ricket was saying blew their minds—and one by one they stood. They looked to Ricket and then to one another. Astonishment had turned to something else. An expression on the Craings’ faces Jason had come to recognize: They were smiling—some were laughing. The feeds from around the star system reflected the same response. The populace was now on their feet. Cheers and clenched fists were raised in triumph. Then the feeds all went black. The news bulletins went quiet.
“What the hell did you say?” Jason asked, bewildered.
There was that same expression. Jason wondered if he’d ever seen Ricket smile before.
“I’ve started something.”
“What?”
“A revolution.” With that, Ricket turned back to the console and entered one more set of commands.
The display above him changed—specifically, something on Halimar’s neighboring planet. The blue vector line from its south pole sub-station out to the mirror array, and then out to deep space, disappeared. Then the icon representing both the sub-station itself as well as its corresponding mirror array out in space disappeared. Several moments passed before the icons returned. The blue vector line reappeared from the sub-station to the mirror array, but it no longer extended out to space. A new vector line connected the mirror array to another planet on the far side of the solar system—to that planet’s south pole sub-station. Moments later, that sub-station icon went dark.
“The process has begun. The wormhole has collapsed. The Craing can no longer travel to the far reaches of the universe.”
Jason stared at Ricket in disbelief. What he’d just accomplished would change the lives of millions, perhaps billions across the universe. For those on Earth it meant no less than their survival.
“Captain, within five minutes, this facility will be destroyed,” Ricket said.
“Let these people know they need to evacuate—get far away from the sub-station.”
Ricket spoke to one of the lab workers. In a frenzy, he turned to his other coworkers. Someone activated another alarm. Mayhem broke out on the other side of the glass wall. Only the security hover drones remained at their posts. Jason checked the display again. Three sub-stations had been destroyed.
“We need to get out of here, fast.” Jason noticed new phase-shift coordinates had been entered into his HUD.
“We are all set, Captain,” Ricket said.
“One question. What’s happening with the Emperor’s Guard? Jason asked.
“I no longer detect them within this star system, sir.”
“Damn! So they made it out before the wormhole closed down?”
Ricket didn’t answer right away. “Yes, I believe so, Captain. In all probability, they will reach Earth within the next day or two.”