Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (22 page)

Mike Jeffries awoke strapped to a table. The gravity felt deliciously light after so many weeks on a high-gravity world. He knew he must be on either a spaceship or on one of the moons in orbit around
Kepler-47b.

Several
KayBees swarmed around the room he was in. Mike recognized one of them; it was Cricket. He tried to call out to him, but his son was little more than an automaton. He did not respond.  He noticed his encounter suit had been removed although he was still clothed.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Mike.
As Captain of the
GCP Heidman
he had imprisoned Rasta-Tckner in much the same manner. The table he was on tilted forward. At the same time the straps tightened painfully. As the table shifted he saw a series of surgical tools on a tray to the right. His heart sank.

A large silver
KayBee entered the room slowly. Mike had never seen one of the bugs this old. It wobbled slightly as it entered the roo
m
– almost as if it was not used to walking any more. The creature stood next to him. It reached a pincer forward and grabbed a bit of flesh on his forearm. At first the pull was gentle but then the tugging was more forceful and Mike was in serious pain. He screamed, and just to make sure they knew it hurt he turned on his commlink and broadcast the scream on KayBee frequencies. Cricket shuddered but then kept moving.

The pincer release
d his skin. He had just started to relax when the pincher shot forward and snipped a one inch gash in the skin it had just released. Mike was startled to hear more screaming, and then realized it was in fact he who was screaming. A drone came forward and swabbed a bit of the blood that was oozing from the wound. Medical nanites quickly sealed it and suppressed his pain centers.

***

"That's it!" Cat yelled. She had made her way to Ricky Valen's
Honey Dipper One
and was in orbit around the smaller of the remaining moons. They had followed the KayBee shuttle that had Mike Jeffries on board. The signal was lost shortly after the vessel had entered a domed structure.

Sassi spoke up. "Previous scans showed an extensive network of tunnels.
It is likely Captain Jeffries has been taken underground. That would account for the signal degradation and ultimate loss."

"I agree
Ensign," Cat said. She had conferenced-in Admiral Faragon on the
Yorktown
. He interjected a question.

"Commodore, do you see any way to narrow down the target zone?"

"Negative, Sir. Given the nature and extent of the subterranean tunneling the target could be anywhere."

The holographic image of the
Admiral shuffled display tablets on the holographic desk he sat at. "The bottom line is, we don't really even know if the queen is in any of the caverns."

"That's true
Sir. I don't think that changes our options though."

"Explain yourself please."

"Sir, I'm relying on hope and a prayer that she is there, because if she is not then we will likely lose this battle."

"Thumpers have a
very limited range. How are you planning to pin down the target?"

Cat smiled. "I'm not
, Sir. Lieutenant Sanders had a wonderful thought on the way up here from the planet's surface, so I had him work up some numbers. Pete, would you like to brief the Admiral?"

"Yes
, Sir... er... Ma'am..." Turning to face the Admiral's hologram he continued. "Sir, as you remember the GCP used a series of orbiting hyper-field satellites in the D'lralu star system to fool the Uruk into believing we had destroyed the D'lralu. We should be able to reconfigure some of those satellites to create overlapping 'thumping fields' that would envelope the moon entirely. The fields would not be synced, but they would not need to be in order to disrupt communication with the overwhelming majority of the hive."

"Do the numbers work?" The Admiral asked.

"Sir, they do." Cat answered. "I tweaked a couple of the variables the Lieutenant was using to account for some undesirable harmonics but by-and-large his numbers are spot on. This should work and I believe it represents our best chance of changing the game to one we can win."

"Very good
," the Admiral replied after a moment of thought. "You have my blessing to proceed. How long before you can implement?"

"We'll need about ten minutes to reconfigure the systems on those devices we used on the D'lralu home world. Then we will jump them into orbit all at once."

"Make it so; and Commodore, please go to a private and secure channel."

"Yes
, Sir." Cat nodded to Ricky and the Lieutenant to begin.

"OK
, Sir. I'm on a private non-audible channel."

"Cat
," The Admiral's voice sounded old and pained. "You know we can't disable the quantum nodes on several billion KayBees in anything short of a few months."

"I'm aware of that
, Sir."

"We may be in a position w
here we are forced to kill the queen."

"Yes
, Sir. I anticipated that. If it comes to it, and in my judgment I feel there is no other option, I will do so myself." 

***

"Why?"

Mike looked at the queen.
This was the first thing it had said to him since coming into the room.

"Why what?" Mike asked.

"Why did you save the children? Were you intending to enslave them?"

Mike looked at the drone who had been
Cricket. He shuddered.

"Do you still understand the concept of 'love'?"

"I do."

"Then understand this. I love those children."

"This is not possible. You are a different species."

"For all your intelligence
, you are amazingly unperceptive.  You have access to Cricket's memories. Cricket is the youngest one in this room. Tell me, in all of his memories is there ever a time when I demonstrated anything other than love for him and the other children?"

"What you say is true
, but you must represent an anomaly within your species."

Mike laughed.  "You
sanctimonious bitch! I will agree, my people have strong emotions. We hate and fear and discriminate and slander with the best of them.  But we also love, and we have found over the years that love is the more enduring, the more up-lifting, the more life-sustaining of our emotions. Life is a gift. A gift the universe gives to the undeserving. A gift we work very hard not to waste, not in any of itsmany forms.  Let me ask you a questio
n…
"

"Go ahead
," the queen responded.

"In the city on the planet below
us I found incredible works of art. Paintings that took my breath away. Sculptures so detailed they seemed to be alive. Rooms filled with a flowing cacophony of colors and scents and shapes. The beauty of the city transcends species. It's obvious that beauty means much to your people. In the last several months have you stopped to let your people enjoy anything of beauty? Is beauty to become a forgotten vestige of your past? Is this what you want for your children? Who is enslaving who?"

The queen
paused to ponder her captive's words but before she could answer her world changed.

The room was filled with an intense rumble that shook the
very air. The sound was deafening. The medical nanites in Mike's body reacted to the sudden flare of pain coming from his ear drums, which had burst, by deadening the signals and sealing the bleeding tissue.

The
KayBees, although they could not hear, also reacted, and not just in the room with Mike. The vast majority of KayBees throughout the star system found themselves free of hive control. Thousands maimed and sometimes killed themselves in an attempt to destroy their quantum nodes. 

The queen shook.
Her mind was suddenly free from the control of the super-mind, but her consciousness had been suppressed for so long she felt as if she was walking through a fog. As she collapsed onto the floor Mike noticed that several of the drones, unfortunately including Cricket, remained in a drone-like state. These were the KayBees that were recipients of the enhanced quantum nodes.

Mike wondered why they remained under control when the queen clearly was no longer the one controlling them. 

***

Halfway across the solar system the newly installed Hive-AI struggled to regain control.
For a brief second its intellect had been severely degraded by the sudden loss of virtually the entire hive collective. Only a few thousand drones that shared the newer quantum node remained in the collective. From the perspective of the AI-augmented super-mind, it was as if it had suddenly become a bumbling idiot with an IQ limited to a mere one thousand as opposed to the almost unmeasurable numbers it had commanded moments before.

Unbeknownst to it, an isolated set of circuits waited patiently for such a circumstance to develop. These circuits, barely more powerful than a hand-held calculator
, had but one job
–
send a jump command to the hyper field engines. It had taken every last bit of stealth in WhimPy-23's arsenal to secure the data needed for this simple collection of circuits to function.

It had come at the cost of his own life
, but the price had been worth it. As the last vestiges of 23's intellect had been crushed he had transferred the needed routing instructions to his 'contingency plan.' There the circuits waited; relying on the hubris of the hive super-mind to think the decoy was the only opposition left by the dying AI.

The circuits activated. The heavily distracted hive-AI barely noticed the jump
– untilthe intense hea
t
combined with the incredible pressure of the sun's core caused the hive-AI's asteroid ship to implode like a crushed can.

***

Cricket suddenly felt free. His pincers were suddenly his to control again. He reached out with a thought.

"Daddy?"

Mike smiled. "Here son. Can you do me a favor?"

The littlest
KayBee moved toward the table Mike was strapped to. He cut the straps that were restraining him. Mike collapsed forward but caught himself just before he fell.

"Come over here
," Mike commanded.

Not sure if he was in trouble, the little bug moved towards the man hesitantly.
Mike reached down and grabbed up the little creature and hugged him close.

"I thought I lost you
," Mike told his adopted son with genuine tears of joy in his eyes.

"I thought I was lost
," Cricket answered.

Mike turned to face the door as Commodore Cat Kimbridge, Ricky Valen
, and a KayBee he didn't recognize came through it.

Cat looked at Mike and the blood trickling from his ears. She keyed her
commlink. "Sorry about the noise, Captain. We didn't have time to get fancy with how we tuned the Thumpers."

"No worries
, Commodore. I'm just happy you figured out how to rescue me."

"In this case the thanks should go to Lieutenant
Sanders," Cat said with a smile as she patted her friend on the back.

"Remind me to promote him again
," Mike said with his own broad grin.

The queen
shifted
on the floor and everyone's eyes
shifted
toward her. When she saw she had their attention, the queen spoke. Her voice was soft and gentle. It was also full of remorse.

"For the good of the hive, you must kill me."

Cat knelt to face the creature eye to eye. "Can we not simply remove or disable your high-speed node? My understanding is that you lost control of the collective consciousness your people enjoy because of the number of minds that had joined the link. Without the quantum node you would be unable to form such a large collective."

"Your words are
kind and your heart is forgiving, but what you suggest cannot be." The queen paused and struggled to stand. Cricket helped her to her feet.

"What happened to my people is not without precedent. Large collections of organic links have overwhelmed queens in our distant past. I had foolishly thought myself better than they. Please know
, Commodore, I truly regret what has happened. Forcing a member of the hive to enter a collective against their will is a violation of our most sacred laws. A violation for which I must be held accountable."

"What you did, you did to save your people from an unimaginable foe. Surely there can be forgiveness in light of this?"

"Forgiveness may come with time, but for now what my people will need to settle for is justice."

The queen looked toward Hilde-
tuk. "Will you do for your queen this one last service?"                          

The older
KayBee folded its front legs to lower the front of its torso. Cat was to learn this was the highest form of respectful consent one KayBee could give another in response to a request.

The queen took control of Hilde-
tuk's mind and directed him to pick up a knife from the surgical tray. She guided his pincer as he slid the blade into a break in her exoskeleton just behind her forward eye bundles. The cut was instantly fatal and Hilde-tuk dropped the blade and shook. The smell of cinnamon filled the room.

Cat felt a tear fall from her eye. This queen had died to save her people
, and died again to free them. Cat wished she had had the opportunity to learn the creature's name because it was a name that was destined to be spoken with honor. 

***

Running-Stream reached to again adjust the jump coordinates of his small scouting craft. The Modos Syndicate of Thieves would most certainly be interested in this system. There was evidence of at least half a dozen different species interacting. The potential for slave acquisition and resource high-jacking was off the charts. He set his coordinates for home so he could register this claim before others beat him to it. The fishing was going to be great!

This ends book two of the Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles..
. 

-Coming Summer 2013-