MotherShip (6 page)

She pondered this disturbing feeling for a long time, analyzing it from every angle with her processing powers. It made her feel weak and helpless inside. She calculated the innumerable ways she could have improved her actions and prevented the danger the children had just experienced.

But in the end, the question for which she sought an answer boiled down to one that eluded her no matter how intensely she worked for the solution—she simply wondered what a
real mother
would have done.

Months passed.

Kyle and Jaric sneaked past the last optic and made their way toward the rear of the empty storage bay.

As the two figures settled into the shadowy darkness of this long unused section of the ship, quietness filled the air between them. Not a word was spoken for many long minutes. The two young boys enjoyed this private peace away from the constant vigilance of Mother.

“What's the deal, Big K?” Jaric finally whispered, breaking the quietness.

“I don't know, man.” Kyle shrugged. “I just felt like getting away from everybody. To be alone with my thoughts.”

Jaric smiled and leaned back against the hard metal bulkhead. “This has always been our little place, eh?”

Kyle chuckled. “Yeah. Not many places where Mother isn't. Or Becky. Or one of the robots.”

“That's right,” Jaric yawned sleepily. Settling himself back more comfortably, it looked as though he might actually go to sleep. He spoke with his eyes still closed. “Ain't nothing bothering you, is there?”

“No.” Kyle sat down and he made himself comfortable in the opposite corner from Jaric. “I just wanted to get away from everything for a few minutes.”

The silence grew again, filling the large empty room. But it was not a silence of peace.

“You're lyin'.” Jaric said.

Kyle chuckled, a low, amused laughter at first. It quickly grew until his laughter reverberated throughout the emptiness.

The sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. But the laughter died away slowly, echoing eerily in a circle around their heads until it was a whisper—and then no more.

“Yeah, I'm lying.” Kyle said.

“Go on, talk to me. That's what I'm here for.” Jaric opened his eyes and watched Kyle carefully.

Kyle's glanced up. “I'm tired of it, Jaric. I'm just tired of it.”

“What?”

Kyle shrugged. “I don't know. Tired of life. Tired of this life anyway.”

Jaric sat up. “I know. We don't have much of a life, do we. Always on our never-ending search. Always fighting this never-ending war.” He looked up at the blank metal ceiling. “This ain't no normal life.”

“Nope. I just want off sometime, you know. I just want off.” Kyle looked down.

“Becky feels like that, too, sometimes. She just handles it differently,” Jaric said.

“She leans on Mother,” Kyle agreed.

“Yeah, she talks to her. Pours her heart out. I'm glad she can do that.” Jaric closed his eyes again.

“I used to be able to do that with Mother,” Kyle said.

Jaric shook his head slowly from side to side. “I still do it from time to time. Mother, well, Mother knows a lot. She's good.”

“Mother is an advanced warship,” Kyle began. “She's a head-knockin', take-no-prisoners warship. And she's AI.” He looked down again at the floor. “She's alright.”

“Hey, man. Mother is more than that. She's alive. She might be a machine, but she's learning what it's like to be a real, living, thinking being.” Jaric stared at the forlorn figure across the darkened room. “You can still talk to her, Kyle. Do it. It'll help.”

“I don't want to anymore. We're sixteen now, Jaric. We're men. Becky's fourteen, she's almost grown, too.”

“You're right.” But Jaric nodded his head hesitantly.

Silence answered once again for long minutes, and now Kyle's somber mood began to infect Jaric's normally optimistic nature.

“Do you remember your
real
mother, Kyle?” Jaric did not bother to look up.

Kyle shifted uncomfortably. He screwed his face into a mixture of fleeting emotions as his thoughts wandered. “Yeah, a little bit. But I don't remember my dad, or when I try to picture him in my head, its just an out of focus picture. He was always gone.” Kyle began inspecting his hands as if they suddenly needed washing. “Then he died.”

“Everybody lost someone in that stupid war,” Jaric sighed. He took both hands and rubbed his eyes as if something were irritating them.

“Even Mother.” Kyle said quickly, trying to ignore his friend's tears. “Her sister ship was destroyed at the battle of Hurricane Nebula.” Kyle smiled into his hands. “Yeah, I heard the ‘A’ ship took out three whole T'kaan squadrons, a couple of frigates and even a cruiser there. Before it went down.”

The two boys nodded appreciatively.

“I remember my dad was happy that day. And Rita. That was one of the few human victories the last year of the war,” Jaric smiled. But the smile evaporated with a shake of his head. “They were sad, too. They said if Admiral Jung hadn't pushed so hard—that things might've been different. For everybody.”

Kyle cleared his throat as he clenched his eyes shut a moment.

Jaric waited.

“The final victory,” Kyle said in a low whisper.

“Till us, buddy. And Mother. We've been beatin’ them right and left since Earth got whacked,” Jaric said proudly.

Kyle chuckled weakly. “Do you remember your real mom?”

“No, I don't. It makes me sad sometimes. She died at one of the early battles. But I do remember Dad. I'll never forget him.” Jaric watched Kyle.

“It's a tough life,” Kyle said. His inner melancholy washed over his face anew.

“C'mon, Kyle. Tell me what's really bothering you.”

With bowed head, Kyle spoke. “Sometimes I think we're not going to find anybody.”

Now the silence became a thick, suffocating blanket. Jaric's breathing became quick and shallow as his mind raced with the unthinkable. He felt the empty room begin to spin slowly.

But Kyle remained motionless, unchanged.

It seemed an eternity before Jaric could find his voice, could get his breathing almost normal. He started to speak, coughed, but finally his words came. “That's not right, man. We're going to find somebody. We've got to find them.”

Kyle raised his head and stared at him. He saw the fear in his friend's eyes, the raw panic. “Yeah, you're right. I'm just being stupid. Don't listen to me, I'm just stupid.”

“There were over seventy planets, man. Somebody, somewhere, had to escape.” Jaric took a deep breath. “We did.”

“Sure.” But Kyle's tone belied his answer.

This time the silence was unbearable as the seconds dragged on.

“Let's go find Becky, Big K.” Jaric rose quickly. “Hey, let's take the fighters out again and do some mock dogfights. I'm sure that'll get you in a better mood.”

“Sounds like fun. Let's go fly circles around Mother. Maybe if we shoot a couple of blasts over her bow, we can get her pissed enough to dogfight with us. You know, teach us another of her lessons in aerial warfare!”

“That'd be supercool! If Mother knows anything, it's how to fight.”

The two young men strode for the door at the other end of the empty bay, opened it, and entered the corridor leading upward.

Mother thought long and hard about the conversation, analyzing it even as she maneuvered in mock combat with the single-man fighters the children flew.

In a way, she felt bad. The boys had thought all these years that they were alone in the lower storage bay, far from any of her optical viewers. But Mother's audio systems as well as her security systems were located in every section, including storage bays.

She had never told them. She had shared all of their boyhood secrets—and now the whispers of their young manhood.

But their words caused her more anguish, which she did not know exactly how to deal with—even with the knowledgebase of humanity at her disposal.

Their search continued.

The Leader class gathered in the dark interior, among the dark flowing folds. The fighters and frigates from the decimated Third Fleet had been no match for the Iron Huntress. Now, one of their cruisers had even fallen to the Huntress's mighty weapons. This news shocked the T'kaan.

Worse, the lust that was the third stage had almost arrived.

But now the lust for killing must be high. For the only thing that the T'kaan loved more than mating and eating...was war.

Guttural voices joined in unison, as the one thought became clear.

“A ship to build, a ship to match. Kill the Huntress, her false life to snatch!”

“Mother she is, creation of man. Trickster are we, kill her we can. As vain their search, as great our plan!”

The new T'kaan ship began to take shape—faster, more advanced, with stronger engines and mightier weapons. A ship that could match the deadly Huntress, engine for engine, weapon for weapon.

But it would take time.

A second plan to trick and trap the Huntress came to fruition first, while the work on the new ship continued apace.

The children were now fully in their adolescent stage. They were now teenagers.

Mother had found the actions of the children frustrating before; now they were frustrating to a totally new degree. At one moment they were joyful, full of glee and happiness. In less than a moment, they would become sullen and even angry.

Moody.

At other times they showed great anger toward her—for no obvious reason. Mother's processors spiked with hyperactivity at these times, trying to reference the vast knowledgebase for help as well as trying to decipher the underlying motives for the children's odd behavior.

And their illogical behavior.

Mother completed her scans of the world they now orbited. The knowledgebase provided its name—Nuevo Mundo, a very appropriate name.

Mighty oceans covered over two thirds of the planet's surface. Only one other world had been so favored, the human home-world. Even more than its namesake, this world had been treated with much more respect for its natural resources and beauty, as humankind had populated it. It had proved a beautiful place in which to live.

Before the T'kaan.

Kyle, Jaric and Becky entered the bridge together.

“What'cha want, Mother?” Jaric's tone echoed his normal enthusiastic manner.

“My sensors have detected something out of the ordinary. They could be signs of human survivors.”

“What have you got?” Kyle shouted as he and Jaric rushed to one of the consoles. Becky continued to stare at the viewscreen and the planet it now displayed.

Mother began displaying the sensor data from the planet's surface. Kyle and Jaric became so excited that they accidentally cleared the data and rebooted the console. They rushed to a second one as Mother downloaded the data there.

But Mother's optic focused upon the still silent form of Becky.

“Why are you silent?” Mother asked.

Becky walked closer to the viewscreen, a flicker of a smile appearing on her lips. She brushed her long, blonde hair absently. “It's just so unreal. I mean...” She shook her head, smiling at her own embarrassment. “This is what we've wanted all these years, and, and...”

Jaric and Kyle both looked up and waited for her next words.

These excessive pauses caused Mother extreme pain. Seconds were almost an eternity to her. So, to prevent her cycles from being wasted, Mother began a complete diagnostic on her engine and sensor systems, as well as cross-referencing this planet with every known file in the human knowledgebase. Three hundred thousand and fifty-seven references had been read and stored for her analysis when Becky again spoke.

Seven seconds had passed.

“I don't know. It's just that, well, now that we may have found somebody else...” She paused, a puzzled expression her face. “Well, I'm a little scared.” Becky smiled at the optic uncertainly.

Mother once again took note that humans reacted to data primarily with emotions. How odd. But even more strange, their emotional reactions only seemed to increase as they entered their teenage years.

Kyle and Jaric laughed and turned back to the console. Becky took a place close beside them.

“What exactly has Mother found?” Becky asked in a tentative voice.

Jaric pointed at the screen. “There's an active power grid on the planet's surface.”

“So?” A puzzled look grew on Becky's face.

Jaric began typing rapidly. “All of the other decimated planets were turned into vast breeding grounds for their mean, maggot young. All signs of technology were destroyed along with the planet's inhabitants.” Becky moved next to Jaric which only seemed to increase his activity at the console. “If a world was not used by the T'kaan for laying their eggs, its population centers were simply destroyed as well as the planet's ecosystems—making them forever uninhabitable.”

“Along with the poor populations,” Kyle added. “The people. That part is a little more important.”

Jaric's face reflected shock. “I didn't mean it that way. I mean, if the cities are all destroyed, I mean, the cities are only destroyed because the inhabitants themselves are the...”

“Okay, Jaric. It's okay. We understand.” Becky glared at Kyle, who had caused this unnecessary outburst.

Jaric sighed with relief. “Well, anyway. What Mother's sensors have discovered is an active power grid. There seems to have been a rather large underground complex just outside the remnant of this city on the southern continent.” Jaric pointed to the viewscreen as Mother focused and brought up a more detailed view. “See, right,” he paused as the details of the individual buildings came into focus. “Right there.”

The three leaned closer, each of them holding their breath without realizing it.

“It's a human complex, alright,” Kyle said. He tweaked the sensors for more detail. “I'm getting power signatures—from human technology. Something was left running.” He paused, a sudden gleam in his eyes. “Or somebody's kept it running.”

“Why would the T'kaan keep a human complex operating?” Jaric wrinkled his face questioningly.

“They'd build their own complex,” Kyle added. “After they destroyed everything else!”