Omega Rising (21 page)

              "Yeah... thanks. But we still sorta needed him. I don't really know how to fly this thing," Jason said as he looked at the pilot's crumpled form. If he was still alive he sure as hell wasn't going to be doing any flying anytime soon.

              "Hmm," was all Crusher said, also looking at the pilot. "That is a problem." Doc appeared a moment later and walked towards Jason, pausing when he saw the carnage at the front of the bridge.

              "So... what'd I miss?"

              "We're short one traitorous pilot. Oh.. and our only way to land the ship without killing us all," Jason said, shooting Crusher a glaring look. Enough to show his displeasure, but not enough to elicit a challenge. He hoped.

              "Hmm, that's a problem," Doc said.

              "So I've heard," Jason replied. "Any suggestions?" Doc didn't answer immediately. Instead, he walked over and checked the vitals of the pilot.

              "He's still alive, barely. Let's get him to the infirmary and try to stabilize him. You come too, Jason. I may have an answer to our pilot shortage." Doc walked off the bridge, assuming one of them would bring the diminutive pilot. Jason looked pointedly at Crusher.

              "It's your mess," he said. The big alien sighed and walked over to retrieve his handiwork. He was surprisingly gentle as he straightened the pilot out and cradled him in his arms to carry him down to the infirmary. Jason verified their countdown timer until they entered real-space was active and then followed after.

              Once the pilot was strapped down to the table, the automated medical systems began to work on him immediately, mostly pumping him full of medical nanites. Doc turned to Jason, "There's a way to impart the knowledge needed to fly the ship directly into your brain via the neural implant, but it's not customarily done so soon after the initial install."

              "Why not?"

              "It takes the neural implant time to learn your synaptic pathways. Implanting skills into your brain is quite intricate. This may be met with varying degrees of success."

              "How varying?" Jason asked, almost certain he didn't want to know the answer.

              "It could range from complete success to massive and permanent brain damage, although it'll likely hit somewhere in the high-middle range, your brain has shown itself to be readily adaptable to the technology." Doc was looking at him intently.

              "Fuck it. Let's do it. Where do you need me?"

              "Really?" Doc and Crusher asked in unison.

              "Yes. If I think about it too long I won't do it, and we don't have much of a choice at this point."

              "We could bring else someone out of stasis, or see if one of the other's we released already has the necessary implants..."

              "No! Thanks, Doc, but no. This is my mission, I'm in command, and I'll accept the risks to see it completed," Jason said. He could see Crusher puff his chest up and nod with approval.
What the fuck is he so impressed with? He's the reason we're in this mess.
Still half afraid of the monster, Jason kept his thoughts to himself.

              "Ok," Doc said quietly. "Let's do this in your quarters, you may as well be comfortable during this." He grabbed a long interface cable out of the case Jason's implants had originally been delivered in and gestured for him to lead the way.

Once in his room, Doc had Jason lay down on the bed on his back. He plugged one end of the cable he'd brought into a socket near the room's computer terminal and walked towards Jason with the other end. The cable flattened out on that end into what looked like a circular paddle about one inch in diameter. Doc reached under Jason's neck and placed the pad just above his collar, he could feel it adhere to his skin instantly. He then removed a memory chip from the case and began installing a software package on the ship's main computer via the terminal at Jason's desk. The software would allow the computer to connect to his neural implant through the interface cable.

              "Now," Doc began, "I want you to visualize connecting to the interface I just put on your neck. Try to imagine your brain actually reaching out to touch it, almost as if your brain could move." Jason looked at him as if he were mad, but he did as he was asked. As soon as he began to visualize the absurd request he was shocked to feel something crawling through his skin and then a sudden coolness, like the pad had been coated in a pain-relief gel. "Excellent!" Doc was monitoring him through the terminal display on his desk. "You're a natural. In order for this high level of data transfer to work there has to be a hard connection. It's also a safety measure that protects you in case someone is trying to establish a remote link to your brain. That visualization let your neural implant know you wished to establish a link and it sent nanite threads to the surface of your skin to complete the hard circuit with the interface. Keep that feeling in mind, it'll be useful in the future. Now, you're going to have to do this next part, I don't have the proper permissions to instruct the computer to begin an upload."

              "What do I do?" Jason asked, more than a little apprehensive about what he was about to attempt.

              "Tell the computer you want the full flight instruction set for the DL7 uploaded through your implant," Doc said.

              "Computer, upload the full flight instruction set for the DL7 through my neural implant," Jason said aloud.

              "Acknowledged. Establishing connection..." Jason felt the patch on his neck go from cool to hot. "Connection established, do you wish to remain conscious during the upload?" Doc was frantically shaking his head no and waving his arms.

              "No!"

              "Acknowledged. Stand by for upload..." Jason didn't hear another word as the computer commanded his neural input to put him to sleep.             

Damn this is getting old.
Jason blinked his eyes as he slowly woke up in his dark room from the data transfer. He was beginning to lose count of how many times he’d either been put under or just plain knocked out since this adventure began. He didn’t feel anything on his neck so he reached behind him and found that the interface cable had disconnected from his skin on its own. He concentrated on how to fly the ship, but drew a blank. He wasn’t sure how it was supposed to feel, but as far as he could tell nothing was different except the feeling that he’d been laying on his back for too long. Rubbing his temples, he sat up in his bed.

              “How do you feel, Commander?”

              “FUCK!” Jason shouted as he jumped so high he actually fell halfway off the bed. The lights came up and he could make out Crusher sitting in a chair by the door watching him curiously as he was stuck between the exterior bulkhead and the bed. His heart still pounding from the fright, he tried to salvage a bit of his dignity, “I’m doing ok. How are you?”

              “I am well.”

              “That’s good,” Jason said as he tried to dislodge himself. After a moment of struggling, which must have looked absurd, he turned back to Crusher, “A little help?” With what looked suspiciously like a smile on his mouth, Crusher walked around the bed, grabbed Jason’s arm, and effortlessly lifted him off the floor and set him on his feet. Straightening his clothes out, Jason walked out of the room without a word, leaving a quietly chuckling Crusher in his wake.

Jason headed to the infirmary to talk to Doc and was slightly surprised when Crusher kept walking and headed towards the cargo bay instead. Shrugging, he continued on and greeted Doc as he walked in. Doc threw him a preoccupied wave as he hovered over the pilot that Crusher had thrown into the canopy, as far as Jason could tell he was still completely out. Doc tweaked one last thing on the tablet computer he was holding and looked up, "So... you feel ok?"

              "Other than that monster Crusher scaring the shit out of me when I woke up I'm just peachy," Jason said as he flopped down in one of the chairs.

              "Yeah," Doc chuckled, "he stayed in the room guarding you the entire time you were out."

              "Why?" Jason asked, both surprised and mildly creeped out.

              "It's in his nature. You're his commander right now and his kind are fiercely loyal. Not only that, you freed him from a life of certain torment and probably a violent death."

              "That's... strange... but I mean why guard me at all? It's not like this was even remotely close to the most dangerous thing I've faced since this all started," Jason said.

              "Oh, that's right... You were already out when we released the others. Crusher and I figured that having all the prisoners out of the stasis pods and mobile was in our best interest," Doc said, sitting across from Jason. "We may have to make a hasty exit at the rendezvous point. We were also tempting fate by keeping the units running on their own internal power for so long, thankfully we didn't lose anyone. We've set them all up in the cargo bay and restricted their access to the rest of the ship. They're a mostly grateful bunch, but there are still more than a few dangerous individuals out there."

              "Good thinking I guess. How's he?" Jason gestured with his chin towards the pilot.

              "Stable. He'll recover, surprisingly. You may want to talk to Crusher and impose some controls. If he's left to his own devices someone could end up seriously hurt or killed," Doc said. Jason looked at him incredulously.

              "I'm not telling that behemoth anything he can or can't do, my self preservation instinct is too strong for that," he said.

              "Your self preservation instinct is questionable, at best..."

              "...Hey!..."

              "...and at any rate he'll listen to you. Just tell him no killing or maiming until he asks first." Jason rolled his eyes at that and got up to leave.

              "I need to get something to eat," he said as he walked out of the infirmary intent on hitting up the galley before going to the bridge.

After a quick meal he walked up to an empty bridge and stopped himself before he sat in the copilot seat. Instead, he walked back around and hopped into the pilot's seat and waited as it adjusted itself to his body. As soon as he laid eyes on the controls at the helm it was like someone opened the floodgates in his brain. He instinctively knew what every control did and what each display represented without having to consciously think about it. He also now understood how the gravity drive and main engines complimented each other and when each was appropriate, he even knew at what speed the lifting body would stall within an atmosphere and when the repulsors would kick in. It went beyond simple memorization, he truly knew what he needed to do in order to fly the DL7.
I'd have killed for this implant back in high school.
He observed that they were on the final leg to their destination with forty-two hours remaining until they meshed into real-space. That would mean he had been out for around thirty-six hours.

              "Commander Burke, please come to the cargo bay." Doc's voice floated through the ship's PA.
Please let there be nothing disastrously wrong this time.
   

              "On my way," he said as he hopped out of his chair and headed aft. Entering the cargo bay he paused, there were twenty-two aliens milling around on the deck with all but one stasis pod pushed up against the port side of the bay. Mats were scattered throughout the cargo bay where the freed prisoners had obviously been sleeping. Jason spotted Doc and Crusher standing by the last stasis pod that still had power applied, Crusher was still armed with the plasma carbine and eyeing the prisoners with thinly veiled menace. Jason sighed, realizing he would indeed have to have a talk with him. "What's this?"

              "The last prisoner," Doc said. "But we're a little unsure how to handle him." Jason peered into the pod and let out an audible gasp at what he saw. Nestled in the pod was a synth, but nothing like Deetz. This machine was easily two meters tall and looked heavily armored. Even his face was armored with only the eyes being visible.

              "Holy shit!"

              "Indeed. He's a battlesynth, a rarity even among such a rare species," Doc said, eyeing the bulky synth. "The issue is that he's loaded with integrated weaponry and he's unbelievable strong, if we let him loose in here and he doesn't play nice the entire ship is at risk."

              "I see your point. Is there any way to only activate his cognitive functions so we can talk to him?" Jason asked. Doc turned and began poking at the controls of the stasis pod before answering.

              "It appears we can. You want to wake him?" he asked.

              "Yeah, let's talk to him and see what's what. Keep your hand on the control to shut him down again if it goes wrong," Jason said. After a few more seconds the head of the synth snapped up and the eyes moved, focusing first on Jason and then sweeping the room.

              "Who are you?" the synth asked.

              "I'm Commander Jason Burke, my associates are Dr. Ma'Fredich and Crusher," Jason said.

              "I recognize you," the synth said to Crusher. "Am I to understand we've been delivered to our new keepers?" The tone was unmistakably contemptuous.