POD (The Pattern Universe) (19 page)

“Yep! Ossie, good to hear your voice - what’s happening?”

“We’re trapped on the Mother-ship about two thousand feet up. Everything seems to have gone into freeze mode here. Can you get someone to come and get us?”

“You and who else Ossie? Shit! I have to go find someone in command.”

“I have Pennington and Frank Garner here, as well. We need out of this ship before it decides to go off somewhere.”

“Okay, I have someone who is talking to someone who is ordering someone – you have sleds heading for you right now, you should be able to see them, they are changing the shield to porous, and they.. wait a sec...”

“Okay, I see them Lang, well done - see you soon” Osbourne clicked off the mike and went to tell the others that help was on the way.

When Ferris returned to the control room, raging over the rampant damage in the computer-room, he hadn’t fully realised how it would directly affect his ongoing operations. When he tried to contact Medusa to get an update on their operation to cut the heads off Space Island’s global parliament then bringing them to him on a platter, he found his comm was no longer working.

When he tried to send commands to his warrior drones, he found they were completely unresponsive. This drove his stress levels through the roof especially after the physical damage his body had received not half an hour ago in the corridor battle with the enemy ‘black ops’ team. So when the agony of his body's reaction to the increased stress hit his system he was totally unprepared for that as he was for everything else. He staggered off to his private office that adjoined the control room and locked the door. He would be safe in there until he got himself under control again.

Inside he let the rage out without realising that the agony and anxiety were interlinked. He had gotten as far as his chair before he collapsed from the pain that enveloped his whole body. His head felt as if it was being crushed inside his cranium. He would have torn his skull apart if he could have gained access, but his fingers and hands were locked in excruciating pain. He realised that the Ferrazine was doing something inside him, changing him. He was about to call Goeth when the pain rose to new levels and he finally and blissfully lost consciousness.

Despite banging on the door and the phone ringing, nothing pulled Ferris out of his coma. With no means of accessing this private sanctuary, Ferris was left to manage on his own. His body, now being completely taken over by the Ferrazine was changing his structure. He was passing from the world of humanity into the unknown and there was nobody there to help him. Not that anyone now could, he was too far gone.

-15 -

“...if we do this right we can resolve the issue of Ferris and the Fortress, forever,” Pennington explained.

He was itching to get his plan into action. They had convinced the AI to berth at the Space-port and then had secured all the warrior bots that had invaded the island. They had become inert and disarmed as soon as the computer controlling them had been disabled back at the Fortress, thanks to Baxter and his teams.

Baxter was still on his way back. His report updating Pennington was brief, but they had lost some good men. Baxter was aware the operation had been a success, in the nick of time too, from what they had seen of the second coup attempt by Ferris. Pennington reassured Baxter that, had they not completed their mission, he, Garner and Osbourne would now be Ferris' prisoners and Space Island would have been delivered into his hands.

Ferris had been one step away from taking control of the whole world. Most, if not all, of the countries would have had no choice but to comply with his demands. With Ferris’s abilities to dominate so much of the technology, they would have been foolish to try to stand against him.

Pennington was a consummate strategist and being a man of action realised that he had an opportunity here to end this while their advantage was clear-cut. They had a safe and painless means of entering the Fortress available to them. He also knew he could overrule Garner, if necessary, as it was still technically a military operation.

Garner was aware of this, but despite everything, they both understood the need to work together for the future of Space Island, and make a joint decision. Even so, he was still apprehensive; this represented an overt and direct move against a powerful and strategic military establishment that had many unknown friends and allies.

Up to now Space Island had maintained its unilateral support from its worldwide members by acting purely as a defence-based organisation. This military action proposed by Pennington would bring them out of the shadows as an aggressor; there would be SC members who would make a political storm from this, the fallout could be catastrophic. Although, if honest, Garner rather relished the thought of being in charge of an indomitable force again.

“We don’t have much time,” Osbourne added to the argument. “The AI on the ship is suffering a burnout over the contradictory programs it is running. It understands that it shouldn’t be providing assistance to its declared opposition, but its logic circuits are running enough to see that in cooperating it accomplishes its own ends. How long it will stay that way is anyone’s guess – we have to move now.”

Garner realised the young scientist was correct. So was Pennington. He also knew that Zeke had foreseen this moment and had already given his commitment to using the military force that his organisation had built and funded. The day he had foreseen had arrived. He, fortunately for them and him, was up in space and unaware of everything. He would be gutted to have missed this, but he was in the safest place.

“OK, boys, saddle her up, but I’m coming too.” He smiled disarmingly at them. “I need to be able to justify everything to the Council and I’m damned if I’m going to take a back-seat to the action at this stage.” Garner gave a brave smile.

It took another thirty minutes before a hand-picked platoon was mustered, by which time Baxter had arrived from his own operation. He and Phelps insisted on taking part in the latest action to bring down the Fortress, and being the only ones with first-hand military experience the Fortress layout, Pennington was glad to have them along.

Altogether there were fifty-three soldiers, two civilians and eight defunct robots. Lang had wanted to keep one to dissect and reverse engineer, but that was vetoed immediately. Osbourne reassured him he would have plenty of opportunities to work with one when they returned.

Then they were airborne and committed to the plan. With the hatch closed, Medusa, with a full complement of troops and meeting its full responsibility in terms of prisoners and equipment, was able to continue to the Fortress. Once on the way its processors settled down and it had an opportunity to consider its position.

The Medusa AI logic circuits had been poorly constructed, so it had no means of considering the issue of loyalty in taking the enemy on-board. As far as its limited intelligence was concerned it believed it was meeting its operational objectives. Its circuits were not sophisticated enough to allow it to think for itself.

The Mother-ship and her escort were fast, so they arrived at the Fortress complex within several hours. While Pennington and the others worried that something might go wrong with their plans, the Mother-ship routinely advised the, now manually run, control shield system of their arrival and the success of the mission.

The shields, instead of being weakened at the point of entry, were now manually shut-down and re-started after entry into Fortress airspace. The airlocks, one for the larger Mother-ship and a smaller version for the gunships, opened up. Visibility into the larger hangar showed a small welcoming committee gathering probably for the prisoners.

As the Mother-ship landed onto resident repeller beams that kept the structure just slightly off the ground, the reception committee fanned out around the hatchway expecting to receive three unarmed prisoners.

As the hatch opened, lax guards suddenly found themselves face to face with a barrage of enemy weapons. Outnumbered ten to one, they wisely put down their NRG’s and raised their hands. The island troops filed out and took up positions around the hangars that covered all entrances into the complex. The twenty, or so civilian workers in the hangar were rounded up quickly and herded into an adjoining canteen area where the two-way windows provided easy supervision.

When no security response appeared from the corridors, the men broke up into squads, each group taking one of the exits they left to secure the rest of the Fortress. Pennington remained where he could control the activities of all troops and within thirty minutes the complex was secured. It had been unbelievably easy, which left Pennington wondering why.

They soon found out.

Osbourne was standing talking to Goeth while the soldiers took over the control room and outer offices. The shield was switched off as additional ships from Space Island began to arrive utilising the Fortress hangars as they brought in engineers and security personnel. This would relieve the military of the burdensome task of managing the prisoners.

“He has been deteriorating for some time,” Goeth explained. “We tried to warn him to remove the Ferrazite, but he refused, saying it was doing its job.” He shook his head regretfully “In truth, I think he wanted it to change him. He had aspirations of becoming a superman of some sort. We could all see it was transforming him into something different to all of our expectations.”

“So, he is holed up in that room and there is no means of accessing it?” Pennington asked them as he walked up to the two scientists.

Goeth shook his head. “He had a room built to withstand anything that could be thrown at it, it’s a completely kitted out panic room. He could live for months in there without coming out. For all we know he might have an escape route, as well. We just don’t know.”

Osbourne pulled out the vial he still carried in his pocket. As he held it up to see how much remained in the glass bottle Goeth saw it and sighed. “It was you that designed those things was it? I recognise them from the computer room. Very smart.” He smiled. “You do realise they are still munching away down there eating everything in reach.”

“Yes, they will begin to die off,” he squinted as he looked at his watch, “in about forty minutes. This batch was activated only a few hours ago. If I let them feed on that door, the nanites will eat through it in about ten to fifteen minutes.”

He looked at Pennington for a decision on what he wanted to do.

He called Baxter over to them. “You have first-hand experience of Ferris. In your view how best should we handle him if he is in there?”

“Nuke the bastard!” he uttered vehemently. “He’s bloody lethal. He took all of my men down and withstood two sound grenades.” Baxter shook his head. “We don’t have anything to stop him with,” he admitted.

Pennington turned to Osbourne and Goeth. “What do you think?”

"Two options present themselves," Goeth responded. “The first, is we seal him up in there until we can find a solution to the problem. Without the Fortress behind him and the people, he is dangerous, but not unduly so.”

“and the second?” said Pennington.

Goeth pointed at the vial in Osbourne’s hand. “Those little mites have demolished the computer room utterly.”

“That’s no indication it will deal with Ferris though,” countered Osbourne.

“On the contrary, Mr. Osbourne. Those things completely decimated the processors that we had recently manufactured from Ferris’ Ferrazine by-products They left nothing behind,” Goeth responded grimly. Those processors had been a major achievement of his lab. He had painstakingly spent night after night manually increasing the purity of the mutated alloy. He had finally resolved the process the night Ferris disposed of Lang. They performed superbly although not a patch on the purity of the aliens’ AI processors. There was none left.

“Ah! I see,” Osbourne admitted. “Can someone collect a large sample from the computer room and bring them here. You will need a glass container with a glass stopper.”

“I can do this," Goeth admitted. "I have as much to gain from seeing Ferris stopped as you do. He’s killed enough of my people.”

Pennington looked at Osbourne, who nodded.

“OK, but if you don’t mind we will let you have a small team of guards in case of anything untoward going on down there.”

With that Pennington summoned two soldiers who had been guarding the entrance to Ferris’ room and the three of them went off to what was left of the computer room.

Osbourne was looking at the door with trepidation. He had no desire to unleash a monster, his own experience of Ferris early on was enough. With Baxter’s news of his fight with Ferris earlier today, Osbourne had decided that if it were at all possible, he would have nothing more to do with him.

This was putting him right up front and dead centre He didn’t much like the thought.

Celnista’Ta Cebrel was the first of the Crystal Queen’s clones. He was also honoured to command the latest warrior ship that contained the prime technology their scientists had designed and built. It was a matter of swarm pride that the Celnista hive was one of the top producers of space technology, indeed, perhaps THE top manufacturer. The swarming hordes, however, were not ones to shower accolades outside their own hives, preferring instead to demean and reduce the value of their partners to maintain trade dominance over them.

His Queen had commanded him to tractor this alien piece of junk (which they would usually have beamed into its component molecules) to a point in space distant from their home and set it on a specific trajectory, having first neutralised its intelligent skins. These skins were effective miniature beings that would shape your surroundings for comfort, or efficiency. As such, they were cleverly made, but nonetheless lacking in intelligence.

Cebrel’s duties included such mundane tasks; however, this one came with a potential opportunity for greatness. One which he was not slow to take up. He formed a private connection with a communication transponder, evolving it into a small decorative cube. He placed it in the dead control room that had held the valuable Alacite which the Queen had taken for herself.