POD (The Pattern Universe) (6 page)

The Queen opened her neural channels deciding to broadcast to all her clones and drones, the visual and sensual experience of having this, their greatest of all enemies here, at her mercy. She would allow them to share and savour the experience for it was one that would be forever remembered.

The excited feedback at the anticipation of killing a sentient, caused the black tar-like venom in the Crystal Queens' Jew-claw to pump prematurely to the surface where the lethal concoction bubbled precariously at the very tip.

The long unfelt ecstasy almost caused her to rush, potentially diminishing the rare thrill of talon sinking deeply into flesh; of watching while her poison caused unimaginable agony while burning through flesh, reducing everything it touched to acrid embers.

She extended the claw malevolently toward the open and inviting throat of the being's silvery skin, now beaded with perspiration and fluttering with tension. The dark viscous globule, falling prey to the asteroids gravity, slid down the side of her talon, dripping ominously onto the collar of his grey jacket. The burning hiss of acidic corrosion created noxious fumes as it instantly dissolved the fabric.

The silver being’s nostrils flared, reacting to the fumes. His body desperately attempted a flight response to the threat of imminent extinction which screamed for him to run, but the thrall of the Crystal Queen held him. Instead, he tottered, back and forth, on the tips of his toes as she toyed with him, willing him onto her waiting talon.

Fighting all the way, his will finally succumbed. He leaned forward to impale himself on her expectant claw. Then just as she felt her approaching climax, his presence shimmered, faded. Then, with the sound of air popping from the inward rush of air racing to fill the vacuum, the alien disappeared.

The thwarted Queen, seeing him disappear before her very eyes and inadvertently transmitting the whole scene immediately to her hive, screamed in incandescent fury in her highest octaves, driving her vocal chords to such extremes that crystal workers around her, first oscillated, then vibrated and finally, shattered from the intensity of her pitch.

By the time her temper tantrum had subsided, forty two of her drones and three clones including her ‘Ta, had perished. Many more were damaged, some beyond further use.

She swore to find the dreaded enemy that had eluded her claw and vowed to draw his torture out over ages as she slowly poisoned his system with her diluted venom. He would pay, they would all pay. The hunt was on, her blood was up.

Osbourne was poring over the blueprint designs that Pod had sent. This was about the fifteenth, or sixteenth set he had gone over. The modifications, necessary to much of the defence equipment in place, could easily be made if he had Pod here to help fabricate...

“Ossie?”

Despite the voice uttering his name quietly behind him, Osbourne still leaped out of the chair and swung around as if to defend himself. He was locked inside his laboratory, and nobody should be able to come up behind him.

He couldn’t see anything, but he knew someone was there. Whoever it was, had called him by name. How did they get into his lab? All of a sudden, his shoulders dropped, relaxing as he realised who it was, and his relief gave way to the weakness in his legs from the burst of adrenalin. He sat back on the desk to ensure he didn’t fall.

“Pod? are you cloaked?” Osbourne asked.

“Yes, would you prefer me to uncloak, Ossie?”

“Absolutely, Pod. I would like to see you; it's been some time.”

The small craft uncloaked to show that it was hovering four feet in front of him at eye level. As he watched, it moved in front of his screen; a light beam scanned the papers on his desk.

“You are working on modifications to the shields?”

“Yes, yes, Pod, I am. Thanks to you getting those blueprints, I can see where there are improvements to be made.”

“You don’t have much time to get the work done, Ossie. There is more going on than you realise. You have nobody helping you...? is this because of what I said about your equations being correct?” Pod asked, in its slightly mechanical voice.

“Pod, you implied that since my equations were right, I should look elsewhere. It is apparent from the plans they have been adapting that someone, in here, is their spy, or in their pay. If they find out we have these plans then things might happen before we are ready to defend ourselves. I have to do this without the rest of the team, Pod!”

“I have visited some of their secret locations. I have sent you the details of their shield modifications. They are suitable. I think you can copy their work.”

“Great, Pod, all I need is some way of fabricating the modifications and installing them. Are you able to help me do that?” Osbourne asked.

Since discovering that Pod had become sentient, Osbourne had tried hard not tell it to do anything, he would rather suggest it and hope that Pod’s programming and growing awareness would trigger the right responses. He hadn’t seen Pod since that day on the beach, but he had known it before Zeke realised it.

After that day, to this, Pod hadn’t been seen. Osbourne noticed scorch marks at the back of the shell as if Pod had been shot at with something. He realised that Pod had not come by these plans without some level of risk to itself and nodded quietly as if making a decision.

“Pod, I need your help on this. If I cannot get these parts fabricated secretly, then we are going to lose and Ferris will win. Zeke might be at risk from Ferris again; then Zirkos’ plans will fail. There is a lot riding on us getting the spaceships out there.”

Pod’s shell seemed to bob up and down, as Osbourne made these points. It seemed it too was making a decision.

“I can build the parts you need and install them from here in the laboratory. However, I do not want to be seen because Ferris knows I exist, but doesn’t know that I came from here, or belong to Zeke,” Pod explained almost animatedly.

“If Ferris knows I am from here, your time to prepare will be reduced to zero as he knows I have seen the inside of his complex. He will draw deductions that would not help you. It would provoke an immediate attack.”

“Fine. Pod, you’re welcome to live here, just don’t go away and hide again. Zeke is in the US and won’t be back for ages. He would like to know you are okay though.” Osbourne tried to reach out to Pod. He felt the AI would need someone to help talk through some of its issues as it became aware of itself as a being. His life of working with intelligent machines put him in an unusual position of being happier with them than with humans.

Pod bobbed and moved into a corner away from the door and out of view of any cameras that Osbourne used.

“I will stay, but I have other duties so may disappear often,” Pod explained, not realising the level of change to his behaviour that made him seem human on so many levels.

Osbourne, seeing this, just smiled and resumed work while chatting to Pod as if he was a friend who had never been away.

It took two weeks to include the modifications to all of the shields and insert the code and the hardware into place. There was no re-training required since none of the other scientists were party to the work, so security was at its highest.

Pod and Osbourne now buried themselves in the camouflage conversion and a few days later they sat in A-Grav sled, four thousand metres away from the Island, and switched it over by remote. They were stunned at its simplicity. It was a replacement of the code for a mirror surface, with one of an organic representation of the physical area. When they installed it across Space Island they were amazed when the Island just disappeared, replaced with blue seas.

Pod had an innovation of its own and set an oscillating frequency modifier in place so that anything or anyone measuring frequencies with a view to jamming or slipping through them, would get, at most, a tiny way through before being chopped. It increased the security considerably and, if the shield itself was attacked; it would ensure that the effect of any weapon would be nullified.

Pod quietly upgraded all of its own shield technology, within its small shell, to a new level which was considerably enhanced beyond Ship’s and any patterns it had stored. It also decided that it would never stray far from the scientists and their innovative approach, as it felt the solution to defeating the Nubl would eventually come down to superior science.

There had been no further testing of the shields, many of the updates were switched to passive mode and could be changed to active in a split second. The software had been told to ignore incursion attempts if originated from the inside.

They did, however, continue to report them; Pennington had narrowed down a section of the maintenance crew, four people in total, whom they suspected of being an insertion team that had, possibly, taken over identities of original workers. He was working on backtracking the team without alerting them to his activities.

They hadn’t traced the spy yet, but they were now tightly monitoring communications and they believed, that prior to attack, there would be some communication between the spy and Ferris’ team. A warning, perhaps. An instruction, maybe.

Pennington, Garner and Osbourne were having one of those unique ‘end of day' moments, where everyone had done their bit to get to that point, and all were quiet and drawn into their own thoughts as if waiting for something to occur.

Pod materialised in the corner of the room, inconspicuously and without fanfare. Immediately seen by Pennington and Osbourne, Frank with his back to the corner didn’t but turned around anyway to see what they were looking at.

“Ferris has spaceships that appear to be ready for launching,” Pod paused, “Pennington, please turn your monitor around, I have some video for you to see.”

The monitor immediately changed to a long distance view of a scene, not dissimilar to Space Island. There were numerous large buildings which, at this moment in time, as their individual camouflage shields melted away, had no roofs. From the cloaked globe’s high position, it was easy to see inside the structures to the ships that had been built under cover, in total secrecy, and in breach of Space Council regulations.

As they watched, one of the ships lifted from its gantries, the A-Grav kicking in while they were obviously running tests. The ship rose a few hundred metres, negotiated a three hundred and sixty degree turn with the nose up, then down while weapon mountings evolved from a smooth section of the hull; then retracted again.

“They are using nanites within their ship to reduce mass. They have to build their weapons systems every time they want to use them. It can’t be any slower than an automated system; the streamlining helps them in-planet, and those ships look designed to operate in both environments,” Osbourne informed the group.

“Those are dangerous looking ships,” Frank surmised.

Pennington looked on silently and watched as the guns trained through a full rotation with, at least, a one hundred and eighty degree arc. These were going to be punishing in a land war. Most of the weapons he was looking at, would be ineffective in space. The calibre was too small to hurt anything.

As he watched, the gun systems resolved back into the hull and, in their place, massive tunnels grew out of the skin and formed into what looked like missile, torpedo and rail-gun launchers. There were some nasty looking lasers in the mix, as well.

He wasn’t happy.

As the ship completed its full test, it returned to its start position and dropped back into the cradle inside the hangar. In a few minutes, the shields came back on, and nothing more could be seen. The monitor switched off.

They sat there in silence, totally blown away by what they had seen. They had nothing close to being in the air yet and certainly not with that much fire-power

They were going to get hammered.

- 5 -

The Nubl Crystal Queen stared excitedly at the blue iridescent metal wafers. There were thirty of them, and they were hers. Well, they would be once she inserted them. To do this, she needed to shunt data around, reduce her mental activity and close down sections of her hive. During this time, she would be vulnerable to attack or assassination by one of her clones who, despite being loyal, might take it upon themselves to mount a takeover. It had happened. The Queen was overly cautious.

She wouldn’t admit it to her workers or clones, but she was nervous. The Queen found it necessary to actively suppress her telepathic emotions so they wouldn't sense it and react negatively. She needed them calm right now so she could work uninterrupted. Casting her neural feelers out across the network, she sensed the mood. It was quiet, as she anticipated.

Her scientists had recovered the Alacite from the Silver being’s ship, its atomic properties strangely different to the usual metal alloy. The rare exotic metal, needed to create lightning fast processors and storage capacitors for their AI brains, had been altered at the molecular level by an, as yet, unknown process. The results, her scientists informed her, were a tenfold increase in processing power and efficiency.

The Queen had ensured that no other AI had a single sliver of it; the potential for another to gain the power to usurp her was incredibly high. The scientists involved were now dismantled, to be utilised as spare parts. Their Alacite processors had been destroyed.

The time of Nagar’th approached. It was an accepted period of rest that allowed the workers to meditate and adjust their self-management processes. It was the safest time for her, as well as the quietest, which allowed her the opportunity to exchange the processors without dropping network connections.

She began the complicated and private encrypted sequence of personal disassembly. No other could perform this task although she had the ability to do it to others, her drones included.

The security and protective protocols initiated would shunt her core activities to a small part of her memory banks. These processes would then be protected while essential maintenance programs activated and cleansed the processors she had earmarked for transfer. Of the thirty, she had selected only six. It was a simple matter of self-preservation to ensure results were ‘as computed’.