Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) (36 page)

-65-

The door behind me opened. Only one leaf slid ajar, and a panicked figure reeled inside.

The man who pushed his way into the council chambers was none other than Bertelsmann, the doorman. He looked disheveled, and his eyes were popping from the sockets in fear.

“Chairman!” he wailed. “The vault doors have opened! They failed us! The enemy is inside!”

This created a stir. Oldsters screeched and backpedaled.

The Chairman, however, stood firmly at the rail.

“Close that damned door!” he ordered the guardians.

They rushed away from me to throw their weight against the massive portal, and I saw my opportunity. In the excitement, my sword had been dropped to the floor. I snatched it up and thrust it into the back of the nearest man.

He growled deeply, and his thick muscles clenched so hard I had difficulty withdrawing the blade. It finally slid out, looking wet and black in the dim light.

The second guardian fired three shots, one of which struck me in the right wrist. My hand hung down limp and bloody. A smoky odor filled my nostrils, and I knew it was my own burnt flesh I smelled.

Taking up my sword in my left hand, I closed with him. Fortunately, the youth of the Great Houses were trained to use either hand in battle. I wasn’t as quick or accurate with my left hand, but I was good enough to hack off his arm before he could gun me down.

With no more weight holding the door, it sprang open. A raging variant strode inside, clicking.

Lightning fast, its numerous eyes surveyed the scene. I wasn’t sure it would recognize me, and I felt a shock of panic as it moved toward me with purpose.

I lifted my blade, but it was a futile gesture. A whip-like arm shot out, snaking past my cheek and stabbing a claw into the throat of the Chairman.

He crumpled with a PAG in his grasp. He’d been aiming to shoot me in the back.

The others on the dais didn’t fare well, either. Both the injured guardians were slain by a series of blurring attacks. Their fingers, ears, and feet were snipped away. Rolling around with many missing extremities, they bled to death, unable to staunch the flow or harm their attackers.

Bertelsmann went down under clattering feet. The first variant stepped on him at least three times, exerting its weight on thin points of metal. These stabbed into the old man, and then the second variant rushed past the first, finishing the job on the ancient doorman.

Finally, the variants went to work on the crowded room of panicked councilors.

“Variants, stand down!” I shouted. “There’s no need for violence! I order you to stop this!”

But they paid me no attention. They ran up into the galleries, ignoring the steps and railing. They lashed and stabbed into the shrieking crowd.

Scrambling over the floor, I found a PAG that had belonged to one of the guardians. I lifted it and aimed at the nearest of the two variants.

A thin-boned hand grasped my wrist then and sought to pull my arm down. I looked in surprise and saw Director Vogel was at my side.

“Where did you come from?”

“Someone had to get the variants out of that ship,” he said.

“Stop them!” I shouted. “Order them to stop slaughtering these people.”’

“Why?” he demanded. “Don’t you think they deserve to die? Think of what they’ve done. Even I think this is long overdue.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think. The courts will decide, not us. They’re beaten. Stop your vicious machines.”

I put the flared barrel of my PAG to his head.

“Variants,” he called. “Halt! Stop Program!”

They halted immediately. I watched as the last of the surviving oldsters crawled away, bloody and groaning. They’d paid a terrible price. I doubted any of them would live without immediate medical attention.

“Captain Sparhawk,” Vogel said urgently. “We don’t have much time. We have to get to the control room.”

“What control room?”

“This vault stands open, and the staff must have sent out a distress call. Overwhelming reinforcements are no doubt underway by air car this very moment.”

I knew he was right. “Where are the rest of the variants?” I demanded.

“They were destroyed. We were losing the battle at the vault doors. The guardians kept coming, shooting at my—my troops. Fortunately, they must have figured I was a helpless bystander.”

“Out of eight variants I’d stashed aboard the pinnace, only two are left…?” I asked.

“That’s right. We’ll be killed when reinforcements come.”

“Let’s close the vault doors, then,” I said.

“We must find the control room first!”

Ignoring him, I left the horrific scene in the council chambers and rushed to the elevator. It wouldn’t open its doors, and it appeared to be disabled.

Vogel followed me. He had his last two variants in tow. I noticed that one of them was dragging a leg, which had been severed halfway up.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. “We must get to the control room. If we can update people…”

“I think we need to shut those vault doors first, don’t you?” I asked.

“We tried. We couldn’t do it.”

“What about this elevator?” I asked. “Did you do this?”

“We disabled it to prevent their escape. We must take the stairs.”

I raced up them, two and three at a time. The variants clattered after me, but Director Vogel lagged.

“Attend me!” he called to the variants. They slowed and escorted him.

When I reached the vault doors, I found what I’d expected to find: My Aunt Ellen was hiding behind one of them.

“Lady Grantholm,” I said, offering her a hand.

She eyed the ghastly wounds on the hand I had presented her with, then she saw the naked sword in my other hand. She shrank back from both.

“William,” she said, “those treacherous machines swept in here pushing back the guards. They slew everyone.”

I looked around, and the truth of her words was evident. Broken variants and men lay everywhere on the stairway.

Then I looked back at her again. “You opened the doors, didn’t you?” I asked. “To let in the variants?”

“I had to do it,” she said. “Don’t you understand that? The Council would have turned on me next. Those bastards. I’ve served them for so many years… when you confessed to having destroyed the fleet, I knew I had to get out. I had to open these doors.”

“Did you know what was beyond?” I asked.

“No, not really. I thought it was your crewmen, loyal men who’d been rejecting their updates. You’re exactly the kind of revolutionary the Council has feared for all these long, long years… But when I opened the vault doors, these
things
rushed in. They killed everyone!”

“Except for you… because you hid behind the door?”

She looked ashamed and angry at the same time. “You did this. You brought these things here to kill everyone.”

“The Council is no more,” I told her. “Their time has passed. I’ll let you escape, but you must close these doors first.”

We could hear a clank and clatter on the stairs behind us. My aunt’s eyes grew wide, and she moved with surprising speed.

Without another word, she gave me a coin-sized object. I touched it to the vault doors, and they began to swing shut.

Lady Grantholm picked her way past the bodies and ran up the stairs and out of sight.

When Vogel reached me, he surveyed the vast, heavy doors. They were now closed.

“You did it?” he asked. “They look impregnable.”

“If the Chairman wasn’t boasting about the impenetrable nature of this bunker,” I told him, “we should be safe for now.”

“Good,” Vogel said. There was an odd light in his eyes. “We need time.”

-66-

Once again, I tried to reach the outside world with my implant. It didn’t function. Clearly, the vault was more than just bomb-proof. We were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.

I wished I had thought to make the attempt before the doors had closed, but I hadn’t. Experimentally, I took out the coin-like key my aunt had used to open them.

“What are you doing?” Vogel demanded.

“Opening the doors again.”

“Don’t. They’re out there. I can feel it.”

I listened carefully. I couldn’t hear anything as the walls were too thick, but after a time, it seemed as if Vogel was right.

I
could
feel them. An army of guardians had to have been called. Perhaps, they were milling about on the other side of that door, trying to figure out what their best course of action might be. Effectively, our situation had transformed into a siege.

Vogel worked on the door’s control panel. He asked for the coin-sized key, and I gave it to him. Soon, sparks flew.

“I’ve disabled the door for now,” he said. “They can’t get through even with a key.”

“You’ve locked us in?”

“Effectively, yes. It will give us time to think—and to act.”

When planning this operation, I’d never bothered to consider a getaway scheme as the odds of my success had seemed prohibitively high. That lack of foresight had left me wondering what I should do next.

“We must find the data injector,” Vogel said.

“To destroy it, right?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I was insane.

“What? A marvel of computing, and you want to destroy it? Is that all you soldiers are, monsters bent on destruction?”

“It was
you
who programmed the variants to kill these people rather than to capture or disable them.”

When I said this, the variant with the bad leg swiveled two vid pickups in my direction for a moment, but it said nothing.

Vogel made a dismissive gesture. “There was no choice. These oldsters would never have given up their power without being completely defeated.”

“On that point, we’re in agreement. So, what are you planning to do with this data injector when we find it?”

“The obvious, of course,” he said. Then he noticed my blank expression. “Think, Captain! How else will we get out of this tomb alive? We’ll use the injector to craft a new memory and upload it to the net as the morning update. Then, we’ll walk out of here by noon tomorrow.”

I chewed that idea over. It did seem feasible. If we could operate the device, we could, in theory, make people believe anything we wanted.

“What kind of cover story would we use?” I asked cautiously.

“It seems straightforward,” Vogel said, already searching passageways while I followed him. “We should keep it simple, this being our first time.”

I glanced at him sharply. “Our
first
time?” I asked. “Are you suggesting there may be more updates in the future?”

He shrugged. “I’m not a prophet. It would seem natural enough to edit a few details about how people look at us.”

“Such as?”

“First off, we’ll have to make them think the terrorists who took this place have already been captured—no, killed! That’s better.”

His eyes had a gleam to them now as he plotted his program for humanity. I found it disturbing.

“Are you feeling well, Director?” I asked, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.

One of the variants reacted with flashing speed. There was a blur and a rasping sound. A metal arm telescoped, and a gripper caught my wrist.

Looking down in surprise, I saw two bloody crescents appear around my wrist.

“I see they’re conditioned to protect you,” I said.

“Yes… Keep that in mind.”

It took us nearly an hour to find the chamber we were looking for. It was hidden, but not overly well. The entrance was guarded by a statue of iron, a metal monstrosity depicting a man in military garb. The figure stood resolutely with rows of medals on his chest.

“Who is this statue honoring?” I asked.

“Don’t you recognize him?” Vogel asked, chuckling. “No, I don’t suppose that you would. The years aren’t kind to any of us, are they?”

After peering at the statue for several moments, a flash of realization struck me.

“That’s the Chairman, isn’t it?” I asked. “When he was young?”

“Yes, of course. It used to stand in the public square in the capital. Now, it’s been gathering dust down here for more than a century. They didn’t want their old identities recalled, you see. The Council members erased all memory of themselves from the majority of Earth’s populace.”

“I take it then they were unpopular?”

He laughed. “Extremely. They were a cabal of government leaders who took it upon themselves to retain their power indefinitely. Announcing a coup on the whole planet wasn’t something that endeared them to the people at large. They took to hiding down here until they perfected the data injector.”

“At which point they altered everyone’s memory…” I said, trying to recall what I knew of the early days of my government. What they taught in school had always been hazy. Perhaps historians had learned to stick to less dangerous topics.

“Ah, here it is!” announced Vogel at last.

I heard a click as he felt behind the statue’s tall jackboots. A portion of the wall behind it rolled away silently.

Lights flickered on in response to our intrusion.

Vogel began to step forward, but I called out. “Wait,” I said. “A paranoid man might set a trap.”

Clearly anxious to rush inside, he peered at me. After a moment’s thought, he waved to a variant and ordered it to advance into the room.

We watched as it clacked on metal feet until it met up with the midpoint of the tube-like passage. We could see bluish lights glowing beyond the mouth of that tube.

The variant’s numerous eyes twitched and whirred. It was clearly looking for danger as well.

An object fell from the ceiling while it was still inside the passage. With amazing speed, the variant reached out a claw-like gripper and snatched the object from the air.

“I’ve found—” it began in a mechanical voice, but then a loud explosion went off. A gust of air and sound blew past us, making us recoil. The variant had been destroyed.

Vogel cursed colorfully and at length. “Hmph,” he grunted, when he’d regained his composure. “One left.”

He then searched the floor with a thin probe until he found a touch-plate.

“Here,” he said. “We must step over it. Do you think you can do that?” he called to the last remaining variant.

Experimentally, the variant lifted its damaged leg with a claw instead of dragging it. Moving slowly and carefully, it proceeded down the illuminated tunnel. Vogel pressed after it had made it inside without mishap, and then I followed after I saw him reach the far end of the tube alive.

The chamber beyond the passage was elaborate and roomy. The ceiling had to be at least ten meters high. The walls were a hundred meters long each, forming a square.

But it was the equipment that filled the chamber that caught our attention. There were large devices like tuning forks with seats in the middle of them. I noticed that the seats were metal, bolted down, and equipped with restraints.

“Do you think they brought prisoners here?” I asked.

Vogel glanced away from the main console long enough to comment. “I bet they had test subjects down here at some point in the past. Maybe they abused thousands of them, over the years, while they perfected their arts.”

I looked over the devices with disgust. “They were forced to participate?” I asked.

Vogel gave me a dirty chuckle. “Of course. Would you like to have your mind altered by a big, experimental machine?”

Large generators filled part of the space, and the main console lined the back wall. The computers seemed antiquated, but serviceable.

“See here?” Vogel asked. “They have high-speed net traffic. Our implants don’t seem to work, but that might just be due to a security code. We can get out onto the nets from here.”

The Director poked around, and I did the same. The system allowed every computer worldwide to be examined in detail. An AI package monitored everything viewed and sorted them in terms of how subversive they were. The AI gave each site a loyalty rating.

The power of it… a simple search could find the most strident critics, filtered and sorted by AI. This was how they’d selected their victims.

“I think this is how they find people who irritate them,” I said, “there’s a scanning system—”

“Yes, yes. I’ve already seen that. Now, I’m trying to determine—” Vogel broke off, giving a whoop of joy. Both the variant and I moved to his side as he continued to exclaim in excitement.

“Look!” he said, tapping at his controls. “I’ve found it! The editor! A universal smart-editor. The AI is
amazing!
”

I frowned and studied the screen from over his shoulder. At last, it dawned on me what I was seeing.

“Are you saying you can use this to edit anyone’s data?”

“Yes, exactly. From this console, I can change anything on the net. I can change it, remove it, or I can add data of my own!” His lips split into a grin.

The situation was becoming increasingly clear. This was how they planted stories. But, how did they change the minds of those who had yet to read them?

Vogel continued working feverishly for the next two hours. I watched, but he soon lost me in technical detail.

At last, he leaned back and breathed a heavy sigh.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’m going to try my first update.”

“Hold on,” I said, “that’s highly unethical.”

He turned around slowly in his chair and stared at me. His face displayed a mixture of surprise and irritation.

“Why do you think we’re down here, Sparhawk?”

“To free the Earth from this sort of manipulation. It’s illegal and reprehensible.”

“Fine,” the director said, turning back to his work. “You can watch, then.”

“Hold,” I repeated, taking a step closer to him.

I froze. The last surviving variant had shot a long arm between us, barring my path.

Vogel chuckled. “It’s you who must hold. Back off, or I’ll order this machine to kill you where you stand!”

There was an odd light in his eyes—the light of excitement. It was as if his mind was filling with new ideas.

I took a step back as I’d been directed. My hands came up in a surrendering gesture. The variant retracted its arm, but kept several eyes on me.

“Director Vogel, please reconsider,” I said calmly.

He didn’t even bother to look at me. Instead, he worked on his update at length. While he did so, I feigned boredom and put my hands into my pockets.

There was a blinding flash. A bolt of energy took most of Vogel’s head off. There were only scraps of smoking flesh attached to his gray-white skull.

The body slumped and flopped out of its chair onto the floor.

Whatever variants are, they aren’t stupid. His bodyguard looked down instantly toward my hands, which were still buried in my pockets.

But there was something new. A blackened hole now scorched my left pocket. The variant spotted it, and it was then that I knew my life was over.

I was comforted by the knowledge I’d given up my existence for a good cause. How could I have stood by while a new dictator rose up before my very eyes? How could I allow this new master to replace the old? The mere thought was intolerable.

Ready for death, I looked at the variant expectantly.