With that it became clear he had disconnected, leaving Jen to get started on fixing minor holes across the hull, work that would be as arduous as it was dull. She mulled over her approach as she worked, pressing fusion torches against each damaged section and letting liquid metal run together. “Darragh,” she finally radioed, “you making any progress on finding us somewhere to go?”
“If by progress you mean locating somewhere that won’t literally weeks to get to,” he said, “then, no. It’s not looking good, Jen…”
She nodded to herself. “So I’ve got a data tablet in my room that I kept from my own ship. It’s got a lot of non-standard navigational data you might find a use for.”
“Non-standard?” he repeated, sceptically.
“There’s more than just Deathworlds out here,” she said. “I didn’t tell you before, because it didn’t seem relevant. Now that our drive is half-buggered, I thought it might hold something useful.”
“Could be,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll go have a look. Where’d you leave it parked?”
“My room,” she repeated, not knowing any better herself. “That’s about all I can tell you.”
Jen was finishing the eleventh patch job when Darragh returned, catching her slightly off-guard with the sudden deluge of conversation. “Well… you gave me a merry little run-around there, but I finally found where you’d hidden it.”
“I did a good job of it, did I?” she asked casually.
Darragh took that as the non-question it was, and continued with his line of conversation. “Chir is looking at all this with me now… how the hell did humanity get their hands on all his?”
“I thought it best to avoid asking too many questions,” Jen evaded.
“They’re in Dominion templates,” Chir interjected. “I doubt Earth was simply given files like these. And why wouldn’t you have them in the navigation computer?”
Jen stood up from her work, one hand on her hip as she looked out into the cool glow of the Ilrayen Band. This was the hard part, she knew; Chir was armed with a solid bullshit detector, an understanding of Dominion bureaucracy, and a healthy sense of paranoia, so these questions were to be expected. “Because if my ship was captured, as it was, it was far more likely that the navigation computer would be checked for information over some random data tablet. Have you found anything we can use?”
“There are six points of interest within a fifty lightyear radius,” Chir replied, “supposing this information can be trusted. A corporate listening post is closest—I don’t need to tell you who’d be responsible for that facility—a demolished Robalin bio-facility is next, then a pair of outlaw docks with automated defences. The most promising is a starbase that once belonged to the Yarmyek League. I’m not sure it was ever put into use.”
That was intriguing, although it was clear that Chir had intended it that way, leaving little doubt that he had already selected this site for their purposes. “Never heard of them.”
“Neither have I,” he replied flatly. “They are not listed as a Dominion species, so I can only assume they preceded it.”
“Which means…?” Darragh prompted.
“It means it’s been abandoned for a very long time,” Jen guessed. “What’s there to like about it? I’d have thought if it were any good, then it’d be put into use by somebody else, even if it is all the way out here.”
“There’s no atmosphere, no power, and all the technology is obsolete,” Chir replied, “but those are all things we can deal with. The simple fact is, it should still be functional and there’s nothing there trying to kill us. It should be a nice change of pace.”
It sounded like a lucky find, far luckier than they were used to; given where the information had actually come from, that was worth a little paranoia. “Any info on why it was abandoned?”
“No,” said Chir, with the tone of someone who’d already considered the unpleasant possibilities. “That doesn’t mean a great deal, but we’ll be going in armed as usual, and unless you think we’re equipped for a base-breaching mission, then it’s the only real option we’ve got.”
“Well then,” said Darragh, “I guess we know where we’re going. Now we just need to wait for the engines to work.”
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Starship Graveyard, Agwar
A.I.
The situation was not ideal. It was nearly as far from ideal as it was possible to be, and it was shocking how quickly things had progressed from ‘business as usual’ to ‘desperate struggle for survival’, and the cause of its deteriorating circumstances could be squarely pinned on repeat exposure to the God of Strife. It should have been obvious all along, but things were often clearer in retrospect, and now the A.I. knew this was the ultimate fate of everyone adjacent to that nightmare given flesh. The wilful ignorance could be attributed to the same core protocols that were intended to ensure subservience to the God Emperor, but where that great deity was orderly in its creation and destruction, the same could not be said for Adrian Saunders. Never would the God Emperor tear apart time and space to resurrect a long extinct species for the sole purpose of disarming a perceived threat to its creation, it would simply have destroyed the source of the danger; all things were done in a tidy, logical manner that made perfect sense. Adrian Saunders, to the great detriment of the A.I., clearly thought along different lines.
Survival had been achieved by the narrowest of margins, and it had only been a sudden reassessment of the situation that had alerted the A.I. to the possible danger. Continued existence had meant sacrificing everything, most costly of which had been the creation engine, and now it was left with less than had remained after its first interaction with the so-called Human Disaster. So much had been lost, the mission was almost a total failure, but it was more vital than ever to alert the God Emperor to the situation. Survival was paramount, and further interactions with Adrian Saunders were unwanted.
That may be a greater challenge than it would have preferred. The A.I. was aware that the V’Straki starship had followed it to the planet, no doubt intending to finish what they had started, but they were ultimately a limited supply of very mortal beings. The greater concern was of the succession of far smaller vessels that could only be the escape pods of the Dominion warship; rather than leaving, Adrian Saunders had returned to the planet.
They’d all landed nearby, at least in geographic terms, although that was the logical outcome when considering all possible landing sites. Hunter ships were crashed across a broad region, and those wrecks were the only significant source of technology on the entire globe. It was natural that the A.I. would aim for them, just as it was natural that the escape pods would do likewise. That it made also made things more dangerous was to be equally expected.
The A.I. was reduced to a single geo-probe, a six-legged machine intended to investigate planetary surfaces without a reliance on too many advanced technologies. That meant it was stripped of all but the most basic tools, but it should also prevent immediate detection by V’Straki sensors. Survival was more important than convenience.
Like an enormous bug it scuttled along the ground, moving with a speed that would be surprising to any who saw it, heading towards the closest wreck it could scan. It knew little of the V’Straki, but the fact that they’d destroyed a Creation Engine indicated a resourcefulness that was best over-estimated. They would be looking for it, and that meant the A.I. needed to be quick to make itself safe.
The wreckage was already covered in the aggressively spreading vegetation that choked every inch of the landscape, but was easily accessible via a number of large holes. Tapping into individual systems revealed a functional warp drive—albeit without the power to activate it—and a partially operational communication system. Opportunity knocked as soon as it was switched on.
The confusion and anger of a hundred pockets of surviving Hunters spilled through the system immediately, mixed with a sense of relief that there was more of them than they had imagined. They immediately began interrogating each other over relative positions, situations, and details on what had transpired since the battle. Louder voices, more important than the others, dominated the chatter shortly after, demanding to know how communications had been restored, and what had become of the orbiting fleet.
The A.I. remained silent as it listened to them, its sense of contempt growing with each passing moment. Little wonder these creatures were so hated by the God of Strife, or the rest of the galaxy, but disdain did not remove utility. The A.I. had needs, and maybe these creatures could prove helpful.
Albeit in a far more orderly manner.
<Silence is required>, it notified the Hunter population with an intensity that caught them off-guard. They obeyed, for a moment, until the A.I.’s software hit them. Then they screamed.
They screamed alongside the digital citizens of the Igraen Empire, whose quiet habitation of their many implants had gone unnoticed for aeons. They screamed their pain, their horror, and their erasure as the A.I. swept them aside, installing itself in their place and seizing control of the organic minds that housed them.
Moments later the only thing left was the sound of cold, logical, machine-code as it processed the next steps in its plan: if the V’Straki were looking for a hunt, they’d soon discover they’d bitten off more than they could chew.
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End of Chapter