Science #$%@ Fiction

Angel wormed her way out of the suit and opened the repair kit. As she rifled through the contents of the kit, Aeolus said to her through the neuro-link, “Second gen units are non-combat. Are you sure those were combat units and not clones intended for service and support in the event of a cme breeching the system?”

“Aeolus, it was Dregan. With memories,” she answered flatly, her voice echoing in the empty hallway. She checked her plasma pistol. “I need to get back in there and take down the rest of the units before I can make the repairs. Is there something bigger than this thing that I can use?”

“There is heavy artillery but it is inadvisable given the plasma breech. The potential for more shearing of the protective exoskin of the ship is high if you go in there with anything higher than level three use,” the ship answered.

“Aeolus, they're here to drive us straight into the sun. They're sans-neuro-link. If they had one, then you'd pick up on them immediately as more than just a presence in the hold. The units trained with out neuro-links are explicitly wet works. They're here to kill all of us and plunge you into the sun. That was the goal of this ship, to destroy everyone on board, broadcast final data, and get rid of the evidence of whatever the hell they're working on. Now where's the rifles at?”

“Compartment six, level twenty two, captain.” Angel turned and began to run down the corridors of the space ship until she came to the space where the gear she was looking for was stowed. “Checking on the status of the crew, they remain in stasis. The cat, however, is prowling and may approach you.” She ran up a flight of steps for the section she was in was typically under the influence of the gravity system. Moving from level twenty to twenty two was a rather straight forward affair, if it wasn't for the fact that the stairwell was massive.

“Aeolus, kick off the gravity in this stairwell,” she said, looking up at the landing a few hundred feet above her.

“Captain?”

“Don't quibble about it, just do it,” she snapped as a plan came together in her mind. The gravity system for that stairwell sector went off and Angel pushed off of the platform she was on. As she grabbed the base of the one above her, she pulled herself up and through it's railing. She reached the doors into the next corridor and pushed the button to open them. They hissed open partly. “Oh goddamn it,” she muttered. In the zero g situation, Angel could possibly push herself between the partly open doors but the corridor would drop her to the deck. Deciding that falling about eight feet wasn't ideal, she worked her way down to the correct orientation and maneuvered herself into the gap. On the left side, she felt the pull of gravity, on the right side she didn't. It was a strange sensation but she ignored it to push hard on the doors. Slowly, they opened farther. “Gravity in the stairwell goes back on as soon as I get through the door. Once she had forced the door open enough for her to worm her way through the system in the stairwell kicked on with a mechanical whine. “That didn't sound good,” she said.

Aeolus was doing his best to track the hostile party on board. With out the neural-link systems installed, he had to rely on thermal imaging. As of the moment they remained on the other side of the cargo bay bulkhead, moving through the area in something of a search pattern. “Captain,” Aeolus said tersely, “If these hostile units are as enhanced as you are, they may be able to force a bulkhead as a collective ...”

“I know, Aeolus,” Angel replied, “Which is why I need something stronger than this piss poor plasma pistol.”

“I'm not sure if I can handle a fire fight on that level,” the ship answered.

“Well, where the hell can I draw them off to so that I can put them down and get to work on repairs,” the cyborg snapped.

“Calculating, please stand by,” Aeolus answered.

Angel muttered to herself, “Fuck standing by, I need those rifles.” As she reached compartment six, she saw a sign that said 'Security only.' “Oh really?” Angel said at the keypad. She punched in her command code. The system blinked and then went red, denying her access. She punched in her code again and was denied again. “Aeolus, open up this door,” she said.

“I'm sorry, captain, the chief security officer on board has the only code to this door,” he answered.

“Override the stupid code,” she said.

“I can not do that, captain,” Aeolus answered with a tone of regret, knowing that the design flaw was a major problem at the moment.

“Fine, I'll override the code myself?”

“Captain?”

Angel took a step back and kicked the panel as hard as she could. The system wasn't designed for a cyborg to give it a direct hit with something blunt, though the plasma shielding remained in place as it dangled half off the corridor wall. Angel looked at the wires and where they connected with the control panel. She pulled out the knife she wore at her back and began twisting away screws that held a secondary control panel in place for the door behind the digital one. “Some motherfucker thought that redundancy was a nice touch here,” she muttered.

She dismantled the second control panel, following the tangled nest of wires into a control node for the door. “Captain, I advise caution, there are some very high voltage lines in that node,” Aeolus said. Angel looked at the wires in her hand and into the rat's nest of wires before her. She saw that a yellow wire lead from the two control panels into the heart of the tangle. With a mighty pull, Angel ripped not only the yellow wire but the small box it was connected to out of the mass of wires before her. A red and a green wire came off of it into the snarl.

“Aeolus, red or green?”

“Captain?”

“Pick a damn color,” she snapped.

“The red line is higher voltage than the green line...” he started when Angel muttered to her self, “Red it is.” As she disconnected the red wire, the door opened with a soft whooshing sound. “Whoever engineered this is fired,” she said as she walked into the security suite.

“That would be ship 362N, the one who did this run prior to me.”

“They have ships engineering ships?”

“Well, yes. Who knows the body better than the one inhabiting it?”

Angel shook her head and counted the lockers before her at the end of the security suite. She found the locker she was looking for and discovered it was empty. She started opening lockers and finding most of them empty. “Aeolus, we've got a big problem,” Angel said, “Security doesn't have shit in it.”

“Logical, 362N was a pacifist.”

Angel sat down in a chair at the chief security officer's desk. She looked at the desk and began to rifle through the drawers. As she turned in the chair to investigate the rest of the office, she found, bolted to the floor, an ancient style of chest with an antique key lock. Angel turned back to the desk. “Was this chest part of your manifest?”

“Yes, personal effects of Chief Security Officer Maeson,” he answered. Angel found a key inside the desk and tried the lock. When the lock opened, Angel threw back the lid. Inside, she found something unusual. A primitive weapon formed of a blade with dual edges and a handle. It lay upon a tartan patterned cloth. “Remind me to apologize to Maeson for taking this,” Angel said. Beneath the sword was a shape that felt familiar. Angel lifted up out of the chest the cloth and discovered a disassembled plasma rifle. “Oh Maeson, you tricksy bastard,” Angel said with a smile, “And you said that you didn't like plasma weapons. Calling them inelegant and yet you had one stowed away. I knew I liked you for a reason.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

An author I respect gave some really good advice to me years ago. If you're having trouble working on one project, switch to something else for a little bit. So, here's some cheezy science fiction. If this runs longer than a few posts, I am probably going to put the whole thing together into a single file and publish it as an e-book. Lemme know what y'all think.