“Can you detail the
successful experiment for us, Ensign Rinett?” asked Ayan. Her
expression may as well have been cast from iron, there was no emotion
to be found there.
Ensign Rinett stepped
forward, dragging his feet. “What do you mean?”
“How did this process
you develop work?” Governor Anderson asked.
“Oh,” the Ensign
said. “We transplanted Alice’s data into a perfect copy of the
hardware that we scanned in her, installed it into the framework
platform, or skeleton, as most people call it. Then we put it in the
stasis tube and activate it, making sure that the subject is
perfectly sedated. Then we start the software patch-“
“You are missing
something!” Jacob Valent shouted, pounding the table. Ensign Rinett
jerked backwards. Liana and Finn flinched as well. Ayan put her hand
on his shoulder and he settled back in his seat.
“The Lieutenant
Commander’s report gives us one more detail before your software
was installed,” Oz said. “Tell us what that is please.”
“We installed a scan
of Alice Valent’s memories,” he said quietly. “But we made sure
the subjects never woke up, we needed that for proper testing, to
make sure that the entire personality was transferred and that the
subject didn’t suffer any loss through the process,” he added in
a rush.
“Go on,” Governor
Anderson said.
“We made sure the
memories were intact, that she was a match for Alice in every way,”
Ensign Rinett said. “Then we applied Doctor Messana’s software
and sent a false injury message to the framework itself so it would
begin regeneration. She’s right, the first six were failures, and
we euthanized all of them, they never woke up. They never knew they
existed. The last one was a success. She was perfectly human, and we
were surprised to see that even the change in DNA went through
without any problems. As the original Alice we made, she had the
parentage of an unknown female donor and Jacob Valent. She evolved,
her DNA was exactly as if she were the daughter of Jacob Valent and
Ayan Anderson. Doctor Messana said that it was built into the
imprint, like a part of the subconscious’ wishful thinking.”
“And three days ago,
Messana woke her up,” Ayan said. “Were those the records you were
trying to erase?”
“I never tried to
erase records,” Ensign Rinett said, shaking his head slowly.
“Lieutenant Commander
Vega?” Jake addressed, stone faced again.
“I witnessed the
Ensign trying to enter the vault ahead of us, and later trying to
overload a battery so it would emit an electromagnetic pulse. I can
only guess that he was trying to damage data inside the vault, even
though I’m told that the damage that could do would have been
minimal since most systems in the Fallen Star are hardened against
electromagnetic interference.”
“You cannot
definitively state that this Ensign tried to destroy evidence?”
Governor Anderson asked.
“I cannot. I can
testify to him attempting to enter a secured space, and that he
attempted to improvise an explosive device, that is all,” Stephanie
replied.
“The explosive charge
is serious enough,” Oz said. “Lieutenant Commander Erron, were
you able to determine if the Ensign had anything to do with the death
of Alice Valent’s copy?”
“From surveillance
footage and research reports that were Doctor Messana’s research
team’s files, I determined that he did not have anything to do with
her death,” Liara answered. She spoke even more stiffly during the
rest of her statement. “Their research subject was awake for thirty
three minutes before she objected to being confined to the lab and
they had to sedate her. She believed that she was Alice Valent. She
wanted to see Captain Valent, and Captain Anderson. They held her
down, sedated her, and then put her back into stasis after a thorough
examination. She was killed when the D-Drive overloaded. My findings
were confirmed by Chief Agameg Price.”
“There are crimes
there,” Oz said quietly. “But they would take longer to pursue
and we do not want any of the experiments with Alice’s physiology
in the public record. I hereby find you guilty of endangering your
fellow crewmembers by creating, arming and attempting to detonate an
explosive device in the form of a power source set to overload. I
also find you guilty of attempting to damage property with that same
device. These charges give me all the justification I need to eject
you from service with Triton Fleet. I require an Officer to oversee
your removal.”
“I volunteer,”
Stephanie said.
“Accepted.”
Governor Anderson
cleared his throat before speaking. “As Governor of Tamber, I
recognize the crime you have been convicted of by Triton Fleet and
see cause to revoke your citizenship. You will be conducted safely
out of the system aboard the next available transport.”
“Lieutenant Commander
Liara Erron,” Oz said to her. “You are the new Communications and
Legal Officer in Captain Valent’s staff. Are you satisfied with how
today’s proceedings were conducted?”
“Yes I am,” she
said with no hesitation.
“Lieutenant Commander
Vega,” Jake said to her. “You are the head of my Security Staff.
Are you satisfied that Mister Rinette has come to no harm, and has
not been abused during these proceedings?”
“Yes I am,”
Stephanie replied.
“If there is any
person in this room who feels they have not been honest with their
testimony, please say so now,” Governor Anderson said. They waited
for what seemed like ten minutes, but Finn’s command and control
unit said it had only been ten seconds by the time he looked at it.
“Then these proceedings have concluded. Good luck out there, Mister
Rinette.”
“I can’t survive
out there, I don’t have any money,” Rinette said as Stephanie led
him to the door by his arm. “We made important medical discoveries,
the framework system can be controlled now, it opens a whole new
field of cybernetics!”
“You’ll get
whatever pay we owe you after we finish estimating the cost of
whatever repairs we’ll have to make because of your bomb,” she
said to him. “I’m sure someone else will continue your work
ethically.”
“I’m sorry,” Ayan
said. “That wasn’t pleasant, I know. But we couldn’t
arbitrarily throw him out of the system. If it were three days ago,
when we’re not forming closer ties to the British Alliance then we
could have done anything to him, but now, with this being so
personal, we had to demonstrate some kind of process.”
“He is being
discharged and deported on an explosives charge you can prove,
Ma’am,” Liara said with a smile. “As a trained lawyer, I can
say that these military proceedings can seem a little rushed and
lopsided, but in this case the charge, the proceedings and the
sentence were perfect. I couldn’t invalidate this case if I had a
whole legal team.”
“Thank you for
reporting, you’re all dismissed. You understand that these
proceedings, aside from the explosive charges and the sentence, are
top secret?” Oz asked.
“Yes,” Finn said.
“I do,” Liara
added.
“Yes,” Agameg said.
“Alice, the real Alice is well?”
“Yes, she’s fine,”
Jake said. “And we have someone investigating whether or not this
cure is real, but no one can know anything about that vault, or the
D-Drive, or that you’ll be overseeing it’s installation aboard
this ship. Lieutenant Commander Erron will make sure there is no
chatter or record describing the drive, Chiefs Agameg and Finn will
direct the installation, and Lieutenant Commander Vega will oversee
security as soon as she delivers Mister Rinett to the Caraway Company
Starliner that’s set to arrive in about an hour. It’s time for us
to get off this ship, before we hold up the Solar Forge’s work.
Take a rest for lunch, then start getting ready, you have your work
cut out for you.”
Finn couldn’t help
but feel satisfied with the long morning he had as they left the
room.
“Isn’t he supposed
to get a defence?” Agameg asked Liana.
“You’re thinking of
human civilian courts,” Liana said with a smile. She seemed happy
with the outcome. “In military courts like that, you have the
evidence against you for everything the court wants to prove
presented, then there’s a sentencing depending on what the Officers
decide, and then you get an appeal. The system is made to trust the
Officers overseeing the process because they get into much bigger
trouble if they’re reviewed and it’s found that their rulings
were unfair. That, and it’s made to be fast, so a ship can keep
running.”
“That’s the way I
was told it was aboard ship,” Finn said. “When I was in college.”
“Oh,” Agameg said.
“Rinett will have difficulty appealing from wherever he’s going,
I think.”
Bismark Industries. It
was a name Burke would never forget. He had been studying their ships
for weeks, and was finally almost ready to steal one from Port
Chalmers, when a planet wide alarm was activated. He was sitting in
one of the many ports on Kambis when he heard a thunder crack in the
sky, and people started panicking.
He didn’t know what
was going on, only that his luck had most likely run out, whatever
karmic payback he had coming was probably a few seconds from dropping
on his shoulders. Burke’s version of Karma was more an enhanced
theory of cosmic give-and-take, but that didn’t matter. There was
something dark and red in the sky, and it wouldn’t get him.
He picked a terminal,
his sidearm in hand, setting off port alarms in the tallest section
of Port Chalmers. Security personnel, most of them hired goons by the
Termi Cartel, spotted him at the last possible second. He knew where
he was going, and the security doors that started closing in front of
him as he headed down the gangway to the small interplanetary
transport he was watching wouldn’t stop him.
He moved faster than he
could remember, rushing down the gangway towards the heavy airlock
door that was slowly closing. “Wait! Boarding pass! I have a
boarding pass!” he shouted. It was a lie. The Steward, in one of
those terrible white and blue uniforms they all wore with silly hats
that looked like some arts and crafts project that turned out boring
saw his sidearm and tried to push the door closed faster. “It’s
only a precaution!” he shouted, lying as he fired several shots at
the door, his wild, running aim only managed to scorch the door’s
light armour.
He collided with the
door, pushed through the narrow space and almost got all the way
through. His right boot was a little bit too wide by the time his
body pressed into the cabin. He deactivated the armour seal at the
top of his boot and yanked his foot free before the door finished
closing, crushing his boot to less than millimetre thickness.
“Boarding pass?”
the steward asked, his voice cracking.
Burke pretended to
search through the pockets of his long brown coat as he looked around
at the inside of the small passenger carrier. It was already taking
off in a hurry, alarms were going off, and the back four rows of
passengers were all staring at him. “Must have left it back in the
terminal. We making an emergency takeoff?”
“Yes, Sir,” the
steward said. “Can I have your name? I’m sure I can find you on
our manifest if-“
An antimatter alarm
went off on the personal scanner built into his coat. He used his
ocular implant’s display to bring up a view from a Bismark
Industries satellite and involuntarily yelped as he saw that the
antimatter alert was closing in around them. “Time to go!” he
shouted, holstering his weapon, so he wouldn’t set off the interior
intruder nullification systems. He had never moved so fast in his
life. “Get into one of these lifeboats, or you’re dead!” he
shouted as he stopped at the front of the small craft and opened a
panel in the floor. The roar of the rocket thrusters firing as hard
as they could filled the cabin. The display overlaid onto his sight
showed the antimatter cloud spreading across the globe. “Too fast!
Not gonna make it!” he said as he dropped into one of the escape
craft. It activated and he looked for the controls. PUSH ONLY IN CASE
OF EMERGENCY said some white writing above a big red button. He
slapped it and crossed his arms atop his chest.
The escape pod closed
and he was launched from the small, fifty person transit ship’s
fore, straight towards space. He watched the status display as the
rocket at the rear of the escape craft indicated that gravity was
slowing him down. “Oh, please, oh please, oh please, I’ll save an
orphanage if you just get me out of this. Like, one just chock full
of the ugliest kids or something.”
Whether it was because
of his prayer, or luck, or physics and a willingness to run, the
escape pod left the atmosphere or Kambis behind. The antimatter
warning spread to the entire planet. “Oh, that’s still going to
kill me at this range,” he said. “Emergency coordinates!”
A low quality screen
slipped out in front of him with a navigational display. He tapped
the coordinates he knew would take him somewhere safe onto the
screen. “Voice command: use standard navigational routes to execute
this transit,” he told the computer. “Execute!”
The computer screen
displayed a rosebud slowly growing then flowering. “What’s that?
Your progress screen?” he asked, shouting loud enough to make his
own ears ring. “C’mon!”
The rose blossomed on
the screen and the hyperspace escape pod accelerated away from Kambis
orbit at hyper-speed.
“Thank you for
choosing Bismark Industries for your escape. Please remain completely
still for the initiation of cold stasis, provided by our partners at
GoChill. Remember, when you need to preserve living or dead matter
for an undetermined amount of time, use GoChill.”
“No freezing! It’s
a short trip! I won’t even have time to get-“