Adrift in Space

"They might not want to kill, but well, you're a problem. They probably want to make you an offer, keep you as a figurehead. But. Well... it is kind of rude."

She laughed grimly. "I don't play well with rude people."

"Do you have Guards that answer only to you? No one else? Absolutely no one."

"What.. oh. You don't know who else is involved?"

"Someone's done their nanomachines. I asked Vicki a while ago for the experts, she gave me names. I doubt it's them but I've not yet been able to cross-reference the students doing practicals with them to this bunch. But I'm guessing they'll all be connected."

"At this point, why do we care about the nanos?"

He wondered if the edge in her voice was the continual alarms or the voices in the background or about him.

"Because they're designed to kill. People breathe them in, designed to be absorbed. A radio signal, they attack blood vessels. People will bleed to death. Internally. And they've been sent to Earth. Not enough to cover the world, not close. Yet."

He used the silence to scan systems. He'd dropped the video window but had the impression she'd been pacing and had frozen in place.

"And not just humans. They'll affect Sylvans too. After all, they're based on your medical prototypes."

"Are they loose here?"

The renewed ice in her low voice brought to mind THAT video. That video multiplied by a hundred. He'd never heard this tone live before this conversation.

"I haven't heard any, but they wouldn't need to be that dense. Breathe a few at a time, not sure yet how many you'd need but hey, depends on where they're at. I've tasked an agent to reprogram the air filters. They already scan for bacteria and the like. These have a specific signal according to the docs I dug up."

He heard a voice, again thought it was Stuart. He was out of breath, Peter heard 'locked.' Anna's snort was clear.

"Shelter is locked, Kim, others are in there. Stuart says the override codes won't work. Oh, and..."

"What?"

"Stuart says their padlets aren't responding."

"Uh, hold on," he stood and walked to the common table along the wall between his work area and the doors, found a couple of spare padlets and turned them on.

"They've used the central codes to shut them down, Anna. Mine has better security, so it's fine," he paused two heartbeats, "and so is yours."

"Was I upgraded?" Not ice, a touch of humor even.

"Yes."

"Hmmf. Too bad my padlet is in my office then. About the locked room?"

"I hate it when I'm right... Ok, I can override their locks. I taught Brittany what she knows, not everything I know. But it'll take time."

"I have summoned Laurel and Hardy," he snorted when she used his name, "and they are coming. They will ignore anyone but my direct orders."

"Good, now--"

"I have the senior reactor engineer, wait," his line went silent. Muted.

He reprogrammed the camera feed to signal him if anyone, especially Guards, approached the VR area. Anna had teased him when he'd complained they were like clones. He hoped she really could tell them apart, know it was truly Laurel and Hardy who got there first.

Two things happened simultaneously. His terminal woke up and a voice returned.

"They are trapped," he assumed the reactor engineers, "the senior and his second. I passed on your message. Iris may not want to kill anyone but they may kill her if what you say is true."

He glanced at the terminal.

"Shi... What? Oh, sorry, where are they?"

"What is happening?"

"Everything. It's all shit. Where are they? I'll get 'em out."

They'd met for breakfast and were working on a set of exams for their students so Iris and the others had been told they needn't come in until after lunch that day. They were in the Sylvan restaurant with a number of other paeple. That explained Iris's original lack of urgency to leave his place.

Or did it?

This had to have been planned for some time but had TODAY been zero day? Or had something forced their hand? The females hadn't seemed in a hurry to leave his place. And their brothers and their Guards had gone to some effort to get to the command ship on short notice.

He rechecked his agent that had found the killer nanomachine files.

Yes. He froze and exhaled slowly then shook his head and forced his hands to move. It had killed another agent. So. They wouldn't have known who. Or how. Only that one of Brittany's agents 'never came home.' But they'd have guessed.

He hurriedly tasked an agent to force its way past Brittany's block to open that door. There was a single, one-way control that would unlock every door on the ship but it was too restricted to get to for the moment so he'd have to open doors individually. His lover must've prepped individual door lock agents. That wasn't too much of an issue. Most folks could sit tight, they'd be out of the way and perfectly safe if scared and angry in darkness and with comms dead. He hooked his line into Anna's connection to the senior engineer, a male about her age that he had only a fuzzy memory of ever meeting.

"Engineer, okay, your door will open now," Peter said.

"What? Who is this?"

"The man who just unlocked your door, ignore him," Anna said and Peter chuckled, "can you see?"

"Lights out, just the emergency substrips. Not a problem, we could find our way to the control room blindfolded."

A murmured agreement.

"Tell everyone else to sit tight, safest where they are," Anna said, "take only who you need. Get those reactors under control."

Peter looked at his terminal as he heard the instruction passed on. Grumbles, heard what he worked out equaled 'comms not working.' The muscles around his eyes went tight as he read the message that had popped up.

"Let's go," the engineer's voice, a soft assent, apparently his second.

"Can we keep the line open, Peter?" Anna's voice brought him back.

"Um, oh, yeah, unless she's nuked the access points on the way. No sign of that but who knows. I'm pretty sure they'll know I've forced the lock so if they're not stupid they'll be expecting you. Be careful."

An angry assent from the senior engineer, footsteps and low voices. He stared at the single window on the terminal.

"Paetor, can... PAETOR," he winced.

"Oh, hey, here," he said slowly.

"Wank on your own time," he laughed despite himself, "I cannot call Ralph."

Fingers danced on his padlet, threw alerts away. Not enough screen...

"Laser interface blocked, shit. Working it." He glanced, realized his attempt to send all of his findings to another ship had failed too.

Good move, Brittany.

The primary laser wouldn't respond. It could carry all of the phone calls if half of the population on Earth called the other half at the same time. If each person could make ten simultaneous calls each the laser might yawn. Twenty calls each, it would still be bored.

The primary laser wasn't broken. Someone had unplugged it. They'd put on a spacesuit, a fucking spacesuit, and went outside and unplugged it. An obvious sabotage point. Obvious. But before today, it was inconceivable.

He rerouted his and Anna's links, waited a moment and received confirmation from the emergency laser comms array that provided satellite to satellite communications. They were 15,000 kilometers above Earth, they were stealthed and this altitude was a 'dead space' for human satellites. Despite that, radio was too leaky. Their spying on Earth's communications indicated their existence wasn't exactly known, as yet, but Anna knew that wouldn't hold another decade and she'd need to make an approach in the not too distant future.

'Control the communications.' He remembered that from the Russian revolution. Or was it Castro? Whichever. They'd studied well.

"They've unplugged the primary laser, Anna," he said, "I've rerouted you around the block on the emergency. Audio only, everyone else will be blocked for now. They kept that up because they're using it, I'm trying to find out what they're sending."

"Fine. Now, unlock the room here. Briefing room two."

"On it," he kicked off another agent to free the group in the VR area.

"What about the farms?"

He threw windows away and tapped quickly.

"Anna, farms are lit, ventilators, water, all still running, but that's it. Locked tight," he heard a soft sound of relief.

If the supercomputers were the brain and the reactors the heart, the farms were the lungs, taking in carbon dioxide and spewing out oxygen.

"Anna, get them out, door open," he said, heard her shout to Stuart, other voices in the background.

"Thank you, they're out," they tuned each other out again.

'Peter, love,' he quickly read again on his terminal screen, 'you know what is being done must be done. This weekend you showed why we need you. But also why we must change our direction. Please, simply sit back. You need do nothing. You will have a position of respect and power. And you will have me. And Iris too, if you want to inflict yourself so terribly. Please. I have learned so much from you, so much more than computers. I want more.'

The screen went black again as soon as he pressed a key. He tapped mute on his wristlet. Anna's multiple conversations continued in his ear, he heard Ralph's voice, shock and confusion clear. Anna's voice was steady as she talked to her advisor, told him to assign Guards to his family. That male was solid, competent, an excellent administrator. But Peter had never noticed an imagination. He took Anna's ideas and turned them into actions. But his own ideas?

"And what if I don't 'simply sit back,' blue eyes?" He glanced at the door since he was sure he'd find out. He fired up two dozen agents, tasked half of them to fight the locking agents on any door they randomly found locked and the other half to turn on small sections of lighting. He didn't care how many succeeded, just to keep Brittany busy.

His earbud chirped. He unmuted his mike.

"Anna, Anna," he waited an instant for her conversations to pause, "I see a pair of Guards approaching you. Coming down service stair two. Are you one hundred fucking percent sure it's Laurel and Hardy?"

"It's them," she said firmly, then after a moment, "thank you."

"Out," Peter said and muted his side, heard Anna say "wait for me."

Then he heard Kim say "I'll meet them."

He looked around the room. Eerie highlights glowed in the pair of UV strips that lit the room. Other than both Annas and Vicki, he'd tried to keep his contact lenses secret. There were two levels of emergency lights, the first set widely spaced visible spectrum, like almost every commercial building on Earth. But if those failed, or had been forced to fail, very low power UV strips ran off of purely local batteries which were kept charged via tiny solar panels that ran off of the regular lights. The batteries and the panels were well beyond the efficiency of anything yet on Earth. They'd last two, maybe three days. If it was an issue beyond that there'd likely be no one left alive to care.

He had the specs for the panels and batteries loaded onto his padlet, if he ever decided to go rogue. And the specs for the padlet itself. Recursion.

But the UV was natural to his hosts. His lenses had revealed a second layer of reality but he'd tried to keep it his party trick without revealing how he'd 'seen' certain things. But now they might save his life. The trick would be letting everyone think he was blind. Until he didn't need to be.

He looked at the door again before he brought up the keypad on his padlet for a message to Vicki and Anna Squared.

'Vicki, Anna, command ship is under attack, led by Victor Duskrider and Charles Seaskimmer. It is not an accident. Victor's sister Brittany and her friend Iris, Seaskimmer's sister, are in on it. Get with Ralph, check their friends. I don't know who else to trust. They are forcing reactor issues to force everyone to shelters. They have at least one set of Guards. I believe they will soon go after Queen Anna once they realize she's not in her office. I'm going to make my way to her, she has Laurel and Hardy on way to protect her. She's hidden for now and I'm trying to keep it that way. Find who made these nanomachines, they're built to kill! I will send you all of my info but it'll be slow, I need to hide it from them. Sheryl Grace in the Valley is somehow the Earth side of this. Anna Squared, watch out for her! The others will be in my info. I need to go now, I'm guessing they'll be coming for me. The Fourth of July can't get here soon enough!'

He hit send and dismissed the keyboard, scanned alerts. Set his archive to trickle across to look like voice packets. He stood.

But then he heard shouts. Male shouts. He froze. No, it was someone. On the line. The senior engineer, others. Had he recruited more?

"You can't," he thought he heard, something. Shit. A sharp intake of breath, more shouts, a body hitting the floor. He knew that sound.

The first sound had been a phaser. Stun? Kill? He'd heard one fired twice in anger, the other times were training. He'd never heard a difference between settings. Shouts ended.

Sounds of more bodies hitting the floor. They had the reactor control rooms and were defending them. They had phasers. Guards? Did that mean...

The connection went dead. Disabled at the engineer's device.

Anna made growling sounds. No, not quite growls, not sexual challenges. Sounds he'd only heard in some of their historical materials he'd studied.

He took the second padlet he'd set up and slipped it into the marsupial pouch on his stomach with the screen against his body. He carried his primary padlet and walked quickly to the closed double doors and stood, flipped the ongoing conversations in his ear to silent and listened.

Nothing. He tapped the agent he'd prepared and an instant later he heard the door lock release.

If Brittany and the rest of her little conspiracy had any doubts about his allegiance, that should've sealed it. The double doors allowed them to easily move equipment in or out of the room and he slid the left one the width of his head and stood still at the gap. Silence. He was about to slip through and froze.

From the right. The hallway went both ways, the conference room his coworkers had been called to and were presumably locked in was that way. Had they gotten out? He'd not let them out because they'd have too many questions he didn't have time to answer. He wondered if the department head was in on it or had somehow been manipulated. For later. They'd wanted him isolated, where he'd be blind with even padlets down for the count, no friendly sighted aliens to lead him around. The handful of other humans would simply be locked in wherever they were.

He slipped his primary padlet into the pouch with its screen also facing him, it was a tight fit with two but it went in.

He held his ear to the edge of the door, there was a light strip just outside the door so that avoided a shadow through the open door. Ah. Voices. Not loud, but loud enough. Ah, stupid. Or overconfident. No. Rookies. Before today this had been just theory to them.

"... just said to bring him, don't let him use the computers."

"Computers are all dead."

"She says he's a genius," a sniff at that, "you do know how to use that?"

"Point this end and pull the trigger," Peter 'heard' the shrug, "he's human, he'll be blind. Shouldn't even need it."

Good. They had a phaser. One. Enough for him. And they weren't guards. Peter quickly backed up and closed the door as quietly as he could. He walked to the edge of his desk and put both padlets face down on the desk and put them behind a couple of books to hide that they still worked. He put his left hand on the edge and waited.

The doors slowly slid open.

"Hey," Peter pitched his voice to a wavering pitch, "who's there?"

He saw two males step into the room. It was too dim to get faces, just the odd highlight from their stripes.

"Paetor," the one on his right switched to English, "I am Timothy, and this is Nathan."

"Hey," said the other, slightly shorter.

"We are here to help you, Brittany sent us. She is worried for you."

Same accents as Brittany and Isis. Same school? Young and think they know everything. Just like young humans.

They'd sent only males. Good.

"Well, it's pitch black. And my padlet won't work so no flashlight, where is she?"

"Somewhere safe and with lights. She wants us to escort you there. We will come to you."

They approached him. Timothy had the phaser in his left hand and held at his side. Southpaw. Unlike humans Sylvans were close to fifty-fifty right or left handed and a decent sized minority was ambidextrous.

"And if I don't want to go?"

They slowed, he could tell their expressions had changed from their fake-friendly smiles to doubt. Timothy's right arm touched Nathan's left.

"Uh, well," Nathan stopped and spoke while Timothy opened a gap, more importantly his left arm lifted at the elbow, "why would you not want to go?"

Timothy took another step toward him, he hoped that phaser was on stun. Peter squinted and swung his head between them and tilted his head, hoped they took him for blind and trying to locate by sound.

Sylvans were pretty decent wrestlers but most weren't like Queen Anna with their fists, their modern culture saw males fighting as opposed to exercising as abhorrent. But females punching each other out for a good fuck? Just another Saturday night!

"I'm just not feeling it, you know, seeing Brittany. Tell her I send my regrets about lunch."

Timothy stopped and raised his arm. Peter squatted and stepped forward rapidly, his new hope the phaser wasn't on a wide field setting. The terminal behind him buzzed from the shock it received, Peter spun below it, felt the tingle but it didn't affect him. He rose and connected with his left fist on Timothy's right cheek.

It was a good punch. The male yelled wordlessly and stumbled against Harry's workspace and terminal. Peter reversed the spin when he heard Nathan's delayed 'hey' and caught the onrushing male with a hard right jab that he knew broke that broad, flat nose. His victim dropped to his knees and put his hands to his face.

Peter turned, took two steps and grabbed Timothy's left arm as it tried to turn toward him and slammed it on the desk. The male howled and released the phaser. Peter kneed him in the crotch.

Fuck fighting fair. It was time to channel brother Jed.

He let the male drop to his knees, saw Nathan stand groggily. He turned, found the phaser on the floor, stooped and grabbed it and backed up and pointed it at Nathan, who saw it and stood still, only his eyes visible above his hand. Peter felt for the switch, at least it had been on stun. Flipped it one step higher.

"Sorry, boys, but I don't have time to hang around with losers."

He fired it at Nathan, who dropped. He did the same to Timothy.

On Earth he and Carole had been hit with 'stun.' It disoriented you but for most victims it left you conscious. 'Paralyze' was their term for the next setting, on an adult like these, you'd lose control of most voluntary muscles and pass out. Death was possible but vanishingly rare of for young and healthy adults. He flipped the safety and slipped the phaser into the rear waistband of his trousers and ripped out some cables.

He dragged the pair to a desk that was connected to the wall and wrapped the cable around it and tied their arms to the desk and each other at their wrists and elbows. Then he grabbed some more cable and tied their ankles and knees. As he'd found with Iris, the ranges of motion of their shoulders and hips made for slightly different considerations than humans. He pulled their earbuds and slipped off their wristlets and quickly checked pockets, found nothing of interest. The wristlets hadn't been on open lines. Amateurs.