“Okay,” Jacob clapped his hands. “Can we all agree that going after Franky will have to wait?” Not that they had any way of actually going after him at the moment, but he wanted to include everyone in the discussion.
Barry and Katherine both nodded.
“Alright, good. So this judicator that’s coming sounds like a big deal. I’m not exactly sure what to expect, but I’m not planning on handing myself over to die. Any suggestions on how I can prevent that?”
“That’s a lot to ask when we don’t even have a full picture of what to expect,” Barry replied. “I usually prefer long-term strategic planning and gathering as much information as possible before making a move when I play games, but this isn’t a game.”
Katherine snorted. “The best defense is a good offense. I would say to leverage the firepower of the station to our benefit, but after seeing how ineffective the void cannons were against the one ship, I doubt that’s going to make much of an impact. AI, are you capable of replacing the missiles?”
When there was no response, Katherine looked at him.
“I had to temporarily disable the AI to prevent our guests from assuming any more control. Besides, I would rather not get into another shooting match. The station barely survived one ship.”
Katherine shrugged. “Suit yourself, but that was my only idea. If you have something better, I’m all ears.”
“That’s fair,” Jacob admitted. “As I told you during the fight, I’m not a very tactically minded person. I’m more of a ‘let’s see how things play out’ type of person. While that worked out fine for most of my life, I realized I need to be more proactive. To that end, I have made some plans. What I really need are alternatives if things don’t work out the way I intend. You two might also want to prep your data storage so it can be quickly moved if things don’t go according to my plan.
“And where would we move them?” Barry asked. “Franky took the only active vessel on the station, and I don’t believe your ship is in any state to host us.”
“It’s called Melody,” Jacob added, “and you’re right about that, but I might have another option soon.”
“You named your ship after a girlfriend?” Katherine asked with a snicker.
“No,” he replied tersely. “I named it after someone I knew. That’s a long story, and I would rather not get into it right now.” If they knew he named the AI to stay sane, they might not look at him the same way again.
Barry ignored the byplay. “If moving storage spaces is an option, why not just move your core to the station? Wouldn’t that remove you from the danger the ship poses?”
“I’m honestly not sure if it would sway them one way or another,” Jacob replied. “As for moving the core, I don’t even know if that is possible. I haven’t looked into it since learning that I couldn’t just transfer my mind. I also knew that it would be a huge undertaking because the AI core chamber is massive and appears to be tied into the entire vessel. I’m just not sure how tied in it is.”
“That should be easy enough to find out,” Barry said. “Just pull up the vessel’s schematics. The station must have them if it’s able to make repairs.”
“Let me see if I can locate it and pull it up manually.”
Jacob found the file inside Melody’s storage, but when he tried to pull it into his virtual space, he got an unexpected error. ‘Construct lacks the available storage.’
What the hell? Just how massive was the file if it couldn’t be shown in his virtual space? He had seen an entire station schematic when he asked to see a damage report. That has to be larger. He quickly realized that wasn’t true. The damage report only showed an outline of the station and the location of the damage. A ship schematic would show the entire vessel and its contents.
He was growing frustrated with the file refusing to load when he finally found the option to change it to a wireframe to only show the part he was referring to.
White lines burst through the apartment, and they suddenly found themselves standing inside a wireframe of the AI core, within his kitchen.
The change was so quick and jarring that everyone but Barry jerked back in surprise. He quickly scaled it down to fit inside the kitchen.
The lines blurred past them as the image shrank, and soon enough, a floating projection hovered over the cheap laminate table, covering most of the round two-meter surface. The core was even larger than Jacob thought. It was four decks tall, with thick branching connections snaking away from it for dozens of meters in all directions, almost like a tree’s branches or a nervous system. Since those connections were in the requested wireframe, they had to be a functional part of the actual core.
“Well,” Jacob deflated, “It looks like I’m not going anywhere unless we carve the entire ship apart. Any other suggestions?”
The two shook their heads.
Jacob sighed. “I was afraid of that. I guess I should explain my plan. The aliens are trapped in their ship because of the attack, and trapped inside the hangar because of some damage to one of their landing struts. I would rather not test that last assumption, however. From what I could see, their ship is armed. If their weapons are the same as the ship that attacked, the hangar door wouldn’t stop them for long if they really wanted out. I think there are two reasons they haven’t broken free already. The first is that they want to monitor my actions. I don’t know how they would do that, but I assume they use their ship’s sensors to monitor the station somehow. They were probably doing that when Franky decided to make off with the transport. The second reason is they are probably afraid we will do to them what you did to the attacking vessel.”
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“Seems plausible,” Katherine nodded.
“I’ve already approached Chalto and told him I was impounding his vessel for his actions. Whether he complies or not is sort of up in the air.”
“That seems rather aggressive,” Barry said. “What if that sours any future relations we might have with them?”
Katherine snorted. “Who the hell cares what a bunch of aliens think anyway?”
Jacob’s plan had nothing to do with them being aliens; he would have done the same thing if they had been humans. He wanted to say something to Katherine about her attitude, but he had to remind himself that it wasn’t the time to confront the woman about her xenophobia. She seemed to have doubled down since the attack. He couldn’t even blame her.
“Uh-huh,” he replied. “Anyway. As I was saying. I think once we get them off the ship and to a holding area on the station, we can use their ship. It will take some planning and repairs, but I think we can get it done before this judicator arrives.”
“And if they don’t agree?” Katherine asked pointedly.
Jacob didn’t like the glint in her eyes when she asked that.
“Uh,” he stopped to rack his brain, not having considered the option. “Plan B,” he blurted out.
Katherine deflated slightly. “And that is?”
Jacob might need to adjust his opinion on Katherine’s hate of aliens from xenophobic to xenocidal.
He shook that thought away as he answered her question. “Sever the docking clamps holding Melody in place, then make a run for it. The ship is technically operational.”
Plan B should really be more like ‘Plan Why?’ since it was such a shitty idea. The docking clamps were massive things, some of which acted as airlocks to the ship. It would require tons of explosives or weeks of work to cut through them all. Jacob considered using the station’s own void cannons to remove the obstacles, but he had a feeling the station had restrictions in place about firing on its own infrastructure. Melody certainly had.
If the void cannons aboard Melody weren’t still heaps of scrap, he could have used those. Then again, that could just have landed him in the same boat as the other ship that attacked the station, and Melody didn’t even have shields to protect against void cannon fire.
“Okay,” Barry said, interrupting Jacob’s train of thought. “Let’s say the aliens agree to vacate their vessel. What is the end goal of your plan? We already know you can’t transfer yourself, and the AI core is far too large to move.”
Jacob really wanted to live, but if his plan failed, he didn’t want Katherine and Barry to die with him. That’s why he suggested they be ready to move their data storage so they could all escape together. At least someone would survive to tell Earth what actually happened in that case. He didn’t trust Franky to do that.
Of course, they would likely be forced to stop Franky as well, so it wasn’t like they would be entirely free to do what they wanted.
He wasn’t sure the aliens would destroy the station, but it’s what he would do if he were in their shoes. Why leave something around that could repair or even build more planetary conditioning vessels when you could simply get rid of it? He told the pair as much, and they reluctantly agreed to help with the plan.
***
Barry sighed as he worked to direct the drones in patching holes in the station. When he had agreed to help Jacob, he had done so reluctantly. While he believed that Jacob was probably going to die, he wasn’t convinced that the Astryx would destroy such an important tactical asset, such as the station.
Normally, Barry would wash his hands of such drama so he could focus on his research, but he wasn’t completely heartless. Jacob had saved his life, so he would at least try to balance the karmic scales.
That being said, he had expected the man to have a better plan than trying to steal the alien’s spaceship if he didn’t succeed in whatever his so-called Plan A involved.
While manually helping to plug holes wasn’t all that interesting, Barry did improve his mental control with the other two drones that Jacob had assigned to him. He found that the trick was not trying to split his focus into all three to control them independently. Instead, he acted as a central control node, giving them quick command updates remotely. It wasn’t nearly as efficient as mentally diving into the drones to control them directly, but it was far more effective than allowing them to work under their own direction, almost like controlling them using a remote.
Jacob had warned him and Katherine about trying to split their minds when he assigned each of them three of the maintenance drones, but Barry had still wanted to test that out for himself. It had not gone well. He woke up four hours later. Luckily, nobody had found him in such a compromised position because he had moved into his own apartment. His work zone was also separated from the others, so they could maximize their repair efforts, and his work stoppage hadn’t been noticed.
Barry still wanted to experiment with splitting his focus into multiple drones, but he decided any further attempts could wait until after he was done helping Jacob.
Once the drones patched the last hole in the corridor, Barry contacted the others. “You can pressurize my section.”
“That took a lot longer than I thought. Was the damage worse than expected?” Jacob asked.
“It just took me some time to get used to handling all three drones,” Barry replied, not wanting to get into what had caused his four-hour delay.
“That’s fine. The delay was actually helpful. The station just finished building the mobile transport tube, so we can transfer the people off the ship.”
“Do you need me for anything else?” Barry asked.
“I don’t need anything, but I would suggest you start gathering those spare data storage units from Franky’s old space and moving them close to the hangar. Those storage units won’t be enough to house both you and Katherine, but more are being produced as we speak. If the judicator arrives before there are enough spares, you’ll just have to do a partial transfer, then move parts of your old storage into their ship.”
“And Katherine is okay with that?” Barry asked.
Jacob hesitated. “Well, she’s already got a head start on you, so the split isn’t going to be even when it comes to Franky’s old storage.”
“I see,” Barry said.
If he actually planned on leaving the station, the woman’s selfish actions might upset him. As things stood, he planned on staying, so her haste in securing as many storage units as possible for herself was merely amusing.
Barry had no plans to inform Jacob that he was staying. The man had enough going on without having to worry about him staying.
He would communicate his plans with Katherine, however. He didn’t want any unfortunate misunderstandings with the woman. Resource shortages tended to make people act irrationally. Those that could be the difference between life and death, doubly so. He should know; forcing those sorts of shortages on his enemies in games was one of his favorite methods of disrupting and controlling his opponents’ actions.