BECMI Chapter 125 – Inside the Barhund

“What was that… thing you just said, Lady Edge?” the man on the other end of the com system asked with a quaver in his voice. “The things it made me see, understand…” he got out with great effort. “Simply a Word of Creation, touching on one of the absolute fundamental Virtues of Existence, Corporal Derrimond. Those who know that particular one are often called Truthspeakers.” “It’s making me believe everything you say is true…” he whispered, and I wondered how many other people listening in were now incapacitated… or, if they had been brainwashed, were now utterly and completely jolted free of that condition. The was within three miles, and Magevoice carried a long way. As long as any doors or windows were open, the magic could carry quite a distance. Also, I could infiltrate their own PA system if I so chose, so I could break the entire crew out of the conditioning the captain had forcefully subjugated most of the active crew to. “I notice your hangar deck is open with the force-field activated. I can enter from there to make things simpler,” I encouraged him. “Do you, do you know the layout of the ship?” he asked faintly. I eyed the very detailed schematics lifted from the datapad of a lich who was probably among the current complement of the ship and still alive. “As a matter of fact, I do. Should I hasten to the command deck?” “I am cycling open the force-field to the hangar deck if you would care to enter…” I noticed a ripple along a slitted gap high on the side of the gigantic vessel in the distance. “I will return shortly,” I told Duum and Cirru as I Cast , and then I away to right over there. --- I materialized aboard the hangar deck, looking around at a couple of the green-tinted locals who dropped the tools in their hands as I suddenly materialized among a bunch of shuttles, flitters, and bots of various sorts and colors waiting to be deployed. “,” I said shortly, taking the physical strain of voicing the full Word. Their eyes all turned up in their heads, and they fell to the ground, quivering and shaking as the mandatory brainwashing ran full into a Word of Creation and didn’t come out of it well. The drones, robots, and androids couldn’t even see me, and a Word of Creation would be meaningless garbling to them without some very specific intonations to attune it to artificial intelligences, mostly only good for breaking them out of logic loops or hostile programming overwrites. I drew a more current datapad out of my sleeve and calmly fed my identification and ranking into their computer system, artfully exploiting a whole lot of tricks and holes the late and unlamented Chief Ferrus had left behind to give him access to the ship secretly if and when he returned. Of course, I also had a slew of technomagic spells available to me, and so giving myself a very high security rating, indeed, was not too difficult, and the wonders of programming meant I could do so during my forty years of boredom and unleash a blizzard of such stuff into their systems now, when it was needed. I oriented myself, flicked a hand to myself as one of their race, with the off-white uniform and color codes of an officer, and strode towards the nearest loop station. The didn’t actually have a working teleportation system, which rather amused me, given what I knew of Star Trek. Then again, real-world physics made it plain that Trek transporters couldn’t work without changing some rules of reality, and accessing higher planes and moving through them over distance with precision was a step above and beyond even the hyperspace travel the ship had been capable of. Star Wars didn’t have teleporters, after all, and the Federation only saw some similar stuff when psionics and reality-bending got involved that way. Various super-science novels postulated having and not having teleportation, the restrictions on it, and so forth. None here. The crew of the got around by taking the internal loop system, basically an inertialess fast travel monorail system. It wasn’t that different from the elevator system on the Star Trek vessels, capable of reaching any part of the ship with like thirty seconds of travel time, while making it seem as if you weren’t moving at all. I’d seen videos and instruction manuals on using the Loop, and I waved my false ID at the scanners to enter one, ignoring the local crew, who in turn ignored me as an officer with clearance. If I looked unfamiliar, well, it was a big ship and new people were being released from stasis all the time for this and that unknown purpose. I stepped into the Loop’s car, which had variable options for as small as four to as many as two dozen people transported at a time, simply stacking modular sections together as requested of the system. I sat down as I said into coms, “I’m inside and heading for the command deck, Corporal. How are you holding up?” Support creative writers by reading their stories on NovelFire, not stolen versions. “What, so quickly?” I could hear some motion in the background. “I, uh, see some unconscious people on the hangar deck…” “Like you, their combat conditioning imposed upon them has been broken. They are sleeping it off.” “Ah.” I heard him swallow. “It, it… thank you for that, Lady Edge. I’m a loyal man, but it felt like my thoughts were held in a vice, that I was a prisoner in my own head, silently screaming to be let out, and I didn’t even realize it…” “It was my pleasure, Corporal. I would patch into your public address system and administer the same cure unilaterally, but it should probably wait for an appropriate time, since it will likely cripple the active crew.” “Will it affect sleeping members?” he asked cautiously. “Of course, Corporal.” “Then we can simply issue a general lock-down of the ship for the time needed and do so immediately. The automated systems should have little problem protecting the ship during the intermediate time period…” “Mmm. You are advocating I do so immediately, Corporal?” I asked coms archly. During our conversation, I’d been shooting through a transparisteel tube at high speed, racing between the modular components that made up the internal structure of the ship. Living quarters alternated with research and production facilities, and there seemed to be a rather large number of holding cells and stasis chambers for alien lifeforms, which sent up all kinds of flags to me. I knew the was an exploration vessel, meant to take samples and specimens from the worlds it visited, but the idea of having a rather large number of likely hostile and breeding-age creatures from alien worlds released on this one naturally made me expectantly nervous of exactly what was going to happen to them. “Kindly engage a full stasis lock-down of the creatures in their containment pods, then, and I suggest everyone return to quarters for a short lock-down period. I am fairly sure you’ve suffered incursions and infiltrations at this point from interested parties of various sorts, and you’re going to be terribly exposed to them.” There were quite a few people wandering the tunnels and corridors paralleling the Loop, even if they were only a fraction of the total number of the actual crew, who were deep in stasis. “I think I can issue a general alert and lock all exits for the duration of the alert. That should clear people out of the public areas and restrict any intruders to just the main corridors,” he replied, tapping merrily away. I was shifted to a vertical tube and went up two decks when the Yellow Alert went off. a reasonably calm and authoritarian voice announced over the speakers, as I returned to horizontal travel and zipped a quarter-mile to my stop. It was only fifty yards to the bridge itself. The halls were emptying of anything moving with great speed as the crew moved to their stations or their abodes, clearing out the hallways as security bots, including the knightly dbots, swung out from positions in the walls behind charging stations and came into place in the corridors. There actually weren’t all that many internal security stations inside the ship, it not being a warship. The androids and bots were the primary internal defenses, in addition to the crew, and the modular connectivity, while offering flexibility of design and versatility, didn’t encourage heavy compartmentalization between areas if not specifically designed for it. The wildlife stasis areas were designed to keep any escaping creatures inside of them, but that could be hugely dependent on exactly what those creatures were… Regardless, I had already forged my security credentials, and the doors to the bridge opened up as I approached them. Paranoid and nervous eyes turned my way as I entered, looked around at the bridge and all its stations arranged in an ergonomic and comfortable circle around the central captain’s station, which currently held a familiar figure in its chair, his head lolled back, blood coming out his nose and shaking slightly. Two other members of the crew who had been listening in to our conversation were also sprawled at their stations, medics attempting to administer to them, and looking around suspiciously at the unannounced lock-down, which probably should have required the captain’s assent. I came to a proper halt, even clicked my heels and stood at attention, which reflexive action made sure they didn’t try to shoot me as I said, Every single green-tinged parahuman crewmember shuddered, their eyes rolled up in their heads, and they collapsed where they stood. There were two armored cyborgs present on the bridge, heavily armored hulks of synthflesh muscles over steel limbs and mechanical organs, the most advanced combat forces the ship could deploy, and wildly illegal to actually bring out in a combat capacity for personal use. The armored fellows, looking like seven-foot tall aliens in armor suits, stood to either side of the command chair, unmoving, still as statues, but plainly not letting anyone else come near the captain. Their heads jerked around sharply at the sound of my voice, and then followed all the members of the bridge crew dropping to the ground as one. Blasters were in hand so fast it looked like a conjuration trick, and their heads and limbs were snapping in all directions as they spun, looking for the source of the sound that had sent the Captain all to twitching wildly again. meant they couldn’t see me, even if they had biomechanical AI’s powering them. I flicked up my technomagic, accessed , and tied it to the fact that they were serving in an illegal capacity and should return to a holding station pending further review of their proper purpose and usage. “Truth,” I informed the two cyborgs in proper Electrocant. Both of them froze as electronic truth overwhelmed their recoded and subverted programming, resetting it to par and furthermore addressing the very things they’d been doing in defiance of their core coding. Just making these two cyborgs for his personal use was enough to cost Captain Emeril his command, not that brainwashing his crew for unconditional loyalty wouldn’t have done the same thing. He was now confronting that truth, being forced to face the fact that his solution was as bad or worse than the problems… but with Section Fourteen-Four in place, the metaphorical ropes tying his hands were lifted, and he could interact with the planetary natives here far more freely than he’d thought. He’d destroyed his career, but the wasn’t going anywhere, and no rescue was coming. It was time to see to the future of his crew and people, and not in the same manner as Chief Ferru. They could do more than survive. At least maybe they could get their children or grand-children back to the stars…