The Pandora Paradox Read online

  "He's completely out of his mind. There's no graceful way to say this, so I'll just spit it out. The little fucker stole my ship."

  "I’m sorry…you said what?"

  "Jacob somehow overrode my security measures at the hangar on S'Tora and stole the Phoenix," Jason said, looking more embarrassed than angry. "There were two battlesynths with him, so I'm assuming that's how he knew where to find her."

  "Damnit," Webb sighed. "I'd hoped once he couldn't gain access to the resources he'd need for his new mission he'd give up and come back in. Apparently, I've not given him enough credit. I'm assuming since the Phoenix is a ship sometimes used in criminal enterprise, you have no way to track her?"

  "None," Jason said. "This presents us with a couple problems. I can't exactly reach out to my contacts in the underworld and ask them to be on the lookout for my ship someone stole. I'd lose considerable cred among my peers, not to mention there are a few who might want the ship for themselves, which brings me to point number two."

  "If the Phoenix is spotted, people will assume it's Omega Force and may take a crack at a Scout Fleet team that isn't ready for it," Webb finished.

  "Bingo."

  "These are problems, but not problems I feel like I can help with…and believe me, I want nothing more than my reckless lieutenant back and would love to send you after him," Webb said. "What happened to your neck? You and Crusher get into a fight, or you discover a new kink you like?"

  "Huh?"

  "I've heard you can use a belt to— You know what? Not important."

  "You Navy freaks are some nasty bastards." Jason shook his head, frowning. "No…this wasn't a training mishap either. Lucky actually tried to kill me, went a bit haywire for a minute, and now he's run off. That's why I need my ship back. I want to go after him while the rest of my crew continues on with our mission." Webb just stared at him, dumbstruck.

  "I thought Lucky had died on Khepri," he said slowly.

  "Did I say Lucky? I meant Crusher," Jason said.

  "No, you didn't," Webb pressed. "And you said haywire instead of insane. Is Lucky still alive?"

  "All I'll tell you is that there is an artificial being on my crew, and we're calling him Lucky."

  "I suppose it's not important…right now," Webb said. "707 and 784 are still with your kid, 701 returned to Terranovus, and right now, the battlesynths are completely radio silent, nothing coming from their compound out there in the desert."

  "Ideally, I'd love to sneak back to your world and try to talk to 701 myself but diverting all the way down the Orion Arm will put me further behind than I already am," Jason said. "I guess the point of this call is to ask you nicely if you hear anything, let me know. I might have a bit of a guilty conscience where Jacob is concerned, but he isn't keeping my damn ship."

  "I'll keep you in the loop," Webb said. "Honestly, I'd almost want to hire you to try and track him down, but it sounds like you already have your hands full."

  "You have no idea," Jason said. "I'll be in touch."

  He killed the channel on his end before Webb could even reach his hand up to his terminal's control panel. There was a lot to take in from that conversation. He was very interested in whatever it was Burke referred to as Lucky that had also tried to kill him. Had they found a way to resurrect Lucky himself? Webb knew very little about the technical details regarding battlesynths, but from what he understood, the processing matrix was a unique thing that couldn't just be downloaded and copied.

  Was Burke so heartsick over the loss of his friend and protector that he'd just found some other battlesynth to name Lucky, and this one was mentally unbalanced? Or—and this was far more likely—had they found another battlesynth and months of being stuck on a ship with the Omega Force crew had driven it mad? All speculation that would have to wait since what he was really interested in was the fact Jacob Brown hadn't just stolen a ship, he'd stolen the ship. The Phoenix was a powerful weapon and, in the right hands, a real game changer when brought to bear. If Brown was still going after Margaret Jansen, at least he wasn't going with some broken down old smuggling scow.

  "Shit."

  Jason kicked himself mentally for the slip up when talking to Webb. Lucky's resurrection was being kept a secret, sort of. There were some legalities surrounding the use of the Gen2 battlesynth body as well as transfer of a primary processing matrix. Now that the quadrant had bigger issues to deal with, however, he doubted any regulatory agency would come knocking asking about his illegal Frankenstein experiment that had just tried to squeeze his head off. He was worried sick about where Lucky was and what he was doing right now, but he just didn't have the time or resources to do anything about it.

  "Captain, you're on watch in ten," Kage's voice came over the intercom.

  "Thanks. On my way."

  13

  Jason normally didn't condone drinking while being in control of a sixty-thousand-ton interstellar warship, but the corvette was so autonomous that most of the time you were just babysitting the computers. He didn't even really remember grabbing the bottle of whiskey from the Command Deck lounge before coming up and assuming his six-hour bridge watch. Kage had just raised one eyebrow at him while giving turnover but didn't say anything as he took one more look at the bottle and slunk off the bridge.

  The Devil's Fortune was so new and advanced, a six-hour watch while in slip-space was one of the most monotonous things Jason had ever done. Before long, he'd gone back to the mini-galley at the back of the bridge and got himself a glass and ice. The whiskey was a bottle out of the second test batch his Irish distillers on S'Tora had produced for him. The crew was busily tweaking their process and training up the locals but, so far, the results were promising. Whenever his business manager arranged for tastings, his whiskey always garnered rave reviews, and there was never any left over after an event.

  He was so engrossed in the music he was playing over the overhead speakers and the mellow taste of the Irish-style whiskey that he hadn't heard anyone walk up onto the bridge. When a massive, clawed, dark-skinned hand eased a second glass with ice in it around from behind him, he nearly jumped out of the seat. Maintaining as much of his dignity as he could, he filled Crusher's glass and waited while the hulking brute settled himself into one of the observation seats.

  They sat without speaking for several minutes, each staring out at the simulated moving starfield Jason liked to project up on the ship's main display when it was in slip-space. When the song changed, Crusher cocked his head to one side and listened intently.

  "What song is this?" he asked.

  "Rock and Roll Girls," Jason said. "By a dude named John Fogerty."

  "It's very nice, but not really your normal fare."

  "This is the kind of stuff my old man used to listen to. Takes me back."

  "Feeling a little nostalgic?" Crusher asked.

  "Just reflecting on the nature of fathers and sons…and maybe mistakes I've made as both," Jason sighed. "I wasn't a particularly good son, and I sure as hell won't be nominated for father of the year anytime soon."

  "If you want to peel off this mission to go get your boy out of trouble, I don't think anyone here would argue with that," Crusher said.

  "Then who would go get Lucky? And who would gather the intel we need on whatever the hell it is the Machine is building out there?" Jason asked, a little bitterness creeping into his voice. "Jacob needed me to be a father well before he grew to be a man and joined the Marines, but I just dumped him back with his grandparents and took off. I mean, I really didn't even try to find a workable solution where we could be together."

  "I was there. Your own people were hunting you, and there was no practical way you were going to be able to stay on Earth without them finding you," Crusher said. "Couple that with your mate dying, and the boy himself not being particularly eager to meet you, and it was probably for the best you left him with what he knew. You didn't walk away from some warm family dynamic, and he wasn't exactly begging you to stay."

&nb
sp; "Don't try to cheer me up with your relentless logic," Jason slurred.

  "I feel like the solution to your problem is to get the intel we need as quickly as we can, then we'll be freed up to chase after your kid…probably."

  "What do you mean probably?" Jason asked.

  "I don't think the Machine is going to give us any sort of reprieve," Crusher said. "All this shit it's been doing, it feels like we're coming up on the point of it soon. If you're right and this thing is back in the superweapon business, I'll bet it'll invade the Avarian Empire after killing off the Saabror Protectorate completely."

  "I still think we're missing some key component of what's motivating it," Jason said. "We're putting too much stock in the 'oh, it's just insane' excuse for why we're not seeing the big picture. For an insane intelligence, it sure does manage to keep a step ahead of everyone without ever screwing up."

  "So, which target are we going out to again?" Crusher asked.

  "It's a site that appears to be building seven massive, identical constructs," Jason said. "It's the largest project they have going, so we hope it'll also be the least secure."

  "I think you have that backwards," Crusher said, shaking his empty glass at Jason for a refill.

  "Think about it. The larger the project, the more labor and logistics you have. It makes security that much harder." Jason filled the glass before topping off his own. "The two smaller ones will have tighter coverage because there are fewer ships moving in and out."

  "And what's your brilliant plan to recon this monster? I don't think they're going to let you just fly past it with your unregistered warship without at least asking you a few questions."

  "I'm still working on that," Jason admitted. "Kage and I will hammer out the details for most of tomorrow."

  "Then you need to give me the rest of this." Crusher deftly plucked the bottle from Jason's hand. "If I'm going to have to risk my ass on this mission, I'd rather the people doing the planning did so without a hangover."

  "Fair enough."

  "Why are we doing this, Jason?" Crusher asked after a long moment.

  "I already told you that—"

  "I mean, why are we doing this particular mission? We're decent soldiers and can crack a few heads together when needed, but we're not spies. Doesn't Mok have about a hundred people more qualified than us to handle this?"

  "I guess I volunteered us out of some sense of responsibility," Jason said. "Honestly, I didn't really think about the technical challenges involved in sneaking into a system where a top-secret military project was being built."

  "Please, give it some thought," Crusher said. "I'd prefer to not be killed before this rebellion of yours really takes off."

  "I'll do my best," Jason promised.

  "You have no idea how little that comforts me."

  "I think I have an idea."

  "I like how you say that," Kage said. "Like it happens so rarely you're not even sure if you have an idea or not, just a sneaking suspicion."

  "Of all the people to run off, it had to be Lucky and not you," Jason sighed.

  "Fine. What's your idea, Captain?" Kage asked. "The sooner you toss it out here, the sooner we can all laugh at it and move on to the serious planning."

  While Jason and Kage did their usual bickering, Doc and Twingo actually worked. The pair shuffled through the raw images that had been on the data core Mok had gone through so much effort to get them. Twingo in particular looked more and more distraught as he went, stabbing at the tabletop computer of the Devil's planning room with enough ferocity to make everyone stop what they were doing and look at him.

  "You have something to share with the class, Twingo?" Jason asked.

  "We might have a serious problem," Twingo said. "Now that I've been able to go through all the data in a logical manner, I'm seeing some patterns here that should scare you."

  Jason waited as Twingo manipulated different images, stitching them together and sending them to the enormous wall display that dominated the longer bulkhead in the room. As he did, the pattern emerged. The largest of the projects consisted of seven heavy construction cradles, so the assumption had been that they were making seven identical…somethings.

  As Twingo used the computer to manipulate the image, he pulled out the things being built away from all the construction rigging. They could see that the seven pieces would actually fit together to form a roughly spherical construct. The general lines of the object made Jason's blood run cold as he recognized it immediately, or at least where it came from.

  "Looks like every bit of Ancient tech we've run into in the last ten years. It even has those same runes etched into the outer casing," Kage said quietly. "I'm guessing we're looking at another superweapon."

  "What I'm seeing built at the other sites leads me to believe they're also components for this construct and not separate projects," Twingo said. "I've looked through all the material manifests included here. They've been at this for longer than the Machine has been in charge. They started building the cradles shortly after it arrived in ConFed space aboard that battleship. Whatever it's planning, it wasted no time getting started."

  "This has been the plan the entire time," Jason murmured as realization snapped in place. "Taking over the ConFed was never the end goal itself. It usurped the authority of a galactic superpower as a matter of convenience so it could get what it needed to build its new toy." He was dutifully awed by the drive and singular focus of the Machine.

  "And wiping out a neighboring empire?" Kage asked, referring to the Eshquarian Empire that the ConFed conquered in one massive, brutal attack on the homeworld.

  "It was either a distraction or it needed something the Empire had," Jason said. "Given its singlemindedness we're now seeing, I'm inclined to believe the attack had some greater purpose."

  "These two constructs being assembled at two other sites, they could either be a powerplant or part of a primary weapon system." Twingo tapped the screen where blurry images of two massive cylinders sat in their own construction cradles.

  "If it's anything like the star killer we destroyed, it won't be a powerplant," Jason said. "The power requirements were so immense it had to teleport energy in from all over to charge up and fire. Maybe they're part of the machinery that creates a singularity."

  "You're assuming this works just like the last Ancient weapon we encountered," Twingo said. "What I can't figure out is how the Machine is able to construct something like this. Did it carry all the specs and engineering drawings within its own matrix?"

  "What we do know is we're no longer going to look at this site," Jason said, walking over towards the hatch.

  "We're not?" Doc asked.

  "No need. We can say with as much certainty now what this likely is as we would be able to if we snuck into the area and remotely observed it." Jason jabbed a finger on the intercom panel. "Crusher, drop our slip-space velocity by half and bring us on-course for the Concordian Cluster."

  "I don't know how to do that," Crusher's voice came back. Jason saw sparks in his vision, and he clenched his fists, taking in calming breaths for a moment.

  "Doc—"

  "I'll go do it," Doc said, rushing out of the room. Kage just snickered while Twingo looked at Jason with what appeared to be genuine concern.

  "After all this time, you still let him push your buttons." The engineer shook his head and went back to his work.

  By the time Jason had calmed himself enough to go back to the tabletop display, he could feel the Devil's engines lull, and the hull give just the slightest groan as Doc commanded a speed and course change. He pulled up the database links they had for post-invasion Eshquaria. Once the Empire fell, most of their dirty secrets had been laid bare, including their extensive heavy weapons construction, shipbuilding, and R&D.

  "What are you looking for?" Kage asked.

  "The trick won't be to try and look at all the stuff they found after the invasion, that's too much and too random," Jason said. "What I need to know is when a
ll these intel services swarmed into the region, what areas were the ConFed focused on? Other than breaking the back of the Imperial military, the ConFed has left them pretty much untouched. I even heard some rumors that six of their shipyards are taking orders again."

  "So, if your theory that they invaded for something specific holds—"

  "Then it should be comparatively easy to find," Jason said. "It also still checks out if we're assuming they used the invasion as a cover for what was really a raid."

  "Here, let me do it," Kage said, pulling all of Jason's virtual workspace to his own area with a hand gesture. "I can rip through all this data a lot faster with my implant integration."

  "Go for it," Jason said. He instead pulled up the most current navigational data they had for the Cluster, including the Eshquaria Prime star system, and started mapping out all the hazards they would want to avoid. Their latest information came from Mok's operation so there were also helpful notes about law enforcement and military presence on the different worlds they may need to operate on.

  A few minutes later, Crusher ambled into the room, loudly eating a piece of fruit. Everyone at the table looked up at him as one, glaring.

  "What?!"

  "Is there any chance you came down here to try and be helpful?" Jason asked.

  "Doc wouldn't tell me what you were planning down here," Crusher sulked. "Then he kicked me off the bridge."

  "We think that the invasion of the Eshquarian Empire may have been a—"

  "Boring!" Crusher yawned and turned to leave. "Just let me know what we're doing once we get to wherever it is we're going."

  "I'm going to fucking shoot him before this mission is over," Jason said conversationally once Crusher had left, not looking up from the display.

  "You always threaten to shoot him," Kage said distractedly. "You've only actually done it once."

  "Yeah, but this time it will be on purpose."

  "I think I have something," Kage said. "You were right. It was easy to find once you knew what you were looking for. Actually, I’m not even sure how this was missed in the initial aftermath."