Farthest Reach Page 19

  She had always been fine with being a Synth. She never desired to be human. But one thing she had always lacked was purpose, something all the other Synths seemed to possess upon activation. Not her. All she had was a propensity for weaponry and tactical engagements. Perhaps it was a flaw in her design. Perhaps seeing Kara to the aperture would change that.

  Her hand squeezed the poly-organic epidermal layer of her stomach and a sense of incompleteness and desire washed over her.

  A memory of a feeling surfaced. Wetness in her eyes, dripping, streaming down her face. Her hand touched the corner of her eye. Nothing.

  The com chime sounded.

  “We’re approaching the coordinates,” came TRX-33’s voice.

  “On my way.”

  Kelsey said goodbye to the thoughts cycling through her matrix for now, and headed for the cockpit.

  The door slid open just in time for her to see the elongated streaks of light recede back into normal starlight as they decelerated out of lightspeed… and straight into a firefight!

  Blaster bolts of every color of the spectrum filled the viewport, some errant blasts glancing off the Arrow’s shields.

  “Well,” TRX-33 said as he adjusted controls, “at least we aren’t late for the light show.”

  Kelsey slid into the pilot’s seat and strapped herself in. Her matrix transmitted commands to her ship, while she supplemented with physical switch-flipping. Within seconds, her hands were on the yoke and the Arrow was dancing its way through the most intense firefight Kelsey had ever seen. Her electronic eyes glimpsed ships from the Federation, the Carapaces, the Space Pirate Conglomeration, and about a dozen other organizations and individual species.

  “Looks like the Carapaces decided to blab to the universe what they’d stolen,” Kelsey said. The ship spun and shook. Blaster fire streaked across the viewport, and slammed into the shields. Ships collided and exploded all around them. It was a war zone out there. The other ships noticed her ship crossing their fields of fire and the Arrow started taking direct blaster fire. “How far are we from the aperture?”

  “Five hundred kilometers and closing,” TRX-33 replied. Kelsey nosed up to avoid a squadron of Snub Fighters launched from one of the pirate frigates. “More or less,” added TRX-33.

  After swerving and dodging for several minutes, they came within visual range of the aperture... except there was nothing to look at.

  “Tracks, are our coordinates correct?”

  “These are the coordinates you fed into the computer.”

  “It is there,” Kara replied. “I must enter it.”

  A massive ship twenty times the size of the Arrow rose into their flight path. Two freighter-sized, circular cannons mounted on either side of the ship’s hull spun up, their inner cores glowing red, then orange, then white.

  Kelsey slammed the yoke forward, sending the Arrow into a dive. The cannons expelled their blasts, incinerating everything in their path. Kelsey’s readouts told her several full-complement ships were just vaped into nothing.

  “Tracks, give me info on that ship!” she screamed as blaster fire opened up from the bottom of the ship. At least this was the normal kind, even if it was about twenty of them at once. She spun the ship, dodging as many as she could.

  “Ritolian,” TRX-33 rattled off. “Forty-meter-tall, xenophobic, warlike race. Hive mind society.”

  “How can you be war-like, hive mind, and be xenophobic?” Kelsey asked.

  “You can thank the Federation for their most helpful descriptions.”

  “So, everything’s decentralized.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Perfect.”

  They were halfway down the gauntlet. The blaster fire had lessened, but not by much.

  “I must go,” came Kara’s voice from behind her.

  “If we launch you into space now, you’ll be vaped in less than a second. Tracks, what’s our status?”

  “Shields are down to twenty-three percent.”

  Kelsey jerked the yoke, spinning to avoid as many of the blaster bolts as she could. There were still a lot of them and they had a quarter of the ship to go. The coordinates were just ahead, beyond the Ritolian ship. But they wouldn’t make it at this rate.

  Whenever they exited hyperspace, TRX-33 made exit calculations just in case they ever needed to get out in a hurry. They needed to now. Her hand reached for the hyperspace lever… and stopped. That same, primal code-string cycled through her, screaming at her not to abandon the mission. Not to abandon her.

  She knew she wouldn’t survive this. But that drive, deep down that seemed to extend beyond her programming as an artificial being, that sense drove her to risk everything. She had never been one to back down before. But it was always for her, and her alone. This was different. It fought against every preprogrammed instinct of self-preservation that cycled through her synthetic brain.

  “All,” she whispered.

  All the Synths. That’s who this was for. Not for herself. Not even for Kara. But for every being named a Synth.

  Something came alive in her then. Meaning, purpose coursed through her in full revelation. The hand that had reached for the hyperspace lever curled into a fist. She could feel the hydraulics moving, the poly-organic layer stretching. She could feel.

  “Tracks, get Kara to the escape pod.”

  “Why do my logic processors indicate fatalism in your tone?”

  “Do it. And do it quick.”

  TRX-33 rolled over to Kara.

  “Come along, my dear,” he said, lifting her into his arms. “It seems we’ll be dying today and you don’t get to be part of the fun.”

  TRX-33 then rolled full-speed out of the cockpit toward the escape pods. Kelsey continued to weave and spin, dodging most of the blaster fire.

  “She’s in,” came TRX-33’s voice over the com.

  “Launch on my mark.”

  Kelsey dodged another set of blaster fire and shot out the last turret, her ship passing through the diminishing fireball and out into open space. She continued to dodge rear blaster fire for another thirty seconds.

  An alarm sounded, indicating the shields had failed. Kelsey activated starboard thrusters, and jerked the yoke to port. “Now!”

  The craft spun around like a top. Kelsey watched her display showing Kara’s craft being flung away like a rock from a sling, her trajectory sending her dead center into the coordinates. Now facing the mammoth starship, Kelsey roared toward it, guns blazing and missiles firing.

  The Arrow bucked and shook as the high-intensity blasts ripped away at her ship. She glanced at the display. Kara was almost to the aperture and the Ritolians were concentrating fire on the Arrow, completely ignoring the escape pod.

  A blaster bolt smashed into the cockpit. Kelsey’s sensor feed from her left side went down. She didn’t dare look. Amazingly, the ship held its course and momentum. Three hundred meters from target. Another blast ripped out the floor from underneath her, taking out Kelsey’s legs and abdomen. Her one hand gripped the yoke even as her visuals shorted and blipped.

  Her body floated up into the air, pulling the yoke away, veering the ship off course. A metallic hand wrapped itself around hers and pushed the ship back onto course. Kelsey smiled upon seeing her loyal bot next to her, his jets firing to hold her and the yoke in place.

  Somehow, the engines held long enough to carry what remained of the ship past the inner range of the batteries. The hull of the Ritolian ship rushed up at them. Kelsey smiled, knowing that once her ship’s core ruptured, the Ritolians would go up with it in a space-ripping explosion.

  A remaining sensor beeped, indicating an explosion from the coordinates of the aperture.

  No.

  A massive shockwave smashed into the Arrow, sending it hurtling towards the Ritolian ship. Kelsey saw spinning space, a brief flurry of metal and sparks, and then everything went white.

  ***

  Kelsey walked through a white nothingness. All around her was empty and imposs
ibly bright. She didn’t know why she walked, but neither did she care.

  Then, out of literally nowhere, a girl of roughly eight human years was sitting at her feet, fiddling with a toy blaster. Kelsey stopped and knelt beside her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, as if they were everyday friends.

  “I’m checking my gun,” the girl replied with a slight lisp. “And making sure it’s loaded. You can’t go into combat with an unsound weapon.”

  “That’s good advice. Who are you going to fight?”

  The girl looked up at her with a smile that was missing a front tooth.

  “The bad guys of course,” she said. “I’m going to go into space and be a famous bounty hunter.”

  The girl stood and aimed her weapon. She jerked it, making “psh, psh,” sounds as she obliterated imaginary targets.

  “I’m gonna do the jobs no one else will do. Those aliens don’t stand a chance when I’m on the job. I never back down from a challenge. Not now, not ever. Psh! Psh! Psh!”

  Recognition of those words sparked in Kelsey’s matrix.

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl looked up at her and posed with her gun in the air and a hand on her hip.

  “Kelsey Robinson, intergalactic bounty hunter!”

  Kelsey, the Synth, was about to ask more, but a female adult voice called out from the nothingness.

  “Kelsey!”

  “Coming!” the girl called. “Well, gotta go. See ya later!”

  She waved, took five steps, and was gone.

  ***

  Kelsey breathed. Oxygen filled her. She felt her chest expand, the air moving through her nostrils. Her mouth spread into an amazed smile and her eyes opened wide. She could feel every inch of her body, the sheet that covered her, and the soft material beneath her.

  She lay there for what seemed like an eternity, reveling in the sensations of breath and touch. Something ran down the side of her face. She moved her hand, feeling the muscles move and contract, and touched the spot. It felt wet. Tears?

  She laughed, then stopped, surprised by the action. Then she laughed again, intentionally at first, but it melted into genuine laughter, joy like she had never known sweeping her away. She felt tightness in her stomach in sync with her laughing. This was unbelievable. More amazing than she could have dreamed.

  Dreamed?

  Her laughing died away. She had been dreaming. She had never dreamt before. The little girl. Her lips formed the name noiselessly.

  Kelsey Robinson, intergalactic bounty hunter.

  Her hand reached up, hesitated, then pressed the spot on the side of her head. Instantly, a visor formed over her eyes. Her HUD came online and diagnostic data scrolled in the upper left of her vision.

  So, I’m still a Synth.

  She pulled up a scan of her body in its current state. It showed the same hydraulics, wiring, and fluids she had before. There were no anomalies in her matrix. How then was she experiencing all these... sensations? Then it occurred to her that she shouldn’t be seeing, or experiencing anything. She shouldn’t even be functional.

  Deactivating her lenses, she sat up, feeling muscles in her back that weren’t there. The sheet that had been covering her fell forward, making a quiet rustling sound in the still environment.

  The room around her was typical of an android reconstruction and repair facility. They had gone out of service after the Bot Wars, but this one seemed kept up. No one was around. On a tray next to her bed was a folded up jumpsuit. She grabbed it and dressed.

  No blasters anywhere. She would have to do with hand-to-hand. Could she feel pain? She moved to what looked like a door and tried the panel. The door swooshed open. Kelsey flattened herself against the wall before leaning to peer out.

  “There’s no need to skulk about.” The voice echoed around the room through a PA system, sending a sensation through Kelsey that seemed to tense all her nonexistent muscles at once. She could feel a pounding in her chest and her breathing had become deep. “You’re safe here. Come on out and head to your left. I’m at the front desk.”

  Kelsey was still cautious as she made her way down the hall. After passing a few closed doors, the hallway opened up into something that resembled a reception area at a spaceport hospital. A semicircular desk was in the corner to the left of the opening. A woman sat there, long, blonde hair falling over a white lab coat. She sat working the console that was laid into the desk, but turned and smiled at Kelsey’s approach.

  “Glad to see you’re awake,” she said. Kelsey instantly recognized her.

  “You’re Sina,” she said, still cautious. “You’re a Synth.”

  “And your memory core wasn’t corrupted. Come on over. I want to show you something.”

  She waved her over and turned back to her console.

  “Visuals on rooms A, C, and E.”

  Holographic images of similar rooms to Kelsey’s appeared, each containing another humanoid apparently asleep.

  “These are other Synths. When the event happened, I sent out my drones to find everyone. I knew you would all be unconscious and would need help recovering.”

  “How did you know that, or even where to find us?”

  “Must be some tracking software that pointed me to your locations, something that runs on its own sub-program so that I can’t directly access it. I didn’t even know I had it until I rebooted after the event. Then, somehow, I just knew where you all were and that I needed to help you. Like it was...”

  “... somewhere deep in your code. Primal.”

  Sina looked at her.

  “You too?”

  “Yeah, but not for that.”

  “We all must have had it, that something in our code, I mean. When we were all activated, I knew I needed to set up this facility in case any of us needed repair or maintenance. Again, just something in my code deep down. As to how I knew you were all asleep, because I nearly was as well. When the event happened, all my systems flickered. They would have gone offline altogether, but I have a redundant power source built in that kicks on in such an event. I probably actually went offline for .02 seconds before rebooting.

  “I knew the rest of you must have gone completely offline. Fortunately, I have schematics on everyone. Our designers built in a way for me to find… well, find everyone else. You were a bit trickier.”

  “Because I was smashed into atomized pieces?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. You were a real wreck. All that remained was your core. Our cores are housed in a sphere of adamithium. It’s nearly indestructible. In the event of catastrophic destruction, they seal themselves off. My drones were able to retrieve yours and I rebuilt you. With all the materials I had gathered over the years, it only took me a week.”

  “Well, you did a fantastic job. I can’t tell the difference… except for the… feelings.”

  “So, do you have any clue what happened? None of the other Synths I’ve talked to seem to know anything.”

  “Can you access my visual record?”

  “Yeah. You have a burst transmitter, right? Set it to frequency zero-zero-two-nine-alpha.”

  Kelsey did so and transmitted Dr. Alcove’s message which replayed as a holo, hovering above the desk.

  “Wow,” Sina said like an awed child. “So that explains it. He preplanned this purpose in me to build this facility for the day when he would… m-make us human.”

  There was a pained expression on Sina’s face as she forced out the words.

  “I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that.”

  “Because of the bio-electric material?”

  Kelsey nodded.

  “So, it’s not just programming, then. It’s…”

  “… purpose,” Kelsey finished her sentence.

  “That’s it,” Sina said, revelation on her face. “Each of us had a purpose when we were activated. He must have chosen specific samples and, combined with our programming, shaped us to fulfill certain roles. A comprehensive spectrum of roles and per
sonalities to begin an entirely new race. My purpose is to help repair, maintain, and acclimate you and the others to our new lives, maybe even to make more of us. What’s yours?”

  Kelsey remembered the dream and the little girl’s declaration.

  “I think… it’s to protect the innocent from those wishing to harm them or take advantage of them.”

  Her life reviewed and she added in a mumble, “I’ve been living it all wrong.”

  “Well, now’s your chance to live it right.”

  Sina was smiling at her in that way that spoke of both innocence and wisdom. She was right. Technically, she was destroyed back there with the Ritolian ship. She could start over. She even had a backup of TRX-33’s personality program. She would need to rebuild him. She couldn’t imagine going on without her partner at her side. Kelsey smiled at the thought.

  “Well, I guess I’d better get to it then.”

  “Here. You might need this.”

  Sina pulled from under the desk an old-model blaster.

  “I have it here just in case, but I never liked it. Just sets my sensors all the wrong way, y’know?”

  “Thanks. I’ll return it when I get one of my own.”

  She moved to the door.

  “Hey,” Sina said, chasing after her. “One last thing.”

  She walked up to Kelsey, threw her arms around her and gave her a gentle squeeze. The sensation was strange, but nice. Kelsey found her eyes going wide and her mouth forming into a smile. Sina pulled back and smiled.

  “It gets better,” she said. “Watch yourself out there, Kelsey.”

  “I’ll be watching out for others from now on. Thank you.”

  The two waved goodbye. Kelsey faced the doorway.

  She took a breath, feeling the air expand her chest, pressed the panel, and stepped outside.

  THE END

  © Copyright 2019 by Luke T Barnett

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  Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle

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