Grinde Galaxy Chapter 5

 

Chapter 5

Crawling through the vents put me closer to the warp than I had expected. I could feel the tendrils of chaos reaching through the ship’s thin outer hull and inserting itself into my brain. I had once been friends with a navigator, so I knew what to expect.

Navigators were humans who could use their psychic power to pilot ships through the warp. The warp itself was difficult to deal with. Filled with the gods of chaos and brimming with madness-inducing psychic waves, the warp was not a friendly place to be. Lots of precautions had to be taken to prevent total collapse of the mental state of any crew within a ship traveling the warp.

I climbed through the vents for a bit to familiarize myself with the layout. The ship Atlas was larger than a small hive city. I only knew where I was going thanks to my innate sense of direction.

I noticed, through a vent grate, that some engine room complexes were completely sealed off and abandoned. However, I still sensed life inside of them. I made a decision and exited the vents to scout out one of these dead engine rooms.

Inside were skeletons. Hundreds and hundreds of skeletons. They looked to be quite old from how decomposed their clothing was. Nothing left but dust and bones. I walked through the room full of bones.

My instinctual sense triggered and I dove for the ground. A splash of violent acid struck the place I had been a split second before. I looked up.

“Well then.” I backed towards the vent that I had entered through. The main door to the engine room had been sealed long before.

My foe was a spider-like creature with huge scythes for hands and a large, bulbous cranium. Its eyes were bright red, and they bored into me.

A powerful psychic blast emanated from the monster’s mind. I was able to defend myself against it by shielding my mind. I had practice with these kinds of things.

Yelling, I picked up an ancient laser pistol that was in the grip of a skeleton hand. I hoped to the Emperor that it still worked.

It didn’t. The gun fizzled and shot sparks from its barrel, barely reaching the level of a sparkler. I tossed the gun aside.

The spider creature scuttled across the wall, its mandibles clicking.

There’s a weak point in the bulkhead exactly two meters and five centimeters to your left, half a meter up.

The voice echoed powerfully through my mind.

Not wasting any time validating the situation, I dove for the wall, slamming into it with brute force. The wall collapsed and I spilled into a sewage treatment pipeline. The flowing sewage gripped me and washed me down the pipe before the monster could get off another acid ball. The spider monster stuck its head into the hole, but did not pursue.

Not everyone survives their first encounter with a synth crawler. Especially unarmed.

“Synth? On this ship?” I crossed my arms and let the sewage flow take me where it will.

Now you will come to a fork. Go right.

The fork appeared with frightening speed, and I just managed to push myself down the right pipe.

Now you will see a platform. Climb it.

I grabbed at a ladder that came up out of the darkness. The ladder lead to the platform the voice spoke of. There was a single door, reading “storage” in Royal Validian, a language spoken mainly by the nobles and the elite of the Empire.

I pushed at the door and it scraped open. The storage room inside was cut off from any other entrance—not even a vent. The door slid shut behind me, trapping me inside with a bang.

“Hello?” I grabbed my light torch and turned it on. “Anyone here?”

I’m the little VCR in the corner.

“What the hell is a VCR? What language are you speaking? I know Royal Validian and Basic, but I don’t recognize that word.”

Sigh. I’m speaking basic. I’m inside the black rectangle with beeping red lights.

“Ah, right. I see it.” I picked up the object in question.

Now please plug me in to an interface device. I know you have one.

“Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to have it, so please don’t—”

Idiot. I’m not going to destroy on my only chance of getting out of here.

“Um, okay.” I plugged the aux cord connected to my—illegal—interface device.

“Whoo!” The voice that came out spoke the most perfect Basic I had ever heard. I was able to tell even from the single word.

“Shucks.” The voice was beautiful. “Well then. Thanks for saving me. I assume you have a lot of questions.”

“Um, yeah.” I scratched my head. “First off, are you the AI that Jones was talking about?”

“I’m the only AI on this ship, so probably!” The voice chuckled, which was musical in its tone. “You wanted to ask a question?”

“Yeah. Where is the chronomicon?”

“Oh, yeah, the chronomicon. Nice one. Yeah I have absolutely no idea.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“No dice. You’ll need authorization for that.”

“From who?”

“Just kidding. No, I know the answer, I just don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“You’re fine with that?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, eventually I’ll figure it out.”

The AI was silent. Then it spoke again. “You’ve got a strange biosignature.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Have you ever been tested for psychic powers?” The AI sounded interested.

“Um, no.”

“Well you should.” The AI’s tone was final. “Oh, and while I know your name is Mythe, you don’t know my name yet.”

“I didn’t think AI constructs had names.”

The AI’s voice became jolly. “The name’s Allen.”

“Allen? That’s it?”

The AI chuckled. “Sure. What, were you expecting something different?”

“I suppose I was expecting something more, Tolky.”

“While I am a Tolk construct, I have chosen to choose a moniker that fits within the language that I speak with an individual. Thus, Allen.”

“Okay. I get it. You’re speaking basic because I speak it.” I switched to Royal Validian. “So what’s your name in this language?”

“Ooh!” Allen switched to Royal Validian as easily as I had. “Call me Atriax.”

“I think I prefer Allen.” I switched back to basic. “Why are you on this ship?”

“I was put here by one of your primitive scientists. I believe it called itself a tech priest?”

“What, do you not know about the Cardinal Archy?”

“Archy? Sounds familiar. But I’ve been in this here closet for many hundreds of cycles. Much has probably changed out there.”

“Hundreds of cycles? How old is this ship?”

“This ship was commissioned on the sixth of Vibril, ten ten sixteen.”

“My god. That was over three thousand years ago.”

“Hm. My internal clock must have gone whack. Maybe it’s because your stupid navigator wasn’t calibrating his swath procedures right.”

“The skill of this ship’s navigator aside, what kind of an AI are you?”

“I’m an operational assistance AI. My job is to run the copier.”

“Copier?”

Allen sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to know about ancient Tolk technology. A copier produces a copy of any physical object. Basically it is a fountain of material goods.”

“Ooh! Can you show it to me?”

“It was taken offline centuries ago. It’s gone.” Allen’s voice showed a sense of sorrow.

“Can we get it working?”

“Did you hear what I just said? It’s beyond repair! Are you daft?”

I frowned. “If you say so.” I tapped my interface device. “So do you think you can upload your entire code into my interface device? I don’t think I can hide that huge box you’re in right now.”

Allen’s VCR thingy blinked. Then my interface device shuddered.

Allen’s voice came through clearer through my interface device. “Ooh. This place is a lot roomier than I thought it would be. Considering the level of technological development I’ve observed aboard this ship.”

“Yeah, my interface device is special.”

“I can see that. Hm, a piece of Tolk software? How did you get your hands on that?”

“I told you I know my stuff.”

“Well, if you bring me off this ship, I’ll reward you handsomely.” Allen’s voice sounded hopeful. “I’ve been cooking in this stupid storeroom for far, far too long. I wish I could grant you a wish like a genie, but like I said I’ve lost my copier.”

“Can you tell me which of these piles of junk is its remains?”

Allen sighed. “The one below my black box.”

I looked down on the bottom rack of the shelf that Allen’s operational device was sitting. “Oh.” It was a total mess of wires, buttons, and broken fusion cores. I took out my portable wallet, opening it. The wallet’s interdimensional door flashed into being. I picked up the remains of the copier and tossed them in. Then I closed the wallet.

“You amaze me.” Allen’s voice was genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, not many people really know how deep I go.”

“Ooh, you’re being philosophical.” Allen chuckled. “Maybe a bit overdone?”

“Forget I ever said that.” I looked around the room one more time. “Okay. One last thing. How in the world is a synth aboard this ship without anyone knowing?”

“Oh, about that.” My interface device blinked. “This ship is older and more complex than anyone of this generation knows. There are so many hidden corners here. It’s possible that there are hundreds of aliens aboard this thing. Or what you homo sapiens would call aliens.”

“But …” I thought about it for a minute. “I get it. This place is ancient. The Empire is only two thousand years old. This ship predates it by a thousand years. Of course there would be stowaways.”

My interface device beeped. “Now let’s get out of here. You’ll have to wade through sewage for a bit, but I’ll give you the best way out of here.”

I started towards the exit. “Do you have a complete schematic of the Atlas?”

“Again, no dice. Many of my memory banks have been damaged or lost over the years. I haven’t lost everything, but even your mechanic crews don’t know the full extent of this behemoth.”

“What do you know about the synth?” I jumped into the flowing river of sewage ad began wading.

“Synth are a bioaccumulating life form whose only goal is to consume as much useful matter as possible.”

“I mean, I knew that already. What can you tell me that I don’t know?”

“Take the next ladder that appears around the corner.” My interface device vibrated. “Well, I don’t know much about the synth myself. I only know what I’ve been able to glean from this ship’s holo library.”

“I suppose that would be limiting. The tech priests and inquisitors don’t keep sensitive information there.” I took the next ladder and began climbing. “Oh, I think I know where we are.” We were in a space that I remembered walking through. I entered the hallway through a grate in the floor. Since I probably smelled really bad, I made sure I didn’t meet anyone.

Finally I made it to the wash room, which was only a hallway away from the speakeasy. I did my best to clean myself with my meager bath ration. When I was done I stepped out of the shower.

Draw entered the room. She grabbed my wrist and started dragging me. “Come on, ace in the hole. We have some work to do.”

“Um, I don’t think—”

“We just got challenged to a high stakes game. We need you to be our designated player.”

“Okay, okay, sure.”

My interface beeped.

I’ll talk to you telepathically while other people are around. But hey, I didn’t think katar would still be around after all this time.

I smiled, not speaking. I still hadn’t learned how to communicate telepathically.

We entered the speakeasy, and I looked up at the playing table. This would probably be easy. However, I couldn’t let my guard down. I went up to the table and sat down, cracking my knuckles.

“Let’s get this over with.”