The End of All Things: The First Instalment (13 page)

Ocampo swore and pulled out his PDA. Then he swore again when he couldn’t open up a line back to base. When the PDA got to the
Chandler,
it automatically connected to the ship’s network. The
Chandler
’s network gave every appearance of being down.

Ocampo looked around at the bridge stations. “Which of these is for communications?”

None of them are right now,
I thought at him
. The bridge stations are cut out of the command loop. Everything gets routed through a simulated bridge which I’m supposed to control.

“So you
are
in control of this ship!”

No, I said “supposed to,”
I pointed out.
I’m not in control of the ship yet. I only get control once the ship has skipped. It’s Control who is behind this.

“Then talk to Control!” Ocampo yelled.

I can’t. I’ve never been given the ability to contact them. I have to wait for them to contact me.

And lo and behold, guess who suddenly came onto the line.

“The
Chandler
is moving,” Control said. “Explain how.”

I don’t know,
I thought.
You’re the one in control of this ship.
You
tell
me
.

“I’m not in control of the ship.”

Well, someone is.

“It has to be you.”

How can that be?
I exclaimed.
Check it yourself! I’m not doing a damn thing in the simulation!

There was a brief pause here as Control ascertained that, indeed, inside the simulation I was doing nothing. While this was happening the banging at the bridge door became more insistent and it sounded like fists were being replaced by weapon butts.

Then Control’s voice came over the bridge speakers. “Secretary Ocampo,” it said.

“Yes?”

“You are controlling the
Chandler
in some way.”

“The hell I am,” Ocampo said.

“You’ve sequestered yourself in the bridge,” Control said.

“We’re locked in here, you asshole,” Ocampo said. “And I can’t help but notice that my Rraey escort is on the other side of the door. What are you up to?”

“Please cease your actions.”

“I am not doing a goddamned thing!” Ocampo yelled. He motioned to the bridge stations. “These fucking things don’t work! It’s you who is doing this!”

There was a pause; Ocampo looked confused. It took him maybe a second or two longer to realize that the hammering on the door had stopped while he was yelling at Control.

“You have purged all the air everywhere but the bridge,” Control said, after a minute. “You have just killed two Rraey.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ocampo said, clearly exasperated. “
It’s not me!
I’m not in control of this ship! You are! You are the one who is doing this! You’re the murderer, not me! Why are you doing this?”

“Enough,” Control said. By this time I could see on my simulated sensors that the
Chandler
had completed its disembarkation process and was beginning to accelerate away from Equilibrium base. This would be the point where Control would have no choice but to cut its losses and try to either disable or destroy the
Chandler
. I was curious to find out what would happen next.

What happened next was that a ping hit my personal set of sensors. It was a signal that was meant for the bomb, nestled next to my brain in my box.

It was supposed to detonate the bomb, killing me.

What it did instead was launch a dozen missiles from the
Chandler
.

Let’s just say I had a philosophical disagreement with the whole “blow up my brain” strategy. And this was my editorial comment on that plan.

I think I actually heard a squawk of surprise from Control as those dozen missiles popped up on its sensors.

There were three ships aside from the
Chandler
docked at Equilibrium station, one a refurbished Colonial Union frigate like the
Chandler,
one that looked like a purpose-built trade ship to me, and one of a design I didn’t recognize, so probably an alien ship. I imagined that all three of them were like the
Chandler,
currently being repurposed for whatever asshole plan Equilibrium had up its sleeve for each of them.

I tasked a missile to each ship.

If those ships had crews on station, it’s possible that they could have stopped the missiles. But if all they had were brains in boxes, not given control of their own ships, then they were sitting ducks.

Each of those missiles hit home, crippling but not entirely destroying the ships.

Intentional on my part. If there were other brains in boxes in those ships, they didn’t deserve to die at my hand.

They didn’t deserve any of the horror that happened to them.

Six missiles aimed for Equilibrium base’s weapon arrays, because I didn’t want them to have a chance to mess up my getaway with a well-placed missile, or two, or ten.

One missile homed in on the Equilibrium base energy generator, because I figured if they were worried about things getting dark and cold, they would have less time to worry about little old me, or the
Chandler
.

One missile went to the base communication array, to make it more difficult to get the word out. They’d undoubtedly try to launch some skip drones, but I’d already configured my beam weapons to burn those out before they got anywhere close to skip distance. Factoring in tracking lag from the speed of light would be tricky. But I’d had time to practice.

That left one missile.

That one went to my best guess as to where Control was.

Because fuck that guy.

Yes, you could say that I’d been busy, using the
Chandler
’s outside cameras to scope out the base, and double-checking the information with the data I had taken from Ocampo’s PDA.

I knew I was going to have one chance to get it right. Any misses and everything suddenly became a lot more complicated.

Fortunately I still had a couple dozen missiles left.

But as it turns out I didn’t need them. When I launched the missiles I was still really close in to Equilibrium base. The targets had anywhere from ten to twenty-five seconds to respond. Which might have been enough in a battle situation.

But as a surprise? When the base and ships were unprepared for attack and the only person who could have raised the alarm was being kept busy with an argument with the very confused and increasingly hostile Secretary Ocampo?

Nope. Not enough time.

Every missile hit its mark.

The resulting chaos was glorious to me.

Glorious
.

“Hello?” Ocampo said, and I realized that from his point of view, nothing had happened. He was still waiting for a response from Control.

I’m sorry, Secretary Ocampo,
I thought at him.
Control isn’t likely to respond to you at this point.

“Why not?”

Because I just stuffed a missile down its fucking gullet, that’s why
.

“What?”

I just attacked Equilibrium’s base,
I thought at him.
Twelve missiles, all in the right places. It’s going to keep them busy while the three of us get to skip distance
.

“What?” Ocampo said again. He clearly wasn’t getting it.

“You mean we’re going back?” Vera Briggs said. “Back home? Back to the Colonial Union?” It was, honestly, the first time I remember her speaking a complete sentence.

Yes,
I said.
That’s the plan
.
Back to Phoenix Station. Where I think they will be very interested in what Secretary Ocampo has to say for himself.

“You can’t do that,” Ocampo said.

Take you back to the Colonial Union?
I asked.
Yes I can. Yes I will. In fact, that’s what I was waiting to do.

“I don’t understand,” Ocampo said.

I’ve had control of the
Chandler
for weeks. I could have tried for an escape long before now. But I needed your data to take back. And I needed
you
to back it up. You’re going home, Secretary Ocampo.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” Ocampo said.

Sure I do.

“No, you don’t,” Ocampo said. “Don’t you understand that what we’re doing here is saving humanity—”

Everything after that point was cut short by the
whoofing
sound Ocampo made as Vera Briggs walked the couple of feet separating the two of them and kneed her boss square and hard in the balls.

I don’t even have balls anymore and
I
felt that.

Ocampo collapsed, groaning. Briggs kicked him several more times in the ribs and face, inexpertly but enthusiastically, until he stopped doing anything but lying there in a ball.

“Motherfucker,” Briggs said, finally backing away.

You didn’t kill him, did you?
I asked.

“Trust me, I’m going to make
sure
he lives,” Briggs said. She spat on him; he didn’t even flinch. “Make me look like a fool by perpetrating treason behind my back? For
years
? Kill a ship full of people and give me the choice of death or being kidnapped? Make me an accomplice to killing even more people? No, Mr. Daquin. This asshole lives. And I’m going to make sure the Colonial Union knows everything I know, too. So you just get us back. You get us back. I promise you I’m going to take care of the rest of it. And
you,
” Briggs said to Ocampo. “You so much as
move
an inch
between now and then and you’re going to wish I kicked you to death. You understand me,
sir
?”

Ocampo didn’t move a muscle for the entire rest of the trip.

* * *

“Let’s talk about the future,” Harry Wilson said to me.

It had been a busy week.

I had skipped the
Chandler
into existence roughly ten klicks from Phoenix Station itself, setting off every single proximity warning the station had. Which was the point; I didn’t want them to miss me.

As soon as I skipped I started broadcasting that I had Secretary Ocampo
and
critical information about an alien attack, which got everyone’s attention. Less than an hour after that the
Chandler
was swarming with Colonial Defense Forces, Ocampo and Briggs were taken off the ship—Ocampo to the infirmary of Phoenix Station’s detention facility and Briggs to high-level debriefing—and then the CDF tried to figure out what to do with me.

That’s when Wilson showed up.

“Why you?” I asked him—
asked
him, because he connected directly to me with his BrainPal, the computer inside his head.

“Because I’ve done this before,” he said. He explained that later, during his debriefing of me, during which I told him of my experiences and gave him all the information I had.

“The future,” I said, back in the present.

“Yes,” Wilson said.

“What I want for the future is to have a body.”

“You’re going to get that,” Wilson said. “We’re already working on it. The Colonial Defense Forces have already authorized growing a clone for you.”

“You’re going to put my brain in a clone?”

“Not exactly,” Wilson said. “When the clone is grown we’re going to transfer your consciousness into it. You’ll leave this brain behind and be put into a new one.”

“That’s … unsettling,” I said. My brain was the only part of me left, and now they were telling me that I was going to leave it behind.

“I know,” Wilson said. “If it helps, I’ve been through the process. You’re still you after it happens. Promise.”

“When can we start?” I asked.

“Well, that’s up to you,” Wilson said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve already started working on your body,” Wilson said. “If you wanted it—and no one would say anything against you wanting it—we can get you one in a few weeks. But for someone with an already existing consciousness that we need to port into the new brain, it’s not optimal. They’d rather build your body slowly and pre-prime the new brain to accept your consciousness. That way the transfer goes off without a hitch.”

“How long will that take?”

“Less time than making a body the natural way, but still a few months,” Wilson said. “Honestly the longer we take prepping the body for consciousness the better it will be.”

“And in the meantime I’m stuck here on the
Chandler
.”

“‘Stuck’ is a relative term,” Wilson said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if you want, I might have a job for you. And the
Chandler
.”

“What’s the job?”

“The job is to be you. Both you, Rafe Daquin, and you, the brain running the
Chandler
. We want the various species we talk with to be aware that you’re real and that your story is real.”

“I already gave you all the information I have on Equilibrium,” I said. “It’s pretty convincing.”

“
We
don’t need to be convinced,” Wilson said. “
We
know you’re telling the truth. But you understand that us knowing about Equilibrium—us knowing that they were the ones behind the attack on Earth Station and the ones who have been setting the Conclave and the CU against each other—isn’t enough. Thanks to what Equilibrium has already done, the CU has almost no credibility. With anyone. Not with independent species. Not with the Conclave, or any species within it. And certainly not with Earth.”

“And having me around changes that?”

“Well, no,” Wilson admitted. I would have smiled at this if I could. “It doesn’t change it. But it does get our foot in the door. It offers others at least the possibility that we might be telling the truth. You can get us a hearing, at least.”

“What about the Equilibrium base?” I asked. “You sent ships there?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you anything about that,” Wilson said.