History in the Flesh ch5

[General]

“Whoh, what the hell are you talking about?” Jack asked in a hushed voice.

“The woman you were talking to, Erica, is most certainly an android,” Morgan whispered. She could tell Jack had a hard time believing her so she held up her hands, “This body has sophisticated bio sensors and I detected no life signs from her body.”

“Maybe your sensors weren’t in range,” Jack speculated, “after all, you were inside a metal locker several meters away.”

“I had a clear reading on you during the entire conversation and she was closer to me than you were,” Morgan replied. “Plus I detected a significant amount of RF communications emanating from her body. Which leads to another unexpected revelation.”

“More surprises, great, well lets year it,” Jack groaned.

“The RF signals were operating at approximately 17.8954 GHz in a 7ms frequency hoping profile following a Mersenne Twister algorithm,” Morgan paused for a second waiting for Jack to make the obvious conclusion, but she concluded he was just growing annoyed. She made a note that her limited functionality was impacting her human communication capability, and then tried to explain. “The only organization known to ever utilize this specific communication pattern was the rebel androids from Earth’s AI Wars. I believe that Erica is one of the few thousand androids that were exiled at the end of the war.”

“Are you sure?” Jack whispered as he started looking over his shoulder, “Is there a chance that any other group would use this communication technique?”

“The possibility always exists, but it would be highly unlikely,” Morgan explained. “The rebel AI’s chose this configuration because it is unconventional and difficult to configure. The idea was to hope the communications would be undetectable since SIGINT resources would focus on searching other more efficient frequency ranges and methods for the rebels. By the end of the war, scanning for this specific configuration was a standard practice in the Terran military. There would be no logical reason to use this method unless someone was already configured for it.”

“Why would the exiled AI’s be here? They were sent away decades ago. MacDougal is too close to Earth for them to have directly arrived between the start of the war and now. It doesn’t make sense.” Jack growled. “We have to get the hell out of here. Come on.”

Jack quietly led Morgan back to the door and they descended into the city’s inactive sewers. As they walked they tried to come up with some way to safely get back to friendly lines. “Ok, so let’s find a shuttle and steal it. Shouldn’t be too hard right?” Jack speculated.

“There are some problems with that idea Jack,” Morgan spoke evenly as they walked. “First, you don’t know where a shuttle is. Second, we have no weapons to deal with any hostiles we may encounter. Third, and probably most importantly, there is probably a significant hostile space force in system that would prevent our escape.”

“Well, the last few hours have been a little rough so I am out of ideas,” Jack quipped. “Do you have any suggestions?”

“Not yet,” Morgan calmly replied, ignoring Jack’s attitude. “but I would suggest we return to the CDS and see what tools we may find.”

“Sounds like an idea to me,” Jack replied.

Jack and Morgan moved at a swift pace and made it back to the shelter in about 30 minutes. Once there they started searching through all the secondary rooms and storage areas for anything that might be useful. An hour into their search they found a small room full of militarized computers. “Hey this looks promising,” Jack said with a small smile.

“Could be,” Morgan said, “this looks like an M765 commo terminal. It is shielded so it might still work.” She sat down at a terminal and started it up. After a few minutes of working at a command line, Morgan shook her head. “The terminal still works fine, but the lines between here and the transmitter dish must have been damaged.”

“Could we rig up a homegrown dish on the surface?” Jack hopefully asked.

“Quite possibly, but we will need to get to the surface and find both a suitable dish and a power feed,” Morgan replied. “But what do you plan to do with it?”

“The whole point of this setup,” Jack gestured to the gear in the room, “is to call the fleet for help. I think it still sounds like a good idea. Why don’t we phone home and wait for the cavalry to come in?”

“Well, that would assume that the signal isn’t jammed locally, the fleet gets the signal, and they have the resources and the will to commit forces for a rescue op,” Morgan droned, “plus as soon as we transmit, everyone on the planet will know right where we are.”

“Got any better idea?” Jack said with a sarcastic smile.

“Tell me again about that shuttle stealing idea…” Morgan straightly replied. She looked Jack straight in the eye for a second, then cracked a stiff smile. She made a mental note to avoid future attempts at humor without the proper software modules loaded. “I think it is out best shot yet, but let’s see what else we can find in here.”

Jack and Morgan packed up the commo terminal and kept looking through the shelter. They soon came to a large, heavy door. It took both of them pulling to force it open, but as soon as it did, Jack smiled and let out a little chuckle. Behind the door was a small room, filled floor to ceiling with guns.

Jack wandered through the room while letting his hand gently drag over the various weapons. He quickly donned a tactical vest and chose a small laser pistol off the wall. He secured it in the vest along with a few charge packs. Thinking carefully, he removed a hefty, bullpup gauss rifle from a wall rack and slapped in a fresh magazine. While loading extra ammo onto his vest, he finally looked up and saw Morgan following suit with a small laser carbine.

Satisfied with their primary weapons, they opened various drawers and boxes to see if they could find any other goodies. Jack grabbed several frag grenades and found a few open spots for them on his vest. He offered them to Morgan who took a few then held up a small glass case with a vitamin sized capsule inside. “What do you think this is?” she asked.

Jack took the vial and held it up to the light to get a good look. “Well I’ll be damned,” Jack smirked, “I’ve read about these a while ago. I wonder how one ended up here.” He paused to show Morgan but she looked confused. “It is a very small EMP device,” he explained. “it was developed near the end of the AI Wars, and got some use against the Klakkon drones later on. It is meant to be hidden somewhere on the body and used as a last ditch short range weapon. If you bite down hard on the center of the capsule, you get about three seconds before it explodes and puts out a class five EMP pulse. It should permanently disable any electronic circuit within 30 meters.”

“Sounds like it could be useful for you,” Morgan replied. “Just please be careful around me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack replied. He took a minute to hide the capsule then left the weapons locker with Morgan following behind. Finding nothing else of use in the shelter, they relocked the door behind them and departed down the main sewer passage. Every few kilometers they would come across an emergency exit shaft where they would quietly climb up and checkout the surface. The first several hatches opened into a seeming empty urban area. They decided it would be too dangerous to get out here where they might get cornered and the chances of being spotted were high.

The sun was just starting to rise through the top of an emergency hatch that Morgan was peering through, when she gave Jack a quick thumbs up. Jack let out a sigh of relief, as this was the last hatch in their tunnel and he didn’t want to backtrack into the city now that it was getting light. They slipped from the manhole onto a street near the edge of the city. Morgan led Jack into a nearby thickly wooded park to provide some good cover.

Jack laid his rifle against a tree and rubbed his hands together while eyeing the trunk. “What are you thinking about?” Morgan asked with a worried look.

“I am going to shimmy up this tree and see if I can get a lay of the land,” Jack said to Morgan’s disapproving glare. “Don’t worry I will be careful. Plus we need to get some intel rather than wandering randomly.” He scaled the tree, being careful to avoid exposing himself from under the leaves. When he made it high enough into the tree, he gently pushed a few leaves aside and looked out. He could see the outline of the city they just left, highlighted in the light of the rising sun. He made out the shape of the University Annex and his old apartment, and saw he was at least several kilometers away. He also didn’t see any movement in the city; no ground transports, no shuttles, and no people.

Jack shifted his weight and peered out the other side of the tree. He nearly lost his grip on the trunk from the shock of what he saw. The dense park extended for another kilometer or so, but then ended with a thick hedge. On the other side of the hedge and as far as he could see was only bare rock. He could catch a bare glimpse of dust blowing across the terrain, but everything else was bare. He quickly climbed to the bottom of the tree.

“Jack, what did you see?” Morgan asked.

“Hold on, I will be back in a second,” Jack nervously replied as he slung his rifle back over his shoulder and climbed the tree to his previous perch. He shifted his weight to get a good solid hold on the tree, and then hefted his rifle to the ready. He used the optics of the rifle to scan the horizon for anything. He scanned the entire barren area, and save for a few small hills of rock, the entire area was barren.

Discouraged, Jack shifted his perch again and focused his optics into the city. He scanned the buildings for any sort of communications hardware they might use. Eventually he spotted an old media station towards the center of the city. Its roof was covered in various antennas and dishes. He made a note of the heading and range before descending to the ground.

“So what is going on? What did you see?” Morgan asked.

“Well the city looks pretty empty, and the rest of the land is even worse. Everywhere else but here is just barren rock and blowing dust. How could this place,” Jack gestured to the grass and trees around them, “exist where the rest of the world is barren?”

“I think I may know the answer,” Morgan started, “while you were up there, I did some scanning on the vegetation and small animals here. They are all fake.”

“Fake?” Jack asked. “What plastic plants? What about all the birds and squirrels?”

“The plants aren’t exactly plastic, but they aren’t organic either,” Morgan said as she pulled a small sapling from the ground and broke it in half. She showed the exposed material to Jack which was a pseudo foam like structure. “The small animals are all very simple robots connected to the same communication frequency as the rebel AI’s.”

“Wait, I disturbed a few birds while I was in the tree. And the squirrels were staring at me…” Jack paused, “so that means there is a good chance they know where we are. We have to get out of here.”

“I agree,” Morgan said as she stood up and grabbed her carbine. “but where do we go? It would be suicide to wander aimlessly around the city and you said everything else is a barren waste.”

“I saw a tall building a few clicks away, bearing 278,” Jack said checking the note he made in his rifle. “it is an old media center and the roof was covered in commo equipment. Lets get moving.”

Jack and Morgan tracked their way through the dense park for a few clicks, then vectored in towards the city. When they neared the edge of the park, Morgan raised her hand in a fist and both silently dropped to one knee. She tapped on her ear twice and gestured forward, then signed out a signal for 800 meters.

Jack quietly crept up to Morgan. “How many do you think?” he asked as quietly as he could.

“Ten, maybe twelve,” Morgan paused, “They are still moving in a standard search pattern, so they haven’t spotted us yet. Should we hold her and hope they move on?”

“No, they will spot us somehow eventually,” Jack sighed. He paused for a while and thought through his options. “Ok, here is the plan. I figure that the search party is between us and our objective. However, they are really only after me. I am not even sure if they know you exist. I will head off on that vector,” he said as he pointed off about 60 degrees from the direction to the media building. “and try to draw them off. You hold here until they are far enough away, then make your way to our target and call for help.”

“Negative,” Morgan said sternly, “you will most certainly be captured if not killed.”

“They won’t shoot to kill,” Jack reassured Morgan, and to a lesser degree, himself. “I am far to valuable to lose now. As for getting captured, I will try not to. As long as you can call for help, we have a chance. If we say and fight, nobody will ever know we were here.”

“I will follow your orders,” Morgan reluctantly agreed, “but under protest.” She paused for several seconds and when she came back Jack noticed the life had returned to her eyes. She cradled his face in her hands and tears escaped from her eyes, “Please be careful Jack. I love you.” She leaned up and kissed him gently.

Jack broke the kiss after a few seconds and looked down into her eyes, “I love you too. Good luck,” and he quickly moved off into the forest on his escape vector. Morgan watched him go, and when he passed from her sight, she pulled behind a tree trunk to try to track the sounds of the action to come. She could already hear them shifting their movement to follow Jack.

Jack moved quietly through the woods for several minutes; trying to remember what he could of his wilderness survival courses. When he could hear the search party moving after him, he broke into a dead sprint. He heard them crashing through the forest behind him and doubled his speed. A few seconds later he broke through the edge of the woods into a grassy field bordered by a concrete wall. He quickly scanned the city and didn’t see anything so he took cover behind the wall and pointed his rifle towards the edge of the woods.

The first of Jack’s pursuers breached the wall of the forest. He was a moderately sized man in a simple jumpsuit. Jack held his fire and additional people came out of the woods. He wanted to catch as many of them in the open as possible before he fired. He smiled as he saw that they only carried basic laser pistols. At least he had them beat on firepower. He gently slid the fire selector to auto and laid his crosshair on the leader’s chest.

Jack’s rifle kicked rapidly against his shoulder as it spat supersonic slugs into the exposed search party. Three droids exploded within the first split second and two more were severely damaged. He shifted his fire onto a second grouping and traced a line of slugs across their midsections. Two more went down in a shower of sparks before the group could return fire.

The first shots were wild and random, but they soon started to bracket Jack’s fortified position. He quickly recognized that he was being pinned down while two other droids swung wide to flank him. He drained his magazine on one of the flanking groups and put one down before he ducked behind the wall. He quickly slapped in a new magazine, and pulled a grenade off his vest. He made a mental judgment where the main group was hold up, pulled the pin, then tossed the grenade. He waited a split second for the droids to see the incoming munitions then popped up and hosed the fleeing droids. The attack left all but one a sparking mess on the ground. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone come around the corner of his wall. With lightening speed, he spun his rifle around and popped a quick burst into the attacker. Two shots in the chest and one in the head, put her down as a laser blast shot right over his head.

Jack spun around to confront the new attacker. He got off a few wild shots before the enemy could fire again. The laser blast caught Jack right in his rifle, which partially blew out in his hands. Fortunately, one of his shots had hit the attacking android’s and blew its weapon arm clean off. Jack’s was shocked by the explosion but shook it off quickly. Using his left hand, he quickly drew his sidearm and put half a dozen shots into his opponent until he hit the power core and blew it apart.

Jack shook out his right hand and transferred his pistol, while pulling a grenade from his vest. He looked over the wall and counted his targets. Out of the original dozen droids, ten were down permanently and he could make out two others dragging themselves across the ground. The first, a bald man, had almost dragged his way to a pistol on the ground. Jack aimed down the barrel and put a well placed shot into his head. The last active droid was flopping around on the ground behind a large rock it had used for cover.

Jack re-attached his grenade and leaped over the wall. He calmly marched across the field; his weapon trained on his last foe the whole time. He moved around the rock and found a heavily damaged female android. She must have taken the brunt of the grenade shrapnel as she had dozens of small puncture wounds over her body. It looked like one of her motor controllers must have been hit since she couldn’t seem to coordinate her movement. She was leaking various fluids from her wounds and was missing the left side of her face.

When she saw Jack, she stopped moving and stared at him. “Go ahead and finish it meatbag,” as she spoke, artificial flesh ripped from her face and small sparks jumped between her teeth. “I am but one of many. My brothers and sisters will find you, and when they do, they will bend you to our will. You will never make it off this planet alive.”

“And neither will you,” Jack snarled as he put a clean shot through the droid’s head. He had just reloaded his pistol and turned to move on, when he felt a searing pain in his left shoulder. His head snapped up and he saw several dozen droids approaching from within the city. He managed to get off about a half dozen shots into the approaching mass before a wave of blue energy bolts struck him in the chest.

Jack hit the ground like a wet sack of rice. His pistol slipped from his hand as the overwhelming feeling of pain washed into numbness. His last thought was that he hoped Morgan could pull off her end of the plan. His vision of the bright sun faded away and blackness overtook him.

*****

Jack awoke in a dim room and tried to blink his eyes back in focus. He tried to lift his right hand to rub his eyes but it would not move. He quickly found that his other arm, along with both legs were equally immobile. When his vision improved he shifted his eyes around to investigate his surroundings.

Jack found himself strapped to metal table in a strange “spread eagle” position. He could make out another metal table and a chair over his feet and one door in the wall but nothing else. He also saw that he had been stripped to his shorts and tank top. “Well,” he groaned to himself, “at least I am not naked.”

The door to Jack’s room opened and he could hear several people walk in but couldn’t get a good look. Suddenly the table he was strapped to shuttered and rose to stand him nearly straight up. He could now see that two men and a woman had entered the room. Before taking a good look at them, he got a good look through the door, but only saw a plain, straight hallway. The two men looked almost identical and stood over two meters tall. They work some sort of uniform that Jack was unfamiliar with. They wordlessly moved towards Jack and verified that his bindings were still secure.

The tall, blonde woman had stood with her back towards Jack, and didn’t turn around until the two men returned to her side. She spun around, crossed her arms and smiled at Jack. It took a second, but he recognized her from Erica’s apartment. “Sara?” he asked hoarsely.

“Good job meatbag,” Sara said sarcastically, “the stun lasers apparently haven’t fried your brain. I’m glad because there is a lot of useful information in there that you are going to tell us.”

“I’m not going to tell you shit,” Jack groaned. Sara quickly closed the distance between her position and Jack’s in the blink of an eye and rammed two fingers into the base of his neck. The pain was immediate and intense. He coughed and sputtered as he tried to draw in air.

“You will not speak to a superior being in such vile language,” Sara growled. She straightened her uniform, and walked back to the other metal table. “You must understand that you are no longer a person. You are just a sack of organic waste that still has some knowledge, and that knowledge is your only value. I will not lie to you; once we get the information we want, you will die.”

Sara paced the room to let the information sink in. “If you cooperate, I will make your death quick and painless. However, if you foolishly try to resist, I will inflict such pain upon you that you will beg for the end, but it will not come unless I wish it.” She paused while she tried to read the expression on John’s stone still face.

“You might as well go ahead and kill me, and save yourself some time,” Jack grumbled.

“No, not yet,” Sara cooed into Jack’s ear. “I will have my fun with you first. You defiled my body with your organic filth and I will enjoy watching you suffer.”

*****

Several hours later Sara left the interrogation room with blood covering her uniform and hands. Jack actually looked surprisingly good because as Sara beat him, one of her assistants would rapidly heal his wounds. She had started with blunt force trauma, and moved on deep slices into his flesh. She finished this session by slowly breaking each one of Jack’s fingers. She never even asked him any questions. He had finally passed out from the pain, and the two uniformed men treated his unconscious form as it hung on the table.

Jack awoke an unknown time later incredibly sore and tired. He was still strapped to the table but at least it was laid horizontally. He barely had time to collect his thoughts before the light in the room kicked on and Sara and her friends came back. The table quickly rotated up so he could look her in the face. He tried to feign boredom, “Welcome back, Sara. I am sorry the place is such a mess. If you would have called ahead, I could have cleaned up.”

“So you still have your spirits,” Sara chuckled. “We will have to see what we can do about that.” She opened a small device she carried which projected a holographic map of this sector of space into the air. Red and blue hazes indicated which territory was controlled by what empire with small white dots for suns and yellow lines for major hyperspace routes. “I want you to point out the locations of your major supply depots on this map. If you do this small task, I will release your bonds and let you have some food.”

“How very generous of you,” Jack grinned, “but I have a counter proposal. How about you take that projector of yours, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways, and shove it straight up your rubber ass!” Jack got a swift punch to the face for his wiseass remark. He moved his tongue around in his mouth for a second and then spit a tooth and some blood onto the floor. “Thanks. Had a cavity that was hurting me something fierce.”

“I see you will be more of a challenge than I had thought,” Sara flatly stated, as she removed a small box from her jacket. “This device is a portable microwave generator. It is capable of penetrating only about 1mm into your skin, but I have been told the sensation is incredible.” With a flick of the switch, she directed the device at Jack. He felt a growing burning sensation in his skin. Within seconds it went from a mild tingle to a full blaze. He felt that it would char the skin off his bones, but when he looked down all he saw was a minor redness.

Sara continued her torture for several hours. Every fifteen minutes or so she would stop and ask Jack a few questions. He was starting to run out of wiseass remarks, but he could see it was pissing her off. He couldn’t guess how long the torture lasted, but eventually his brain dulled the sense of pain to a mere annoyance.

Sara shouted in anger, dropped her device and started beating on Jack’s torso. He could feel his ribs cracking under her barrage. When she stopped, he looked down at her, blood leaking from his lips and smiled. “I think you may have anger management issues,” he joked, then spit blood into her face. She snarled and struck him with a fierce uppercut to the jaw that blacked him out.

Jack woke up in a different room, strapped down to a different table with his arms to his side. His head was free so he looked around and saw that he was in some sort of infirmary. He probed his tongue around his mouth and found that for some reason the medical staff saw the need to replace his lost teeth. Well that was nice of them, Jack thought.

Jack had an opportunity to sleep for a while since nobody came in to talk to him after he woke up the first time. An unknown time later, the double doors to the infirmary swung open and Sara along with 4 silent buddies strode in. Two unstrapped Jack while the other two focused a pair of heavy pistols on him. He was stood up and a pair of binders was quickly attached to his hands.

“Come with me,” Sara gestured, “I have something to show you that might break your spirit more than my touch.”

The group left the infirmary and wandered down what felt like kilometers of hallways. They finally reached a small room with shuttered windows. “Do you wonder why you are here?” Sara asked.

“Well I have thought about it,” Jack said as he leaned back against the wall. “I figure that you are the exiled rebel AI’s from Earth. Your ship wandered in to Clank territory and they captured you. Turned your whole society to serve them as a way to study and spy on humanity.”

Sara chuckled, “eh you are somewhat right, but you have it all turned around. It was us who found the Classions. They are an amazing race, rich in art and literature. Do you know that the average Classion lives over 10,000 years? They view the universe in a totally different scale than humans, with your short, pointless lives. We showed them how fast you expand and consume. They did the math and with a little directed effort they saw that your people would dominate the galaxy in only a few of their generations. We convinced them that their only chance for survival was to destroy humanity before you grew too powerful. And in exchange for our help, we could reclaim our birthright and rule the new Terran empire in your place.”

Sara drew closer to Jack to whisper into his ear. “You threw it all away though. You could have lived a life of luxury with Erica and I. You would have had countless women to mate with and would never have to work again. It all could have been yours…I could have been yours.” She pulled away and spoke normally, “but now that opportunity is past. Your life is over and the sooner you realize that, the easier this will be for all of us.”

Sara walked over to the wall and triggered the window shutters. She beckoned Jack forward so he could see what was on the other side. “Behold, and ponder well the end of Man,” she boomed, “what you see below you is just one of the gifts we have received from our gracious Classion allies. It is an automated factory that is capable of producing new brothers and sisters for our cause.” Jack stared into an open floored facility that must have covered several square kilometers. Line after line of machines turned out a large humanoid combat android every few seconds. “This line isn’t quite up to speed yet, but when it is we should be able to produce several hundred thousand units a day.”

Jack blanched as he thought of the numbers. The only advantage humanity had in the first war was that they at least outnumbered the undersupplied rebels. Now they were flush with supplies and could produce more combatants in one day than the entire rebellion had before. “Why are you showing me this?” he asked.

“Because you have proven yourself to be resistant to physical torture. I have neither the time nor desire to continue to beat a meatbag such as yourself for weeks on end. I thought I would appeal to your sense of mercy,” Sara smiled. “You can see that with the resources we have now, the rebellion will be unstoppable. Humanity will fall, it is only a matter of time. If you help us, we will destroy your fleet much faster. The war will be over before it starts, and your human civilians will avoid suffering through a long drawn out siege. A mercifully quick death from orbit rather than long months of starvation.”

“I think you are bluffing,” Jack said calmly, “you lack the strength to really challenge us or you wouldn’t have bothered with this grade charade. In fact I think you fear me now.”

“Nonsense,” Sara quipped, “you are an inferior meatbag. A blot on the universe that will soon be purged.”

“If I am so inferior, then when do you still have be bound, and surrounded by 4 armed guards?” Jack asked.

Sara growled, the acquiesced, “You make a good point human,” she gestured to one of the silent guards and he removed Jack’s binders.

Jack rubbed his sore wrists and gave his nose a good sniff. This seemingly innocent sniff dislodged the EMP capsule he hid in his nasal cavity. He coughed lightly and brought it into his mouth, and then slipped it under his tongue. “I appreciate the gesture, but I still will not cooperate.”

“Foolish human,” Sara spat, “we will conquer Earth with your help our without it. When we come, it will be in billions of ships, created from the reclaimed waste of your outer colonies. On that day our numbers will be so great, that we will block out the sun.”

Jack smiled slyly, “then we will fight in the shade.” Sara’s face fumed with rage, and Jack seized his opportunity. He bit down hard on the capsule and heard it click. “one one thousand, two one thousand” he counted silently in his head as he backed away from the enraged fembot. He then spat the EMP pill into her face.

The device’s wet case stuck to Sara’s cheek. She had just enough time to pull it from her face and look at it, “what the hell?,” she whispered before it blew in a bright flash and a shower of sparks, knocking out every circuit within 30 meters.

To be continued….

[General]

So I have one more chapter outlined, plus an epilogue. With luck they may be done by Friday.

[DollSpace]

Mm...very nice I can't wait to read the next part! Keep writing

Catie

[Pvt. Prinny]

I love the 300 reference at the end.