The Brutus Code

Agnes ran down the metal stairs two at a time. She felt chased by the past, but nothing followed her this time. When the settlement had been full of life, before the evacuation, this had been her favorite route from her father’s office to her lab. She avoided crowds, and she stayed in her coveralls with grease stains and tool pockets, each one occupied by a wrench or screwdriver. That ensemble didn’t meet the dress code of the formal corporate offices. Her brother Jasper always frowned when he saw her dressed in coveralls, a more practical attire, for her workshop and lab. Her father laughed and often confessed his jealousy he no longer got away with his own lab coat. He said the wrinkles were in all the right places, and they were all well earned.

She came to the bottom of the stairs. They ended where they always had, but the spiral cargo ramp that ran parallel to the stair continued much deeper. ‘That’s new’ she thought and hurried to her lab. Nothing had been touched since her last escape. Piles of bots lined the hall. All of them disabled by the EMP Marcus had set up. She put her satchel down and removed all the electronic equipment. Agnes then extended a slim cable from her old tablet to a panel in the wall. Once she had done this, she tapped in a code to her tablet and smiled.

The symbol of her Roman General appeared on the screen. Marcus greeted her, “Mistress, it is good you have returned.”

A tremor shook the floor. Her com unit buzzed. “Agnes, where are you?” Tommy asked.

“I had further to go. What’s up?” she responded.

“The lift shaft has collapsed. We’re not getting home that way.”

“Join me here. And hurry.” She sent the route to them. She didn’t have to wait long. That was another advantage to her back stairs.

When Tommy rounded the corner with the avatars in tow, he reported, “Alfred has sent micro avatars up, and two made it back to the shuttle. We can’t go that way, too dangerous. The shuttle is intact but trapped. The whole upper level is collapsing into the lower levels.”

“Let’s get inside. Marcus, please lower the drawbridge.” This coded phrase from Agnes opened the lab door and disabled the EMP generator. Once inside, she locked the door and primed the EMP with this warning, “Keep away from the walls. It won’t be pleasant.”

Agnes wasted no time and went right to her workbench. She opened a storage cabinet and extracted a molded case. “There I am,” she said. She picked up her media unit, “Dr. Ann I need you, please.” As Dr. Ann Ai approached, Agnes had carefully opened a carrying case and placed Caesar’s and Jasper’s media units into molded slots. Five other units already occupied slots in the case with space for three more.

“I need to entrust you with my family.” Agnes was very serious. These collected minds were all she had of her past. “I’ll hang on to mine this time.”

Tommy had been eyeing the door. His military training kicked in, and he knew not to trust any sanctuary. Get comfortable and a sanctuary became your grave. As he strolled around the lab looking for an escape, he found the monitors that looked over the factory floor. This factory was still manufacturing caskets. “Agnes, what do you make of this?”

She joined him at the window and said, “I don’t know. My memories are spotty, but my last memory was of an empty factory, just gearing up.”

Alfred spoke up from the inner lab, “I’ve been able to access the system network and filters are in place. I can report that Cassius Brutus is no longer ignoring us. He is sending his robot units to the corridor. We can’t go out that way.”

“Analysis and options?” Tommy asked Alfred.

“One strategy he could employ is to trap us here and let whatever is happening to the planetoid do the job for him. Another might be…” A series of thuds hit the door. Their frequency and sound increased. “Another is to send kinetic projectiles past the EMP at the door to batter it down. He is throwing bigger boulders.” Alfred concluded as the sound of thuds turned to thunder. “As to options,” Alfred paused. “I got nothing.”

“I have an idea,” Agnes suggested. “The same way I got out before.”

“You mailed yourself,” Tommy said.

“We can’t exactly pick up the next Postal Ship as a delivery, but those caskets are all going somewhere and..”

“And where they go, my mother may also have gone.” Tommy smiled the smile of a hunter. “Can you set this up?” he asked Agnes.

“Of course,” she smiled back. The thunder grew to a crashing maelstrom against the door.

“Quickly?” Tommy added.

“Yes…” Agnes moved to collect tools and their assortment of media units. “Here’s what we need to do,” she began and outlined a general plan as they all began preparations to escape.

Not much latter, Tommy had pulled three caskets from Agnes’ storage room. With their environment suits sealed, Agnes, Tommy and Dr. Ann Ai all closed the lids on their caskets. Alfred had his two large spiders sharing Tommy’s and Agnes’ units, while Dr. Ann Ai had the case with the other media units in her casket.

“Now,” Tommy signaled Alfred. Alfred timed the next large kinetic strike on the main door so he could blow it up and mask the life signs in two of the three caskets. He also disabled the EMP generator around the lab. Next, he piggybacked subroutines that Cassius Brutus had in his system to gather all caskets and load them, passing on those instructions for their three caskets. Electronic tags on the caskets would assign them to the rest of the inventory.

Maintenance bots entered the lab and scanned the damage. With no life form readings, the subroutines took over, and they cleared the debris. Two of the bots that had scanners searched for an escape route. That is when one of Alfred’s micro spiders transmitted false readings from the ventilation shaft that fed the lab with air.

While the two scanning bots worked to pull off the grill from the vent, another smaller bot entered the lab and connected to the caskets. It was really no more than a powerful motor with a computer brain. It connected the caskets like cars on a train and pulled them out of the lab.

Agnes and Tommy both monitored their progress through the HUD in their helmets. Agnes insisted that she wouldn’t have any trouble getting back into the casket, but Tommy instructed Alfred to place cameras on the caskets to see each other.

The casket train moved away from Agnes’ lab and took the spiral ramp deeper into the complex. It continued spiraling down for long minutes even after all the lights faded in the distant upper levels. Alfred offered to go to night vision, but with no sources of light, dark was still dark.

Finally, the train emerged into the hollowed out interior of the planetoid. The cavity was filled with star ships, packed nose to end connected by gangplanks. Cassius Brutus’ function had been to create millions of starships. Each one emblazoned with the full pirate image of the reaper and scythe.

In her casket, Agnes gasped and immediately forced herself to be quiet. Alfred could mask their presence only so much. Fortunately, the search for them had not spread to this level. Alfred gave a text analysis of what his passive sensors were picking up.

The robots of the settlement have used the mineral resources to create ships and caskets. I have found manifests for these ships. Their only cargos are caskets. Each ship has just enough fuel to break out of this orbit. They are networked to jump as a single ship. When they do, the planetoid will be destroyed and most of the remaining mass will be converted into hyper-fuel for the ships. They will spend several hours collecting the leftover mass and then leave the system. Some have been tasked to pick up additional cargo before reporting to their central processing complex. The shipping orders list the cargo as biological samples. I believe the true cargo is human. There is an embedded manifest with names and medical data.

Tommy texted, “Alfred, final destination?” This was a risk, but Alfred’s main unit was in Tommy’s casket.

Still unknown. The navigation computers will receive their destination orders just prior to leaving this system.

That means that someone will have to stay with the ships so we’ll know the destination, Tommy thought. The train wound its way deeper into the rows of ships. It took hours. Agnes slept while Tommy meditated. He had practice with waiting. The dark interior of the casket seemed like nothing compared to his previous solitude. He wondered how Agnes was fairing. Alfred kept him apprised of her condition.

While Agnes slept, Tommy worked from the inside of the casket. Although, Agnes may have designed them, Tommy knew enough to read the instruction manual. He had Alfred copy it to his HUD and studied it thoroughly. He knew that the media units copied a person to data. This allowed them to be restored after they defrosted. Tommy used his time to copy himself to the media unit of his casket. Just in case.

The train finally came to the middle of the central cavern and launched into the empty space that was once solid rock. They floated through the center of the planetoid. Their trajectory took them across to several partially assembled ships parked nose to end. All construction had ceased on them. The caskets were loaded onto racks in the last completed ship, and the hatch was sealed. They waited.

While they lay in their caskets, Alfred probed more and reported back. “Tommy, Agnes. We are safe for the moment. I have sent false sensor signals for this cargo bay to mask our presence and disabled their sensors,” he shared.

“Let’s get out and take a look around,” Tommy suggested. He hoped to find the cockpit and take control of this ship so he could follow the other ships to their destination. Once the lid popped open, Tommy took his time getting out. He stretched as much as his suit would allow.

“There’s no atmosphere,” Agnes observed. “I’ll take the engine and look for life support.” Tommy gave her a nod, and she floated off toward the A/W drive interfaces. Tommy moved forward where the cockpit should be located. He passed rows on rows of caskets.

There were several cargo bays on the ship separated by partitions although they weren’t necessary. The racks of cargo were all alike. Much like the Swift, this ship had a central walkway. Once Tommy made his way down to it, he moved forward to the bow of the ship. He ran into a wall. Tommy worked his way back to the stern and paced his way back again to the bow. The ship was larger than the Swift, more of a large cargo hauler than a scout. Still, Tommy knew ships well enough he should have come to the crew deck and the cockpit long before he hit the wall.

He returned to the bay with the caskets about the same time that Agnes did. “There’s no cockpit,” he stated flatly.

“There’s no engine interface that I can find either. All the control lines lead to a central box in the stern of the ship.” Agnes answered with a quizzical look of her own. “This ship isn’t designed for a crew.”

“I don’t know of any Ai that can pilot a ship well enough to correct for navigation and docking, short of Alfred. And he is the only one of his kind,” Tommy said.

“The unit in the stern was very small, but all the technology I found is dated to my time. What gives?” Agnes asked.

“Were there any hard interfaces that Alfred’s avatars could plug into?”

“Not that I saw,” Agnes replied. She approached the problem from another angle, “Could it be that this ship has only one destination, and it doesn’t spare any power or space to anything else?”

“Possibly. Or,” Tommy suggested, “this could be a part of a hive ship. One among many and there is a single control ship managing several drones.” A tremor shook the ship. There had been several tremors as they traveled to the ship. From long experience Tommy felt this wasn’t the planetoid shifting. It was the ship moving.

“Let’s get back to our caskets,” he said. “We won’t answer these questions here. Besides, it may not matter.” As they climbed back to their caskets he explained. “These ships have a single function and were built by a machine mind. The design is functional for its purpose of hauling people as cargo, not people as passengers.”

They both secured themselves in their caskets against any buffeting of the warp jump. They didn’t have to wait long. The familiar sensation of the A/W drive making a single jump passed through their bodies. It didn’t last long. The ships had left the planetoid. Now they needed to gather matter for fuel and start their big jump to their destination. Tommy hoped it would take them to the pirates and his mother.

He opened his casket and floated next to Agnes’. They had left the gravity field of the planetoid. Tommy set her lid to transparent. He owed Agnes a face to face as he outlined what he had planned.

“Aunt Agnes,” Tommy began formally. “I’ve got a plan, and if it works, I’ll find mother.” She stared at him confused. “You can’t go with me.” Agnes’ eyes opened wide as she saw where Tommy was going with this. “It’s a long trip and there are no provisions for us to stay awake. I’ve checked, and you can’t go back into hibernation.” Now Agnes shook her head. There had to be a way. “Alfred will be with you and Dr. Ann. He’s calculated that you can summon the Swift when it completes its next orbit. It’s risky, but it’s a chance.”

Always the good engineer, Agnes found a way to transmit through the casket, “Tommy are you crazy? This is certain death.”

“You said yourself the ship’s systems are closed. We can’t hack in.” Tommy had opened the access panel in the back of Agnes’ casket and plugged in Alfred’s media unit. “I’ve made a copy of me and of Alfred to take with me. I need you to recover the Swift and follow. I need you to get me out.”

She saw Tommy was giving them all a chance. Agnes had to be Tommy’s chance. For Agnes this made the difference. How could she argue with a crazy plan when she had a part to play in it as well? With tears in her eyes she nodded agreement. “Set a timer. From here, if they go to the Central Systems you’ll be traveling a month. If you go to the Fringe it could be longer. Either way you can’t re-hibernate right away, your body will need time to recover. At least a week.”

“Alfred will have that covered.” At this, Tommy glanced at the avatar still attached to his casket. “Now I haven’t much time to get you out of the lock and safely away from this ship.” Tommy felt the inertia of maneuvering thrust as he held onto her casket.

“Okay But nephew, you listen to your old auntie. You be careful. What will your mother say if I lose you?” Agnes quipped trying to lighten the mood. “Remember our family has a habit of running off to save each other and getting lost.” She tried to smile.

Tommy smiled back. “I’ll be good as I can be. And I’ll have an Alfred copy to watch over me,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.” He put the lid back to opaque to shield Agnes from radiation, then Tommy hotwired the cargo bay hatch to open.

As the hatch opened, Tommy saw the extent of the destruction. The ship they were in was part of a fleet of thousands of other ships. All moved as one toward the debris of the planetoid. That looked like a fragmented sphere expanding even as it emerged from the gas giant’s atmosphere. Cassius Brutus had timed it exactly. The ships had jumped out into an orbit that allowed them to overtake the debris field with little waste of thruster fuel and consume the remains to power the A/W drives.

Without its partner to balance it, the outer planetoid spiraled away. It pulled some of its sister with it as a trail of rock and the settlement’s remains followed. It was a slow dance. But Tommy, long practiced in piloting, understood the mechanics of solar navigation. He didn’t have time to wonder what would happen to the gas giant or the sister planetoid. He had to get Agnes and Dr. Ann Ai out of the hatch.

Releasing the restraining clasp on both caskets, he lashed them together with cargo straps available on every vessel to secure shipments. Once he got them into position at the hatch, he secured his feet to the cargo rack with more straps. Then he placed his helmet against Agnes’ casket lid and gave it two thumps with his gloved hand. A reassuring two thumps responded. It was low tech but it would do the job. He shoved hard, pushing the two caskets out the hatch door.

They sailed slowly away from the ship. Tommy watched for a moment and then closed the hatch. He made his way to his casket and started the hibernation sequence. Tommy’s last thoughts were not of his mother he hoped to find or his sister he hoped to save. He said a prayer for his Aunt Agnes, who he hoped he had saved already, even though she was now in the most dangerous part of his scheme. And then Tommy thought no more.

“Alfred, are you there?” Agnes waited twenty minutes. Her suit contained several days of battery life. But it’s quiet in space. She had waited this long, afraid that any signal would be picked up by the fleet of ships hanging in the surrounding space.

“Yes, Agnes. I am here. You needn’t worry about talking. Our low level signal will not be picked up.” Alfred spoke reassuringly to her.

Agnes got a grip on her emotions. Trapped in a coffin of her own making, she floated helpless in space. She was safe from the unknown horror that Tommy had chosen to face without her. Damn him. He pursued his mother and she felt helpless.

“Thank you, Alfred. Could I see what we face?” The lid in front of her went translucent. Her casket slowly rotated on all three axes. She should have felt disoriented and nauseous. But somewhere in her unknown past, she must have done some space walking. Perhaps as an engineer, she had done repairs in space. She added one more thing to the list of things she learned about herself. She handled the disorientation of no up and down like a natural.

What she saw disturbed her. She could make out several bright dots moving against the surface of the gas giant. The fleet of ships converged on a spherical cloud of dust that had been her home. As she rotated around, she noted the twin planetoid wasn’t where it should be. It moved toward a higher orbit, no longer tethered to its partner’s mass in the strange dance of two heavenly bodies.

“Okay don’t go space crazy on me,” she said to herself.

“Pardon?” Alfred responded.

“Nothing, Alfred,” she replied quickly. “Talking to myself. You’ve made observations. Are we in any danger from the debris field or the changing orbit of the twin planetoid?”

“No, we are safe.” Alfred continued his report. “The Swift should be holding its place on the other side of the sister planetoid. We were to rendezvous in two hours. The debris field has expanded to the sister and will eventually form rings around it.”

“We should be able to make contact in less time than that.” Agnes observed. So, she waited. She sucked down nutrient from her feeding tube and waited. She asked Alfred to clear her lid every twenty minutes and waited. It didn’t make her sick, and she felt better if she saw with her own eyes the disaster ahead of her. She kept track of her time on her HUD. After patiently waiting an hour, Alfred checked for signs of the Swift. It would be looking for them to come from the shattered planetoid. If it kept communication on a tight laser beam, then they would miss each other. If the Swift was out of position, then they could not contact it. The laser transmitter on Alfred’s avatar was not as accurate as those on a ship.

“Alfred, I just had a thought. I know you’ve got your beam wide, but try refining it to a pinpoint and transmit on this target pattern across the sister planetoid.” Agnes entered the pattern through her HUD and shared it with Alfred. They would either find the Swift or the pirates would pick them up. She wasn’t desperate for rescue as much as she needed to start rescuing Tommy.

Another hour passed and still no word from the Swift. Alfred’s navigation subroutine Ai ran the ship. “I will widen the pattern,” Alfred said. Agnes hunkered down now for a longer wait. She monitored Alfred’s efforts, but there was nothing further she could do. So, she just hung in space spinning.

The rendezvous was three hours overdue and no word yet. She was a small target in a lot of space. “How is our orbit?” she asked Alfred again.

“We are in no danger,” Alfred replied with patience. “I do have an update on the ships. They are leaving the system. The debris field has been swept as fuel and has been reduced. The remaining debris will offer little navigational hazards and give the sister planetoid no balance to its orbit,” he informed her.

Dr. Ann offered some distraction to Agnes as she posed word games and stories about their family. They were in the middle of a holiday story when Alfred’s voice broke in distorted. “Mayday, mayday!”

“Alfred what is that?”

In a clear voice Alfred explained, “That is the Swift. I will respond.”

“Let me, it will be less confusing,” Agnes suggested. “Swift, this is Agnes. Can you clean up your signal? Over.”

A moment later the Swift navigation Ai responded in Alfred’s voice, much clearer. “This is the Swift. I’ve had a problem. The ship has almost exhausted the maneuvering thruster fuel avoiding the debris field. Some of it has fallen into orbit around the planetoid. There is enough to hold orbit, but I cannot break out and meet you at your present position. An FTL jump at this short distance is ill advised. Over.”

“Crap.” Agnes let that slip out, but then added a question to Albert, “Can we assist the Swift in any way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe we have the resources. But I need to share with you that there has been a bogie changing orbit in our direction since our contact with the Swift, and is now sending a beacon signal in our direction,” Alfred informed her.

“Is it the pirates?” she asked.

“No, we are receiving a transponder code on a tight laser beam, and the pilot would like to speak with you.”

“Pilot, but none of those ships had a pilot.” Agnes thought quickly. This could be a trap, but it felt more like a rescue. “Okay let’s hear it,” she said.

“This is Swift shuttle to Agnes Zephyr. Please respond mistress,” came the signal. “Mistress Agnes are you there?”

If Agnes could have jumped inside the casket she would have. “Marcus, but how?” Agnes knew full well that there would be a delay of several minutes, but she welcomed the voice of her family protector.

“You sound in good health. I will explain upon approach to your position. ETA two hours, over.” The strong voice on the other end of the transmission responded several minutes later.

Over the delayed com link, Marcus explained that he used subroutines Caesar developed with Agnes as a young girl. It allowed Marcus to assess a situation and make a reasonable choice beyond any other parameters his programming allowed. It entailed several random generators in a matrix she enjoyed working on as a puzzle. Marcus reminded Agnes both she and her father expressed disappointment it had apparently failed at the time.

The parameters he faced in securing the apartment never reached a threshold where the subroutine would properly activate. The eminent destruction of the apartment building and the primary instruction from the family to protect each member finally pushed the variables high enough Marcus moved his programing out of the home console and through the network. He traced Alfred’s small avatar spiders to the shuttle and overrode the hanger systems as the settlement fell apart.

They launched the shuttle and attempted to track her ever since. The avatars interfaced and updated Marcus on the escape attempt. Marcus used them in an attempt to link with Alfred. Since he was with Agnes, Alfred’s avatars located the media unit. But they had only a vague direction to scan. The com link with the Swift allowed Marcus to find the location for a tight beam and find Agnes in her casket.

The delay became negligible as the shuttle approached. “Mistress, I will pick you up shortly. I have only a passing control of this shuttle’s systems. It may take me some time to rendezvous with you.”

“No need. You are close enough for me to take control.” Alfred offered. He then guided the shuttle next to Agnes and used his avatar to pull them all into the ship. Once inside, they faced a different problem, how to rescue the Swift.

“Marcus, my memory is shaky. Is there a refueling depot close?” Agnes asked.

“Yes, mistress. I have recorded all current orbital data and adjusted it for losing our home planetoid. The closest depot is in low orbit near the gas giant. We have sufficient fuel to get there,” Marcus shared.

“Alfred, we’re going to get some gas.” And they did.

The Controller opened his eyes. They felt gummy. It had been a very long time since anything surprised him. The signal was strong and coming closer. He knew this signal.

His agents were already in play. There was much at stake. He lost hope when he lost this signal, but now. If Tommy was there, they might have a chance to stop the culling of the human race. He closed his eyes and focused on the control. He could not afford to lose control now. He played his part as he always did.

Danielle Sutton pulled her pack strap tighter and wiped the snow from her visor. There were few places left this remote and a lot better ways to get there. But hiking through a polar ice cap was the only way to get in unnoticed. Yes, she was trained and yes she could do it, but that didn’t mean she liked the cold any better.

She sent Tania in so Sutton needed to get Tania out. So far Tania provided the best intelligence they had, and Tania wasn’t even conscious. Her imbedded tech allowed the Controller to trace back to this location. The shock was that it was so obvious.

So, visor cleared and straps cinched tight, Admiral Danielle Sutton marched on. One step at a time, neither snow nor rain nor dark of night would keep her from her mission. Now where had she heard that, she wondered.

Tania Smith knew nothing. She was in hibernation. To look at her face, she slept so peacefully. Her hair shaved off, but she still had warrior’s beauty. Her skin was smooth and her mouth relaxed. She looked much like she always did, except for her hair, of course. And the tattoo of the reaper and scythe newly inked just beneath her left collarbone. Its one unique difference, under the scythe was an accurate portrait of her as an avenging spirit stepping on the bones of children. Tania slept on knowing none of this.