Chrome Symphony - Chapter 7

The spacecraft silently approached the still-unidentified, dilapidated ship. Chester was careful to keep his distance as he maneuvered the customized Crest Corporation vehicle into the proximity of the wreck.

Duncan transmitted the inverse beacon signal, which jammed the old ship's detection systems. Nervously, Chester moved Crest's ship closer and closer to the wreck.

"So far, so good," said Camay. "I believe we should keep Duncan aboard our craft so that he can concentrate on jamming the security system."

Duncan nodded. "That's probably for the best. If I go too deeply into the ship, there's a risk that something inside might jam what I'm doing."

Chester extended the robotic arms from the spacecraft and slowly pried the cargo bay door open. The metal was worn and pieces drifted away as the door was cautiously forced open. When the opening was wide enough, Chester maneuvered the craft inside and turned on its bright spotlights.

"Okay. Jax and Shell, go head and suit up," said Camay, pointing to some space suits in the back of the shuttle. Camay walked into the back and put on her space suit.

After Jax and Shell had put their space suits on, they entered the airlock of their ship. Camay wirelessly operated the controls and the three of them exited their craft and walked into the depths of the cargo area.

Jax picked up a small piece of metal that had fallen from the wall of the old ship. She scanned it with her analyzer and gasped.

"Dr. Thameh!" said Jax, over the radio link. "Either my analyzer is malfunctioning or this ship..."

"This ship what," asked Camay.

"I don't know how this is possible but the radiation-based dating indicates this heap is about ten thousand years old!" shouted Jax.

"Preposterous," snarked Camay. "Please scan another piece of debris."

Jax did as Camay asked, scanning several more pieces of debris from the floor, then scanning the still-intact walls of the cargo hold. She sent the raw data from her analyzer to Camay, which all indicated an apparent age of the materials to be around 10,000 years.

"This can't possibly be right," said Camay.

The group eventually made their way into the core of the ship, where the drone Camay had sent earlier was resting beneath the giant sphere.

Suddenly, a loud, head-splitting buzzing sound rang out through Shell's mind. She fell to her knees, screaming.

"AHHHHH!!!! WHERE IS THAT COMING FROM?!!!" screamed Shell.

Camay and Jax rushed over to her. A loud voice then boomed through her head.

"I see you've returned," yelled the voice. Shell turned around. From the looks on Camay and Jax's faces, they could hear it too.

"Who are you?" yelled Shell.

"I have become God," replied the voice. Shell knew the voice sounded familiar but she could not place it.

Shell looked at the sphere. It was showing signs of activation with indicator lights around its seams. Shell attempted to access its control system, to no avail. She pulled up the pass code that Jess had given her during the earlier meeting and immediately began entering it.

"I said, who the hell are you," demanded Shell.

The sphere blasted a powerful force field, slamming Shell, Camay, and Jax into the walls of the room.

"I have become God!" repeated the voice in Shell's head. Shell fell back to the floor in pain, having been jarred not only by the force field but by some kind of internal tension that she could not understand.

"Mulhauser," muttered Jax.

"It's... him? Really," replied Shell.

The sphere emitted another blast wave, slamming Shell into the wall again. Jax and Camay were crushed by the second wave with sparks flying from their android bodies.

"Dr. Thameh!" screamed Shell. Shell ran over to Camay, who was lying on the floor, motionless. Jax lay just a few feet from her, completely devastated from the blast. Shell knew that she herself was injured pretty badly, although her strong cybernetic armor had protected her vital organs and major internal augmentations.

"Dr. Thameh, are you okay?" said Shell.

"Shell, get out of here right now," replied Camay. "Don't worry about us. We have plenty of other android bodies to which we can transfer."

Shell looked up at the sphere. She knew that there was nothing she could do.

"Jax and I have already extracted what data we could," said Camay, now speaking directly to Shell over the wireless network. The two android bodies that Camay and Jax had inhabited were now completely inoperable.

Shell stumbled to her feet and began running toward the exit of the large room when the sphere sent out a third shock wave, this time pinning Shell against the wall. She felt her arms lose power and she fell limp, slamming into the floor.

"Shell, can you hear me," shouted Chester, over the radio link. "Some kind of strong force field is tossing our shuttle around the cargo bay like a rag doll! We have to retreat!"

Shell struggled to stand up, her arms hanging to her sides. "Chester," replied Shell, "Dr. Thameh and Jax had their proxy androids destroyed. I can barely move."

"GET BACK TO THE SHUTTLE!" yelled Chester.

Shell stumbled toward the exit again. The booming voice from the sphere rang out in her head again.

"What's wrong," yelled Mulhauser's voice, "leaving so soon?"

Shell reached the door and managed to take cover around a corner.

"You can leave but you'll never escape. The universe itself cannot escape. I have become God..."

"Shut the hell up!" yelled Shell. "I don't need to hear your nonsense!"

"You don't understand," replied Mulhauser's voice. "I have merged with a system that can control the very logic of the universe. I am inevitable and inescapable and you dared to interfere with my projection."

"Projection?" asked Shell, "What ARE you blabbering about?"

"The sphere, stupid," replied Mulhauser. "It's a projection of the system in lower dimensional space. Soon, I will assume complete control of all time and space."

"I KNEW this was going to turn out to be dangerous," yelled Duncan.

Chester unbuckled his seat harness and ran to the back of the shuttle. He started putting on a space suit.

"What are you doing," asked Duncan.

"Shell's hurt," replied Chester. "Keep jamming the security system. I'm going to bring her back to the shuttle."

Chester put on his space suit and rushed out of the air lock. He darted through the corridors, desperately trying to figure out which way the team had gone.

After a few minutes of searching, Chester found Shell, stumbling along the wall. Her space suit was damaged and appeared to be de-pressurizing. Chester knew that, in this condition, Shell would die if she wasn't in a pressurized area soon. Chester ran over to her.

"Can you run," asked Chester.

"I'll try," replied Shell.

The two of them made their way back to the shuttle. Chester helped Shell back into the air lock. Both of Shell's arms were crushed.

Rushing back to the pilot's seat, Chester turned on the engines and maneuvered the shuttle through the cargo bay doors and back out of the abandoned shipwreck.

"He's going to kill us," said Shell. She was slumped over in her seat.

"We have to destroy it, don't we," replied Chester.

"Can we?" asked Duncan.

Suddenly, Camay's voice came in on the radio link. "The NEA726 orbital cannon," said Camay.

"What?" asked Chester. He was confused.

Camay appeared on the video screen in the cockpit's communicator. "When Mulhauser activated the sphere's ability to phase in and out of our world," said Camay, "he moved the entire asteroid out of phase along with it. There was another top secret project that the Herei Mob Army had kept there... an orbital cannon."

Chester flew the shuttle away from the old ship as quickly as he could.

"But how do we fire it at that thing if it's out of phase," asked Duncan.

"You don't have to," replied Camay. "If there were a way to simply access it, we could activate the orbital cannon's self-destruct function, which would take out the true location of that thing's core."

"Ehhhhhhh....." muttered Chester. "I don't really understand how that would work..."

Camay was sitting in her office at the L1 colony. After the sphere had destroyed her android body, she transferred her mind back to the android she inhabited at the colony. Jax entered the room shortly after Camay had arrived and they were both in radio contact with Chester, Duncan, and Shell.

"Please retreat and come to the L1 colony immediately," said Camay.

After about twenty minutes, Camay watched the security cameras as Chester brought the spacecraft into the colony's dock.

Camay and Jax ran to the docking area to meet them. Chester and Jax helped Shell limp along as they took her to the medical center. The technicians began working on Shell's damaged frame as Chester, Duncan, Camay, and Jax moved into the waiting room.

"Thank you for risking your lives yet again," said Camay, looking at Duncan. "I know this wasn't part of the arrangement and for that I am deeply sorry."

Duncan sighed and sat there, scratching his head.

"What do we do now, Dr. Thameh," asked Duncan. "I don't know if Mulhauser was bluffing but he's already demonstrated that this... machine... he's fused with, supposedly, has a terrible amount of power."

"Every time that sphere does something, whether it's phase in or out of our world or send out shock waves, it seems that its true location becomes exposed to electromagnetism somehow," replied Camay. "In the short time we were in there, Shell unlocked its security and we were able to grab a considerable amount of data, which revealed that among other things."

"Like what other things," demanded Duncan.

"In short, this system is at least many, many thousands of years old. It's older than that abandoned ship we just escaped. It's of ancient, extra-terrestrial origin," said Camay.

"Furthermore," interjected Jax, "Your crackpot theory about radio signals traveling backward in time is actually realistic considering that machine's capabilities."

Camay nodded. "But that's just it. Even though it exists in higher dimensions, it leaves itself extremely vulnerable whenever it exerts forces in lower dimensional space. Every time it does that, it leaves us an opportunity to destroy it, provided we have a sufficiently strong blast."

Duncan sat and thought for a moment. "So, that means if we can make the orbital cannon on NEA726 self-destruct at the exact time that thing acts, it will take it out? Completely?"

"I'm quite sure of that, yes," replied Camay. "You'll have to break through the cannon's security on the first opening, then make it self-destruct at the exact moment on the next opening."

"That's going to be really difficult, if not impossible," replied Duncan.

"Before we go any further," replied Chester, "we have a serious threat here. This is much bigger than Firewall's mission."

Camay nodded. "Of course it is. I've sent Jess Price a message about what just happened aboard the ship," she said. "Crest is sending a private security force to secure the space around it. The military is also moving in with a fleet."

"Good," replied Chester. "What we just witnessed, if it's not an illusion, is a potentially world-ending weapon."

"Hoo boy," said Duncan. "The messes we get into." Duncan stood up and started walking back toward where Shell was being treated. "I'm going to see how Shell's doing," he said.

Chester turned on one of the TV monitors. The local live news broadcast was covering the military approach of the abandoned ship.

"We now bring you live coverage of the attempted containment of the alleged weapon, apparently left over from the Herei Mob Army," said the reporter. "Crest Corporation is supplementing the military force with their best security forces and equipment."

Chester scratched his head. "I'm a little surprised that they aren't doing this covertly," said Chester. "The whole world's going to be watching this unfold."

"Well, that's the containment operation underway," replied Camay. "Crest knows Firewall's role here but our operation will actually be covert. Fortunately we'll do it from here."

"Duncan will be able to make contact through the dimensional opening... from here?" asked Chester.

"Through a probe, yes," said Camay. "There's no sense in almost getting you all killed yet again. We'll do things sensibly."

Chester nodded. "That's why you're the boss, boss!"