Interstellar Academy by Kennedy Harkins (read books for money .TXT) 📕

seize power," Dru finished her thought.

Nodding, Mae said, "But it's not that easy to get rid of a giant ship."

"Sure it is." I shook my head, feeling ill. "All you need is a destructive force the size of a star that won't leave behind anything. Something that sucks up everything. Even light itself."

A blackhole.

Drusus

 

April 20th:

"We're headed towards a blackhole," I told the Tundrians once we were back in the Tak Raw center.

There was a beat of silence.

Two.

Then total hysteria.

People were screaming, lashing out at their friends, trying to figure out how to get to the escape shuttle in the next five seconds. Inside, my mind was doing the exact same thing. I wanted to leave, to run so far I wouldn't even be able to get back.

There wasn't enough time, or space if I knew Rike, to get everyone onto the shuttle. And I had put them in this position. My map had led them to the best point on campus to release the gas. I had sentenced those people to die.

"Quiet!" I barked, and, meraculously, they silenced.

Except for the boy who'd been opening his big mouth all day. "What're you waiting for?" He stepped right up to me. "Lead us to the shuttle! Rike said he'd send the location to your holo."

I gripped the round sphere tightly through the fabric of my jacket, and I noticed my three roommates were staring at me. The girl and the Animarian I had expected, but I was shocked to see Mae looking so anxious, standing close to the other two.

It was down to me. I could see it in their eyes. In Mae's I saw a deep loyalty, telling me shed back my play, whatever is was. Kavi's were pleading, asking me without words to stay and help all those unconcious people. The girl's were defiant. She knew she couldn't take on the AIs without my help, though it would've been like pulling teeth to get her to admit it.

Unlike the Animarian, however, she wouldn't beg.

"Well, it's been fun-- not really, you understand, I'm just trying out polite. Doesn't really suit me, though." The girl pulled Kavi away from the crowd. "Come on, green boy, let's--"

I turned back to my fellow Tundrians. "We could go," I said. "We could get in that shuttle and leave all those people to their fates."

"So let's do that!" A girl in the back of the crowd shouted. There was an accompanying roar of approval.

I looked back, and the girl was raising her eyebrows at me. Shrugging, I realized she was right. Speeches weren't really my forte.

Pulling the holo out of my pocket, I threw it to the ground and smashed it under my foot in one smooth movement. It crunched under the force, a million shards of metal cascading down, electrical sparking sprouting up in a confetti explosion of color.

The boy who'd gotten in my face earlier screamed and fell at my feet, grasping at the pieces and cutting his hands. "Do you realize what you've done?" he wailed. "You've doomed us to die with these dregs!"

He sprung to his feet at swung at me, his aim sloppy. I dodged easily and rammed my fist into his sternum, sending him sprawling and choking to the ground. He layed there sputtering while I looked up at the other Tundrians, staring at me with wide, angry eyes.

"So," I said. "Help or die."

_____

 

Keeping watch at the door, I kept stealing glances over my shoulder into our apartment. We'd left Kavi and Mae to organize the volunteers into formation for the next stage of the girl's plan. This part of it, I was less than pleased about.

"You're going to get us captured," I hissed at her. "What's taking you so long?"

She kept her hands and attention on the task in front of her. "I'm building an EMP bomb out of spare bits. You can't rush this."

"You have five minutes."

I watched her for a second before returning to my guard post. She was dissembling a cluster of stolen holos and the AIs hand from under my bed. The girl seemed calm and assured, the opposite of what she'd been coming up with this idea. I figured that this was her element.

"Where'd you learn to do this?" I asked.

"A buddy of mine at camp was kind of famous for it. He got his kicks bringing down Cruisers and jets within his ten mile radius. Ours won't reach that far."

I didn't question what kind of a camp would house a person like that. "So it won't get the whole school? What if some of the AIs are out of range of the electric pulse?"

She said, "Not my problem. You're security. You deal with it."

Perfect.

More than five minutes had gone by, and I opened my mouth to tell her to get a move on, but she was already up. The human shoved the bomb at me, and I caught it with shaking hands. I held my breath until it was obvious it wouldn't detonate.

The girl rolled her eyes at me. "It has a switch. Besides, it'll give off a pulse of engery that'll shut down all our tech. At the most it'd give you radiation cancer."

"That's not as comforting as you think it is."

With her step completed, it was my turn. I motioned her to move out, and we sprinted south towards the arena. The smoke hadn't completely cleared, but it no longer served as an adequate cover against being seen. The lack made my feel raw and exposed.

I heard the robots before I saw them, a heavy clanking that I'd never associate with anything else ever again. Pulling the girl behind me to keep her from running right into them, we pressed ourselves against the side of the building, barely daring to breathe.

She tapped her forefinger against the stun stick strapped to my left calf, a silent question.   

I shook my head vigorously, miming counting off on my fingers to signal that their were too many. She bit her lip but nodded, seeming to sink further into the granite behind us.

An awful helplessness spread between us as we sat there and waited for them to pass. Each foot step sounded like a strike or a gunshot, causing us to flinch and our hearts to beat impossibly faster. Rows and rows of them marched right past our hiding spot, each second bringing more into our line of sight. A hard grip on my weapon, I waited for the scared one to come around the bend and spot us.

But he didn't. And they passed.

After the AIs were clear, obscured from us by space and buildings, I nodded at the human to continue running. We reached the arena a few minutes later, gasping inaudibly and clutching our sides. We didn't approach the hangar, though I saw her shoot it a wistful glance. I placed the bomb in the middle of the arena, the center of the ship, giving it the opportunity to take out the most AIs, especially the ones in the main control room.

She arranged a grouping of metal cubes around the device that had been lying around the arena. “Okay.” The girl stepped back. “We activate the bomb using this--” she pointed to a blue button “--switch. After that, we have three minutes before it goes off to get down into the control room. If not, we'll be trapped up here, because the pulse will shut down all the systems except the protected ones-- ones necessary to the ship's survival like piloting.”

I was already mentally calculating how long it would take us to get there. It'd be tight. “Can you re-calibrate it to take longer?”

She shook her head. “I have limited materials and time. This was the best I could do.”

I pursued my lips. “So what do we need Mae and the others to be distracting for?”

“After we push the detonate, the real problems arise,” she explained.

“Oh, only then,” I muttered.

“Once activated, the bomb will show up on the ship scanners as a threat, and the AIs will likely pick it up seconds later. Add another couple seconds for them to trace it and then a minute tops for them to get here. That doesn't even come close to adding up to three minutes.” She pointed at the cubes. “Even the force field won't slow them down for long.”

“Mae and--”

“Kavi will help slow their reaction time by distracting them. Exactly.” The girl knelt by her creation. “Get your holo ready, so you can message her as soon as I press the button.”

I did as she bade and then made eye contact. We stared at each other for a silent moment, mentally doing a count down. Then she pressed the detonator and I pressed send. The girl hoped out of the circle she'd set up, slapped the cube until it glowed faintly blue, and we were off.

I took her to the tube leading down into the ship that I'd used last night. She deactivated the safety on the gravity, and we did a free fall to the bottom, landing in an undignified heap. The moment moment we were up and running through the corridors based on my memory of the layout of the tunnels.

“Right here,” I breathed. She turned tightly while I went wide. We didn't even have to communicate it.

I focused on my movements, making them smooth and quick. “If we beat the timer, won't the AIs down there still be active?”

“Your problem,” she panted. “Not mine.”

The matter shifter ring wasn't large, so we had to stand chest to chest while it slowly sucked us down. With each lazy slosh of the strange, gooey material, I could feel the hourglass running out of sand. I didn't want to know what would happen to us if the shifter shut down with us in it. Hopefully a quick death, because no way did I want to be stuck face to face with this human for the rest of my short life span.

We dropped to the floor in the main control room, and it sounded like a cannon blast against the silence. I guessed robots didn't do small talk.

Five of them turned at once to face us, their pale metal faces looking bewitched in the low light. I could count the wires and gears that made them run they were so close. Without communication, they moved towards us in synchronization, like a hive mind. I unsheathed my stun stick, waiting for them at the ready though I was trembling so hard my teeth were chattering.

And then, for the third time that day, the ship gave a mighty vibration, knocking us all off our feet. The lights of the control board went completely dark, the lifelessness swallowing us all whole. I couldn't see the AIs, but in my mind's eye they were everywhere. To my side. At my throat.

Right behind me.

The next second, a faint green glow emanated from the stripes of wall, ceiling,