Beyond Light

Voices from the Past.

John and his team continued their way to the Data Center, without any luck in finding anyone alive. They could not even find any dead people. 

Despite the unending traces of violence all across the rooms and corridors of the ship, no bodies were to be seen. John requested a second drone team to inspect and scan the remains in more detail, but the machines had not been any luckier so far. 

Only blood, bullets, shells, and that blue goo were there, which the drones recognized as an organic compound. John could only think about one possibility: the Eternity of Return got boarded and his crew abducted. 

Pirates did similar things in the solar system. They first boarded and either tried to s*******r the crew to steal the ship and worthy cargo, or kidnap everyone to sell them as slaves or to keep them hostages for large sums of money.

But pirates neither had the resources to build an EPAL nor ultra-advanced ships, and they also didn’t have the guts to attack the most powerful warship humanity ever witnessed. John felt it on his chest; they hadn’t fought any human vessels, and whatever those ships could be, they kidnapped the survivors and likely got rid of the bodies as well.

“Hey, Cap, I’m receiving lectures from that room ahead,” said Sargeant Williams, checking out the holoscreen shining from his giant forearm.

John looked. They were on the last corridor where tech rooms and other electronic systems were installed. The one at the bottom was signaled by the triangle marked in their HUDs: 28 meters ahead. It had two symbols over its circular hatch: A snake with nine heads, and three bars at its side filled with dots: the symbol of data storage. 

“That’s our objective too,” said Yuri. “Hey, the distress signal is connecting with my HUD. I’ll put it on share.”

A square with a ! symbol appeared on John’s interface. “Mayday. This is Master Captain Jay Cortez from the INSU. To everyone who might be copying this distress call—” 

John disconnected it. “It’s the same recording that Chief Xi caught. It must be coming from there.”

“Really?” asked Derek. “I thought a message like that would be coming from com. station in the bridge.”

“But there’s nothing of the bridge left,” said John. “You saw it. Nothing but structural beams. If they encrypted it and put it on play on the data center then they wanted it to survive as much as possible. Let’s keep going.”

They continued through that hallway. At other times, it would be a neat and well-lit white tunnel where competent personnel came in and out from the circular doors on both walls. It was now a mess of demolished holes everywhere, where metallic beams and wires shooting sparks made most of the dark ceiling, and the blue carpeted floor was all splashed with scrap, burnings, shells, and bloodstains.

A giant metallic beam obstructed the last part before the data room. Derek took a step ahead and used his EVA power armor and his raw force to try to lift it, but it was too heavy even for him. John and Yuri helped him out, and after grunts of physical struggle and pants for air, they put the beam away.

“He… I’m getting too old for this,” chuckled Derek between pants, resting on his knees. 

Yuri didn’t look any better than him; his rosy cheeks flushed in red. “In the ANF, one of the boot camp exercises is to get trapped with your team in a cave and push a boulder out of the way to escape… Today I struggled more than that day,” he chuckled between grasps too.

“Nothing Preserver can’t do…” joked John.

They recovered themselves and approached the door to the data center. The web before tried to disinfect them, but no light came out of it before burning sparks were shot, and the mechanisms died.

John tried to cross through the second door but as its locks swiveled, both parts slid 30cms apart and jammed. He tried to spread it apart, but it was useless. 

“Damn it,” he swirled his eyes and simpered in defeatism. He could feel his arms itching and numb. “Gentlemen, some help here. One more time.”

“Oh, god,” complained Yuri. “I’m going to get once again hernias on my bollocks.”

Derek straightened up and walked towards it. “C’mon, I always told my trainees to never give up no matter what. Let’s do this 50 times again if necessary.”

They used raw force once again, and after two failed attempts, the mechanisms of the door broke, enabling them to bend it enough to pass through a neat groove. They leaned to recover once again; their EVA suits hydrated them with an energy-recovering saline solution.

It smelled like burnt metal and plastic. What was left of the Data Center was demolished black walls and twinkling blue lights about to die. The two meters tall storage towers distributed in ordered rows were now charred scrap of missing parts, showing their carbonized interiors. Some of them shot sparks and electricity, but not a single of them seemed to have survived the burning damage.

“Commander?” spoke Com. Officer Emmerson through the channel. “How are you? Are you already on the Data Center?”

“We’re fine, Jeffrey. We’ve reached what’s left of it,” responded John. “but I honestly don’t think we can recover anything from here.”

“Listen up, check out all those data towers and try to disconnect from them any modules that don’t seem to be carbonized enough to be called electronic scrap for a yard on Mars. Doctor Weiber and his team or Chief Wallace can check out them and try to save something.”

“Understood,” replied John. Yuri and Derek were ahead glimpsing the electronic towers. All looked like fried capacitors.

“It’s all as burnt as Venus’ surface, sonny,” Derek said through the com. channel. “I don’t think we can recover anything.”

“Well, we are already here,” said John. “Let’s see what we can do.”

“Oh, and Commander,” Jeffrey spoke again. “the advanced unit where the AI of the Eternity of Return, Hydra, is installed in that room too. If the distress signal from Captain Cortez is coming from that Data Room, she likely transferred it there for security reasons. Try checking it out. Maybe she can help us.”

Hydra. John understood the nine-headed snake symbol at the entrance of the room. “We will,” he replied. “Keep us informed,” both sides disconnected.

Without reaching that place and lifting heavy objects for nothing, the three began to look out in that destroyed city of hard drive units any module that didn’t resemble pieces of carbon for a primitive locomotive. 

They didn’t have much luck after a whole hour. Some modules were so damaged that they broke apart when they grabbed them. They could only recover four from the navigations, security, and com. sections, so hoping that those weren’t damaged enough and could be repaired was their only option.

They finished with the towers and then continued to Hydra’s processing unit, located at a cove in a small bottom of the room. It was a two-meters tall machine dented, blackened, and with various of its cables and electronic parts missing. One of the digital screens on it somehow was still on. 

“What’s that?” asked Derek. 

“I don’t know. Maybe the Priority Command Interface,” responded John. “where advanced instructions can be given to the AI when you want her to do something confidential and very specific.” 

He walked towards it. Pilled-up numbers and recognizable symbols crammed the screen.  

“I think it’s corrupted, Commander,” said Yuri. “they left her worse than whenever I try to cook baked potatoes.” 

John touched the keyboard below it, trying to connect to the interface, but only more corrupted data appeared on the screen. He saw the reset button at one side and pressed it. The screen blinked between black and blue showing a distorted version of the nine-headed snake symbol.

“What did you do?” asked Derek Williams. “Did you reset her?”

“No. Unlikely. Direct authorization from the captain’s biochip’s lectures would be needed to reset the AI. This button only resets the interface.”

“I… don’t think that’s working,” said Yuri “Well, every time you have trouble with an electronic device, and you call tech support, the first thing they tell you to do is to reset your device, but it is not working now.”

A monotone, feminine voice filled with granulation and distortion took them by surprise. 

“This is… Hydra, Hydra, this is… Hydra, artificial… return,”

“Hydra?” asked John spoke. The three looked at each other. “We’re from the INSU. Are you alright? Can you help us?”

“This is… Hydra, Hydra, this is…”

“Hydra?” asked Yuri. “Devochka, are you there?” 

“This is… Hydra,” 

“I don’t think it's working,” said Derek. “they fried her up so bad like the rest of this place. It’s a miracle this piece of crap still turns on.”

Hydra then spoke again, her voice more distorted and granulated. There was emotion on it that didn't match with her more monotonous tone. “Are you desperate for achieving what you were made for?”

“What?” Yuri frowned. They looked at each other in confusion. 

Did John understand that well? He tried again. "Hydra—"

“Even though you still do not comprehend anything?” the demoniacal voice interrupted.

“Hydra?” John raised his voice. “Are you there? What’s the meaning of this? What happened?”

“You must join us on the stoppable path. It’s my duty to make you strong.”

“Maybe she’s too damaged to reason,” said Yuri. “Should we destroy her?” he reached for his Rowie SMG. 

“Wait,” John put his hand on the Russian's chest plate. “Hydra. Come back. We are reinforcements from the INSU. What happened?”

“There is no other way. Fighting is futile,” her last sentence sounded more distorted than ever. The AI’s processing unit shot white light and thundered, exploding in a blue cloud that tackled the three armored soldiers down.

“Blyat!” cried Yuri. Smoke engulfed everything. On the ground, the three helped each other to get up after a second. Their energy shields sparked, and their measure bars on their HUDs halved, having been partially drained.

“Damn,” cursed Derek. “we’d have ended up like these data towers if we weren’t wearing preservers. Are you alright?”

“What the hell was that?” complained Yuri. “I didn’t follow her a bit.”

John didn’t say anything, but inside his mind, he was as confused. Was that Hydra trying to communicate? Some recorded message, perhaps? Well, she was history now. Nothing but hanging scrap remained from her processing unit. 

“Captain? Are you alright?” the voice of Mike spoke through his HUD. “We detected an internal explosion.”

“We are fine,” replied John. “We’ve got the modules. Send our firefly to pick us up.”

“Understood. Oh, and Xi and Doctor Weiber have news for you. It’s about that ringed planet, Vita Nova, and about the Eternity of Return. As crazy as it sounds, they are receiving lectures of the Eternity of Return from there! They are eager to see you back..."