Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

You can’t be Korok ! was Jon astounded reply, he died five hundred years ago !

Again that terrifying smile.

The version of me made from meat and water is long gone. But my mind, all that was my essence, was digitised and uploaded to the operating system of the Fatal Scimitar. No – I AM the operating system. The Maroun you saw was merely a representation, a shadow play. But I am no puppet. I am Korok and as of now I bring an end to your plans. You will contaminate no more of my soldiers. We will arrive at our destination before long and when my warriors awake they will deal with you in the manner most appropriate to your treachery. Now begone !

And instantly the men’s eyes opened as they were flung out of the Educator with such force that Jarz tumbled off his couch.

After that shock they stood or sat in complete dejection, oppressed with a feeling of utter helplessness.

Jarm said over and over and over again: ‘We’re all going to die,’ until Jon crossed angrily to him and shook him into frightened silence.

Shev stared at Jon. ‘It’s easy enough to shut him up but what exactly are we able to do here? We’re trapped in a vessel of a size we can only guess at with no way of knowing where we are.’

Shana12 suddenly looked up, her face suffused with excitement. ‘Jon! I know what the High Official Generation Room is!’

He glared at her, his taut nerves fraying. ‘And how does that help us; you know, right here, right now?’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘Then please be quiet Shana.’

Jarz suddenly spoke up from where he had been sitting, crumpled up on the floor.

‘We have to go back in.’

‘Into the Educator?’ Jon demanded, ‘No, no, Korok said we wouldn’t be allowed back in.’

Jarz looked at them all, one by one.

‘What’s the alternative? If we can’t find our way around this vessel and somehow seize control of it we’re finished. As Jarm said, we’re all going to die. Once the rest of Korok’s army wakes up it’ll be over for all of us. We’ve got to find out where we are on this ship thing.’

‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ Jon said, looking down on the smaller man as he lay huddled on the floor.

‘You don’t have to,’ Jarz said and stood up very slowly. Suddenly he seemed a taller man than he had been before he had sat down. There was determination in his face. Jon was struck, not for the first time, how different this Jarz was from his equivalent on the Hill, once Korok’s control was removed.

‘I choose to go in.’

None of the others tried to stop him and they watched, almost reverentially, as Jarz lay down on the couch and carefully put the headset on.

At once his eyes closed and his face went blank.

But not for long. Suddenly his face twisted with fear and he cried out in a voice much louder than anyone had thought possible for him: ‘No! No!’

Then his body arched until only his feet and shoulders were on the couch. Then he bent the other way so his arms and legs were pointing almost directly at the ceiling.

And so it went on, with opposing muscle groups being stimulated into ever greater contractions. Desperately they tried to hold him down but his tormented musculature was too strong. Each clonic spasm was greater than the previous, eventually sending the women spinning across the room.

Then there was the dreadful sound of bones snapping under the strain. Jarz gave out one last tremendous scream and then all was silence.

The survivors lay where they had been thrown across the room or where they had collapsed near Jarz’s corpse.

Eventually Jon raised his head and stared at the body.

That was our last hope , he thought, Korok has won .

Never had Jon felt so utterly helpless, so completely, finally beaten. In his electronic incarnation, Korok had become an all-powerful part of the very ship, a vessel in which they had been reduced to the status of crawling vermin.

They had no weapons; no plans; no hope. And even if they had possessed weapons would good would they do against an enemy that was an intangible essence; an electronic mist that could be anywhere and do anything?

He gave a wry smile: at least if they had had weapons they could kill themselves and cheat Korok of his final triumph by escaping into death.

He looked around; half decided to take that ultimate act. What could be used?

There was nothing in this room.

What about that antechamber, he thought. He remembered the objects he had seen when he and Shana had walked in. Those metal sheets, could they be rolled up and pushed down the throat to cause asphyxia?

It was then an incredible thought hit him almost like a physical blow.

Those things had been in part of the Education Room; ergo, they were tools for learning, for information.

What if those who had designed the Fatal Scimitar had planned for a possible problem with the ship’s operating system? What if they had stored information in a non-digital, physical form? A form that could be read without software.

It was their only hope. He dragged Shana12 to her feet and ignoring her startled cry pulled her into the antechamber. He spoke to her quickly and quietly; the last thing the others needed was false hope. Once aware of his idea the pair took out a few of the metal sheets and, after some experimentation, slotted them into viewers.

To his incredible joy, the sheets did indeed contain technical data, data which could only be read by biological eyes when in these viewers. Somewhere there must be schematics for the layout of this vessel!

Shana brought the others in and rapidly set them to work, each to a viewer and a stack of the related metal records.

It was a wearisome task. Many times Jon had thought that the next sheet would give him the knowledge he needed. And each time he was disappointed.

And so it went on.

It was Jarm who found it and his cry echoed all around the antechamber and into the main room. Everyone rushed to look over his shoulder and saw a technical blueprint of their vessel and prison; the aptly named Fatal Scimitar .

It consisted of a wide cylinder with a great nozzle at one end for expelling the propellant gases. The habitation area was in the mid-section of the cylinder, rotating around the long axis to simulate gravity and as far away as possible from that blazing exhaust. But not too far, for dwarfing all the other structures on the vessel was the great shallow cone of the collecting dish. In operation, a magnetic field would be generated, many dark kilometres across and powerful enough to rip iron from the bodies of any biological entity that got too close.

Using knowledge that only a short time before he had not possessed Jon could see that the hydrogen collected by that great ram scoop would be accelerated by a series of microwave generators and lasers and emerge as a massive thrusting jet, burning outwards at a significant fraction of lightspeed.

Jon’s freshly expanded technical knowledge marvelled at the skill which had gone into producing this system; for it was the only feasible way of crossing the tremendous gulfs between the stars without being trapped in a runaway system of demanding ever more fuel to propel ever more mass.

Whatever their undoubted faults, the Protectorate had not lost scientific knowledge.

( Or was it the slave labour of the Degenerates a part of his mind wondered.)

But that was not the end of their labours. They still had to find a way to the Control Room and that took almost as long as finding the overall schematic.

But find it they did.

They stood up from their wearisome task and looked at each other. A quiet determination appeared to be radiating from them, almost a tangible aura.