WAR STORY

©1995 by John Robinson Wheeler. All rights reserved.

"WAR STORY"   INT. STORAGE ROOM The power comes on, revealing in the sudden light Jack and Joe sitting on their cots, watched over by a guard.           JACK       (cheerfully) Power's up! The guard doesn't budge. Jack swallows, smiling nervously. There's a knock at the door. The guard, keeping an eye on them the whole time, opens it and exchanges a quick word with someone.           GUARD Get up.           JACK Take it easy. It's not our fault.           JOE It's sort of our fault.           JACK Yeah, sort of. But you can't hold it against us.           GUARD Shut up. We're just taking you to another room. If I were going to beat you up or kill you I'd tell you straight out.           JACK Ah. Great. Thanks.   INT. BRIDGE The first mate oversees the preliminary repair operation.           FIRST MATE Try maintenance droid 4. It's farther to the underside.           CREWMAN Let's see if she responds. The power spike might have shorted out the contacts like on number 3. No, she's alive. On a video monitor screen, a 4-foot robot emerges from a cubbyholeon the outside of the ship, tethered to a line but maneuvering via jets. It seems to have an assortment of arms and tools. Another monitor comesalive with the droid's POV camera.           FIRST MATE Is her tether line long enough to reach?           CREWMAN Should be... coming up. The droid drifts slowly along the underside of the ship, which showsmore and more explosion-scarring the farther to the rear it goes.   INT. CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS Dolfan welcomes in Jack and Joe, making sure their presence is relativelysecret. He invites them to sit.           DOLFAN Let's talk while we have a moment. My name is Dolfan.           JACK Dolphin?           DOLFAN Not dolphin. Dol-fan. I've been running trade routes for thirteen years, and I've carried cargo so hot it'd burn off your momma's eyebrows, but I haven't ever seen the pigs that pissed off at anyone before. While saying the above, Dolfan has to reach over and silence a communicationbeeper that goes off. When he finishes, it starts beeping again. He stopsit, again, looking confused.           JACK I suppose you want an explanation.           DOLFAN No, not an explanation. I want whatever it is you have that they don't want you to sell to someone else. A different kind of alarm goes off, and the lights flash. The beepergoes off again, too.           JOE Repairs going okay?           DOLFAN I don't know what the hell's the matter. But don't change the subject. You boys are in the air and space fleet, right?           JACK I'm a colonel. Or was.           DOLFAN Aren't you young to be a colonel? Jack looks him straight in the eye.           JACK Yes. BEEP, BEEP! FLASH, FLASH! The ship's engine hum seems to dip momentarily.           DOLFAN What the hell! So, you've quit? Why?           JACK Let's just say I didn't like what they were...WHOAA!! Before Jack can even get that many words out, a gas conduit in thewall bursts, spewing vapor into the room right by his head. He falls over,shocked. Dolfan laughs. Joe looks suspicious, bordering on fear.           JOE Something's not right. The ship jumps, throwing all three to the floor. The lights pulseand go out, then settle into a ghastly flicker.           DOLFAN       (deadpan) Really? What gives you that idea?   INT. BRIDGE First mate and crew are double-checking all systems. There is auniversal refusal of their consoles to respond properly. The lights herealso are having trouble staying on.           CREWMAN What the bloody hell! This isn't responding the way it should. It's backwards!           FIRST MATE Then do it backwards, then! Find out what's happened. They must have hit us worse than we thought.           CREWMAN The droid can't get back far enough for a good look.           FIRST MATE Pan it around, then. I want to see. The droid POV sputters and goes blank.           CREWMAN We lost it!           FIRST MATE Lost the droid? Get it on-line.           CREWMAN Not with these controls I can't. The door to the bridge opens. Dolfan enters with Jack and Joe following.           DOLFAN Report! What's going on?           FIRST MATE What are they doing here?           CREWMAN I won't work with those damn northies on the bridge.           DOLFAN You'll do what I tell you to do or I'll break your neck. Why aren't those systems on-line yet?           FIRST MATE We're having trouble with the maintenance droids. Only number 4 is operational, but we just lost it.           DOLFAN What do you mean you lost it!           CREWMAN It stopped responding to our commands, then it turned off its monitor.           JOE I know where it is. The crew look at Joe as if he were admitting treason.           FIRST MATE Where? Joe points out the large viewing window.           JOE It's right there. Everyone looks. There's the droid, hovering right outside, staringin. The POV camera comes back on, and we see the bridge crew looking outat it.           DOLFAN Well, what the hell is it doing up here at the bridge? Get it back where it can do some good.           CREWMAN It's locking me out. It does that when it's carrying out a priority operation.           FIRST MATE What could that be? The droid startles everyone by smashing itself full force into thewindow. Recouping, it does the same thing again, and again. Then, it extendsa drill bit and begins attacking a weak spot on the glass.           DOLFAN Bloody hell! Bloody flipping double god-damned hell!           JACK Joe, can you do something about that!           JOE I don't know. Not with the main systems haywire.           FIRST MATE You know what's going on, don't you?           JACK AND JOE It's Archangel.           FIRST MATE What's Archangel?           JACK It's a specialized virus program, the Cops must have uploaded it through my access card when you used it.           JOE It destroys a ship from the inside out, by turning all its benign systems into enemies against itself. It specifically attacks the bridge functions, then travels by whatever means into the central core, ultimately...           JACK It's very quick, and usually is too efficient to stop in time. On cue, the droid adds a focused laser beam to the drill spot. Alittle red dot in the glass begins to glow. Cracks appear and widen inwhat proves to be the outer of two layers of glass shielding.           FIRST MATE You two seem to know a lot about this Archangel.           JOE I led the team that engineered it.           JACK And I signed the order that commissioned it. Jack and Joe are rewarded for this admission by a half dozen gunsdrawn and placed point-black at their heads. At that same moment, the droidpenetrates the first window, which shatters sending fragments spinning offinto space. The laser continues to fire at the weaker, inner glass whichalready begins to buckle.           DOLFAN If you built this monster, do you know how to kill it?           JACK That's difficult. It's supposed to be unstoppable.           JOE Every system it invades, like the droid, like the life support routines, the lighting systems, has a copy of the whole virus, and can reproduce itself so long as there's still one copy living.           JACK You cut off one head, two more take its place.           DOLFAN So we're doomed, and once again it's your fault.           JACK It looks that way. We can try one thing. That droid is going to take out the bridge in about 5 minutes, but then it's going to think it's done its job and it'll shut down and the virus will erase itself from its memory.           JOE It's designed to never leave any trace of itself as evidence.           DOLFAN Ingenious. I don't know whether to pat you on the back or shoot you in the head. I may do both.           JOE We can write a new routine that we'll give the droid to run on after it's clean. It'll act like an antibody, and should clean the ship.           JACK We can help that along by getting into the central computer core and forcing a shutdown of tertiary systems.           DOLFAN Look, don't explain it to me, do it. We'll kill you later. Joe is already blazing away at a terminal.           JOE It's a deal. Jack, everything's flipping around like a beached mackerel. You have to get to that core and start the flush procedure or I won't be able to do a damn thing.           DOLFAN Right. I'll take you there. Everyone else, evacuate the bridge. We don't want anyone playing hero except our two heroes here. If that robot gets through, I want this airlock sealed tight. We don't have enough oxygen to spare venting it into space. If we survive long enough to worry about that. Let's go!           JACK Joe, I'll see you in ten.           JOE Five!           JACK Five, right. Don't be too much of a hero.           JOE Hell with that! I'm going all the way.           DOLFAN Hurry up, damn your eyes! Jack rushes off. Joe and the first mate are the only ones left on the bridge. Joe types what he can. The droid drills away.