Chapter 22: Chapter 22: TRILLION – Escape

Trillion and Ship started their escape plan by sending all the eleph-ANTs in the system to the other side of the star. The opposite side to where the Dottien planet was. Here they were hoping to create a makeshift spaceship without the Dottiens seeing or interfering.

The Dottiens didn’t appear to be able to track any of their radio communication. The radio waves they were using to control the eleph-ANTs and ANTs weren’t picked up. At first they thought it was simply because the aliens chose to ignore the radio waves – it appeared strange that they could travel through space, yet have no understanding of radio communications. But based on what Lex had learnt, they were purely visual creatures. And purely line of sight too. Trillion was fairly certain the Dottiens had no idea what they were planning.

Lex had produced a new miniature spaceship design, combining parts from several eleph-ANTs and ANTs. Lex was left in charge of the assembly, with Ship guiding all the eleph-ANTs and ANTs behind the star.

The three of them had completed everything quickly. The only thing left was getting Ship into an eleph-ANT rocket.

“Do you think this will work?” Trillion asked.

Ship nodded. “It has to.” 

Trillion had to manually control one of the maintenance ANTs inside the very centre of the ship. It was a large dodecahedron-shaped room, with each of the twelve sides identical to the next. Each wall had a thick wire that ran from the middle of it to the metal cylinder located in the centre of the room. Trillion assumed it was to hold Ship’s brain matrix in place.

“Those wires act as shock absorbers to make sure I don’t take any damage,” Ship explained, answering Trillion’s unspoken question.

There was one wire that was thicker than the others. Trillion assumed it was the fibre optic cable that connected Ship to the spacecraft. 

Safety protocols meant there was no hapticgraphic projector in there. And neither Ship nor a preprogrammed robot could operate there. They got around this by Trillion manually taking control of a maintenance ANT. There were 42 screws, each covered by a plastic clip. One at a time she guided the maintenance ANT to remove every individual screw.

“Heist movies are meant to be fun,” Trillion commented to no one in particular as she tried to break the tension she was feeling.

After a long bout of concentration, Trillion had removed all 42 screws. She could now see a metallic cover which covered the whole matrix of Ship and held him in place. She carefully removed the cover with the help of 12 maintenance ANTs, one hanging from each of the wires holding Ship’s matrix in place. Inside was a large diamond-shaped object. It looked like melted glass had combined with gold and silver metal. It was bright, almost sparkly, and pulsated. Trillion stared at it for a long time. 

“Trillion, your matrix is about three times as large as this,” Ship said.  

Trillion nodded, still mesmerised by Ship’s matrix.

 

 

The team had created a new makeshift case for Ship’s matrix. It would act as a shock absorber, similar to the room he was in, only this case would be portable and could handle the vacuum of space.

“Ship, as soon as I release the cable connecting you to the ship, we won’t be able to communicate until you get connected to the eleph-ANT spacecraft on the other side of the star.”

Ship nodded. “I’ll speak to you soon then.”

“Are you sure everything will still continue to operate on this spacecraft after you’ve gone?”

Ship nodded again. “Mostly. You won’t be able to move the ship, but power, maintenance and the freezers holding the embryos are all automatic. The ANTs and eleph-ANTs will be less intuitive without my assistance. But Lex should be able to help with a lot of that.”

Trillion sniffled a little. “I’m going to miss you, buddy.”

“I’ll see you soon, Trillion.”

Trillion disconnected Ship and watched his avatar fade away. She was a little sad; she missed her friend already. They had spent many years together travelling through space, exploring. They had destroyed a star system together. And they had been trapped on this moon together. Ship had become her best friend. When humanity sent her on this journey, they didn’t take into consideration how lonely it would become. Ship was her only companion. Trillion shook herself out of her gloom. She still had work to get done.

The new canister holding Ship looked like a metal drum, or a large beer can. The thought amused her and she smiled a little.

She manoeuvred Ship’s matrix out of the room. It took a while because it was heavy and only small maintenance ANTs could operate in that room; they weren’t designed to lift something so heavy. A smaller eleph-ANT was waiting for it. It picked Ship up and carried him through the spacecraft up to the top level.

Trillion noticed her control of the eleph-ANT wasn’t quite right – it was as if the AI controlling its movements was a lot less intelligent than before. It was clumsy and constantly misstepping. She figured that was what Ship meant when he said the ANTs and eleph-ANTs would be a lot less intuitive.

“Lex, can you help me here? This bot is moving awkwardly.”

Within seconds the eleph-ANT started moving more smoothly. It wasn’t completely perfect, but it stopped tripping itself up every few steps.

Trillion smiled. “Thank you.”

Trillion’s plan was simple. Without Ship, she wouldn’t be able to control any flying vehicle with precision. She also didn’t think she could outmanoeuvre any of those Dottiens out in space. So her plan was to release 30 canister-shaped objects at once, shooting them all in different directions.

They had learnt that the Dottiens didn’t care too much about anything they did in the immediate area surrounding the ship. They had erected several screens outside in their attempts to talk with the Dottiens. They had left these structures alone, but anything that came within one kilometre of the ship was attacked by the Dottiens. They had tried several times to launch ANTs to test this, but each time they were ignored until they reached approximately one kilometre away, where they were either pulled back onto the moon or launched into the star.

What Trillion found strange was the Dottiens completely ignored any of the ANTs or eleph-ANTs that were released when they first entered the Dottiens’ system. That was how they managed to collect enough resources behind the star to make the new spaceship for Ship.

The eleph-ANT had finally reached an airlock in the spacecraft. They had constructed a long pipe, just big enough to fit Ship’s matrix, and placed magnets around the pipe to essentially create a railgun. Trillion had loaded Ship into the railgun, ready to shoot him out the back of the airlock door.

The sticky purple Dottiens were still connected to the ship so Trillion had to blow off the outer airlock door to create the exit point for Ship and the fake canisters.

Trillion worried that this wouldn’t work. She didn’t know what she would do if she lost her only friend and was stuck there if the Dottiens pushed Ship into the star. Again, she cast the self-doubt and worry out of her mind. She had a job to complete. She treated it like a real-time strategy game. She simply had to bring an army from Steel World to this one.

Trillion’s hand hovered over a large red button on the bridge of the ship. The button was to trigger everything that would come next. She steadied herself and then pressed it.

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All at once multiple canisters shot out of the ship, travelling in multiple directions, but avoiding the planet. She did not want the Dottiens to think they were a threat to the planet – it had to look more like a failed attempt to escape.

Lex was still attempting to communicate with the representative from the Dottiens. As soon as the canisters began to reach the kilometre distance from the ship, the representative turned purple.

Ship exited the back of the ship with a bang. Thanks to the railgun tube he was loaded into, he was pushed through space at a speed hundreds of times faster than any of the other fake canisters. Trillion watched it worriedly, hoping that the obvious additional speed wouldn’t arouse suspicion among the Dottien force.

All of a sudden, the skies lit up with purple. Trillion hadn’t seen this much purple since the time she was captured. Half the canisters were quickly captured and she watched in dismay as they were plastered with purple blobs. A number of them dragged their victims back to the surface of the moon, while other canisters headed for the star.

Trillion quickly had the eleph-ANT near the start of the railgun load five more fake canisters into the tube. One by one, each of the canisters were launched into space at relativistic speeds.

It was all happening so quickly Trillion could not keep up.

“Lex, can you make sure Ship does not get caught?”

Lex took control of the thrusters they had attached to the back of Ship’s matrix canister. He was much better at manoeuvring it, but it wasn’t going to help. If the fake canisters were captured, then the Dottiens would only have a single target.

A single target is too easy, Trillion thought.

Trillion slowed her perception of time to a crawl. This battle that was occurring over five minutes was now going to feel like an hour. She now had enough time to take in everything, giving her a chance to react and adapt.

There were now only three fake canisters left. Two that had been shot out of the railgun, and one from the first cohort.

Trillion took control of the canister closest to the ship, the one not travelling at relativistic speeds. With the time slowed down, she assumed it would be easy to dodge the Dottiens. Firing engines in all directions, she attempted to weave the canister through the incoming Dottiens. They were arcing towards the canister from all directions. She realised it was not going to be easy. She could think faster now, but it was an effort to think in 3D space. She struggled to keep track of multiple objects moving at different speeds, and the canister was soon covered in sticky purple dots.

Trillion focused her energy on the two canisters out of the railgun.

There were four polka dots chasing the three canisters. That was bad. It meant she had to somehow take out two of the Dottiens with each of her two fake canisters. It meant she had zero margin of error.

Ship’s canister was a good way ahead of her two. She used the thrusters on each of the two canisters to position them directly behind the trajectory of Ship’s canister. She hoped that by lining all three up in a row, the Dottiens would follow suit. It worked. They were following the most direct path to each of their targets. That meant all four were directly behind the canisters.

Trillion abruptly reversed the thrusters on the canister at the rear of the formation, sending it back the way it came and shooting it directly into the path of the Dottiens in pursuit. The front-most Dottien connected, smashing into the canister. They were tough, though. Neither the canister nor the Dottien was destroyed. The second polka dot flew by but failed to connect with the canister.

“I missed,” Trillion said, annoyed at herself.

The third Dottien wasn’t so lucky. It connected with the canister that had slowed, slamming into it.

“Yay,” Trillion said, much happier now that her plan was working. “Just two left to get.”

The Dottiens didn’t change their strategy – there were still two polka dots travelling towards the two canisters. They were gaining on them, travelling directly behind one another. Trillion prepared to do the same trick again.

She suddenly realised why the Dottiens’ strategy was to chase in one direction. Hundreds of new Dottiens were headed towards the two canisters. They had numbers on their side.

She took control of her final canister, hoping she could at least buy Ship some time. Once Ship reached the spaceship, he would be plugged in, and then he would be able to communicate with Trillion. She steadied herself. She would get Ship to the spaceship, then they could communicate briefly before the rest of the Dottiens arrived. At least they could say goodbye then.

Trillion thought about it a while longer. Maybe she could get Ship to the spaceship and tell him to come back to the moon. Being with her, stuck on the moon, was better than being dragged into the star. At least the two would still be able to communicate. And she wouldn’t be lonely.

Trillion turned the canister around, this time learning from her mistakes. “Lex, can you help me? When this canister hits the Dottien, I need it to stay in the path of the other Dottien. It needs to hit both.”

She gave the controls to Lex. Lex did exactly as requested and both Dottiens were taken out. Trillion took a deep breath. She smiled. It was just enough time for Ship to arrive at the spaceship and get connected. He would now have about five seconds before the first Dottiens connected with the spacecraft.

Lex controlled Ship’s canister to dock with the spaceship, which was already moving to match the speed of the canister, so the canister did not have to slow down.

The orb flashed green. A Ship is connected sign appeared on the screen in front of Trillion.

“Hurry, hurry. Come online,” Trillion urged. She was extremely worried now. All the fake canisters had been captured – most of them had ended up in the star. She didn’t want the same to happen to Ship. She regretted sending him on this mission; it had been such a big risk to take.

Trillion returned her perception of time back to normal. She was prepared for the worst. She had already sent off a message telling Ship the Dottiens were seconds away from impacting him and that he should do everything in his power to reach the moon again.

She watched as Dottien after Dottien reached the spaceship. And one by one the spaceship manoeuvred out of the way, the Dottiens missing their target. It was a sight to see.

Trillion received a reply from Ship.

“Hey, Trillion. Thanks for letting me know about the Dottiens. Don’t worry, I’m a ship, remember? Flying through space is what I do. Without the need to protect the embryos onboard, I can manoeuvre and change direction at G-forces much higher than would be safe for life.”

Trillion smiled. She was so happy. She watched as Ship’s thrusters pushed him further and further out of the system.

The light-speed time delay limited their communication first. Then after a while, messages between the two had to stop as the distance was becoming too great. The makeshift eleph-ANT-based spacecraft Ship was travelling in wasn’t designed for long-range communication.

See you soon, was the final message Ship sent to her.

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