Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4)

by G. S. Jennsen

  “But now more than ever, we must be vigilant. We must redouble our efforts and take due care in them, for any further mistakes risk bringing doom upon our civilization.”

  Gemina should feel shamed, she knew she should, but the indignance refused to cede the high ground, where it tussled with Nika’s taunt for a claim on the summit.

  She did manage to get control of her tongue. “I promise you, I appreciate the stakes, Guide Anavosa. I apologize for my lapse and will endeavor to ensure it does not happen again.” She paused briefly. “Can I ask, what do you intend to do about her?”

  “You need to focus on repairing the damage your mission has suffered and completing the formidable tasks ahead of you. We will deal with Nika Kirumase.”

  “Yes, Guide Luciene. Thank you for the honor of your time.”

  “What should be done with him, Advisor?”

  Blake studied the body on the lab table. It was nothing but a husk now, for the psyche that once inhabited it had been shredded when its neural hardware was drained of data then dismantled. “Schedule him for a full retirement and reinitialization. Tier III tradesman skillset and a business auxiliary, which should reset him somewhere close to where he started.”

  The neuro tech didn’t make eye contact with him. “What if the physical damage to his brain is too significant to enable a new imprint?”

  “Do whatever it is you do with people who suffer catastrophic head trauma—put him on the list for a new brain or whatever.”

  “Yes, sir.” The tech nodded and began cleaning up her tools.

  Blake stepped into the curving hallway of the Platform’s detainee wing and walked two doors down to the exam room holding their prize ‘detainee.’

  Inside, another neuro tech monitored the bank of equipment doing the painstaking work of prying secrets out of the man’s mind without cracking it open like a piñata. Guides’ orders: no lasting damage to the man’s neural architecture until they were certain no further information could be gleaned without inflicting said damage.

  He understood the reason for caution; they didn’t want to unwittingly destroy vital intel while trying to retrieve other vital intel. Unfortunately, interrogating this psyche without damaging it was proving to be problematic, to say the least. The man had dozens of firewalls and traps installed, including one self-referencing paradox trap that it took techs four hours to extract the interrogation algorithmic probe from.

  And if a probe managed to navigate all those barriers, around a third of the time it then ran smack into a mutually-assured-destruction gating function.

  Clearly, the information they sought about NOIR rested on the other side of those functions. But short of deleting the man’s OS and reconstructing the data his mind held in a virtual environment, they had no way to get to it. Success rates for such a drastic procedure hovered around 42%, foreclosing its use for now.

  But in the end, the extreme measures to which the man had gone to protect his deepest secrets were going to be for naught.

  A lot of the stored data and memories weren’t protected by MAD functions, and once the probes worked their way through mazes of lesser defenses, they uncovered a wealth of information about the man. Mostly about his life before NOIR, but even those files had ultimately proved fruitful.

  Joaquim Lacese had cut virtually all ties with his prior life in recent years; all but one, in fact, which meant this one mattered a great deal. The man remained in regular contact with his former boss, the owner of a residential furnishings fab shop on Synra named Gregor Shone.

  On the Guides’ order, Blake had brought Shone in this morning. With no restrictions imposed on this interrogation, it hadn’t taken long for the algorithms to extract a full dataset of Shone’s interactions with Lacese. And how interesting that for the last decade, 95% of them had revolved around the care and maintenance of a single address.

  Blake left the machines to their delicate, frustrating work on Lacese and returned to the hall. To the right, around the curve and just out of sight, stood the closed and locked door to the Guides’ inner sanctum. It had been a busy and fruitful night, and he had to resist the urge to walk up to it and knock, in the hope that he could report all his successes in person.

  Instead, he turned to the left and head for the main anteroom, then the exit. As he did, he sent a message to the secure nex address he used to communicate with the Guides outside of audiences.

  I’ve acquired actionable intel regarding the probable location of NOIR’s hideout.

  A response arrived in seconds. He couldn’t say which Guide composed it or if it was a group effort.

  Excellent work. Confirm the location with as much certainty as possible. If the information is accurate, prepare a mission strike profile and be ready to execute on it on our order. Also, pull the trigger on Advisor Ridani’s assistant.

  Blake considered the orders while he endured the security checkpoint in Synra Tower.

  Do you desire simultaneous missions? I cannot be in two places at once.

  As close to simultaneous as is feasible. We leave your individual role in either or both to your discretion.

  Finally, a bit of justice was within his reach. He’d become increasingly frustrated over the refusal of the Guides to remove Weiss from his position and lock him up, when the man was blatantly committing treason by working with NOIR. But within a matter of hours, NOIR was going to be removed as a threat, once and for all.

  He didn’t need to ask why the Guides were finally moving on all fronts, either. Gemina had confided in him that Nika, and presumably Dashiel as well, had discovered Hokan Station, and with it an unknown level of information on the Rasu Protocol. Now they were in danger of blowing the lid off a secret the Guides had spent eight years protecting. They needed to be stopped, but to be stopped they needed to be caught.

  So it was time to throw some chunks of juicy red meat into the water. When they took the bait—and they would—Blake intended to be there to cinch up the nets.

  40

  * * *

  WAYFARER

  Gennisi Galaxy

  DASHIEL AWOKE TO EMPTY ARMS. An empty bed.

  Amazing how quickly he’d again gotten used to having her beside him, no matter the setting. Her absence now triggered an echo of the loneliness and despair an empty bed had nurtured for five years. But the echo was weak and fleeting, and he didn’t need to dwell on it. Not when he would find her steps away.

  He left the bed and climbed up the ladder to the main cabin.

  Nika sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on her knees and hands fisted at her chin. The subtle glow of her tattoo shone like a lodestar amid the shadows of the cabin.

  She didn’t look up when he reached the top of the ladder, so he didn’t wait for an invitation to move to the couch and sit beside her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We have so many challenges facing us at present, you’re going to need to be a little more specific.”

  That earned him a fleeting smile, but it quickly gave way to vexation. “I went to bed tonight intending to rush home and confront the Guides with what I know about the Rasu, because I can’t let them continue to send innocent people—or hells, even guilty people—into that horrific place to be tortured. Possibly to die.

  “But given what we’ve learned, I have to assume they believe they have no other choice. I mean, the Guides have done some epically shitty things, but they’re not actively evil, are they?”

  “Eh, maybe Luciene…” he shrugged weakly “…no, I doubt they’re evil.”

  “Then they believe they have no other choice. They must be wrong. There must be another way, and I must find it.

  “But I’m not a soldier. So far as I can tell, I was never a soldier. Even during the SAI Rebellion, I was a diplomatic representative for the rebel soldiers. In NOIR, I fight, but not with fleets or armies. I fight to change a system, not to destroy an enemy.

  “And tonight I realized something. If I
stop the shipment of people to the Rasu without a plan in place to defeat them or at a minimum prevent them from defeating us, the Rasu will almost certainly come for us, and I’ll have killed us all. Only I don’t have that plan. I don’t know how to begin to put together that kind of plan.”

  She peered at him through splayed fingers. “Would former-me have known what to do?”

  He tried to give the question the thoughtful consideration it deserved. “Well, you faced a lot of situations where, going in, you weren’t certain of the best course of action. But you trusted in yourself to be able to work together with your counterparts to find it. And when you couldn’t, you trusted in your judgment to make the right call. And you were almost never wrong.”

  “But I was wrong occasionally?”

  “Despite my personal opinion on the matter, I’ll concede that you were not technically perfect. But over time, your error-correction routines became damn near flawless.”

  “Good, because I don’t have much margin for error here.”

  He reached over and gently brushed messy, bed-tousled strands of raven hair out of her face. “This isn’t all on you. You’re not alone, not even close. We’ll figure it out together—you and I, your friends and allies, my friends and allies. It’s our future on the line, too.”

  She stared at him for several seconds wearing the oddest expression, until her gaze unfocused as her mind turned inward. Gradually, the expression brightened into delight. “We. Of course! It was the first and most critical mistake the Guides made, and it doomed them to failure from the start.”

  She grasped his face in both hands and kissed him with enough fervor to make him dizzy. In its wake, her lips hovered a sliver away from his. “You’re a genius.”

  He belatedly remembered how to breathe. “I admit I’ve been called that once or twice, but usually I have some idea what I’ve done to deserve it.”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure yet. I need to think on it some more. But I will take your advice and trust in my ability to work it out.”

  Her renewed kiss carried no less intensity, and he moaned as one of her hands encircled his and the other trailed down his chest. “Back to bed?”

  “Nothing wrong with the couch. And we’re already naked.” She laughed and flattened a palm on his chest to urge him down.

  He eagerly complied. The rapid change in mood didn’t surprise him too much. It was hardly the first time a eureka moment on her part had led to this manner of celebration. Granted, that was the old her…but if it was the new her, too, he felt no inclination to complain. Nope, none whatsoever.

  As soon as his head hit the couch cushion, she swung a leg over his hips and sidled atop him. The blue-green fire in her eyes matched the heat radiating off her skin where it met his. He reached up to tangle one of his hands in her hair, then tugged her down and devoured her mouth, distracting her while he shifted the angle of his hips and slipped inside her. Or possibly she did the distracting.

  He closed his eyes and lost himself in the flood of sensations. Every time like the first time, the best time, the only time that mattered, every single time….

  The unexpected absence of her lips forced him to reopen his eyes. Flashing a tantalizing smile, she rose up to straddle him. He grasped both her hands and opened his palms against hers.

  My emotional processes fought to reject the words Steven Olivaw had just uttered. To deny them their proper meaning. “Why?”

  Steven sank onto the park bench and ran a hand raggedly through unkempt chestnut hair. “Because I’m tired. I’m…done. And because I’m okay with being done.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “We accomplished what we set out to do: we led our people, most of them, to safety. We found a new home. We built a new home. Our people are thriving, and I feel fulfilled.”

  “But you—”

  “I’ve lived for 140,000 years, Nicol—Nika. Forgive me, very old habits. Isn’t that long enough?”

  “But retirement and reinitialization? You might as well commit suicide. Please, try a generational upgrade instead. Tweak a few algorithms. You’ll feel like a new man, without actually being one.”

  “I’ve tried an upgrade. Twice.”

  “What? You didn’t tell me.”

  “I was hoping they would work, and then I wouldn’t need to.”

  I swallowed, but I couldn’t dislodge the lump that had swollen in my throat. In desperation, I forced a cracked whisper past it. “Don’t you love me?”

  He swiftly stood and closed the physical distance between us to bring a hand to my cheek. “Eternally. But you don’t love me. Not really.”

  I grabbed his hand at my cheek and pressed it hard against my skin. In defiance. “I do.”

  His halting smile and the brimming tears in his hazel eyes nearly ruined me. “Okay. I believe you. But you have so much left to do—so much you want to do. I wish I could share your enthusiasm and stand proudly at your side for it all, but I simply…can’t. I’ve got nowhere left to go in this life. You’re somehow just getting started, but I’m finished.

  “And who knows? If we’re truly meant to be together, maybe you and my future incarnation will find each other again. I could even…it violates the rules, but if you want, I could arrange it so you’re told my new name and where I settle.”

  He placed a soft kiss on my lips—I shoved him away and stumbled backward. “That’s not fair. You expect me to chase after some refurbished copy of you and try to convince a distant echo of the man you are now to fall in love with me all over again? Don’t you dare put that burden on me. No. I won’t settle for a hack version of you.”

  He nodded soberly and shifted toward the path leading out of the park. “I understand. Still, perhaps it will turn out to be a better version. One ready to walk through eternity with you. One worthy of your love.”

  “Steven—”

  “Goodbye, Nika.”

  Nika gasped in air as the cabin spun around her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t look at Dashiel as she more or less fell off of him and the couch, banging a knee on the corner of the table on her way to grasping for the storage cabinet shelf. “I’m…I just need a minute.”

  He wasted no time in following her, and she had to force herself not to shrink away when he cupped her cheek in his hand.

  “You unlocked another memory, didn’t you?”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “I suppose I ought to be more careful where my fingertips land.” They shared a faltering chuckle. “Will you tell me what it involved?”

  “It was from before I met you.” Which wasn’t technically a lie. “It was…violence and death. That’s why it shook me up.”

  “But I thought you said they were always topical?”

  Of course they were. She shrugged and kissed him softly, trying not to get dizzy as the sensations it elicited overlapped with those in the memory. “I guess not always. Or maybe it was triggered by our conversation about the Rasu. You should go on back to bed. I promise, I’ll be right down. I want to get some water and a little snack.”

  “I’m not going to leave you to process this alone.”

  “Please. I’m fine. I’ll only be a minute.”

  He studied her suspiciously, a hint of troubled disquiet in his eyes. “If you’re sure.”

  Was there anything in the stars she was sure about? She managed a pathetic facsimile of a smile, and he stepped away to climb down the ladder to the lower cabin.

  When he’d gone, she went to the sink and splashed water on her face, then patted it dry. It didn’t help, so she shuffled back to the couch and collapsed on it, letting the avalanche of heartbreak escape the memory and engulf her.

  How long had it taken her former self to realize Dashiel was almost definitely a scion of Steven Olivaw? Perhaps not immediately upon meeting him, for while they favored one another, the resemblance was not overwhelming. She hadn’t picked up on it in the memory of
the final hours of the SAI Rebellion, though she’d been understandably focused on other facets of the memory at the time. And her former self hadn’t been bombarded with a series of hundreds-of-millennia-old memories that brought the truth into stark relief.

  But she must have realized it in time, much like Nika now had. Their mannerisms, body language, voice…the feel of their lips on hers.

  He placed a soft kiss on my lips—

  And she had shoved him away and he had broken her heart.

  Not tonight. A hundred million years ago.

  Her former self hadn’t told him about his heritage; of this she felt certain. If he’d known, he would have used it early on to try to convince her of how they were destined to be together. He’d have claimed his First Generation lineage alongside her.

  Again she returned to the question of why. Or in this case, why not?

  Why make a point to encrypt this memory, if not to hold on to the truth of Dashiel’s ancestry? Why hold on to it for herself, but keep the truth from him?

  Was it intended to serve as reassurance for her and future generations that Steven had been right, that his descendant was a better version of himself, someone she could spend eternity with? Or was it a warning, an admonition to guard her heart closely, because he remained the kind of man who would leave without warning?

  Why the fuck didn’t these memories come with an instruction manual, or at least a couple of helpful annotations? And why did they include so many memories from distant, early incarnations of her psyche, of ancestors so long gone?

  She needed answers, before the questions drove her mad. But the only person who might be able to provide them was a ghost hiding in the shadows of her own mind.