by J. N. Chaney
His hand twitched toward his weapon. I dropped all pretenses and shot to my feet. My own weapon was already out and pressed to his head before his came out of the holster. “Sir, if you go for your sidearm, I will shoot. It will be justified. Stand down.”
Skein’s face went slack, but his hands went up. “What the hell, man? I wasn’t going to do anything for real. Let’s all just calm down.”
I stayed exactly where I was. The room had gone from shocked silence to two sides on the brink of a fight. My men were no longer sitting. Each of them were on their feet, observing, weapons at the ready, and the change had happened in an instant. None of the other soldiers seemed to have processed it yet.
“Back away, sir,” I ordered. “Once I see the threat is gone, I will lower my weapon, as will my men.”
Now Skein’s people were realizing they were in trouble. Skein didn’t worry me. None of them did. But if this situation escalated and my team slaughtered a group of unedited soldiers, there would be hell to pay, even if it wasn’t our fault.
Gibson moved forward, deliberately slow, with both hands in the air. “Sergeant, you’ll have to ignore my friend here. Skein lost a friend today. Two, actually. He’s had some drinks and his emotions are a little whacked. I’m just going to take him out and let things calm down. That work for you?”
I nodded, the motion curt. “That is acceptable, sir.”
He indicated my still raised weapon. “Do you mind?”
At first I wasn’t sure what he wanted, then I understood. In this instance, with so many friendlies and the situation being what it was, I lowered it.
“Thanks.” Gibson let out a shaky breath, then started to haul Skein away. “Dumbass,” he muttered. “What were you thinking?”
I motioned for my team to stand down, then returned to my seated position.
The crisis had passed, but Skein’s words stayed with me.
Do you have ice instead of blood running through those perfect veins?
I couldn’t say why that comment had wormed its way into my thoughts, but I was disturbed by it. Just because I was efficient didn’t mean I wasn’t human, right? Then again, I supposed I didn’t really care what I was. I knew my purpose.
Didn’t I?
3
The next morning, I woke when the lights came on without my prompting them to do so. They were low but enough to have me come alert at the change. I lay still in the dim glow and focused my amplified senses, feeling out my surroundings in case of a threat.
A chime sounded, signalling an update of some kind, and I realized AMI must have been responsible for waking me up. The AI was strange like that. To everyone else on the ship, she more or less presented herself as one would expect for an artificial intelligence, but our interactions were different.
I started to reach for my personal pad when another light flickered in the small space. It wasn’t the room’s lighting but rather a small hologram emitter that had recently been installed at my tiny workstation.
The holo started out as a pile of pixelated light that wasted no time swirling to form a shape. Within a matter of seconds, AMI appeared. This time her avatar was decked out in a navy blue skinsuit bearing the Exodus Ark’s logo on the chest. It might have looked professional if not for the strategic cutouts.
Her hair was braided intricately along both sides of her scalp, but the tail was left to hang to her shoulders. AMI’s outfits and hair changed daily, something she assured us was a result of her merging personalities with DICK, who was now deceased, for all intents and purposes.
It was like she was trying to find her identity, something I could understand.
“Good morning, Chief Mission Ward.”
“Morning, AMI. Do I have a message?”
“You do. Shall I relay it to you?” Her reply was cheerful with the barest hint of playfulness. More of her off programming, though it only seemed to occur with me. I motioned for her to go ahead. “Director Wright would like a word, at your convenience.”
“Now is fine. Tell him fifteen minutes.” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of my bunk without complaint. “What can you tell me, AMI? Have there been any updates?”
She walked in a lazy circle, swaying her hips. “Not about the enemy.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, distracted by the strange sashay.
“Walking.” AMI tilted her head to one side as if that were obvious.
“Yeah, but why are you walking like that?”
The AIs avatar went still, and she looked down at herself. When AMI looked at me again, her stance was normal. “I have absorbed all media stored on the ship in an attempt to better understand how humans interact with each other. It seemed like a beneficial activity for both of us. As I learn, I am experimenting to see what is useful.”
“I see,” I told her, even though I didn’t. “You said there were no updates about the First. That implies there’s an important update about something else. Earth?”
She smiled at me. “That is correct. I would fill you in, but the Director has ordered all relevant data wait until the meeting.”
It would have made more sense for me to know the information prior to the meeting. That way it would have given me time to think on the way there, but this was just another annoyance that arose when dealing with humans. Tara called it red tape. Something about proper procedures and politics.
Procedure I understood. Politics was something I was still learning to navigate but preferred to avoid.
I bent down to pull on my boots. “Sounds like bad news.”
AMI cocked her head at the question. “Are you trying to wheedle information out of me, Chief Mission Ward Kent?”
“Pulling out the full title?” I raised one brow so she would know I wasn’t being serious. “No, AMI. I wouldn’t dream of doing that. Besides, when have you ever known me to wheedle?”
“Excellent point. You are quite direct,” she replied. “The director has confirmed your appointment. You may arrive at any time.”
“Thanks.”
I slipped my personal pad into a pocket and left my quarters. Time on the ship followed a typical Earth cycle. Twenty-four hour days and three hundred and sixty-five days to a year. For the entire trip here the Exodus Ark hadn’t had a system to orbit, so keeping standard time familiar made sense to whoever made the rules.
It was just past 0600 and the ship was already alive with activity. Colonizing the planet was no longer the priority mission for me, but it still mattered plenty to the others on the ship. If we survived the upcoming war, Kainos would be our new home. Provisions were being made for that eventuality, as well as all the repairs still needed.
The First’s attack on our ship had only been the beginning, but it had also caused a lot of structural damage. Most of our defenses were back up but far from reliable, and many of the Ark’s systems were disrupted. That left us in the dark when it came to exactly how long we’d been traveling or when the Blight might have come into contact with us.
Thankfully we had reached the Red Shift System without any more catastrophe and limped along to our final destination of Kainos. Unfortunately, our first excursion to the planet had exposed us to more problems, namely that our enemy was already present on the planet.
Kainos’ inhabitants, a peace loving people called the Volcuri, were also under attack, although their war had been waged for hundreds of years at that point. The First had mind-enslaved most of their people, leaving only a small portion of their population unscathed.
Maybe unscathed wasn’t the word. I met the rebel leader, Riva, and learned about their existence in an underground bunker. They weren’t what one would term thriving. Surviving wasn’t the same as living, but it was all they could do.
Even more than that, the actual First were scheduled to pick up their newest crop of sacrificial soldiers by the end of their year. Riva had given us a time frame that worked out to a matter of standard Earth months. That left little opportunity to make sure we were rea
dy, less so if the enemy showed up early.
I sighed internally as all the different scenarios played out in my head. How did people do this all the time? Maybe I’d been under the thumb of the Black Shield Corps for most of my life, and call me crazy (Tara certainly did), but life was a hell of a lot easier when all I worried about was where to aim and when to shoot.
At least I wouldn’t have to wait long. When I reached Director Wright’s outer sanctum, his secretary greeted me with a smile and motioned at the door.
“You can go right in, Chief Kent. The Director is waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” I said automatically. Manners, at least, were easy to remember.
I pushed the office door open and stepped through to find my superior and one other person inside.
Director Wright was an imposing man. He stood over two full meters, with hard features and broad shoulders, plus a steely eyed stare that was reported to stop lesser men in their tracks.
The other occupant, one Dr. Rhys St. John, stood and offered me a hand, which I took. We’d clashed on more than a few occasions, but after Avery’s funeral the night before, something changed between us.
“Good to see you, Chief. How’s the training going?”
“It’s coming along.” I took a free seat at the table where a pad had been set out for me. “Real experience would be better, but we don’t have a way to safely contain or control the Flux. As it stands, progress is acceptable.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” commented Wright. “Speaking of that, I’d like to observe a future session. According to the gossip train, you’re quite the instructor.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, sir. Teaching is new for me. I’m finding it easier to demonstrate in the holo room.”
The Director nodded approvingly. “That’s a good tactic. You may not follow orders all the time, but you are modest, Kent. And teaching isn’t just instructing. It’s how you carry yourself. No one that looks at you sees anything other than a dedicated soldier. No nonsense. It sends a message. The right message,” he finished.
“Thank you, sir.”
Deliberately, I picked up my pad and opened the dossier it contained in the hopes we could get the meeting started. It worked. St. John followed suit, but Director Wright leaned forward. His brows drew together, and I had a feeling that whatever he was about to say wouldn’t be good.
The first thing that caught my eye was that there was news from Earth. I figured they would have sent scheduled updates after our departure as our warning probably hadn’t reached them yet.
“As you can see in the file, there’s an update from back home. We have a bit of a situation,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “We’ve received a response with… let’s say unexpected news.”
My gaze shot to the doctor, but he didn’t say anything so I directed my question to Wright. “A response? How could they answer that fast?” I asked.
“For the sake of simplicity, let’s say yes this is a response, but there is more to the story. Thanks to the transmission, we now know that our assumption of how much time has passed is incorrect.”
I nodded, recalling AMI’s uncertainty in that area. “We thought that might be the case. What are we looking at?”
My mind was reeling with possibilities. The first was that it had been longer than the centuries that were scheduled. Thousands, maybe more. I couldn’t picture what that kind of future might look like back home.
Director Wright watched me with sharp eyes. “Less than one hundred years have passed since our departure. Six decades, to be precise.”
It wasn’t easy to take a Black Shield operative by surprise, especially during conversation, but Wright had done just that. For a long, drawn out moment, I could only stare. “Sixty years? How is that possible when our trip was supposed to take centuries?”
“I think Dr. St. John may be able to explain it better.”
The man in question bobbed his head, eager to answer. “Actually, to be exact, sixty-one years have passed since the Exodus Ark launched.” He paused and drew in a breath as though about to launch into a deeper explanation, but Director Wright interrupted.
“Keep it simple, Rhys.”
“Right, of course. The simple answer is Faster Than Light travel.” St. John grinned.
“I don’t understand,” I replied, trying to digest the implications. “It still took us hundreds of years to get here. It would have taken a long time for our message to reach them. The math doesn’t add up.”
“No it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But that’s because you don’t have all the information. They didn’t come up with FTL after we left. They had it before. As in, we launched with it.” He gestured around the room, which I took to mean the entire ship.
I wasn’t exactly stunned, but the revelation was far from minor. “The Ark has an FTL drive and no one knew?”
“Oh, someone knew.” Wright cast a glance at a corner of the office that held cameras closest to his line of sight.
“AMI?” I guessed.
Her reply came over the room’s audio feed. “Astute, as always, Chief Mission Ward. I feel compelled to add that there were security protocols in place that prevented me from discussing that data. There was nothing I could do to circumvent until the first message confirmed same.”
Director Wright waved the explanation away. “Understood, AMI. You’re not at fault. Rodon is. The corporate assholes should have never kept something like this from command. Is there any other information I’m not aware of?”
“Not at this time, Director.”
“Good enough. Moving on. Chief, this meeting is about more than a time discrepancy. There are serious implications that come with this development. Namely, what the transmission detailed. Evidence of the First has been discovered in more than just this system. By all accounts, they appear to have the means for Faster Than Light travel as well.”
Serious implications indeed. I regarded the director with a level gaze. “Is Earth at risk?”
“Not yet. But we are. And the powers that be have decided we need help. They’re sending backup.”
I curled my lip. “What good does that do when they won’t be here for decades?”
Wright pursed his lips, a sign he was unhappy with whatever he had to say next. “As it happens, the good people of Rodon Corp and the United States government knew we might run into trouble. The assistance was already en route before AMI sent our warning out. They’ve been traveling for almost as long as us. If they don’t run afoul of the First, they are scheduled to arrive by the end of the month.”
Now I was starting to get a little pissed. Of all the emotion I possessed, aggression was the only one that had been enhanced instead of taken away. It was something to be used during combat, or when I had a readily available target at which to direct it. At the moment I had neither and had to keep the leash on. “So Rodon Corporation knew we might be walking into hostile activity,” I said, the words acid in my mouth. “Why not just send a force with us? If they had, we might have been more prepared when the First attacked.”
“Another mystery I was not apprised of.” The angry lines marring Wright’s expression told me he felt the same way I did. “In any case, we need the firepower. You should know that they’re sending Black Shield operatives. Your brothers in arms.”
He didn’t say former, but I was sure we both thought it. I swiped through the list of operatives. I wasn’t surprised to find that most were obsolete, like I had been. Called up for a one way trip. I recognized a few designations and was satisfied enough to sit back. “This is at least something they’re doing right. They’ll be assets.”
AMI’s voice came over the communication speakers again. “Excuse the interruption, Director, but there is an incoming transmission from Kainos. Riva wishes to discuss an important update with the Chief Mission Ward.”
When I’d left the planet the previous month, Riva’s engineers had worked with AMI to create a way for them to reach us. The fact tha
t she was using it at all spelled trouble.
He frowned. “Fine, put her on. We’ll take the call in here.”
There was a beep, then Riva’s voice came over the line. “Chief Kent. We have a problem.”
“This is Kent,” I replied. “What’s going on?”
“Makin has been in contact with his masters.” She bit out the last word, so it came out almost as a hiss. “We intercepted one of their communications. The timetable has been moved up, but the message was encrypted so I cannot say when the enemy will arrive. We must prepare.”
I didn’t think the Director would want me mentioning anything he didn’t clear, so I kept it simple. “We are. My people are training, and arrangements are being made.”
“This is a relief,” she replied. “However, I must request your presence here once more. We—I—need your help. Makin and the other Turned must be removed from the mountain post if we are to have a chance. I believe our Elders have information that will help, but they request an audience with the Chief Mission Ward.”
The request took me aback. “No disrespect, Riva, but why me? I’m not the leader.”
I glanced at Director Wright, concerned he might think I had orchestrated this behind his back. His face betrayed nothing, however, even to me.
Riva’s response was measured. “They are aware of this fact. As to the why, I do not question the Elders, Chief Kent. It just isn’t done.”
The seriousness in her tone told me this custom was non-negotiable for her people, so I didn’t push it. I supposed this wasn’t unfamiliar territory. No soldier would have questioned a superior officer back on Earth, at least not under typical circumstances. That didn’t make me any less curious though. I looked to Wright again, waiting for confirmation. When he nodded, I continued. “When?”
“Now” was the response. “They wish a meeting as soon as possible. We must go on foot.”
Wright didn’t object, so I agreed. “We’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Thank you, Chief Kent. I will meet you at the lake where you first arrived.”
