Through the Singularity

by L. Frank Wadsworth

  ∞∞∞

  Rialle is on point, her silver eyes alert, and examining her surroundings—trying to spot any hidden trap or ambush. She is cloaked in her stealth outfit from visible and infrared light and is scanning her environment systematically across the full spectrum, from radio waves up to gamma rays. Every 20 meters, she stops to do another full scan, then deploys a few more remotes. They've so far cleared most of the main entry level, which consists of nothing more than a few rough tunnels and four chambers, apparently meant to look like a long-abandoned gold mine that chased a poor vein along a quartz seam in folded rock that failed after a short distance.

  The rest of the squad is strung out behind her, keeping her well covered in case hostiles show up. She finally reaches the end of the tunnel, where she can see an elevator shaft hidden behind a well-crafted faux rock wall. She waits until the squad closes ranks before using their plentiful drones and nanomachines to explore the area and seek how to operate the hidden machinery, if it even still has power.

  After several minutes, they find the elevator car 20 meters below them, halted mid-shaft between the bottom and middle floors. There doesn't seem to be any power to the old facility. Odd. Why would that creature come here so often if the facility is inoperable? She suddenly gets a chill up her spine, feeling like this is a bad idea. Their sentinel machines discover the opening mechanism, so they can at least enter the shaft and descend using their graviton generators. She pushes the door open once they spring the latch. It slides with relative ease, belying the apparent defunct status of the structure.

  She shares these observations with the squad and emphasizes the need to be alert. She sends in the remotes. They reveal the layout of the middle layer. It is in better shape and is modern looking, based on the types of electrical switches and wiring they find. Still, no sign of power or of life. She has them scan across all frequencies, seeking hidden enemies. Nothing. They confer among themselves and decide to explore further.

  Trègar now takes point and is the first to descend, while Rialle forms a rear guard. He sweeps the middle layer, with Beltare on his right flank and Zargus on his other. This level appears to hold meeting rooms and dormitories. It could hold up to a couple dozen people comfortably. There is also a cafeteria. The spaces appear to be carved out of the living rock but finished with a high degree of precision—walls and floors polished and decorated with many works of art depicting various styles and subject matter from disparate cultures. However, the eight-pointed star with a circle in the middle is also present everywhere. This is clearly a Sklávoi Ashtoreth facility.

  Beltare makes a report and updates Luna base on their progress. Achi looks at Fandtha. “I think it would be prudent to load our two teams into three waveriders and be prepared to depart immediately upon request.”

  “You are uneasy?”

  “Very. And if we're needed, we will need to act quickly, and with exceptional violence, I believe.”

  Zaleria is already dividing up the two reserve squads into groups of eight, sending them into the waiting waveriders. She glances back and nods at them—a silent command that it is time to act and not talk. They all quickly mount into their respective ships.

  Back on Earth, Beltare is becoming increasingly paranoid, expecting to trigger a trap at any second. She has sent sentinel units into all the wiring, seeking to map out the entirety of the comms and electrical circuits to try and find where those services originate—which is apparently not on this floor. They discover it is all on the bottom level, which is not easily accessible because of the position of the elevator car. This leaves them with a problem. Do they risk supplying power to move it or burn through it? They confer, before deciding it would be best to leave no sign of their being here if the facility is truly empty, as it seems. They decide to stage everyone on the main level and bring the car up. Their sentinel machines provide power to the hydraulics, and the car smoothly rises to the top of the shaft. The doors open on the empty car. They inspect it and discover a maintenance door on the top of the car which they open before sending it to the bottom of the shaft. When the elevator door opens on the lowest level, they remove power, ensuring a path to the bottom level. They now isolate the power and communication lines to ensure they can't be used against them.

  Beltare looks at Trègar and Rialle. “This is the last level; let's be careful. There should be another entrance down there, one that isn't obvious from the outside. We'll have to secure it and then explore what secrets it may hold.” They both nod in agreement.

  Again they send in the remotes, followed by Cloufen on point flanked by Trègar and Rialle. This level's layout is similar to the middle level but contains generators, and more importantly, computers and communications gear. Finally! They bring down the rest of the squad, except for a small three-person rear guard on the main level led by Zargus. They find a corridor heading toward the back of the facility, which they slowly explore and secure. There doesn't appear to be a door at the end of it, just a dead-end. Puzzling.

  Suddenly, they hear a loud, thunderous crashing sound and an involuntary cry of alarm. They tap into their sensor networks to discover a huge stone block has just fallen down the elevator shaft, effectively trapping them in the basement. They call out for backup, just as the rear of the dead-end corridor opens with a loud crack, and high velocity projectiles and energy beams begin lancing through their ranks. These have little effect on their protective suits but sailing through their midst are explosives that produce large chucks of shrapnel that tear at their suit fabrics, shifting them out of place and leaving parts exposed. They fall back and try to form a defensive line, hiding inside doorways to protect themselves while laying down suppressive fire. Their attackers appear to be mostly human but outfitted in apparel similar enough to their own to make it difficult to take them out quickly or with non-lethal force. And moving in the back are three taller figures, nearly identical in appearance to the one they encountered in LA.

  Responding to Beltare's panicked summons, three waveriders descend moving at half the speed of light, closing on their destination nearly instantaneously. Achi and Zaleria have linked their minds and symbiots and reach out to Fandtha. Tackle the back door. Don't be subtle.

  Their waveriders alight, doors opening and personnel pouring out. Antimatter demo charges on that rock now! Clear out! The first team's rear guard clears out of the elevator shaft as several drones go in one at a time, detonating micro antimatter charges to vaporize and fracture the rock. It is taking too long, but they can't use bigger charges without risking a complete cave-in.

  The fight below is not going well. Two galan have been cut down, and they're being pushed back toward the elevator shaft. Half a dozen humans have also fallen, but there are a couple dozen more charging forward to take their place. The tall creatures stand behind them, sniping galanen momentarily exposed by the explosives, having a disproportionate effect. Simply put, they are being overwhelmed. They've expended almost all their remotes, which have been whittled down almost as quickly as their dwindling forces. Rialle and two more galan fall.

  They feel the whole hill shake with a powerful crrummp! It is Fandtha, trying to open a way into the lower level from the outside, having discovered a hidden part of the facility that was cloaked. That explosion was a sizable antimatter charge; he isn't messing around.

  Beltare is hit in the face with an energy beam, and Trègar is nearly sliced in two. Cloufen is putting up a fierce last stand, meticulously targeting her foes and taking out several of them, before her weapon is drained and she is shot through the heart at close range as she tries to reload. The humans start dragging away the corpses, while the three taller beings start injecting them with their alien symbiots, waging a nanoscale war to recover them for who knows what evil purpose. Beltare, still hanging on to consciousness, starts triggering their fail-safes as she is being dragged away, trying to maximize the damage to their adversaries.

  “Fandtha, if we can't get to them now, we're going to
lose them all! Hurry!” Zaleria exhorts.

  Another crrumph! Twice as powerful as the last one comes as his reply, knocking Achi and Zaleria off their feet. Achi launches several remotes down the shaft and detonates them simultaneously, the rock crumbles, the shaft cracking in an alarming manner. He and Zaleria are at the top immediately using coherent beams to clear a path large enough for them to get through, intertwining their fires as directed by their symbiots, complementing each other perfectly. They go through three rifles each, passing them back to Zargus and his team in exchange for freshly loaded weapons so they can keep up the stream of energy, vaporizing a path down.

  Achi hears a series of staccato detonations as Fandtha, having blown nearly the whole side off the hill to access the previously cloaked chamber, found it being used as a hanger and garage. He has just disabled several Sklávoi Ashtoreth vehicles, including a couple primitive graviton ships. Their adversaries are now trapped!

  His and Zaleria's squad launch themselves through the now cleared path forward and quickly flood the lower level with drones, who make short work of the remaining humans, stunning them with strong electrical discharges. Fandtha storms in the rear, but it is too late; the fighting is over. Beltare's sacrifice utterly destroyed the three tall creatures but at the cost of several of her squad, including her most beloved Trègar. The rest can be regenerated quickly, if they can overcome the symbiots coursing through their bodies. Achi commands his and Zaleria's symbiots to counter this threat, but they are already on it.

  Achi finds Beltare, barely clinging to life. The left half of her face is burned off, and her left arm is missing. She looks at him, barely recognizing him with her one good eye. She tries to speak, but only ends up coughing up a sizable amount of blood. Through sheer determination, she wills the spasms to stop. She tries again, “You…were right, as usual… It was a trap.”

  Achi shakes his head. “No, you were right. We have gained a substantial victory here today. Your squad fought brilliantly. Most of you will be on your feet in a couple weeks, and the rest will also recover.” He strokes her hair with his left hand. “Your boldness has secured this victory; you will see it more clearly when you are in less pain. You've hurt them far more than they've damaged us.”

  She closes her eye. “They've infested me, and I'm losing the battle. You'll have to fry me, I think.”

  Achi shakes his head. “Bullshit. I'm not letting you take a two-year vacation now; there is too much to do.” He quickly slices his hand, opening a large flowing wound, and presses it against the side of her damaged head. “Guys, get in there and save her ass. We need her memories intact, and we need to learn all we can about those alien symbiots.”

  Zaleria's symbiots charge from Achi into Beltare, bolstering her flagging system, and taking an increasing toll on the foreign invaders—out thinking and countering all their tricks. Programming can't compete with AI, and they begin to quickly turn the tide. And in their spare time, they dissect their adversaries to learn all they can. Beltare's one good eye widens, “You ha…” she coughs up more blood and almost fades before restating her comment. “You have been holding back from us…”

  “Yes,” he whispers, “you didn't think I was going to spill all of my secrets, did you? Don't worry, we've got you now; you'll be fine.”

  “I doubt it,” she says before another coughing spasm hits her. “But thank you…” she says before she finally succumbs to the massive blood loss, and her life ebbs from her broken body.

  He looks at Zaleria. “Let's start cleaning up. There are others who are suffering a similar fate.”

  She grabs his knife and slices her hand open as well, and goes from injured galan to galan, pressing her hand on their wounds, making blood-to-blood connections, to facilitate transference of her symbiots. Achi is doing the same. Their little friends are taking command, instructing the others how to defeat the invaders. Acting as commanders, as it were, in this miniaturized clash between two massive armies. It is all quite surreal…

  He circles back, picks up Beltare's broken body, and looks for her lost appendage. He finds it several meters away and grabs it, too. It'll be quicker to restore her with more of her mass and symbiots included. Zaleria cradles Cloufen, rose eyes open in shock, but unseeing; largely intact except for the dripping cavity where her heart and three vertebrae should be. They carry them out the new back entrance to a waiting waverider, silently commanding the rest of the squad to salvage what they can of their comrades.

  Fandtha is already digging through the rubble to try and exploit as much of it as he can. The computer systems are mostly intact, as are the communication systems. They also have several conveyances, to include two graviton-powered craft of an unknown design, now slightly damaged. Sentinels swarm over and through all the tech, finding and defusing booby traps and fail-safes.

  Fandtha is busy. Another waverider has already arrived with technicians and point defense weapons to ensure any counterattack by the shell's forces will be costly. He looks over at them. “You should, uh, get out of here I think until we, ah, secure the area. Wouldn't want a huge antimatter or nuclear device to go off and set back most of our leadership a couple years.”

  Achi looks around at the destruction and nods. It is all too familiar to him, but at least this time, most of the causalities will be coming back. Despite everything, it has to be considered a victory. The enemy lost a facility, the galanen gained more insight into Sklávoi Ashtoreth's structure, and three more of those creatures, the ones that most worry him, are no longer a factor. His gut tells him this latter has been a significant blow.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Agony of Victory

  She awakens with a start and takes a moment to take stock. All her body parts appear to be accounted for. No alien symbiots are within her. And Achi's—wait, she corrects herself—Zaleria's symbiots have all vanished, as well. They have been keeping secrets, again. She senses a blank spot in the room, a space where sounds feel muffled. A presence lurks. Of course, he would be here, she sighs. “You won't even let death prevent your invading my privacy.”

  She hears Achi let out a soft chuckle. “Privacy, such a strange concept in a race that shares as much as the galanen do. You okay?” he asks, dispensing with any pretense at banter, just trying to make sure she is psychologically fit.

  “One of the last memories I have is using the body of the man I most love as a weapon to take out one of those, things. Do you know how much that hurts? Actually, I'm sure you do, and we both know he'll come back. It'll just take a couple years.”

  “You didn't hesitate, and did what needed to be done. I'd be honored to fight by your side any day.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Actually, we're both here,” Zaleria shares, to Beltare's surprise.

  She realizes they've become so intertwined they 'feel' as one being. She finds this slightly disquieting.

  “You are our friend, and we didn't want you to be alone when you regained consciousness.” Zaleria continues.

  “I have more experience with combat than any galanen,” Achi continues, “So I wanted to make sure you had someone to talk to, if you wanted, and to make sure your head is screwed on tight. And if you want to get angry and throw things, well, I can deal with that to.”

  “You are a real ass,” she shares, trying hard to not laugh, in part because she is still in shock at the brutality of the last encounter.

  “I've come to accept that,” Achi shares back. “I'm glad you're back. There is a lot to update you on, when you're ready.”

  “How many?” She asks.

  “Five, the three you triggered, plus two more that couldn't be salvaged from the alien symbiots. We had to use their fail-safes.”

  “That is nearly half of our squad…”

  “The ambush was well executed,” Achi consoles, “You should have been destroyed to the last galanen; yet by the time we got there, you'd already largely neutralized the enemy. You made the mos
t of the bad choices available to you, and in so doing, secured an important victory. You saw and seized the opportunity. Yes, not without cost, but there was a sizable net gain. Did you expect to tackle a foe far older and more experienced than most galan and not take casualties?”

  “I don't think I really knew what to expect. Everything happened so fast, I just reacted as best I could. I saw everyone fall. I saw Trègar…he was eviscerated; it was horrible. His face was twisted in agony.” She pauses a bit, getting her emotions under control, before continuing, “I hated them! Then I used his corpse to destroy them…” She forces herself to sit up and look at them. Zaleria is worried, and sympathetic, having recently suffered even greater loss. And Achi, he knows exactly what she has been through—and of course, Zaleria has all those memories too. She reads it on his face. He's been in this position, second guessing every decision in a vain effort to figure out how he could have saved everyone. He is looking back at her, reading her body language, concerned.

  “Stop looking at me like that you two. I'm okay,” she says, slightly exasperated before laying back down. “Yes, I'm upset with how the mission went, but I realize I did what was necessary. They'll all come back. I am, I admit, most disturbed by what I did with Trègar. And now I must wait at least two years until I can see him again. I'm also concerned you've been hiding your true abilities and several other things from the collective, but I can't say I'm surprised.”

  Achi and Zaleria get up to leave, relieved. “Good. Well you know where to find us if you need anything,” Achi shares. “Let us know when you would like a debrief.”

  “Hey.” They pause, and turn toward her, Achi raising an eyebrow. “Thank you. For being here, and for caring. I'll be along in a bit, after I clean up and eat some real food. Achi, do you happen to have any of your elixir handy?”

  “Grape?” he asks. She nods. “I'll be right back.”