by David Beers
“Yeah, I suppose I do. I’ve got no reason to doubt them.”
“Do you think they watch us? Do you think they’re watching this thing happening between the Commonwealth and Alistair?”
She shook her head. “Nah. If the gods cared, someone like the original Ascendant wouldn’t have risen to power.”
Ares turned so the two faced each other. “You don’t think that was for the best?”
She let out a large sigh. “I don’t know. That’s the real question, isn’t it? The wars ended. We have abundant energy that shows no sign of ever running out. All we have to do is bend the knee. I think about Kane and that sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
Veena slid down in her chair a bit and looked at the ceiling. “I mean, he served the Commonwealth for decades. No offense to present company, but he was probably the greatest Titan ever to live. He saw all the good the Commonwealth did, but in a single move, he pitted the entire empire against him.” She glanced at Ares. “I’m not sure I’ve ever asked this, but do you know what he did?”
Ares nodded, a little smirk on his face. “He was sent after two Subversives. He was supposed to put them down, just like always.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I almost can’t believe it, sitting here thinking about it now. Just so ridiculous.”
“What?”
Ares rolled his eyes. “They told him they had kids, and they didn’t want their kids to grow up without parents or something similar. Alistair let them go.”
“That’s it? That’s all he did? He let two Subversives go?”
Ares couldn’t quit smirking as he nodded. “That’s it. Two Subversives, and I was sent in to kill him. When I didn’t do it, the Subversives took him in, and the Ascendant burned a planet.”
Veena straightened. “How does that make any fucking sense, Ares? None of it does.”
The smile dropped off his face. For the first time, he realized he hadn’t thought any of it through and was embarrassed. “I… Gods, I just followed orders.”
“We both did,” Veena said as if she hardly heard him. Her mind was whirring. “First, why would the Subversives take in someone like him? He hunted them for decades, killed them like dogs in the street. Second, why would the Ascendant care so much? He was a great Titan, but he was only one man. So what that you didn’t kill him. Was one man going to bring down a system?”
Ares was stunned into silence. She was right; none of it added up. The entire story was ridiculous.
“Look at this.” Veena turned in her chair and waved her hand across the holovid. The image reversed until they were looking at an old photo taken from space. Ares had seen it before—the nuclear blast sites that had killed so many people. “That’s a lot of unlivable space,” she continued. “The story goes that after that nuclear war, the first Ascendant decided he couldn’t let mankind kill itself, and that’s what started his conquest. Now look at this, a thousand years later.”
She pulled up a current space view. The unlivable spots were down to two. Veena leaned back in her chair. “A thousand years later, why are there two spots on Earth that you can’t go to?”
“Radiation half-life,” Ares said, though his voice sounded weak to his ears.
“Yeah, that’s the story, but what else could it be, Ares? Think.”
He was at a loss. He had no clue.
“It makes sense.” Veena was almost speaking to herself. “If the Ascendant was creating this epic artificial intelligence, something he could upload himself to, something that could practically see into the future, they would need server space. A lot of server space, especially a thousand years ago. As time progresses, the story is the radiation half-life allowed people to move back in, but technology is continuously improving. Maybe they didn’t need the server space anymore.”
“Yeah,” Ares said, finally catching up. “But technology improves faster than that. From all those radiation areas down to two in a thousand years? They wouldn’t need nearly that much server space.”
“True, if the AI didn’t improve, which it had to. The original was probably incompatible with the current state of technology, so more server space might be needed to power it.”
Ares opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat.
It made sense.
Veena wasn’t done. “If all that is true, the only rational explanation is that the AI made a decision about Kane. It decided burning a planet was worth the chance of killing him. Why?”
Ares’ eyes opened wide. “It knows. It knows he might be able to bring down the Commonwealth.”
“We’re making a lot of logical leaps, I’ll grant that, but what makes more sense? One Titan lets two people go, the ones he hunted for years take him in and make him a leader, and the Ascendant decides he’s worth chasing across the universe? Or, the algorithm exists because the AI exists, and it knows more than any of us do.”
She spun her chair slowly.
“I can hardly say it aloud,” she told him.
“It knows he has a chance to bring down the Commonwealth,” Ares whispered, hardly able to believe it but not able to disprove it.
The AI spoke from above, breaking into their thoughts. “I am dropping us into the third dimension. At planned speed, we will reach the algorithm in just under two hours.”
The two of them shot up. Veena was already moving toward the bridge, taking control like the Primus she used to be. “Why are you just telling me this?” she asked the AI.
“It’s the requirement of the digits you gave me,” it answered. “I did not know until milliseconds before I told you. Dropping into the third dimension now.”
Veena felt the difference immediately, a huge relief to her entire body. The intensity of upper dimensions took its toll.
She reached the bridge moments later, feeling like she could already breathe better.
“Show me where we’re going,” she demanded.
Screens lit up as she sat in her chair. She saw an orb in front of her, and at first glance, it looked naturally made, not like the box.
“Give me all the information we have on it. Is it a planet that formed naturally?”
“There is no information on this planet,” it responded. “There has been no known contact with it, but from early scans, it appears to be formed of organic materials.”
“Weapons?”
“Initial scans show it is well-fortified. Space defense system. Land-to-air missiles available.”
Veena didn’t know what to think. She had believed they’d have time to figure out where they were going, though now she realized that had been foolish. Whoever had started this game didn’t want them to know anything. “Is it possible to turn around?”
“I cannot until we have landed.”
Veena pulled the ship’s controls to her and started trying to change course. Nothing reacted as she touched panels and changed coordinates. For the second time, she’d lost control of her ship.
“Well,” she said as she leaned back in her chair, “we’re going to land. No doubt about that.”
Ares was standing next to her seat, looking at the screens. “AI, can you predict where we’re going to land?”
“Not with any real accuracy. If my computations are right, we will be five or ten kilometers outside a populated zone. There’s movement on the planet, though the screens can’t show it this far out.”
“What is going on?” Veena wondered aloud. “Where is the nearest populated star system?”
“One hundred million light-years.”
A planet no one had contact with that had no outside commerce, somehow existing this far out? A populated planet.
“Keep giving me data as it comes in, and feed your voice through the whole ship,” she told the AI, then looked at Ares. “We’ll know everything together. You want to see how well those hoverblades work?”
His face was solemn as he nodded.
They’d come all this way. Neither of them was prepared.
They bot
h knew it, too.
All of the philosophizing and theorizing left Ares’ head. He didn’t want to bring the battle to this planet. That wasn’t why he’d come. However, he didn’t see any other way. It was clear that whoever had created this little puzzle meant to try to kill them and had killed a lot of others in the process. The black box’s AI had told them only one group had ever returned, and it had returned without the algorithm.
Ares spent the next two hours preparing the hoverblades. If the ship was landing them ten kilometers out, they were most likely going to need ground transportation. The blades would take care of that.
Truthfully, neither of them knew what to expect. Their AI had given them information for the next thirty minutes. The planet was populated by humans or some other race, but it couldn’t tell which. There were many populated land areas across the planet, but the oddest—and last thing—it gave them was that there appeared to be no water or plant life. It was a dry, barren world.
Then the AI’s scans had stopped. No technical issues, no other problems—it just stopped being able to scan the planet. Veena’s screens had stopped working, too. Either this planet had technology that stopped outside viewers from seeing it, or someone knew they were coming and wanted them blind.
Either way, the tech matched what they’d seen in that black box, far more advanced than anything Ares or Veena was familiar with.
The ship touched down easily, and like last time, the AI died. Ares and Veena stood in the cargo bay next to their hoverblades, though neither was eager to step outside.
They both heard the sounds. They were either motors or the most ferocious growls Ares had ever heard. Someone—or something—was waiting for them, so it didn’t look like they would need the hoverblades.
“You think we can wait ‘em out? Just stay inside, and maybe they’ll leave?” Ares joked without looking at Veena.
She didn’t have a witty response. “One way or another, I think whoever is out there is going to get to us. I’d rather do it in a way that doesn’t destroy our ship. Are you ready?”
Ares stood in his MechSuit, Whip in hand. “Ready.”
Veena raised her hand and passed it over the wall panel.
The cargo bay’s door slowly lowered until it touched the ground.
Ares’ HUD immediately did an air scan. “Oxygen’s fine,” he said, but he’d moved on in his mind. His eyes blinked as he tried to figure out what he was looking at. It was so odd, so inhuman, that he couldn’t process it.
The noise they’d heard hadn’t been a motor but a thousand small flying robots. The only thing Ares’ mind could compare them to was heads, though they weren’t shaped like that. Each of the robots was round and had a ring of red lights around its middle and five jelly-like tentacles branching off one side.
“What in hades?” Veena whispered.
The tentacles appeared to be made of organic matter, while the body looked robotic.
They were whipping around in a huge circle that nearly touched the ground and stretched twenty meters high. Around and around they went, the air churning so quickly that it had made a sound like a motor.
Ares took a step forward.
The robots stopped. Red lights stared at the two humans, tentacles waving in the windless air.
“We mean you no harm,” Veena said softly.
The robots then did something even stranger. While some remained still, others started flying forward, then stopping just in front of the one that had flown before them. Ares saw fairly quickly what they were doing.
“They’re building a bridge to us,” he said through his helmet.
“Are we supposed to climb onto it?”
“I think so,” he answered.
The bridge touched down where the cargo bay door connected to the ship.
“Come.” The voice emanated from all the robots. It sounded like what it was, robots trying to speak a human language.
Ares could kill some of them, he knew, but not all. They could rush him, and there were enough to do serious damage. They could also just fly away. They couldn’t retreat into the ship; that was obvious.
They’d come here to get the algorithm, so forward was the only way.
Veena didn’t give him much choice, though. She moved toward the door.
Ares followed, and they stepped onto the robot bridge at almost the same time. The robots started to swirl, and the construction lifted into the air.
After they rose above the ship and started forward, Ares only needed one glance to know where they were heading.
A city full of machines.
Chapter Fourteen
The dispatched ships had just breached the atmosphere, this time heading into space. The whole endeavor had taken maybe a half-hour, and Alistair was wondering if he’d made the right decision.
The giant sitting next to him would say yes, he knew. Obs, immobile at Alistair’s feet, might differ.
There wasn’t any going back, though.
The dispatch had landed. Five ships.
Alistair had never seen anything like the creatures that had stepped off. They were bred in a lab, though hugely different from gigantes. Their facial features were man-like, their eye colors the same, a crystal-blue. All fifty of the men had pure white hair that resembled a human’s, long and pulled back in a ponytail.
Once you moved past their necks, things stopped making sense. They were covered in thick white hair, though nothing like the strands on their head. This was animal fur, a pelt.
They had all looked at Alistair and his crew with something akin to disgust. One or two had spit on the ground, and Alistair had nearly drawn his Whip.
Nero had stayed him, though. He’d placed a huge hand on his shoulder and simply said, “We go up.”
Now Alistair was separated from his Whip and immobile as well. He hadn’t seen the technology they used before, though it was easy to understand. Two straight bands had been slapped on the gigante and Alistair, one on their wrists, one on their ankles.
After that, the only things he was able to move were his jaw, tongue, and eyes. Everything else was frozen.
Obs had nearly ripped into one of the human-animal hybrids and only calmed down after Alistair convinced the creatures to let him place the bands on Obs’ legs.
Two of the hybrids stood in the prisoner bay with Alistair’s group. They’d said nothing the whole time, not even while slapping the bands on. For all Alistair knew, they couldn’t speak.
They’d stared at Nero as if they knew he was also a bred species.
“Have you ever seen anything like them?” Alistair asked, his first time speaking since boarding the ship.
“No,” Nero answered. “This is my first time in space, remember? You were the first outside visitor to my planet.”
The gigante didn’t seem concerned about anything that was happening. His damned dream had done some work on his mental state.
The ship finally docked with the dreadnought. Three floating slabs were brought in, and the hybrids lifted all three and dropped them on the apparent transportation. Alistair wasn’t just impressed with the hybrids’ strength, he was shocked by it. One alone lifted Nero as if he’d been little more than a pillow.
Gigantes were different from humans, but they were human-based.
These things were new.
“It’s okay, Obs,” Alistair said as the slabs started to move without direction. He imagined the animal was in a state of near-panic, if not outright terror.
Alistair could only look at the ceiling as the three slabs wound through corridors. He saw two of the hybrids walking with them out of the corner of his eye, though they paid him no mind. Alistair was trying to keep track of time because he needed to know how close the army was to the capital. By the time they reached the room, he thought about forty minutes had passed.
He might have one hour, maybe two.
As they reached the room, the slabs moved to the far wall, then stood up. None of the three slid down, though, since
some force from the slabs kept them pinned against them.
“Nero, you still with me?” Alistair asked.
“I do not like space as much as I thought I would,” he said in his stilted manner. He sounded disappointed and grumpy as if they had not enjoyed their accommodations on vacation rather than being held captive.
“Sorry to hear that, Nero. Really, sorry.” Alistair would have smacked the giant if his hands had been capable of moving. “Next time, I recommend not taking an enemy ship. You might find things a bit more to your liking.”
He heard the giant chuckle from his right side. “I like you, spaceman. You make me laugh.”
The hybrid beasts left the room and they were alone. Alistair understood that mattered little; everything in this room was being watched by some ever-present AI, and it would only take a word for their blood to spill all over the floor.
Alistair estimated another ten minutes passed before the woman Nero had called the queen of cold entered.
She stopped at the door, and Alistair took her in. When he’d seen her in his mind, things had been hazy and tinted with odd colors.
Now he saw clearly.
She was tall for an Earthborn woman, though that meant nothing in this part of space. She was very thin, and her hair was the same white as the hybrids, long and tied back the same way. She had a certain hardness, one that radiated from the set of her jaw and the way she held herself.
This is a true warlord, Alistair thought. She wasn’t like the outlaws or the businessmen he’d encountered. This was someone who had never known comfort and who conquered because that was all she knew.
“Are you the one who took this planet?” she asked, her voice as cold as the rest of her.
“I’m the one who freed the slaves,” he answered.
“I would like to speak to you for a bit before our war starts. I won’t offer any lies or false hope. You will never make it off this ship. You will die here. However, if you’re willing to speak to me, I’ll make it an easy death.”
She stared at him, her hands at her sides, no fear and nothing to hide.
