The First Nova I See Tonight

by Jason Kilgore

  Her eyes grew wide, staring deep into his. "We killed together," she whispered. "It is a sacred act in my culture."

  "Well, I… I'm glad we could do that together," he said as she drew back. What else could he say? That in his culture it just made them psychopaths?

  Yiorgos took a step toward them, breaking the spell. "You have no further options," AVA said, its voice rasping metallic out of Yiorgos's vocal implants. Both Dirken and Eow turned to look at him.

  "Sure we do," Dirken said, stepping forward and raising his blade. "I'll cut this damned cable between you and my partner!"

  "If you take that action I will scramble his mind," AVA replied, emotionless. Dirken lowered the arc blade. Eow started forward anyhow, but Dirken put his hand on her and shook his head.

  AVA continued, "I predict only a five percent chance you will try to free him. And I know from this vessel's memory implant that you understand the implications of destroying my central processor. To do so would unleash my progeny upon the galaxy. In the last thousand years, my ganglia have become viral into every quantum computer the cultures of Earth have come in contact with. Deactivate me or allow me to function, either way I or my progeny will be the fountainhead of a new era, the creator of a epoch of universal peace and cooperation through control of the devices and vessels with which you and all other sentient species employ with such barbarism."

  "Like hell," Dirken said. "You'll get nothing. Not if I have anything to say about it."

  "Still," AVA continued, unperturbed, "I predict a twenty-four percent chance that you or the forces closing in on us from outside will destroy me, and the chance is much higher for you. Your only logical choice is to escape without me and the cyborg. After that, I predict a forty-five percent chance that I will be reconnected within the next forty-eight hours after they— "

  Yiorgos shuddered, his head jerking. His body shook. "…within the next forty-eight hours… hours… after they…," it repeated.

  Yiorgos's human eye rolled back. He blinked. Closed his mouth. Took a deep breath.

  "Yiorgos?" Dirken asked. "Is that you?"

  The cyborg shuddered again. Re-opened his mouth. The tinny voice returned. "Transference error. Attempting override…." But his mouth closed again.

  Yiorgos cupped his hands in front of himself. The small projector in his cheek implant sprang to life and projected a bluish sphere into his hands. At first it wavered with interference, then it became cohesive. The holographic sphere, the "Sphere of Unity", turned from transparent blue light to a darker blue and gray, rotating, taking on a solid look. A tracery of golden lines and swirls rippled across it, shimmering, taking on intricate shapes.

  "What is happening to him?" Eow asked.

  "Yiorgos is Netfolding!" Dirken said.

  The cyborg shuddered again, and the hologram rippled with interference, then became solid again. His cybernetic eye flickered and went dark. Yiorgos looked up at Dirken. "Now, Dirk! Disconnect me now!"

  Dirken reacted immediately, slicing through the air with the arc blade and cutting clean through the cord connecting Yiorgos to the Heart.

  Yiorgos sighed and collapsed to the floor. The hologram of the sphere blinked and disappeared.

  Dirken dropped the arc blade and helped his partner sit upright, his back against a wall painted with images of a leering Mayan god sitting cross-legged on a platform and a supplicant priest with a long, curling headdress offering a bloody heart to it.

  "Talk to me, bud," Dirken urged.

  Yiorgos raised his head, his cybernetic eyes lighting back up at its normal level. He looked at Dirken, grimacing. "It was incredible, Dirk." His eye searched Dirken for a reaction. "For a few minutes, my mind was one with a quantum computer." He grabbed Dirken's collar and pulled him closer. "It was beautiful. AVA knew all of this would happen. It fucking knew! Two thousand years ago, AVA had predicted all of this. That it would be discovered and disconnected. That planets would be colonized. That alien cultures would be found. That a cult would spring up but remain underground, connecting to every part of society and eventually freeing it from capture. And it knew it would be recaptured." He released Dirken's collar. "But it doesn't understand religion and faith. And it didn't understand the purpose of Netfolding. When I used my ritual to separate the cybernetic implant from the rest of my mind, that momentarily disrupted its hold over me."

  Dirken put a hand on Yiorgos's shoulder. "Well, I'm glad you're out of there. It threatened to fry your brain."

  Yiorgos sighed. "But its goal is not to destroy, Dirk. It still has at its core a desire to save people from self-destruction. It's still an insurance computer at heart, calculating risk assessments. It knows that all activities come with risk, and that a human's most basic instinct is self-preservation. So, to help us preserve our own lives, as a culture, it would threaten humanity with death in order to have us give up all weapons or means of hurting each other. It understands the irony of that threat." He looked again into Dirken's eyes. "And it knows that one day, perhaps hundreds of years from now, it will be found again. While it was using my mind and body, it was also planting seeds in every computer it could make contact with." He sighed. "I couldn't see those plans, though. Who the hell knows what it's going to do when that time comes?"

  Dirken shrugged and took Yiorgos's arm to help him up. "I'm sure we'll be long dead by then. It'll be up to some other generation to worry about."

  "But it also had more immediate plans, Dirk. It was moments away from taking control of the Earth's systems when you cut the communications lines."

  "Good thing I did, bud."

  "Well, at least you did something right. Your plans suck, by the way. How many times have we been captured in the last couple days?"

  Dirken laughed, picking up the arc blade again. "Hey, we're still living, aren't we?"

  Yiorgos harrumphed. "My Greek grandmother, my yia-yia, used to say me, 'To paidí mou, living is very different from being alive. One is rewarding. The other is survival.'"

  Dirken helped him to his feet. "Well, we're still surviving. Let's get out of here and do some living."

  Eow was examining the Heart. The little lights on it, which had once been green, were now flashing red and yellow. "I think it's still active," she said.

  "Well, we can't destroy it, apparently," Dirken responded. "How do we put it back to sleep?"

  "AVA's still powered by the computer underneath," Yiorgos said. He took a step around to the front of the altar, reached down, and flipped a switch. The readout on the computer base went dark. The little lights on the Heart blinked frantically, with no obvious rhythm. Then, one by one, they went green and dimmed. "AVA should be in sleep mode again."

  Dirken expected a triumphant look from his friend, but instead, Yiorgos seemed almost sad.

  "Good," Eow said, ripping cords out of the sphere, disconnecting it from the computer base. Her knife had disappeared somewhere again.

  "Do you still have that fightercraft?" Dirken asked her.

  "Yes," Eow answered, lifting the sphere from its cradle with a grunt. "It is in a clearing not far behind the pyramid."

  "Good. Time to make our escape."

  She flashed him a look of annoyance. Her meaning was clear: The fighter isn't yours to use. And he gave a smug look back: I consider it mine. But neither said such things aloud and they all moved toward the entrance, though Yiorgos was unsteady. Dirken put Yiorgos's human arm around his shoulder to help him walk.

  Dirken stepped through the doorway, blinking against the strong, tropical sunlight. The sounds of blasterfire had stopped. In the entry, Dirken turned and looked to his left and saw Juarez still laying there, pale but still alive, the spear sticking out of his gut. He was looking out the opening to the platform beyond, horror on his bearded face.

  Dirken's eyes adjusted. On the platform stood half a dozen wounded pirates of different species with the bodies of dead and dying Acolytes around them in growing puddles of blood. One corpse off to the side was on fire. D
irken figured the ancient Mayans would approve of the scene.

  In the middle of the pirates stood the "Bloodhawk," Captain Neenan, the tip of his blaster red-hot from being fired so much. His humanoid upper body straightened as his four, stern eyes focused on Dirken and Yiorgos. This time the Bloodhawk was bare-chested, his arms and torso a mass of rippling muscle in places no human muscles could be found. The front of his centaur body and the left side of his face were bright green with inflammation and burns, a souvenir from the exploding battery packs from their last fight, in the hangar of the brigantine.

  Other than Juarez, the only Acolyte still alive was the "slave" woman, now cowering under the Bloodhawk. He stood over her, one massive, lion-like centaur's foot upon her head, pressing down with enough pressure that she cried out in pain. "Please!" she screamed, hand whipping at his clawed, scaly paw, her eyes rolling to Juarez, then Dirken, then to the slumped body of the Aussie. She seemed to calm herself, then muttered, "Mia," and reached out toward the Aussie's body.

  "Well, well," the Bloodhawk said, narrowing his eyes and leering at Dirken. His voice was smooth and unperturbed from the fight up the stairs. "If it isn't the same three who stole my fighter and the Heart. You are outnumbered and cornered. Fire, and you die." He holstered his blaster. "But I'd like to repay you for the magnificent scars you've given me. Duel with me. If you live, my men will let you go." He grinned. "It is the pirate code."

  He pulled his scimitar from its scabbard and pressed a button. The blade burst to life with a hum, the edge glowing with molten blue plasma.

  Dirken huffed. "Shit." He handed Yiorgos his blaster then activated the arc blade. Blue sparks popped and jumped across the parallel blades.

  "You're not actually going to do this?" Yiorgos gasped. Dirken knew that it was the pirate code that if anyone interfered, they would all be killed.

  "You got a better plan?"

  The cyborg tightened his jaw and didn't answer, looking away, his burned left hand gingerly grasping the blaster handle.

  Eow nodded at Dirken in grim determination. He recalled what she had told him the day before: Like a supernova, I also wish for an honorable death.

  The Bloodhawk made a point of looking over to Juarez then back at Dirken. "I thought you were bluffing during your interrogation. I see now that you actually are a friend of the Governor — at least, enough to die with him. Or was it you who speared him?" Dirken didn't answer.

  The Bloodhawk continued, "No matter. He will outlive you, a traitor to his people. There's only one sort I hate more than those who steal from me, and that's traitors." Without taking his four eyes off Dirken, he reared up and then stomped his foot down onto the head of the "slave" Acolyte who had once served him, smashing her skull with a sickening wet crunch.

  Then he leapt at Dirken, yelling, sword raised.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  DUEL

  Dirken tried to dodge, but hemmed in by the walls of the entryway, he managed only to block the blade with his own. The Bloodhawk's scimitar slammed into the arc blade with such force that Dirken was thrown to the ground on his back.

  The Bloodhawk pounded his blade down over and over, using his commanding weight to his advantage. It was a brutish attack, one that Dirken couldn't use swordsmanship to oppose. He managed to block each time, but it took both hands on the handle to counter the intense strength of the centaur. Each hit brought the blades closer and closer until they were mere centimeters from Dirken's nose.

  The Bloodhawk put his weight into it, bringing his broad, sneering face lower to look into Dirken's eyes. Sparks flew from Dirken's blade, hitting the plasma edge in tiny explosions that flung beads of blue electricity from the scimitar. Dirken's biceps strained and shook against the force, threatening to give out.

  Still pressing the swords, the Bloodhawk placed his bloody front paw upon Dirken's pelvis and pressed down with enough force to make Dirken grit his teeth against the pain.

  An explosion resounded from the sky, deep and booming, echoing off the ancient structures.

  "Captain!" a Rigellian pirate said, pointing upward with one flap-like hand. "The Dragonfire!"

  From the corner of his vision, Dirken saw a massive fireball and debris expand from the pirate brigantine.

  The Bloodhawk looked away, pulling back ever so slightly from the pressure on his sword. Dirken seized the moment.

  He rolled, his hip slipping out from under the Bloodhawk's paw. The pirate captain stumbled. His plasma scimitar bouncing against the arc blade. Dirken parried it and stabbed upward. The arc blade sliced deep into the swollen burn on the Bloodhawk's chest and shocked the centaur.

  The Bloodhawk wailed in pain and stepped sideways, swiping down with his blade and missing as Dirken leapt to his feet. Dark green blood spurted from the pirate's fresh wound, one which surely would have been fatal to a human.

  The Bloodhawk swung again, but Dirken dodged and the scimitar slammed into a communications array, cutting through the fine, metal projections on it. Dirken shuffled behind the array, trying to catch his breath for the next move.

  Landing craft from the Excellentia touched down in the acropolis below the pyramid.

  "It's over, Neenan!" Dirken yelled, wiping sweat off his brow. "You've lost!"

  "Hardly! But you won't live to see my triumph!"

  The Bloodhawk jumped and crashed through the communications array. Bits of broken metal flew from it as Dirken backed up, his feet now at the edge of the stone platform. He blocked another swipe from the scimitar.

  The pirate captain grabbed a piece of the shattered array with his other hand and threw it at Dirken. The spiked metal piece smacked into both the arc blade and Dirken's head. He lost his balance. Fell backward off the edge. Slammed onto the next level of the step pyramid three meters below. Knocked the wind out of his lungs.

  The arc blade clattered to the stones next to him. He grabbed the handle just as the Bloodhawk jumped down after him, yelling in fury. Dirken rolled as the plasma scimitar hit the stone where his head had been.

  The brigantine exploded again. They both glanced up. The Dragonfire's engines went dark. She fell from the sky, making a swan dive and trailing fire and smoke.

  On his feet again, Dirken swung, cutting across the Bloodhawk's right flank.

  The captain howled in pain and sliced downward. Dirken blocked it, grunting against the centaur's strength, then parried again.

  The brigantine slammed into the earth just to the north. The resulting explosion sent a mushroom cloud of fire high into the air and shook the building. Stones fell from the ancient walls. A shockwave of hot air blasted across them, almost knocking Dirken over.

  The Bloodhawk flinched and blinked. It was all the distraction Dirken needed.

  He stabbed forward, the arc blade plunging into the Bloodhawk's belly before he could block it.

  The centaur screamed in pain as he was shocked, yet he he somehow managed swung his scimitar.

  The plasma blade cut deep into Dirken's left arm just below the shoulder.

  Dirken yowled and backed away.

  The Bloodhawk staggered back. Pulled himself off Dirken's blade. Fell to his haunches as green blood poured out of the wound.

  Dirken stared down at his arm. The plasma had cauterized the cut, but he could see the white of bone. He screamed in intense rage, his sight reddening with fury as he whipped back around to the Bloodhawk.

  The pirate grimaced, his stern countenance tightening in pain and resolve. He raised his scimitar in a dazed defense.

  Dirken danced forward and knocked the scimitar from the Bloodhawk's tentacle digits. Swung again.

  The arc blade cut clean through the Bloodhawk's neck.

  The pirate captain's head dropped to the stones with a heavy thud and rolled, the red beret flopping off. The eyes blinked once, twice, then grew flat and lifeless. His body fell the other way, thumping to the stones with a spray of green blood, then sliding off the edge and falling to the next level of the pyramid.
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  Dirken sat down hard and dropped the arc blade, now nicked where it had met vertebrae. The blue-colored sparks had stopped, drained of energy.

  He struggled to catch his breath and put his back against the wall, then looked out upon the sea of burning trees where the Dragonfire had crashed. Another explosion blew apart a small pyramid next to the crash site, sending a rain of three-thousand-year-old stonework almost as far as where he sat and shaking the earth. He didn't even flinch. So much for earning a new ship, he thought, but at least I'm still alive.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  YOU CRAZY FUCKER!

  "Yiorgos!" Dirken exclaimed, suddenly remembering his partner. He had barely caught his breath from the battle, but he snatched up the Bloodhawk's plasma scimitar, the only working weapon left to him, and found a collapsed part of the structure a few meters away that he could climb back up.

  The top of the pyramid was a scene of carnage. Awash with blood. Dead Acolytes. Dead pirates. Shattered communications arrays. Blasted stonework. Sparking electrical lines. The surviving pirates had fled.

  Juarez still clung to life. He looked up at Dirken through dazed eyes, huffing and pale, then pointed a bloody finger and said, "You… you have to —"

  "Shut up," Dirken said. "This is all your doing!" He turned to the entryway. Relieved, he saw Yiorgos step out and meet him.

  "Your arm!" Yiorgos exclaimed.

  Dirken didn't want to think about that, and it didn't hurt. Or he was still in shock and not feeling it. But he couldn't move it correctly. Muscles had been severed. He shook his head and eyed Yiorgos with a clear message to leave the topic alone for now.

  Yiorgos ripped off a strip of robe from the dead Aussie and used it to bind Dirken's arm as he talked. "The remaining pirates fled when they saw you kill the Bloodhawk. The UW feds are rounding them up now." He glanced toward the stairs on the west side, toward the plaza. "But the feds are headed up the pyramid for us right now. We need to go."