by M. D. Cooper
PART 2 – WIDOWS
WIDOW A1
STELLAR DATE: 10.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: OGS Perilous Dream
REGION: Karaske System, Rimward of Orion Nebula, Orion Freedom Alliance
A1 sat on the bridge of the Perilous Dream, soaking up the sensor data that flowed through the ship and into her mind.
She saw the movements of all her Widows as they went about their assigned tasks, monitored the ship’s systems, and watched as the ship accelerated through the Karaske System to its rendezvous with Garza’s base of operations.
However, there was a group of Widows who had more than their share of A1’s attention. They were far aft of the bridge, in one of the primary datanodes. Two were her sisters—a different sort of sister than the rest of the Widows—one was a friend, and the fourth was the previous A1, the person once known as Lisa Wrentham.
A1 supposed the Widow in question really was just Lisa Wrentham now. She had no designation and was no longer in command of the Widows…she wasn’t even in control of her own body, her movements and actions being fully determined by F11—or Faleena.
Yes, Faleena. Don’t forget, Cary. Saanvi, Faleena, and Priscilla. Two sisters and a friend. You’re all here on a mission to stop the Widows from launching more attacks, not to join them.
A1 was determined to ensure that the Widows were no longer a threat, at least not for the Scipio Alliance. The Widows would continue to operate and launch more attacks, but they’d launch them against their former masters, the Orion Freedom Alliance.
From what A1 had gleaned from the former A1’s memory, it was obvious that the other woman knew she and her sisters were being used by Garza. Lisa Wrentham had known that when the time came, he would cast her aside. But she’d planned to make herself indispensable to him once they’d overthrown Praetor Kirkland and forestall that while she developed other options.
Cary-A1, however, had no need to play that long game. She’d just kill Garza and destroy his base of operations.
Yes, there are probably more of his clones out there, but if I take out his HQ, then his ability to coordinate his operations diminishes drastically.
As she played out scenarios, she realized that anyone as organized as Garza would have pre-established fallback locations. If that was the case, then there would be little gained from taking out whichever clone was ensconced at Karaske.
Still, the primary goal is to gather intel. With enough of that, we’ll be able to get one step ahead of him.
She realized that one option might be to put out a call for more of the clones to return to Karaske. Eliminate them one-by-one as they came back—which meant she would need to somehow take control of a Garza clone and assume command of BOGA through him.
I wonder what father would think about that….
* * * * *
Saanvi looked from Faleena to Priscilla and back again. “OK, show of hands. Who thinks this is nuts? Because it’s nuts!”
Priscilla raised her hand halfway and wobbled it side to side, while Faleena only shrugged.
“I agree it would be crazy, if this had been the proposed plan from the get-go,” Priscilla said. “But your sister is capitalizing on an amazing opportunity. We could never have suspected that she could bond with A1’s personality so well that she could completely assume her identity. She’s making the right move to take advantage of it.”
“Aren’t you worried that she might lose herself in it? That she might become A1?”
Faleena nodded. “Yes, that is a significant risk.”
“So why’d you just shrug?” Saanvi demanded.
“Because you asked if it was nuts,” Faleena replied equably. “I don’t think that is the case. If she were alone, yes, it would be a very bad idea. But we’re here, and we can monitor her. Father is also following us, so we have ways to extract Cary if things go wrong.”
Priscilla bobbed her head in agreement. “We also had our minds backed up to crystal. If unwanted patterns are established in Cary, then our neurospecialists will be able to revert her back to how she was.”
“That’s not terribly encouraging, Priscilla.”
The avatar shrugged. “I’ve gone through more neural re-alignment than you can imagine. It’s solid science and, quite honestly, very reassuring to have a way to objectively compare your current mental state to past states and see if you like the direction you’re headed in. Yes, most people just muddle through and let their minds evolve chaotically, but to me, that’s verging on barbaric.”
“Spoken like an AI,” Faleena replied with a soft laugh. “Which I mean as a total compliment.”
“I figured that,” Saanvi muttered. “Well, if Cary goes off the rails and starts really acting like a Widow, we’re yanking her and getting the hell out of here.”
The other two women gave their agreement, but then Faleena asked, “So…how are we going to determine that she’s gone off the rails? Because she’s already really acting like a Widow.”
“If she does something that would harm us or Dad,” Saanvi proposed.
Faleena nodded, and this time it was Priscilla who shrugged. “I suppose I can go along with that. Although I have no idea how we’d stop Cary without hurting her if she ‘goes off the rails’.”
Saanvi pursed her lips behind the widow’s featureless helmet she wore. “You’re right. What we used on our friend Lisa here won’t work on Cary, especially because of her…impending ascension.”
“We’re just going to have to trust our sister to do what’s right. Worst-case scenario, we can always call Mom,” Faleena said.
“Stars,” Saanvi muttered. “I wonder if Mom is getting tired of being the galactic firefighter.”
“Tired or not, if we call for her to save Cary, she’ll come,” Priscilla said.
Saanvi reached up to run a hand through her hair, stopping when she realized that wasn’t possible. “Stupid helmet. Don’t forget, though, Mom needs to be ready to go to Airtha. We can’t distract her—we have to do this on our own.”
Priscilla shook her head, an ethereal chuckle coming from her helmet. “Yes, the galaxy still spun before Tangel came along. Missions were still completed successfully. It’s not as though we’re going up against an ascended being here.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being ironic or not,” Sanvi said.
The avatar shrugged. “Neither can I.”
“This is getting us nowhere.” Faleena gestured at the stock-still figure of Lisa Wrentham, the former A1. “We need to finish up stripping her datastores and prepare the intel for transmission to Father’s ship.”
“Right.” Saanvi nodded. “Because everything could go to shit in an instant, it would be nice to at least secure what we originally came for.”
Faleena suddenly scowled at the holodisplay in front of her. “Shit!”
“What?” the other two women demanded.
The AI looked up at them, worry etched into her features. “Two teams of Widows were sent to Airtha—to destroy it!”
FATHER’S PURSUIT
STELLAR DATE: 10.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Falconer
REGION: A1 System, Spinward edge of PED, Orion Freedom Alliance
“Targets are locked,” Captain Tracey announced. “We’re ready. We just need your tokens on the Gamma Protocol unlock, Admiral.”
Joe glanced at the Falconer’s captain. “Tokens…entered. Fire when ready, Captain.”
He turned back to the bridge’s central holotank, watching as the fire-control systems targeted the seventy closest enemy ships.
“Fire!” the captain called out, and a hundred and forty half-meter missiles launched—two for every target. They eased from the Falconer on conventional thrusters.
Once they were clear of the ISF ship, their AP drives fired, coherent beams of gamma rays boosting the missiles to near-luminal speeds in seconds.
The bridge was deathly silent as the rods of destruction streaked toward their targets,
every crewmember watching the missiles’ trajectories. Joe noted that many members of the bridge crew appeared apprehensive, likely uncertain of the morality of what they were about to do, though none seemed to be concerned enough to raise any objection.
Though the people of New Canaan had frequently used picotech in discreet building projects—typically ones that were hidden on, or within, planets—they’d not used the technology in anger since attacking the AST dreadnoughts at Bollam’s World.
The destruction of those six ships via picobombs had been the shot heard around the galaxy, and was already being cited by historians as the event that sparked the current war—something that was being called everything from the Orion War to the first Galactic War.
None of that mattered to him right now. The only thing on his mind was eliminating the Orion Guard ships so he could use the A1 System’s jump gate to follow his daughters to Karaske.
His musings were short. It only took ten seconds for the missiles to reach the closest Orion ships.
There was no doubt that the enemy saw the incoming warheads; the AP drives’ gamma rays were hard to miss. But what the enemy could not anticipate was that the missiles themselves were not intended to even get close to their targets, so it didn’t matter that the enemy vessels took out half of them.
The warheads had already fired off their true weapons: nanoscale spears loaded with pico ready to devour everything in its path.
“Hit!” Scan called out, and Joe noted that one, then four, then twenty-three enemy ships showed signs of the picobombs ravaging their hulls.
Sixty seconds later, the first of the ships was broken apart, drifting sections of dissolving hull and interior decks all that remained. Three minutes later, fifty-two of the targeted seventy ships had been destroyed.
The remaining eighteen targeted ships that had—by dint of very lucky defensive fire—escaped destruction, and were already boosting away from the Falconer.
“Activate stasis shields, drop stealth,” Joe ordered. “Make for the gate. Let’s see what the ships defending it do.”
Captain Tracey nodded silently, then swallowed noisily and said, “Yes, sir.”
Readings on the forward display came to life, highlighting thrust, vector, shield status, and power levels as they shifted to drive the vessel forward.
On the main holotank, a plot appeared, denoting the route the ship would take to the jump gate, thirty light seconds distant.
Joe’s daughters had already passed through that gate aboard the Perilous Dream, and though he had to concentrate on getting to it, half his thoughts were already on the dangers they could be facing in the Karaske System.
One thing the admiral was certain of was that Garza and the operation he ran would not be so easy to take down. The wily Orion general would certainly have defenses against the Widows going rogue—Joe knew he would, if he were in Garza’s shoes. However, he had no idea what form those defenses would take.
If Lisa Wrentham really was as skilled at manipulating minds as it seemed, then he didn’t think that Garza could have inserted anything into her Widows’ programming. Instead, whatever means of protection he possessed would likely take the form of brute force.
There had been much debate as to what General Garza’s modus operandi was. He seemed to feint as often as not, but other times, would come in with a full-frontal assault. It had been posited by ISF Intel that some of his unpredictability was due to the divergent nature of his clones—that some would favor different tactics and strategies.
Similar behavior had been observed in the three Seras, though the results of the cloning made it readily apparent that different technologies were in use by Orion and Airtha.
As the ship surged forward, closing the gap between it and the gate, Joe realized that the bridge crewmembers were sharing significant looks with one another, and low murmurs filled the air around him.
Joe nodded soberly.
He knew that many people in the ISF felt strongly that there should be more liberal use of pico weaponry. In general, he agreed with the sentiment, but he also understood the New Canaan Parliament’s reason for banning its use.
Their rationale had been that unrestricted use of pico weaponry would make more and more interstellar nations view New Canaan and the ISF as a threat, not a potential ally.
The Gamma Protocol had been established by Tangel as a way to use pico weapons in cases of extreme need. This was following the Defense of Carthage, when the only other option had been to draw the Exdali out of the dark layer.
That singular event had made it painfully obvious to parliament that denying the use of the ISF’s best weapons meant that they’d have to find other means to defend the populace—and those other means may just be more terrifying than picobombs.
Despite the protections the Gamma Protocol offered, Joe was certain that some would view his actions as pure nepotism, but he didn’t care. If the ISF wanted to haul him before a board of inquiry for what he’d done, that was their prerogative.
My prerogative is to use whatever tools are at my disposal to accomplish my mission—part of which is ensuring that my three girls make it back safe and sound.
As he considered the ramifications of his actions, the remaining Orion ships in the A1 System began to move away from the Falconer, giving the ship a clear path to the jump gate.
“Lieutenant Faleena’s codes are good. We’ve established a connection with the gate,” the Comm officer announced. “Jump coordinates are still set for the Karaske System.”
“Very good,” Captain Tracey said, then turned to Joe. “Sir, analysis believes that it is likely there is another gate in the system. We’re too far from other settled regions in Orion for them to rely on a single egress point.”
“So what you’re saying is that if we leave these ships behind, they’ll be in Karaske before long, outing us to Garza?”
“Yes, Admiral, that is analysis’s assessment.”
A part of him wanted to give the order to fire on the rest of the Orion Guard ships, to wipe them all out…. But there could still be emergency beacons that could send messages through the other, hypothetical gate.
“I guess we’ll just have to ask them where it is.”
“Sir?”
Joe winked at Captain Tracey and then opened a channel to the Orion ships.
The captain raised an eyebrow as she regarded Joe.
“OK…think it’ll work?” she asked.
“Sir, ma’am,” the comm officer turned to the pair. “I have a colonel on the line, he’s— Sheesh, he’s not waiting at all before blustering, that’s for sure.”
“I guess we must have taken out whoever was senior to him,” Captain Tracey said.
Joe nodded and was about to ask the comm officer to put the colonel on the main display, when she chuckled.
“Oh! Three ships just sent all their navigational data.”
“Send it to analysis,” Captain Tracey said, glancing at Joe, who nodded. “Should we just ignore this colonel, then?”
“No, put him up,” Joe said. “He might reveal something interesting.”
“—unprovoked attack on Orion’s sovereign—”
“Let me stop you right there.” Joe held up a hand, interrupting the Orion officer’s ongoing tirade. “Every
action my people are taking against Orion is not unprovoked, it is a response. We were minding our own business, many thousands of light years from here, when your forces attacked our system. Though it was a few years ago at this point, it’s still really fresh in our minds, and we’re not ready to let go yet. Plus, your Widows just tried to assassinate one of our leaders—one who I’m really quite fond of—so we’ve decided to bring the fight to you. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry?” the colonel, a raven-haired man with V-shaped eyebrows, sputtered. “You made an unprovoked attack on our fleet!”
“Oh, you’re just upset because you’ve only just now realized how much trouble you’re in,” Joe replied. “You’re like a naked person who’s kicked a hornet’s nest…or some other suitably ridiculous metaphor.”
“Well, the metaphor isn’t ridiculous, sir,” Captain Tracey chimed in when Joe paused. “More that the person depicted is ridiculous.”
“Thanks for backing me up,” Joe said with a laugh before turning back to the colonel. “So, where is your other gate?”
“Why? Are you going to destroy it and leave us stranded here?”
“Mmhmmmm.” Joe nodded. “That is exactly what I plan to do. The alternative is destroying all your ships. You see, I really don’t want you following us. I think you should look at this as a gift. Given how remote this system is, I imagine that you’re looking at almost a year in the dark layer before you make it anywhere with a gate. Just think, you’ll avoid being around for all sorts of battles where the Orion Guard is going to be utterly crushed.”
Captain Tracey asked.
Joe shrugged.
“No wonder the praetor has vowed to eliminate your people. We’ll fight—”
