“Zoom in, maximum differential. Scan for any known identifiers.”
The tablet beeped and formed a data grid over the shadowy image.
Male. Humanoid. Just under two meters, approximately 100 kilos. Age undetermined.
He threw the tablet across the room. It bounced off the shelving and clattered to the ground.
Maria, why? he thought, holding his head in his hands.
The tablet buzzed and alerted, and at first he didn’t hear it. He couldn’t get the silhouette of the other man out of his mind. It wasn’t until he heard Pancar’s voice that he broke from his thoughts.
“Damon, come in, please.”
Grabbing the tablet off the floor, Unipoesa cast aside the touch pad’s splintered frame.
“Are you alright?” Pancar asked, leaning into the view.
“I’m fine,” he said, straightening his uniform and returning to the chair at his desk. “Tell me the latest.”
“I thought you’d like to know that I have Captain Jagger and his crew in my custody,” the Nagoorian said.
The admiral heard it in his voice. “Is he... compromised?”
Pancar folded his hands together. “You and I have always disagreed about the efficacy of the Sleeper program, and Captain Jagger is a prime example of its shortcomings. I believe he would have fallen into enemy hands if it had it not been for the help of Old Earth’s notorious Scabber Jocks.”
Unipoesa pinched his eyes. “What are the casualties?”
“I’m sending you the list,” he said, typing in something on his console. “My compliments, incidentally, on outfitting Agracia with a custom puppet. This ‘Bossy’ is quite... unique.”
Unsure of what Pancar actually knew about the Alliance’s involvement in their pairing or his specific role in liberating her model, he moved the conversation forward. “Are Agracia and Bossy in your custody as well?”
“For the time being, although we’re having a hell of a time containing the puppet. And Agracia is quite insistent on speaking with Jetta. She says it’s urgent. I don’t think she’ll stay on Nagoor unless we can arrange that.”
The admiral sighed. “Get her transported here immediately. It’s past time I made contact with her anyway.”
“Are you sure that’s wise? I would imagine you’d be a significant trigger, and she’s quite unstable at the moment. All of them are. They need to be ‘unagented,’ Damon, or they will all go mad. The Talian is destroying anything that he perceives as a threat, and the surgeon is beginning to compulsively hurt himself. I won’t even tell you what the rest of the crew is doing.”
“Jaeia and I are addressing that at 1700 hours.”
“Damon,” Pancar stressed, “there is no worse affliction than to lose the reins of your identity.”
The admiral heard the touch of grief in his voice, saw the way his forehead creased.
This isn’t just about his concern over his guests. The face of Pancar’s nephew, Tighsen Dai, flashed through his head. A charismatic smile wiped away, a joyful laughter lost. Military Minister Razar made sure of that when he ordered him to be turned into an agent all those years ago.
No time to dig up old ghosts. Unipoesa deflected the comment and drove into the more pressing matter: “Tell me what you really found.”
Pursing his lips, Pancar sat back in his chair. “The Talian took Shandin’s head as a prize. We inspected it and found some very suspicious implants. They appear to be of Motti design, but with peculiar customizations. I’m having my best people look into it.”
“And?” He checked his uniform sleeve; he only had a few more minutes until he had to meet with Jaeia.
“This is not the first time I’ve come across something like this, Damon. In fact, just a few weeks ago one of my viper squads found the body of Mashen Ky, former leader of the human colonists on Jue Hexron, in a rescue mission after Victor’s forces took hold of the planet. He was outfitted with similar ocular and intracranial implants.”
“Victor...?” Unipoesa said, squeezing the tablet handles.
“And that’s not all. I’ve sent you the video log of Reht’s engagement with Diawn Arkiam. If you look closely, she has injuries consistent with the implantation of these same devices.”
“It must be some sort of control device,” the admiral said.
Pancar nodded. “My guess exactly.”
The admiral’s sleeve alarmed at him. “I have a consultation with Jaeia. Keep me posted on your findings.”
“One more thing, Damon,” the blue-skinned Nagoorian said as Damon’s finger hovered over the disconnect. “I need you to promise me something.”
Unipoesa braced himself against the desk, anticipating the request of his oldest friend.
“Many things have been taken away from you and me with the lives that we’ve chosen, and so rarely do we have the opportunity to step out of uniform. She’s coming back to you now, Damon, against all impossibilities. So don’t deny yourself the possibility of hope, and don’t rely on the dictations of your past.”
“What are you saying, Pancar?” he said, swallowing hard against the hot lump in his throat.
Pancar smiled sadly. “Old friend... Don’t be afraid to be happy.”
JAEIA MET THE ADMIRAL just outside the Defense Department’s Division Lockdown Labs.
“Are you sure about this, Captain?” the admiral said, checking the readout panel for the internal operating levels.
It had taken a lot of convincing to get the approval of Dr. DeAnders and the CCO for their meeting with the Hub, especially since the Defense/Research team had recently taken the super processor offline after it had shown independent neural node growth, but Jaeia felt sure. If they didn’t free the mind of Tarsha Leone and the other Sleepers, she argued, then the Alliance risked their one and only chance against Li. And if she could get past Li, then she could find a way to confront Victor and end his reign.
“You’ll just have to trust me, Admiral,” she said, hitting the keypad.
Once she stepped inside the network housing, her stomach knotted. A long time ago, the steady hum and blinking lights of the main processor excited her, made her wonder what mysteries of the universe could be solved. Now she only felt the fluttering uncertainties in her belly, and the burden of the choices she might have to make in order to save the Starways.
Please, she thought, projecting her voice beyond her own mind, for once, give me a break.
As the admiral watched over her shoulder, she input her command codes and freed the emergent restraints enough that the Hub’s independent functioning could engage, along with its holographic imaging.
“I know you can hear me,” she said, looking at the blank staging area and stepping onto the center platform. “I don’t know what you’re calling yourself these days, but I’ve come to make good on my promise to you.”
A glimmer of light descended from the ceiling, expanding into an orb suspended above her head. Whispers came from the darkness. A chill shot up her spine as she remembered her sister’s confrontation with Jahx’s possessed mind.
“We know what brings you here, Jaeia Drachsi.”
“I no longer use that last name,” she corrected the Hub.
Two eyes appeared before her, slitted and yellow like a cat’s. “You have many names, some of which you have lost, and some that you have gained.”
How did he acquire that information? she thought. No, I can’t do this. He’s goading me; I can’t play into his game.
The Hub revealed more of itself, this time assuming a feline form with black and purple markings. It paced around her, shoulder blades spiking up and down beneath shimmering fur. “Your friends whisper one of these many names. They tell me your secrets—and the real reason why you come here today.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the admiral giving her a cautionary look.
I know what he’s doing, she thought, weighing her options, but I have to bite. “What friends?”
The feline creature smiled,
revealing a crescent moon for a mouth. Then the image blinked out, confronting her with empty space.
“This is a waste of time,” the admiral said, checking the time on his sleeve.
Her voice came out of the distance, rushing toward them with desperate urgency: “Jaeia—have you forgotten about us?”
Senka.
Focusing on her breathing, Jaeia rubbed the tips of her fingers together. She couldn’t let the machine get inside her head. Stay cool and calm; it wants a reaction out of me, test my limits.
She reminded herself of its ultimate goal: merging with the other two dataHubs that controlled the Alliance Intelligence Systems. DeAnders, Wren, and Unipoesa held serious reservations about letting an artificial intelligence come into a state of full conscious emergence. Dividing the Hub kept it in control.
For now.
Before Victor had crippled the Fleet, the Alliance would have come under political fire for restricting the growth and development of an emerging intelligence for the purpose of defense and war, but things had changed. It was part of the reason why she was here. She still had reservations about letting a collective intelligence like the Hub roam freely throughout the wave network. After all, it knew every registered being intimately through their personal logs and public files. But the part of her she could never deny, even against the will of her overbearing sister, felt strongly on the matter.
“I hear them,” the Hub said, rematerializing on the ceiling, crawling on all fours. “They are in such pain. They want to return to your world; they want release from this terrible limbo.”
“You know why we can’t,” Jaeia said. “You’re linked into our systems. You know we haven’t been successful in our attempts to use the flash transport device.”
“That’s because you haven’t asked me,” the Hub said, dropping to the floor. The feline creature morphed into a semi-humanoid form, standing on its back legs and rounding its shoulders. He held in his paw-like hand a glowing orb that changed its form to that of Senka, then Rawyll, Crissn, and the Grand Oblin. “I can reawaken them. I can make them be reborn.”
The admiral stepped in. “At what cost?”
Winding its tail up the admiral’s leg, the feline creature closed its hand on the orb. “And you. You want to know the song to awaken those who slumber. I can help you, too.”
Sensing his frustration and paranoia rising, Jaeia answered for both of them. “Yes, you’re right. We need to know any and all information you have on the Sleeper program and the word ‘Blackbird.’ If you can help us bring back the Exiles and release the Sleepers, then I will release you and the other dataHubs.”
The Hub let out a sound between a purr and a laugh and crouched down on all fours. “You have promised such things before, Jaeia of Old Earth. Besides, you will be reprimanded, demoted, imprisoned for misconduct and tampering with a dangerous weapon.”
“I will authorize it,” the admiral said, backing her.
What?
Without breaking her composure, Jaeia absorbed the shock of the admiral’s unanticipated move. She had expected to have to use her second voice to convince him to relinquish his command codes—not for him to do so willingly. This changes things.
Centuries of military strategy and experience butted up against her thoughts. Maybe this is part of a secret plan. He never revealed his motive for coming with me, or what he planned to do when the time came to play the final hand.
“You know not what I am capable of,” the Hub whispered, once again revealing his crescent smile. “I am the eyes and ears of the wave network. Should you so blindly trust me?”
Jaeia played with the end of her uniform sleeve. The Hub read and analyzed all my personal files; it knows my weaknesses. “It is my belief that no Sentient creature should be held against their will in order to serve this institution.”
“Is that why you freed the Spinners?”
Unipoesa’s anger hit her like a tidal wave, but she breathed through it, reminding herself that she had to hold onto her objective.
“Yes.”
“Even though Aesis is a known impersonator of high-powered delegates and military personnel?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to sound convincing.
She felt the admiral’s hand at her sleeve, but she pulled away and didn’t look back.
With a smile, the Hub smiled playfully stretched out and yawned, its long, pink tongue curling out of its mouth. It licked its lips and lowered its head. “Well then. Prove your conviction. Show me where your faith lies.”
Jaeia paused over the console after the admiral input his codes. “Do you know why I believe that you will help us?”
The Hub leapt back onto the ceiling and dangled upside-down by its tail. “Enlighten me, Triorion.”
“Because it was your interaction with our minds, from our daily banalities to our tragedies and triumphs, our deepest secrets to our wildest fantasies, that brought you into being. That’s what breathes life into you with every piece of electronic data we feed into the wave network. If you are truly are a product of our experiences and our dreams, then I would hope, for the sake of both our existences, that you would see the logic in supporting what makes us honorable and good creatures by helping us in our mission to bring freedom and democracy to the Starways.”
The feline creature disappeared, and the staging area became a blank field once again.
“Waste of time,” the admiral muttered.
The speakers exploded with a cacophony of dissonant sounds as the holographic image of the enormous Motti ship, with its curved, half-dome superstructure and tentacled underbelly, moved slowly along the optic field, laying waste to the civilization projected in its shadow. Jaeia and the admiral retreated behind the interface, watching in horror as the nightmare unfolded. Screams and mechanical chattering filled the room, and faces contorted with immeasurable suffering surfaced and receded. A green planet decayed to an ugly brown, then charred to black before blipping out of existence.
Victor’s image took center stage, all around him the light of the setting sun dying against a world reduced to ashes. His figure never settled, caught in a state of flux, as if the hardware struggled to keep up with the illusion of his plastic-sheened flesh. As the world around him perished, he spoke in an insect’s tongue, his words strained and in hisses:
“With eyes open, they burn!”
Jaeia’s stomach twisted sickeningly, and she grabbed onto the railing.
“There is much suffering in your world,” the Hub whispered.
How could she trust the Hub? How could she believe that an artificial intelligence, released from its bonds, would find reason to save the ones who had caged and restricted its awareness? How could it possibly understand or care about the absurd struggles of organic species limited by their biological wants and needs when the universe posed as a much more interesting and fulfilling playground for a superior intelligence? It could very easily let them fall to the mercy of Victor and his tyrannical empire.
Two images flickered to life. One was of Jaeia, sitting before her private terminal in her quarters. The other was of Unipoesa, much younger, doing the same. The Hub went back and forth between the two audio tracks, starting with Jaeia:
“Sometimes I wonder... if this is all worth it. If humans—if Sentients—are worth saving. The horrible things we have done keep me up at night.”
The audio switched over to Unipoesa. “Maria—I did this for you. I hope you know that. I wanted to give you, and perhaps one day our family, a future.”
Jaeia remembered making the recording a few weeks ago, after Victor’s forces had taken over most of the interior, leaving those who didn’t join at the mercy of the Motti’s weapon.
“Are we worth saving? Are the Sentients of the Starways worth saving? I asked myself that before I helped Jetta face Jahx. Sometimes it still sits uneasily in my heart.”
Unipoesa cradled his head. “I am so sorry, Maria. I should have never have left you. I thought I knew what I
was doing.”
It flipped back to Jaeia: “...and then I close my eyes, and I listen to Jetta’s voice. Not the loud, obnoxious one, or the one at the front of her head. The one that’s quieter but always there, pulling and pushing her every single day. The one she may never really hear, but the one that keeps her—and me—going.”
The Hub returned to Unipoesa as he fumbled to remove his wedding band. He held up it up to the light before putting it in his pocket and turning away from the camera. “Letting you go will be the hardest thing I will ever do. But I promised to protect you, and I will do anything—anything—to keep you safe. I love you, forever and always.”
The field blanked out again.
“Do it already,” the admiral whispered, his reddened eyes staring out ahead.
Jaeia flipped the switch.
You’re free.
She stepped back while the computer housing hummed and buzzed with new life and the Hub rerouted its processor to integrate with the other two divided components of its neural network.
“Hello?” Jaeia said, standing in the silence.
The admiral kicked a coil of fiberoptics. “Chak it all.”
Her uniform sleeve beeped, alerting her to an emergency briefing called by the CCO.
“We have to go,” she said, stepping off the platform. “Let’s just hope it keeps its promise.”
As Jaeia closed the doors behind her, she saw something glimmer in the shadows. She only caught a glimpse of the projection as the doors sealed shut.
My tattoo—
And with it a whisper, ever so faint, in the dark: “Believe.”
ALTHOUGH HELD UNDER strict watch in her quarters, Wren had granted Jetta limited use of her rank to search the network.
I can’t believe they allowed me almost full access to the Alliance database, Jetta mused as she scrolled through department reports. After checking and rechecking that the status of her brother was critical but unchanged, she reviewed the latest intelligence on the Motti and Victor’s secret counter-weapon.
Triorion Omnibus Page 138
