by Bob Mayer
The control room was dimly illuminated by emergency lighting. She went to one of the consoles and activated it. Did a quick systems check, as per SOP. The mothership was functional, although operating at absolute minimums. To power it up for STL, slower than light travel, ie move at all, would require some time. FTL, much longer, but it was Airlia policy not to engage FTL inside a solar system as the transition sent a signature through interstellar space that the Swarm could possibly pick up.
The ruby sphere, the mothership’s primary power source, was at a satisfactory level. There was one underneath Atlantis, supplying power to the shield wall and the Citadel-Tower. The third was lost due to Isis’s mistake. The fourth was on Isis powering the small base there attached to the FTL transmitter.
The top of the mothership was four hundred meters below the surface of the ocean, beyond detection of the humans and definitely beyond their ability to reach. The water pressure was inconsequential compared to the stresses of interstellar flight the ship was built to withstand.
Anubis shifted programs and ran a system check of the single talon attached to the bow of the mothership. They’d had to cannibalize parts from the one perched above the amphitheater in Atlantis to keep this one functional. Anubis was leery of flying because if a key part failed that was already a replacement, then they lacked any ability to project power from the air. That was besides the possibility the craft would crash. The mothership had no weapons systems, a model rebuilt to a stripped-down version after rebuild from battle damage, designed to be used for the Teardrop program.
A light flashed red. The talon’s power source was flat-lined. To be expected as it had been a long time since last flown. She tapped in the commands to funnel power from the mothership’s ruby sphere to the talon. It was going to take a while. Anubis left the control room to wander the ship while she waited.
LIONS HEAD, ATLANTIS, EARTH15
Amun had a high wedjat bring a chair into the control sphere near the top of the Citadel-Tower. Once the wedjat was gone and the sphere sealed, Amun sat and did a system’s check. Everything seemed to be functioning. Anubis was on-line in the mothership and powering up the talon. Osiris was slowly waking.
Horus had marched off. Given that the Msats no longer worked, Amun had no idea of Horus’s status. The marshalling of the army seemed to be on schedule according to the Shakur general who would be leading it south to link up with Horus.
Amun sighed and pulled one of the red strings out of a pocket on his cloak.
Regress.
Supposedly for medicinal purposes in case of severe trauma. And for recreation but only under very controlled circumstances.
This was not one of those circumstances but since it appeared nothing significant was going to be happening any time soon, Amun saw no reason not to indulge. He knew that eventually some ‘straight spear’ would do a required inventory and note the missing amount of regress, but according to his own count, Amun knew he wasn’t the only one who was pilfering the stock.
Teardrop duty had been the dregs of Fleet assignments so many years ago. This startling new report that the experiment actually seemed to have worked meant that things were going to get very busy as soon as the mothership from Orion Fleet arrived, so it was best to play while there was time.
A loop of regress allowed one to return to a memory and experience it as if they were reliving it. At least in the mind. The body was locked in position during the ‘trip’. Completely helpless and vulnerable. Amun made sure the entrance to the sphere was secure.
He slid a ka into the control console. Image of personal memories, his favorites, filled the screens, blanking out the normal status and security views.
Amun circled the regress around his neck, a finger in each loop at the end. He leaned his head back, resting it against the top of the chair.
He pulled the string, feeling it tighten into his skin just the right amount. Stretching the regress opened the microscopic dischargers along the length of the string. This released nanites that passed through the skin and into his peripheral nervous system. They found the electrical currents in that system and traveled along the afferent nerves to his central nervous system. The first Regress commands locked his joints and muscles in place. There were those who did Regress while standing, which caused some painful swelling and recovery on the other side.
Next, his peripheral nervous system shut down. He would feel nothing if anything happened to his body. Of course, the opposite was also true. He had no control of his body while under the control of the regress.
The nanites continued their journey and their designed task. They passed into his spine, his central nervous system and into the brain. Sight, smell and sound were now blanked and the external world was nonexistent. There were cases of regress overdose where the user never came back. There was debate over what such a person experienced as their body wasted away and eventually ceased to function. Did they remain in regress until nothingness or was there a moment of realization of the fatal mistake?
Finally, the regress reached journey’s end: Amun’s cerebral cortex, where his memories were housed. Here came the other dangerous aspect of regressing: The user had no control over which memories were tapped. The regress normally targeted the most recent and powerful subconscious activity.
This was the reason he’d played all those happy images of his past on the screens, hoping the regress would tap into one of them. Because there were times a regress found darker memories and the trip became a horrid nightmare.
Amun would have smiled if his muscles still functioned as a memory from his time prior to the Academy was brought to life inside his brain.
His first love.
He was living it again.
The screens in the control room flickered and went dark as the replay on the ka ceased.
*****
General Tor-monar looked at the Citadel-Tower one last time, just to make sure there wasn’t some last-minute instruction from the Airlia. But the wedjat held their ritual positions after having blessed the army, as if that was going to do any good.
With a flick of his hand Tor-monar indicated for the lead scouts to move out. They marched through First Wall gate, the talon looming over them. As they passed through each gate in succeeding walls, more troops joined until they passed through South Gate of Seventh Wall.
Aligned on the plain beyond the outermost wall was the main part of the army consisting of several thousand wargs and tens of thousands of mercenaries, most from the Wilds to the east.
Tor-monar was not thrilled to be leading so many. The numbers appeared good on the balance sheet and the glittering of sunlight on so many helmets and spear tips was impressive to those who knew no better. But this was an army cobbled together with many elements that not only had never acted in concert but were actually blood feud enemies.
For the march, Tor-monar was doing his best to keep those elements as far apart from each other. It would be Horus’s problem once they arrived at North Wall.
HEGEMONY, EARTH15
The eyelids flickered, then opened. Confusion rippled over the face, but it was quickly replaced by awareness. Markus lifted one hand, flexing the fingers. Then the other.
Bren hit a hexagonal and the lid lifted. She leaned in and kissed her mate. “Welcome back, love.”
They held the embrace for long moments, then Bren helped Markus out of the tube. As he reached for the clothes and armor she’d laid out, he froze. “Who is that?”
Orlock had his hood up and was to the right of the two depressions at the front of the ship for the pilot and co-pilot.
“That is a friend,” Bren said. “He helped me recover your ka and led me on a fast route back from North Valley.”
“Does the friend have a name?” Markus asked, grabbing a pair of pants and pulling them on.
Orlock flipped the hood back. “I am Orlock, brother of Moroi, Elder of the Nagil.”
Markus’s hand reached for the sword, but Bren stopped him. “He
’s a friend, Markus.”
“He is Airlia.”
“No,” Bren said. “Look. He’s shorter. Five fingers. He is half Airlia, half human.”
“I don’t understand,” Markus said.
“I will explain as you dress,” Bren said. It took longer than the time for Markus to gear up for her to fill him in on all that had occurred since he’d last been here and downloaded his essence into the ship’s computer. There was, of course, some she couldn’t tell him, because she didn’t know. All that had occurred to him during that missing time, other than the result, his body lying in a shallow grave. That was lost with his death. But the information about the acolyte he was supposed to have met being crucified on the Red Sphinx explained why that had happened.
While she narrated, Orlock sat on the edge of the co-pilot’s depression, patiently waiting. Bren had not given him a decision on Arcturus’s plan. She’d insisted she run it by Markus and they decide together.
Bren finished her narration of events and then added what Arcturus suggested they do next.
Markus rubbed his temples for a moment. “It is much to take in. If I did not see him—” he indicated Orlock—“these Nagil would be hard to believe. In all the years all we’ve heard is rumors of them. And this Arcturus? Yes, we also heard stories of the Archaic over the years. But for him to be able to evade us all that time? To claim humans, including him, were here before the Airlia came? That humans were not made by the Airlia?”
“He helped me,” Bren said. “He helped Orlock and his people. Your ka would be in the master guardian right now, with the Airlia able to rip apart your essence, if it had not been for their help.”
Markus held up a hand, nodding. “I know, I know. I heard. But coming back is hard. My head is not clear yet.” He looked at Orlock, evaluating. Then at Bren. “What do you think we should do?”
“It is a daring plan,” Bren said, “but we have never made progress in Hegemony. This is a chance.”
“But we will expose the ship,” Markus pointed out. “It is very likely the Airlia will spot it. They could use their talon to destroy it. And us.”
“They could,” Bren agreed. “But I almost lost you this time. And there have been other close calls over the years.”
Markus reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “You are right. As you always are. I trust your judgment as I always have. We can keep hiding or we can take a chance. The Airlia are weak. If Arcturus is right, this might work.”
He walked over and slid into the pilot’s depression. Bren took the co-pilot’s.
“Find something to hold onto, Orlock, Elder of the Nagil,” Markus said. “It will be a bit rough getting out of this hole.”
SWARM BATTLE CORE, INTERSTELLAR, FASTER THAN LIGHT TRANSIT
Kray remained perfectly still as the swarm orb poked and prodded him with various instruments. Not that he had any choice with the swarm tentacle having taken over control.
This went on for so long that Kray actually fell asleep standing on his feet.
He was startled awake when the tentacle forced him to walk. A portal had opened in the side of the chamber, revealing a tunnel of red organic material. Kray was staggered down the tunnel. It ended at a swarm scoutship. He clambered into it. The craft detached and flew across a massive hangar crowded with warships and scouts hanging on supply lines like peas on a vine. Thousands of ships.
The scout went to the far side and then along another wide channel, big enough for warships to traverse. Into another hangar, this one blackened and blasted from multiple nuclear explosions. The edges of the blast zones were already under repair with tens of thousands of crawling machines scraping away dead, radiated material, revealing living, healthy Core material underneath. Other machines were taking that debris toward portals that led to the surface where it would be expelled once the Core came out of FTLT.
The ship flew across that hangar into another, narrower, corridor that curved inward, deeper into the Core. The scout reached the destination, locking into the wall. The door opened and the tentacle forced Kray out. He was force-marched fifty meters along a tunnel. A door opened and he walked into a circular chamber with two cages, side by side. There was someone in one of the cages. Since he couldn’t control his eyes, Kray didn’t have a chance to get a good look at who it was. He went into the open cage, twenty feet square and fifteen feet high. The bars were made of black metal.
Kray gasped and fell to his knees as the tentacle let go. The pain was excruciating as the organic material reassembled and the tentacle retreated out of his body, leaving an open wound at the base of his spine. It slithered out of his cage.
“Use that yellow-gray stuff in the bowl,” a woman said.
Kray looked up. A naked woman was standing in the next cage and pointing. He looked to the side.
“Put it in the hole,” the woman said. “It stops the pain and heals.”
The woman showed no indication or embarrassment at her nudity, not that Kray thought she needed to. This was certainly a situation beyond any norms. He grabbed a handful of the goo and pressed it into the hole. She was right. The pain subsided immediately.
“Thank you,” Kray said, getting to his feet. He realized there was a Swarm orb directly behind her in her cage, tentacles hovering. And one tentacle was extended to the left side of her head. Two of the ‘fingers’ were splayed outside her ear, but the third was inserted.
“Does it control you?” Kray asked, indicating the tentacle.
“Not control of my body,” she said. “It’s listening and tells me wants to ask you.”
“I am Kray, of the tribe of All-Life.” He extended his hand between the bars.
The woman hesitated, as if mentally asking permission of the Swarm, then shook it. “I am Lina. I have no tribe. I have no people any more. The Swarm took them all in a Reaping.”
“I am sorry. May they all travel on through to All-Life.” He smiled at her. “You are not from my world.”
Even though it wasn’t a question, she replied. “I am not. But we are the same species. There are other Scale life in here. In the chamber they took me from.”
“Scale life?”
“Yes. Intelligent,” Lina said. “They brought me from a place in here that is a—” she searched for a word—“zoo. Do you have zoos on your world?”
Kray shook his head. “I don’t understand the word.”
“A place where one keeps other living things. To observe them. There are some from all the worlds that have been reaped by this Core.”
“Why?”
“To study,” Lina said. “There are species in the zoo that no longer exist outside of it. Whom the Swarm have made extinct. Some who only existed on a single world and now it is barren.” Lina grimaced. “The Swarm wants to know what is this All-Life?”
Kray spread his hands. “The All-Life is everything that lives. People. Animals. Plants. Fish. All life.”
“A religion?”
“No,” Kray said. “Religion is to worship the Airlia.”
“Airlia,” Lina said, nodding. “Another Scale species. They are not gods. There are some in the zoo. They used you to attack. That is something new that must be studied.”
Kray shrugged. “We obey because the Airlia must be obeyed. But we do not worship them. They are part of the All-Life.”
Lina remained still for several moments. Then asked: “The Airlia used you and your people as a weapon. Sacrificed you. How did this happen?”
Kray relayed the story of the Tally and walking to Atlantis with the tax. Being put on the ship. Then waking on the moon. Having little control over what he was forced to do after that. Dressing in the armor. Getting on the teardrop. Landing on the Core. All the way to being taken by the Swarm. It occurred to him as he relayed this what the Airlia had done to him with their brain programming was very similar to what the Swarm did with their parasites.
“Why didn’t you detonate the weapon on your back?” Lina asked when he was done with his
tale.
“It would have killed life,” Kray said.
Lina waited, then: “You didn’t detonate because you didn’t want to take your own life?”
“I didn’t want to take any life,” Kray said.
“You mean the other humans with you.”
“Yes.”
“What about the creatures attacking you?”
“They were alive,” Kray said. “Them too. All-Life.”
Lina was still for a while. “The Swarm doesn’t understand. You were being attacked. Why didn’t you fight?”
“It would have taken life. I don’t have that right.”
“Do you have war on your planet? Against the Airlia?”
“Some fight against the Airlia.”
“What about among the humans? Human against human?” Lina asked for the Swarm.
“Yes,” Kray admitted. “Tribes fight each other. But not my tribe. We fight no one. We are All-Life.”
Once more Lina was quiet for a bit. “Why don’t the other tribes conquer your tribe if you will not fight?”
“Because we are not a threat. And we have Healers. Other tribes value our Healers.” He shrugged. “It’s been accepted among the other humans that All-Life are too valuable to be harmed.”
A long silence. A trickle of blood was seeping from Lina’s left ear around the Swarm finger.
“Are you hurt?” Kray asked. “Is that thing hurting you?”
Lina didn’t answer. Finally, she spoke. “Your people have no desire to conquer others? Or rebel against the Airlia?”
“No.”
“You have no desire for power?”
“No.”
“But you want to stay alive?”
“Of course,” Kray said. “All-Life wants to live. Until it is time not to live. Then one must pass on and live again as part of All-Life in another form.”
