by M. D. Cooper
He is something between, Trine surmised. Not quite ascended, but the being is him, not a passenger like a remnant—of that I am certain.
* * * * *
The moment he swung into the passage, something felt wrong. It wasn’t an ephemeral tickle in the back of his mind, but an actual tangible feeling.
There was another being like himself nearby.
Several of his companions turned to look behind them, and he followed suit, catching sight of a platoon of Marines escorting—
Shit!
Walking in the center of the Marines’ protective phalanx was none other than Cary Richards. His sources had suggested that Cary was something beyond a regular human, and one glance confirmed it.
She was moving down the road to ascension. Nearly as far as he was.
The thought that a child such as Tanis’s daughter could be nearly as progressed as him was infuriating—though it was only because of the Caretaker’s betrayal that such was the case.
The cursed ascended AI had no sense of loyalty, of holding up its end of the bargain.
Still, killing Tanis’s daughter was a temptation too great to pass up. There was no way the child could best him—provided he could get her alone. Even he would have trouble defeating her with a platoon of Marines at her back.
He could only stop so much firepower before it overwhelmed him—and Marines liked to dispense as much energy as possible at a target such as himself.
Time for a wild goose chase, he thought before ducking down a side passage, signaling two members of his group to follow.
* * * * *
Shit! He’s on the move!
Trine sent a message to Ophelia, telling her to watch over Amy as she took off—all three bodies moving as one—in pursuit of Chief Travers.
“Wait!” Lieutenant Mason called out, as Trine pushed past the Marines in pursuit of the partially ascended man and his two companions.
She heard Mason direct a fireteam to stay with Ophelia and Amy before the steady thud of Marines in powered armor picked up behind her.
Faleena’s lithe, dryad-like form moved into the lead while Cary and Saanvi’s bodies fell behind, keeping pace, but relying on Faleena’s enhanced sensory systems to watch for threats.
In addition to corporeal dangers, Trine watched for ephemeral threats, pockets of energy that an ascended being could summon and move through other dimensions to attack through bulkheads or other solid objects.
At least, she assumed they could do so—Trine-Cary had been experimenting with such things, much to her sisters’ surprise.
Focus. We have to remain unified. This person is stronger than a remnant.
They turned onto a wider concourse and caught sight of their prey with biological eyes: three ISF chiefs rushing through the crowd, shoving passersby out of the way.
One of Trine’s prey spun and fired a projectile pistol toward her, but even before Trine-Cary could raise a hand—she had also been practicing creating grav fields—a rifle’s report sounded from behind them, and the shooter before her collapsed.
Trine sent an acknowledgement, picking up the pace as a general quarters alert sounded on the Link and 1MC.
“General Quarters, General Quarters, this is not a drill. Clockwise up and forward, counter down and aft. Sweepers grab your brooms, the station is dirty. Repeat the station is dirty.”
Trine had never heard the sweepers suffix, but assumed it must be a call to arms for station clearing teams. Or someone was just getting creative out in the LMC.
Ahead, Travers and his remaining accomplice turned right, rushing down another passageway with Trine-Faleena hot on their heels.
As soon as she turned the corner, the CW2 stepped out from behind a bulkhead rib and swung a baton at her. Trine-Faleena easily ducked it and thrust the heel of her hand into the woman’s chin, shattering it before driving a fist into her gut.
Trine’s other two bodies reached the side passage, not slowing as Trine-Faleena checked the woman to ensure she would not choke on her tongue.
The moment Faleena turned to follow the others, the doors behind her sealed, cutting off the Marines.
Trine ignored the Marine as her cyborg body caught up to her biological ones, continuing to pursue their quarry down a hatch into the power generation section of the station.
She passed a pair of Marines that had been stationed outside a door, unconscious but alive. Ahead, Trine-Cary caught another glimpse of their prey’s extra-dimensional form and she navigated the annoying warren of three-dimensional passages, slowly closing the gap.
As they passed through more doors and hatches, each one closed behind them, until Trine became aware that there were over a dozen sealed doors between them and Mason’s Marines.
The station layout showed that Trine was approaching the main reactor and antimatter annihilator. A pair of technicians raced past them, headed in the opposite direction, screaming ‘he’s lost his mind’.
Trine-Faleena was first through the final door, and reached the catwalk stretching over the annihilator at the heart of the station moments before her other two bodies.
He is mad, she thought as her three sets of eyes took in the scene.
The annihilator chamber was a wide oval with power generation systems on either side and a matter annihilator in the center. They stood at the end of a catwalk that arched over the center of the chamber.
Directly in its center stood Chief Travers, a small, silver cylinder in his hand.
“Cary Richards,” he called out. “I didn’t expect to have you be the one to find me. I’d been waiting for your mother, but she never came out to Aleutia.”
“You’re lucky,” Trine shouted back, three mouths giving voice to the words in perfect unison. “If she were here, you’d already be ground to atoms.”
“Well, that’s interesting…you’re not…. What are you?” Travers’ brow furrowed as he spoke.
“We are Trine,” she replied. “Put the cylinder down and surrender. You can’t defeat us.”
Travers tossed the cylinder lightly in his hand. “This? Why, it’s just a bit of antimatter. I imagine it won’t do much at all if I let it fall into the annihilator. Nothing, if you consider a planet-sized ball of plasma to be of no consequence.”
“What are you?” Trine asked, changing the topic of conversation. “You’re not like the remnants.”
“Remnants?” Travers asked. “Oh! You mean the things we leave behind in others? I assume you’ve found most of mine. I haven’t received many messages of late.”
“Our shadowtrons see to that,” Trine replied, a smile quirking at the corners of her three mouths as Travers’ brow furrowed. “A weapon that can trap and kill remnants. You too, I imagine.”
“I’m much more than a remnant,” Travers replied. “And I’ve worked far too long at my goals to have an upstart like you get i
n the way. You’ll make a fantastic message to send to your mother. Maybe I’ll crush your minds first. That would be fun.”
Trine saw a tendril of light drift out of Travers and stretch across the space between them. She widened her stance and generated a wide n-space stabilization field, the way she’d been practicing. The field wavered before her, but then stabilized a moment before Travers’ extradimensional limb reached Trine. It probed against her field, but with a little effort, she was able to push it aside.
“Impressive, little one, but you’re not thinking wide enough.”
Trine felt her mind narrow sharply and turned to see Saanvi cry out and fall to the deck.
Nano! Trine-Faleena cried out, rushing to Saanvi’s side. He’s…I don’t know what he’s done.
A second later, Faleena collapsed as well, and Trine was just Cary. She deployed her own nanocloud and swept it across the catwalk, realizing that Travers had planted breaching nanobots below the deck. They’d moved up right through the plas and into Saanvi and Faleena’s bodies.
Travers was laughing softly, walking down the catwalk with slow, cocksure steps.
“Looks like your little trick doesn’t hold up very well, Cary Richards. Now let’s see what you can do without your gestalt.”
Gestalt? Cary had never thought of her connection to her sisters like that. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
As she turned that thought over in her mind, she sent a surge of extra-dimensional energy through her sisters, targeting their internal nano-defenses and shielding them against attack from Travers’ breachers.
“Well done, little Cary,” Travers said, now only ten meters away. “Can you concentrate on saving your sisters and fight me off at the same time?”
Another tendril of visible light left him. In her transdimensional view, Cary could see that it was more than just light; the limb contained energy spikes that would inflict both pain and damage.
She summoned her n-space field once more, this time erecting it as a shield around her and her sisters. Once the sphere snapped into place, it cut off Travers’ control of his own breach nano, and Saanvi and Faleena’s internal systems began to clear their bodies of the intruders.
“It won’t be that easy,” Travers said with a wicked grin. “I hit Saanvi’s brainstem and Faleena’s core-interface hard and fast. If they survive—which is unlikely—both will need some time in the autodoc.”
“Fuck you,” Cary hissed, turning away from her sisters, though still keeping part of her mind on the nano-battle raging within their bodies. “They’ll survive.”
“Oh?” Travers asked a mock frown on his face. “Oh! You mean now that you’ve fought my nano off. Yes, huzzah, you defeated my little distraction.” His mocking tone took on a sinister bent. “I meant that after I kill you, they’ll not survive.”
Travers had six of his limbs stretched out, pressing into Cary’s protective field, driving it back with unrelenting force. The attack sapped her energy, and Cary dropped to her knees as Travers continued to take languid steps toward her.
“Silly girl. I’ve been playing this game for centuries.” He was only a meter away now, crouching on the far side of her shield. “Do you hear me, scion of a fool? Centuries.”
Cary clenched her teeth, drawing the energy out of her internal SC batteries to maintain the shield while looking up to meet Travers’ eyes.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “You’re not an ascended AI…”
“Really?” Travers laughed, the sound almost maniacal. “I know you’re just a kid, but you have good genes, so you can’t be that stupid. Stars, if Jessica were here, she’d know who I was. I still want to visit her someday, let her know that Trist’s death was an utter waste.”
Understanding slashed across Cary’s mind like the crack of a whip.
“No…” she whispered. “You died…Trist killed you…”
Travers sat back on his heels, mouth half-open in a macabre grin. “Come now. You know of my remnants, you must understand that I never tip my hand; I worked from the shadows through agents. If you weren’t so evolved, you wouldn’t even know for sure that this is me—but you do know, so you must die.”
Cary knew he was right—if she didn’t do something, he would kill her. And then he would snuff the life from her sisters as well.
Her eyes fell to the deck, and she drew in a ragged breath, willing her shield to become stronger—but the attempt was futile. Her internal SC batteries were almost drained.
The deckplate swam before her vision, its solid form dissolving into chaotic particles.
Am I hallucinating….? What is this? she thought in a daze, before the particles moved into forms she understood, molecules of carbon and steel interlocking before her vision.
She took a moment to wonder if that was what her mother could see when she plucked apart solid objects, and then drove a tendril of her extradimensional self into the deckplate, severing the molecular bonds and drawing both the matter and energy into herself.
Lucidity flooded back into her mind, and her head snapped up, focus clear as she strengthened her n-space stabilization shield and rose to her feet. She caught flashes of Travers’ thoughts as she pressed the brane close around him, nearly falling to her knees as the revelation unfolded.
“What the—” he exclaimed, scrambling backward before he too rose. “Nice trick, little girl, but—”
“No buts, Myrrdan,” Cary hissed as she pulled her shield from its sphere shape to form a wall between her and her foe. “You’re going to die for all the suffering you’ve caused. I’m going to make you pay for all the lives—”
“Oh please,” Myrrdan scoffed. “You don’t even know the half of it. I’ve killed more people than you can imagine. And I’ve stood up to the Caretaker’s minions, too. The likes of you is not going to defeat me so easily.”
Cary didn’t reply, drawing more energy from the molecules of the catwalk to power her shield.
For a moment, they stared at one another, Cary feeling stronger by the second, and Myrrdan looking concerned as the shield between them strengthened.
Concentrating on her extradimensional form, Cary reached out and grabbed the corners of the shield that separated them, feeling the quantum fabric of the field pulse beneath her ‘hands’ as she folded it around Myrrdan in a single deft move, forming a large M5 black brane.
For a moment, the man appeared surprised, and Cary breathed a sigh of relief. “You know, Myrrdan. I’ve defeated the Caretaker’s minions too.”
“Oh?” Myrrdan cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll admit that I’m impressed. But you know they are just shadows…. What did you call them? Remnants. Yes, that’s accurate. They need a host to survive in this spacetime, they don’t possess enough energy to travel without one.”
He paused, his eyes locked on Cary’s.
“Not like me.”
One moment, he was within Cary’s black brane, and the next, he was before her.
But it wasn’t ‘him’, not his corporeal form, at least. That body collapsed to the deck a moment before the lack of internal pressure from Myrrdan’s defenses caused the graviton sphere to snap inward, crushing the man’s form within.
A tendril of light from the being in front of her rose up and wrapped around her throat, while the being spoke into her mind.
-I don’t like to move about without a body. I find it…uncomfortable. Perhaps I’ll take yours, once I purge you from within it.-
Cary fought down the panic she felt as more tendrils of Myrrdan’s form wrapped around her body, sliding inside her corporeal body, touching her fledgling extradimensional limbs.
Her thoughts raced, frantically trying to come up with a means to defeat him, all the while still drawing more energy from the deckplate around her.
She tried to form a black brane around Myrrdan, to trap him the way she had done to so many remnants, but he batted the form aside, wrapping her own constructs in antiparticles.
-You’ll have to try har
der than that.-
Cary flailed wildly, desperate to free herself, when her eye caught sight of something in the compressed remains of Travers’ corporeal body.
It was the cylinder he had been holding—a small cylinder of antimatter.
Cary snaked a limb around Myrrdan’s extradimensional body and grasped the capsule, drawing out a microgram of antimatter. She pulled it toward herself and then created a new black brane, bleeding sleptons off the antimatter to strengthen the field around it.
It took only a second to create the new brane, and she feared Myrrdan would stop her, but he didn’t. Cary realized it was because he was sifting through her mind, delving into her memories.
“Stop!” she shouted, directing a burst of sleptons into Myrrdan and driving his ephemeral form back into the black brane she had created.
Surprise registered on his form, and he shrieked wordlessly as the brane enclosed around him. Myrrdan raged against the walls, but Cary drew out more antimatter atoms, fueling her creation, keeping the being within secure.
Suddenly aware that she was on her knees again, she struggled to her feet, only to feel the catwalk shift beneath her. Looking down, Cary saw that she’d drawn so much energy from disassembling the molecules of the catwalk that it was paper thin in places.
-Such a fool,- Myrrdan chittered as the catwalk split open under Cary’s feet, and she began to fall toward the matter annihilator forty meters below.
Cary tried to summon a graviton field, but the moment she did, she felt her control of the brane around Myrrdan waver.
Then we die together, she thought grimly, wrapping a limb around the brane and pulling it through the hole with her.
Below, the housing of the annihilator raced toward Cary, and she knew that while she would likely die from the impact, nothing would happen to Myrrdan—other than that he would gain his freedom once more.
“Not this time,” she whispered.
She focused on the housing around the annihilator, the sphere that smashed atoms into one another, extracting every joule of energy from the utter destruction of matter.
