by M. D. Cooper
She held the last antimatter atom she had drawn from the cylinder and slammed it into the surface of the black brane, phase shifting the field so it would pass through solid objects before pushing it down toward the annihilator.
During those two excruciatingly long seconds, Cary had heard a strange sound above her, but kept her focus on the black brane containing Myrrdan, as it fell through the housing and into the region of utter destruction within.
Time continued to pass with mind-numbing slowness. With her other sight, Cary could see the raging inferno of energy—energy that spanned many dimensions of spacetime—tear into Myrrdan, shredding his ‘body’ layer by layer, exposing every part of him to quantum energies that obliterated his being, burning him away to nothing.
I can’t believe that worked…he’s finally dead!
Myrrdan’s destruction didn’t change her state, however. She gave one final attempt at generating a graviton field to slow her fall, but there was nothing to draw energy from. Idly, Cary calculated her trajectory, noting how she would hit the annihilator’s sphere, bounce off, and fall sixty meters onto a heat exchanger that bled excess energy off to thermal convertors.
Death by vaporization…at least it will be fast.
The surface of the annihilator was seven meters away when something hit her, shoving her aside. A pressure wrapped around her torso, and her downward motion stopped.
All the energy seemed to flee from Cary’s body as she craned her neck to look up into the grim face of Lieutenant Mason, rising back up to the catwalk with his armor’s a-grav pack.
“Stars, girl,” he muttered. “Your father is going to skin me alive.”
AWAKEN
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Aleutia Station
REGION: Cheshire System, Large Magellanic Cloud
Darkness instantly became light and then swam into wavering shapes around Cary. Solid forms moved nearby, and thin partitions were beyond them, only partially obscuring more forms that moved in the distance.
She tried to make sense of what she was seeing, but there was no rationality to anything. Objects moved through one another, taking paths that seemed entirely impossible.
Then one of the blobs spoke.
“Cary? Are you awake? Your vitals show consciousness.”
The words filtered into her mind slowly, as though they were spoken over the course of hours.
Bit by bit, Cary put together her recent memories, remembering the fight with Travers—who turned out to be Myrrdan—and then her impending death, which was averted by Lieutenant Mason.
“Sisters?” Cary asked. “Saanvi, Faleena.”
“They’ll be OK,” a different voice said. “You kept them safe, my little angel.”
“Dad?” Cary asked, wondering which of the blobs had spoken.
“You may want to open your eyes, daughter mine,” he said, a small chuckle following his words. “You keep waving your arms around like you’re blind.”
“Eyes…right…” Cary whispered as she tried to remember how to open her eyelids. After a curl of her lip and a few twitches of her nose, she remembered how, and the blobs of light disappeared, replaced with a hospital recovery room.
“Cary!” A voice called out from the doorway, and she barely registered her mother dropping a cup of coffee—which Joe deftly caught—and all but leaping across the room and wrapping her in a fierce embrace. “Stars…what were you thinking?”
“Like mother, like daughter,” Joe said, leaning over the two women and embracing them both.
“Moms…can’t…breathe,” Cary gasped.
“Sorry,” Tangel replied, laying her head on Cary’s chest. “You look OK, all your parts are still there—oh!”
Cary registered a look of surprise on her mother’s face, as she straightened and glanced at Joe before looking back down at her.
“You’ve grown.”
Joe cast Tangel a curious look. “Grown?”
“I’ve got more ascended parts now,” Cary said as she struggled to sit up, flashing a grin at her father.
“Stars,” he said, shaking his head and bumping his hip against Tangel’s. “You’re the spitting image of this crazy woman when you do that.”
“What happened in there?” Tangel asked as she sat on the edge of the bed. “The optics in the annihilator chamber were fried the moment Travers entered.”
“And stuff was shredded,” Joe added.
“You’ll never believe it,” Cary said. “But before that, Saanvi and Faleena…are they really OK?”
Her father placed a hand on her forehead and nodded. “Saanvi has some neural damage to her brainstem, and Faleena took a hit to her core interface, but her internal defenses held it off. Her core was severed, but she’s up and about again.”
“How long ‘til Saanvi’s conscious?”
“I’m conscious now,” Saanvi’s voice came from behind her parents. “Not walking, but thinking, at least.”
Joe turned aside, and Cary caught a glimpse of Saanvi on a medchair, with Faleena behind her.
“Saving the day, again, Cary,” her AI sister said. “Thank you.”
“You’ll all be thanking me even more when you learn who that was.” Cary grinned at each member of her family in turn.
“So it wasn’t Chief Travers?” Joe asked.
“Uh…” Cary felt a moment of nausea at the memory of what had happened to the body Myrrdan had inhabited. “Well, yeah. But that was just the meat-suit.”
“For fucksakes,” Saanvi rasped, swinging her chair around the other side of the bed. “Spill it already.”
“Wow…” Faleena whistled. “You made Sahn swear. Better get on with it.”
“OK. It was Myrrdan.”
Cary’s lips split into a broad smile at the four gaping mouths arrayed around her.
* * * * *
Tangel stood in stunned silence, as Cary explained her encounter with the being in the station’s annihilator chamber. At first she couldn’t believe it was Myrrdan, but as her daughter completed her tale, describing how she saw into her attacker’s mind, she realized there was no denying it.
“Motherfucker,” she whispered. “That bastard has still been with us all this time…some mysterious occurrences over the past few decades are making more sense now.”
“Like what?” Saanvi asked. “Do you think he told Orion where New Canaan was?”
“No,” Tangel shook her head. “We’re reasonably certain they just scouted the area ‘til they found it—or got it from a spy in the TSF. I was thinking more about some attempts to steal the picotech after we arrived at New Canaan.”
“Guy sure played the long game,” Joe muttered, and Tangel noticed that he was clenching his right hand over and over again.
She placed a hand on his and gave a gentle squeeze. “I imagine that the Caretaker sending Nance in to take him out put a wrinkle in Myrrdan’s plans—though I wonder if he knew what he was getting into when he took a flight out here to Aleutia.”
“I hate to think of all the people’s lives he ruined,” Saanvi said quietly. “But I’m also perversely pleased that his centuries of planning got him exactly jack squat.”
“Did he have other remnants here?” Cary asked suddenly. “What happened to them when he died?”
“Colonel Ophelia is doing a full sweep—your dad brought more shadowtrons from back home. So far, they’ve found two…no, three. It seems that they aren’t affected by their progenitor’s death, either. Just keep on ticking…like little parasitic mini-Myrrdans.”
“That sucks,” Cary muttered. “I’d hoped that killing him would free everyone under his control.”
Tangel patted her daughter’s leg. “It would be nice.”
“Mom…weren’t you on your way to Aldebaran to deal with the mess there?” Faleena asked. “I was under the impression that Amavia was all but besieged by politicians and the like.”
Tangel nodded slowly. “Yes, as soon as things are se
cure here, I’ll jump to Amavia’s rescue. I’m just a big intergalactic firefighter.”
“Not this time, you weren’t.” Cary gave a saucy wink. “I had things all wrapped up by the time you arrived. Nothing but cleanup left. Oh! But I got all sorts of intel from Kent.”
“I already filed it all,” Faleena said with a wink. “Even semi-ascended, you still sleep, and I had nothing to do last night.”
“You stole my thunder?” Cary gave her sister a mock glare.
Tangel laughed and shared a look with Joe. “You killed Myrrdan, Cary. Pretty sure you have enough thunder to go around.”
“Speaking of thunder.” Joe placed a hand on Tangel’s shoulder. “Amavia has been trying to reach you over the QC network, and now she’s started pinging me. Their assembly thought you were on your way and has an emergency session scheduled to hear you.”
“I know…” Tangel’s voice was filled with reluctance as she rose. “I just feel like I’m bailing on my girls.”
“We’re fine, Moms,” Cary replied as Saanvi and Faleena nodded. “Go put out some more fires.”
“OK, but I’ll be back to check on you once I’ve straightened out the League of Sentients.”
“We’ll be back on the Palisades by then,” Joe said as he leant in for a kiss. “As incredible as the view is out here, I feel a lot better with The Cradle in my night skies.”
Tangel pulled Joe close. “You’re just a control freak and you want to make sure everything is just so.”
Joe laughed and squeezed Tangel tightly. “I got it from you. I used to be all carefree, but now I need to compensate.”
The two separated, and Tangel ignored her daughters’ grins as she gave Joe a final kiss. “That’s why I can trust you to keep everything in line while I’m gone.”
She gave each of her daughters an embrace before giving them one final wave and leaving the room.
This is my punishment. Kids that are too much like me.
A VISIT FROM ROXY
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: River Station, Styx Baby-9
REGION: STX-B17 Black Hole, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
“I never got to ask,” Seraphina said as she walked with Sera to the docking bay where their unexpected visitor would shortly arrive. “How did it feel to have the cabinet ratify father in a matter of hours?”
Sera snorted, giving her sister a measuring glance. “You know…it should have bothered me, and I suppose it did a bit. But mostly I was relieved. I don’t mind being the Hand’s director—it’s more my speed. Being president? That just never felt right.”
“I know what you mean.” Seraphina gave a rueful laugh. “Being president never sat right with me either—and I’m the reserved one.”
Sera glanced at Seraphina’s square-toed boots, leather pants, grey silk shirt, and long black leather coat. “We don’t really do reserved well, do we?”
“Not so much, no. Fina least of all.”
Seraphina barked a laugh. “Girl’s getting her inner mod freak on. I wonder what we’d be like if mom didn’t go tweaking in our heads. Would I be a fetish freak like you two are?”
Sera shrugged. “She tweaked all of us. She had a shard of herself in our heads for most of our lives. Maybe Fina and my proclivities are a result of that.”
Seraphina knocked her shoulder against Sera’s. “Or maybe you’re closest to spec, and I’m the weird one.”
“To spec, eh?”
“Well, we are geneered. Made-to-order daughters; just add unloving psychomom.”
“Always happy to disappoint her,” Sera replied, then decided to change the subject. “So you don’t think Justin was working with Airtha at all?
“If he was, she never told us. Bastard was a thorn in our side—messing up more than one of our operations.”
“Ours too,” Sera said. “Turns out a lot of agents were more loyal to him than the Transcend.”
Seraphina nodded. “Between you and him, we barely held onto a tenth of the directorate. We got the short end of the stick there—though your deputies running things at Khardine still managed to keep Fina and I answering questions for days.”
“Sorry about that,” Sera gave her sister an apologetic glance. “I knew that the ISF’s deprogramming would work on you—they’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years—but our folks needed to see it for themselves. You know how it is.”
Seraphina rubbed her ass. “Yeah, but I could have done without the probe.”
A laugh burst free from Sera’s lips as she gave her sister an appreciative glance. “Off-color humor? Who are you, and what have you done with Seraphina?”
“Hey, I’m just as dirty-minded as you and Fina, I just figure that someone has to be a bit closer to an even keel—what, with you two freaks in the mix.”
Sera placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder and slowed to a stop, fixing her with a level gaze. “Seraphina, seriously. Be your own person. You don’t have to compensate for our behavior. There’s no cosmic scale weighing the three of us, looking for balance.”
Seraphina pursed her lips, then ran her hands over her face. “Dammit, Sera. I don’t know who I am. Fina seemed to slip into her ‘freaky girl’ persona the moment the ISF removed mother’s aegis from her. She seems to know exactly who and what she is. Me…I have no clue. I’m trying to be like I was—like we were—before that day we pulled Tanis from that shipping crate. But I don’t know if I remember it right…so I’m just faking it as best I can.”
“You know what they say, ‘fake it ‘til you make it’. Seriously, though, Seraphina. You know Fina is just rebelling. She was pushing so hard against mother’s control that when the chains were removed, she careened headlong into what she’s become. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The only way you can find balance is by swinging side to side on the ole pendulum a bit; at least that’s what Tangel says.”
“I think our pendulums are in the middle of a hurricane,” Seraphina said with a soft laugh.
“Sounds about right,” Sera replied as the two women resumed their walk. “Shit, I tried to get this conversation off us, and to whatever this ship means, and it got back onto us again.”
“We’re a right bunch of screwed up narcissists,” Seraphina said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Nice one, losing a stasis ship to Justin, by the way.”
“Better him than mom,” Sera replied. “She would have held onto it—Justin lost his in a matter of days, it seems. Though I have no idea who this Roxy person is, do you?”
“Not a clue. She’s not in any of the Hand databases I had access to. I have no idea how she found us, either, which is honestly the most concerning part—your secret base isn’t so secret.”
Sera twisted her lips, wondering whether or not they were walking into a trap.
Silly, of course it’s a trap. The question is just who is the one springing it?
Sera and Seraphina turned down the long gantry that lead to the spur where the Damon Silas was slated to dock in a few moments.
Standing in their way was Flaherty, flanked by two members of their former High Guard.
“Seriously?” he grunted out the word. “You know this is a trap, right? Jen, why did you let them both come?”
“I don’t skulk.” Flaherty glared at Sera’s forehead, as though he was staring into Jen’s synapses. “I lurk.”
“Either way, Flaherty,” Sera shrugged, wishing he’d stop boring a hole through her head with his eyes. “Don’t you have all the angles covered?”
His scowl deepened. “No one ever has all the angle
s covered. But one of the easiest to cover is not having both of you together.”
Seraphina shrugged and glanced at Sera. “We’re clones, we have backups.”
“Are you really suggesting that we should leave the mission to defeat Airtha in Fina’s hands?” Flaherty asked with a raised brow.
Seraphina snorted and shook her head. “Now that you put it that way…”
“Rock paper scissors?” Sera asked.
“No, I’ll let you handle it. Our chat has me feeling more out of sorts than I’d expected, anyway.”
Sera gave her sister an appraising look, then nodded. “OK. I’ll give you the scoop.”
“You’d better,” Seraphina said, turning on her heel and striding back the way she’d come.
Sera laughed softly.
Five minutes later, they were at the end of the spire, watching as the Damon Silas eased into position.
