Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2)

by Pourteau, Chris

  13:00 … 12:59 …

  He watched the last seconds of his life tick away.

  Far overhead, the red alarm light blinked on and off, like the station was trying to hypnotize him.

  He wondered if he would see his life flash before his eyes in his final moments. And what would those moments be? Graduating from basic training, the feel of a fresh army uniform against his skin, the shine of his boots, the flash of his belt buckle.

  Or something less happy. His best friend’s grin … and his face shattered by a bullet at Vicksburg. The heavy, sticky feel of Jamie’s blood on Remy’s hands.

  10:45

  The first time he met Elise. She in her wheelchair, her beautiful face soured by her lot in life. The slow build of their relationship from cold enemies to warm friends to fiery lovers. The touch of her hand, the feel of her skin beneath his lips…

  They were happy, they were in love, they were together. What would he give to freeze his life in that moment?

  But the pressures of her family—her father—made that impossible. The price of those miraculous bionic legs was a life in the public eye, a life promoting Kisaan Ag to the world.

  His Elise went from a shy, caring human being to an uncaring entity hungering for power. The elder Kisaan had set in motion a monster of consumption. The new Elise wanted more: the next promotion, the next politician in her debt. She surpassed any bar set for her by her father.

  8:32

  Remy fired off a round at the back of the reactor room just because, enjoying the kick of the rifle butt against his shoulder .

  Somewhere in that span of time, the Neos had come for her. The kidnapping in Alaska had been a sham—how long had it taken him to realize that? How blind could one man be? His sole job was to protect Elise Kisaan and he’d let the seeds of her destruction into her life.

  Remy saw Elise now with the cold precision of mental distance. He’d been too close. His job was safety, not happiness. He’d cared too much about her, and in doing so he’d been her downfall as a human being.

  The people are the problem, Remy.

  Her words chilled him even now. That was the moment he knew what his beloved Elise had become … and even then he’d refused to believe he’d lost her for good.

  Elise was a killer. He’d seen it and done nothing to stop her. That made him just as guilty.

  5:27

  Cassandra … Remy’s face contorted at the very whisper of her name. He’d lost Elise to a machine, a computer.

  And that thought brought him to this moment. An icy rage consumed him, inuring him to his wounds, steeling his mind for the sacrifice to come. If Elise was unable to break free of Cassandra’s influence, then he would end Cassandra.

  He would free Elise. He would make her safe again.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Remy detected a flash of movement near the reactor door. A pair of Neo soldiers in black battle armor stepped into the room. Remy fired a short burst from his M24, forcing them to withdraw.

  3:19

  He rolled to get a look at the other entrance. A concussion grenade clattered along the catwalk. He curled into a ball just as the grenade went off, the blast smashing Remy back against the handrail. With his hearing reduced to a ringing hum, he cracked his eyes to see a squad of Neo soldiers rush into the reactor room. He alternated fire between the front and back entrances until his magazine was empty, then rolled away as they returned fire.

  Remy scooped up the timer and got on his hands and knees. The Neos were coming to take back their reactor.

  1:56

  Remy crawled farther down the catwalk, searching for a place to hide. His hearing was coming back slowly, enough to hear a gunshot from below him and feel a searing sting in his side.

  He flattened against the deck, the hot corrugated metal mashed against the side of his face. A comforting sensation. His fingers probed the wound in his side and came away heavy with blood.

  Remy focused on the timer. 1:46 .

  He wanted to laugh. Just when he needed a break, time was slowing down.

  The catwalk trembled underneath his cheek. Footsteps. They were coming after him.

  Remy slithered off the catwalk, and onto the body of the fusion reactor. He surfed down the slope of the toroid to the central magnetic hub, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. Worming his way to the far side of the structure, Remy forced himself into a sitting position. The face of the timer was bloody. His blood.

  1:02

  He peered around the edge of the hub. Brother Donald was on the catwalk, his eyes locked on the trail of blood. Remy wasn’t fast enough to duck his head before Donald saw him.

  “Remy!” Donald shouted.

  Remy could feel his strength leaking away. He wrapped both hands around the timer and pressed it against his chest.

  Donald was standing over him … when did that happen?

  He hugged the timer closer to his body, mashing the sharp corners into his breastbone. He tried to count seconds, but time seemed to have no meaning anymore.

  Donald rolled him over and smashed his fist into Remy’s face. Remy felt a boot crack his side and his automatic response was to curl his body more tightly.

  “Where is it?” Donald screamed at him.

  More blows rained down. Remy felt the bite of a knife on his neck. His strength was flowing away fast now. He felt his arms relaxing.

  In the haze of his passing, a memory beckoned to him.

  Elise at dawn, their favorite time together. He would carry her to the balcony off her bedroom and hold her as the eastern horizon lightened. Dawn always came fast in that part of India. The horizon a pale etching, then a flash of sun so bright it made them close their eyes.

  His strength was gone. Donald peeled Remy’s arms from his chest, revealing the timer. The monk wiped the face of the device clean. His eyes grew round.

  And the sun came up so brightly, it made Remy close his eyes forever.

  Chapter 26

  William Graves • Earth Orbit

  The dropship jerked under his feet as they separated from the station, pushed away by the airlock’s venting atmosphere.

  Graves craned his neck to peer through the portside window. Bits of slag and dirt trailed behind them. Ortega applied max thrusters, and the acceleration pulled Graves away from the viewport.

  “Best strap in, sir,” Estes said.

  Graves crawled to his seat and belted in. “Give us a view of the station, Corporal.”

  The aft camera came online. The station hung, slightly worse for wear with its pockmarked outer skin. The details of the station grew less distinct as they drew farther away.

  “What’s our time?” he asked.

  “Three minutes and change, sir.”

  How far away did they have to be before they were safe from an exploding space station? Graves stared out the window, trying and failing to estimate the distance. Farther than they were right now, he was sure of that much.

  “General, what the hell are those things?” Ortega called, pointing out the right window toward the far curve of the planet. A string of cylindrical shapes, seven of them, rose from the horizon. The Haven ships were colossal creations, each one larger than the Neo space station by an order of magnitude. The milky white domes gleamed in the sunlight.

  As they drew closer, the Haven ships moved into a diamond formation.

  “What are they?” Ortega asked.

  “That’s the future of humanity, son,” Graves said. “That’s why we’re here. It’s a chance for humanity to start o—”

  A bolt of pure energy lanced out from the crown of the Neo station. It sliced across one of the cylindrical ships. The elongated structure began to separate like a great whale split in two in the seascape of space. The sections spiraled apart in slow motion.

  Bits of spinning debris emptied from the broken vessel like confetti. Even at this distance, he knew what they were. Frozen bodies, limbs splayed in every direction, tumbled away from the craft, blown free by the
atmosphere inside.

  People, hundreds—thousands—of people.

  Graves closed his eyes. His first thought wasn’t the cost of that loss of life, or whether or not the six remaining ships were enough to accomplish their mission. He simply wished in the form of a prayer that Jansen’s ship was safe.

  “Ho-lee shit,” breathed Estes. “How many…?”

  “Three thousand,” Graves whispered.

  A blue glow appeared at the rear of the lead Haven. One by one, the same flare bloomed from the engine of the remaining ships, brightening the blackness of space.

  “How much time?” Graves asked. His tongue dragged the roof of his mouth.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  C’mon, c’mon, get out of there .

  The blue glow intensified, and the Havens drew into a closer formation. Rickard had told him of the need for the ships to sync their nav systems down to the nanosecond to ensure they’d end up at the same destination.

  “General, look.” Estes was pointing at the station. The laser was booting up again, gathering energy into a pinpoint of light.

  “No, no, no,” Graves whispered. His fingers pressed against the glass. Jensen, Luca, Rickard, and eighteen thousand other souls were out there…

  The explosion that destroyed the space station threw the dropship into a crazy spin until Ortega had the presence of mind to hit the autopilot. They used the last of their thruster reserves to regain control of the craft.

  Graves had hit his head on the window. He swiped blood from his eye, peering into the blossom of wreckage from the shattered space station, looking for the Haven ships.

  They were gone.

  They made it, he told himself. They made it.

  He unbelted from his seat, floating free. Ortega joined him at the window, passing him a bandage from the first aid kit.

  After a few minutes, Ortega unbelted from the pilot’s chair. “Well, sir, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  “Good news first,” Graves said. “For the love of God.” He rested his head against the cool window. Debris from the explosion rained into the atmosphere, creating trails of fire in the sky. The view from the ground would be spectacular.

  “We’ve got lots of food. Enough to last for weeks, I’m guessing.”

  “Bad news?”

  “We have no thrusters left and our orbit is decaying. I’m no pilot, but the nav system tells me we’ve got about twelve hours until we burn up in the atmosphere.”

  Graves watched another piece of the space station meet a fiery death.

  “But…” Ortega continued.

  “There’s more?”

  “We’ll run out of oxygen long before we burn up.”

  Graves took that in. He wasn’t sure it mattered. The Havens had gotten away. The Neo station was gone. Mission accomplished. “Any booze in the supplies?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Well…” Estes said. “Shit.”

  When the atmosphere in the dropship got thin, they donned pressure suits and floated free in the cabin. Like clockwork, every minute the emergency beacon would ping a distress call. Graves knew with all the debris and confusion around them, any chance of the distress call being heard, much less responded to, was slim. Worse than slim.

  He closed his eyes. He dreamed about a lighthouse and a girl who had no fear. A girl who would stand on the railing far above the rocky shore and scream into the wind. Even now, he felt himself being pushed by the wind.

  “General, wake up!” Ortega put his helmet against Graves’s and screamed as he hauled at his arm. Graves floated to his feet. He heard a banging noise.

  Ortega was tapping on his helmet. Graves blinked, trying to recall the hand signs used in space flight. His radio! His radio was off.

  He chinned on the helmet receiver.

  “Dropship, stand by for entry, this is Dauntless . I repeat, stand by for entry.”

  Chapter 27

  Ming Qinlao • Taulke Headquarters and Habitat Complex, Mars

  When she woke up, the only voice in Ming’s head was her own. MoSCOW was gone, and its absence left her with a sense of empty panic, a feeling of being less than whole.

  Ming tried to shift her position and groaned. Her body felt like she’d been run through a meat grinder. She touched her face. Clean bandages covered her right eye, the smell of antiseptic underwrote all her senses, and her body felt clean. Her one good eye focused on the bank of monitors and she caught the Taulke logo on the corner of the screen.

  Back on Mars. Lander had been as good as his word.

  Lander rested in a chair, his big frame bent into an awkward curve, his unshaven jaw resting on a clenched fist. He was wearing the same clothes as when she’d last seen him.

  “Lander,” she whispered. It even hurt to speak.

  Lander snapped awake. He looked as bad as she felt but offered her a tired smile anyway.

  “She lives. ”

  “Barely.” Ming found the bed control and raised the bed. Sitting up made it easier to breathe. “How long?”

  Lander shrugged. “I did a hard burn all the way back, so two days getting here. You’ve been here for about eighteen hours.”

  That explained the muscle pain. Hard-gee fatigue combined with immobility for almost a full day.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Doc Bishop says you might have some short-term memory loss.” His eyebrows knitted together, and Ming realized he was actually worried about her.

  “I remember you were supposed to kill me and you didn’t,” she replied. “How did that go over with the boss?”

  Lander cleared his throat. “If by ‘the boss’ you mean Tony … he doesn’t much like it when things don’t go his way. But Anthony told me to keep an eye on you. That’s something, I guess.”

  Ming’s head throbbed. Despite Tony’s threat on her life, it was Anthony she had the biggest beef with. She just hoped Ruben was safe. He was Sying’s problem now and probably safer for it.

  “Ming! You’re awake!” Viktor Erkennen bustled into the room, an ill-fitting white lab coat stretched over his shabby gray suit. The touch of his pudgy fingers on her brow was gentle. “You did not follow my directions about MoSCOW. I told you not to wear it for too long.” Doctor Bishop followed but let Viktor take the lead.

  Ming leaned her head back on the pillow. “I know, I know—radiation sickness. But you can treat me for that, right?”

  Viktor shared a guarded look with Bishop.

  “We’ve been treating you since you arrived, Dr. Qinlao,” Bishop said. “Very aggressively. Too aggressively, if you ask—”

  “Tut-tut,” Viktor said, fussing with the monitor showing Ming’s vital signs. “Everything will be fine in due course.”

  The silence that followed was uncomfortably loud. She didn’t need MoSCOW to know Viktor was lying.

  “There’s more, though, isn’t there, Viktor?”

  Lander turned away from the bed. His body language screamed bad news.

  “Viktor.” Ming gritted her teeth from a flare of pain. “Tell me now.”

  “You didn’t follow my directions,” Viktor said again. This time his words carried less the tone of a disappointed professor, more that of a sorrowful friend. “I told you not to wear it any more than necessary, but you stayed integrated with MoSCOW for nearly an entire day.”

  “Which means what, Viktor?”

  He wrung his hands. “I don’t know, not exactly. I did a brain scan and the right side of your brain is enlarged.”

  “You mean swollen?”

  “I mean … changed.” His eyes searched her face. “Do you feel different?”

  Ming tried to take stock of her thoughts, but she was unable to focus. “I can’t tell.”

  “We’re not sure the damage is permanent,” Bishop offered quickly.

  “But it might be,” Ming said. A tiny surge of panic flooded her mind, making thinking even harder.

  “It is … possible,” Bishop said.

  Vi
ktor covered her hand with his own. “You will make a full recovery, Ming. Trust me. ”

  “You should rest,” Bishop said. Viktor nodded and gave her hand a final squeeze before he turned away. Lander resumed his seat next to the bed, studying her.

  Ming pushed aside the panic, forcing herself to organize her thoughts. She ran back through the last minutes on the space station. MoSCOW had uncovered something—something important—and flagged it for her … it was just beyond her grasp, a missing word on the tip of her tongue.

  She closed her eyes, letting her mind relax, float from one idea to the next. Lander’s hands on the controls, the debris field, the space station…

  The space station!

  Ming opened her eyes.

  “My memory is coming back,” she said to Lander. “I want to see Tony. Now.”

  • • •

  Anthony Taulke • Taulke Headquarters and Habitat Complex, Mars

  Anthony steepled his fingers and studied the woman across the desk. Elise Kisaan was tall and lithe, with straight dark hair that hid the New Earth Order tattoo on the back of her neck. Her face was relaxed, her dark eyes unreadable.

  “Well?” she said, breaking the silence. Her voice was low and serenely confident.

  “Well, what?”

  “Am I crazy? What did your psyche doctors tell you?”

  Anthony sat back in his chair to hide his discomfort. Her self- assuredness in a setting where he had the clear advantage was off-putting.

  “What makes you think I have doctors evaluating you?”

  She tapped an elegant fingertip to her temple. “It’s what She said you would do.”

  “Cassandra?”

  Elise nodded.

  “But you’ve already told us Cassandra was a construct, not a real person. She—it—was a computer program.”

  “Artificial intelligence. There’s a difference.” She seemed to be enjoying the repartee.

  “Yes, there is, but whatever you call it—Her,” he corrected himself as she started to object. “Whatever you call Her, you still haven’t told me the most important piece of information.”

  Elise raised an eyebrow.

  “Who made Her?” Anthony said. “Someone created Cassandra. Who was it? Was it you, Elise?”