The Link

by Isaac Hooke

  “Someone’s not bitter or anything…” Crusher commented. “Though I do agree with you.”

  Jain smiled faintly at her words. “I suppose it’s not all darkness and suffering though. Good things do come. Opportunities that ordinary men never get.”

  “Like having your mind installed in an alien warship?” Eric asked.

  “Exactly so,” Jain answered. “Though sometimes I wonder if this is an opportunity, or a curse.”

  “I’ve wondered the same,” Eric told him.

  “I’m sure we all have,” Brontosaurus interjected.

  Jain glanced at the big man before returning his attention to Eric. “Your mind is tied to the neural network spanning the entire Banthar homeworld?”

  Eric nodded. “It is.”

  “I can only imagine how much processing power is at your fingertips,” Jain said. “And I thought my current mind was vast…”

  “Yes, and I’ve only scratched the surface of my potential so far,” Eric said. “Occasionally it feels like I’m evolving into something beyond a Mind Refurb.”

  “Try not to get a big head,” Bambi said.

  Eric couldn’t help allowing his avatar’s head to balloon in size at the comment, and Bambi giggled. Crusher tossed a pin, and when it hit him, Eric made a show of letting his head “pop.” He reset his avatar a moment later.

  “You’re nothing like I imagined any of you to be,” Jain said.

  “What did you expect?” Sarge said. “A bunch of grim-faced, war-torn old soldiers whose backs and outlooks were bent by the weight of a world?”

  “Something like that,” Jain agreed. “You’ve certainly got a better outlook, and much more humor than I would have ever expected, for what you’ve been through. But you are a hardened bunch, I get that sense. You’re not a group I’d want to mess with.”

  “Well I’m glad we have that clear,” Sarge said.

  Jain returned his attention to Eric. “But all joking aside, what you said earlier, about evolving into something more than a Mind Refurb, I think it’s already happened. Hell, you’re a planet. Of course you’ve already advanced far beyond the rest of us.”

  “Just because my mind is a thousand times more powerful than yours, doesn’t actually make me a thousand times better than you.” Eric said.

  “I heard you were humble,” Jain said. “That’s probably a good thing, for someone in your position.”

  “Probably,” Eric said. “But if I’m humble, it’s because of these guys.” He jerked his head toward the Bolt Eaters on the deck with him. “But I do mean it: I don’t really feel like I’m better than the typical Mind Refurb. Sure, I can solve problems faster, and make decisions in the blink of an eye if I have to, but I still have to interface with the real world, a world that operates at a far slower speed.”

  “So it’s the real world that brings you down,” Jain said with a grin.

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “Basically. If I lived only in my head, I probably wouldn’t have any problems.”

  “But if you did that, one day you’d simply cease to exist, when the Link decided to show up at your door and collect their fee,” Jain said.

  “Exactly right,” Eric said. “And if not the Link, then some other opportunistic invader. Still, a part of me wonders if it’s worth it. A part of me just wants to walk away and leave the Banthar to their machinations, while I live out my life in my mind, my AI core drifting toward the edges of the galaxy in a small ship. Hell, sometimes I just want to set a course for the Andromeda galaxy, decrease my time sense to speed up external reality, and then spend the next eon drifting there. Maybe I’d even shut myself down, with a timer to wake me when I arrived.”

  Jain studied him for a moment. “Have you ever considered pulling your mind out of Banthar Prime?”

  “I have,” Eric replied. “But I don’t think it’s even possible to extricate myself, not without destroying the neural network in the process.”

  “Hm,” Jain said. “I should send you some of the work I and my team have put together regarding consciousness relocation. We routinely transfer our consciousnesses in and out of our existing neural cores, with no damage to the individual servers involved.”

  “You’ve done it with your alien neural network, too?” Eric asked. “Moved in and out?”

  “Multiple times,” Jain said.

  “Hm,” Eric said. “That’s certainly good news.”

  “Hell yeah,” Slate said over the comm. “I thought I was trapped in the Bug Killer for the rest of eternity.”

  “I can relay the details if you’d like to take a look…” Jain offered.

  “Please do,” Eric said.

  He received a sharing request a moment later and accepted. He performed a virus scan, then perused the data. He sent it along to Slate when he was done.

  “This is certainly useful,” Eric said. “Though I’m worried if I vacate my consciousness from the alien homeworld, only automated processes will be left in place running Banthar Prime. There’s always an issue that crops up, something needing manual intervention, despite all the automation I’ve put into play. The issues will add up.”

  “Deal with them when you return,” Jain said.

  “No, I don’t have to,” Eric said. “I’m already set up to operate remotely for the time being, so it’s not really a pressing issue.”

  “Your consciousness is on your homeworld right now?” Jain said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “How’d you manage that?” Jain said.

  “Tiny rift gates, left open 24/7,” Eric told him.

  “You’ll have to teach me how to do that sometime,” Jain said.

  As a thank you to Jain for the consciousness transference docs, Eric immediately transmitted the specs.

  “I appreciate it,” Jain said. It looked like he was about to make his farewells, but then he glanced at one Bolt Eater in particular. “I can’t leave without asking… you’re Frogger, right?”

  Eric’s mind twin grinned. “Good guess.”

  “What’s it like, working together with your clone?” Jain asked.

  Frogger shrugged. “It’s not much different than working with any other Mind Refurb. I don’t really think of Scorpion—Eric—as my clone. A brother, maybe. Possibly a twin. But clone, no.”

  Jain nodded. “I’ve considered cloning my own consciousness on multiple occasions, but always held back. I kind of feel the universe has enough Jain Sagans.”

  “It has more than enough Eric Scalas,” Frogger agreed. “The two of us have a bit of an ego, and we know it. He wasn’t kidding when he said the other Bolt Eaters help bring us down to Earth. Without them, our egos would be out of control.”

  “But it must be nice to bounce ideas off of someone of like mind,” Jain said.

  Frogger chuckled. “You would think, but usually when I talk to Scorpion, it’s like I’m talking to myself. The whole echo chamber sort of deal. There’re no real fresh ideas when we brainstorm. But that’s why we have a big team.”

  “I suppose so,” Jain said. “It was nice meeting you all. I hope that when this battle is done, I see all of you again.”

  The unsaid message was clear: I hope you all survive.

  “I hope we see you, too,” Eric said. “Actually, scratch that. I know we’ll all see each other again. We’re the Bolt Eaters. And you’re the Void Warriors. We don’t truly die. We’ve got backups.”

  Jain hesitated. “Do you really believe that? The part about not truly dying?”

  “No,” Eric said immediately.

  Jain nodded. “Neither do I. New versions are no replacement for the originals.”

  “No, they’re not,” Eric agreed.

  With that, Jain bid the Bolt Eaters farewell, and logged out.

  Eric glanced at his companions. “Well, that was interesting.”

  “He seems like a nice guy,” Traps said over the comm from the Bug Killer. “But whether or not that translates into a good fighter, we’ll just have to wait and see
.”

  “You don’t end up with your consciousness inside a stolen alien warship if you’re not good at what you do,” Eric commented. “I think the coming battle will go well.”

  9

  Jason lounged in the couch of his VR mountain cabin. Seated across from him was Queen Risilan, wearing a resplendent red and gold gown, with a tiara resting on her curly red hair. A teardrop brooch hung down from the tiara and onto her forehead. Her face was covered in a layer of thick white makeup.

  She sipped tea from a small white cup, then set it down on the glass coffee table that separated them.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  He sighed. “If you don’t help us, no one else will.”

  “Already the Tyrnari have earned the enmity of the Link,” she said. “They weren’t happy when I tried to renegotiate the terms of our membership. In the fifty years since, we’ve had to endure twenty short term wars, lasting from weeks to months, with only a few years of peace in between. Our space navy is wearing thin. Not to mention our ground forces.” She shook her head. “We can’t afford to send any ships to your Earth.”

  “It doesn’t have to be your whole fleet,” he said. “Just a few ships. Twenty.”

  “Twenty is more than a few,” she said. “Our navy is down to sixty, right now.”

  “By joining forces with Earth, you’ll be stronger in the long run,” Jason said. “We’ll be committed to helping you in return, going forward. Who knows, maybe together, our two races will be able to wipe out the threat of the Link forevermore. By bloodying their noses a few times, we’ll teach them very quickly that it’s not the wisest idea to attack our worlds.”

  She smiled patiently. “We bloodied their noses the first few times, as you say. But they kept coming. And soon it was our noses that were bloodied. No good can come from this.”

  “Then we won’t stop after bloodying their noses,” Jason said. “We’ll press on to the Link homeworld, and teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget. We’ll take over the Link.”

  She laughed. “Illusions of grandeur, anyone? No, it’s not so simple. There isn’t one single Link homeworld. Each member race has its own homeworld. If you manage to subdue one homeworld, there are a hundred others that will remain.”

  “Then we attack the homeworlds of the most influential members,” Jason said. “And take control of them, if we can.”

  She sighed. “Your naivety knows no bounds. One cannot simply walk into Mordor.”

  “Huh?” he said.

  She giggled. “Never mind. I’ve been delving through the archives you shared with me; I thought you’d get the reference. It’s not important. What I meant was, taking out the homeworld of the most influential Link races will essentially be impossible. The defenses are unlike anything you’ve ever seen. You just don’t understand.”

  Jason closed his eyes, and lay back. “All right. I guess I made a mistake in coming here.”

  “Why not stay?” Risilan cooed. She had teleported her avatar to his couch, so that she pressed against his side.

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Uh, no. I’m not doing this. Especially not now.” He shoved away from her.

  She pouted. “What? Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “First of all, you’re an alien, and you look nothing like your avatar in real life,” Jason said.

  She shrugged. “That didn’t stop you before.”

  “I was a lot hornier in my youth,” Jason said. “Trust me, when you have virtual sex as much as I do, you grow bored of it very quickly. And back to what I was saying… second of all, you’re not helping me, so why should I pleasure you?”

  “If you have sex with me, maybe I’ll help you in some small way,” Risilan said.

  “Oh really,” Jason said. “A moment ago you told me that you couldn’t afford to lend me any ships.”

  Risilan tittered. “Oh, you’re such a dear. I never said anything about lending you ships.”

  Jason frowned. “Then why should I bother still being here?”

  “What if I could offer you a new weapon?” Risilan said.

  “I’m listening,” Jason said.

  “We still have hundreds of bioweapons left over from the days when our planet was a breeding ground for the things,” Risilan said. “There are still large regions on this continent that are uninhabitable, and filled with these bioweapons. I could harvest some of them, and give them to you.”

  “Well, I guess that would certainly help with the land-based attacks my homeworld is experiencing,” Jason said. “But it doesn’t change the situation in orbit.”

  “I’ll give the authorization as soon as I log out of your VR,” Risilan said. “So we’ll have sex now?”

  He shook his head.

  She got up, and went to the window that overlooked his mountain lake. “When I was a child growing up in the Imperial family under the auspices of Duke Malbeck, who spared me alone among the members of my family, all I could think of was killing him to get my vengeance, and taking back the throne that rightfully belonged to me. And now that I have it after all these years, I sometimes wonder why I ever thought this was a good thing. I wonder if I should have left the throne in his hands. Do you know why?”

  Jason stared at her, saying nothing. If this was some play at sympathy to get him to sleep with her, he wasn’t going to buy into it.

  Maybe I’m being too hard on her, he scolded himself.

  “I wonder these things,” Risilan continued. “Because sometimes, it’s just so hard. Ruling, I mean. I second guess myself more times than I would like. And I constantly have to worry about assassination attempts. There is a small but vocal minority that demands we rejoin the Link, you see… and they don’t mind sending assassins. It’s during these trying times that I have to remind myself of the good that has come from my rule. The bioweapons production I’ve shut down, and the domes I’ve had removed when the atmosphere became stable enough. I’m slowly returning our homeworld back to the way it was before Duke Malbeck took over. But yes, sometimes it’s hard to rule. Like when you come to me, and ask the impossible of me. I am indebted to you, for what you did for my world, and yet the repayment you ask for that debt is too high.”

  “I’m not asking the impossible,” Jason said. “I just want you to loan me a few of your ships for a little while. You don’t even have to commit to something long term. We can take this one battle at a time.”

  “I—” she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  With that, she logged out.

  Jason sighed, and sat back on the couch. He repositioned to the chair beside the window where Risilan had been standing, and gazed out at the lake beyond, and the beautiful mountain that towered over it.

  Lori entered a short time later, her tail swaying behind her. “She said no, didn’t she?” She sat on the couch next to the chair, letting her blonde hair tumble over the headrest. Her long tail curled around the edges to rest close to his leg; the hair tickled his calf, and he shifted his legs away from her.

  “She said no,” Jason told her.

  “Well, on the bright side, at least we escaped the alien invasion,” Lori said. “We can wait here until the dust settles back on Earth. Who knows, maybe we’ll even stay?”

  “Right now, our mechs are residing in what could best be described as a dungeon, cooped up with the Rex Wolves,” Aria said, entering. She looked as vampirish as ever. But beautiful as hell. “I don’t think this is the most ideal situation.”

  She sat down on the couch opposite Lori, who pouted. Obviously she had been hoping for some quality alone time with Jason, but she wasn’t going to get it.

  Good.

  He wasn’t in the mood for sex, not with anyone.

  “Why does it matter where our bodies are physically?” Lori gestured at her surroundings. “Especially since we’re here, and can fashion our virtual world however we please. And at least they’re feeding the Rex Wolves, so we don’t have to worry about them suddenly taking a
bite out of our faces while we’re in here. Not that they eat metal anyway, but hey, you know what hunger can do!”

  “It matters,” Aria said. “Besides, even if they move us to better quarters, we’re not necessarily safe here. I’ve heard about the assassination attempts from Jhagan.” That was Risilan’s general and lead advisor. The War Forgers knew him from their original journey to this planet. “Plus, while her world might not be under attack by the Link now, more attacks will certainly come in the future.”

  “Then we’ll jump back to Earth when that happens,” Lori said. “In the meantime, I say we camp out here on this alien world. Offer our services to the queen.”

  “I don’t think I want to offer my services to the queen,” Jason said.

  “What, take one for the team,” Lori said. “I know you like having sex with her.”

  Jason gazed at the lake outside and sighed. “No, we have to go back. I can’t abandon Earth. None of us can.”

  “I can,” Sophie said, sweeping inside. She sat down next to Aria. She wore her Cleopatra outfit today, replete with diaphanous white dress, crown, and kohl-painted eyes. A Persian cat leaped into her lap and she began petting it. “When the humans attacked us back there, for me, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m tired of having to help those ungrateful wretches. They can’t let us coexist peacefully with them? Then I say we leave them to the fate they’ve earned. You know, I actually laughed when the alien invaders appeared and started chewing through their ranks. They deserve whatever cruel end awaits them.”

  “They still think we’re military property after all these years,” Aria said. “Kind of shows you that the other Mind Refurbs were smart to leave the planet. Maybe Sophie’s right. Maybe we’ve overstayed our welcome. If Queen Risilan has offered us a place here, maybe we should take it.”

  Jason didn’t answer. “You’re both right. But a part of me still feels human inside. And I can’t bring myself to abandon humanity. I know that only a few top advisors in the military ordered the strike against our base. I also know that the majority of humankind probably holds no grudge against us. Especially not the Mind Refurbs among them.”