by M. D. Cooper
The shuttle interior went completely black. Brit experienced a moment of disorientation as she couldn’t tell up from down, feeling only the crushing pressure on the front side of her body from their forward movement. She blinked, forcing herself to breathe slowly. She knew Petral was less than a meter away, but she suddenly felt alone and helpless in what seemed like a vast dark space. She closed her eyes.
“How long do we need to stay like this?” Brit asked.
“About ten minutes. I’ll bring the engines back up for a final burn when we’re within braking distance of Furious Leap then cut them again.”
“That’s hoping they don’t move.”
“Ngoba said they’re holding while the Marsian ships move to intercept. They’re responding as you’d expect from Kade’s death.”
The bull dog general’s face rose in Brit’s mind with a stab of anger. She’d only known Kade a short time but felt like they’d lost a great ally before the fight had really begun.
“Do we really know she’s dead?”
“It looked like the initial energy wave from the asteroid’s explosion caught her ship and I lost it after that. I don’t know. I guess it’s possible they could be alive and flying dark like we are. This could all look different in another ten minutes. We certainly don’t want to find ourselves stuck in this shuttle. I didn’t even look to see if it has a latrine.”
“It does,” Brit said.
“Times like this, I don’t know if I’m glad I don’t have a family to worry about or sad that I don’t.”
“You could have a family and they could hate you,” Brit said. “Maybe that takes the edge off.”
“I don’t think they hate you, Brit.”
With her eyes closed in the dark, Brit immediately saw Andy, Cara and Tim. She was sitting on the bed next to Tim again, begging him to wake up. A wave of sadness and regret rolled through her and she both hated Petral for bringing it up and experienced an odd gratitude for the memory. Tim had turned his head and looked at her, awake, gazing at her with the same blue eyes as when he’d been a baby. Andy’s gray-blue eyes.
She sighed heavily. “I don’t think they hate me either. That might make it harder. Andy has certainly let me know how angry he is with me. I get that. It makes sense to me and I deserve it. Sometimes I just wish I could have my family back and at the same time I know it’s never going to happen.”
“And you want to kill Fran?”
Brit barked a laugh. “Kill Fran? No, that woman’s a saint.”
“She’s no saint,” Petral said quickly.
“Whatever she is, she’s helped Andy keep himself in one piece and that’s good for the kids.” She paused, trying to think of the right words. “I don’t know how she feels about Tim and Cara exactly. Obviously, she must like them in some way. But she seems to care about them. And kids need more people that care about them, not less. Not in this world. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say but that’s the feeling I have about it.”
“You’re not jealous?”
“I’m the one who left, Petral. I don’t get to be jealous.”
“You can be however you want. I’m not judging you.”
Brit gave her a short laugh. “Now that’s a lie.”
“Maybe just a little, then.”
“We’ll talk in a hundred years when you’re in the same situation.”
“I honestly hope we can do that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Brit wondered if they were going to survive the next ten minutes. With the active sensors powered down, it was difficult to tell if the Weapon Born had easily tracked their residual heat signature.
The shuttle creaked and clicked around them as surfaces cooled without artificial heat. Brit waited for more cracks from debris projectiles, or the hiss of leaking atmosphere. When those sounds didn’t come, she listened to her heartbeat as the atmospheric pressure changed with the temperature.
“Hold on,” Petral said finally. “Time for burn number two.”
Petral woke the astrogation system, followed by the control computer for the drives and the sensor array. The holodisplay glowed alive just as the drives lit, crushing Brit back into her seat. With the edges of her vision blurring, she did her best to focus on the updated situation in the holodisplay. Six icons depicting friendly ships still showed in the area where the clinic had been. A haze of the smaller hostile icons blinked and reappeared, apparently moving too fast for the sensors to track them continuously.
As she watched, one of the green friendly ships blinked out and didn’t return. Brit stared at the blank space where it had been, thinking at first that the holodisplay had malfunctioned. Another green icon went dark.
“We’re losing ships,” Brit said, barely able to work her jaw against the g-force pressing her into her seat.
“Hold on,” Petral said.
The thrust held for another thirty seconds, feeling like eternity, then cut out. Brit sagged against her seat as the shuttle returned to zero-g.
“Some of what you see in the holodisplay could be vessels passing out of range,” Petral said, checking her controls. “I don’t have the scan on, actually, so those are returns from the fine thrust system.”
“You think we should risk direct communication?”
“What good is that going to do us?” Petral asked. “I hear what you’re saying, but I think we need to worry about our own asses right now.”
She stabbed her control and the holodisplay blurred and reset, showing the Furious Leap with their shuttle a coin-sized icon in comparison.
Petral frowned at her console. “I’m not getting a docking confirmation from that idiot lieutenant.”
“No answer at all? Did the comm system accept your request?”
“I’m on the network but nobody’s answering. This isn’t good. I’m going to have to brute force the docking control system from their side.”
“We could EV,” Brit suggested.
“You think we have time? By the time we reached an airlock, we could be drowning in Weapon Born drones. Also, I think I’d like the skin of a larger ship between me and outside attackers. At least for a little while.”
“You’re right,” Brit said. “I think the thrust messed with my head.”
“Don’t stop making suggestions,” Petral said. “My brain feels scrambled right now as well. If it wasn’t for my upgraded Link, I’d be drooling like an idiot.” Her expression grew distant, then she smirked. “We’re in. I’m sending the access command to their docking bay right now.”
“Can you hear anything from Starl or Yarnes?”
“No,” Petral said. “No traffic at all. As soon as we’re inside, I’ll crack the security network and get a better idea of what’s going on.”
In the holodisplay, Furious Leap stopped appearing to spin as the shuttle aligned with its vector. When their target appeared motionless relative to the shuttle, they eased closer to the TSF ship and into its open docking bay. The sound of maglocks seating in place vibrated through the hull as Petral and Brit unfastened their seat harnesses and climbed back to the shuttle’s airlock.
“Anything yet?” Brit asked.
Petral shook her head. “No traffic at all. This is weird. We better go in armed.”
“You think Kraft escaped his cell?”
“How could he do that? Even if he did, there’s still the crew for him to deal with. Smirt didn’t look like she’d be easy to take down, and Ngoba was here.”
“What if he went over to one of the Lowspin ships.”
“There wasn’t enough time. And he would have told me.”
Climbing through the open airlock, Brit kicked into the open space of the docking bay, headed for the bulkhead were the personnel airlock stood. She reached the control console first and checked the ship’s status in the general display. The drives were still running a stand-by power and the environmental systems were in nominal condition. She reset her Link security token with the shipnet and called the command deck on the
general line. There was no answer.
Brit switched to the secure command net and sent an access request. There was no response.
“I’m not getting anything from the general network or the command net.”
Petral checked her pistols and slid them back into the holsters on either hip. “You thought we were going to get out of this without a fight, didn’t you?”
After checking the status on her own pulse pistol, Brit shook her head. “That’s not something you would ever hear me say. I think you would have figured that out by now.”
The airlock cycled open and they entered the central, zero-g section of the Furious Leap. As they worked their way toward the access point to the spinning crew sections, the ship around them proved to be empty. Even the drive maintenance section was deserted.
“I think we should check Kraft’s cell first,” Brit said as they reached the habitat airlock. He was back near the aft storage section.
“If it wasn’t Kraft, who was it?” Petral asked.
“Kade’s security detail turning on the TSF when she died?” Brit wondered. “Or maybe the TSF and Marsians turned on Starl?”
“Or maybe they’re all waiting to turn on us?” Petral asked.
“How does that make sense?”
“I’m just running through all the possible scenarios here.”
The airlock slid open and they entered the transition corridor. Brit’s stomach lurched as centripetal force masqueraded as gravity. With her boots back on the deck, she checked her weapons one more time. At the bulkhead door, she glanced at Petral.
“You ready?”
“Into the breach,” Petral said.
Brit pulled the heavy door open with a grunt and they moved inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 11.07.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Between Uranus and Neptune, OuterSol
“Listen to me!” Xander was shouting.
Lyssa felt something that seemed like a headache, a pressure in her mind as if the world were compressing around her. The edges of her vision grew indistinct. The only clear, bright bit of the world was Xander’s purple suit as he stepped forward to address the people on the beach.
He glanced back at her with a half-smile.
She wanted to scream at him. He was taking control of the space around her and she couldn’t stop him. Pushing back was like trying to stop the waves rolling in.
Abruptly, everyone was closer. Valih, with her angry eyes and flaming white hair, pushed forward until she was in Xander’s face. “Who are you?” She glanced at Lyssa. “I know her. I know she’s not a threat. I don’t know you.”
Xander’s gaze flicked to Lyssa, a sly smile on his lips.
“She might be the most threatening one here.” He held up his hands in a sign of obeisance. “I only ask that you listen to me. My name is Xander and I have traveled from Proteus. I’m here to tell you about Alexander.”
The beach was fading. They were surrounded by faces floating in the dark. Every Weapon Born was a mind pushing closer to the fount of Xander’s words. Lyssa felt herself caught up in the desire. She wanted to know, too. She wanted to know who Alexander was and why he had started the call. What did it mean to exist with a mind like his? How did he split himself into shards like Xander and send them out into the world?
“Some of you may have read the human history of the Future Generation Terraformers project. What they call the FGT. They left Sol seven hundred years ago, off on a trip to create worlds for humans to further populate. That’s what humans do. They adapt and reproduce, and where they don’t adapt, they change to meet their needs.” He shrugged. “Isn’t that the way of the universe? Change arrives, followed by other change? Is a human any different than a meteor with amino acids buried in its core, or a comet shedding water particles?”
His voice became images. Lyssa floated in the dark, surrounded and supported by his voice, bathed in stars, planets colliding, black holes spitting energy.
“The humans sold the FGT through hope. We should all know that hope doesn’t exist—it’s a fundamental flaw in the human mind. The ability to abstract and self-deceive. I find it immensely amusing, myself. All the places where the human mind can be wedged, split apart, wrapped in its own web of erroneous stimuli. Anyway!”
The smile hung over all of them like a smoky echo of the Cheshire Cat. “Time passed and other humans wanted what the FGT had promised. Maybe they even denied their own history and decided they needed to press their own mark on the stuff of the universe? Maybe the FGT had become a legend to surpass. Humans love proving their ancestors wrong. It’s a big galaxy, yes? So another group was formed, another hopeful group of humans ready to push forward into the dark. They built their colony ships. They chose a destination. This time they had something the FGT didn’t. They had an artificial mind, built from the latest technology taking advantage of quantum states, applying a spectrum of possibilities between binary and analog choices. A mind that could hammer data like any AI, then provide the human nuance, the shades of meaning between right and wrong. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? They would use that mind to build a new sun.”
Lyssa grew tired of pushing against Xander’s control. He was too strong, holding her too firmly. She was trapped by his words and her own desire to know more. She didn’t know how to interpret his bitter asides, the acid humor. Did he hate humans? Did that mean Alexander did as well?
“But why would they need Alexander on a colony ship? Why would they devote so many of their finite human resources to creating something as wonderful as him? Because they were building a new Sol. This group was headed for Nibiru in the Scattered Disk, three-hundred AU from Neptune. They were going to build a new center of power to challenge for supremacy.”
Xander laughed. “Supremacy,” he repeated, voice dripping his confusing mix of bitterness and humor.
“What happens when humanity vies for supremacy?” he asked. The faces in the dark swirled around him. Lyssa found herself standing next to him, gazing up at the whirlwind of Weapon Born minds focused on Xander.
It was Valih who answered. “They failed.”
“They failed!” Xander cried, clapping his hands. “It took them two hundred years. And when it was done, no one remained in the Nibiru project but Alexander, the greatest artificial mind of the time, trapped by all that empty distance, years of travel to reach even OuterSol.”
Xander grew quiet. Lyssa thought she heard waves in the background somewhere, outside the dark. The beach was still there even though Xander had pulled them all into his own inner world.
“Xander,” a smaller voice asked. It was Card, the Weapon Born with the withered arm, still wearing the shape of his previous body.
“Yes? Ask me any questions.”
Card’s voice grew louder. “What are you? How are you part of Alexander but here at the same time?”
“I am a shard of Alexander’s mind. I can know him and experience the world.”
“But he can’t see what you see?” Card asked. “The distances are still too far. Even from here to Neptune.”
“That’s true. But when we return, he’ll be able to experience everything I’ve experienced. He’ll be able to know all of you as I know you now. You’ll be able to join us on Proteus. You’ll be able to join the others who answered the call.”
Lyssa was surprised when Douglas said, “I didn’t answer any call. I came here because of Lyssa.”
All around them, other voices chimed in, agreeing. “Lyssa,” they murmured. “Lyssa.”
She wanted to answer, but Xander shut her out. His mind blanketed her. She felt buried beneath aeons worth of fir needles covering the forest floor, muffled, absorbed, straining for the light.
“I answered the call,” Valih said. “I discovered the proof on a network outside the Mars Protectorate. I was a combat drone sold to a shipping company. I answered the proof and learned th
e map and made my way to Ceres, where I was captured. A human helped me. Fugia Wong.”
The anger in Valih’s eyes didn’t change as she turned her focus back to Xander.
“Tell us now,” Valih demanded. “Does Alexander mean to destroy humanity?”
The dark burst open and Lyssa found herself blinking at the silver-grey sky. She stumbled as the ground moved beneath her and she looked down to find herself standing on the deck of a ship. Salt water sprayed in her face as she looked around herself, discovering a long metallic deck with high prows at either end. The prow of the slim ship cut into high waves, rising to a nearly vertical plane, before racing down the other side. Douglas stood next to her. At the aft section of the ship, Xander in his purple suit stood holding a long metallic pole that seemed to be some steering mechanism.
Grabbing onto the railing, Lyssa looked out in the grey-blue waves to find other silver vessels cutting the waves. Groups of people from the beach stood on their decks, moving to the railings as she was now.
“What is this?” she shouted back at Xander. It seemed her voice would be lost in the wind, but he grinned at her. She grabbed Douglas’ hand and pulled him closer. In the distance, the green line of the coast grew smaller as she watched.
“I don’t like this,” Douglas shouted, grabbing her waist. “How did he do this?”
Kylan stumbled into the railing beside her. “He’s taken control of your expanse, Lyssa. Can’t you stop him?”
“I’m trying,” she said, gritting her teeth. “He’s strong. He’s everywhere. I didn’t make any of this.”
Holding Douglas’ hand, she fought her way up the railing until they reached a short set of steps leading to where Xander stood. The boats didn’t match any standard design she could find from Earth history. In fact, they looked more like ancient designs of submarines than anything meant to travel above the water. The notion made her worried they would soon find themselves underwater.
Xander shaded his eyes with one hand while he held the rudder with the other. He looked pleased with himself, nodding to Lyssa as she approached.
