The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  “I am Darak Legsu,” he replied, and bowed.

  “Not Shard Darak?”

  “Oh, no!” Darak laughed. “Not Shard Darak, no. At least, no longer. Surely that ruse has no further purpose, not to one like you.”

  Brother Stralasi stared at Darak. Not a Shard? That’s not possible! Everything about him screams Shard. I've seen him perform miracles. If he’s not a Shard, the only possible explanation can be…he must be a demon of the Da’arkness!

  Stralasi’s heart raced as the events of the past few days fell into place. The shock that he had been fooled so easily hit him like a physical blow. I prostrated myself before this demon! I introduced him to the townspeople as a Holy man! Worse yet, I’m standing here alongside this demon as he confronts an Angel!

  Oh, dear Alum! How could I have been so blind? He dropped to his knees, burying his head in his hands and bawled. “Forgive me, mighty Angel of Alum, for I have been tricked by this Deceiver! Destroy him and free me, I pray!”

  Darak turned to the distressed Brother. “Rise and bear witness, Brother Stralasi,” he said in a voice as commanding as the Angel’s.

  Stralasi couldn’t help but obey. He shuffled to one side so as not to stand between Darak and either of the hovering Securitors. To his dismay, they adjusted their positions and maintained a bead on him. That’s it. I am doomed.

  Lord Mika’s golden eyes flared. “You display some admirable talents, Darak Legsu, but you are no more demon than Shard. Let us see whether your talents extend beyond trickery, shall we?”

  Tendrils whipped out from the smooth black surfaces of the Securitors and curled tightly around the two men, lifting them up, and leaving their feet waggling a good half meter above the ground.

  “No, apparently they do not,” Lord Mika smirked as Stralasi struggled and Darak tranquilly contemplated his bindings.

  The Angel rose and turned back toward town, satisfied and a little disappointed. “I didn’t think so. We shall return to the starstep and proceed to Home World for questioning.”

  “Thank you, Lord Mika, but I’m afraid we’ll have to decline. Brother Stralasi and I have other plans,” Darak explained.

  The Angel wheeled around to address the impertinent man. The Securitors’ tendrils retracted and the two men dropped freely to the ground, issuing soft “oophs” from their diaphragms as they landed.

  “Well, that was rude,” commented Darak.

  The Securitors each emitted an ear-splitting squeal, shuddered, and fell to the ground, inert and deaf to the Angel’s commands. Lord Mika scanned for signs of damage or system subversion but found nothing to explain their failure. And yet, impossibly, their internal microverses—their practically indestructible power sources—had collapsed. Without power, they were dead.

  Ignoring Brother Stralasi, Lord Mika zeroed in on Darak. The golden eyes narrowed and took fresh assessment of the offending man before him. “Clearly, there is more to you than I expected,” he admitted.

  He translocated himself to a point immediately behind the man and wrapped his arms, rumored to be strong enough to crush entire buildings, tightly around the other’s torso.

  Darak spun around within the powerful grip and faced the Angel. He drew his knees sharply upward and, pushing off from his sternum, escaped Lord Mika’s clutches.

  The Angel struggled to recover his balance and composure, while Darak drifted gently to the ground, four meters away.

  Angels do not get angry—Alum dictates that anger is counterproductive in battle—but they do get determined. And this particular Angel was now supremely determined to submit this mysterious man to full interrogation back on Home World. No matter if all that remained to interrogate was the man’s neural lattice inside his severed head.

  Lord Mika drew his sapphire sword. He closed the distance to Darak in two inhumanly fast steps, and took a mighty swing, intending to remove the head of this perturbing anomaly.

  Darak ducked effortlessly beneath the blade.

  Impossible! The Angel’s movement had taken less than two hundred milliseconds. It wasn’t possible for a human to react fast enough to avoid the severing edge. And yet, Darak had.

  Lord Mika reconsidered the situation. This man, by all outward appearances and cursory scans a normal man, had exhibited skill in altering starstep records. He’d changed the perceptions of hundreds of individuals by hacking into their neural lattices and providing false input, simultaneously and in real-time. He’d disabled two Securitors, possibly collapsing their microverse power systems, squirmed out of an Angel’s grasp, and avoided a sword moving at hypersonic speeds. He’d demonstrated the strength and speed of an Angel. This man was not at all normal. He was not simply a talented renegade engineer.

  Despite millions of years of active duty in Alum’s service, Lord Mika had neither direct commands nor adequate experience to guide him in this matter. Nobody had ever encountered such a situation. Clearly, if this Darak Legsu could hold his own in a fight with an Angel, he posed a threat to the Realm. It was time to escalate to deadly force.

  Lord Mika pointed his sword at Darak and directed a violet beam at the man’s heart. The beam passed unobstructed through the space where Darak had been standing only microseconds before and destroyed a few hundred meters of the hillside behind.

  Lord Mika could hardly believe his eyes but there stood Darak, unharmed, some ten meters away alongside a surprised-looking Brother Stralasi. The monk, at least, had not moved since being released from the Securitors.

  How did he manage that? Only the Angels and Alum Himself have translocation capabilities! Lord Mika ran a self-diagnostic to see if his lattice had been subverted. Could this imposter be feeding my perceptions false data? No, internal processing was nominal. Still, the man was suspicious.

  Mika deactivated his perceptual enhancements and scanned the area using only his basic senses. Nothing changed. Darak and Brother Stralasi stood, quite impossibly, together.

  The Angel translocated behind them and once again delivered what should have been a devastating blow. This time, both men disappeared. By Alum! How did they get to that boulder thirty meters away?

  Without losing a millisecond, the Angel shifted to the space directly in front of them, swinging his sword as he reappeared. The blade struck nothing but air. In Alum’s Name, this is getting tiresome. Play time is over, you arrogant mite. It is time to draw the childish game to a close!

  The Angel shifted to the far side of Brother Stralasi, employing him as a screen. He discharged an energy beam, rather dispassionately, right through the hapless monk to get at the man behind him.

  To the Angel's compounding annoyance, the sword met only empty air. The pair had already blinked out of the path of the blast.

  Frustration was not a state the Angel was accustomed to experiencing, and it was not one he wished to explore any further. If he didn’t destroy this man soon, he would have to invoke Alum to deal with this…this...affliction. Angel or demon, you will not avoid obliteration forever.

  Lord Mika flew upward, nearly out of sight, while the two men below watched with curiosity. A more powerful attack was required, one the two men could not elude. The Angel increased the power and radius of his destructive beam, centered it on Darak and Brother Stralasi, and released a torrent of energy lasting several seconds.

  Satisfied that nobody could survive such a blast, Lord Mika surveyed the damage. A crater, five kilometers in diameter and several hundred meters deep had been punched into the bedrock. All matter within the crater had been converted into a plasma gusher, which the Angel’s beam neatly confined within a moving cylinder, saving nearby Alumston from incidental annihilation. The plasma streamed upward, making a spectacular exit from the atmosphere. There was no sign of Darak, Brother Stralasi, or the two Securitors.

  Lord Mika grimaced. He did not relish reporting his failure to capture Darak Legsu.

  * * *

  Darak and Brother Stralasi hovered forty kilometers above the massive crater. They watc
hed the cylinder of accelerated plasma cross the edge of the planet’s atmosphere, creating a beautiful aurora as it entered space. For the first few seconds following their translocation into the stratosphere, Brother Stralasi flailed in panic, his limbs seeking unsuccessfully to connect with the ground far below. When he realized he was not falling, he stopped struggling and began to wonder how he was alive. He felt oddly calm and rational. What an odd sensation!

  “I’m altering your body’s normal physiological response to fear so you can think clearly,” explained Darak.

  Stralasi looked around. He was very high above the ground. How can I hear? There’s no air up here to conduct sound. No air! He gasped for breath, and a soothing calmness washed over him again, the result of further intervention by Darak.

  Stralasi marveled at the planet far below, at the universe all around him, and at the man/demon beside him. “How did we get here? How are we flying? How am I alive?”

  “Let me address your questions in order,” replied Darak. “I shifted us here to avoid the Angel’s energy beam. We are able to hover here through a balancing of gravitational and anti-gravitational forces. I erected a shield around us to contain some planetary atmosphere so we can breathe. I am refreshing the air inside with air from the planet every few seconds. The shield also protects us from cosmic radiation and the cold vacuum of space.”

  “But, how..? Are you truly a demon?” While fearing the answer, the Brother felt compelled to ask, even if it cost his own life.

  Darak laughed. “I have been called many things but never a demon. Though, as the Angel surmised, neither am I the Shard of Alum you thought me to be.”

  “Are you a god, then?”

  Darak considered this. “There are no gods,” he finally said.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “That is exactly as I represented, Brother Stralasi. I want you to journey with me.”

  “What use could you possibly have for me?”

  “You may be more useful than you think.”

  Brother Stralasi contemplated the uses this man, or Angel, or Demon, might make of him. He could think of nothing pleasant. “Let me die. Please kill me or let me die here, I beg you. I cannot face more like that.”

  Darak’s eyes filled with compassion. “I am sorry for what you were put through but it was necessary for me to know if Alum has changed, or if he is still the ruthless God I once knew.

  “I believe that Angel, His Angel, would have destroyed this star system to kill me, if necessary. And I believe Alum would have approved.” He gazed into space. “Your God has long been more concerned with His power and His Divine Plan than with His People.”

  “But Alum is the Living God appointed by Yov, the Creator!” Stralasi protested.

  “Perhaps it is time for His reign to be over. Perhaps the days of the Living God are coming to an end.”

  Great Alum, preserve me. I am the prisoner of a crazed demon! Weary resignation settled heavily over Stralasi’s mind and body. When angels, demons, and even God take direct interest in the fate of one man, what power does that man have to make choices?

  “Very well. I will accompany you on your journey. I pray that we both survive it.”

  Darak smiled. “Pray if you must but your God will not hear. Rather, let us trust to our knowledge, skills, and good luck. If we must have any gods, these will serve as well as any. Let us be on our way.”

  With that, they disappeared from over Gargus 718.5.

  10

  A cacophony of blaring alarms greeted Princess Darya's return to her covert asteroid base, Tertius, and her outworld trueself.

  Her internal status alarms and the asteroid base's intruder alarms all clamored for immediate attention. Great, my ultra-capacitors are nearly depleted, my reserve power is almost gone, and someone’s found this base.

  The proximity alarms lit up: Securitors closing in.

  Okay, first things first. Darya dropped the last vestiges of her inworld persona and reverted to her base trueself.

  Her avatar, the regal Han princess, bore no resemblance to her spherical metal body. Nobody’s avatar ever did. In the real universe, her official Cybrid designation was DAR143147. Outworld, her close friends called her Dar but whenever she was inworld, she went by the more formal name, Darya.

  Though Cybrids were sexless, synthetic constructs of metal and semiconductor, Darya had always identified as a “she.” Throughout the ages of her existence, her persona had been consistently female, matching that of her original human template from Earth.

  She deactivated her quark-spin lattice, and took her radar and laser-sight offline. My manipulators and active sensors are eating up more energy than I can spare right now. If I don’t drastically cut the drain, I’m not going to stand a chance. Passive visual sensors and ambient light sources will have to do for now.

  What else can I do without? The emotions system. She needed to focus on problem-solving right now; she couldn’t afford to be distracted by simulated emotions. Done.

  Anything else I can do without? She moved all but her most critical processes into slow storage. That should help save some energy and increase computational power.

  Now, let’s take a better look at the incoming Securitors. Where are you? She accessed the asteroid's external sensors.

  * * *

  Tertius was Dar’s third “home”, the one she used as a base for her Lysrandia inworld incursion. She’d found it during her previous assignment, repositioning other asteroids away from S0-102’s gravity and into orbit around Sagittarius A*, where they would serve as fueling depots, repair shops, and entertainment centers for the countless Cybrids that comprised the Central Implementation Team of Alum’s Divine Plan.

  During her millions of years on the project, Dar had managed to take occasional unrecorded asteroids and park them in orbits that might prove useful to her at some unspecified time in the future. She implemented the orbital changes in the selected planetoids gradually, and only in coordination with intentionally-herded asteroids. That way, the discrepancies would be interpreted as natural errors, and her propellant use would remain within expected ranges.

  Tertius was the third rock she had secretly maneuvered. She’d picked it for its high natural concentrations of uranium and plutonium. She’d placed it in a fixed position relative to her most important base, Secondus.

  Over the hundreds of thousands of years since placing Tertius in its present orbit, she'd hollowed out a series of chambers to use as workshops, and connected them by a maze of tunnels. Inside the tunnels, undetected and at her leisure, she’d mined and refined fissionable materials, and mapped the structure of the asteroid’s rocky interior.

  And in the central control chamber, she’d planted a 100-kiloton atomic bomb constructed with the purified radioactive elements. Just in case—she’d reasoned.

  * * *

  Dar glanced at the readout from the cloud of microsensors she'd deployed around the asteroid. Oh! Okay, that’s impressive; I’ll give them that. Alum had sent hundreds of enforcement Securitors to capture her. The microsensor display lit up their approach in iridescent trails.

  They’re closing in fast, and in more force than a single opponent should warrant. I guess anyone possessing enough skills and nerve to hack into a central inworld server would be of interest to Alum. Clearly, they don’t want me escaping. Sorry, fellas, but I’ve got other plans!

  She couldn’t fend off a whole squadron of Securitors, and even if she did, they’d just send more. The rock’s thick outer shell and her artful camouflaging of the six entry portals might buy her a little time. Once they got inside the asteroid, it wouldn’t take them long to find the inner chamber. If she couldn’t get out off the rock fast, she’d be facing deep interrogation and a full persona wipe within hours.

  Another alarm sounded. Her ultra-capacitors were down to less than one percent of full charge, and there was no time to recharge using Tertius’ internal power supply. The slow trickle of power from the
ancient solar panels on the surface would only give her another one or maybe two percent before the Securitors found her.

  Options! What are my options? The frozen blocks of mercury and anti-mercury in her propulsion system were a great source of power. But for some reason, the idiot engineers hadn’t thought to connect the propulsion system to an electricity generator. Such a blatant oversight—an outright design flaw—made her wonder if it was purposely designed to hamper the Cybrids’ overall versatility and freedom. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  If I can get to Secondus, I can recharge from the high-output panels. She ran the calculations. Enough matter-antimatter fuel to reach the base easily. I’ve never run this close to red lining; can my processing circuitry last long enough to make the transit? And if I do go, the energy flare from my main drive will be impossible to hide from the Securitors. They’ll just track me, and capture me there. No sense doing their job for them!

  So, that’s it, then. Time for the last-resort option. Destroy Tertius and ride safely away in the detritus of the nuclear fireball.

  Long ago, she’d simulated how the planetoid would shatter if a nuclear device was detonated at its core. She’d searched through the resultant simulated rock fragments for one large enough to be propelled along an intercept orbit with Secondus.

  Over and over, she’d modified the tunnel structure models until finally the simulated explosion produced large enough fragments that would travel along the desired range of trajectories. Satisfied with the results, her last task before she’d started hacking into the Lysrandia sim had been to drill a Cybrid-sized chamber within one such fragment, line it with a thick titanium shell and hatch, and install a few external sensors.

  She hoped this crudely fashioned escape pod that she’d prepared so long ago would survive the blast meant to destroy the entire planetoid and be accelerated intact along the projected trajectory.

  It had seemed like a reasonable last-ditch escape plan when she’d first thought of it. She’d soon have opportunity to see how accurate her simulation had been.