by M. D. Cooper
“Garza?” Tanis asked. “Do you mean the Garza we have in stasis on the Intrepid? I got an eyes-on confirmation right before the party.”
“What?” came Elena’s startled voice.
The ionization in the air from the EM pulse had decreased, and Tanis sent out a fresh wave of nano, searching for the source of the utterance.
She thought she had tracked it down when she heard a footfall behind her. She whirled and found herself staring down the barrel of a railgun.
“Funny how ionization can either ruin stealth or help it work even better. Just depends on the method of concealment,” the figure holding the railgun said. Tanis took a step back, and the figure followed, moving out into the light to show his face
Garza.
“How did you escape?” Tanis asked.
“Oh, you know,” Garza replied. “I’m wiley like that. I have more tricks up my sleeve than you knew existed, Tanis Richards. I assume that your black outfit is your vaunted flow armor, right? Think it can stop a railgun?”
“What do you want, Garza?” Tanis asked. “I assume you orchestrated all of this for a purpose?”
“I did, indeed. Elena back there—” Garza nodded toward a figure moving out of the shadows to his left “—was hoping to capture Sera. Some sort of twisted, love-based retribution. But I was hoping for you. Your people will trade your picotech for you, Tanis Richards.”
“All this for me?” Tanis asked. “I’m touched.”
Garza laughed. “Well, we were planning to take out Diana even before you got here, but things coincided so nicely. And then Elena showed up, and we decided to strike while the iron was hot.”
“Trade, Garza?” Elena asked as she approached. “We have to destroy their tech. New Canaan is a poison that will sweep across the Transcend and then the rest of the stars!”
Garza shook his head. “You’re an amazing woman, Elena. At least insofar as how well the conditioning worked on you. Otherwise you’re a fool. We need the tech to win the war; it’s that simple.”
“What about after the war?” Elena asked. “There’s no way we can contain it if it gets used in the war. I thought that was the whole reason we were stopping them.”
Tanis could hear the confusion in Elena’s voice, and Garza sighed in frustration. “Yes, yes, tomorrow’s problems.”
He twitched the railgun to the side, directing it toward Elena. Tanis seized the opportunity and rushed Garza. She slammed into him just as he fired at Elena. A scream punctuated the air, and Tanis saw through the nano feeds that Elena’s right arm was gone, as was most of shoulder.
Garza swung a fist at Tanis’s head, but she caught it in her left hand and fired a pulse blast from the emitter embedded in her left arm. The concussive shock rippled through his fist and up his arm. She could feel his bones shatter under the force, and the Orion general let out his own scream.
“What goes around,” Tanis said.
Tanis delivered another blow—without the pulse blast—to Garza’s face.
Tanis raised her arm to fire again when a voice called out, “Freeze!”
She looked up to see a trio of soldiers approaching. They weren’t wearing Scipian uniforms, but the armor bore no markings.
Garza pulled himself backward with his good arm until one of the soldiers bent to help him up. The general hissed with pain as he rose, but eyed her left arm hungrily.
“You’re just full of surprises, Tanis Richards. I’m going to enjoy seeing what makes you tick.”
Tanis didn’t reply as she sent out a new wave of nano, trying to find out how many soldiers there were. No one would send in just three; there had to be more, and their stealth tech had to be good.
A moment later, several more figures were highlighted on Tanis’s HUD, and then several more, until she counted thirteen soldiers in all.
“First things first,” Garza said, glancing back at one of the soldiers behind him. “Kill the Empress. We don’t need the bait anymore.”
The woman raised her rifle and took aim at Diana’s head. Tanis saw that it was a slug thrower, and knew it would hurt, but leapt in front of the empress as the soldier fired.
A trio of rounds ricocheted off her chest, momentarily knocking the wind out of Tanis.
“A pointless gesture,” Garza said. “You can’t block shots from all of them.”
Tanis struggled to her knees and looked up as Garza approached.
Tanis examined the enemy soldiers’ positions. Five were on catwalks above, two were on tanks, three were behind Garza, and three more were behind Tanis.
Tanis was about to fire her pulse emitter at Garza and go for his throat, when a dark shape streaked through the air and ripped one of the soldiers from the catwalks above, flinging him into a tank.
A white shape followed the dark one, grabbed another soldier, and repeated the action.
Tanis could make out the second figure. It was Petra. Which meant that the other newcomer was Sera.
She didn’t waste the opportunity the distraction created. She fired a pulse blast into Garza’s stomach, which doubled him over, but not before she grabbed his neck, flooding nano into his body. Angela took over as he fell to the ground, and Tanis turned, suffering a moment’s indecision as to whether or not she should help Elena.
Then she saw Sera flash past, swinging her sword at one of the enemy soldiers, and sighed.
Angela nodded in her mind.
Elena was shivering convulsively, and her eyes had rolled back in her head. Tanis placed her left hand on the woman’s wound and let enough flowmetal run off her to create a thin layer over Elena’s shoulder. She then flushed a passel of mednano in as well.
Tanis glanced about and saw that Sera and Petra had taken down four other soldiers, but they were suffering under more than their share of enemy weapons fire. Petra’s wings were torn in several places—though Sera’s seemed mostly intact.
One of the enemy troops was taking careful aim at Petra’s head, and Tanis shot him with the slug thrower embedded in her arm. It wasn’t enough to penetrate his armor, but it did make him duck back behind cover. Then Tanis fired two shots at the chain suspending Diana, and the empress crumpled to the ground.
Tanis was about to crawl over and check on the golden woman, when more soldiers in unmarked armor appeared, and someone yelled, “Stand down!”
Angela reported.
Tanis saw Petra raise her hands in defeat, and a moment later, Sera’s sword clattered to the floor as she followed suit.
“What did you do to him?” one of the soldiers ask
ed as he approached Tanis and shoved his gun in her face.
Tanis didn’t reply as the enemy closed in around her.
REMNANT
STELLAR DATE: 08.12.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Intrepid Space Force Academy
REGION: The Palisades, Orbiting Troy, New Canaan System
No! Nance screamed from within the confines of her mind. I won’t do it! I won’t hurt her!
Your desires are immaterial, the remnant said as it raised her hands. Nance had fought it every step down the tunnel, forcing it to make each movement against her will; she had controlled some of the words coming out of her mouth, but had never managed to say exactly what she wanted.
In the end, the thing inside her had fully taken over her speech as well.
Nance had hoped the remnant would weaken from the effort to control her, but it seemed to grow stronger. Now she was completely trapped in her mind; it felt the same as the time Myrrdan had utterly controlled her on Ikoden.
She railed at her body, trying to get her limbs to respond, but they wouldn’t. Her hands stretched out toward Cary, and Nance tried to force them back down with every fiber of her being, but to no effect.
The nano streaked out from her hands, streaming through the air using tiny ES fields to close with Cary and penetrate her skin.
She watched as the entity within her did battle with Cary and Faleena’s biological and nanotech defenses. The young woman and her all-but-newborn AI put up a very impressive fight, pushing back the remnant’s efforts at first.
But then the remnant did something Nance didn’t quite understand: it breached Cary and Faleena’s internal security with an extradimensional attack, destroying all of the nano in the young woman’s body. Nance cried out in terror as the remnant Linked directly to Cary’s mind.
Then Nance felt something hit her from behind, the force of which drove her forward into Cary, and they fell in a heap. The remnant turned her head, and Nance saw Saanvi jump atop her, driving her fists into Nance’s ribs and kidneys.
The remnant ignored the pain and pushed a cloud of nano into Saanvi, who went rigid and fell to the deck. Cary reached out and clasped Saanvi’s hand as the remnant turned its full focus back to Cary.
The being was pushing at the bounds of Cary’s very person, inserting its own code into her DNA, into the cells of her brain, rewriting her into its own embodiment.
Nance despaired that she had now destroyed these two women, sentencing them to the same purgatory where she had spent the last eighteen years, when something occurred that she could never have expected.
One moment, the remnant was doing battle with three separate entities: Cary, Faleena, and Saanvi.
The next moment, there was just one.
In Nance’s mind, this new being appeared to be luminescent, as bright and strong as the Caretaker had been. Its thoughts were resolute, and it quickly and swiftly dealt with every attack that the remnant delivered.
The combined entity pushed the remnant’s nano back, correcting any alterations that it had made in Cary’s mind. Once that was complete, the tide turned.
Cary and Saanvi’s nano invaded Nance’s body—disabling her mods, destroying her nano, and locking down her Link access, trapping the remnant in place.
Nance sensed an inquisitive focus from the Cary-Faleena-Saanvi being. It was searching inside her, trying to find where the entity that controlled her lay.
Nance wished that she could help them, but if she knew that, she would have tried to cut it out years ago.
But they found it somehow, and Nance felt her skin crawl as the trio began to separate it from her. It was as though Cary’s merge was not operating on the same plane of existence as her. Whatever they were doing, though it seemed to be working as Nance felt freedom of movement return.
A second later the remnant was completely gone. The controlling entity was no longer present in her mind. For a moment, she worried that it had merely retreated again, but this was different. There was a sense of clarity to her thoughts that she had not felt in ages.
Her limbs were hers to control once more, and she pushed herself off Cary, rolling to the side and gasping for breath.
“I’m free,” she whispered. “Free of it.”
“Yes, you are,” Cary’s voice sounded strange, like a chorus.
Nance turned to see Cary kneeling with something in her hand. It was a glowing ball, wrapped in dark bands. The ball pushed at the bands, but whenever it did, darkness spread across its surface and it recoiled.
“Is that…is that the remnant?” Nance asked as a wave of dizziness pulled at her mind.
“It’s whatever was in you, yes,” Cary said in her strange voice. “It’s going to tell us what it was doing—why it was inside you.”
Nance tried to move, but realized that her back hurt a lot.
“I’m sorry. I hit you with a metal bar,” Cary explained. “I probably broke some ribs.”
“You?” Nance asked and looked to Saanvi, who was also rising. “I thought Saanvi did that.”
“I did,” Saanvi replied with the same voice as Cary. “We are one being. The three of us. It’s hard to explain.”
Nance couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“You should rest,” Cary said, and reached out toward Nance. The moment her fingers touched Nance’s forehead, she felt a wave of calm wash over her. She laid down before a deep sleep came over her.
CAVALRY
STELLAR DATE: 08.12.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Maintenance Tower, near Imperial Palace Complex
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
Garza’s soldiers pulled Tanis to her feet and pushed her against one of the tanks, while others directed Sera and Petra to stand beside her.
“Nice rescue,” Tanis said.
“Next time we go to a party like that, we all pack heat,” Sera replied. “Swords are great and all, but they really suck for long-range work.”
“Also hard for them to cut through CF ablative armor,” Petra added.
“Shut up, you three,” one of the soldiers said. It was the same one who had addressed Tanis earlier, and he turned to her once more. “What did you do to him? Is he going to be OK?”
Tanis shrugged. “Depends on what you do to us. We stay alive, so does he.”
One of the soldiers grabbed Diana by the remainder of the chain around her neck and hauled her to her feet, throwing the empress against the tanks with the others. Tanis reached up and helped Diana remove the chain from around her neck, and the woman drew a ragged breath.
“Thanks,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Fix him,” the man gestured at Garza, who lay perfectly still, though his eyes were wide and staring.
“I can’t here,” Tanis said. “I’ll need an autodoc.”
“My people will be here soon,” Diana rasped. “You won’t survive the encounter.”
The soldier laughed. “Your people, Empress Diana, think that their people are to blame.” He gestured with his rifle at Tanis, Sera, and Petra. “A nice bit of misdirection that my employer sowed in your networks. Your AIs are doing whatever we say. Right now, they’re attacking the Aegeus. They’re convinced that the shuttle made it there, and that Admiral Richards and the dragon queen here are holding you hostage.”
“Shit,” Diana whispered, looking to Tanis. “Your ship…your people.”
“They’ll be fine,” Tanis replied. “That’s the thing about us folk from the Intrepid. We’re survivors.”
“Well, step one will to be to f
ix him so we can get paid,” the lead soldier said.
Angela reported.
“Like I said,” Tanis replied. “Autodoc. We all go, or I kill him right now.”
“Fine,” the man grunted. “Dragon lady. You carry the armless one.”
Sera looked down at Elena, only just then realizing who was lying in a puddle of blood with the remains of her arm nearby.
Tanis gave a mental sigh.
Sera bent over and gently picked Elena up, cradling her in her arms with far more compassion than Tanis thought she would have shown at that juncture.
“Move,” the man said and gestured back toward the lift.
It took two lift cars to get them all to the building’s roof, where Tanis’s smoking aerojet still lay crumpled atop the jumble of pipes.
She was surprised that no local law enforcement had come to investigate the crash. Then she realized that none of the adjacent buildings were illuminated.
Tanis said.
“Shuttle coming in,” the lead soldier reported and gestured for the captives to back up.
Tanis considered taking a shot at him, but her arm was out of slugs, and pulse blasts wouldn’t do much against these armored opponents. The other buildings were close; if she took a run for it, she could leap across and make it to the other side.
Then Tanis glanced at Diana, who was still struggling to breathe. She’s an asshole, but dammit, she’s our asshole, and I can’t leave her behind.
