by Kurt Johnson
“The creature is a nanoconstruct,” AI continued, not letting silence get a grip on the room. He emitted molten red light that cast shadows on the walls and made us, despite the whiteness of the kitchen’s illumination, look like we were staring into a campfire. “My scans indicated it’s composed of Human tech. It’s a strain of nano not in any of my databases, but at its core, it’s Human-tech nonetheless.”
Dad thunked down in a chair by the kitchen table and stared down at his four hands spread out, palms up. The muscles around his jaws bulged, and he alternately clenched his hands into fists.
“What I was able to scan of the creature, it resembles, well…Raystar.” My parents gasped, and AI continued. “One explanation is that it self-assembled in the Mesa Ruins and was out searching for consumable material. Self-assembly, as you’re aware, can happen when enough nano aggregates in a single place that it can spontaneously activate. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more, given what’s in those Ruins. But that does not explain the resemblance between them.”
Outside, Chunks squea’d, ominously annoyed at something.
“As to Raystar…,” he let the sentence hang, flashing cool blue. “Please understand that Raystar’s parents bound me to….” Somehow, AI saw the looks on Mom and Dad’s faces. “...silence on certain topics. I will not discuss what she did.”
“Bound you…you mean, you promised them?” Mom whispered, looking down at her hands. “But we’re her parents.”
“I’m not going to be mysteried to death,” Cri exclaimed, “What is going on?” Even though “mysteried” wasn’t an actual word, my sister was spot on. We needed answers. “Is Twig a mutant? A Human mutant? A Hutant or Mutan? Part machine? What is she?” Cri continued, her lower hands posed on her hips as she gestured with her upper arms.
I reeled as the realization that AI had known my parents slammed into me. He knew them. He must know what I was. What I AM. Thinking that THING and I were somehow connected put a giant knot in my stomach.
“Cri!” Mom hissed to my sister, her eyes blazing. Startled, Cri took a step back from Mom, who turned to me and took my hands in hers. “Raystar, you are a perfectly amazing and natural Human child. Our beautiful child! But the purple in your hair and eyes is the sign of an ancient and rare gene.” She looked down and then back at me. I had never given my purple a second thought.
“Toward the end of the Lethian–Human conflict,” she continued, “Humans integrated advanced nanotechnology with their own biological structure so only they could control Human technology.”
“Soooo?” I gestured vaguely at myself.
Dad stood up, towering over all of us. “Daughter,” he paused, “For whatever reason, those of your kind with the gene have purple hair. And over the years, hundreds of years, Humans with this control gene have been”—he paused—“disappearing. You have this gene, and something else.” He waved to where the images of me had hung in the air.
“THAT’S what you wanted to talk to me about last night!” Then I thought about it. “Uh, the gene, or the ‘disappearing’ part?”
“Human tech is largely a mystery. Elements within the Convergence believe that examining Humans with this gene is essential to unlock the ancient technology,” Mom said. My thoughts surged at the implications. Who were my parents? Why was I adopted?
“It is my belief, Lady Sathra, Commander Nent, that this construct was sent after Raystar. It knew her name,” AI said. “It looked like her.” I felt his scowl and disapproval aimed directly at my parents. The ruby at his heart pulsed and increased in brightness with each word. “You’ve let her be discovered.”
Mom put two hands over her mouth and braced herself against the table as AI’s accusation hit her.
Dad simply processed it. “An assassin,” he hissed though his teeth. Straightening, Dad turned his massive bulk to Mom. “Sathra, I spoke to the embassy after our return from the fields.” Then, more quietly, he added, “Your brother is there, in Ever.”
Mom gasped, touching her face. Her scar.
“Offworld help had already been requested and should be making contact with us today.” He glanced outside the window, frowning at a thought, and turned back to us. “My estimate, if we are lucky: We have three days before vid-sats route the images to the NPD.”
NPD—the Nem Planetary Defense? Help had already been sent? What did the Glean Embassy have to do with this? And Mom never talked about her brother. How did he fit in? I had questions. And then yesterday’s events came together with those questions in a sudden punch to my gut.
“Dad…what if…our help already tried to get to us?”
Mom and Dad stared at each other as they followed my thoughts. Dad broke the silence with a whisper. “The meteors.”
“Will someone tell me what’s going on? An assassin? Hunters? Genes?” Cri stomped a foot, looking at each of us in turn. “What’s the big deal with…oh.”
Those meteors were ships. One—or all—had crashed in the Mesa Ruins.
AI projected the images he’d recorded that evening. The Core had been as beautiful as ever, and then three meteors had cut across the blackness. AI magnified the images. At the heart of each fireball was a ship. Just like my 3-D battle scene, plasma streaked back and forth between the two rear ships and the front ship. A glowing missile trail arced from the lead ship to one of the rear ships, and the ensuing explosion whited out the view for a moment. The remaining pursuer accelerated to collide with the lead ship, and they smashed into the Ruins.
Mom straightened up. Her black hair flowed around her face, hooding her glowing eyes. “We are not even remotely prepared for this,” she muttered to herself, absently tracing her scar line down her cheek with one finger.
A low rumble shook loose dust from the ceiling and rattled my teeth. Was she talking about the assassin, the meteors, or the quake beneath our feet?
8
Quakes don’t give time for dramatic pauses or questioning looks. Our kitchen cabinets vomited dishes. Dad drew and flung two of his four pistols to Mom before any porcelain hit the floor. Mom, her eyes glowing, caught them over Cri’s head just as the dishes reached the ground and shattered. She clicked them to her combat suit at her hips while activating the blank wall next to our kitchen table with her free hands. At Mom’s command, a 3-D image of our compound appeared, rotating slowly three centimeters above said table. She spun it with a hand and the image shifted, tracking the motion outside.
“The perimeter defense has been overridden,” the house synth calmly chimed—in the same voice, incidentally, that it used to ask if we wanted our milk warmed.
View screens showed a black, vaguely oval predator descend and squat in our courtyard. Weapon clusters broke its smooth lines, but there was no mistaking that its viewport, armaments, and sensors were pointing at our kitchen door.
The cruiser’s engines rumbled dust toward the gratcher outbuilding. I’d never seen a cruiser this close, except in vids when the bad guys were about to lose spectacularly. Panic churned in my stomach, and I wanted to run.
Our gratchers squea’d, bucking at the dust streaming around them. They shoved their toothy muzzles in between the slats of the fence and then pulled back when their bravery wore off.
Except for Chunks. A mountain of territoriality, he braced himself against the exhaust while his responsibilities squealed behind his sheltering hulk. Can gratchers squint? He turned his massive, bristly, tusked head left and then right, judging. With wild eyes, he analyzed the cruiser and the squad that spilled out of it.
“Stay by Mom,” Dad ordered. He moved to the kitchen door, turning sideways so as not to stand directly in front of it, and looked back at Sathra. Cri squatted with her back to the wall and pulled a plasma pistol out of her shirt. I blinked, wondering only for a split second where it had been hidden. I bumped my back against the wall, wondering why I hadn’t brought mine. I curled myself around AI and waited.
“Mom?” At Cri’s whisper, Mom held a finger vertically to her l
ips and shook her head, her other hands moving over the wall controls with trained familiarity. She hadn’t taken her eyes off what she was doing.
The image of the yard shifted to reveal four Lethian security officers standing two-by-two behind their leader. They wore matte-black uniforms with giant red NPD letters marking their arms, chests, and backs. Combined with their flowing white hair, they looked pretty cool—at least on the vids. Lethians are as tall as Gleans, but while Gleans weigh 200 to 300 kilograms, Lethians were usually only a kilo or so over 200 kilograms, and, like me, they had only two arms.
Their skin was the same color as a storm cloud. Two vertical slits held approximately similar positions on their faces, like thin, Human noses. Their mouths were almost like ours, except their black lips curled down at the end, locking them in a perpetual sneer.
Their eyes were also black (and directionless). Only by the turn of their heads, and the context of the conversation, could you tell if they were looking at you. From the kitchen vid, however, we could clearly see where the leader was looking.
He was repeatedly poking one side of the doorframe (we may be the only Galactic house fitted with a doorbell designed for Human fingers). Frustrated, he poked harder at the tiny button.
“Rearm perimeter and interior defenses with Alpha priority, auto target on my mark,” Mom commanded, frowning. Somehow, our guests had disarmed our defenses. A separate wall image showed dozens of green dots lighting up along our force fence, the first level of the house, and then a huge green dot on the hangar.
The line down Mom’s face was livid, like a fresh wound, and through clenched teeth and a quavering voice, she looked at Dad and said, “I will not let them take her, Nent.”
Dad returned her challenge with wide eyes, “And you believe I will? This is not the time for that discussion.” He dipped his head and gestured with two hands at the door.
After repeated thumps, each successively harder than the next, the doorbell chimed. The Lethian leader straightened and struck a serious pose.
“Systems rearmed, Lady Sathra,” the house attendant intoned, its voice surrounding us. The dots turned red. Mom nodded to Dad; each had unconsciously slid their hands to the plasma pistols resting at their hips. Dad straightened, opened the door, and stepped outside. We held our breath and followed him via the holograph. I didn’t know our compound had this many auto cannons.
“Mark,” Mom breathed.
“Confirmed. Targets acquired,” replied the house synth. Targets acquired? Sure, we had tested the house defenses over the years. But we’d never actually pointed them at anything! I swallowed, but my mouth had gone dry.
The lead officer frowned. His face looked like someone had wrapped grey skin around a skull and pulled it so tight there wasn’t enough flesh to create lips, so the teeth were always exposed in a permanent grin.
“Master…,” He made a show of peering at the virtual display his synth had created. “…Nent Ceridian. I am Jurisdictor Godwill. I am here to discuss this morning’s events.” He peered around Nent into the kitchen. “You have a Human, yes? I will inspect it.”
Jurisdictor.
And I had seen him before. The image from my battle with IT-ME. He was the blurred figure!
We were so completely head and body in the Architect’s giant gravity well. Every parent told his or her kid some version of “Jurisdictor’s gonna do something horrible if you don’t…” at some time or another. It was a surefire way to get a child to go to bed, do homework, eat more ’natch, etc.
“…I’ll give you something to inspect! Freaking idiot, we should have annihilated their grey a…” AI paused a moment and then muttered something I couldn’t catch. “…from Terra to the black hole they crawled out of.” Mom and Cri both glared at me, eyes ablaze.
Wide-eyed, I shoved AI into my shirt. He shone like the sun through the material and continued muttering about some “stupid plan.” I clutched my hands around him to hide his glow.
My dad nodded formally. “Jurisdictor,” he then said through a huge, white-toothed grin, “our Gathering always welcomes Lethian delegations. One wonders how Nem’s police are involved, however?”
Because, you see, Lethians were the leaders of the Galactic Convergence. It was only accidental or convenient that they headed up the Nem’ Planetary Defense.
The Jurisdictor paused, “What?”
Dad took a step toward Godwill. His eyes shone like twin suns, illuminating the deck and casting Lethian shadows on the walls. Godwill’s team shifted their rifles indirectly toward my dad, and the house’s autocannons shifted directly toward them. “Godwill. Leave.”
“Come now, Commander,” Godwill said softly, ignoring the disrespect he’d been shown by being deprived of his title. He took an equal step toward my dad. His dark grey face and enormous black eyes contrasted with Nent’s red skin and glowing golden eyes. “Living this close to the Ruins, you saw something. Vid-sats documented your lev-sled headed straight toward them this morning. Your pet was in the back.” I heard Mom suck in a breath. I blinked. Commander? My ignorance seemed to be the only certainty, the only constant in my world.
“Jurisdictor. My daughter and I were fixing an irrigation controller. There was a storm. We returned. I remind you that you are on Glean territory. You know the Republic War Treaty as well as any junior officer. With witnesses, I direct you to leave.”
The War Treaty—an 1,800 year old agreement between the Terran Republic, its allies, and the Convergence. The terms of surrender were essentially that the Lethians could do nearly anything with Humans, but their allies were full members of the Convergence. Their homes and property were nearly off-limits to Convergence control. Gleans had been amongst the closest of Humanity’s allies. My Dad could legally kick him out.
“Listen well, Glean,” Godwill spat, “only a micro storm saved your Human. We had hoped that the lightning damaged you and your creature as much as it did our vid-sats.” Godwill paused, inhaled, got control of himself, and then bowed his head slightly, all the while never taking his eyes off Dad. He made an effort to purse his lips, but it didn’t seem like there was enough skin, so he snarled, “You will receive a directive tomorrow. I will expect you at NPD headquarters. Bring your sled’s navigation records, along with any additional items listed in the Directive. Good evening.”
My dad was still as he watched them go. OK, maybe his fingers twitched a bit above his plasma pistols. Cri and I breathed a sigh of relief as the NPD force turned and headed back to their cruiser.
“INSPECT THIS, LETHIAN SLIME!” AI yelled from underneath my shirt. AI flashed as if a star was around my neck, and the entire room was cast in shadows from his anger-red, nova flash. Mom jumped and had her pistols out in an eye blink. The shadows her pistols cast against the ceiling were HUGE. Cri ducked and I grabbed AI through my shirt. What on Nem’ was wrong with him?
“LONG LIVE HUMANITY!” he yelled again, this time through the house speakers. A section of fence blinked yellow on the holograph and then alarms went off. The gratcher pen opened.
“Man, I mfknkms hate those mufmf guys!” AI’s muffled voice continued from between my hands.
Chunks, our bristly, smelly, 5,000 kg gratcher meteor, smashed into the police cruiser again and again. The cruiser swayed under Chunks’ repeated ramming. His deep squeals were matched only by the sound of bending, grinding Galactic alloy as it surrendered to his massive tusks. The cruiser’s struts and lower armored sidewall buckled inward, and the police cruiser listed toward Chunks. The engines, which were on, kicked up a dirty plume at this new altered angle.
Jurisdictor Godwill stumbled backward and tripped into my father’s arms. Godwill’s officers screamed and ran in a mob toward the house. Chunks heard their panicked cries and turned his giant head toward them. If his look was a word, it would be “I’M HUNGRY!” (OK, that’s two words.) He bunched his hind legs underneath himself and bucked his head up and down. Eyes wild and wide, he thundered toward the terrified NPD team, squeal
ing as only something ten times your size can do.
“Sathra!” my dad yelled, pulling everyone inside the house.
“Gratcher neutralization!” Mom shouted, and Chunks and the herd fell instantly asleep. The control units on each collar blinked yellow. Of course, Chunks had been charging at the time, and as he went limp and tumbled, his bulk carried him forward in an avalanche-style roll that ended with a ground-shaking collision with the house. More dishes spilled out of the cabinets and dust poofed from new cracks in the ceiling.
“Suckers,” AI whispered from my shirt.
9
Chaos, thy name is: five Lethian officers, my Dad, a floor full of broken dishes, and a hostile, 5,000-kg predatory pig. Said officers, and Dad, had spilled into the kitchen, crunching and sliding on the broken dishes, in their haste to escape the now-comatose Chunks. One officer lost his footing and skidded on his back to land at Mom’s feet. Mom had stepped in front of Cri and me, her hands on the plasma pistols Dad had thrown her. The pistols were huge.
In the enclosed space of the kitchen, a shot from either pistol would have likely given us more than sunburn. Cri stood a little behind and to Mom’s left. I was behind her and to her right.
You need to shut up! I thought furiously to AI.
The Lethian officer looked up at Mom as he tried to regain his breath. Then he became aware of her charged pistol, aimed at his head, and crab-walked slowly across the floor toward his team. Dad’s back was against the door, and he’d drawn one of his guns and pointed it down.
I HATE Lethians. I’m sick of this horrible planet, AI’s reply floated back to me. I could feel him clenching his virtual teeth and becoming warmer. But yeah. I could have handled that differently.
The NPD officers had recovered from the shock of pig-ocolypse and stood stalwart. Two faced Dad and two faced Mom.
Godwill shot a disgusted glance at his squad and then looked at Mom. “Lady Ceridian,” he bowed, “I apologize for our...” His eyes lifted. He spotted me. And froze.
