by Kurt Johnson
He continued, “If the Lethians were terrified of your kind’s ideas, Humanity waging war was an entirely different level of fear. Had they studied your history, they would have seen a species with the will for genocide. They would have seen a species that NEEDED an adversary, that needed a unifying challenge to avoid its own self-destruction.
“The Lethian–Human conflict became a fight that Galactics wished had never started. Upstart Humans mobilized; gathered Gleans, Chars, and Machines as core allies; and waged WAR. Humans are devious…and craxy.
“Lethia, thinking they could cow the new Republic into submission, destroyed seven Terran worlds. They were nuked in cold blood—their surfaces incinerated—and billions of Humans and Galactics alike vanished that day.
“On that day, ’NEMESIS‘ appeared on every visual display across the Convergence that was wired to the Galactic Net. Overnight, trillions of Galactics became students of your ancient tongue, Latin. The fact that Humanity had the ability to distribute the message everywhere, and invade every Galactic home—even the bank accounts—with that message was terrifying.
“And then Humans introduced planet-sized, Apocalypse-class battle platforms. Planetships. These massive battle stations rode Lagrange pathways into Lethian systems. Using a mass conveyer to destabilize each system’s primary star, thus triggering a nova, entire star systems flashed into nothingness.
“Humans seeded known space with their mysterious nanotechnology. The nannites destroyed existing machines or transformed them into weapons for the Humans. Imagine our lev-sled suddenly activating and attacking us. Nothing could be trusted. Furthermore, Humanity keyed control of its technology to controllers that were integrated into Human DNA. The result was that only Humans could control Human tech, whether it was Human-made or converted.”
Dad looked at me. “Humans, like you….” He paused and then continued, “To see your kind so small and comparatively weak, turn so incredibly deadly, was a lesson to foes and allies alike.”
I gulped. Cri raised her head and looked between Dad and me.
“But in the end, those combined forces were overwhelmed by the thousands of years of fully developed production capabilities of the Convergence. Our superior tactics and technology were fought to a standstill by sheer numbers.
“In the final century of the war, the Humans surprised the Convergence yet again. The Terran Republic’s leaders approached their allies with a plan that, in typical Human fashion, didn’t make sense. Humans would relinquish their worlds, destroy their fleets, and join the Convergence—only if the Glean, Charian, and Machine spheres of influence were integrated as is. The Convergence could rule, but Terran allies were to suffer no consequences.
“Historians believe that the Terrans realized the ridiculous futility of going against the united power of the Convergence. The Surrender was accepted, and the Terran Republic fleets stood down. Two planet-busting core imploders were placed on Terra’s north and south poles to ensure good behavior. As the story goes, the ink on the Surrender Agreement had only just dried when the ruling Lethian High Commander, with the sanction of the Lethian Empress, detonated the bombs.
“But the remaining Terrans kept their promise. Lethia could not completely eradicate Humanity for fear of reigniting the war—this time, with its own allies. Because who indeed can trust a double-crosser to lead?
“A century into looting Terran-Republic planets, a Recorder reported to the Convergence that the math was wrong. There were nowhere near enough Humans. Concern mushroomed to panic when further investigation revealed that the decimated planets had been abandoned. The enormous ship graveyards were husks of older-generation battle tech.
“Where had the Humans gone?”
“Dad,” I said, in a small voice, “are those fleets coming to Nem’ because of me?”
“It is not unreasonable to believe you are tied to this,” he said, gently placing a giant hand on my back. “But I think not. One battle group is massive overkill. Two suggests some other objective.”
Her thoughts of nobility replaced by a frown, Cri stared at me, “I don’t get it, Dad. Why is she even with us?”
I sucked in my breath. However rude and jerkish Cri was being, I wanted to know the exact same thing.
Dad gathered us to his chest. He wrapped his arms around us and patted our backs comfortingly. “Cri. Raystar is your sister. Why we are together is less important than the fact that we are together. Mom and I should have told you both sooner. We should have.”
“But why, Dad?” Cri persisted. “Why are we here? Why is she with us?”
“Humanity’s old allies—the Gleans, the Charians, the Machines—recognized the power in the Human technology, and Lethia’s desire for that power. We take it upon ourselves to shelter key Humans that have the potential to manifest the control gene. We hide them out of the reach of Lethia.
“Over the last several decades, across known space, Human tech has been reactivating—though it was once thought of as eradicated, or at least nonfunctional. The Convergence is finding that Humanity’s ghost is alive and doing…something. Mining factories, constructed by self-replicating nanotech, are churning out raw materials. Random clusters of nannites, disguised as rocks, or toys, or almost anything, suddenly become explosive, or take over, say, the controls of a ship….” He let the thought hang there.
I thought about what Nonch had said about his Broodmother. That the Human machines were waking up. I needed to talk to Nonch.
Dad spoke again. “The technology only responds to Humans with the control gene. Raystar has remarkably undiluted genetic code. She CANNOT fall into the wrong hands. Your mother and I volunteered to hide her.”
Cri looked at him like he’d grown a third eye. “But what about me?”
Two giant hands caressed her face. My dad’s gentleness seemed impossible, given his size. “We thought this world could be home. For you. For us. Away from the Gathering’s demands and intrigue.
“Sathra’s Brother,” he paused, scowling, “will be the next leader of the Gathering. With that obligation removed, we could raise a family, you two girls could have a normal childhood, and then when you were both older….”
I felt his hand stop patting my back. Instead, he poked at the base of my neck, where AI’s necklace usually hung.
“Raystar?” he said. He pulled back so he could look into my eyes. There was concern on his face. “Where is AI?”
16
Dad listened with a veneer of calm. It was an illusion. His eyes blazed; there was no mistaking his anger and disbelief.
“You flushed him?” Cri squealed. “NOVA!” She stood to high-five me but then sat back down quickly after a sunbeam-hot glare from Dad.
I looked at her helplessly. The shame of public discovery was crushing. I had intended to find him, just not like this.
“Sit. As much as I do not like that creature, you have no idea what you have done,” he said, pointing to us, then at our chairs. “Wait.” He rose and left the kitchen. We looked at each other, and Cri made a move to rise. He poked his head and an arm in again, eyes blazing, and pointed at each of us, “Stay!” And then he left the kitchen again.
Cri leaned over to me, “That ‘ingot’ totally deserved it, Ray! Totally a starred move! You may not suck so bad, Sis’!”
I leaned away and frowned at her, raising my eyebrows. Any other day, I would have been happy to have her compliments. Weren’t two civilization-crushing fleets headed our way? Hadn’t Dad just told us that Lethia was collecting purple Humans?
Could she be that obtuse?
I watched her call up her attendant and message her friends, despite Dad’s express orders NOT to tell anyone. I blinked. She could be that oblivious. As Dad stomped back into the room, her virtual screen vanished and she sat up straight, blinking innocently. He held scanners and two neon-green environmental suits. One suit had two arms—the other, four. They were both kid sized.
We were going to go hunting for AI. In the waste re
cycler. We trudged after Dad in silence, following him downstairs into our large, orderly basement. Concrete floors dry and clean of dust were lit by cold light strips that vanished down multiple hallways. The basement was huge, with neatly stacked pallets and occasional sealed doors guarded by biometric scanners that came alive with red lights as you approached.
Dad marched us to a yellow-and-red diagonally striped door marked “BIOHAZARD.”
I gulped.
He unsealed the door. In an instant, my knees went weak and I retched. Our helmets’ air scrubbers didn’t protect us from the stench that leapt like an escaping prisoner out of our waste recycler. Cri gagged beside me and gave me the stink eye, just to make sure I understood this was my fault.
I knew it was my fault.
We waded into the squishy content of that dark, square room, tripping down to our hands and knees on submerged pipes. We tried in vain to clear our faceplates but only succeeded in smearing grey-brown muck over our field of vision.
But I gulped down my gag reflex and searched with all my heart.
AI was not there.
17
Fresh morning air stroked my cheeks with cool fingers and almost removed the memory of the waste recycler’s stink. I puffed strands of purple hair from my eyes and shuffled by Chunks on my way to my dart. Chunks whuffled a gigantic sneeze that blew dirt into the air as I approached. He shook his mountainous, bristly head, wriggled his nose in my direction, and eyed me suspiciously. Everyone’s a critic.
I tossed my extra ’natch sandwich through the gratcher pen’s force bars. His giant pig eyes followed it as it landed, tumbled, and unraveled at his feet. He dipped his enormous head, and the sandwich vanished with a swipe of his tongue. He humphed and walked back to his herd.
Friends were in short supply.
Banefire marched upward, dominating nearly a third of the horizon with its furious red aura. Green ’natch fields waved in the breeze. Mom would be back from Ever, our capital city, by the end of the day, and I’d feel a lot better with all four of us together. Cri was sleeping in. I shook my head. I actually didn’t mind her making the most of being expelled. Nova, I would.
Dad was scheduled to go into Blue River to meet with the Jurisdictor later in the morning. The idea was to file a complaint about the NPD’s unlawful entrance into a Glean’s government-protected property. The NPD would have to respond to it, and thanks to the resulting raging paperwork battle, we’d get more time to figure out our next steps.
Grownups had forms and lists and lines for everything, so it seemed like a good plan. I swallowed, rubbed the sweat off my palms, and fired up my dart’s engine. The two-seat air cycle hummed to life. Blue and red displays blinked on and the silvery environmental shield shimmered into existence around me. My helmet was snug and comforting. I looked around at the compound, inhaled, and lifted up toward the blue sky.
I spared a glance toward the Mesas. Smoke curled lazily up from the crash site, now nearly invisible against the dark, grey clouds that had begun to concentrate around the tops of the flat mountains. The Storm Wall was building.
Thousands of flips wheeled low over the ’natch fields. They were yellow, red, purple, blue, and green. The flock moved as a two-kilometer-wide organism of color. Suddenly, those lower to the field parted like waves splashing against a rock. The rest of the flock followed suit and split in two. I squinted to see what had alarmed them. In the dense, thick greenery, large, dark shapes moved, occasionally flicking hairy, spidery legs in the air toward the flips.
Leggers.
That was craxy. They hardly ever came out during the day. I shivered and checked my dart’s battery. I leaned down, accelerating. My flight to school was fast and lonely and scary.
I landed on the VCP, powered down the dart, and locked its systems. AI would have done that automatically. Alone, I walked to the schoolyard.
The roar of kids washed over me. My friends were at their usual place next to a tall jungle gym across the field. Nonch bobbed and weaved his six arm claws as he spoke to Jenna. I wondered, as I trudged toward them, what could have him so animated? Crynits’ natural weaponry and armor made others nervous, so they tried not to get too excited in public.
“Raystar!”
I turned and saw Mieant running toward me. He was dressed in all black with a shoulder-length grey cape, presumably to ward off the morning chill. At the speed he was running, it flared behind him, looking like the wings of some giant aerial beast.
Great. Being chased, caught, and presumably pummeled by the most fashionable, popular kid first thing in the morning was low on my to-do list. I launched myself toward my friends.
We were covering serious ground by the time he caught me. I hadn’t ever run this fast before. His long hand nudged my shoulder, and I stumbled and faced him in a low fighting stance. “Mieant!” I panted. “What?”
“Raystar,” he wheezed, one hand on his knees and the other held palm open toward me as he lowered his head for breath. His long, black hair curtained around his grey face. “Raystar, I,” he gasped, breathing hard, tucking strands behind his ears so we could see each other. “I wanted to thank you. Your sister, actually.”
It was a trick. I blinked and straightened slightly from my crouch. As he stood to his full height, I saw that the shadows on his face were bruises.
“She pulled them off me.” He straightened his cape unconsciously and looked down at me, still breathing hard.
“She’s expelled because of you.”
“I know. I know,” he said, moving his hands in a calming gesture, his chest heaving as he sucked in air. “I’ve told my parents what happened, and they are coming to school to talk with Entarch about the incident. To speak on your sister’s behalf.”
I blinked at him.
“I owe her,” he said. “I do not like you, Human. But you are different from what I thought.” He leaned in; I didn’t pull back.
In a low, urgent voice, he said, “Have care, Raystar. Something is happening. My parents are worried. I will inform you of anything I learn. Oh,” he paused, looking at me almost shyly. “Please say thank you to your sister. Um.”
And he walked away. I blinked again.
“Pllllthhhsssssppbbbbb!” I expelled the breath I’d been holding. I bent over, hands on my hips, and allowed myself to relax for a flipping, hyperventilated second—when suddenly, knives poked at my shoulders, hips, and calves.
“Aiiiyee!” I screamed, rolling forward to rise and spin into a fighting crouch. My hair sparked and crackled. Energy surged through me. No no no no. I couldn’t spark out! I fought toward calm, thinking that if the day continued like this, I would blow up or grow a third arm.
“Ease, Raystar! I was surprising you. Be at ease, friend.” Nonch’s orange primary eyes, underlined by rows of space-black orbs, regarded me. His claw arms were spread out low, signaling no threat and his hundred feet thrummed as his close to three-meter-long, midnight-blue, armored length flowed backward from me. He cocked his head and his feathery sensor stalks brushed sparks from my clothes.
“NOVA! Flip! Auugh! Architect’s gravity well!” I yelled. I stepped to him and pushed. “Shells! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I shoved him again with both hands and put my weight into it, so his hundred legs rippled to one side to keep him from falling over.
“Never sneak up on me like that!” I punched him, learning the hard way that the Human fist was not the weapon of choice against impenetrable Crynit chitin.
Nonch weaved nonetheless, startled at my intensity. Jenna laughed, but then tilted her head to one side and considered me as I waved my bruised fist in the air and scowled at the pair of them.
“Was that…did your hair just spark?” she asked, leaning in for a closer inspection.
I smoothed down my hair. “No!” I said.
Static electricity hissed and popped. Twice. Jenna raised an eyebrow.
“Well, you should wipe your nose, or go see the nurse. Your blood is disgusting,” she said,
making a face. I rubbed my nose with my sleeve, and she grimaced. “We saw Mieant chasing you. You two were flying. I didn’t know Humans could run that fast!” Jenna continued. The multicolored beads woven into her green hair clinked and flashed the sun.
“What did he say? He looked friendly. Wait,” her eyes got huge, “you’re not…you have a crush on him! I knew it! Raystar’s craxy in love! You’ve been pretending to hate him. You even darkened your hair color. Cra-cra-Ray-Ray! I bet you flushed your synth because your dad said you couldn’t see Mieant. Hey…Ow!”
Nonch bapped her on the head with a sensor stalk. “Do not be low intelligence, Jenna. Of course Raystar does not want to mate with Mieant. I am correct in this, yes? Raystar?”
“I…ugh,” I pulled my hair and sucked in a deep breath. Insanity. “You know Cri’s been expelled?”
“She told me everything,” Jenna huffed. Nonch raised both sensor-stalks and scuttled around so he faced me.
“Some older kids attacked Mieant and she pulled them off him. Mieant wanted me to thank her.” I said, not telling her quite everything.
Nonch rolled back a meter and clacked his armor. Jenna squinted at me and shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Look at him in class. His face is bruised.” I frowned. “And you know Cri’s at home.”
Nonch clacked his armor again, nodding. “This does not make logic. Lethians should be attacking Raystar, not Mieant. That is curious. Especially given his family.” Yeah. Attack me! Of course, that made sense.
Jenna frowned at Nonch. “I told you…”
“You are not the master of me, Jenna.” He turned his full, weaponized, navy blue and orange head to her, flaring his sensor stalks over her to make his “not-my-boss” point. “You requested I remain quiet on this topic. However, I cannot. Broodmother asks me to stay away from Raystar, and I will not.” He looked at me and reached out to touch me on the shoulder with a blade claw. “I cannot be away from my friend. And I must share what I know. The time of truth and revelation is approaching. The Human machines are waking.”
