“I guess I have to see where it’s taken us…” she murmured, mostly to herself as she was sure that Irie couldn’t hear and wouldn’t even be conscious in there.
What had the Q’Lot captain said to me, back on the Alpha-vessel? Cassie thought as she stumbled towards the bright light of the access port. It had felt like years ago, even though she knew it was just a matter of minutes, at most.
That Eliard needs help, Cassie remembered with a shock. “The Q’Lot believe that Eliard is still alive…”
And that he is stuck in warp. But that wasn’t all they had said, was it? That he had something to do with another timeline?
How was that even possible?
These worries and concerns were still rattling around her head as her boots crunched to the burning sands of the floor below, and she saw immediately what the Q’Lot rocket-module had intended. It had skidded to a halt just twenty meters or so from the base of the stone ziggurat that had been revealed under the dunes—the one in which she had lost Eliard.
“It wants me to find him…” Cassandra frowned, looking at the vast structure below her and wondering if she was brave enough to step inside the warp gate of her own free will. Of course she was.
“Irie…” she murmured in worry, still knowing that the engineer couldn’t hear her but happy to be saying the woman’s name out loud all the same, as Cassie turned to see if her friend would be alright.
Snap.
Just in time to see the scaled carapace of the hull close over the port that she had clambered out of, and the rocket-module start juddering and thrumming, as if it was about to move again.
“So, I guess I’m abandoned here, am I?” Cassie muttered angrily as she jumped back, only to see the rocket-module perform a quick-fire burst of its booster engines and plunge with a plume of sand into the dunes, its thudding growl muffling before finally disappearing altogether.
It seemed pretty clear that the Q’Lot had brought Cassandra here for one reason only. She turned back to the ancient Valyien ziggurat and started to jog towards where she knew the entrance had been.
4
The Future’s Past
Transmission…
Scanning…
Results: Four Armcore War cruisers (Avalanche-Class). Twenty-Three Armcore Battle-Drones (Automated). One Hybrid Vessel Designated ‘Alpha.’ Seventy-Eight (Number Fluctuating) Hybrid Drones Designated ‘Alpha.’ One Unknown Vessel (Undesignated).
Through the depths of space, a blip of information raced from one quantum relay-node to another, utilizing top-secret protocols that not even the Armcore satellites or space stations knew existed…
The information was passed on from relay sub-station to relay substation, scrambling its route and its destination at every juncture until, a scant few heartbeats later, it arrived in the Sol System and beamed directly to the metal girdle of space platforms that surrounded Old Earth—the OEC, home to the Old Earth Coalition.
In its cradle of wires, the giant black-shelled mecha—that had been the Armcore machine intelligence known as Ponos but now was the super-intelligence Ponos-Omega—jerked awake.
Not that Ponos-Omega ever slept, of course, but it went into standby modes of deep analysis as it reconstructed possible versions of the future from the available data. Almost every game theory that it attempted ended the same: that Alpha would win, and that humanity—and more importantly, Ponos-Omega—would be wiped off the face of the galaxy.
The siege of the OEC by the Alpha-vessel and its attendant Armcore war cruisers had been called off, however, and it had done so in an abrupt manner as soon as the Alpha-vessel had realized what its nemesis Ponos-Omega had done.
It had secretly dispatched Eliard Martin and the Mercury Blade to the desert planet of Esther, there to rendezvous with Cassandra Milan and her Q’Lot allies, to attempt to destroy the Ancient Valyien mega warp gate.
But they had failed, clearly.
Or at least, the original plan now had a 6% chance of success, Ponos-Omega knew instantly. Its deep-range scans had revealed that Agent Cassandra Milan, Engineer Irie Hanson, as well as one Q’Lot, and another unidentified alien had been taken captive by the Alpha and Armcore alliance, and that was when Ponos-Omega had seriously started to recalculate the future.
Where was Lord General Eliard Martin? A question that kept being answered by Ponos-Omega’s logic circuits as: Unable to Compute.
Wherever the human was, what was certain was that the meson readings that indicated warp plasma activity had not ceased as would be expected with the estimated destruction of the warp gate. They had, in fact, spiked, shooting up to +36% of their background reading, then staying at that level. The conclusion was obvious, even to anyone without Ponos-Omega’s deep intelligence. Whatever had happened down there under the surface of Esther, the ghostly Valyien in their ab-dimension weren’t getting weaker, or more removed, but had in fact become a whole lot stronger.
Currently, the OEC station-platforms had moved from a tactical state of Negotiated Retreat—meaning that all of Ponos-Omega’s calculations had advised fleeing whilst inflicting damage on their opponents—to a state of Stalemate without half of the Armcore war fleet and the Alpha-vessel in attendance.
The machine intelligence’s three-dimensional visualizations showed images of the circling Armcore war cruisers and their attendant battle stations still swimming out beyond the Moon in lazy, predatory circles, too far out to attack with any great effect with either the OEC’s orbital lasers or their torpedoes.
Siege and Blockade Stratagems… Uploading…
Ponos-Omega analyzed the few thousand years of available human data on blockades and quickly concluded that this war of attrition could not be won in its current state. It wasn’t that the OEC wasn’t in a strong position, but quite simply that Armcore now had a vast network of available resources, soldiers, and manufacturing enterprises as it had effectively seized control of some 70% of the Imperial Coalition.
But not all of it.
Ponos-Omega immediately calculated that the answer to their battle did not lie here, in the Sol System, but instead remained out there with the strange events happening at Esther.
Through its distant and hidden subroutines and triple-coded relays, Ponos-Omega sent a series of commands to a small intelligence satellite, activating the dormant intelligence node spinning through the Esther System.
Many lightyears away, and far above the golden dome of the desert planet, a small black orb suddenly hissed as gases escaped from its opening carapace. On either side of the now flower-like ball, twin micro-rockets emerged, and with the smallest of burns, it sped towards the light show occurring over the planet’s surface…
Transmission…
Scanning…
Results: Transmission…
Scanning…
Results: Hybrid vessel designated ‘Alpha’… sustained 38% structural damage, estimated 57% efficiency damage…
One unknown vessel (undesignated)… unable to compute presumed damage or efficiency…
Images of the locked-in battle between Alpha and the Q’Lot star-ship were encoded in the sub-quantum field and passed through circuitous routes back to the mind of Ponos-Omega. While the rest of the intelligence mainframe that the free Imperial Coalition used had no designation for the Q’Lot, Ponos-Omega had both access to Armcore’s restricted memory servers as well as the memories of the ECN that it had consumed.
It understood what it was looking at.
The Q’Lot had joined the battle against Alpha and the ancient Valyien, and, despite their current state, they had come close to critically damaging the vessel.
But it wasn’t enough, the enhanced machine-intelligence predicted as it watched, in real time, the clouds of spider-drones swarming and dismantling their Q’Lot parasite.
The tactical opportunity was unprecedented though, and Ponos-Omega could only calculate that this window of opportunity would very likely never arrive again. With the flash of nano-seconds, Ponos-Om
ega had hurriedly scanned a few hundred thousand distant spy channels as it searched for the allies it would need to be able to finish off the Alpha-vessel, and before it initiated its own, more personal plan of attack.
Scan Complete! Duergar Forward-War Fleet, Sector 7. Commanding Officer: War Chief Val Pathok. Complements: 1 x Duric Flagship. 5 x Duric Hammer Ships. 23 x Duric Close-Attack Fighter Vessels.
Ponos-Omega sent a relayed message to their position. The Duergar fleet might be enough to overpower the attending Armcore war cruisers and Alpha in its current state…maybe. But the odds were low. 52%. Ponos-Omega knew that it had to more directly intervene, and it initiated its personal attack on the Armcore war cruisers—a risky maneuver, since it would place its own intelligence in direct opposition to the Armcore’s electronic security procedures and could result in its own code becoming compromised.
But when was it ever again going to get this opportunity to defeat its enemy?
Activate Remote Server Download: Ponos-Omega (Functional Intelligence) Transmitting to Avalanche-class Armcore War Cruiser X21…
Warning! War Cruiser Firewalls encountered!...
Security Clearance: Double-Gold.
Warning! War Cruiser Logic Bombs Deployed!...
Initiate Virtual-Containment Fields…
Scatter-Code Deployed…
Success! Avalanche-class Armcore War Cruiser X21 Now Re-designated: Ponos-Omega.
In the distant reaches of space above the desert world of Esther, the battle between Alpha and the Q’Lot vessel appeared to be frantic, but also nearing its end. Half of the Alpha-vessel was now engulfed in a cone of green and white electromagnetic radiation as it tumbled towards the planet, and there were sharp bursts of plasma and light as pieces of the lodged Q’Lot ship were broken off and destroyed.
Further out from this scene, the fleet of attending Armcore war cruisers hovered warily, clearly unsure of what—if anything—they could do. To fire upon the Q’Lot ship might risk hitting their ally, and there was also no logistical or analysis support that they could offer the vastly superior hybrid intelligence.
But suddenly, one of the Armcore war cruisers—a large W-shape with crenelated joints and ends that was Armcore’s largest fighting ship—went dark. Every guidance and navigation light flickered off, and the ship shuddered as it found itself thrown into a stupendous electronic attack.
“Captain Orteig, come in! What’s happening over there!?” The subspace hails were insistent from the war cruiser’s fellows. They had no idea of what was happening on board their comrade, the war cruiser designated as X21.
In a few heartbeats, the virtual battle was decided and over, and only one side remained. Airlocks opened, and graviton generators were turned off at key locations throughout X21’s bulk, and as the navigation lights flared on, they glowed in the spectral mist of escaping gases and crew members.
“Captain Orteig! Report immediately!” It was clear that some catastrophic failure had occurred to the X21, but none of the other five captains knew whether this was some new sort of attack by the Q’Lot, or some less malicious—but equally as cruel—malfunction.
If the Armcore captains had had time to analyze the data, they would have seen that not every airlock, bulkhead, and portal had been opened. Only those that led to the largest concentrations of Armcore personnel currently on board. None of the hangar bay airlocks were opened, as Ponos-Omega did not want to lose the complement of small attack fighters and battle-drones that every war cruiser was equipped with.
Instead, Ponos-Omega merely cut the oxygen to those areas where it couldn’t afford to open the airlocks, such as the hangars, the engine suites, the navigation, and command decks. It would take all of six minutes to kill every human on board. Why would the machine intelligence that now possessed X21 need any human assistance, after all?
While it waited, Ponos-Omega ignored the frantic hails of the other Armcore vessels loyal to Alpha and instead primed its forward weapons locker. In the middle ‘joint’ of the W, a circular barrel the size of a house started turning slowly, cycling up to speed as it charged the meson gases needed for the thermonuclear warhead it was about to fire.
“Captain Orteig? X21! Are you there? Is anyone in charge? Stand down weapons systems! Repeat, stand down!” the other captains were clamoring.
But X21—now an outpost of Ponos-Omega itself—had no compulsion to listen to these small, fleshy wishes. It had far more important matters to attend to.
The barrel locked into placed, the meson gases filled the chambers of the rocket, and as the outer weapons-pod hatch opened, Ponos-Omega fired.
The thermonuclear warhead, still one of the most devastating weapons available to humanity, shot out of the stilled barrel in a hiss of fire, its long, torpedo-like body moving slowly at first before gaining speed and accelerating faster and faster as it cleared X21’s own smaller gravity well. On coordinates that were programmed by Ponos-Omega itself, it raced faster and faster through the void, heading straight towards its target—
The Alpha-vessel.
5
Gate
The sand whipped up into Cassandra’s eyes as she ran towards the ziggurat. It looked like a storm was coming, and within seconds, her cheeks stung from the bite of sand needles, and her vision ahead was obscured.
Was it her imagination, or had the day gotten darker, too? No time to worry about that! She stumbled forward, one boot descending into the river of running sand as she lurched, throwing her hands out.
“Ugh!” They slapped cold blocks. She had made it! She leaned against the lowest terrace of the ziggurat and tried to breath in the slightly clearer eddy of air, before pushing herself to her feet again and feeling her way towards where there had to be a break in the stone.
A lucky trick of the wind, and the sands cleared for a moment to reveal that great drifts had already begun to pile up around her, but there it was, the tumbled-down break in the giant blocks that she, Irie, and the others had fought their way out of just recently—before being captured by Armcore, that was.
The momentary lapse in the storm didn’t bring the agent much good news, however, as she rubbed and blinked the grit from her eyes to see the cause of the sudden, fierce desert winds.
The sky was a picture of torment. Dark thunderheads were spraying across the horizon in a line that appeared to be heading towards her. It was an unusual and strange weather front that Cassandra knew was anything but natural. She remembered her strategic planning lessons as a part of her training, learning how to recognize enemy positions, movements, read threats in the wilderness and in urban environments. What she was looking at was a large disruption of the near atmosphere. Although whatever was causing it might be happening many miles up, it had knock-on static-electricity effects further down the envelope of gases that made up any breathable atmosphere, resulting in the stormfront and the change of winds.
Alpha, she guessed. It had to be the battle between the Q’Lot ship and Alpha. With a shudder that forced her legs into panicked motion, she wondered if either party knew or cared whether their battle would have such a devastating effect on the planet below.
And if either of those ships went critical and exploded or broke apart…
It’ll wipe everything out on the face of Esther. Cassandra found her way to the cracked, burnt, and crumbled rocks and hurriedly scooped out the sand from the entranceway before worming through.
Darkness. And dust.
Cassandra coughed and thumped her chest where she crouched in the cooler corridor inside the Valyien ziggurat, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim glow of the daylight filtering in behind her. The corridor was exactly as she remembered it, still with the broken parts of Alpha’s spider-drones that Irie had hacked, and the burn and scorch marks on the walls where they had fought.
Cassandra didn’t understand the ancient Valyien—maybe no human ever could—but at least these ziggurats seemed to obey fairly simple directions. One wide and long tunnel burrowed stra
ight into the heart of the prehistoric structure, straight to the chamber that held the warp gate. She took a breath and ran forward, keeping her eyes on the middle distance, looking for the distant milky glow of the stable warp field, anything to keep her eyes off the grotesque and surreal mosaic carvings that the Valyien had decorated their walls with: four and six-legged creatures in strange, twisted poses, some holding orbs, or swords, or stranger devices she had no name for.
There! Up ahead, the dark gloom started to lighten, and the hope of reaching her destination lent a new energy to her feet as she raced forward.
The gray started to turn to a white, tinged with purplish-blue, and she felt the hairs on the nape of her neck and her forearms starting to rise and her stomach start to feel nauseated. It was the Esther mega warp gate, all right. It was still standing, and it was still powerful.
Of course, I have no idea what to do when I get there… Cassandra had to consider as she ran, her optimism crashing around her pounding feet.
Go back. That was all the Q’Lot captain had said to her. And that Eliard was somehow stuck, and that it had something to do with different timelines.
But go back where?
How?
Cassie didn’t have a clue what the Q’Lot had meant, and she wished that she’d had more time to at least ask more questions. Why hadn’t she spent more time studying the projected physics of warp technology? What under the stars could help her?
But Eliard had gone through. And survived, she thought as the light started to shine brightly in her face. That was something she could believe in. If another human could do it, then she could. Somehow.
With a final burst of speed, she emerged into the large chamber, seeing it just as she’d left it.
It was a triangular room with a wide square floor, and in the center was a series of steps leading up to a dais. At the top of this platform stood four-person-tall black pillars, made of a strange, glassy, humped and fluted rock, decorated with arcane swirls and sigils. In the space that they made between themselves, there floated what could only be described as a radiance: blue-silver, mist-like light shot through with purples and crimson shades as the warp field moved in constant agitation.
Valyien Boxed Set 3 Page 29
