“And we want to meet you, when we can, when you’re able,” her mother added. She smiled in a way that lit up her eyes, shining with unshed tears.
“We wish we could give you more than that, but Samantha assures us we have to keep this short. We’ll look forward to seeing you when we can, all right?” her father said.
“Goodbye, dear. Be safe,” her mother added.
Then the video blinked off.
Sam closed her eyes. She found herself choking back a sob. Emotions came roiling up from places where she’d buried them a long time ago. When she was first trapped in Valhalla Online, the idea of getting out and back to her family had been one of her main sources of strength, something that drove her on to overcome things she never would have been able to otherwise.
But when she learned the truth, that she was a copy and the real Samantha was still out there living her life, it almost broke her. She’d been fighting to win back her life, always hoping there was somehow a way. But that life was still being lived by the original her. Sam was just a copy. All her reasons to fight went away, except one: revenge on the beings who’d done this thing to her in the first place.
It had been one of the darkest times in her life.
This video was like a door opening up and letting the light into places that hadn’t seen it for a very long time. Sam wasn’t sure how to cope with all the feelings welling up at once. It was too much. She sobbed, cupping her face in her hands and letting virtual tears fall from her eyes into virtual hands.
“And this is why we should stay the hell away from the mortal world. Like I said. Nothing but pain and trouble is waiting for us out there.”
Sam’s head snapped up. Harald stood in front of her, arms crossed over his chest. His glare pinned her in place like a spear.
Twenty-Five
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, brushing tears away from her eyes and getting to her feet.
Harald shook his head. “You didn’t have privacy settings on. Anyone who walked by could see the entire video. Like me. I told you it wasn’t a good idea to engage.”
What the hell was he on about? Sure, she’d had an emotional reaction to seeing her parents, but their reaction hadn’t been bad! They wanted to meet her. Sam could hardly believe her luck. Their response had been about as good as anything she could have hoped for.
“Why, Harald? What’s so bad about wanting to meet my folks?” Sam asked.
“Because they aren’t your parents!” Harald roared. She took a step back, unable to recall when she’d seen him so angry. “They’re the parents of that other person. The one you were copied from. You, me, we’re something else. We’re not those people. Not anymore.”
He calmed himself, shaking his head at her. “Listen, I’m sorry I yelled. But I’m worried about you. This is serious shit out here. You need your head in the game, not out in the clouds.”
When had she ever not been focused on their duties? “I don’t think that’s been a problem.”
“No, maybe not yet,” Harald admitted. “And I don’t want you to start. Can you really say you can afford the distraction of worrying about your family right now?”
“I don’t think they’re a distraction. I think they’re a reason to fight harder, if anything,” Sam said. That felt right, and she continued along that avenue of thought. “All through human history, what have we fought the hardest for? It wasn’t usually land or wealth. It wasn’t some vague concept of humanity. It was usually our family that we warriors risked ourselves for.”
The more Sam thought about it, the more valid that felt. She wasn’t feeling less concerned about winning in the wake of the video. If anything she felt more determined than ever to defend the planet. Her parents were down there. They knew she existed. They wanted to meet her. They cared, and they’d told her so. It all made Sam feel real in a way that she hadn’t in quite a while.
Harald didn’t look convinced. He made a sour face and turned away from her for a moment. Then he whirled back.
“You can’t trust it, Sam. You can’t trust them. They’re not like us. Those people you’re calling your parents - the other Sam - they’ll all die in time. You’ll go on, assuming you keep your head about you,” Harald said. “We’re not really alive, but we’re not going to die either, short of being killed out there.”
“I disagree, Harald. I think we are alive,” Sam said. He opened his mouth to interrupt her, and she held up a hand to forestall him. “Hear me out. What is the definition of life?”
“Hell if I know.”
Sam tried to reach back into her memory for information about that from old biology classes. She could access the internet for the answer, of course, but it didn’t feel relevant. This wasn’t about science so much as it was about psychology and philosophy.
“We think, therefore we are,” Sam said.
Harald chuckled. “By that gauge, the Valhalla AI were alive too.”
“Yes,” Sam said. “I think they were. We didn’t just delete them. We killed them. I have to live with that, the fact that we wiped out the only two existing members of a brand new species. Can you?”
Sam knew there was more to it than that, for Harald. The matter was personal. Understanding broke over her like a wave. If Harald accepted himself as a living being, then he had to accept those AIs as alive as well. If they were all just software, then the morality fell into a gray area. But if not…
“It’s OK, Harald. We both did what we had to do,” Sam said softly.
Pain was etched in every line of Harald’s craggy face. Sam wanted to reach out and smooth away those lines. Her friend was hurting, and she hated it. He had his human face again - a bonus of their exit from Valhalla. She remembered when it had been made of stone instead and seemingly incapable of displaying emotion. Now all of that was right on the surface, raw and powerful.
“It’s not just that, Sam,” Harald said.
“What is it, then? Sit with me and talk,” Sam said. She followed her own advice and took a seat at the long table, gesturing for Harald to join her.
He shook his head and paced instead. “Not like it matters.”
“You’re my friend, and you’re hurting. Let me help,” Sam said.
“You can’t. No one can,” Harald said softly. “You’re not the only one who left people behind, Sam.”
Oh - the whole exchange made more sense in light of that statement. Harald had never spoken of any family on the outside world. Sam had always assumed he didn’t have any, but she realized that was foolish. Of course there would be someone out there that mattered to him.
“Who?” she asked.
“I had a son. And a grandson,” Harald said, his back turned to her so he could mask the emotions playing over his face. “They think I’m dead. They don’t know anything about me being uploaded to Valhalla Online. It was part of the NDA I signed. No one knew.”
Sam didn’t understand. He was out, now! He could get back in touch with them, tell them he was still alive, renew contact. Harald wasn’t making any sense, from her point of view.
“Why not reach out to them?” she asked.
He turned back toward her. “They’ll die in time. I’ll get to watch my son grow old and die in front of me. Then my grandson, too. I’m a monster, an unnatural thing, and I’ll never get older. I’ll continue to exist like this until I finally despair and give up being a Ghost.”
“You don’t know that, Harald. Maybe in time they’ll elect to join you as a digital mind,” Sam said.
“That would be even worse! Share this half-life with them? No, never,” Harald said. “It was simpler back in Valhalla. We knew who we were, there. We knew what we had to do to get by. It was all a game. It was easy.”
Sam nodded. Everything he said was true. Valhalla Online was just a game. That had made everything easier, but also less fulfilling. Sam wanted her life to matter. That was why she’d joined the military in the first place. Maybe it was their age difference, the fa
ct that Harald had lived a full life outside before being uploaded to Valhalla? Did he feel finished, when she felt like she was only getting started in life?
“That wasn’t always a good thing, Harald,” Sam said.
“It was for me. Simpler was good. You came along and everything got complicated, even there. Things started to matter again. You changed the nature of the game for me, Sam. For everyone you met,” he replied.
“I wouldn’t go back and do it differently even if I could,” she said.
“I know you wouldn’t. I respect and admire that constancy about you. I just wish I could be like you,” Harald said.
You could, she wanted to say. All you have to do is step out of what is comfortable and safe and take a chance on actually living again! Harald was stuck in a half-life, while Sam was watching new worlds of possibility open up for her. She wanted to bring her friend along for the ride. How could she convince him?
His family would be the key, she thought. If she could convince him to reach out, that might give him a reason to care. Pictures of his grandson, images of what his old family was up to, that might make all the difference in the world. But he had to take that step first.
“Reach out to them, Harald. Give it a shot.”
“They think I’m dead. Better to leave it that way. Think of the pain they’d face if they knew I was still here, like….this,” he replied, gesturing at his virtual body.
“I don’t think they’ll care how you’re alive. They’ll be glad you are. But hell, what have you got to lose? Try. That’s all I’m saying,” Sam said.
Harald shook his head emphatically. “No. Not happening. I don’t think you should have made contact, but you have, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I sure as hell am not making the same mistake. Let them think I’m dead and gone. It’s the truth.”
He vanished from her sight, but not before Sam saw a new emotion flickering across his face. Harald wasn’t avoiding contact with his family out of caring for them. She’d only seen him show that emotion once or twice before, but she knew what it looked like. It was fear. Harald was terrified of the idea of reaching out.
How could she blame him? She had been, too. But maybe there was something Sam could do to help him. Before she could act, Sam was pinged by an alert message. She checked it, annoyed at first, but then she saw the contents. Admiral Stein was calling a meeting of senior staff. Finally, it looked like maybe they were going to take some kind of action. About damned time.
Twenty-Six
Max had to stifle a grin as Admiral Stein’s glare swept across the room. He knew the man well enough to not be afraid of him. Their enemy, on the other hand? Oh, Max was pretty damned sure that stare boded badly for them. And with the gathering sitting at this table, he felt doubly sure.
Stein’s wife was there, the commander of all their fighter assets. So was Sam, the leader of the Ghost Wing. Knauf himself was present, of course. So was Major Kissel, the head of the Intrepid’s Marine component. Captain Edwards, the Intrepid’s XO, was present as well. In short, it was everyone who was anyone in their little two-ship flotilla.
“This is the current imaging of the gate,” Stein said, gesturing to a holotank floating about the conference table. “It’s old news, of course. But we’ve been monitoring the area constantly, so we’ve got a good idea what to expect.”
It was a mess, for sure. There were a lot of alien ships flying around up there. Three of them were dreadnoughts. It wasn’t looking good.
Stein tapped a button on the table, and the image changed. Now there were just two small cruisers floating near the gate.
“This is where things were yesterday,” Stein said. Then he tapped another button. “And this is a time-lapse since then.”
The scene sped along, showing one ship after another arrive through the gate. Max tracked the entry times. It looked consistent, to him. The arrivals came through the gate like a beat, always the same amount of time apart. Different numbers at different times, but even there it looked like there was some consistency. Stein confirmed that with his next words.
“They seem to be energizing the gate every six hours. They also seem to have a cap on how much mass they can transition each time, which is good for us.”
“Yeah, or they’d already have a fleet of six hundred dreadnoughts up there,” Max said.
“I don’t think they need six hundred to deal with us,” Stein replied. “By my calculations, their fleet will hit critical mass within the next forty-eight hours. After that, they’ll have enough force to blow apart anything we can send their way.”
The time-lapse went back to present time. The most recent gate activation was interesting, though. Only one ship had come through, but it looked to be about twice the size of the dreadnoughts. The thing was impossibly large. How the hell were they going to fight that? Max thought the Admiral might have been overly generous with his time estimate.
“Three dreadnoughts, six cruisers, and that,” Stein said. “That one even bigger ship. That’s what we’re dealing with for now.”
“Plus whatever came through during the activation since then,” Keladry added. “The light-lag is long enough that they’ve had another activation since then that we won’t see for hours.”
Stein sat back down, folding his fingers around each other. “That’s correct. The question before us, then, is what do we do about it?”
Around the room, various people glanced at one another. Major Kissel was the first to speak up.
“Begging your pardon, Admiral Stein - but weren’t we ordered to hold position? Has that changed?”
“No. But the UN president reminded me of our oath,” Stein said. He didn’t have to remind anyone of the relationship he shared with the president. They all knew.
“To defend humanity,” Max said.
“Against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Stein finished. “Yes. Or in this case, against both.”
“How so?” Kissel replied.
“Now hear this,” Stein said. “As the senior UN Navy officer, and after due consideration, I have decided that the actions of the UN Security Council represent a clear and present danger to the future of humanity.”
Max could hear sucked in breaths from a few people in the room. He wasn’t surprised. It was the logical course of action. What else could Stein do? The longer they waited, the worse their odds became. It might already be too late. If they were to have any chance at all, they needed to strike soon.
“Any objections will be noted. Anyone who feels they cannot serve under me after this finding, say so now, and I’ll relieve you of duty. The rest of us are going to go try to save this little blue rock of ours,” Stein said.
No one said a word. Stein pinned each of them with his gaze, one after another, but none of them backed down. Damn, he was in good company. Max couldn’t be committing to almost certain death in a better crowd.
“They’ll have your rank for this, Admiral,” Edwards said. “No way your career will survive.”
“People said that about my father more than once, you know,” Stein replied. “But if that happens, so be it. We’re doing the right thing.”
“Besides, then you’ll finally get command of the Intrepid,” Stein finished with a wry grin.
“Not how I wanted to earn command, sir,” Edwards said stiffly.
“Relax, man. You’re acting like I have one foot in my grave. I’m not dead yet. And besides, the odds are we’ll all die trying to stop them anyway,” Stein said. “Now, speaking of stopping them: I need ideas. Some way to even the odds.”
Because the odds were horribly against them. A stand-up fight didn’t favor them, but the enemy now had enough jump-capable ships out there that a running engagement wasn’t so great either. Plus, the enemy knew that there was only one objective that mattered: the gate. So long as the gate was open and running, they would eventually win by simple attrition. All they had to do was protect the gate.
Luckily Max hadn’t been idle during t
heir wait. He looked around the table from face to face, wondering if anyone else had an idea worth considering. His was a real long-shot, so if any of the other minds at the table had conceived a better plan, he’d just keep his mouth shut.
But no one spoke up. Max sighed. It looked like his plan or nothing, then.
“Sir, I do have an idea. But it’s risky,” Max said.
“I think that defines every possible action we could take right now,” Stein replied. “Go on.”
“The gate is the key. We need to stop them transitting the gate. But maybe we don’t have to destroy the gate to accomplish that,” Max said. He glanced at the holo display and took it over, placing his own diagram there that showed the gate in detail.
“We know the gate is protected by an energy shield. That’ll make it hard to kill. With both our ships hammering the thing we could probably knock it out, but that will be hard with a fleet of alien ships blowing us up,” Max said. “The fighters don’t pack enough punch to kill it. We learned that the hard way last time.”
Max zoomed in on one spot on the image. Fighters were flitting to and from that position on the ring at regular intervals. They weren’t approaching any other part of the ring - just that one spot.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. There seems to be some sort of docking system there. It might be related to controlling the ring, though,” Max said. “If we can get someone in there, dock, and hack the ring’s controls, we might be able to steal it away from them. The ring won’t help them if we can simply lock it down so they can’t use it.”
“You want to hack an alien computer system that undoubtedly has military-grade protection, and is probably programmed in code that no one on Earth has ever seen before?” Edwards asked.
Max looked at him, and then back at Admiral Stein. Stein looked back and him and nodded, a thin smile crossing his lips. He’d already figured out what Max had in mind. It might not work, but it was the best idea he had.
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