by Tim Waggoner
“Well… maybe just for a few minutes.” She closed her eyes and put her head on Wolf’s shoulder.
“That’s fine. A few minutes is all I’ll need.”
Her eyes flew open. “What did you say?”
“I said a few minutes is all you’ll need.”
She sat up and looked at him, her vision almost fully restored now. “No, you didn’t. You said ‘a few minutes is all I’ll need.’ You were referring to yourself.”
Wolf smiled. “You’re exhausted, Mei. I understand. Everything will be okay soon. All you have to do is close your eyes and rest.”
He put his hand on the side of her head and tried to force her to lay it against his shoulder once more. His grip was strong, stronger than she remembered, and though she resisted, her neck muscles soon began to ache, and she could feel the strain in her vertebrae.
She gritted her teeth and slammed her elbow into Wolf’s gut. The breath whooshed out of his lungs, and she was able to break free of his grip. Mad as hell, she turned to face him, ready to demand that he explain just what in the hell he’d been thinking, but her vision was completely normal now, and she saw his eyes, his glossy black eyes, and she realized the awful truth.
“You’re not Wolf. He’s dead, and this isn’t the Cydonia arboretum. You’re the goddamned Prime Mother, and you’re inside my head, attacking me with my own memories!”
Wolf smiled, his lips stretching wider than any human mouth was capable of. Behind his teeth tiny dark insects writhed and crawled over one another.
“Magnificent,” the Prime Mother said in a soft hiss of a voice. “If only you would become One with us…”
“If only you would just shut up and leave me the hell alone!” Kyoto slashed out with her left hand—her nails suddenly much longer and sharper than in reality. The nails sliced across Wolf’s obsidian eyes, and thick greenish-black blood gushed forth. He howled in agony and covered his face with his hands, foul ichor oozing from between his fingers and dripping in thick globules to the arboretum floor.
“You bitch!” the Prime Mother hissed.
Kyoto experienced a sudden dizzying instant of vertigo, and then she was back in her pilot’s seat, looking at the holoscreen through the view plate in her vacc suit’s helmet, collision alarms blaring. On the right-hand side of the screen was an image of the Prime Mother. A deep bloody gouge ran across her inhuman face, right through where her nine eyes had been.
“The starboard wingtip has suffered some damage, but structural integrity is holding,” Memory said. “To be honest, I’m surprised that worked. I thought you were going to rip the wing clean off.”
Kyoto wasn’t sure what Memory was talking about. She had hold of the joystick, so she decided to bring the Defender back under control before asking questions. When she got the starfighter stabilized, she brought it around until it was facing the Prime Mother once more. Her wound was already healing, and Kyoto thought she could see new eyes forming beneath the blood.
“What did I do?” she asked.
“You made a run straight at the Prime Mother, and just when it appeared as if you were going to ram her, you turned hard to port and used the starboard wingtip like a knife to cut her eyes. The pain and shock of the injury broke the Prime Mother’s mental hold over you.”
That wasn’t exactly the way it had happened in the psychic illusion the Prime Mother had trapped her in, but it made sense that whatever Kyoto did within the mindscape, she did in the real world, too. After all, wasn’t the Defender in its own way as much a part of her body as her arms and legs? In some ways, maybe even more?
“We need to strike again before she has a chance to fully heal,” Memory said.
“My thoughts exactly.” Kyoto shoved the joystick forward and the fusion engines roared as the Defender streaked toward the injured Prime Mother.
“What do you intend to do, Mei?”
“What you thought I was going to do before: use the G-7 like a stake and ram it through that alien bitch’s black heart.”
“You realize of course that the Manti don’t have what your species would recognize as a circulatory system, and therefore – ”
“Shut up, Memory.”
“Shutting up, Mei.”
The G-7 continued flying toward the Prime Mother like a fusion-powered spear.
See you in a couple of seconds, Wolf, Kyoto thought, and braced for impact. Hastimukah had just lifted up Mudo with the intention of carrying the recovering scientist to the crew quarters when Memory came over his comlink.
“Hastimukah, I just received a message from my little sister in Mei’s Defender. I’m afraid our friend is about to do something that’s as brave as it is foolish. I have to stop her.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Actually…”
The cargo door opened, and Hastimukah and Mudo were instantly sucked out into hyperspace. Hastimukah held onto the unconscious scientist as they tumbled weightlessly through the void.
“Hold tight,” Memory said. “Someone will be along to pick you up shortly.”
Just as the G-7 was about to crash into the Prime Mother, the joystick yanked itself out of Kyoto’s hand and angled hard to starboard. The Defender zoomed pas the Prime Mother, missing her by only a few meters.
“What are you doing, Memory?” Kyoto shouted. “We would’ve had her!”
“Big sis and I had a better idea.”
The holoscreen changed to a full-screen image of the Janus traveling toward the Prime Mother at full speed. The giant Manti was almost completely healed, and she looked up to see the modified GSA transport heading straight at her.
“Memory!” Kyoto yelled. “Don’t do this!” She grabbed the joystick once again, but she was unable to move it. Memory Junior had complete control of the ship.
“I have a score to settle with the Prime Mother for using me against you,” Memory Senior said over the ship’s comlink. “Besides, suicide runs are something of a specialty of mine. Goodbye, Mei. Memory out.”
Before Kyoto could say or do anything more, the Janus slammed into the Prime Mother and its fusion engines exploded in a radioactive fireball.
“Time we were leaving,” Memory Junior said, and the G-7 shot away from the Weave as fast as it could fly.
Kyoto watched on the holoscreen as the fireball crashed into the ruins of the Manti tower. There was another, larger explosion then, this one so bright that the holoscreen flickered and went dead, unable to handle projecting the image of such intense light.
Kyoto couldn’t believe it. Memory was gone—again. The Prime Mother had been destroyed, but at a high price. Kyoto felt as though she had just lost her best friend for the second time.
The holoscreen came back on, this time displaying a wide-angle view of the Weave. The area surrounding the Manti tower was a blazing ruin for kilometers in every direction. Hyperspace was free of Manti weapons fire, and the Buggers themselves—whether in the sky or on the strandways—had fallen motionless. Then slowly, the fliers began to descend toward the Weave, and the walkers started toward the burning ruins of what had once been the Crèche and the Prime Mother’s pit. It was almost like a funeral procession, Kyoto thought.
“It’s over, Mei. Without the Prime Mother to think for them, the Manti don’t know what to do. They’re harmless.”
At first, Kyoto thought she was hearing a ghost, but then she remembered that only Memory Senior had sacrificed herself. Memory Junior was still “alive” inside the G-7’s computer. Then another thought hit her.
“Oh my god! Gerhard and Hastimukah!”
“Weren’t aboard the Janus when it struck the Prime Mother. They’re floating in hyperspace, safe inside their vacc suits, waiting for a ride.”
Kyoto smiled in relief. “Then we’d better go get them, hadn’t we?”
“Roger that. Turning control back over to you, Mei.”
The joystick was suddenly responsive once more, and Kyoto headed the Defender in the general direction of the D
ardanus. “Scan for our friends and lay in a course for them. And you might want to explain to Hastimukah how to use the grabbers in his gloves to take hold of the wing.”
“Will do.”
Kyoto sat back in her pilot’s chair, let out a long, slow breath, and allowed herself to hope that maybe—just maybe—it really was over at last.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
“How are you feeling, Commander?”
Kyoto hesitated before answering. Though she’d been on the Dardanus for the better part of a solar day now, she still hadn’t gotten used to talking to a giant shrimp.
“Fine, Captain. My radiation exposure was minimal. The last of the G-7’s energy shield, plus the rad shielding in the hull of the ship itself and in my vacc suit dealt with the worst of it. And your medtechs took care of the rest. My starfighter is clean of radiation, too, thanks to your engineers.”
“Kyoto’s tough as empyrean nails,” General Adams said, sounding more like a proud father than her superior officer. Adams—wearing his vacc suit, as was she—stood next to Kryllian’s command chair. Though she doubted either he or Kryllian would admit it, she had the impression that the two had become friends during their time together.
“No doubt,” Kryllian said. “And what of your ship’s artificial intelligence, Commander?”
“Your techs have given her a clean bill of health, Captain. It seems that the symphysis did its job well.”
“Why doesn’t that overgrown piece of seafood ask me himself?” Memory said over Kyoto’s suit’s comlink. “He acts like I’m just some sort of glorified calculator!”
Kyoto smiled, but she didn’t respond to the AI’s complaint. She was just glad Memory hadn’t broadcast it over the Dardanus’s shipwide com system.
The gray blob—which Kyoto still couldn’t believe was nothing more than a single combined colony of sentient nanoparticles—looked up from the nav console and turned to Kryllian.
“Captain, we’re approaching our original entry point into hyperspace. We’ll have our guests back to their home system shortly.”
“Thank you, Suletu. Contact Hastimukah and see if he—”
The door to the bridge irised open, and a short, stocky being stepped through, accompanied by a wan-looking human. Neither wore a vacc suit.
“Belay that, Suletu.” Kryllian turned to look at Hastimukah. “I’m glad to see you’re back to your old self, Assessor. Nothing against our guests, but I found your last visage somewhat offputting.”
Kyoto chuckled. “I hope Aspen DeFonesca never hears that. She’s already obsessed with being the most attractive and beloved human in the Solar Colonies. Can you imagine what would happen if she decided to try for the entire galaxy?”
“The mind absolutely boggles,” Mudo said with a smile. He and Hastimukah came over to join the others around Kryllian’s command chair. The scientist was still pale, but the nanoparticles Hastimukah had given him had saved his life. More, they’d given him the same abilities as any member of the Residuum, and he could breathe the atmosphere aboard the Dardanus.
“Good to see you up and about, Doctor,” Adams said.
“It took a while for the nanoparticles to restore me to full health,” Mudo said. “The damage carrying the symphysis did to my cerebral cortex and central nervous system was quite extensive. So much so, in fact, that I’ll need to retain the nanoparticles inside me for the rest of my life.”
“Just so long as you avoid the temptation to add them to any GSA equipment,” Adams said with a scowl. “I think we’ve had enough of your special upgrades after what happened to the Janus.”
“Yes, General.”
Mudo looked and sounded chastened, but Kyoto doubted he was being sincere. He had too much of the rebel in him. In that way, he was a little like Wolf. That thought, and the confused mixture of feelings that accompanied it, was something she’d deal with another day.
She turned to Hastimukah. “Does it feel good to be… what’s the right term? Bergelmirian again?”
When Hastimukah had told her that his people resembled the woolly mammoths of ancient Earth, she’d pictured him as a massive elephantine creature covered with fur. She’d gotten the hairy elephant part right, though Hastimukah walked upright, had ears only slightly larger than a human’s, and possessed rudimentary tusks. He did have a prehensile nose, though it was only thirty centimeters long. But she’d been way off on the massive part. Hastimukah stood only a meter high, if that. He put her in mind of a stuffed elephant she’d had as a child, one her parents had gotten for her after a visit to the holozoo on Europa. She’d named the toy Mr. Bo-Bo, and she’d lost it when her parents’ transport had crashed.
The thought made her grin, and Hastimukah frowned. “Is something wrong, Commander?”
She shook her head. “No, not at all… Mr. Bo-Bo.” And then she burst out laughing.
The others looked at one another and gave a group shrug.
“Careful, Kyoto,” Adams said. “Keep it up, and you might cause Hastimukah to reconsider his assessment of the human race.”
“You’ve reached a decision?” She’d been so busy helping the Dardanus’s techs with the Defender and Memory that she hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone else for hours before she’d come to the bridge.
“I have,” he said. “I’m going to recommend to the Ascendancy that humanity be given provisional membership in the Residuum. Provided your Council of Seven agrees, of course.”
“That’s wonderful news!” Kyoto said.
“Perhaps,” Mudo allowed. “But it’s difficult to say how the council, let alone the rest of the Colonists, will handle the revelation of the Residuum’s existence. So far humanity’s encounters with extraterrestrial life have been less than pleasant.”
“We’ll take it one step at a time, Doctor,” Adams said. “And we’ll just see how things play out.”
“They’ll be a lot more sympathetic when they hear how a Residuum ship helped up stop the Manti,” Kyoto said.
“My only regret is we didn’t have enough artillery left to attack the Manti after the Prime Mother’s death,” Kryllian said. “We had the opportunity to destroy them once and for all. We could’ve taken out the entire Weave.” Kryllian’s antennae waved about in frustration. “Instead all we could do was turn about and head home.”
“The Residuum can always return with more ships,” Adams said.
“If it’s even necessary,” Mudo added. “The Prana will likely try to do what they can, but without the Prime Mother to give them direction—or more importantly, to create new Manti—their species will eventually die out.”
“Coming up on hyperspatial entry point,” Suletu said.
“Prepare to make the transition to realspace everyone,” Kryllian ordered.
As Suletu began to carry out his captain’s command, Kyoto knew that they’d be returning to a very different Solar Colonies than she’d left—even if the Colonies themselves weren’t aware of it yet. They were now provisional members of the Residuum, and the Manti threat had finally been eliminated once and for all.
But if that were true, why did she have the nagging feeling that it really wasn’t over? That in some strange, unknown way, it was only just beginning?
Deep within the melted ruin that had once been the Prime Mother’s pit, a single microscopic nanoparticle that had survived the destruction of the Janus began to stir. It cast about with its sensors and detected traces of biomaterial from what had once been the Prime Mother clinging to hundreds of inert nanoparticles. It sent a signal to awaken those sleeping particles, and then settled back to rest while it waited patiently for the others to come back online.
It would need all the strength it could muster, for there was a great deal of work to do. A great deal of work, indeed.
From.Net
