"Too bad you didn't see it before it happened," Jake grumbled. "Isn't that what Clairs are supposed to do?"
Jamie could barely work up a scowl for him. "Clairs" couldn't be relied on for anything, but Kim-Ly had a knack for coming through at the right moment, and she seemed to have a special connection with Jay. They could be grateful for that, at least.
"Barry, punch a hole –" She was going to say "into the sphere," but for all she knew, Jay could be on the other side of the wall where Barry Apple's particle beam penetrated. She had another thought, turning to the former leader of Last Days in America. "Brian, are you with us?"
Loving shrugged, holding out his hands to the team around him. "I seem to be."
"You know what I'm asking, don't you? Are you with us? Are you ready to work together to defeat our enemy?"
Loving swallowed and looked uneasy, as if he wasn't quite ready to concede that. "I don't want to kill anyone..." As he spoke, Horner moved ominously closer to him, his cold blue eyes sighting in on him. "But ah, yes, I know you're right. Whether they're evil or not, we were deceived..."
"The Commander asked you a question, dipshit," Horner stated in a low, hard voice. "Are you with us or not?"
Loving swallowed again and nodded. "Except for the killing part, I'm with you."
"I want you to take me inside the sphere," said Jamie. "Can you do that?"
"I've never done that – taken someone with me. I'm not sure it would be safe for you or even possible."
"It's possible and safe, as long as I am in close contact with you and only you."
"Then...okay."
"All right. Come here."
He flew to her, moving tentatively. Now the awkward moment. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and pressed against him.
"Don't take this personally," she said.
"Uh...." He coughed quietly to one side of her ear. "No problem."
"Don't materialize inside until I tell you."
"Okay."
"Let's do it."
Her body tingled and the scene misted over behind a steamy window. The sphere approached and melted away into a large central room. In the center was what appeared to be a young, blond woman in a glossy, metallic suit, her eyes closed, floating in the air within a bright orb of prismic-colored light, as though she was enclosed in a mini-sun. On the far end of the dome-shaped room was Jay – also enshrouded in light, immobile, but not looking so at peace.
A cloud of varicolored light was building around them as well.
"Materialize!" Jamie shouted into Brian Loving's ear.
The world de-misted. They were back on solid ground – except for the lack of gravity. The lights struck at them like Star Wars light sabers – a dozen burning points of attack on her body. Brian cried out, swatting at them like bees. Jamie willed them away, which worked for a second or two, but they kept coming back. Without knowing their power source, she was reduced to swatting away a steady stream of bullets.
Jamie lashed out telekinetically at the woman floating above her. The cloud she was within sparkled and hissed – momentarily turning grey-white – but the person or thing within appeared untouched.
The light attacks on her and Loving stopped. Suddenly, Jay's cloud was gone. He stumbled free.
"Teleport her to the outside!" Jamie called to him.
Jay gazed up at her. Her cloud sparkled and hissed again, but no other effect. He shook his head.
"She's inside some kind of force field," he called back.
"Together!" Jamie cried. "You, too, Brian! Teleport her out of here!"
She slammed the force field with her thoughts while the two men issued departure orders. The ball of light enclosing her popped and snapped and dimmed but the woman inside remained unmoved. She hadn't even opened her eyes.
Jamie struck the arched ceiling above the woman with a force she imagined would blow apart a large building, but only a few fender bender-sized dents appeared which almost instantaneously smoothed out.
A different approach was called for. Jamie jumped straight for the woman. The force field snared her in a swarm of electric swords impaling every square millimeter of her body. It was like she the time she'd used a knife to dig burnt bread from her toaster and been knocked to the floor multiplied by a million.
But I'm still alive. And I can move. With those facts in mind, Jamie willed herself forward, clawing her way through the briar patch of lights toward the pale blond figure in the glossy silver suit lying only a foot or two from her grasp.
She was through – or the upper part of her body was. Enough to reach the comatose woman and clamp her right hand around her throat.
"Turn off your defenses," she said, "or I will squeeze. Hard."
The woman's eyes opened. A pair of oversized bright blue eyes in a round, Botticelli face. A smile curled the corners of her full lips.
"Commander Shepherd," she said. "I see you made it."
Shock rolled through Jamie. She loosened her grip on the woman's throat but didn't release it.
"We thought you might be one of them. Cardinal...whatever your real name is. Did you enjoy pretending to be a god to those ignorant people?"
"No. But it served its purpose: to free you, and through you, them."
"That torture...you knew it would make me wake up?"
"I didn't know, but that was the idea."
"You're Fifth Column?"
"Yes. We sent you a gift, and as coincidence would have it, you were the first to receive it."
Jamie let go of her throat. Her mind was reeling. Coming face face to face with the creator of the Object had been in her dreams from the first moment the black cylinder had crashed into her property. But this was not the face she would've imagined in a billion years.
"Time is limited," said the alien female. "The ship has nearly completed its salvage. When it's finished, in perhaps a day or two of your time, it will destroy your world."
"What...?" Jamie shook off the panic ripping through her. "But...why – why would anyone want to destroy us? What do you mean by salvage'?"
"I can only give you the most basic answers. There isn't time for more."
"I need to take you out of here, to meet my team."
"No. We must stay in here. But first, you should destroy the communication module. I don't believe they can monitor me within this field, but I want to be certain we're not being observed. In general, everything inside the ship is being recorded." Her eyes darted to a far wall. "Do you see the red line? The communication/recording modules lies a few centimeters behind it. Destroy it, if you can."
Jamie followed her gaze to a five-foot dark red line on the grey wall. She punched it telekinetically. As that section of the wall crumpled in, she added heat to the mix.
"Yes," said the alien female. "It is destroyed – past the self-healing recovery threshold."
The cloud surrounding them vanished. Jamie followed the woman in a leisurely descent to the floor, where Jay and Brian Loving were gaping at them.
"Jamie!" Jay called to her. "Commander! Are you okay?"
"Yes. I'm okay. This is..." She made an uncertain gesture to the alien female.
"Gabrielle?" Brian's throat was bobbing, his voice emerging with a scratchy sound like paper being torn.
"I apologize for the deception, Brian," she said. "I had to maintain the appearance that I was fulfilling my role. My true name is Amelrina."
Brian stood there, staring, his knees bent as if he wanted to kneel before her but was stifled by the zero gravity.
"Amelrina is on our side," Jamie said to Jay. "She's the one who sent us the Object."
"One of those persons who sent the Object," she corrected her.
"So the Fifth Column is real," said Jay.
"Yes. And we're in an emergency situation. Amelrina just told me that this ship is going to destroy our planet sometime in the next two days, when its mission is completed here."
"Are you serious?" Jay looked from her t
o the alien female as if waiting for a retraction.
"Yes," said Amelrina.
"That's insane!"
"What is the mission, exactly?" Brian asked. "If it really wasn't about saving our souls."
"To preserve a part of the human species," said Amelrina. "It's a kind of salvage operation for doomed sentient civilizations. Their evolution will continue, but under more controlled conditions."
Jay was shaking his head. "Doomed? Why are we doomed, aside from this ship threatening to destroy Earth? None of this makes any sense."
"I understand how confusing this must be for you," said Amelrina. "And I hope you will understand that we lack the time for full explanations. What's important is that we and other similarly advanced civilizations have developed a method of assessing future threats posed by a sentient race. We call it the 'aggression index.' It amounts to a vast number of intricate analyses comparing civilizations based on algorithms I won't attempt to explain. For simplicity's purpose, any civilization over the .9 aggression index is suspect and tagged. Extinction orders are reserved for .95 and above. You were a .97, one of the highest on record. We've been monitoring you, attempting some genetic and cultural manipulation – religion being a prime example of the latter – within the ethical constraints in place for the last several of our centuries, but until now we have failed to eliminate or reduce your aggressive traits below the deadly risk threshold."
"But how can you possibly know your predictions are correct unless you let the societies actually evolve to that point?" Jay asked. "Unless you're clairvoyant?"
"Clairvoyance works by accessing parallel universes where the time runs slightly ahead of your universe – but true parallel worlds don't run far enough ahead to be useful in long-range predictions." Amelrina paused, a small frown creasing her inhumanly smooth porcelain face. "A few centuries ago we let a civilization with a .96 AI rating develop to Stage Six – the highest technological phase we know of, where its people can manipulate the fabric of space-time and reality itself. That civilization killed countless numbers of sentient beings and spread through hundreds of universes before we were able to stop it."
Jamie struggled to pick the one question from an endless maze of questions. Nothing came to mind except one curious contradiction.
"But if you think the predictions are valid, why are you helping us?"
"Some of us started questioning what you would call 'playing God.' In truth, we've been playing at that for a long time – creating millions of universes and seeding them with sentient precursors. But when it comes to condemning beings who have not committed crimes – it is a debate that has raged among our kind and dozens of other civilizations, finally resolving a few of our centuries ago in favor of extinction assignments. Yet some of us still dissent. We believe we have not done enough to benevolently intervene. What you call 'the Object' was born of that belief."
"To make us strong enough to defeat you?" Jay asked.
"The purpose of the Object was not primarily to make you stronger, but to alter your social evolution without changing your essential nature – any essential change considered to be the ethical equivalent of extinction. What you call the "nanovirus" – not inaccurately – is a recent design derived from a popular rescue device meant to save core selves in the case of accident or other unforeseen disasters. Since it doesn't appear to change a person's basic psychology, we believed it might be ethically employed to change the direction of a civilization's evolution. The consensus of our peoples, however, held an intervention on that level to be ethically unacceptable. Some of us disagreed. You are the first species we've tried this on. At this point, it's mostly theoretical. But as of the last measurement, your aggression index has fallen to just above .95. Significant, but not enough to change the extinction determination."
"Who or what makes this determination?" Exasperation and tension reduced Jamie's voice to a thin rasp. "Some government board or department in your society?"
The alien female smiled for the first time – a rueful, semi-sad smile. "We don't have authorities of that type. We have discussions, and we respect the results of debates between our best intellects. Sometimes, but not always, some individuals may choose to support an ethical consensus with force. You might call them 'consensuses with teeth.' More often, those who physically oppose the ethical consensus are simply shunned. That might sound minor to you, but for us it is terrifying consequence – to be banished from contact with the rest of our kind – a fate I and my collaborators fervently hope to avoid."
Jamie didn't place that very high on her list of concerns. "How do we destroy the weapons systems on this ship?"
"You can't – not in time. It's self-healing and has too many redundancies. What you must do is reach the source of this ship's control. Five core selves control this and other crafts in other universes, as part of a monitor, rescue, salvage, and extinction operation. I have the teleportation code to their core world in my body. You'll take this body with you and use it to return."
"How?" asked Jamie.
"Just hold my body up to the gateway. In here it's marked with 0-plus, on the wall to your right." Jamie traced her look to the symbols. "Note the symbols when you emerge at the destination." She registered Jamie's persistent uncomprehending expression. "All you need to do is hold my body before the gateway. That's the easy part. When you arrive at the core world you will be near the core selves – what we call our organic bodies, which control our synthetic forms. What you might call an avatar. You understand the concept, don't you?"
"I think so..."
"Yes," said Jay.
"When you get within striking range of the core selves, you pose a real threat. You may be able to convince them to change their plans or you may need to shut down the connection between them and the ships. As a last resort, you could kill them. I truly hope it does not come to that."
"They'll have defenses, won't they, like you did?" Jay asked.
"Their most powerful defenses should exist in the outer layers of the artificial world that encloses them. The usual reasoning is that anything breaching those would not be deterred by any relatively lesser defenses placed close to the core chambers. What we're giving you is a backdoor straight to the heart of their world. The odds of anyone discovering the necessary codes who lack access to their organization are beyond astronomical. It took us nearly two hundred years to obtain them."
She paused, seeking out Jamie's glassy eyes.
"I cannot guarantee that their defenses won't be formidable," she continued, "even so far within the safety of their world. But this is the best chance you have, and you are your world's only chance."
"Even if we stop them," said Jamie, "how long before someone else from your civilization sends another ship to finish the job?"
"It could be thousands of your years. As I mentioned, time in your universe is flowing much faster than in ours. Roughly ten thousand times faster. Our group is the only one that has been monitoring you. No one is closely monitoring us."
All the other questions clamoring in Jamie's head seemed to jumble together and jam on the tip of her tongue. Amelrina gazed into her eyes.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"Do I have a choice?" Jamie's smile was so shaky it barely qualified as a smile. This was insane. Even more insane than usual for life these days. In what conceivable universe could the fate of the human race rest on her shoulders? It was like some terrible Young Adult fantasy come to life. But she was too old – or felt too old – for that.
"When I disengage," said Amelrina, "I will not re-engage. I would have you damage this synthetic sufficiently to make that impossible – but in a way that will not affect the code transmission. That will help maintain the appearance that you overwhelmed me by force – that I was not complicit."
"Tell me what to do?"
"A powerful blow to its head should be sufficient."
Its head. Jamie swallowed. Apparently, super powers weren't an antidote to nausea.
&nbs
p; "Okay." Jamie steeled herself. "Are you ready?"
"Yes. Don't worry, I will feel no pain. This is merely a shell – an extension of me." Amelrina startled Jamie by touching her shoulder. "Good luck, Jamie. I have faith in you."
"You people have faith?"
Amelrina smiled. "A faith-analogue?"
They and the two men drifted in a tight circle, planets in slow orbit around an imaginary point.
"Thank you for everything you've done," said Jamie, crushing the female avatar's head with one light blow.
Chapter 30
THIRTY MINUTES AND A lifetime of explanations later, Jamie stood with her team before the 0+ symbols on the wall that Amelrina had designated as their gateway to their enemies' "core world." Jamie maneuvered Amelrina's limp avatar in front of them a few feet from the wall.
A ten by six foot section of wall melted away, revealing a dimly lit room filled with concentric circles rising to a single large dome. They might've been looking through a doorway into an adjacent room, but they knew that nothing but endless rows of virtual reality chambers and sleeping people lay beyond this wall. If Amelrina was right, they were seeing the inner sanctum that housed the five organic bodies of the people who controlled the ship and the mission that had deceived millions and threatened their world with extinction.
"Let's kick some alien ass," said Horner.
At that moment Jamie appreciated the reassuring predictability of his words. They were some of most powerful and deadly human beings on the planet. Why not go in with some confidence, even some swagger? This wasn't a time for self-doubt. Defeat was not an option.
Jamie nodded to the others. They stepped through as one, Amelrina's synthetic body tucked under her right arm. She did as Amelrina suggested – noting the figure-eight symbols above their gateway seconds before the wall resumed its intact form.
It was about as illuminated in the room as in a movie theater when the film was playing. Jamie couldn't make out a lot of details. Aside from the concentric circles rising pyramid-like before them, the walls, floor, and ceiling were bare, all formed of the same featureless, smooth grey plastic or metal. Jamie felt uneasy as they moved through the semi-darkness. Night vision wasn't one of her abilities.
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