The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  “I’m almost to you,” said VJ. “I’m using my shield to move the crap that’s on top of you. Forwarding our location to Raul now.”

  Jennifer looked up to see VJ lift and toss aside one of the trees that lay atop her, sending bark and small debris raining down onto her stasis shield. Then, just as VJ crawled into that newly opened gap, flames roared through to envelop them both.

  VJ manipulated her stasis shield like an earth mover, feeling the heavy energy demand as she cleared the obstructions that blocked her from Jennifer and Dgarra. Their backpack power supplies were far more limited than the one in VJ’s gut, and if she didn’t reach them quickly, she would be the sole survivor.

  The collapse of the crevice floor had dropped all these trees into an active lava tube that had ignited this influx of fuel, turning the environment into an inferno that would have made Mephistopheles feel at home. To make things worse, the trio was being swept along by the river of lava, so when Raul did show up, they would be out of the range of the Meridian’s stasis field.

  Raul’s voice barely registered in VJ’s consciousness. “Damn it, VJ, I need your new coordinates.”

  Right now she had more pressing worries. Her SRT connection to Jennifer and Dgarra confirmed her mental calculations of how low their energy reserves had gotten. Visualizing what she wanted, VJ reformed her stasis shield into a bubble wedge that split the three-foot-thick tree trunk that separated her and Jennifer from Dgarra. Then, as she felt Dgarra’s shielding waver, she enveloped all three of them with her stasis field, hugging them into a tight bubble. And as it was swept onward through the lava tube, the outside of their little bubble glowed bright orange.

  Raul brought his stasis shield in tight around the Meridian, engaged the gravity distortion engines, and covered the mile to the coordinates VJ had sent in seconds. But by the time he brought the ship into position above the crevice, it was too late. The SRT feeds from Jennifer, VJ, and Dgarra told him why.

  “Damn it, VJ, I need your new coordinates.”

  There was a pause, during which he could see through Jennifer’s eyes the reason VJ was slow in responding. Jennifer and Dgarra had mere seconds of power remaining. As his heart tried to claw its way up his throat, VJ shattered the tree that separated her and Jennifer from Dgarra, then encased all three of them in a stasis shield bubble that pressed their bodies tightly against one another.

  The relief that flooded through him was short-lived. His crew was being swept through a large lava tube. The ceiling of that tube and debris battered the bubble as the inferno raged against its surface. Even VJ’s advanced power supply couldn’t endure the demands she was placing upon the shield for long. Accessing his SRT link to her brain, Raul felt hyperventilation threaten to rob his mind of clarity.

  Through Jennifer’s eyes, he saw VJ grab a handful of the debris that had been pulled into her bubble when she had grabbed Jennifer and Dgarra. Grinding the sticks into small chips, she crammed them into her mouth. With a gag-inducing effort, she swallowed, repeating her actions several more times. VJ’s disgust came through the SRT headset in waves, but a quick look at her power reserves showed them stabilizing at 14 percent.

  Wait. They hadn’t stabilized. The rate at which the super-capacitors were being drained had merely slowed. VJ’s MDS was unable to supply power to them at the same rate at which it was being drawn upon by her stasis shield. All she had done was buy them another two minutes.

  Another problem became readily apparent. During all of VJ’s struggles, she had lost track of her location.

  Raul activated forty-three worm-fiber viewers, the most he had ever tried to control, and sent them scurrying below ground, seeking the lava tube through which his crew was being carried. What he found horrified him. There was no single channel. This world’s thin crust was held in place by a honeycomb structure through which magma flowed via a network of channels, welling up and then returning to the depths, forming a complex circulatory system. He had no idea along which of these tubes to look for his crew.

  Crap. Two minutes twenty-three seconds.

  Changing tactics, Raul started all the worm fibers from the origin, sweeping them outward in a rotating and expanding hemisphere, focussing all the neural net’s power on analyzing the mass of video data streaming across those links.

  Suddenly, he found his crew. But they were being funneled down away from the planet’s surface, already far too deep for the Meridian’s stasis shield to reach them. That left Raul one choice—one that was as likely to kill his companions as it was to save them.

  Draping the ship’s stasis shield even more tightly around the outer hull, he performed the calculations that would enable the subspace drive to carry the Meridian to his target. Then Raul shifted the vessel into subspace.

  Jennifer thought that if she had to die, it was nice to do so in Dgarra’s arms. As they held each other tightly within the stasis bubble, Jennifer saw VJ crush and ingest several handfuls of wood and other debris. The horror that she felt in the biosynth’s mind at consuming the disgusting mash made clear just how hard VJ was struggling to save them. In all likelihood, she had sacrificed her own life in a vain attempt. The thought drew tears that cut dirty trails down Jennifer’s cheeks.

  Dgarra tilted his head down toward her face, and Jennifer felt her lips meet his. To have found love and never consummated it was a tragedy that ripped at her soul.

  The shock wave that struck the outside of the stasis bubble slammed it into the bedrock above and tore pressure holes in the lava tube. Jennifer heard a groan from VJ as her stasis bubble warped and then reestablished itself.

  What had just happened? Whatever it was had just siphoned away most of VJ’s remaining power reserves.

  Suddenly Raul’s link reestablished itself, and Jennifer understood. The Meridian had emerged from subspace a hundred yards in front of them, sending the hypersonic shock wave through the lava and surrounding rock and triggering an earthquake that was about to drop billions of tons of stone atop them.

  Jennifer looked up to see fractures crawl through the bedrock like the electrical arcs inside a plasma globe. She watched VJ’s eyes widen as her power dropped below 1 percent. This was it, the last seconds of their lives.

  And then it wasn’t.

  The Meridian’s stasis field extended to encase the crew, shrugging aside the cacophony of destruction to pull VJ, Dgarra, and Jennifer back toward the starship and into its hatch. The stasis shield dissolved, dropping them to the floor as the hatch closed once again.

  Then, as Jennifer struggled back to her knees, the Meridian shifted back into subspace.

  Raul set the Meridian Ascent on a course that would bring it out of subspace in orbit around Brillian-2. Then, as he rose from his stasis chair, Jennifer’s concerned voice spoke in his mind.

  “Raul, there’s a problem with VJ. You’d better get back here.”

  He broke into a run, passed through the door, and turned left into the hallway that led toward the outer hatch. He arrived to see Jennifer kneeling beside VJ’s body as Dgarra looked on. The concern he felt in Jennifer’s mind threw him into a panic. Raul slid to a stop, dropping to his knees by VJ’s left side, taking her hand in his. It felt cold . . . lifeless.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I think she drew too much power and her MDS shut down to avoid an overload condition that would have produced a detonation.”

  Raul used the stasis field to gently lift VJ’s body and move it to the room where VJ had made this physical version of herself. As her body settled onto the bed where the molecular assembler had created her, he pulled her vitals from the neural net, wondering why her specialized nanites weren’t repairing the damage. Hell, they could regrow limbs.

  The neural net supplied him with the answer. With her super-capacitors completely drained, the sudden MDS shutdown had stopped all her physical and electrical processes. And if he didn’t get her systems restarted quickly, the biological part of her brain would begin to decay.r />
  She would be lost to him forever.

  Raul summoned her body’s design details from the neural net. Using a stasis field scalpel, he cut away her uniform and opened her stomach to reveal a mixture of internal organs and cybernetic components. He disconnected her MDS from her twin super-capacitors.

  With speed born of desperation, he fully wedded his mind with the neural net, supplying it with goals but letting it optimize the molecular assembler’s capabilities. The wires that it extruded were so thin that he worried they might break. But that minimalist design meant they could be rapidly grown to the required length and, via the stasis field, connect the table’s power supply to the super-capacitors.

  Raul paused just long enough to breathe a silent prayer to the god in whom he had long ago lost faith. Then he funneled a full charge into VJ’s capacitors. He stared down at her, monitoring every aspect of her body and brain through the neural net as second after endless second ticked away. The beauty of her lifeless face drove an icicle through his heart, his growing sense of dread pasting his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

  In frustration, he placed one hand atop the other and began chest compressions, exactly as he would have if she had been a real girl. Jennifer put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and continued.

  “Damn it, VJ,” Raul said, breathing heavily from the exertion. “Wake up.”

  When her eyes popped open, Raul jerked back as if he’d been shocked. Recovering, he leaned down to kiss VJ’s forehead and then her soft lips, oblivious to Jennifer and Dgarra.

  “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear.

  VJ’s chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath. Her blue eyes focused on Raul’s face and blinked twice. When she spoke, her words slurred ever so slightly. “For what?”

  “For coming back to me.”

  Her eyes lost focus for a moment and then cleared. “I am detecting a number of system faults.”

  “Lie still,” said Raul, taking her hand in his. “I need to replace your MDS and rewire your capacitors before you can get up and move around again.”

  Jennifer and Dgarra stepped up to the other side of the table.

  “You scared the hell out of us,” Jennifer said.

  “Sure did,” said Dgarra.

  A subtle smile lifted the corners of VJ’s lips. “Yeah, well, the next time you two decide to go for a long walk, give it a second thought.”

  The laughter that greeted this riposte put the last of Raul’s worries to bed. His VJ was back.

  CHAPTER 31

  QUOL, ALTREIAN SYSTEM

  TBE Orbday 25–27

  Jack broke the subspace link with the AQ37Z and rose from his chair, clenching his fists to still the tremor that had crept into his hands.

  Son of a bitch!

  He had underestimated Khal Teth by assuming that he could lock the Altreian’s mind inside the extradimensional prison from which he had escaped before. And Jack’s own body had provided the getaway vehicle. Now that ruthless bastard was on the AQ37Z with his wife.

  Despite Janet’s assurances that she could handle Khal Teth, Jack’s intuition screamed something different. He had hidden his growing terror from her throughout their three-way conversation. Not a conversation. This had felt like a hostage negotiation. There was no doubt in Jack’s mind that Khal Teth intended to kill Janet with the resources available to him through his mental link to the AQ37Z’s artificial intelligence.

  Jack had noted the Altreian headset on the body that Khal Teth now controlled. It must have been the one assigned to the research vessel’s commander, the Altreian named Broljen. Somehow Khal Teth had reprogrammed the band and then put it on. That meant that Jack’s body and brain had been altered like Mark’s, Heather’s, Jennifer’s, and Robby’s. That knowledge lent extra weight to Jack’s desperation. As much as he feared what Khal Teth would do once he became the overlord of the Altreian Empire, he’d be damned before he let Janet remain at that megalomaniac’s side.

  Jack would allow General Zolat to place him back in the chrysalis cylinder while Khal Teth climbed into the one aboard the AQ37Z that had already been attuned. That brought another question to mind: why was Zolat going along with this? The answer came to him immediately. This was a way of restoring Dhaldric leadership without anyone else realizing that they had a new overlord. After Khal Teth put the old psionic meritocracy back in place, it would be too late for the displaced Khyre to mount an offensive.

  Khal Teth would break his bonds with the Twice Bound, leaving them vulnerable to being bonded by the very Dhaldric from whom they had escaped. He didn’t know about Moros and the genetic mutation that he and Jack had unleashed, but Khal Teth would find out as soon as his mind reassumed control over his brain. Unfortunately for the Khyre, his reaction was probably going to be a violent one. The thought made Jack sick to his stomach.

  Every decision had a price.

  Reaching out with his mind, he touched that of General Zolat.

  “Okay, General. Khal Teth and I have reached an agreement. Would you like to escort me to the chrysalis chamber?”

  Jack could feel the thrill that radiated from Zolat’s mind.

  “Yes, Overlord. I most certainly would.”

  Khal Teth looked at Janet and grinned, drawing the expected scowl in return. Right now he would dearly love savaging her. It wasn’t her gun or robots that stopped him. Over the last few weeks of their subspace journey, he had felt the psionic mutation growing along his upper spine, sending its tiny tendrils up through Jack’s brain stem. And with each week, his psionic abilities grew stronger. With a thought, he could bring Janet to her knees or make her do anything else he wanted. He had not done so because he needed her to make her sales pitch to her husband. And Jack would have indeed detected a forced presentation.

  Khal Teth had an agenda that took precedence over immediate gratification, one that involved reentering the chrysalis cylinder from which he had crawled not long ago. Besides, he would have plenty of time to send part of the Altreian fleet to end these meaningless human lives once he was again the overlord.

  He stepped into the chamber with the five crew cylinders, one of which Broljen occupied, feeling a strange combination of exhilaration and dread. That last emotion was understandable, given the suffering one of these devices had inflicted upon him. But today he would put that behind him forever more.

  As Janet watched, he issued the command that opened the cylinder before climbing inside. When the lid closed, he activated the subspace channel that would listen for the attuned cylinder on Quol to establish its connection. With Jack’s heart pounding in his chest, one of Khal Teth’s thoughts crowded out all others.

  He would finally meet his destiny.

  Janet waited alongside the chrysalis cylinder, frustrated by her inability to know what, if anything, was happening inside. She tried not to think about her hopes, having been disappointed too many times during the last year to have them dashed again.

  When the cylinder opened, Janet held her breath as she looked down at the face of the man she loved. But she couldn’t keep herself from wondering who was really behind that face. Jack’s eyes opened, found hers, and crinkled at the edges as he smiled, an expression she would have recognized if they had been separated for a thousand years.

  “So you came to rescue me, huh?”

  “Damned right I did,” she said.

  Then Jack was out of the cylinder, holding her in his arms as she returned his embrace. For an endless moment, she held on as if reluctant to awaken from a marvelous dream. With a sigh, she tilted her head, and he kissed her mouth with an urgency that stole her breath.

  “God,” Jack whispered, “I’ve missed this.”

  Blinking back tears, she managed a laugh. Then she stepped back and looked into his brown eyes. What she saw there dampened her joyous mood.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  Janet
took a step back, taking a moment to recover her composure. “As long as we’re a team, I’ll be just fine with whatever you’re planning.”

  There it was again, that cocky half smile.

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you out of this. Besides, you’ve brought my ride.”

  Khal Teth opened the chrysalis cylinder, his mind scanning the room for other occupants. Only one presented himself: General Zolat. Probing deeply into the general’s consciousness, Khal Teth found no trace of deception. Zolat had made good on his part of their agreement. Now it was time for Khal Teth to fulfill his. He let Zolat touch his thoughts, feeling the general’s satisfaction that he was indeed Khal Teth.

  As he climbed out of the cylinder, he mentally scanned the upper level of the Parthian, rapidly shifting his attention from mind to mind, satisfying himself that no unusual activity indicated that he had been betrayed. But something about that mental search felt wrong to him, as if a thin veil hung over his thoughts. He could see through it, just not quite as clearly as he remembered.

  Then another set of memories staggered him. An isolated clinic in the far reaches of Basrilla. A Khyre doctor. Captain Moros and himself on twin surgical tables. The shiny hairlike tendrils crawling through a hole and into his chest.

  The Lundola Procedure!

  Khal Teth swayed and felt General Zolat reach out to steady him. But it was not weakness that shredded his equilibrium. It was blind rage.

  Through force of will, Khal Teth righted himself, his voice a deep growl. “Gather the Dhaldric members of the High Council, and bring them to my chambers. It is time that they know what Captain Moros and the Khyre have released.”

  As General Zolat hurried off to implement his new overlord’s orders, Khal Teth made his way back to the suite of rooms that were his home. Although he could have issued the mental commands directly to the very Dhaldric whom he had sent Zolat to summon, he needed time to come to terms with the depths of The Ripper’s deprivation and its potential impact upon Khal Teth and his destiny. And he wanted a little time alone to formulate his plan.