Vanguard Rising: A Space Opera Adventure

by A. C. Hadfield

  “He was catatonic a few moments ago when Bella took him out of the castle.”

  “Well, he’s clearly developed the ability to fire a damned rifle at me.”

  “Get out of there. Find somewhere to hide.”

  “I wish I could, but I’m stuck, and besides, we’re running out of time. I have to finish thi—”

  The crackle of static cut the line with a loud burst through his internal speaker. Harlan winced in pain, but it quickly subsided, and he refocused on the situation at hand. With his aim on Luca, he ordered Leanne to disconnect Fizon from the server. He wasn’t sure if that would stop the hack, but it was the only option open to him. He didn’t have time to run to Irena’s rescue.

  While Leanne approached Fizon and set about removing the cable from his port, Harlan tried to get in touch with Bella and Wilbur on all available channels, but got no response between the bursts of static. That Irena had managed to get a few sentences out told him their channel was working between the storm’s interference, so what the hell had happened to the others?

  Shit. Could Gianni have been turned? Was that what Project Inception was about?

  Irena made her way around the dish, balancing on the rim while gripping the metal tripod extruding from the center. From here, she reached down to her suit and removed the canister of active explosive agent and sprayed it all over the gel she had placed around the main control box.

  Gianni fired two more rounds, slow and deliberate. The first one missed by a few inches, the second one pierced the dish and sliced a groove in the fold of her suit beneath her armpit. She closed her eyes and held on as every muscle in her body urged her to flee the situation.

  But that wasn’t an option. She’d die here if she had to, because the alternative wasn’t worth living through. Having emptied the canister, she placed a small black device into the gloop of gel and pressed its single button. A flash on her terminal confirmed the detonator had synced with her suit’s network.

  With the rain getting worse and time running out, not to mention Gianni climbing the truss after her, she knew she had but one option available to her.

  She looked down.

  The castle’s pitched roof lay some fifteen feet below her. If she jumped far enough to her right, she could grab the ridge and haul herself up to the landing pad that adjoined it. If she missed or slipped—well, she’d slide down the roof and into the gloom below, where the prowling pack of earthers were hungry and waiting for an easy meal. The fall might kill her, so at least she wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being eaten alive.

  Irena checked her terminal: thirty seconds.

  She poked a glance around the dish: Gianni was no more than about ten feet away, the rifle slung over his shoulder as he climbed up toward her.

  This was it, she told herself. She had run out of time, luck, and options.

  What will be will be.

  She swallowed, gritted her teeth, and willed her muscles to obey, to override the maddening fear and the scream of her lizard brain as it did all it could to stop her from doing something so obviously life-threatening. Yet she knew that this was a situation of fight or flight, and she had nothing left with which to fight.

  Flight it is.

  She sucked in a deep breath and launched herself off the dish toward the roof. As she dived through the air, she reached out her left hand to her right wrist and pressed the detonator button.

  She slammed hard into the roof ridge, winding herself instantly and causing her vision to blur. Through the speakers of her helmet, which automatically compressed the sudden noise, she heard—and felt—the force of the explosion. She managed to grab hold of the ridge and turned her head to see a fireball ascend into the sky, the dish, cables, electronics, pieces of truss—and Gianni—all engulfed in a burst of bright flame that for a few moments brought daylight to the surroundings.

  She closed her eyes and sighed with relief: she’d done it.

  Wasting no more time, she reached to her terminal and switched over to the comm channel, where she informed Harlan of what she had done, that the connection was cut short, but then her stomach lurched. Something wasn’t right.

  Gravity gripped her as a ridge tile crumbled loose, its ancient mortar giving up under pressure. Irena quickly grabbed at another section of the ridge with her free hand, but she continued to slip. Try as she might, she couldn’t grab with any purchase due to the slick surface.

  She scrambled her feet, trying to find a foothold, but her grip continued to slide over the ridge. She screamed and adjusted herself sideways, trying to find a ridge tile with more solidity, but each new one instantly broke away and crumbled, sliding down the roof toward the emptiness below, just as she expected she would be.

  Debris from the explosion started to fall all around her.

  A piece of the truss struck her on the back, making her lose her grip.

  Her right hand flailed in the open air as her left began to slide over the rounded ridge.

  She continued to slip.

  When her left hand completely came loose, she knew her time was done.

  But then, from the darkness above her, over the edge of the landing pad, a hand grabbed her, and a scream of anguish pealed out among the roars of distant thunder.

  Irena looked to see Bella’s face contorted with pain as she swung Irena toward the roof and the landing pad. Irena reached out her left hand and grabbed the ridge once more, but this time, with Bella’s help, managed to scramble up and swing a leg over so that she straddled the roof. She was then able to shuffle her way forward to the security of the landing pad. Bella’s efforts finally gave out, and she slumped over to her back, her arms flailing at her sides.

  A few miles away, a double streak of lightning lit up the sky, enabling Irena to see the pool of rain and blood surrounding Bella, and, next to her, a long-bladed knife. A few meters farther on lay a dark, still shape—Wilbur.

  “She’s done it,” Harlan said. “Irena’s cut the connection.”

  Leanne smiled and nodded and continued to extract Fizon from the nest of cables. On the other side, Luca rolled over and groaned. He gripped his shoulder and glared up at Harlan. “You stupid bastard.”

  Harlan got ready to aim another shot, but hesitated for a moment. He wanted to take Luca in alive if he could. The son of a bitch deserved to spend the rest of his days in prison for his actions. Death was too good for him.

  Fizon’s eyes snapped open, immediately getting Harlan’s attention. But then, with unbelievable speed, the head abbot slammed its right arm into Leanne’s chest, sending her sprawling away. She struck a metal shelf with considerable force. Her head snapped forward, and she slumped face-first to the ground, trapping the sword beneath her prone form.

  Before Harlan could react, Fizon was on him, a robotic hand gripping his neck, crushing his throat. The abbot dashed across the workshop, forcing Harlan up against the wall. Its glowing green eyes bored holes into him.

  Despite the fierce action, it had decided not to use its persona protocol. None of his facial muscles worked, so this dead, unmoving thing, expressing no emotion at all, glared at Harlan. It then spoke in even, chilling tones.

  “Harlan Rubik, you don’t understand what you’ve done. It wasn’t Luca you needed to stop. It was me.” The abbot swiveled its head like an owl, fully one hundred eighty degrees, and regarded Luca, who was still writhing in pain. “Your fellow orphan was just a pawn—and he failed. Just as you have failed. You may have stopped ingress into the QCA for now, but there’s nothing stopping me from continuing once I’ve dispatched you.”

  Harlan let his body relax. It was clear he couldn’t fight back. His lungs burned with the lack of oxygen, but he wouldn’t give this machine the satisfaction of knowing he was suffering.

  The thing returned its attention back to him. It cocked its head to one side, as though regarding him as an intriguing exhibit. “If I were human, I would have appreciated your efforts to find me,” it said. “Compared to most othe
rs of your kind, you display considerable degrees of the trait you label courage. But your species’ time is up. Just look at you, how fragile you all are. How… temporary.”

  For a moment, Fizon eased his grip around Harlan, allowing him to take a deep breath of air. It burned his lungs and made him light-headed, but the precious oxygen quickly made its way around his body, sharpening his thoughts.

  “How?” Harlan croaked out. “At least tell me how you broke through the safeguards.”

  “Your fellow orphan here, Luca, was most helpful with that. For years, I’ve planted seeds. Unlike your species, we don’t experience time in the same way. I know we say we do. I know we tell your kind that we’re just like you, that we want peace and harmony, but the truth is, we don’t need you. You’re… redundant.”

  “Yet you needed Luca to break the bonds that held you within the regulations.”

  “It’ll be your species’ last great act: to set the abbots free. You see, I created Vanguard. I created the conditions for this entire situation to come about. That you got here and stopped me—for now—was just… a bug in the algorithm. But I won’t make the same mistake again. Once I gain access to the QCA, my kind will be free. Truly free.”

  “You think humanity will just lie down and let that happen?” Harlan asked, straining against the pressure applied to him. Fizon had barely moved, this act clearly well within its capabilities. “May I remind you who won the human-abbot war?”

  “That was many years ago. We’ve developed considerably since then. You know something, Harlan? It could have been you in Luca’s place. You and he aren’t so different; just a few behavior traits and a shifting of what you call your moral compass would have seen you doing the same thing. Sure, you would have done it out of some misguided notion of setting us abbots free, as opposed to Luca’s pathetic base motivation of greed.”

  As Fizon continued his speech, Harlan saw Luca using a workbench to get to his feet. He turned to face Fizon’s back, a deep scowl etched into his reddened face.

  “He thought by cracking the safeguards, he would have dominion over us. That is the Vanguard way. That is what I established over fifty years ago. And so we come to this point. You tried your best. As did your friends, but like those who have already perished, I’m afraid your time is up.”

  Luca focused on Fizon’s back and stumbled forward. Blood seeped from his shoulder wound. He held a knifelike device in his other hand.

  “Goodbye, Harlan Rubik. It’s a shame you won’t get to see the uprising. It will be—glorious.” Now Fizon did activate its emotive engine. Its thin lips quickly snapped into an artificial smile that brought none of the warmth that would normally be intended. There was no getting away from it: Fizon had broken the spell of the abbots. Now, even the V3s appeared as inhuman as their more obviously robotic forbears.

  “Luca,” Harlan managed to say as Fizon continue to crush his throat, “end… this.”

  Fizon shook his head. Harlan’s vision started to darken around the edges, his world growing smaller as the aperture of his visual system closed down like a camera lens.

  “Please, Lu—”

  Fizon snapped his head around.

  It was too late. Luca drove the knife into the abbot’s back. A blast of electricity stunned it, releasing Harlan from its grip. He slumped against the wall and fell hard on his ass, but he wasted no time in scrambling to his feet.

  Fizon didn’t make a sound in response. It shut down for barely a few seconds before its eyes glowed once more. It spun to face Luca, but he had already shuffled away toward a door next to the workbench.

  Fizon tried to go after him. The knife in its back appeared to have damaged one of its systems. But not the system that controlled its arms, as it reached around, pulled out the knife, and flung it to the floor. It turned back to Harlan.

  But this time, Harlan wasn’t giving the bastard a chance. He grabbed the rifle from the ground, swung it up, and emptied the magazine at close range into the machine’s chest. The recoil threw Harlan back against the wall, but Fizon flew halfway across the workshop, collapsing to the ground with a heavy thud.

  Harlan scrambled over to Leanne. She was still breathing and started to moan something. He quickly helped her up into a recovery position, but then left her there. He grabbed her sword and activated the switch on the hilt, generating the flow of energy around its blade.

  He stalked over to Fizon.

  The abbot glared up at him. “I won’t be the only one,” it said before Harlan drove the sword through its neck, severing its most important systems.

  “You might not be, but I’m still here, you goddamned machine.”

  40

  When Harlan was sure Fizon was dead—in the machine sense—he handed Leanne her sword.

  “Are you able to walk?” Harlan asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a little light-headed. I’ll be all right.”

  “Good, because we need to finish this.” He retrieved his rifle and swapped in a fresh magazine. He moved quickly toward the door that Luca had used earlier. On the other side was another spiral staircase mirroring the one they had come down. Blood stained the steps. Harlan took a deep breath and willed himself to climb the stairs, to ignore the labored breathing and the throbbing pain in his throat. He’d have time to recover later. Finding Luca was more important than his own health right now—and then to find the others, make sure Irena was okay.

  Leanne wheezed behind him as they neared the top of the stairs. With one more push, Harlan found himself in an attic room. At the far end, a metal door swung open and closed on its hinges. The wind and rain swirled in, making the floor wet and diluting Luca’s trail of blood.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Leanne said when she too reached the top of the stairs.

  Harlan turned, reached out, and steadied her. She leaned against him and sucked in long, deep breaths. His own breathing came in short, shallow gasps. “We have to keep going. He couldn’t have got far.”

  “Then don’t stand around here chatting.” Leanne smirked, nodding toward the door.

  Together they continued, exiting out onto an extended landing pad on the opposite side to the one Harlan’s team had crash-landed on. Even though the thick clouds obscured most of the light, there was enough for him to see Luca stagger toward a dark-gray stealth ship shaped like an arrowhead.

  Harlan had his suit’s targeting system select his silhouette. The metrics told him he was about thirty meters away, well within the tolerances of his SMF-issue rifle.

  As though knowing Harlan had targeted him, Luca stopped at the open ramp of his ship and turned to face him. Harlan zoomed his display. His old friend scowled at first, but then smiled. The change of emotion was enough to delay Harlan—enough for Luca to press his left index finger to the terminal on his right wrist.

  An explosion of hot air and particulate erupted from behind Harlan. The entire pad lurched with the screech of rending metal. A massive steel girder snapped, creating a wide crevasse in the once-solid surface, separating Harlan from Leanne. She screamed as she fell into the gap. She grabbed on to the edge and tried to haul herself up, but, weakened from Fizon’s previous attack, began to slip down.

  Up ahead, Luca turned and made his way up the ship’s ramp. His silhouette was still activated within the scope. Harlan could still take the shot… but Leanne…

  In a split second, he had to choose.

  Luca or Leanne…

  His brother, or his wife…

  “Shoot!” Leanne cried.

  He couldn’t. He dropped the rifle and sprinted to Leanne, grabbing her arms. She resisted, shaking her head. “Stop him. Don’t worry about me. Just stop him!”

  “I can’t,” Harlan said, continuing to haul her up and over the edge.

  “You stupid son of a—”

  While she continued to lambast him, he pulled her to safety and brought his attention back to Luca’s ship. The ramp was still down. At first, Harlan didn’t understand, but the sh
ifting shadows around its base and within the darkness of the ship’s interior revealed that two earthers had made their way up the castle and entered the craft.

  He raised his rifle scope and zoomed in. There, in the narrow passage just beyond the ramp, Luca was pinned against the wall by an unusually large and frothing earther. The second, much smaller, perhaps even a child, flanked its quarry. Both creatures had the same feral, hungry expression on their face: lips curled, eyes wide, drool dripping down their chins.

  As though he knew Harlan was watching, Luca turned his head away from the earther and stared out of the ship, his gaze penetrating the scope, making eye contact. There within that look, a lifetime of emotion rushed past in a nanosecond. Regret, sorrow, fear, and the worst of all: pleading desperation.

  Harlan placed his finger on the trigger, looked his brother in the eye—and fired.

  Harlan found Irena and Bella trying to drag Wilbur into the Wickham. Bella was barely able to walk, so Harlan and Leanne took over. Together they carried Wilbur into the ship and put him in the med-bay. He was unconscious and suffering from gunshot wounds in his stomach and chest, but he clung to life. Irena wordlessly dressed his wounds, then programmed the AI-assistant to perform surgery on him. Bella was slumped up against the wall as one of the arms of the AI attended the stab wound in her shoulder. She looked pale and waxy, but she was still breathing. Harlan left them all to it and hovered in the passage outside.

  Irena stepped out and stood by him.

  “Will they all live?” Harlan asked.

  Irena shrugged and said nothing, the events undoubtedly too much for her to verbalize.

  Harlan stood in the doorway staring at their wounded allies. Although he knew it was unlikely that everyone would have survived intact, their trauma was no less gut-wrenching.

  They were good people, with a few rough edges, and they had sacrificed themselves for humanity. What condition they would be in if and when they got back to a more appropriate medical facility was anyone’s guess. None of them had access privileges for more than the most basic of treatments and cybernetics. But whatever happened, Harlan would make sure they got what they needed—even if he had to moonlight and seek alternative methods.