by J. L. Doty
The door opened and Nano ushered the two women into the office. Charlie wore the visual distortion field that produced the Edwin Chevard appearance. When Carristan saw him seated behind the desk, she halted abruptly, and swallowed an angry retort. Behind her Delilah stepped into the room, doing a good job of pretending to be the meek servant.
Charlie stood and stepped around the desk. He felt like a schoolboy about to ask a girl on a date for the first time. “Your Ladyship,” he said to Carristan, the programmable implant distorting his voice.
“Who are you?” Carristan demanded.
Charlie tried to smile warmly, hoping to alleviate some of her fear. “I’m Edwin Chevard.”
“What do you want? Do you intend us harm? My girl here . . .” She waved a hand at Delilah. “ . . . is just a servant. Let her go. I’m sure you have no need of kidnapping a mere servant.”
Charlie looked at Delilah as he spoke. “Oh no, Lady Carristan, we have no need of a servant. However, we do find it advantageous to kidnap Her Royal Highness.” Charlie bowed deeply to Delilah.
Carristan gasped and tried to deny it. To Del’s credit, she didn’t react in any way, but looked Charlie in the eyes and considered him carefully. She thought the situation over for a few moments, then slowly squared her shoulders. The servant disappeared and the royal princess emerged. “Carristan, my dear, please,” she said. “I think there’s no use denying it. Mr. Chevard is clearly well-informed.”
“We intend you no harm,” Charlie said, looking only at Del. “My people will protect you with their lives. You’ll be housed, clothed, and fed, and treated as befits your station. Unfortunately, you cannot leave. We support the Free Aagerbanni Resistance here, and the windfall of your captivity is . . . a boon to our efforts, shall we say?”
Del’s eyes narrowed, and Charlie wondered if his disguise was as good as he thought. “For the record, Mr. Chevard,” she said, “I did not support my father’s ambitions. I did not support his alliance with Syndon, nor the annexation of Aagerbanne.”
“I’m well aware of that, Your Highness. But you must be aware that your support either way is irrelevant. Your presence here as a hostage, however, is quite relevant to our cause.”
Charlie turned to Nano. “Captain Neverlose, please see Her Highness and Lady Carristan to their quarters. And see to it that they’re under guard and protected at all times.”
“Will do,” Nano said. He opened the door and held it for the two women.
Delilah turned, walked to the door, paused on the threshold, and turned back, looked suspiciously from Charlie to Nano. To Nano she said, “I think we’ve met before.”
Nano shook his head. “No, never met.”
She smiled, clearly not convinced. She looked again from him to Charlie, then turned and left the room.
Charlie woke in the middle of the night needing to piss badly, staggered tiredly into the fresher, and relieved himself. As he returned to bed he paused at the small dressing table on which lay the computer tablet and the ornate dagger. His last visit to the blind corridor haunted almost every waking moment, and many of his sleeping moments too. He’d racked his brains a hundred times trying to understand why it had failed to respond to his presence.
He threw the switch on the computer tablet, watched the internal map of Starfall appear on its small screen. He stared at the display for several seconds, knew for a fact he’d missed something important, but what? He switched the tablet off, crossed the room to his bed, and sat on its edge staring at the tablet. And the dagger; he stared at that too. He wondered why his eyes kept returning to the dagger, just an ornate piece of junk. He’d suspected it was the overlord key, but that had turned out to be wrong. Cesare had told Paul it was important, so Charlie had never let it out of his sight, stuffing it into a pocket each morning, and putting it on the dresser each night before going to bed. He tried to recall the last time he’d gone down there. He remembered getting up, throwing on the robe, and going down to the blind corridor. He’d done nothing different—except he hadn’t taken the dagger. “Shit,” he shouted, jumped to his feet, ran across the room, and swept up the dagger and the comp tablet. He ran out of his room in his underwear, swearing, “Shit, shit, shit!”
Ell sat up on the couch where she’d been sleeping and jumped to her feet, a startled look on her face. She followed him out into the corridor where he dodged cleaning bots that only came out at night. Charging down to the lower floors, he took steps three at a time in a headlong dash. He stopped just outside the blind corridor, and Ell stopped beside him.
“What are you doing, little brother?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
He held the dagger in his right hand with the comp tablet in his left displaying the interior map of Starfall. He extended his right arm so the dagger passed into the blind corridor, and the corridor suddenly appeared on the map. He pulled the dagger back out of the corridor, and it disappeared. In, out, in, out, he waved the dagger back and forth, watching the corridor appear and disappear on the map. All along it had been the dagger that triggered the appearance of the corridor on the map, not him. With the exception of that one time he’d always had it stuffed in a pocket.
He sat down on the floor in the corridor with his back to a wall and put the tablet aside, then examined the dagger carefully. The overlord key, it had to be, but again he found nothing to indicate it was anything more than a cheap, decorative blade.
Standing over him, Ell asked, “What is it? What’s bothering you?”
He looked up at her and said, “The overlord key, I need—”
He stopped in midsentence as her eyelids fluttered and her mouth opened. In a trancelike state, she stared at nothing for several seconds. When the moment ended, she looked down at him and took a step back. Then she subvocalized into her implants, “Add, get down here right away.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She ignored him as she told Add their location. In a matter of seconds a breathless and half-dressed Add came running down the corridor and stopped beside Ell. She asked the same question Charlie had. “What’s wrong?”
Ell looked at Charlie and said, “Say it to her. She has to hear it in your voice for the implant programming to kick in.”
“Say what?”
“What you said to me a moment ago about the key.”
“The overlord key?”
Those words had the same effect on Add as they’d had on Ell: the eyelids fluttering, the trancelike state that lasted for only a moment. When Add regained her composure she looked down at Charlie, held out her hand, and said, “May I have the dagger, little brother?”
Charlie extended the hilt up to her. She took it, looked at it for a moment, then pressed the sharp edge of the blade to the back of her hand and made a small cut there. She handed the blade to Ell, who then cut the back of her hand. Both cuts weren’t deep, and began healing rapidly due to the genes engineered into the twins’ ancestors.
“DNA lock,” Ell said as she handed the dagger to Charlie.
He noticed two red smears on the blade’s edge. It wasn’t a terribly large blade, about the length of his middle finger, hilt the same. As he looked at it, the blade and hilt came apart with a click. There was no hidden compartment, no secret documents that would lead him to concealed wealth and power, but the connection between the two was an odd sort of plug-and-socket type of arrangement.
Charlie rushed up to the security center with the twins on his heels. He sat down at the security commander’s station and examined it, looking for an interface that would mate with the dagger. He saw nothing visible, so he put the dagger down and ran his hands over the surface of the station.
“I’m looking for a visual distortion field,” he told the twins. “Help me.”
He repeated the process at the other stations. Again nothing. Eventually he and the twins ran their
hands over every inch of the security center, every station, console, the floors and walls. They even stood on the consoles and ran their hands over the ceiling. Nothing.
“Computer,” he said. “Define the overlord interface.”
“This system does not recognize the reference to overlord interface.”
He needed to try a different approach. “Computer, define all references to overlord.”
“Overlord is undefined in this system.”
“Damn!”
Dagger in hand, he headed back down to the blind corridor. With the twins standing in the hallway outside it, he stood facing the featureless wall with the visual distortion field. “Cesare,” he said, “where is it? What are you hiding? What are you trying to tell me?”
Driven by pure desperation, he laid the dagger on the floor since he had no pockets in his underwear, walked up to the wall, and pressed his hands against it about shoulder high. His hands again appeared to sink into the stone up to the wrists. Something had changed, he realized, something subtle. Perhaps the texture of the wall, perhaps it was ever so slightly different than before, though still featureless and blank.
He started at the top and ran his hands from left to right, dropped his hands down one hand span, dragged them along the wall right to left. Methodically, he repeated the process, slowly working his way down the wall, careful to miss nothing. He was more than halfway down, about waist high, when he found it: two indentations that he could feel, that he was certain hadn’t been there when he’d done this once before. That had been before he’d inserted the three cyberkeys into their sockets in the security center.
Two indentations. The visual distortion field hid them from view, and he couldn’t really determine any fine detail with his fingers so he had to go on instinct. He picked up the two pieces of the dagger and, going by touch, brought the hilt up to one of the indentations, hoping he could insert it in some way, careful not to force it since he couldn’t see what he was doing. Again, nothing.
He moved the hilt to the other indentation, felt a mild pull on it like two magnets attracting one another, carefully let the pull guide his hand. Just before it made contact the pull twisted the dagger slightly, and when it touched the indentation it locked there with a solid click. He tested it, tugged on it, and couldn’t remove it.
He lifted the dagger’s blade, brought it to the other indentation, felt the same pull, the same guiding twist at the last moment, and it too snapped into place with a click. The visual distortion field disappeared, and the hilt and blade now protruded visibly from the otherwise featureless wall. But nothing else happened. He waited, and still nothing. “Damn it, Cesare. What am I supposed to do?”
He stepped back from the wall, tried to twist or turn or pull the hilt and blade, but met with no success. He waited for what seemed an eternity and nothing happened.
He turned to the twins. “Do you know anything about the overlord key?”
Both shook their heads as Ell said, “No. There was just some hidden programming in our implants. When you said overlord key, I felt a mild compulsion to cut myself with that blade.”
“Me too,” Add said.
He picked up the tablet, looked at the map of Starfall and nothing had changed. Shaking his head, he turned to leave, and as he stepped across the threshold of the corridor, Cesare said, “Charlie.”
He gasped, spun, and there stood Cesare in the middle of the blind corridor, but not really Cesare, just a 3-D projection.
Cesare said, “There were several different scenarios under which Overlord could have been activated. But since this recording is the one that you’re seeing, it means I’m dead, someone—probably Gaida and Theode—usurped Arthur’s claim to the de Maris ducal seat, and you’re now de Lunis.”
Cesare grinned. “Sorry about that, Charlie. But it was the only way I could think to save your life under such circumstances. And it was the only way I could think to give you the power necessary to save Arthur’s life if he still lives, or to avenge him if he’s dead.
“Activate Overlord immediately. With it you can defend Starfall. And remember me to Aziz and Sague and Ethallan. They’ve been good friends for many years. You can trust them implicitly. And tell them I said, The thirteenth man will rise.”
Cesare’s image disappeared, and the walls on either side of the blind corridor began to swing shut like two large doors. They didn’t grind or creak as they moved, but swung silently with no more noise than the quiet hiss of displaced air. And when they closed there was no longer any indication that the blind corridor had ever existed.
“But how the fuck do I activate Overlord?” he said, though he knew there’d be no answer forthcoming.
“Your father was always quite mysterious,” Add said.
Charlie sighed, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned and started back to his rooms. He happened to glance at the face of the tablet as he walked and noticed a small red flashing icon on the map. He stopped, zoomed in on it, and found it located in the security center.
For the second time that night, with the twins on his heels, Charlie rushed up to the security center, dropped down breathlessly into the couch at the commander’s console, and said, “Let’s try again.”
He recalled Cesare’s exact words. “Computer, activate Overlord.”
Nothing. Just dead silence for several seconds, then the computer said, “Overlord vocal signature confirmed. DNA sequence confirmed. Overlord lock released and initiation sequence activated.” There was a pause, then it said, “Diagnostic scans initiated. A full system report will be available in approximately ten minutes.”
Ten minutes. Starfall’s computational systems were enormously powerful. For it to take ten minutes to run diagnostic scans meant it was scanning one hell of a lot of hardware.
Charlie couldn’t sit still. He stood, paced back and forth while he waited for the system to finish its diagnostic run. The twins sat calmly and waited. Goaded by impatience, Charlie stopped and looked at the command console. “Come on, come on, come on,” he demanded.
“The system does not recognize the command, Come on.”
“Oh fuck you!”
“The system does not recognize the command, Oh fuck you. However, Your Grace, the diagnostic run is complete. In summary, all elements of the system have been in powered-down and static mode for varying durations ranging from five to twenty-three years, and a considerable amount of maintenance is many years overdue. However, the system is capable of performing at an overall effectiveness of eighty percent, though without further maintenance that will decline rapidly. Do you wish Overlord fully activated at this time?”
While the command console had come to life, Cesare hadn’t given him an operator’s manual for Overlord, so he’d have to move carefully. He decided best not to activate Overlord until he knew what the hell it was. “Computer, do not activate at this time. Display an executive schematic of the entire Overlord system, with all Overlord facilities highlighted in red.”
Charlie expected to see an enhanced 3-D map of Starfall, with some new pieces of information here and there. But what appeared on the screen in front of him didn’t make sense until he realized he was looking at a solar system map. There were eight red blips spaced equally in an orbit around the system’s solar primary at an orbital radius twice that of Terra’s, another four orbiting Terra along with Luna, though the four blips were at a radius far outside Luna’s orbit. The red blips were labeled as platforms one through twelve.
“Amazing,” Ell said.
“Overlord,” he whispered, almost unable to get the words out. “Give me a detailed specification on platform one.”
With the twins looking over his shoulder he spent ten minutes reviewing the flood of data that trailed across the screen. There was so much that he could only scan bits and pieces here and there, and glance briefly at a schematic or two.
But it was enough to confirm his suspicions: platform one was an orbital weapons platform, bristling with transition batteries and transition launchers, active shielding, and one hell of a power plant to give it muscle (though no transition drive, and just enough sublight drive to make orbital adjustments over long periods of time). If the other platforms were anything like platform one, Starfall was nicely defended indeed.
“Holy shit!”
“The system does not recognize the command, Holy shit.”
Ell said, “I thought we taught him better than that.”
“Computer,” Charlie said. “Download a full Overlord system schematic and specifications to my personal comp. Also download details of the recently run diagnostic scan. Use type-one military encryption so I’m the only one who can access the information.”
“It’s being downloaded now, Your Grace.”
“Computer, lock down all access to Overlord so that only I can view it. And ensure that there are no traces of Overlord within the Starfall system visible to anyone else unless I specifically authorize it.”
“As you wish, Your Grace.”
CHAPTER 25
SUSPICIONS ABOUND
“Who is this Edwin Chevard?” Goutain shouted. Nadama watched him pace back and forth in front of three of his generals who stood at rigid attention, quaking in their boots. “Only six months ago the Aagerbanni resistance was ready to collapse, and then along comes this Chevard fellow. We should have consolidated Aagerbanne months ago and moved on to the next target by now. Instead, all I hear from you is delays and Edwin Chevard, failures and Edwin Chevard, lost ships and Edwin fucking Chevard!”
Goutain had worked himself into a howling rage. He stopped in front of General Tantin and stood nose-to-nose with him, small bits of spittle splattering Tantin’s face as he screamed, “Edwin Chevard, Edwin Chevard, Edwin Chevard! Well, Tantin, what do you have to say for yourself?”
General Tantin’s voice trembled as he answered. “We know almost nothing about the man, Your Excellency. It appears he did not exist prior to the advent of these Aagerbanni resistance fighters. That leads me to believe he was not active in politics prior to the annexation.”
