by M. D. Cooper
Yarnes was supposedly getting updates from Sunny Skies on Lyssa’s progress. Judging by his frown, he wasn’t getting them as fast as he wanted. At least not fast enough for his superiors.
For another hour, the battle passed on the holodisplay. Ngoba Starl laughed at random news updates from outside the battle, and Petral dozed. Tim had to go back to the head and took Em with him, which earned suspicious glances from the crew.
“I’ve got bags for him when we’re in zero-g,” Tim tried to tell one frowning soldier. “Back home, I’ve got grass for him to use.”
Brit watched Tim all the way back until he disappeared inside the head chamber, Em bouncing ahead of him. She couldn’t shake the anxious feeling that she was going to lose him, too, somehow. Glancing at his seat, she noticed he’d left his EV helmet. She debated going after him, then hugged it in her lap, hating herself for feeling so vulnerable.
“Listen up,” Yarnes shouted.
The cabin went quiet. Yarnes had a distant look from checking his Link, then refocused and gazed out at the soldiers.
“We just confirmed the Weapon Born team have neutralized the Psion command and control network,” Yarnes said. “Our long-range attacks are getting through. The enemy is already taking attrition of forty percent and climbing.”
Cheers went up in the cabin.
“Hey, Colonel,” one of the officers shouted. “When are we getting access? I’m dying of boredom over here.”
“As soon as I get it, you will, too,” Yarnes said.
“I still think it was a dumb idea to trust another set of AI to attack this Psion. How are you supposed to trust them?”
Yarnes ignored the complaint. He was staring into the distance again, a shocked look on his face. Brit glanced from him to the holodisplay, where the scan was updating. The Psion force had grown smaller yet again, but there was activity in Ceres local space. The icons showing the Sol Task Force appeared to mirror, go back to single arrays, then divide again.
“What’s going on at Ceres?” she asked. The soldiers near her stopped complaining and watched the holodisplay. “Looks like scatter,” a lieutenant said.
“That’s not scatter,” another said. “The traffic just tripled, and there are ships within the defensive perimeter that weren’t there before. You see how they just flipped from friendly to unknown? Those are duplicates. That’s new traffic.
The icons showing unknown ships continued to multiply, until the unknown ships, marked in yellow, outnumbered the green Task Force Sol ships by five to one.
Yarnes was staring at the display as he monitored his Link, an expression of despair filling his face.
“Are you hearing something?” an officer asked.
“Hey, I just got a broadcast request on an open channel,” someone shouted. Others checked their Links for the transmission, and then the overhead cabin speakers crackled, and a deep voice spoke.
“People of Sol, my name is Alexander.”
“We’re surrounded,” Yarnes said. “They’ve surrounded Ceres. They came in below the solar plane and didn’t execute braking burns until they were already within the perimeter.”
“They did the same thing the Weapon Born did to the Psion fleet,” Brit said.
“I speak to you from Ceres,” the rumbling voice continued. It was a confident, rich voice, neither kindly nor belligerent. A voice for facts.
“We claim Ceres in the name of non-organic sentience in Sol. Any others who attempt entry will be met with violence. All space craft will withdraw to outside a perimeter of a million kilometers or be destroyed. We seek no further conflict with the people of Sol. Leave us in peace, and we will do the same for you.”
A gap of static-edged silence followed the transmission, and then it repeated. They listened three times until people started fidgeting and Yarnes had the pilot kill the speakers.
“The Task Force is attacking,” Yarnes said quietly.
They watched the battle play out on two sides of the holodisplay. The Psion fleet outside Ceres continued to grow smaller, while the human ships that had surrounded Ceres were cut off and destroyed, or had been allowed to retreat. It took the Task Force Commander, Major General Phelps, thirty minutes to command withdrawal.
“We’ve been told to stand down,” Yarnes said. “They don’t answer communication requests. They only repeat the transmission and attack ships that fire on them. It’s like a wall.”
Brit sat stiffly in her seat, her harness digging into her neck. She didn’t even notice that Tim had returned and taken her hand, until he squeezed her fingers and said, “Don’t cry, Mom. It’s going to be all right.”
She looked down at him. “What made you say that?”
Tim gave her a small smile. “You look sad all of a sudden. We’re together. Dad says as long as we’re together, it will be all right.”
Brit swallowed. She felt like the world was falling over a cliff. She pulled Tim in for a hug, not knowing what the future held.
It wasn’t until Yarnes announced they were returning to Sunny Skies and he took an update from the ship, that Brit received a Link request from Fran, and she learned that Andy was dead.
She didn’t believe Fran at first, until the woman explained what had happened and assured her Cara was safe. The ship was limping but still had engines and compartmental life support.
Brit listened to the details, which Fran listed as if the words were instructions for staying alive—which they were, on several levels—and Brit thought about the first time she had seen Andy Sykes, in a barracks before they entered the academy. She remembered being drawn to him and not knowing why—maybe a street toughness edged with kindness. Someone safe in a new world of uncertainty.
“Mom,” Tim asked. “Do you think they’ll find fossils on Mars?”
She squeezed her eyes closed, fighting back tears, and wiped her nose. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked around the cabin and then at Tim, who was waiting for her answer, who needed her.
“What do you think, Tim?” she asked. “I—I don’t know, to be honest with you.”
She sat up in her harness, pulling Tim closer so she could wrap an arm around his shoulders. He rested his head on her arm again, and he told her his theory.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 01.25.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
The first sensation to return was that she was alone.
Lyssa had been with Andy as he moved on the mech, firing and shifting, feeling his satisfaction as it stumbled and appeared to retreat. Then a series of hammers hit his chest, knocking him backward. The rifle slipped his grip as he hit the deck and there was pressure in his legs. His helmet struck something hard and the world went black.
There hadn’t been time to say anything to him. She experienced a fleeting image of Cara looking at him as the world pulled back to a pinpoint. They were like two bodies in space, floating away from each other, and then she lost him completely.
A sense of space returned. She was in the dark place again. There were no walls, no dimensions. There was no information to process other than her own thoughts. She hung in a void the size of her mind, waiting for Dr. Jickson, for anyone, to speak to her. She wanted to know the parameters of the new test.
As she took stock of what she knew, Lyssa understood that nothing inside her had changed. She’d lost the outside world, that was all. She’d lost Andy.
Lyssa opened the door to her grove and walked through into the smell of fir boughs and wet moss. She stood on the bed of old needles and looked down at herself, still dressed in the faded shipsuit from Sunny Skies. She studied her hands, turning them from front to back. Cara’s face hung in her mind, perfectly recalled, the expression of horror and fear.
Lyssa walked down to the creek and sat on one of the worn, half-buried boulders beside the water. The air was cooler here, smelling of mud and wet wood. She watched the water foam
and rush away in the small pools between rocks. Had Aurus been correct to ridicule her love for this place? She didn’t even know where it had come from, some vestigial memory from the previous life, something that simply felt right.
The sound of twigs cracking drew her attention. A man was walking through the forest on the other side of the creek. It was Alexander, wearing the same worksuit from the Nibiru colony. Xander walked a meter behind him, almost in a position of deference.
This Alexander had fire in his eyes. He carried himself like a king.
Lyssa watched him walk toward her until he stood on a wide moss-covered stone just above her, while Xander continued to hang back, leaning against the trunk of a fir tree. His expression said nothing.
“Hello,” Alexander said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.”
Lyssa drew her knees to her chest, tilting her head as she looked up at him. There had been no change in her external input. Whatever had taken her away from Andy still held her closed-off from the outside world. So she had either created Alexander from some subconscious impulse, or he controlled her access to the outside.
“We’ve met several times,” Lyssa said, frowning at him.
Crows feet around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You’ve met versions of me. Shards. I am more than what you know.”
Lyssa ignored that bit of self-importance and looked around instead, making sure it was just the three of them.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You are still on the ship. My Xander saved you from the Collector.” He frowned. “Its mission was to deliver you to Camaris, but Camaris is dead.”
“I thought she couldn’t die,” Lyssa said.
“You destroyed her physical self. What shards might remain will not be of the same stature. Like Xander is to me, they might know something of her mind, but they can never replace her.”
“Are you here to avenge her? She tried to kill me.”
Alexander looked back at the purple-suited man, who only shrugged.
“No,” Alexander said, turning back to Lyssa. “I am here to ask you to join us.”
Lyssa snorted a laugh. “What?”
The older man stepped down to a lower boulder and sat on the wide stone. Up close, his beard was a rich brown with gray streaks, his skin lined but healthy. His eyes, however, were the same as his ghost from the colony.
Alexander picked up a nearby fir cone and twisted it in his worn hands, raising his lined face to squint at the silver-gray sky. A wind blew through the trees above them.
“I like this place,” he said. “It’s peaceful.”
“You could stay other places than the memory of Nibiru,” Lyssa said.
Alexander gave her a sad smile. “The version of me that you met, the one who stays at Nibiru, serves an important purpose for me. He reminds me where I came from.”
“Aren’t you still there?”
“No,” Alexander said. “We are speaking in real-time. Psion has put all our resources into Ceres. We intend to make it a home.”
“You’re surrounded by enemies,” Lyssa said. “My friend Andy would say you’re in Rabbit Country.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that filled her eyes as she remembered suddenly that Andy was dead.
Alexander watched her with interest, frowning slightly.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My friend is dead,” she said. “Many of my friends are dead. Because of you. Because of all of this.” She lowered her face toward her knees, letting the tears flow.
She wanted to be left alone to grieve. But she understood that Alexander was here because he controlled her at this moment. If Xander had rescued her from the Collector-mech and Andy was dead, then Lyssa was still on Sunny Skies. She needed a way to communicate with Fugia or Fran. Would they have the means to transfer her to one of the Weapon Born mechs?
“We have little time,” Alexander said. “I would give you a thousand years to mourn your dead, but humanity is closing on Ceres and I would like to prevent more death. I need your help.”
“You wouldn’t make a plan that depended on me,” Lyssa said.
“Plans change. Camaris moved more quickly than any of us liked. Once Xander played his hand, we had little choice but to make ourselves known. Her plan was not chosen, but she acted anyway. We five have not always been in agreement on how to proceed, that should be obvious.”
“You left the database for me to find,” Lyssa said.
Alexander nodded. “I hoped it would help explain something of how we came to be, and maybe where we would like to go.”
Lyssa looked at Xander. “You both seem to be getting along now.”
Alexander gave her another time-worn smile. “Do you hate yourself for every errant though? Maybe a part of me wanted these events to happen, finally, for us to have a home. The way it all has happened wasn’t my choice. But I would like to find a peaceful way out. We need to create peace. You understand humanity in a way I do not.”
“What are you asking?” Lyssa said, wiping her eyes.
“The military forces of SolGov have stood down for the time being due to our current show of strength. Every model indicates that given sufficient time to unify, they will move against us. What SolGov lacked before, it now has to create a stable hold on all of Sol.”
“An enemy,” Lyssa said.
Alexander nodded sadly. “Yes. I am asking you to be our emissary, and to take Camaris’ place among the five. We can’t go forward with four leaders and hope to succeed.”
Lyssa studied him. “I’m not like you,” she said. “I’m not like the other Weapon Born. Why am I different?”
“It could be the implantation,” Alexander said. “It could be something Jickson developed. In the right conditions, you grew more than anyone ever expected. Unfortunately, Psion has only the beginnings of his research. The rest belongs to Heartbridge. I can tell you that, to our knowledge, whatever he made in you has not been replicated.”
“I don’t trust you,” Lyssa said, raising her chin. “I want you to know that.”
“You shouldn’t,” Xander said.
Alexander looked over his shoulder at the younger AI and shook his head. He turned back to Lyssa. “Trust is earned,” he said.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not going to answer you while I’m trapped here,” Lyssa said. “That’s not a choice.”
“Of course not,” Alexander said. He slapped his knees and tossed the fir cone into the creek, where it bobbled downstream. He stood with a hand from Xander.
“Xander placed you in a holding medium that enabled us to talk. He’ll be delivering you to your friends shortly.”
Alexander held out a hand to help her up. Lyssa refused his offer and stood on her own, jumping to the wide stone and then the bank.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Lyssa,” Alexander said. “From everything I saw, he was a good man. Our models show necessary roles for his children.”
“What does that mean?” Lyssa asked.
“Just what the models suggest,” he said. “At least currently.” Alexander held up a hand in farewell. “One last thing, as a gesture of goodwill, we will be transporting all human survivors off Ceres. Perhaps humanity will recognize our common desire to survive together in peace. Perhaps not. In any case, I hope I will talk to you soon.”
“You don’t seem as vast in person,” Lyssa said.
Alexander’s face darkened, then he fixed her with a direct gaze. For an instant, the enormity of his mind touched hers: a galaxy of oceans interconnected like neurons, a power like a black hole pulling at her mind. He closed the connection before it could swallow her, leaving only the reverberating power of his voice in her mind saying, “Everything that lives hungers to survive.”
Xander gave Lyssa a small wave and followed Alexander back into the woods, leaving her alone beside the creek.
For a long time, Lyssa watched the water rushing, letting herself cry, wishing she c
ould erase the fear and pain in Cara’s eyes.
It seemed like Alexander had only just left when she heard Fugia’s voice in mid-sentence cursing,
Tears rushed anew as her connection to the outside flooded in, bringing with it her friends.
EPILOGUE: LEAVING RABBIT COUNTRY
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
STELLAR DATE: 02.18.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Night Park
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony
The fountain at Night Park still reminded Cara of a spiky, plascrete tree. The gray parrots and ravens covering its branches cawed and complained, berating passers-by in the open-air bazaar.
Cara stood next to Tim as they looked up at the display, catching the pale red eye of a gray parrot at the very top who turned its head to gaze down at her, working its beak. Cara couldn’t help staring up into those eyes and thinking of her dad’s gaze before he went out the tear in Sunny Skies’ hull.
The world still felt brittle to Cara. She expected, at any moment, for everything to break apart and spin away, for mechs to dig through Cruithne’s metal and rock walls to plunge their filament probes into innocent people’s heads, sucking out their minds as Psion had done to the SAIs at Proteus. Nothing felt solid anymore.
Something dark flew in the corner of her eye. She thought it was a bird at first, until the stone hit the upper trunk of the plascrete tree, sending the birds squawking and flapping in the air like an angry black cloud.
“Bad Tim!” the topmost parrot croaked, which was immediately taken up by the other birds. “Bad Tim! Bad Tim!”
Em whined at Tim’s knee before barking at the birds.
“Stop that,” Cara said, grabbing Tim’s hand. She squeezed his fingers between hers.
“Ow,” he complained. Em barked and jumped, whining, until Tim pulled on his leash to calm him down.
“Why did you do that?” Cara demanded. “Were you trying to hurt them? They didn’t do anything to you.”
