by James Somers
“I wonder why they didn’t attack that space station?” Dorian asked.
Before the last syllable escaped her lips, a massive beam of energy emanating from some point beyond the planet, smashed into the Vorn space station, knocking out its shields and further vaporizing one quarter of its surface area.
“Where did that come from?” Millo shouted.
“I don’t know. There’s nothing on scanners-just empty space,” Orin said, mystified.
Within moments, another powerful burst slammed into the station. Without shields to buffer the blow, the structure shattered like a window pane. Several large sections of debris began to fall toward the planet, dragging the atmosphere with white hot material, vaporizing during its descent.
“That’s an unbelievable amount of power coming from somewhere,” Tiet said. No longer content to stay in his chair, he joined Orin at the systems control station, with Dorian close behind.
“Millo, I think the planet would provide us with at least some protection-better than just sitting out here,” Orin said.
“I’m for that,” he said. “Setting course and speed.”
The Saberhawk veered away from their previous course toward the planet. They hoped to avoid whatever predator was lurking nearby and find further information about what was really happening on this side of the rift.
Vale was unable to discern the trouble occurring around the ship. Wedged inside the landing-skid housing, the android had no view of the surroundings. Except for vibrations given off through the hull of the ship and some flashes of light, all was quiet in space. Now was the time to break into the ship and acquire his target again. He did not have proper schematics for the vessel. But Vale was within the shield perimeter of the ship, and any weak place in the hull would suffice for an entry point.
Using the hypermagnetic discs in his appendages, the android climbed out of the skid housing and began to cross the surface of the ship. Coming across the top of the ship, Vale spotted a docking hatch. He crawled toward it, paying little attention to the nearby planet they were approaching. The android located the emergency panel and peeled it away effortlessly revealing the keypad underneath. Vale applied his hand to the pad and sensors beneath his pseudo flesh began to scan the internal controls. Within moments his processors had decoded the lock. He applied the code.
The outer hull door unlocked. Vale turned the manual lever and released pressurized gases as the bulkhead doors parted, allowing him to enter the vestibular area to await atmospheric equalization. The outer door automatically closed and the area re-pressurized to match the interior of the ship. Once the process was completed, the interior door unsealed itself and opened, allowing Vale free access to the interior of the Saberhawk.
“Orin, I’m reading a hull breech,” Millo said.
“What? Where?”
“The docking hatch has just been opened and resealed again.”
“Sensors still show we are the only life forms on the ship,” said Orin.
“Is the area pressurized?” Tiet asked.
“Yes. I’m still showing normal atmospheric conditions in the cargo area.”
“All right, I’ll check it out.”
“We’ll check it out,” Dorian said.
Tiet didn’t even try to argue the point with her. They moved quickly through the passageway from the bridge toward the cargo hold. When they reached the cargo bay, Tiet tapped the switch on the bulkhead to release the door. As he stepped into the area, the computer automatically brought up the lights. Heavy footsteps grew rapid and close then paused as the illumination came on.
“Move, Dorian!” he shouted pushing her aside.
Tiet barely drew his sword in defense before the android came down from above with its own Barudii blade. The force of the attack nearly knocked Tiet off his feet. Instinctively he forced back with his mental power, trying to compensate for the android’s greater physical strength.
He ducked down and rolled away then leaped back toward the menacing robot, slashing at it with all of the fury he could muster. The Android defended itself well. Dorian got back to her feet with her own sword drawn, but she kept out of the way for the moment looking for an opening. Tiet hoped she would not intervene. He and Vale exchanged strikes at a dizzying pace. Tiet used the two-handed fulcrum technique taught to him by Orin long ago, incorporating the Way for speed and agility enhancement. Still, he could not get past the android’s weapon to destroy it.
Vale’s face was expressionless as he countered each strike and parried only to meet the humans blade each time. His computer mind rapidly coordinated every movement while trying to find a weakness in Tiet’s defense that would allow a death blow.
Vale’s back was now to Dorian. Tiet could feel her in his mind as she lunged for the android. He wanted to stop her, to protect her, but it was too late. Vale noticed her steps, the rush of wind around her blade and moved to defend himself.
Tiet struck again to draw its attention from her, but to no avail. Dorian’s blade penetrated the androids synthetic skin then dragged across its adomen exoskeleton as she swiped down across its back. Leaving his sword hand to counter Tiet’s strike, Vale struck Dorian with the other, sending her back to the floor with a fractured arm.
A fury welled up within Tiet as he sensed her pain. He blasted Vale with a mental burst that sent the android flying back hard into the cargo bay wall.
It felt different than when he had used the Way back on Castai. He felt more powerful. But his rage overpowered his bewilderment. Vale stood again, quickly recovering from the fall. Tiet lowered his blade as the android lunged for him only to be hurled back against the cargo bay wall again and again.
Tiet felt the power surging now. He sensed the workings of the android and felt the drain of its power as it fought to get at him. He sensed the physical pain of Dorian and the presence of Millo at the helm and Orin coming toward the cargo bay. Then something happened he had not expected. The android spoke to him.
“Are you afraid to fight me, human?” it asked, trying to stand again. “You are a coward for using your mental power to avoid open combat with me.”
“Don’t listen to it,” Dorian said, still huddled on the floor holding her arm.
“Yes, human, cower with your woman,” Vale said.
Tiet replaced his sword in its scabbard, as he released the android from the invisible grip of his mind. Vale cautiously picked up his own blade from the ground. Tiet’s kemsticks leaped to his hands from the magnetic clips on his thighs. He calmed himself and moved into the fluid movements of his favorite two-handed technique.
Orin had rarely taught him to use the kemsticks, as he favored the blade, but Tiet had always enjoyed the two-handed style with its rapid-fire strikes and elaborate movements. Vale attacked quickly. For a few moments, they remained deadlocked blow for blow. Then Tiet shifted to his own version of the two-handed technique, relying on no discernable pattern the android’s mind could decipher. As Tiet increased his speed, he became a blur of motion. He landed a strike to the android’s leg then another followed quickly to the torso.
The robot failed to match the speed of Tiet’s attack. For every three to five strikes made, one landed on the android’s body, doing serious damage to its exoskeleton. The robot retreated away from the continuing assault, losing bits and pieces of his mechanical structure as the strikes continued to find purchase on his body.
He sliced Vale’s forearm open, disintegrating the motor controls of his hand. The android’s sword fell from the limp appendage. Tiet never let up on the robot. Orin was now in the cargo bay with Dorian, helping her with her injury. Tiet wanted to be the one consoling her. He dealt a quick and final deathblow, driving a kemstick right through the android’s chest where its primary power source was housed.
Vale fell to the cargo bay floor and moved no more. Tiet replaced the kemsticks on each thigh. He ran to Dorian’s side.
“How’s your arm?”
“I don’t think its bad…”
<
br /> “It’s fractured in two places.”
“Are you sure?” Orin asked.
“Yes, I…I sensed it as it happened. I’m not sure how though. The Way seems more powerful on this side of the rift.”
“Interesting…we had better get to the med-station and set Dorian’s arm.”
The trio walked back through the cargo bay entrance and sealed the door again.
“What about the android?” Tiet asked.
“I don’t trust leaving it there,” Orin said. “Open the outer bay door and flush the remains into space.”
Tiet complied, being only too happy to finally rid themselves of this persistent assassin. He keyed in the command on the cargo bay keypad. The computer scanned for life signs as a routine safety measure and then opened the doors. The pressurized gases quickly rushed into the vacuum carrying Vale’s lifeless, torn body with them. Tiet watched the debris clear through the cargo door window and lingered only long enough to see the doors closing again.
ASSIMILATION
The cold of space would have quickly killed him had there been any real life in his android body. Now only the incomprehensible surging of a computer mind remained. The body was hacked to sheds, and the final blow had disintegrated his primary power supply along with his main efferent signal processor.
Vale’s functioning mind was trapped in a body he could not control. The attempt to bait the human through its pride had failed. His mind raced at incalculable speeds searching for errors in his own performance that may have caused the outcome. But it was a pointless race to run, for now he was nothing but wreckage floating in the cold black void of space.
Something tingled. Something probed his computer mind, not invading, but washing over him and through him. A voice spoke inaudibly to him. It was familiar and mechanical in nature. Vale’s mind responded to its call. He began to move swiftly through space. The voice reassured him without words.
It pulled him across the vast expanse to itself. Vale discerned no movement, but he calculated five hours from the first contact with the voice until he saw himself pass through an opening into a vessel. The voice of the Sphere called for him to release all data and merge with it. There was no resisting the call.
Within microseconds, the Vale android became one with the Sphere. A vast memory of the Sphere’s travels across different worlds in pursuit of the Vorn opened up to him. The Sphere had returned home to this planet as it followed the Vorn across space, destroying them everywhere they were found, just as the Makers had planned. And yet, for Vale the android, the Vorn were his masters, having sent him on his mission after the Barudii warrior and his companions.
A problem presented itself-opposing goals and masters. The only way to reconcile the two was to fulfill both objectives. The Barudii warrior and his companions had to be exterminated along with the Vorn. The Vorn had not restricted the android from targeting them. And nothing in the creator’s directives to the Sphere denied it the privilege to exterminate rebels of any race. Simple. All objectives would be met. Failure was not an option.
Vale and the Sphere were one. There was so much power and so much data available between them. They knew where the Barudii ship was located. The Sphere had been tracking it all along. Vale watched it through the eyes of the Sphere, seeing through its scanning mechanisms.
The Barudii ship approached the planet on the far side, away from the Sphere’s current position. An invasion force was already prepared to decimate Vorn cities on the planet surface, to rid the Maker’s home planet of the infestation by their enemies. And now Vale’s memory provided further information.
The Sphere now understood what the android’s mind had known-that the Vorn had been in the process of trying to escape across the local phenomena known as the transdimensional rift. And they currently occupied a conquered planet similar to the Maker’s home-world here. It would be necessary then to travel across the rift to destroy the Vorn at that location as well.
Now was the time to launch the first wave of the invasion force. If the Vorn were able to counter the attack by some means then subsequent waves would be modified to overcome the problem and finish the objective. Now, Vale could finish his objective as well. The Sphere had been refitting his chassis since the time it pulled his torn body inside itself. And it had duplicated his android body with a pair of automatons able to function as extensions of his body, but directly controlled by their conjoined minds. The Barudii warrior would lose the advantage he had gained at their last encounter.
The trip through the planet’s atmosphere was uneventful with shields operating at maximum. Orin scanned the planet for topographical and geographical data as the Saberhawk cruised swiftly at sixty thousand feet.
“I’m picking up twelve large cities with functional energy signatures and many more appear to be on fire or have sustained major damage. It’s like a war is taking place. At this point on the map, sweeping to this area, all these minor cities are destroyed, while those with major structures have sustained heavy damage. Wait a minute, what’s this?”
He tapped the display next to an alert code for the geographical data search. The screen complied by showing a match to the ships database. Orin released the information.
“I…I can’t believe it.”
On the screen it read, planet: Castai. Orin began looking for specifics in the data. There it was. Mt. Vaseer appeared on the compiled data map. He could not have mistaken it for anything else. Orin knew the place he had called home, better than any other location on Castai, and yet, here it was on a world across the rift.
Upon scanning this city, Orin found a great deal more damage than the old city inhabited by Estall and his Aolene back home. He keyed in comparison data from his home world and matched them together. Orin saw clearly that this city of Vaseer was actually less complete than back home. Somehow this planet was a duplicate of his home world.
“What is it, Orin,” Tiet asked?
“This planet is somehow a duplicate of Castai.”
“What?”
“I know…but I’ve already located Mt. Vaseer and confirmed other topographical comparisons. The oceans, the mountains and almost every major landmark are the same.”
Silence held them captive.
“But the Vorn inhabit this planet,” Dorian said.
“We could really use some answers and the Vorn aren’t likely to give them to us. I think we should go to this planet’s city of Vaseer and see if the people on this world left any records. The city is deserted according to the scan data. I don’t know what else to do at this point. “This isn’t what we expected to find.”
“Well, we had better do something,” Millo said. “This ship isn’t invisible, you know. Somebody will be shooting at us sooner or later if we just fly around up here. I vote for Vaseer.”
Tiet and Dorian nodded in agreement.
“Course plotted. E.T.A. is twenty minutes.”
The Saberhawk’s thrusters boosted them away toward the mountain city. Thick cloud cover provided good visual cover for the ship, but most likely they were already being tracked by the Vorn. The question was, could they reach Vaseer and find out what they needed to know before they were intercepted by attack ships?
The reconstruction of Vale’s body and the construction of his duplicates took a little time even for the automatons and nano-builders at the Spheres’ control-but soon enough the work was complete. At ten hours, fifty three minutes and twenty seven point seven eight seconds, Vale’s repaired body and his new duplicates came online.
The Vale-Sphere mind held control over all three bodies simultaneously. The three androids moved without delay to join the waiting invasion force. In one of the launch bays within the huge Sphere, the Vale androids boarded a carrier vessel about to launch to the planets surface. The drones were miniatures of the Sphere itself. Each attack drone was fully armed with phased plasma weapons and shield generators for defense.
Many of the drones transformed into large surface attack robots,
more suited to close quarters fighting and rooting out combatants able to evade the airborne attack force. A spherical carrier drone closed around the three Vale androids and hovered off the deck of the launch bay to join the other mini-spheres leaving the main ship. The first target would be a multiple objective-the Barudii ship on course for one of the ancient cities of the Makers and a large contingent of Horva clones on their way to the same location.
A Horva clone of regal stature and advanced intelligence sat astride his grevasaur, surveying his army. The general expected a mighty victory today. The Sphere doomsday weapon would take his bait, thinking this army to be sent by the Vorn. It had decimated their forces at every encounter with the powerful drones it employed, as well as the powerful weapons used by the main Sphere itself. But General Grod was certain the machine was in orbit around Castai. Sensor scans had failed to locate it, and the orbiting satellites able to detect its presence had been destroyed.
But now, by employing his new plan, Grod felt confident that not only would they soon have its location but they would finally put an end to its reign of destruction. After all, if the Sphere were to eradicate the Vorn, he and his elite Horva would also be included. Besides, Grod didn’t want their former masters destroyed, but subjugated.
The Vorn were still useful to him, but they would soon learn who the real masters were. Their resistance to the uprising of his fellow Horva would soon be crushed and the balance of power would rest with himself and his fellow clones.
The general’s command group began to break away from the rest of his forces as they approached Mt. Vaseer from the north. They would make there way up the mountain to a preplanned area overlooking the valley on the other side. The valley would be the perfect battlefield to have their showdown with the drones and draw them out into the open, so that his plan could be properly executed. One thing about computers, they always made predictable movements. He knew the drones would take the bait and the electronic signals employed to control them would help identify the location of the Sphere itself.
