Revelations (The Boris Chronicles Book 3)

by Paul C. Middleton

  That was a long, slow process, though.

  ---

  Meanwhile, Boris and Paul were outside finding easily defensible positions for both railguns and bunkers to be put in. Places to put up railgun positions were the easy part. Boris was certain they could disguise them as pillars of rock.

  Paul was a little less sanguine about that proposal, but such formations did appear naturally in the area so he wasn't convinced it wouldn't work, either.

  Their biggest problem, especially close to the cave mouth, was that the entire area for at least 500 meters around that cave mouth was bare rock. Any bunker directly covering that cave mouth would be completely obvious.

  In the end, Boris decided to build a town for the people who chose to remain on Earth rather than follow Bethany Anne into space. He would move their current base of operations to this new location. Spreading the town away from the cave mouth and then digging a tunnel into the cave was the best option. They would also have to tunnel and create hidden bunkers on the edge of the forest. If they put them in with no underground entry, travel to and from them would inevitably reveal their locations.

  It was not a perfect solution. Bethany Anne was not enamored of pissing the Russian government off simply for the sake of it. It seemed that the Russians were happy enough playing a wait and see game, as opposed to all too many of the rest of the world's governments.

  She was just as happy to keep them ‘Gott verdammt fucking Switzerland’ for the purposes of the remainder of the time she was in near proximity to Earth. If they weren't going to piss in her backyard, she would do her best to avoid pissing in theirs. Although there was a small feeling that they owed her for cleaning up the mess that Konrad had created right under their noses.

  Recovering from such a massive internal security threat had thrown the Kremlin into a mild panic. The investigations into how it had happened were progressing slowly, although finding suborned officers that had been involved, even peripherally had helped - until it became clear no amount of political backing or information provided would save them from, at best, life imprisonment in Siberia.

  That didn’t mean she’d leave people in her service uncovered. There were already plans to place a puck defense system, similar to the one she was leaving in Japan, in the valley and covering the mountain. Boris was already planning on making contact with nearby farms for supplies of fresh produce, and several Black Eagles under ADAM’s control were far overhead in case the Russian government decided to play hardball.

  Once the Pucks were in, Boris and a handful of people he designated would be put in control of them.

  Boris still wanted a MotherPucker, just in case he had a large target to take out, like, say the entire Russian Government and senior military structure. For the time being Bethany Anne was saying ‘no’ still.

  In fact, the conversation had gone like this:

  “Bethany Anne, I NEED it for my ‘it all goes to hell’ plan. I’d rather kill thousands of politicians and bureaucrats than thousands of soldiers just following orders!” Boris had almost yelled at her over the phone line.

  Janna, who had been in the room, winced. It didn’t fit her definition of a respectful request. Boris had promised her it would be a respectful request.

  “If it needs doing, just call me. You have a direct line to me, ADAM, TOM and the Admiral. If we agree it’s appropriate, it will be done.” Bethany Anne had answered calmly. She knew Boris was still upset with the government’s failure to act when the NVG had moved against Romanovka.

  “But…”

  “Boris, do I need to come down there and claim a damned bear rug from your fucking hide? No. The Russians are quiet, they are one of the few countries actually supporting the effective embargo on alien tech I’ve put up in the UN. They haven’t even commented on the fact that I obviously have at least an allied force that is more effective at rooting out their own problems internally than they are.”

  Boris jumped back in, “And that force is mine! I need a big stick for when the svoltsky politicians get brave enough to think that they can roll us over. I don’t like killing people just following orders. I’d rather kill the people GIVING the orders.”

  “Then keep in contact with Yuko. I am sure she will be willing to aid you if you need to go in. If you go after the government with a MotherPucker, the number of civilian deaths could be more than would be good for either of our consciences. This discussion is over Boris. But I will throw you a bone. I’ll send down a bunch of armor penetrating tranquilizer darts so you don’t have to kill any small force the Russians might send to investigate. Then you can send them back, gift wrapped, as a cute little reminder that the government had better not think about fucking with the agreement between them and us.”

  Boris grunted. He had hoped that a ‘gloves were off’ ruling was over Russia, but they were too nice to her at the moment. From a strategic perspective, she was right. And she had the waste material from the asteroid mining being converted into prefabricated housing. It was being sent straight to the proposed town. Since it was actually slag turned into walls, there wouldn’t be much for them to pull out of it, so Boris had permission to trade samples of it for favors as needed. Who knew, maybe they’d ask if they could buy some for military housing or something. There was insulation between the slag outer and inner walls, so they would be cheaper than most buildings to heat or cool.

  Wilderness near Archangelsk, Russia.

  Gyada was comfortable for the first time in centuries. She was being fed regularly by those who had captured her, and interesting things were going on around her. The biggest problem she had with the time she'd been trapped by the man and put in this cave was simple boredom.

  The next biggest problem was figuring out what the hell the voice in her head had been.

  She'd been so enraged when the alien creature had changed, or as he put it, ‘improved’ her and her children, that she had ignored his threats that he would trap her in this animal’s form if she acted against him.

  Gyada did not regret helping her children escape. Nor did she regret killing the alien. At the time she had thought it must have been something from Nifelheim or Svatalfhiem. She now honestly didn't know. After all, if it had been from one of the other realms, could she have killed it? The rampage she had gone on before that man had trapped her back in her lair, had been because she was trying to escape the voices in the den.

  Unable to think of any other options after she killed the one who changed her and her children, she had gone back to her home village, only to have the hunters from the village try and track her down. In her anger at being attacked by her own people, she had struck out.

  She regretted that now. After all, if a strange beast that couldn't talk had entered the village while she had been human, she would have reacted exactly the same way.

  The people from her original home had hunted and chained her, but the chains couldn't hold her, and in her anger, she had destroyed the village. She had then gone around destroying the communities of any who tried to hunt her, until that man, the one who had been stronger than her, had trapped her in this lair, in her new home.

  Gyada tried to ignore the voices, the ones that spoke to her whenever she was there. But in the enforced boredom of Gods knew how long trapped in these caves, Gyada had eventually turned to the voices.

  Responded to them, asked questions, received answers.

  The voices had told her the most wondrous tales. And slowly she had come to an understanding that it was not a Jotun or any other evil creature. Every so often Gyada tried to change back to human. She remembered how it was done, but her body stayed firmly in this form.

  She had learned many things that would have been useful had she been able to return to her human form, but the body of the creature this being’s master had left her in was not adept at the tasks that would be required to use that knowledge. She comforted herself with the thought that at least her children had gone free. In time, the being had taught her how it,
and its now dead master, had spoken.

  She had no real idea of how long she’d been here. There’d had been a time when the hunger pains had become all consuming. The voice had done its best to calm her while she was in pain, and convinced she would die. It said she was drawing the energy her body needed from elsewhere. She still only had a rough understanding of this ‘elsewhere’ the being spoke of. But then she also had trouble understanding that the creatures that had broken into her cave were humans. It hadn’t been until she had tasted their blood that she had known.

  Actually, she had been afraid of these people.

  This group she had encountered had smelled so different from her memories of what humans were like. They had been something unknown, and in her current form, the unknown was frightening. Not only that, they had invaded her home, the place she had become comfortable.

  If they damaged or destroyed it where would she go? She had been here for so long she had no idea what the outside world was like. She didn’t want to leave. But they had come deep into her home, and their strange devices had fired things that hurt her.

  Finally, they had been something she could eat.

  Gyada had to assume that the long thin tubes that these strange humans carried were some form of weapon. They had spat out fire and blunt objects that had caused her much pain. The pain had reminded her of her hunger, so she had attacked for food as well. Then she had started tracking down those who left their homes.

  The homes that had been built near hers. She did not want others coming to hunt her. That had been how she had been trapped in the cave in the first place.

  She would protect the people here from others, and do them no harm as long as they stayed and did no harm to her.

  The second group of new humans had been different. They had waited for her at her lair and smelled of the woods. She had not noticed them until she was too close to them to escape. They'd also had chains strong enough to hold her. It was all very strange, as they had been able to take forms unlike their human forms, but not a true beast form either. Like her children had once been able to take. She had feared her children had been affected as she was. That there were no others who could shift. She had been wrong.

  Who could they be?

  It was unlikely they were her descendants, since before she had engineered her children's escape, she had told them to warn her descendants to stay away entirely.

  That her family was never to return.

  Could it have been so long that someone had forgotten to pass on the message before their death? Could her children have even survived with their unusual abilities, rather than having been killed? It seemed so long ago. She could not remember how old they had been when they had escaped. She lay down on the cell that her captors had made for her and listened, trying to learn the language which they spoke.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It had taken TOM two months to complete the analysis of the Beast's DNA and nanites with ADAM’s help. It was odd, very odd. The species that she had been transformed into was extinct and had been for tens of thousands of years. It wasn’t even a placental mammal but was a marsupial. Thylacoleo Carnifex, the Marsupial Lion, although it was actually more like a bear in form than a lion.

  Neither he nor Adam believed there had been a living sample of the creature at the time that ship had crashed on this planet. Piecing together the DNA of an extinct species, especially one that long gone, was a complex process.

  It would have taken someone far more knowledgeable in the sciences than he was. It was more than anyone that had been sent on this mission to help races defend themselves against The Seven had the knowledge to do. TOM couldn't think of even someone from the group of them happily sauntering off into the wilderness like this, let alone a pure scientist.

  It was just too much risk, as he’d explained to Bethany Anne previously. Kurtherian scientists were just not this adventurous. So he was at a complete loss.

  He and ADAM had reverse engineered how it had been done, or at least a probable method, but without ADAM, TOM would have been completely out of his depth.

  How had someone from at least two and a half thousand years ago, at TOM’s best guess, ended up all the way out here? Not only ended all the way out here but ended up out here after TOM had arrived?

  It was clear from the degradation of the alloys that the ship had only been in the atmosphere for eight centuries or so. Ships from that era weren't designed for long-term periods in the atmosphere. By this point, even if the ship were able to be pieced back together, it would never be able to fly in space again.

  The other interesting thing was her nanites seemed to react to radio waves. They'd confirmed the beast was female. ADAM was reasonably sure that she had been human, as he had found sections of trashed programming. Remarkably trashed, as if they'd been deliberately destroyed by someone or something.

  He felt this was how she had been trapped in this beast form.

  Without the nanite protocols to assist a human in changing back-and-forth, he extrapolated it would be difficult, if not impossible for a human to achieve that result. He supported Shen's theory that there might be a proto-AI or even a full AI active in the computer.

  The fact that the Beast was still alive and the computer still running suggested that they had gotten as far as using the Etheric for a power source, but not for communications, by the time whatever happened, happened.

  Without stable Etheric communications, short-range communications radio waves were the most effective method. The main drawback with them was they could be intercepted. The short burst receivers that were within the nanites when they combined in the presence of radio waves suggested the same elegant solution that modern humans used. Burst transmissions were far harder to track than full transmissions.

  Still, even with a companion, it seemed unlikely that an AI would be completely sane. It had far more relativistic time on its hands than a human being would, if it was an AI, because of its processing power. What had been done to the Beast, on the other hand, was genius.

  A cruel, evil genius, but genius nonetheless.

  TOM found himself both fascinated and sickened by it. He dreaded what might be in the archives of the ship. How many planets had this individual stopped on before reaching earth? How many races had he meddled in? These were questions TOM did not want the answers to. TOM pushed aside those thoughts.

  Adam, can you see a potential way of reprogramming those nanites without resorting to the Pod Doc?

  <>

  What?!

  <>

  In your opinion, what level of AI is indicated by the data we have been receiving from Shen's communications with the machine?

  <>

  TOM groaned. Adam let's not have that conversation again. For the purposes of our present conversation, your behavioral patterns and moral compass may be considered s
ane. Let's not get into the fancy definitions of the fact that you would think self-immolation in the protection of your host a point of contention. Simply because you would be willing to die to protect a friend does not make you insane.

  <>

  ADAM, there is more to what makes a sentient being than survival alone. If survival alone was a requirement, then I am insane. Bethany Anne is insane. Everyone we work with is. There are some goals, some higher purposes, that fall outside the definition of survival, but inside the definition of sanity. And please don’t talk to Bethany Anne about this.

  <>

  If TOM had had his own body, he would have heaved with the exasperated sigh he felt. In this analysis set the actions of Bethany Anne, her allies, myself and yourself as sanity to assess this AI.