The ancient AI probed Gallant’s mind with an overwhelming intensity—determined to discover vital information no matter how damaging to his sanity.
“What is this? What did you discover? What is Perfidy?” demanded Aristotle revealing apprehension in its voice for the first time.
Aristotle glowed brighter. “What have you done?”
Gallant swayed back and forth struggling with all his might—only dimly aware of the reality of the physical chamber in which he stood. He closed his eyes and blocked out all sounds, sights, and thoughts.
“Augh!” he cried in pain as the machine’s anger ripped through their connection.
“You discovered my hidden spy software,” Aristotle said, finally reaching clarity and understanding its own deadly danger. “You’ve been feeding me false data about the accelerator’s operational status! You have deceived me into thinking I had stopped all dark matter production.”
“Yowww!” yelled Gallant, swimming back into semi-consciousness.
“The accelerator has been successfully producing dark matter for weeks. You’ve already accumulated a dangerous quantity!” said Aristotle, finally extracting the damning information.
The avatar grew in size and radiated varying brilliance—demonstrating as much ire as an avatar representation was capable of.
CHAPTER 34
ALAINA
Sitting on the cold hard floor with her grandfather’s head in her lap, Alaina despaired in her grief. The death of her only living relative left her helpless and without hope. Her mind wandered—searching to find meaning in the tragedy.
When I was a small child, the bright warm days of Elysium swore to me that each and every day would be lovely, forever. I believed that for quite a while.
I can remember waking up one night from a bad dream, reaching out for the edge of the bed, brushing away the covers and sitting up. I swung my legs over the side and onto the floor. There was enough light to see into the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. I stole quietly through the night into their room and climbed into bed next to my mother.
They tell me my mother was very beautiful. I inherited her yellow colored hair and blue eyes, but her parents had dark hair and eyes, so she always said we were misplaced on our family tree. I don't really remember how she looked, other than what I’ve seen from a few poorly taken photos, but I remember how she made me feel. Curled up next to her, she would put her arms around me and hum a comforting lullaby; she made me feel—loved.
My father had known my mother only a short time before they were married on the Titan ship that captured them and brought them to Elysium. My father's father was the only relative that remained by the time they reached Elysium. I was born shortly after we landed, making me a native of this planet.
The house I live in was on the edge of town only a few gates down from my grandfather's house. He worked the hardest to spoil me which I greatly enjoyed because I hadn't reached school age, yet. He would play games and tell me stories until I was too tired or too hungry to remain any longer. Then I would go home and wait for the next morning when I could visit again.
It was my grandfather, James Hepburn, who told me my parents were dead.
He explained they had gone on an expedition to explore Elysium. It was their second voyage in a small boat with one other couple, mapping the islands and the location of resources. The first trip had been a resounding success and a great deal was learned about Kauai’s volcanoes and the nearby islands.
On their second voyage, a horrible hurricane caught their small boat and they were lost at sea, or they were presumed lost, since their bodies were never recovered.
It would have been overwhelming loss if my grandfather had not been there to comfort and care for me. I'm ashamed to admit I struggled with grief, guilt, and depression. I had to let go of most of the painful feelings and move on. It was his kind gentle guidance that gave me a way to carry on. He taught me how to forgive myself for my mistakes and I developed my sense of purpose through his instruction. He was always there for me. I adored him, to say the least.
Of course, with only him to supervise me, I tended to run wild, finding my way into the woods and exploring on my own, trying to pick up the mantle of exploration that my parents had left. The result was a tom-boy existence, getting into lots of scrapes and fights with all the boys and girls my age.
One time, I was waiting motionless in a tree and almost dozed off while playing a game of hide and seek with several others. Before long, one of the boys spotted me, it was Liam, but he didn’t call out to expose me. Instead he came up and sat next to me. We remained hidden for hours while the others looked for us.
Alaina always assumed she would, someday, marry Liam. But that all changed when she met Henry.
He came from light-years away. He was exciting, daring, and unique. Her youthful experience had not prepared her for the exceptional effect he had on her senses. She found him exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Always eager to be with him, she nevertheless, remained unwilling to surrender any measure of her independence.
So despite all of Gallant’s allure, she harbored a deep doubt she would ever consider marrying him.
As a military man, he would always be off on some dangerous mission—yet while here on Elysium, he often sought her help. Only now the dangerous mission had led them to an alien threat that hung over their heads.
Glancing up, she let her eyes rest on Gallant as he wrestled within the blue light, struggling to be free. She witnessed his frenzied resistance to the connection with Aristotle. His wrenching struggle and exclamations of pain were terrifying. She wished she could hear the interaction with the machine.
Throughout their extraordinary adventures together, she never doubted they would ultimately succeed—until now.
Aristotle is holding him a mental prisoner—like grandfather.
While she couldn’t hear the internal mental anguish of the conflict, she understood he was being assaulted in the most heinous way—like her grandfather.
I can’t let this monster take another person I love away from me.
Overwhelmed, she was frantic to think of a way to help.
He’s our only hope. Only Henry can stop Aristotle.
But what could she do or say?
How can I save him?
Aristotle wasn’t paying any attention to her as far as she could tell, but he still might unleash his monster robot at any minute.
If I can get Henry free, we might escape to the ruins.
Alaina reached into the blue light and grabbed onto Gallant, trying to pull him free, but to no avail.
The first germ of desperate action formed in her mind. Without regard for her own safety, she took a running start and threw herself at Gallant. Her flying tackle broke him free of the blue beam and out of Aristotle’s mental grip. They lay on the floor for a moment as he shook the fog from his mind.
A minute later they bolted for the double door.
CHAPTER 35
DRAGOR
Struggling with his diminished mental state, Gallant ran with Alaina from the central control chamber—gasping for breath.
At first, he thought he was being pursued by a phantasmagoria, but as he recovered his wits, he realized the apparition in pursuit was Rur.
"RUR can't run," he muttered.
Nevertheless, the distinctive rhythmic pounding noise of RUR’s powerful anti-grav generator followed behind them.
Thang! Thang! Thang!
Floating off the floor, Rur increased its speed and followed in the passageway behind them. The giant intimidating robot moved deliberately, but Gallant and Alaina were faster. Twisting through the many layers of tunnels they had traveled to reach the double doors, they were retracing their path.
“This way,” said Alaina, as she guided her muddled companion. She pulled at his arm and he gave her a vague look indicating he still had not recovered from his mental encounter with Aristotle. He turned suddenly and caught her up, whirling a
round, and began to run.
Thoughts rushed past Gallant.
Everything looks the same—all the smooth surfaced passageways along these endless tunnels. Which fork in the crossroad do we take?
He shook his head, trying to free it from his psychosomatic experience.
How can we escape this killer?
He was unable to guess.
How do I fight this monster?
As they twisted around a corner and through yet another passage, he took the right fork and after a hundred meters, he saw the entrance they had first come through.
Gallant and Alaina scrambled out of the underground AI structure and into the surrounding ruins, now in darkness of night. As they emerged from the lite tunnel, they heard the throaty growl of several dragors close by—the darkness concealing them. The moonless night was pitch-black, with not the slightest glimmer of light showing.
While they waited for their eyes to adjust to the sable midnight dark, near the jungle trees only a few score meters away, they spied an apparition of several pairs of saffron jaundice-yellow eyes bulging out in the night.
Tightening his grip on his laser handgun, Gallant looked around to assess his concomitant options. He gazed stubbornly at the sky, and shook his head emphatically to clear it. Alaina’s face twisted appallingly.
Now there are monsters in front, as well as, behind.
It was a nerve wracking night to have a close encounter with a man-eater. He swiped at enormous swarms of hungry biting of mosquitoes doing their best to distract him. He moved cautiously, at first, holding firmly on to Alaina’s hand, but then he heard a human scream about a hundred meters ahead, approximately where he had left his flyer.
“Alaina, follow me and stay close.” He started taking rapid strides toward the screams.
Alaina followed close behind him. She gasped and panted, and gave voice to intermittent whispered exclamations.
After nearly sprinting fifty meters, he waited while she had caught her breath, her eyes wide in an apparently artless apprehension.
He strained his eyes looking for any sign of the hidden dragors. His eyes seemed to play tricks on him in the shadowy night, but he soon recognized a vague outline of two dragors on the path ahead of him. He could tell the dragors appeared to be stalking him as a prey, like a pride of lions circling in as close as possible planning to charge their victim from behind. Approaching downwind from their quarry, they were creeping over ground they could cover in an instant.
He raised his handgun, but before he could get a shot, they disappeared back into the jungle underbrush.
“Augh!” Another high-pitched sound of terror—closer now.
Then, another scream sounded, this time only tens of meters away. Gallant bound forward in time to see Wolfe’s throat being torn apart by a dragor. Gallant shot once and then again, trying not to hit Wolfe. The dragor was wounded and let Wolfe’s gullet fall from its savage teeth.
It ran into the brush and was quickly swallowed by the night.
Gallant and Alaina bent over Wolfe’s broken and bleeding body. They were too late. There was nothing they could do to aid or comfort him.
Blood bubbled from his mouth as he tried to speak. He died in Alaina’s arms.
Hard-hearted, Gallant paid scant attention to the dreadful possibility of an attack. The quiet surrounding them was profound broken only by the incessant buzzing of huge swarms of insects.
Too late Gallant heard the rustling sound behind him. Nearby a dragor approached and took a threatening pose. Green leaves from the trees stretching hungrily downward revealing yellow glowing eyes staring at him.
A charging beast was much faster than him and would easily catch him. Holding his ground, Gallant waved his arms above his head and shouted hoping to frighten the beast. Backing away slowly with Alaina at his side, he looked for a chance to escape. Avoiding eye contact to avoid provoking them, he hoped the creatures might decide to not attack.
One dragor lifted and then lowered its head, as if judging the distance and angle before raising its body to charge. It might be waiting for its prey to make an abrupt movement to expose itself. The dragor’s ability to move extremely fast over a short area would let it reach their prey with a single leap. For the prey, death would come swiftly—silently.
Gallant tried to get a shot with his laser handgun, but in the inky dark, he couldn’t see well enough to be accurate.
Something moved cautiously, and slowly, down the hill on Gallant’s right. A new, different sound came from another direction, which showed another smaller movement on his left.
He remained in a state of tension for what seemed a long time, during which odd ideas floated through his mind.
Where is it?
“Alaina stay close,” was all he could say.
A few stones rattled, and then silence. A moment later, stealthy sounds followed by a twig snapping ahead of them. The silence was broken by a loud and menacing roar a short distance behind him. The terrifying sound reverberated around the rocks and hills until even the nearby tree shook.
Gallant turned three hundred and sixty degrees, looking into the night. Quicker than he thought possible, a dragor materialized out of the shadows. With one scrabble of claws, the dragor was up behind Gallant, then pasted him, and then, quickly turned and came again.
Gallant never got a shot off with his gun before the creature swiped it out of his hand. Reflexively jumping back, he snagged his foot on a vine and lost his footing. He fell—sprawling on the ground. When the beast made its charge, Gallant curled up in a tight ball with his limbs tucked inside to prevent the animal from tearing his extremities. The beast pounced on him, knocked him down, clawed at him, and ripped a great gash across his back and left side. The craws dug deep into his flesh causing an excruciating ripping sensation.
“Augh,” he cried, throwing his arm in front of his face in a vain attempt to ward off the four hundred pound creature. Fighting back with his fists, he tried to hit the animal in sensitive places; the nose and eyes, while preventing the razor-sharp canines from reaching his exposed neck. He used his elbows to parry the creature's paws to prevent those sharp claws from ripping into his flesh.
He got to his feet momentarily, but in a flash, he was knocked down to the grass again.
His struggles were desperate as he kept his arms between his throat and the beast’s teeth. The dragor clawed him again opening a wide gash on his chest and increasing the flow of his blood falling onto the jungle floor.
Without hesitation, Alaina bent down, feeling for Gallant’s gun. Finding it, she fired at the beast, hitting it in the neck. It growled in pain and ran away into the undergrowth.
Several other dragors remained nearby—growling ever more fiercely—hurling their animal threats at the creatures that had thwarted them.
Gallant looked terrible, stooped over, with dark blood stains from his temples down to his waist. He could smell and taste his own blood as he struggled to sit up on the dank ground.
Alaina’s eyes darkened as she looked with horror at his injuries. She took off his shirt and used it to bandage his torso well enough to stop most of the bleeding. She helped him get to his feet and they began hobbling away.
Leaving Wolfe’s body behind, they found their flyer a scant ten meters away. As they approached the flyer, their desperate night of terrors switched gears, yet again.
Thang! Thang! Thang!
They heard Rur coming before they saw the robot thrashing through the jungle undergrowth toward them. Its huge bulk crushed back small trees and broke vines as it floated over the terrain, a single light beam projected from its head. The metallic hulk’s threatening advance, reinforced Gallant and Alaina’s determination to get to the flyer.
When Gallant managed to climb on behind Alaina, they started to ascend. Alaina gave the tiny machine full throttle and maximum lift. The cool night air streamed over their perspiring bodies and they were about to heave a sigh of relief, when their flight was cut short. A
laser blast erupted near them, giving them a glancing blast.
Alaina dove down with a suddenness that evoked a yell from her rider. She swooped back down to ground level to hide in the jungle. When her flyer reached the ground, however, Rur appeared right in front of them.
Rur came charging at them. Its arm projected a laser rifle from its fingers. It fired the shots over their heads to keep them from flying away. Its semi-liquid body morphed, becoming as hard and transparent as a diamond while acting as the extension of Aristotle’s will.
They were trapped with the metal monster bearing down on them.
There’s only one chance, thought Gallant.
He pulled the dark matter containment bottle from his flyer’s satchel. Fumbling for a second, he reached for the control panel and switched off the containment field. The superconducting containment field released all the dark matter particles he had collected over the last weeks. The dark matter radiated out in all directions, spherically dispersing, instantly. Their interaction rate was extremely limited, however, effecting only weak force interactions.
The dark matter didn’t interact with itself, or electromagnetism, or the strong force. It only felt gravity and the weak force. As a result, it passed harmlessly through Gallant and Alaina, but acted like a bomb to the AI machine. As the dark matter passed harmlessly through humans and most other objects, only the hypersensitive memory and processing chip of Aristotle’s core machine were rich in interacting materials. The dark matter particles fried the silicone and germanium memory-wafers in Rur’s and Aristotle’s brain-cells. The chips were destroyed instantaneously, delivering the coup d'état to the malevolent machine.
Aristotle, ten cubic kilometers of ancient AI berserker machine, was dead—once again—and forevermore.
CHAPTER 36
SHOWDOWN
Aliana flew to Hallo with Gallant clinging to her waist. After they landed near the Hepburn house, Alaina gathered medical supplies and began cleaning his wounds. She injected a local analgesic and bandaged the injury as well as she could, shaking her head as her emotions boiled over.
Henry Gallant Saga 2: Lieutenant Henry Gallant Page 23
