by Lee Bond
Solgun wished desperately that Herrig DuPont had found another method of dealing with them. Treating brothers and sisters in this manner ran contrary to his nature. They were all needed for the moment when the Darkness Fell and the Light Rose, and he felt deep in his weary old bones that Sidra, one of their best and brightest, wouldn't make the end of the story.
He pressed on.
***
“Stop pacing.” Lokken snapped irritably as he ran the machine through its final paces. It was a delicate thing, wrapped in concentric, shielded circles of energy that kept it almost invisible from the HIM. Figuring out a way to create a machine that didn’t interact in any meaningful manner with the netLINK yet still managed to utilize the ever-present communications bandwidth had been a stroke of genius, one that Lokken suspected would be the final thing ever to spring forth from his mind. Therefore, he wanted to make absolutely damn certain that it would remain functional.
Indra Sahari looked at the Harmony soldier with an inscrutable look on her face. “Stop pacing? This isn’t some show I’m performing on some backwater planet filled with adoring fans, you know. This … this is something else altogether.”
Lokken bared his teeth at the abomination. “It’s a whole new kind of show, Indra Sahari, one you will perform flawlessly if you want to remain alive and breathing.”
This time, Indra shot the Harmony soldier a look of bland unconcern. They all of them had been threatening her with various forms of death and pain and discomfort from the moment they’d kidnapped her, and it was beginning to wear thin.
Death didn’t bother her, nor did pain; pain was her constant companion, a fact of her chameleonic existence that the warriors who’d chosen to repurpose her for their own nefarious scheme had failed to properly consider.
Just as pain didn’t scare her, neither did death. Even before escaping the cruel clutches of that bastard Drubarge, she and the original chameleons had embraced the inevitability of their own demise. And after, when she’d managed to escape and fake her own death?
She’d been waiting for death ever since that first breath of sweet freedom had filled her lungs. Everything from that moment to this one?
Cake and ice cream.
“How do we know this will even work?” Indra demanded, lighting up a cigarette. She caught a feral warning in Lokken’s eyes, so she stubbed the thing out before getting in a single puff. “I mean, the people I … sampled were children in comparison to this Sidra woman.”
“The existential shunt I implanted in you earlier should suffice. The avatars inside are as close to intelligent as I can make with Latelian hardware, and driven by your will. If someone is talking to you about a particular past event, it’ll read your need and plumb Sidra’s memories for the relevant material. Beyond that, it’ll be housing roughly five hundred years of recollections in its database.” Lokken finished fiddling with the machine. Either it’d work or it wouldn’t. “And you know this.”
“Preshow jitters.” Indra supplied, running a hand across the thin, barely noticeable scar at the base of her neck. She could hardly even feel the device that Lokken had implanted in her several days ago, but at the same time, she could somehow still feel it there, a foreign object that would –if all went well- house the memories of a woman that’d lived for four thousand years. “I sometimes forget lyrics to dozens of songs before going onstage, so I recite them to myself. That’s all."
“That isn’t … here she comes. She’ll be in this room in seconds.” Lokken snapped his fingers at the abomination and pointed to the hiding spot they’d manufactured for this moment. “When she enters, she may be surprised to see one of her commanding officers present, she may not be. I will handle the situation if she overreacts. I will explain to her why I’m here, and we will proceed. When she climbs onto to the bed…”
“Yes, yes.” Indra waved a hand as she climbed into her hiding spot. “She’ll fall immediately unconscious and your machines will begin making it seem as though she’s passed out from the strain of preventing this exogenesis thing you’ve all been talking about. From there we do the memory transfer, and then we wait a few days. Then we pretend you figured out a way to prevent the thing from happening, and I go pretend to be her all while trying to come up with some method of killing the most powerful man in the solar system. That I remember.”
Lokken stared at the woman through the thin wall hiding her from the rest of the room. “See that you play your part well, Indra Sahari. The Falling Darkness depends on it.”
Scant seconds later, Sidra burst into the room, trembling with fear and terror, power bleeding from every pore.
Lokken greeted her with a warm smile.
***
Sidra had never met Lokken before, never in person, had never even seen him from a distance. Only ever through Harmony, and even then, she well knew that his harmonic signature was vastly different than his real body.
How strange it was then, to see one of the Horsemen in person, when her entire body buzzed and screamed with unfettered electric death. With fingers flashing with lightning and eyes burning with shadows, Foursie Sidra tried to take a knee in deference.
"None of that." Lokken hoped he sounded … not like a liar. Somewhere in the Harmonic distance, Solgun jammed a few more terawatts of refined energy through the woman's implants and she literally jolted in place. "None of that."
"You …" Sidra gasped the words out, tongue getting in the way. "R … run. Going …going … Fivesie. D … death …"
Lokken gestured to the bed they'd prepared. In addition to housing the machinery that'd allow Indra access to memories, it was chock full of equipment that'd keep their wonderful Foursie on lockdown until the end of time itself, if that's what was needed.
"No, no, nothing like that will happen, Foursie Sidra." Lokken took hold of insensate Sidra, noticing that her eyes turned white and wild at his touch. She tried stammering out a warning once more. "We are the Horsemen, Sidra! We sensed your encroaching exogenesis well before you. We … prepared. I am here to usher you forth. Into an entirely new realm."
Sidra allowed herself to be marshalled towards the bed. It looked positively … archaic, yet the soft mattress and inviting pillow overshadowed the equipment nearly covering the top and sides in a metallic cocoon. Lokken's fingers were shadows, brushing against her skin, but his Harmonic presence burned against her retina, an example of divine divinity, holding back the forces of her death.
Lokken assisted the panicky Goddie onto the bed swiftly. "Do you accept our help of your own free will?"
Sidra thought that was an odd thing to say, but as her sweat-soaked hair met the soft pillow, she nodded. You needed to trust your commanding officers. "I do."
Lokken smiled. He flipped a switch. A stasis field of absurd strength slammed down into Sidra with the brutality of an unseen hammer crashing into her forehead. Sensors and scanners promptly burst into life, tracking everything.
Solgun's displaced voice whispered through the exobunker. "The lion is brought down by the viper, and the viper becomes the lion."
"Shut it." Lokken hit the next switch and commanded the device to do it's job. Even under the spell of stasis, mighty Sidra shifted and twitched as the probes began to burrow.
***
In her hideaway closet, Indra Sahari shrieked as the first of four thousand years' worth of memories crowded her. They grabbed hold and dropped her down a chasm …
Hey, Has Anyone… Has Anyone Seen Our Quantum Tunnel?
Ute tried eyeballing the Quantum Tunnel through one of the few portals built into the ship and failed to get anything better than a glimpse.
It was massive, one of the largest things he’d ever seen, and here, he was tossing Sa Gurant’s tremendous ego into the mix; at just over a thousand kilometers from end to end and comprised of a single thick circlet –the ancient Goddie was reminded of a simple toy very much in vogue over three thousand years ago- of metal and machinery, the Tunnel was one of the biggest artificial str
uctures he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Tell me again how we’re supposed to move this bitching thing.” This came from Agrimal, over the comm systems. Both Salax and Trista chimed in with grumbling doubts, while the Onesies and Twoesies from the Tizhen line that’d volunteered for this little side mission kept their mouths shut; they were pleased as hell to be involved in anything that their most ancient sire wanted done and didn’t want to get bounced from the roster. “It is … big.”
Tomas watched as highly advanced avatars –two or three generations ahead of any software entities currently in use- ran through the simulations once more, a tiny rat of doubt gnawing at his innards.
At home, in his room, working on these same ideas, everything had seemed so simple. Get some Latelian black hole ships, hook them up at key points around the frame of the Quantum Tunnel, and … move it.
Simple as that.
Except … except staring at the blasted thing through the same window Ute was now blocking entirely with his gigantic skull, Tomas felt approximately one third as confident as before. He covered his nervousness with an artful scratch and waited impatiently for the avatars to finish.
“My children asked you a question, old friend.” Ute didn’t push too hard because he knew precisely what was running through the man’s mind.
Tomas held up a wizened finger. “One. You are much older than I am, but do not think you will be getting any respect from me. You don’t have the decency to look ancient enough for that. Two. They aren’t your children. They didn’t spring from your loins directly. Three. This is … ah. There. You see?”
Tomas gestured at the screens with a flourish. On the brightly lit monitors, five –not including their own- black hole ships connected themselves to the Quantum Tunnel at key points along the frame by use of a relatively new design in magnetic bore grapplers that’d come –no surprise- from UltraMegaDynamaTron.
With the current flavor of the day being more ‘save all vessels and as many Trinityfolk lives as possible’ and less ‘launch indestructible God soldiers directly through the hull and see what happens, am I right?’ the boys at UMDT had put a twist on Garth’s old shieldtech designs by developing the EverLok Breach and Blast system.
Every Goddie vessel currently deployed throughout the solar system was now equipped with Breach and Blast, and when it came time to board an enemy vessel, the new system guaranteed that both craft –enemy and Goddie- were as one until the power was cut.
That resolute connectivity would be the same on a Quantum Tunnel as it would be on a TMS destroyer class starship.
“What are we looking at here, old man?” Trista’s voice rang bright and clear through the comm.
“Tell your daughter,” Tomas said with a grin, “that she is easily four times my senior and that I am continually amazed she does not drift off into rambling musings of the time she picked flowers with her grandmother in some obscure park in a city that no longer exists.”
Shocked laughter barked out of the comm, further punctured by the embarrassed and guttural laughter of the Ones and Twos.
When radio silence resumed, Tomas began explaining. “Without the Breach and Blast system, this plan simply wouldn’t work, and had I not been desperate enough to hack into UMDT servers in search of something that’d aid me in my quest, we wouldn’t be here right now, on the verge of the biggest theft in Latelian history.”
“Next to the theft of the Box, of course.” Salax said.
Ute shook his head, urging Tomas to ignore the jab; Salax was a Foursie, but refused to admit, accept or believe that while Garth N’Chalez was in fact a true and proper hero in every sense of the word and had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man was the actual owner/creator of the Box that it was his and took every opportunity to argue that fact.
Tomas dipped his head and continued. “When all our ships are connected to the Tunnel … indicated on your screens by the bright red dots, complete with flight paths for those of you who are too elderly to manage on your own … we begin powering up our engines at a nice leisurely pace until we hit top standard speed.”
“And then?” Everyone chimed in simultaneously.
“And then we start the black hole engines and we launch ourselves at the location I’ve long since given you.” Tomas shook his head, then muted the microphone. “Are your children afraid of doing this?”
“Hardly.” Ute replied confidently. “If anything goes wrong, Salax, Agrimal and Trista will almost certainly survive, and Shoonty and Gorak … they’re reckless. This is a grand adventure for them. If they live, they’ll have a great story to tell in a few years when everything’s cooled down. If they die … well, I don’t think they’ve thought that far ahead, but I’m not one to keep hyperactive youngsters from having a bit of fun. No, they’re just hoping to hear you sound more confident.”
“Confident.” Tomas muttered the word, still more hung up on the fact that half their group of thieves had absolutely no problems with the fact that there was a chance they’d die.
Spectacularly so.
Even after all this time in Latelyspace and all his exposure to God soldiers, Tomas was afraid that he still understood his adoptive people only poorly.
"Confident." Tomas shook his head. The elderly EuroJapanese coder extraordinaire released the mute button. “And from there, we use the Quantum Tunnel’s truly impressive power to create a soft spot in the Shield. At which time, your great grandsire and I will launch ourselves through it.”
“Or turn yourselves into soup. Space-frozen people soup. That’s been charred. From the engines erupting.” Salax laughed.
Agrimal chimed in, “I was thinking … what’re those things Charbo makes now? Those flat things? Cancakes? No. Pancakes. You might turn into pancakes, especially if the black hole engines get you before the regular engines do. Squashed into micron-thin people pancakes.”
“And now I want soup and pancakes.” Trista lamented.
Ute laughed long and loud with his family. It was good to share times like these with those who’d come after you, triply so now, when they could remember who they were.
Then the ancient warrior turned somber; he hadn’t forgotten why the wizened old man beside him was making the journey and he looked apologetically to Tomas, who merely waved the jocularity away.
“Any other questions?”
“I … I have one.” This came from Gorak, the only Twoesie of the group.
Ute raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead, Gorak.”
“How … how are we even going to get near the ring? I’ve heard this thing is Trinity tech all the way through and is guarded by sophisticated machines.”
Tomas couldn’t help but smile. He’d been hoping someone would ask that very question so he could explain the next amazing part of his supreme coding abilities.
“Glad you asked, because you aren’t wrong, sa. This is a Trinity installation, the only one of its kind here in the entire solar system. The only reason, well, perhaps there are two reasons, that the invaders haven’t tried taking it is because it is very well guarded by our forces and two, only authorized individuals are permitted to get close. Anyone else, even the people of the system in which a Tunnel is placed … they don’t get very close. Trinity guards It’s secrets very closely, and with an iron fist.”
“Sounds like a Chair.” Gorak laughed before trying to stammer out an apology for insulting the Chair.
“I knew a Chair once.” Agrimal mused. “When I was an idiot. The man was a bloodthirsty maniac. Liked to kill small animals and blame it on his honor guard. Left little furry corpses in our helmets or in our boots. Thought it was hilarious. Until one of us accidentally sat on him.”
“Chairman Waigong Tanner.” Ute ran a hand through his hair. “Thank Pete he was only Chair for two years. Did he really …”
“If I may continue?” Tomas demanded, part-fussily, part mock-arrogantly. He did so when Ute rolled his fingers at him. “And since the only people permitted to approach a Quantum
Tunnel are servicemen dispatched to repair or upgrade Tunnels, that is what we will be to the AI minds aboard.”
This time it was Ute who hit the mute button. Dubiously, he eyed his compatriot up and down. “And this is something you can do? Hack an AI mind? Because it seems to me this is the only way that this little feat can be accomplished. You haven’t been near an AI in over fifty years.”
“Closer to seventy.” Tomas wished Ute would let him smoke his pipe in the ship. They wouldn’t be in her for very long and besides which, the air filters would be able to handle the paltry amount of smoke quite easily. He caught the look on Ute’s face and explained. “Sa, I am the greatest programmer in the system, aboard a vessel capable of traveling faster than the speed of light by way of means that honestly do boggle my mind, but remember, our method of travel is controlled by the absolute highest level ‘LINKed machinery and the most flexible, malleable avatars in existence. If I can’t figure out a way to use what I’ve got onboard this ship to fool that poor AI mind while we wait for your … friends … to arrive with their package, well, I will think of something else.”
“They claim they’ll be here in an hour.” Ute said defensively, sorely wishing Candall hadn’t sacrificed himself for revenge.
Landmark Reclamations had gone downhill since then, and their tardiness was all the proof anyone needed that the band of thieves wouldn’t be around for much longer.
“Good. That’s all the time I’ll need. Tell your brood to maintain a low profile. The next scheduled eyes-on check from the Gargan isn’t until tomorrow, but they may get bored.” Tomas stretched his fingers out and began working on the coding he believed would be necessary to trigger a false priority repair warning in the Quantum Tunnel’s AI systems.
***
“Incoming.”
“Incoming.”
“Inc…”
“I got it, thanks, everyone.” Ute swiveled his joystick around and brought their vessel around to bear on the location everyone’s avatars was indicating as the likely point of egress for the black hole ship that was inbound. A few seconds later, a Latelian Infiltration Class Black Hole Special Type II spun into local space, more or less like a cab speeding into a parking spot.
