Their exchange came off as a diplomatic way for Phoenix to offer him a chance at surrendering without insulting his pride and providing a new reason for resentment. But Kai couldn't be completely certain who was manipulating who.
She clenched and unclenched her fists, visualizing the freakish black goo creature from before dancing around her with its thick dark fog.
Phoenix nodded to his former student. "Then go. Face the Invectials, the Starbleeders, and the black goo on your own. Maybe one sol you'll be the Engineer you always wanted to. But I'll never train you."
Jace.blek shimmered out, and she shut her eyes with the critical knowledge that it was down to her, him, and the black goo.
Kai's mods kept any anxiety at bay, yet a spark of frustration crept through her. Only a little more and the restoration of the black goo in her would be complete.
"Couldn't let me go, huh?" she said, trying to buy herself a few precious seconds.
"Right now the black goo is connected to you psionically. If you fight, my severing the connection might harm you permanently," Phoenix warned, raising his hands cautiously.
He was playing by the traditional New Terran rules of morality. That would make him easy to take advantage of. "Then don't sever it."
Even better, she sensed fear in him.
The original black goo agent pounded inside her now, cold, void and wanting. She felt as if she were floating.
"I know you think you can kill me with that, but it won't work." His words felt a thousand light-years away. Instead, the deformed creature avatar of the black goo appeared beside Phoenix, familiar with her desires. "Do it," she whispered.
"Kai, don't!"
Phoenix had a defense against the Starbleeders, but the black goo wasn't from their universe. He'd said it himself—it didn't follow their rules.
Like ash in a breeze, his body whisked away, joining the nebula void he'd created.
The black goo avatar plunged into the cracks in the butte's surface, leaving her the lone sapient in a strange land. More than likely, with him and the Starbleeder unit dead, the effects of their alterations to reality would cease. If not, she was slightly fucked.
Oddly, she didn't feel the joy she'd expected from killing him. It was a major accomplishment, there was no question. Her nexus had recorded the entire thing. She would be the legend now and restore the Hellion network to its former glory. Once she could find a way out.
Staring from the edge of the butte into the orange-brown haze of Phoenix's nebula, her nexus detected no changes to the atmosphere. The changes to reality weren't resetting.
"You know, I'm really starting to think you're not such a good person," Phoenix said inexplicably from behind.
If she had to breathe, it would've caught in her throat. Instead, she pivoted around and willed the black goo to strike him down. He must've figured out a way to avoid its effects or outright pacify it. Because he strode toward her unflinching. A hint of amusement lingered in his eyes. "All this time you were trying to kill a ghost."
Her jaw fell agape, shaking with rage, but words failed her like everything else had.
He shrugged with one hand. "A worm beat you to the punch."
"A worm?"
"After Arteyos sentenced me to die, I dodged every attempt, until, finally, an interstellar malworm corrupted my mind. But, by then, I had discovered the secrets I was destined to. I had gained the ability to encode myself into the Neural Network's Akashic Record. I had become a permanent part of the fabric of the universe."
Kai took several steps backward. The knowledge that he'd never been hers to kill was a sinister demon. He was never anything more than a space ghost and yet.... "You're immutable."
"There's a version of this where you survive." His words sent her mind racing for an escape. "I can extract the black goo from you again. But you can't fight back."
She did.
Epilogue
Hayland issued a long sigh as an asteroid blasted down from the red-hot sky. He knew Felik thought of himself as a failure. But sometimes it just wasn't your fault. This time, it was Hayland's fault. He'd failed Felik. Worse, he'd failed his late brother.
The asteroid flooded his vision. It would destroy him and Oberon in a few seconds.
Ever since he rescued Felik and the other three scions from the Darwinist network, he'd assumed a protective role for them. Everyone figured he felt responsible for them. That it was simply him playing the role of uncle for his brother's clones. He'd had his reasons, though. Other reasons.
Yet, he couldn't pretend that he hadn't grown fond of them over the solar cycles, despite his attempts to stay objective. Scions like Felik were a refreshing contrast to the likes of Oberon, Xerix, and the other starkeepers.
All of that passed through his head in a couple seconds. Then a blinding wave of plasma engulfed the asteroid followed by a tag with Oberon's score.
"You better be careful," the Union Alpha's StarMaster said, lowering a gauntleted hand that was still emitting heat waves from the blast. "Steeger takes it personally that you created a simulation of you killing her."
Steeger can suck a dick, Hayland thought but didn't say. "You better be careful not to let another asteroid come that close."
At one time, Hayland had the respect of Steeger and vice versa. And there would always be some respect between them by default. They'd both served and done their duties. But they also knew the lies, the crimes the other had committed and simply preferred not to tolerate each other.
For Steeger, it was that despite her boasting of running a single frame without backups, her Green Devil was immutable. One of the Sacred Mecha reconfigured. A perfect suit of armor. It would never break, nor she so long as she was physically piloting it.
The two of them served Oberon, but they were not friends.
Still, he would never go so far as to actually betray Steeger. Not even if it meant saving Felik.
"Steeger takes everything personally," Hayland muttered, lifting his gauntlet up to the burning sky. Any second now another asteroid would darken that glow.
"Well, I thought it was heart-wrenching, you giving my little brother one last dreamer before Steeger locked him away." Oberon's tone made it obvious he was mocking him. Not that Hayland would have believed a more sincere tone. What was it the sapients said? Oberon had downloaded so many political strategy mods that he was more of a bot than a human. And he'd altered his core's emotional state so much he was as cold as a Nebirian.
One sol, though, he would draw out a sincere reaction from Oberon. He would do something his nephew never saw coming.
Hayland shrugged as a big ugly rock came hurtling down. "It was the least I could do."
"You're taking his imprisonment better than I expected."
Hayland snorted, extending his firing hand. He shifted for better footing on the cratered, rocky surface of the space platform. "You get your ruthlessness from Arteyos. Well, I can be ruthless, too. It's just that he used it to excel in politics. I used mine to excel in war."
What everyone overlooked was that as Arteyos's brother, he could politic nearly as well when he desired. Well enough to fool most into thinking he was the harmless, sentimental uncle. Arteyos had never logged their childhood into the archives, however. As far as he was concerned, only he and Karina knew who he really was.
The asteroid barreled toward them. Hayland watched the distance tracker on his HUD. The closer it got, the better. When it dominated the sky, only a couple thousand feet overhead, a rush of energy obliterated it completely. He was still a few points shy of overtaking Oberon's score.
What his nephew said next was a testament to how well he could read New Terrans. Or, at least, his family. "I thought your exploitation of your link with Felik was quite political."
As Oberon's breaker had activated, removing Felik as captain of the Nassatar and then disabling his nexus systems, Hayland psi.hacked him. With no nexus systems or psionic defenses, it was easy. Then he planted a simulation of himself a
ttacking the Green Devil in Felik's head. One final fantasy for his nephew before he entered stasis. He'd made the decision at the last second, so the sim was far from perfect, but he liked to think Felik still went out on a high.
He waved it off. "Master blaster is a game of destroying an asteroid before it kills you. Politics is simply a game of getting other people to do what you want. I've always thought war was the ultimate game of politics. You get other people to die for you."
"Only if they can't afford a second living frame," Oberon said, giving him a sharp look. "The point is you demonstrated an ability to me that may prove beneficial for the both of us. You were on a very short list. Now you're the only one on that list."
"Oh? What's that?" Hayland tried to act surprised. Could Oberon be so arrogant to think he hadn't seen what was coming? Once upon a time he might've considered the possibility that Oberon only portrayed himself as arrogant to trick his opponents. Now, though, he was fairly certain the man had grown proud to a fault.
"You're going to be the Nassatar's next captain."
"Obviously I accept, but why me?"
"You may be one of the few who can convince Juliard to join us given that you're the brother of Arteyos. A man she was very fond of."
"Are you getting at what I think you're getting at?"
"There's a good chance she'll grow attached to you. Especially with your recent show of affection for Felik."
It was almost laughable, hearing it from Oberon. Not because it was a terrible idea. But because he assumed so much about human psychology and relationships. Somehow among all the mods he'd upgraded his core with, he'd lost one of the most important attributes. Nuance.
"And by good chance, you mean...?"
"Conservatively, a sixty-eight percent chance. Run the estimates yourself if you like."
Hayland only nodded as Oberon roasted the next asteroid. And if I fail, how soon will there be a new captain of the Nassatar? How soon will everyone hear that Hayland Ullon committed self-termination. It had been his nephew's trademark way of eliminating those who failed him. Deleting their minds and manipulating the digital forensics to show that they erased their own minds. Even now, he wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Oberon had found a way to kill the StarMaster and not the Lumerians.
He couldn't help but think of the streamer, who'd "deleted himself twice" as if such a thing were possible. It was an odd enough report, yet those who wanted to believe it did. Oberon's influence over many media streams and realms helped. The better to influence public opinion.
Of course, many sapients had grown suspicious, and Oberon utilized different methods now.
His nephew seemed to sense his disinterest and reached out, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "Remember Uncle, I'm as much your nephew as Felik. If you truly care about him, then you should seek the Lumerians’ defeat as much as I do. It was the Lumerians who hired the Darwinist network to corrupt Felik."
He didn't need reminding. In fact, a big part of him wanted to smack Oberon's hand away then and there. But he'd pretended to be the loyal uncle for a long time now. So many solar cycles that the neural pathways had formed anew in his core, casting his thoughts much differently than they had been once.
He did care for Felik more now.
Fifty solar cycles ago, he would've let him rot in stasis.
Hayland decided that once he became the new StarMaster, he would free Felik.
Above, a freshly warped-in asteroid threatened to turn them both to atoms. The biggest and deadliest so far.
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What’s Next in the Series?
Prequel Novella-The Harvest Uprising (get it by signing up to my newsletter below)
Book I-The StarMaster’s Son
How much do you know about your reality?
Book II-A Puppets’ Peace
What if there are no good guys?
Book III-The Guardians’ Gambit
That moment when every choice is terrible….that’s every moment for Felik.
Book IV-A Celestial Rising (working title)
Kai is back...in black (goo)/Freedom is chaos
Book V-The Fifth Player (working title)
When happens when an unstoppable force meets an immutable object?
Books VI, VII, VIII, etc...TBA
I expect to release a new novel about every two-three months.
If you’d like to stay updated on my next release and receive a free InterBleeding Series Guide and two sci-fi novellas, sign up to my newsletter at www.gibsonmorales.com
Glossary (partial)
Sol-roughly one Earth day. The same as a Mars sol.
Lunar cycle-roughly one Earth month
Solar cycle-roughly one Earth year
Nexus/SUN-standard universal nexus, the digitized neural laces that increase mental capacity and allow for various apps to run on one’s core.
(living) frame-one's living body.
core-the mind itself used within a living frame. It’s very important as it contains processing and computing power in lieu of computers.
HUD-the heads up display of a nexus. It’s highly personalized and configurable.
Mods-alterations to one’s abilities/thinking
Sapients-life in the universe that can think. Generally referring to the average minded masses
Sophonts-AI that are as smart or smarter than humans with all the personality and emotion too (this can all be tweaked, however). Sophonts are considered as part of the sapients.
Heap-one’s processing power-the more cores, the bigger the heap, which allows more to occur.
Proto-leader of a network
Networks/Minds-the “family” a person belongs to.
Scions-the StarMaster's clones (effectively viewed as his sons)
reboot-reviving someone from the “dead.” When someone wakes up from a recovery chamber in the Karma Nebula.
Immutable-a state in which an object cannot be destroyed or broken down further in the universe. Invulnerability.
Protocol-an advisor or source of guidance that sapients use often
Pathons-(seemingly) immutable, subatomic psionic molecules that make up the Neural Network. Pathons are not directly observable, but their effects can be.
Dialectic thinking/Objectivity/Impartiality-the ability to conceive multiple sides of an argument without bias even if that means putting aside one’s own inherent conflict of interest.
Subtlety/Nuance-an important trait among New Terran and other sapients. A sapient acting binary (either/or type thinking) would be criticized.
Rationality/Logic-it’s expected that one prioritizes logical thinking over emotional decision making.
Godweb-a field (of control)-a spread of smart dust, molecules, and chemicals around a sapient, living frame, station, or ship used to affect the world in varying ways-often used for combat purposes.
Bubbleweb-a very weak, limited godweb for civilian usage.
Swarm-the combat smart dust in one’s godweb
Phased-through a godweb, objects can be effectively warped somewhere, but it’s a special type of warping that goes through everything else.
Psi.link-pseudo mind-merging in which relevant thoughts are shared and communications occur nearly instantly. Used in combat.
Psi.hack-psionic hacking into someone’s nexus, which allows for a host of ha
rmful possibilities.
Starkeeper-a politician in the Union Omega, similar to a US member of congress or senator (depending on whether the starkeeper is a low starkeeper or a high starkeeper). The starkeeper may or may not be human.
Basic-the well-known universal form of English. Includes some words that were originally foreign to English.
sims-fake, digital worlds with a running program/dynamic.
Constructs-fake, digital worlds that are static.
Realms-a platform on the InfiNet that hosts various sims
Get the InterBleeding Series Guide (with a full glossary, universe history, character backgrounds, and A LOT more) plus two novellas for free by joining my newsletter at www.gibsonmorales.com.
About Gibson Morales
Gibson Morales is the starving artist and authorpreneur (author entrepreneur) behind the InterBleeding saga and the Aldrinverse series. His young adult science fiction novel The Deadliest Earthling won the 2015 New Apple Summer e-Book Award. It’s not exactly a Hugo, but, hey, he’ll take it!
When he’s not out partying on yachts with Instagram models and lines of coke, Gibson is getting lost in alternate realities in front of a computer. While he currently writes political space operas with rich world-building, he would be happy if readers considered it thought-provoking satire. Which is not to say that he has any problems with sci-fi—he’s in a mature and steady relationship with sci-fi now (sometimes when he’s writing sci-fi, he still fantasizes about satire, though).
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