What’s more, whatever was out there, there were just three lifeforms aboard the Nautilus likely to survive an up close and personal encounter with it: Cassandra, Solo, and the nun. They were all more superweapon than humanoid in their own way, but of the three, the nun was the closest approximation to the Nautilus supersentience possible in humanoid form. Hence the nun was the most likely to make the quick assessments needed to get in and out in the shortest span of time.
The nun surveyed the spacecraft options at her disposal. Jet fighters. Troop transports. And more. Each powered by various propulsion systems: nuclear, matter-antimatter, solar sails, et al. None of the modes of travel would get her where she needed to go in time.
Some of the craft were powered by black hole engines; others could open wormholes about themselves. Better. But they’d detect her coming a mile away. Enough time to destroy her before she became a threat to them.
“To hell with this. Nauti just beam me where I need to go, please.”
“With my scanners blocked, I can’t guarantee where you’ll end up.” Nauti’s tone was matter of fact, and not at all motherly despite many of the crew preferring to refer to her as Mother.
“I’ll take my chances.”
“And I won’t be able to beam you back.”
“You leave that to me.”
Mercifully, the nun, who preferred to economize on her words as much as her actions, didn’t get subjected to a long diatribe of warnings and disclaimers on the Nautilus’s part. Evidently they shared at least one quality in common.
The nun found herself beaming off the ship for destinations unknown.
***
Cassandra tromped into the nearest launch bay on the Nautilus, moments after the nun had left. She could still smell her. “Don’t tell me that bitch is trying to steal my thunder.”
“Nauti, do your thing.”
The Nautilus teleported Cassandra behind enemy lines without further ado.
***
Leon entered the war room. Aside from Theseus, who was standing for obvious reasons—he’d have broken a chair if he tried to sit down—all the seats were filled, except for two.
“Two of the queens on this n-dimensional chessboard are missing,” Leon protested. “Where are they?”
Solo groaned. “Behind enemy lines.”
“I don’t remember giving that order—just yet.”
“Yes, well, I don’t envy you playing MC to this circus of prima donnas,” Patent croaked. Patent, Leon’s Alpha Unit team leader, was used to a certain amount of insurrection from his teens; this latest generation of space cadets it seemed did better with the cutting edge technology than with respecting authority. But Patent was surprised and irritated himself by the conspicuous absence of two members of the brain trust. Patent had a similar physique to Leon’s with a bald head to match, but perhaps was a little broader in the back and shoulder due to the ridiculous amount of armaments he liked to carry into battle. His face was a bit more lined with age and weathered from the additional field work he saw.
Leon didn’t need a face-recognition algorithm running on his neuro-net to know Solo was hiding something. “I know what kind of antenna your mind is, Solo. Stop holding back, just show us,” Leon commanded.
Solo took a power breath and exhaled forcefully. “I gotta tell you right now, it’s no morale booster.”
The ship shuddered from the latest impact with an asteroid. From the decline in bone rattling, Leon figured Solo was getting this version of the Nautilus clear of the asteroid bombardment and leaving running interference to the other Nautili, but they weren’t entirely free yet. That, or, speaking of the cabal of prima donnas, he’d disobeyed Leon and ordered the Mars war god to take over for him in his game of cosmic billiards, and the Mars war god was just a touch better at playing the game.
“It’s a little late for false hope in any case, I think,” Leon said dryly.
Usually a 3D holographic projection was brought up by Natty or Cassandra, using a remote control to access Mother and to convey intelligence gathered for the briefing. This was the first time Solo had offered his mind up as a cosmic radio to the stars, broadcasting audio and video directly from his third eye, the chakra in the center of his forehead.
As always, the broadcast was projected over the long oval boardroom table made of cypress, centered for everyone to see.
The chorus sounding off included all but a few voices who were likely too stunned into silence to speak up: “Shiiiiiiiiit!”
***
Cassandra materialized off world, in the depths of space, between a cluster of planets. This was no cause for concern: her nanites were the most advanced the Nautilus had to offer. She was radiation-shielded, immune to the temperature vacillations of deep space, and her nanites could provide all the oxygen and life sustaining compounds she needed—nearly indefinitely.
What was cause for concern was what was before her eyes.
The worlds she beheld had been retrofitted—not a grain of sand left unaccounted for—and remade into castle fortresses.
Flying about those castles were dragons—warships to be more precise, cut in the shape of dragons, of various varieties.
The castle-worlds appeared to be at war with one another.
The dragon ships insisted the others stay out of the territory they were protecting—that included the castle keep worlds and a fair amount of space about them. When any of the other dragons got testy, confrontation ensued, which included: laser fire from the dragons’ eyes; plasma torpedoes hurled as so many dragon’s “eggs” from the “female” dragons.
Occasionally, the dragon ships would attack one another with their beaks and talons, showing as much mobility and flexibility as actual dragons, tearing and gnashing at one another, while combatants within the dragon ships attached lines to the enemy’s ships—boarding them like pirate ships of old on Earth. The dragon ships were open to the vacuum of space, their inhabitants clearly modified for space battle.
The real horror slowly dawned on Cassandra: this was just one of the suburbs, a kind of reenactment district of some historical significance to the locals, or possibly pure fantasy gaming conducted without need of virtual reality—because their technology was just that advanced.
Cassandra’s access to the All or “the Godhead” had not been severed; meaning her most advanced generation of nanites were still on-line. No one fully understood how this access worked, just that it had something to do with information theory; the idea that information from anywhere in the cosmos could not be destroyed, and somehow the Nautilus had managed to forge a connection, transferring the “radio receiver” to the nanite hive minds inhabiting Cassandra now. It was only pursuant to The Star Gate mission that that breakthrough technology had been provided them.
But this was the first time they’d gotten a chance to use it. Cassandra could tell that her access to the “All” was fleeting and limited at best. Even so…
That gift was something of a mixed blessing.
It was because Cassandra hadn’t lost that connection to the All that she knew she was beholding a trans-galactic civilization. One that colonized entire galaxies for little purpose but gaming, and wish-fulfillment for its inhabitants.
In lieu of that, being absorbed by them might not be such a bad thing, Cassandra thought. There was room enough in a trans-galactic civilization to accommodate most any tastes for the “the life best lived,” or as Leibnitz would say, “the best of all possible worlds.” If you disagreed with one rendition of the present or future, just migrate to a place within the trans-galactic boundary where life was more in keeping with your preferences.
But it was the mythos holding this trans-galactic civilization together that Cassandra found troubling. All the worlds, all the solar systems, all the galaxies that made it up… they all lived for one thing: war games.
Unlike ancient Greece on Earth, whose city states demonstrated remarkable dissimilarity from one another, like the more famous Athens—a city
of intellectuals—and Sparta—a city of warriors—all these societies were variations on a theme.
But a war gaming trans-galactic civilization still didn’t fully characterize these people.
Hell, Omega Force and Alpha Unit lived for war gaming, even Theta Team—in their own way. But as a means to an end. As a way to protect those who wished only to live in peace. As part of a mentality of: walk softly but carry a big stick.
Even Leon and his Special Forces officers would be repulsed by what she was seeing here.
And then the baited trap became all too apparent.
The instant they engaged this civilization in any way, it would be game on. And while Leon and his people would tire of it soon enough, they never would. Forget the technological gap between them. Forget the insanity of a Stage 0 civilization that was Earth, coming up against a Stage 3 civilization, to put it in Dyson terms. That in itself would be a losing battle. But they’d picked the one Stage 3 civilization to run into that had to be the nastiest of them all.
But there was more to this baited trap.
The asteroid attack on the Earth…
As far as Cassandra could tell, it was being carried on in autopilot mode. Some kind of AI defense system keeping the protective bubble about the trans-galactic civilization off-line as far as the rest of the cosmos was concerned. Perhaps as a form of elitism. Techa forbid anyone intervene in their little nirvana who wasn’t a worthy adversary. That would only downgrade the level of play.
The AI conducting the asteroid bombardment really had one job, to be breached by a civilization worthy of these warrior gods.
Once that was done, the cage rattling would rile the beasts in the cages. Only then would they awaken and release the hounds of hell for anything and anyone beyond the boundary. That encounter would lead to oblivion of their adversary or to their absorption.
Cassandra wasn’t sure which fate was worse.
And the AI serving as the outer membrane of this one galaxy she’d entered or this very large “cell” in the God body—it was more advanced than the Nautilus’s chief supersentience. Team Good Guys would likely be destroyed without this galaxy—far less the trans-galactic civilization it was a part of—ever becoming aware of their existence.
The artifact on the moon that had activated and catapulted both the Earth and its satellite into harm’s way…
It seemed to Cassandra that it had activated too soon.
In their current state of technological development, they were obscene underdogs in this drama. Hardly ready to be tested by the likes of a civilization such as this.
Cassandra could only divine one logical answer: Earth and its people were the lowly bacteria in this drama. Might they infect the host body and bring it down, or make it stronger?
Evidently their adversaries didn’t believe life anywhere in the universe could possibly serve any other role relative to it.
The most unfair thing of all: it was likely the artifact’s detection of the Nautilus that had fooled it into thinking it was dealing with a more advanced civilization.
Had it not been fooled, the Earth might well have stood a chance, however vanishingly small, by being given so many more millennia to evolve, and to prepare.
On the other hand, bacteria ruled the earth. Why shouldn’t it also rule space?
Making the most of the opportunity of their microscopically small significance in the cosmic scheme of things, Cassandra scanned the entire trans-galactic civilization, mapping it all, memorizing the big picture. Her mind could log such a bounty of information thanks to the space-warping technology stolen from alien tech encountered on The Star Gate adventure. Only she and the nun had dared adapt it to their brains. And because of those adaptations, its capacities too were limited. A big picture survey still left a lot of room for error; the devil was always in the details.
The real issue now for Cassandra and her mission was, would the membrane protecting this “cell” in the God body permit her to leave with this information?
Cassandra seriously doubted it.
Just as she doubted that the Nautilus could scan her mind now and download this valuable intel.
Her one hope was the ever-mysterious mind of Solo; the full extent of its abilities still an unknown. If he had a lock on her… he could traffic the information through.
If not…
It wouldn’t matter if access to the All or to the Nautilus was restored when she was back aboard the ship.
What was cloaked beyond the boundary to this trans-galactic civilization would remain beyond, her memories likely wiped by the membrane AI securing this secret sector of space-time, as she passed through it. Cassandra had learned, moreover, when practicing with the nanites that granted access to the All, that the All did not do spoilers; if it wanted them to not see something before they were ready; that was how it was going to be. And just because her mind could tolerate a hit of cosmic consciousness beyond what most minds could endure, that did not mean she would be allowed to retain the knowledge if it threatened more fragile minds.
If the truth about her access to the All weren’t damning enough, from the other side of the membrane, the AI attacking them was also blocking their access to the All. It had blinded the Nautilus as well.
For now, Cassandra had even more pressing matters on her hand.
She had to find a way across that membrane without being treated like invading bacteria, and killed within the membrane itself. If she couldn’t get to the other side, the Nautilus couldn’t get a lock on her. Even if she was dead by the time she made it to the other side, that in itself would be a small triumph. The Nautilus could tease a bulk of information out of her dead body, which as nanite-infested as it was, would still have a lot of secrets to offer up. But, she suspected, even that was asking for a lot.
She engaged her foot thrusters—the nanites lining her bare feet with their onboard matter-antimatter rockets.
There might be time enough to ponder any number of strategies for crossing that barrier once she hit it.
But she couldn’t see the barrier. Apparently the residents on this side wanted no obvious reminder of its existence, so had cloaked it. Just as it was cloaked on the other side.
She might well cross that barrier before she had time to finish her thought.
***
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
THE SITUATION ROOM
Leon sighed. Along with everyone else in the war room, he had been privy to the data flow streaming across Cassandra’s mind, every thought, everything she was seeing. The gift unwrapped with the help of Solo’s mind.
“I think that’s enough,” Leon said keeping his voice as level as he could. “It’s time to see what’s on channel two of this broadcast.”
“Dude! How many ways can you say ‘Game Over’!” Ajax blurted in the whiny voice that he shifted into when his joke-making failed him as a coping mechanism.
“Stow that shit!” Patent snapped.
Leon craned to Solo. “Solo, if you please.”
“Wait,” was all Solo said.
The latest footage with Cassandra came up.
***
Cassandra emitted a deafening scream only she could hear, for in the depths of space, sound did not carry.
She had quickly realized she could be flying around out here for eons before encountering that barrier in a civilization this large, and she just didn’t have the patience.
Time for Plan B.
She dove down to the nearest Dragon Ship, landed on it much like a mosquito on a bull, and started prying back the hull, using her hands as a can opener. This one wasn’t open to space like the others. An older model?
Once she’d broken through, the instant decompression from inside the ship caused it to vent a goodly number of its crew. The moment she saw one of the alien creatures she morphed into what appeared like a member of their race. They might think of her as a spy, a turncoat, but they would not suspect outside infiltration from beyond the barrier. Cassandra wasn�
�t about to show the Nautilus’s hand just yet.
Once inside the vessel she hesitated following through with her plan. She was not known for her hesitation or for getting caught with her guard down. She might well never live it down. But she needed a beat. The dragon ship—as big as it was—easily the size of the Nautilus—was availing itself of its own space warping technologies.
Cassandra floated in an anti-gravity chamber big enough to house a solar system. She could only take it all in through her mind’s eye—through her connection to the All, still, miraculously, not severed. Could she be such a non-threat that she fell beneath their security scans, failing to trigger the T-cells immunizing this trans-galactic civilization from harm?
The next thing to take her breath away was the floating spinning top of a space station she was most proximate to. It was filled almost entirely by children. The few adults looked like little more than android guardians making sure they didn’t get into too much trouble. They talked and played in the way that all children did and although Cassandra had yet to hack her way through their language—her nano hive minds had enough else on their hands right now—there was no mistaking that this entire ship, and very possibly this entire sector, was little more than a children’s playground.
And what did she know about parents everywhere?
They didn’t let their kids near anything too unsafe that would require adult psyches and skills to pull them out of danger.
That made what Cassandra had to do all the more difficult.
Using the space-warping technology that the Nautilus had also gifted her with, that would allow her to expand or shrink to any size she wanted—she sized herself accordingly for less than a femtosecond—below the threshold of conscious brain detection—only the unconscious quantum mind could react this fast—and blew herself to kingdom come.
***
“What the hell!” Ajax barked as everyone in the war room with Leon witnessed the Dragon Ship explode—killing every living thing inside.
“Even forgetting how she did that—by the way, how did she do that!—forget the billions of souls she just extinguished, the sociopathic, psychopathic bitch—why in Techa’s name would she take herself out like that, when we need her the most?” Ajax with his whining again was also leaping out of the chair and gesturing to match. The rest of the team was used to tuning him out; if it wasn’t the offensive jokes to keep his stress level under control, it was erupting like this, like someone you wanted to slap some sense into.
Moving Earth Page 4
