by Scott Baron
“None taken, Daisy,” the doctor replied. “But you have to accept the fact that you are unique. You’ve even seen the readouts. Your physiology is enhanced. And look what you were able to do with your mind. All the data you retained. That should have been impossible. Whether you like it or not, you are special. We just need to find a way for you to tap into your potential.”
“Sure, I did download a bunch of stuff and access some abilities I didn’t know I had tucked away in my noggin, I’ll give you that, but how does knowing a few coding tricks and basic shuttle mechanics make me this ‘chosen one’ you keep going on about?”
“No one calls you the chosen one. Have you been watching that old, ‘There is no spoon’ movie with Vincent again?”
“You know what I mean. I’m supposed to be amazing, but I feel average. Okay, maybe a teeny, tiny, little bit above average, but you know what I mean. I hate to disappoint you all, but you’ve got the wrong girl.”
“But the genetic––”
“Maybe it was Sarah who was supposed to be the golden child. You ever consider that?”
“Oh no you don’t. Don’t drag me into this!” Sarah objected.
You were grown just like I was. Maybe you were supposed to be their super messiah savior girl, she silently argued. What do you say to that?
Sarah didn’t bother to reply.
Doctor McClain studied her a long moment, then sat back in her chair.
“All right, Daisy, let’s go with your theory for the moment. Even if you are just a normal woman, don’t you want to grow as a person?”
“I was grown in a tube, Doc, and no amount of therapy is going to change that. All I want to do now is just live as normal a life as I can.”
“Here on the moon?”
“Yeah, here on the moon. I’ve accepted that I’m never going back home, because that home never existed at all. I’ve just got to make the best of a shitty situation and get on with my life.”
She rose to her feet and headed to the door.
“I do appreciate your efforts, Doc, but I think I can be of far more help here than I’d ever be on Earth.”
Daisy walked out of the room, leaving Doctor McClain jotting notes on her tablet. A minute later the shrink reached for her comms unit.
“Harkaway here,” the captain answered.
“Captain, would you please arrange a meeting with Commander Mrazich and Fatima? I think we need to talk.”
Chapter Six
Deep in the shadows of the moon, a series of flashes briefly flickered against the inky darkness.
“Commander, Bob has just signaled us. Reggie and Donovan have returned from their drift,” Sid’s disembodied voice informed Commander Mrazich. “I am opening Hangar Two for their arrival. It also appears, in addition to a successful scanning run, they have managed to retrieve a few pieces from the debris field in the process.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Sid. Please have them upload their data to your systems once they’re safely inside, and inform Chu and Gustavo that we have some new information for them to review.”
“Certainly, Commander. My pleasure.”
“And let Shelly and Omar know there’s some componentry to be offloaded.”
“Of course.”
The base AI clicked off the comms and set to his tasks while Commander Mrazich watched the beat-up, but very functional, recon ship as it drew close to the base. Bob, the ship’s AI, steered it expertly into Hangar Two, then powered his flight systems down to standby mode.
Fifteen minutes later, Chu and Gustavo were poring over the newly gathered data in the communications lab as Commander Mrazich and Captain Harkaway looked on.
“Anything, Gus?” Harkaway asked.
“Hang on just another minute, Captain, there’s a lot of interference in this scan. I was wondering if maybe they could maybe drop lower next time and take readings clear of the debris field––”
“You know we can’t do that,” Donovan said as he and Reggie entered the room. “Commander Mrazich. Captain.” The pilot nodded to the men in casual greeting.
“No difficulties, then?” Mrazich asked.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle. We hit a particularly dense patch of wreckage, so it took us a bit longer than usual to maneuver through the field with our air thrusters. Tacked an extra forty minutes onto the flight.”
“Beats showing up on the Chithiid scans,” Chu said.
“True, that. Anyway, once we settled in, we picked up a fair amount of comms noise, but as usual, it was garbled gibberish. I don’t know if it’s a scrambler or what, but Bob couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Nor can I, Commander,” Sid chimed in. “Mal is running a parallel scan on her systems, but feels similarly that this will prove fruitless yet again.”
“We did send another focused ping directly at Los Angeles to the region where Daisy said she encountered that massive AI presence, as you suggested, but we’ve been doing that for months now, and there still hasn’t been a single reply.”
“You think she was hearing things?” Chu asked.
“I don’t know,” Donovan admitted. “I mean, it’s entirely possible that the only reason the AI stayed intact this long was by entirely cutting itself off from external comms. Tactically, it makes sense. If they severed all comms links in order to seal off any possible access point of the AI virus, they’d be sitting blind.”
“Blind, but alive,” Captain Harkaway mused as he scratched his stubbly chin in thought. “Alive and able to operate their city defense systems. That would explain why the Chithiid are still steering clear of so many cities. The intact ones. But we still don’t have any proof, and it’s far too risky to plan a full-scale mission based on just a hunch.”
“Agreed, Captain,” Sid said. “The cutting of all comms would certainly keep the AI clean of the virus, but it would also mean that it could not even so much as hear our transmission, let alone reply to it. Of course, it’s all speculation at this point. Once Daisy returns to the surface and re-establishes contact, then we’ll finally know what the city’s status really is.”
“You know she’s dead-set against going back there, right?” Vince said as he stepped into the room. “I mean, maybe you’ll find a way to talk her into it, but knowing how stubborn she can be, I find the idea highly unlikely.”
Harkaway grunted his agreement, or perhaps it was his annoyance, or maybe it was a healthy bit of both, then glanced once more at the results of their fly-over scans, his brow furrowed as he read the data.
“Good lord, look at all the craters where those cities used to be. They’ve stripped them bare, like goddamn locusts. Reggie, you were reading the monitors real-time, are you sure there wasn’t a single sign of any activity from any other intact region?”
“Negative, sir. No communications chatter whatsoever.”
“Any surface activity?” he asked. “Besides the usual small transport ships moving their loads to the main warp ship docks, that is.”
“Well,” Reggie began, then hesitated. “There was something going on in the periphery of Beijing that seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Weapons fire and some smaller salvage ships going down, but we’re pretty confident it was just the Chithiid probing the automated defenses again. It looks like they’ve pretty well stripped the surrounding areas of usable resources, and Chu and me, well, we thought they were probably just testing the city, just in case they could dig into that rich vein rather than have to relocate their deconstruction operations to another developed area.”
“Good thing those alien bastards don’t know which cities possess nukes and which don’t,” Mrazich said. “I’m pretty sure that uncertainty is the only thing keeping the majority of them from being overrun.”
“So, status quo, then. Have you made any progress in figuring out how their large cargo ship warp device works?” Harkaway asked.
“Unfortunately, the tech behind their warp drive still remains a mystery to us,” Chu replied. “If we could perhaps
capture one of their ships, then we might have a chance of figuring out how it works. Reverse engineer it, as it were.”
“You know that’s not an option.”
“I know, but we’re stuck observing from afar. For now, all we know is it seems to form a tiny skin of a compressed warp bubble around the nose of the ship just prior to its jump. The power signature is quite low, and Sid and Bob and I have long theorized that it’s more of a hop device than a true warp. Given that, we all agree that they most likely have to perform a lengthy series of smaller hops in order to reach their fleet.”
“Why is that?” Vince asked.
“Well, for one, the power signature seems to be far too low to indicate a significant space-time event. That makes sense looking at the limited area affected by the ship’s movement, whereas a large-scale warp would form a proper warp bubble of much greater magnitude. Unlike their current method, that type of larger event would allow for a single jump to their destination.”
“So, given how far away the fleet must be by now, we’re thinking what? A few months of travel? Days? Years?”
“We really have no way of knowing, but if we figure in the speed at which their main fleet left the solar system several hundred years ago, and the distance they would have covered by now, it is quite likely that even with these tiny hops, it still would take at least a year, if not two, for the ship to reach the fleet. Of course, we don’t know if they left our solar system and simply found a new conquest nearby, but given the size of the galaxy and rarity of planets with Earth’s resources, it seems most likely that they traveled quite a distance before discovering another suitable planet.”
“Agreed,” Sid’s disembodied voice said.
“Okay, so we probably have a little bit of a cushion between us and their fleet. What do you think, as someone who has been watching this planet for years? Is there a realistic likelihood that L.A. is still active despite the lack of response?” Harkaway asked as he scrolled through the contact map, looking for signs of anything other than alien crews deconstructing the planet.
“Sir, if I may,” Sid interjected. “While Miss Swarthmore’s recounting of her time on the surface seems a bit fanciful, I would remind everyone that fleshless cyborgs were indeed seen by the rescue unit when they retrieved her and brought her back to Dark Side. Many of her other claims have proven to be true as well. I do not think she was misleading us, nor do I believe she possesses the mental structure of one who would make something like that up. She believes what she reported, and minus proof to the contrary, I feel we must take her at her word.”
“Agreed,” Harkaway said after a moment’s consideration. “But if that’s true, then we’re going to have to find a way to make contact, with or without Daisy’s help.”
Chu looked up from his workstation.
“Um, Captain? I think I may be able to help with that. And Daisy will even lend a hand, though she won’t exactly know it.”
The next afternoon Chu was hunched over a large pile of parts spread across the table in the mess hall, sipping his coffee as he studied the machinery. Daisy, as was her usual routine, stopped in to pick up a snack to top off her energy stores before heading to train with Fatima, but Chu paid her no heed.
“Hey, Chu,” she called out.
He ignored her.
“Chu!” she said, louder. The technician looked up as if he hadn’t heard her come in.
“Oh, Daisy, hi. Sorry, hang on, I think I’ve almost got it.”
“Got what?”
“Nothing, just a reverse engineered wireless—never mind, you wouldn’t understand.”
Daisy bristled ever-so slightly as she strode to his table, nudging him aside as she plopped down next to him.
“Uh-huh, wouldn’t understand, eh?” She scanned the device and parts spread before her. “So you’ve got a long-range encrypted comms transmitter piggybacked to an RF modulator with a MK-V uplink filter running tri-band firewalls. Sound about right?”
Chu laughed.
“Damn. How do you do that? You’ve never even seen this thing, but you know what it does in just a glance.”
“Call me special,” she joked.
“Now you’re starting to sound like the others.”
Shut up, Sarah, she silently replied.
“So, what’s the issue, Chu? Seems like a solid enough system you’ve got set up.”
“For comms shielded by the moon, perhaps, but we have no way to contact our drift ships while they’re in the scanning range of Earth’s orbit. They’re on their own, and we just sit here, waiting to see if they make it back in one piece. But what if we had a way to communicate with them, all the way into Earth’s atmosphere, but in such a way that the Chithiid wouldn’t detect it?”
“Seems like an easy fix. Just use a low-frequency encryption and deliver with an asynchronous pulse rather than traditional. That would work.”
“Yes, it would, but Bob is running that ship, and his AI brain would be exposed and run a risk of the Chithiid AI infection every time he used it.”
“Shit, I see what you mean,” Daisy said. “Hmm, gimme a second here.” She furrowed her brow in concentration as she looked at the communications device and the assortment of parts on the table.
“Hang on, do you have any of the old DM-15s lying around?”
“We’ve got a few crates of them, but those things were antiques when they first built this place. Why?”
“I have an idea,” she replied with a cocky grin. “Your concern is not only staying off of Chithiid scans, which your system seems to accomplish, but also to transmit in a manner that would protect Bob—and Sid by extension—from running the risk of AI virus infection. So why not overlap a set of two-factor authenticated wireless signals from the DM-15s?”
Chu’s eyes went wide as he realized what she was proposing.
“You mean re-working the old units to transmit with actual radio waves, verifying with a super-outdated authentication? Like waaaay back in the old days?”
“Why not?” she said. “The Chithiid, from what I can tell, are so busy focusing on high-tech attacks and defenses, they’d never even notice something so simplistic as a random terrestrial-style radio signal. All you would need is some masking signal to hide the transmission in. Hell, that’s easy enough. Then, once it runs through your filter, it would be all but unreadable to those four-armed freaks, while you’d be able to communicate with Bob and the boys easily.”
“But what about the radio delays?” Chu asked.
“Come on, Chu, you’re a scientist. Sure, the distance to somewhere far away would make for difficulties processing the signal, but the moon won’t take ten minutes like it would for radio waves to reach Mars. I’d think at most, and this is if Bob is orbiting on the far side of the Earth from Dark Side, you’d still only have maybe a five-to-seven second delay. Factor that into the algorithm and you should be able to have relatively stable comms, no problem.”
She smiled as he processed what she said, proud of her impromptu design work.
“Holy shit, Daisy, that’s amazing. Thank you so much!”
“You got it. You need anything else? ‘Cause I’ve got to get to my session with Fatima if you don’t.”
“No, I’m good. You go.”
“Cool.”
She got up and headed for the door.
“And, Daisy, thank you for this.”
“My pleasure.”
The door slid shut behind her, leaving Chu alone once more. He picked up his long-cold cup of coffee and dumped it in the sink, then keyed his comms.
“Commander, I think I got us something we can work with. If I understand it correctly, it should easily be able to handle our needs.”
“Excellent. Rustle up the others and meet us in the comms lab. Daisy’s off with Fatima for at least an hour, correct?”
“Yes, sir, that’s her schedule.”
“All right, then. See you in five.”
Chapter Seven
“Breathe,
Daisy. Just breathe.” Fatima watched her impatient pupil as she led her through a mental warm-up before getting to the day’s challenges. “Remember, soft is strong. Just relax. That’s it, be mindful, but let the tension and worries go.”
“Am I the only one getting sick of this yogi, guru, routine?” Sarah griped.
Go away, Sarah, I’m trying to concentrate.
“Something on your mind, Daisy?” Fatima asked.
“No, I’m fine. Just got distracted for a minute.”
“Mm-hm,” Fatima said with a faint smile.
For the next ten minutes, Daisy followed the older woman’s lead and let herself gradually shed the stresses and worries of the day. When the real training began, she would be an empty cup ready to be filled.
Metaphorically, of course. The fact was her head was so jammed full of information, she would never be truly empty ever again.
“Good, Daisy. Very good. Breathe. Quiet your mind. Sense all that is around you and stay aware, even as you let your mental walls slowly come down.”
“I know how to meditate, Fatima. Sarah taught me almost a year ago when we were back on the Váli.”
Her teacher grinned. “And I am quite thankful for that. She saved me having to go over the basics with you, which certainly gave you a head start on your training. But those skills were merely the first steps. Yes, you’ve done far more than scratch the surface, but you still have a very long way to go, yet.” Fatima took one of the alloy cups from the table and poured herself a helping of tea as her pupil continued to slowly inhale and exhale.
“Good. And again, breathe and open your mind to yourself. Relax into it.”
Daisy actually felt herself sliding into her comfortable meditative state, though she’d never done so in quite this fashion. Her eyes slowly began to close.
A lightweight alloy cup clanged off her forehead.
“Ouch! What the hell, Fatima?”
“I said to relax. I didn’t say to let your guard down.”
