by Scott Baron
As much as she wanted to survey more of the city, Daisy had to admit that she agreed with her sister. Things were about to get hairy up in space, and she really should be there, just in case.
“Freya, we’re going to be heading back to you shortly. Plot a course back to intercept the shuttle, okay?”
“You betcha,” the chipper AI replied.
“Okay, see ya soon.”
She went back downstairs and placed the coffee where she had originally found it all those months ago.
“Thank you, Daisy,” she said. “Why, you’re welcome, Daisy,” she replied to herself.
“You are such a dork.”
Aww, love you too, Sis.
She carefully stepped from the unit, careful to not disturb the fine pile of human dust in the clothes by the door, then took off back down to the streets. Freya was where she left her, quietly hovering, not making so much as a peep.
“We’re back,” she said just as the airlock opened.
“I was watching you,” Freya replied. “There are also a few cyborgs out in the streets. They’re some of Habby’s people.”
“Why are they up top?”
“It’s safe to come up at night. Mostly, anyway.”
“No Chithiid?”
“Nope. I’ve been scanning, but I’ll do a quick loop on the way to orbit, just to see if there’s anything I might have missed.”
“And Cal didn’t see you?” Daisy asked as they took to the skies.
“No. I know his systems now, so it was pretty easy to mask my signature and interfere with his scanners and cameras.”
“Great. Then let’s get to it.”
The stealth ship ran a full battery of scans as she spiraled over the city on her way out of the atmosphere, then, with a burst of speed, reconnected with the now-ailing shuttle.
“Looks like the first mishap has already happened, Daze.”
“Yep. All good, though. Now we just watch and wait.”
“Yeah. And hope we don’t have to step in and save your ass.”
“I think I would have remembered that.”
“Remember that sentiment next time you enjoy a cup of coffee, Sis.”
“Hey, that’s totally not the same. And coffee is important!”
“I know. Just fuckin’ with ya.”
As Daisy predicted, the rest of her trip aboard the ancient shuttle was uneventful. Well, it was eventful, but no more than it had been the first go-around.
The vessel lost power as it entered the atmosphere, just like before, though this time Daisy was able to observe the Ra’az missile that narrowly missed it when the power signal it had targeted abruptly disappeared.
All the way back down to the City of Angels, Freya scanned the Chithiid responses to the craft. Surprisingly, it seemed to have not drawn any attention, which was something akin to threading a needle, given their sizable presence in the outskirts of the city.
“I’d guess they’re steering clear of the areas that have automated defenses. The shuttle was coming in with no power, so unless they watched it with their own eyes, it was probably nothing of real interest to them on their scanners,” Daisy posited.
“I think you’re probably right, Daisy,” Freya agreed. “They’re scanning it, but there’s no reading.”
“So they’re scanning you too.”
“Of course. But those scans won’t pick up anything from me,” the AI said confidently.
“The charmed life of a stealth ship, huh, Freya?”
“Yep!”
“Cool. Let’s keep a low profile and monitor any Ra’az activity. The Chithiid are staying clear, but if the big guys step in, we’ll need to act.”
Freya touched down in a relatively clear patch of the Los Angeles riverbed, monitoring Daisy’s movement as she ventured into the foreign environment.
“This must’ve been so weird for you,” she said.
“Yeah, it really was,” Daisy replied. “I mean, I thought I was escaping an AI rebellion to overthrow humanity. Little did I know, right?” She watched her own progress on the scanners, then walked to the medical bay to check in on her wounded sister.
Unlike previously, there had been some changes since she last visited her.
“Daisy, what the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, confused.
Inside the pod, a slow-moving swarm of what appeared to be black ooze was flowing over Sarah’s right arm at a near-imperceptible flow. A fine trickle was also trickling between her nose and mouth, the liquid flowing in and out of her with gentle waves.
“Freya, what have you done to Sarah? What’s that black stuff?”
“It’s not black. It’s a light-absorbing nano material.”
“A what?”
“It’s like I said, Daisy. I don’t have proper medical fabricators on board, so I had to make do with what I have.”
“Which means?”
“I repurposed a small batch of my nanites and set them to work inside the cryo pod. They have to work really, really slow, but they’re gradually replacing the destroyed arm, building a new one from the ground up at a molecular level.”
“Whoa,” Sarah marveled. “But what about the stuff coming out of my nose?”
“That’s more of the nano swarm.”
“But what are they doing?”
“Fixing you. I mean, her. Your lungs were basically destroyed, Sarah. And you lost a decent amount of blood too. They’re rebuilding you an entirely new respiratory system along with replacing the missing blood with a super-efficient nanite substitute.”
“Does that mean what I think it does?” Daisy asked.
“Yeah. Basically, Sarah’s getting a self-repairing nanite upgrade that will restore all of her damaged functions.”
“I sense a ‘but’ in there, Freya,” Sarah noted.
“But, I can’t guarantee she’ll even survive the process.”
“Oh,” Sarah said, crestfallen.
“There’s another but, though,” she continued, perking up. “But if she survives, she’ll be even more invisible to Ra’az scans than you are, Daisy. The nanites are made from my stealth material, so by incorporating them into her body on this scale, Sarah could probably walk right up to a scanner and not read on it.”
“So now we just wait and see, is that it?”
“Pretty much. I’d warp us forward if I could, but I don’t think she’d survive the process in her condition, and it’s going to be a long time before she’s ready to come out of there.”
“Looks like we’re going to be catching up with our own timeline the long way around,” Daisy sighed, then settled in for a nap.
“Wake me if anything happens,” she said. “Anything besides what we already know about, that is.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, kiddo. You’re doing really great.”
Daisy then slid into an exhausted slumber, slowly letting the mentally draining past several days wash from her consciousness. At least for a little while.
“Daisy, the cyborgs and Chithiid are fighting now,” Freya announced, covertly pulling the video feed from Cal’s systems and streaming it to her monitors.
“Okay, then,” she groaned, sliding up from her slouched position in the captain’s chair. “How long was I out?”
“A few hours.”
“Better than nothing. All right, let’s get airborne and prep to shadow the retrieval ship. I was unconscious for the trip, but from what they said, I know it was a hairy ride.”
Freya immediately powered up and moved into a low hover, awaiting the imminent escape.
The battle unfolded on the monitors, just as Daisy remembered. The cyborgs fought valiantly, and especially well now that she knew they were actually mere domestic units.
“They made a good show of it,” she said, admiringly.
“Here comes the good part,” Sarah said.
Daisy watched Vince and his team rush to her aid on the screen in front of her.
; “Look at the concern in his eyes, Daze. You had just cut his arm off like two days earlier, and there he is, still healing, desperate to save his girlfriend.”
“Yeah, I know. No need to make me feel any more guilty about it.”
“Wait, here’s my favorite bit.”
Daisy on the monitors jumped to her feet, hands held high, and called a surrender to the stunned Chithiid. She knew any moment now, Vince and the others would cut them down in cold blood.
“Daze, look at their shoulders!”
It was something she hadn’t noticed in the heat of the moment. A detail that would have meant nothing to her at that time, but one that now made all the difference in the world. A distinctive scar was branded into each of the Chithiid’s flesh.
“Fucking loyalists,” she growled. “Suddenly, I don’t feel so bad about what’s about to––”
Vince and the others lit them up, tearing the loyalists to shreds.
“Great. And now this part,” she grumbled, knowing what was coming next.
Tamara, for her part, showed a brief moment of hesitation that Daisy hadn’t remembered. Then she blasted her with the stun rifle just the same.
Daisy watched herself collapse to the ground, only to be roughly thrown over Tamara’s shoulder and rushed back to the tiny hopper ship a few blocks away. The team wasted no time, blasting off hard, burning bright as they launched toward the edge of the atmosphere.
It was a rough ride, and to make things worse, a pair of missiles quickly locked on to them, tracking their progress and growing closer by the second.
“Um, Freya?” Daisy said, concern in her voice. The missiles grew closer still. “Freya? Any time now.”
“Jeez, don’t worry so much. I told you, I can handle it.”
“Teens, Daze.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Freya flashed into the sky, making sure to stay out of the escaping hopper’s windows’ field of view, then blasted out a jamming signal, forcing the missiles to spiral out of control with no target to lock on to.
It was a rough ride, but the ship finally made it into space in one piece. Now, Daisy remembered, they’d float a while before gradually returning to Dark Side Base to begin a long adjustment period.
As for future Daisy, she, too, had a long wait in store.
“Okay,” she said. “Might as well get comfy. We’re in for a long haul.”
Chapter Eleven
Five long months.
That’s how long Daisy had spent observing Ra’az and Chithiid movements and communications and cataloging their various vessels, including the slowly advancing iterations of Chithiid-test piloted warp ships that continuously failed in spectacular bursts of unstable energy.
She was also counting the days, making preparations for the eventual syncing of timelines.
With Sarah still in the process of being reconstructed, she had been stuck living out the months in normal time, unable to attempt a warp. But they were close, now. Soon Sarah would be ready to exit the cryo pod after months of intensive repairs, and hopefully not keel over dead from the shock.
With so much time on her hands, Daisy had also spent a good portion of her time attempting to repair the burned-out Ra’az power whip she had claimed from the corpse of the alien after their face-to-face encounter.
Unfortunately, unlike her original Chithiid power whip, which was far simpler and which she had easily repaired and installed into Tamara’s arm, the powerful Ra’az model was proving far more difficult for her to repair.
“Might also have something to do with your not knowing enough about it to be able to leave yourself a little extra info in that neuro-stim update.”
“I know, but the tech is basically the same concept as the ones they let the Chithiid use.”
“Sure, but you know they’re going to keep their own personal toys far more secure than the ones they allow their underlings to use. Basic security, Daze.”
“Still, I’ve gotten it to power up, so I know it should work, but for whatever reason, it just won’t activate. I can’t even get a tiny pulse out of it.”
Indeed, during her many test sessions––each performed in a remote location on the planet’s surface, so as to avoid unintentionally damaging Freya should things go awry––she had achieved full power, per her readouts, but zero output.
“I don’t know. Maybe their brains are just too incompatible. Something about the way they think, perhaps.”
“You want me to try?” Freya offered. “I can mount it on one of my mechs and see if I can get it to work.”
Daisy slid the band from her forearm and offered it up to the precocious ship.
“Give it a go. Just keep your firewalls up so you don’t catch anything from their alien software.”
“Don’t worry, I already know how to cure the virus.”
“I’m not talking about the virus. There are other things out there. Things you haven’t encountered yet, so don’t take it for granted that you can overcome all of them.”
“The joy of youth, eh? That wonderful invincibility.”
“Yeah. We were too, once upon a time.”
“Then I died, and you got your ass whooped and dragged to the moon.”
“Well, yeah. There was that.” Daisy chuckled. “How things change, huh, Sis?”
“That they do. But I may have a second chance, soon.”
“I know. It’s about that time. Hey, Freya, where do we stand with Sarah’s progress?”
Nothing.
“Freya, you there?”
“Oh, sorry, Daisy. I was just reviewing the comms traffic between NORAD and Sid from before we jumped back.”
“That, again?”
“Yeah, that, again? You’ve gone over those comms hundreds of times, Freya.”
“But there’s valuable information there. Joshua is the greatest AI mind to ever live,” she replied, defensively.
“You know what it is, don’t you, Daze?”
“Oh, yeah. Freya’s got a crush on a boy.”
“I do not!” she blurted.
“Yep, that confirms it.”
“Shut up. I do not have a crush. I just respect his intellect, is all.”
“It’s okay to have a crush, Freya, even if it is a bit unusual for an AI. But you can’t get attached. You know what happens to him not too long after those comms links get established. It’s a historic fact, and we cannot, we must not change that.”
“Well, duh. I’m not stupid, Daisy.”
“I never said you were.”
“Then don’t treat me like I am.”
“Don’t get snippy with me, Freya.”
“What? Are you going to ground me? Send me to my room? I don’t have one, by the way––it’s still occupied by the earlier version of me.”
“Wow, where did all this lip come from? You need to check your tone, young lady.”
“Then stop picking on me.”
“We’re not picking on you. It was just a joke, Freya. It’s fine if you like Joshua, really, but you can’t go off on these rude tangents. It’s not cool.”
“Well––”
“No well. Just don’t. Now this is important. I want you to answer my original question. How is Sarah’s recovery coming? She should’ve been ready to come out of the cryo pod a few days ago, according to your earlier estimates.”
“I know, but I want to be sure.”
She’s scared, Daisy realized.
“There is no sure, hon,” Sarah said, taking the hint. “Eventually, we’re going to have to open the pod and let the chips fall where they may. And this is me saying this. I have a very vested interest in the outcome, and even I recognize what needs to happen. So, what do you say?”
Freya hesitated a second.
“One more day, okay? Then we’ll pull her out of cryo,” she finally answered.
“Okay. Tomorrow is the day. Thank you, Freya.”
“You’re welcome,” the young AI replied. “And Daisy?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
Daisy felt a warm flush of pride in her chest as her kid showed her love and ever-increasing maturity.
“It’s okay, kiddo. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. And I’m sorry I razzed you about Joshua.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Of course, kiddo. Arguments happen, but at the end of the day, we’re family, and that’s far more important than any little spat.”
“Yeah,” the brilliant AI said. “Thanks, Daisy.”
“You bet. Now, what do you say we head over to Dark Side and see what’s up?”
“You got it,” she replied, then merrily powered up and set her course for Dark Side Base.
The work on Dark Side Base was moving at a normal pace. No one had impulsively zoomed off down to Earth yet, damaged ships were not being salvaged and stockpiled, and a secret hangar had not yet been discovered.
For most of the prior day, Daisy and Freya had monitored internal comms, while watching Bob and Donovan gather scrap, flying in and dropping their loads to be sorted, then lazily floating back toward the debris field orbiting Earth.
They also watched as Daisy performed Fatima’s arduous tasks in the low-g environment.
“Man, she really did have you running around out there, didn’t she?”
“She sure did,” Daisy replied with a faint smile. Fatima, for all the exhausting training she had subjected her to, was her friend, and she found herself missing their talks. “Hey, I’m gonna suit up and go for a closer look.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“We can read scans, and our visuals are okay, but I’d like to get a first-hand peep at what’s going on over there.”
“Just be careful.”
“Never,” she said with a laugh. “Hey, Freya, do me a favor and keep an ear out for Donovan and Bob. Wouldn’t want to accidentally wander into their flight path and get scanned when they drop their next load of salvage.”
“Will do, Daisy,” the AI replied.
It wasn’t a very long walk to where the majority of the work was taking place, but Daisy couldn’t very well risk being seen wandering about the base’s facilities. After a moment’s thought, she settled on the ridge-line above.
