by Scott Baron
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Really? Excellent!” Sarah gushed.
“But only if you promise to keep what we share to yourself until we have a chance to talk.”
“Okay. Promise,” Sarah agreed.
I wonder what she’s on about, Daisy mused. Of course, now you’ve sworn not to tell me anyway, so I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out.
“This is going to be amazing. I’ll finally have new memories, just as if I had a body again.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s a two-way street, so spare me the overly chipper attitude, okay?”
“Hey, I’m part of this too, you know,” Daisy reminded her. “Sarah lives inside my head, so I’ve got to go through with this just like the two of you.”
“Fine. Can we just get this over with already?”
“The neuro-stim unit is all set up,” Freya informed her. “All you two need to do is come aboard, plop down in your seats, slip the bands on your heads, and let me do the rest.”
“Okay, then, let’s do this.”
The pair made their way to the hangar, rushing straight to Freya’s stealthy craft. Finn was nowhere to be seen en route. Sarah supposed she should be grateful for that.
“Ready,” Daisy said as she settled into her seat. “You ready, Sis?”
“Yeah,” Sarah grumbled.
“Fantastic,” Freya said, thrilled to be able to help with such an unusual data transfer. “Just relax and close your eyes. This should hopefully take about an hour.”
“Hopefully?”
“Well, yeah. I’ve never done it before, so I’m kinda estimating, here.”
“What have I gotten myself into?” Sarah groaned.
“Oh, hush,” Daisy chided her. “It’ll be done before you know it.”
An hour later, it was not done, and Daisy was now the one getting antsy in her seat. The transfer was taking place, but as it was between the two Sarahs, she was left out of the loop, aside from acting as a conduit, that is.
“The fleet is almost ready to launch, Freya. How much longer?” she asked.
“I’m almost done,” Freya replied. “And don’t rush me. This is a lot harder than it looks, but if I do it just right, they’ll share every memory as it if were their own. Now, hold still. Sarah’s in your head, but partitioned from your own memories. It’s kinda tricky, so let me concentrate.”
“Okay, okay. Do your thing, kiddo.”
“I am, Daisy.”
Freya continued to stream memories from Sarah to Sarah until, at long last, the two had synced up. Each shared the same memories now. The process was a success.
The Sarah riding in Daisy’s head was unusually silent, given what had just happened. Flesh-and-blood Sarah was also not saying a word, but rather, sitting quietly, looking stunned.
Finally, she slipped the neuro-stim from her head and got to her feet.
“I need to find him,” she said.
“Yes, you do.”
Sarah quickly gathered her things and bolted out the door.
“You wanna tell me what that was all about?” Daisy asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Sarah replied.
“Where’s Finn?” Sarah asked as she ran into the mess hall. She scanned the kitchen area, but there was no sign of the knife-wielding madman. “Has anyone seen Finn? Anyone?”
The visitors to the base looked at her, confused, but one of them seemed to have overheard a conversation he had not too long ago.
“The chef, right?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I heard him telling one of the cyborgs he’d meet him aboard the Váli. Something about prepping for launch. I think he’s crewing on that ship during the invasion.”
Sarah was out the door before he could even ask if that was what she was looking for.
She bolted down the corridors, taking the long way where the damage was still being repaired. She had just been in Hangar Two, and had she not been in such a rush, she might even have noticed him entering the large ship not too far from Freya.
No time to beat herself up over that, not with the mission about to launch. Sarah keyed her comms as she ran.
“What’s up, Sis? Did you find him?”
“Change of plans,” she said, out of breath from running. “I’m going to warp to Taangaar aboard the Váli instead.”
“You don’t want to come with Freya and me?”
“You go on. Finn’s aboard the Váli, Daze. You and I can rendezvous once the mission gets underway.”
“Okay, Sis. Good luck with whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Thanks. I wish I knew,” Sarah replied as she rushed aboard the Váli just as she sealed her doors and lifted off, joining the hundreds of ships launching to retake the Chithiid homeworld.
Freya launched as well, settling in with the other ships as they prepared to warp.
Sarah was still being uncharacteristically quiet inside Daisy’s head, and the quiet was putting her on edge ever so slightly.
“Hey, Sis. You okay in there?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she replied in an almost dreamy tone. “It’s amazing, Daze. It’s wonderful. I have all these experiences that are part of me. It’s like I’m alive again.”
“I don’t mean to sound cruel, Sarah, really I don’t, but you do realize that wasn’t you, right?”
“But it was, don’t you see? We were the same, but two different people. But now, we are one person, just existing in two places at once, is all.”
“That’s kinda freaky, Sarah.”
“I know. Isn’t it cool?” she murmured. “It feels like I’m no longer just a ghost in the shell, Daze. It’s like I was really there. Like it was really me experiencing those things. Those feelings, those sensations. I’ve got a life again, and it’s going to be an amazing one.”
Daisy didn’t quite know what to say to that. She was skeptical, as always, but she also didn’t want to rain on her sister’s parade. Sarah was happy, and that meant she was happy too. She just worried what would happen in a month, when it began to wear off.
“Hey, Sis? I’m going to check out for a bit and leave you on your own while I replay some of these memories. Holler if you need me.”
“Will do, Sarah. You enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, I already have been.”
Chapter Twenty
The main body of the fleet had begun warping into a staging area not too far from Taangaar, the human vessels hiding out behind a neighboring moon while the captured Ra’az ships slipped into a casual orbit, ready to streak to the surface to deposit their rebel cargo.
Most of the commandeered Chithiid and Ra’az ships had already made the jump. Arlo and Marty had gone on ahead with them, acting as a stealthy set of eyes and ears, feeding real-time intel to the fleet as they arrived.
The human contingent was much slower in departing. Partly because they had swapped so many warp drives between so many ships in order to help get as many Chithiid rebels as possible to the battle. The result was they found themselves forced to consolidate the remaining warp systems into only their most vital craft.
Daisy and Freya were sitting back and watching the goings-on with great interest from afar, drifting just off the surface of the moon.
They’d been ready to make the jump for a little while, but after Sarah bailed on them and took off with Mal and the Váli––which had jumped ten minutes prior––they decided to enjoy the rare feeling of taking a step back and just going with the flow. The madness of battle would begin soon enough.
“We should probably head out pretty soon,” Daisy said, sipping from an electrolyte packet in her captain’s chair.
“Is your stomach feeling better?” Freya asked. “I keep telling you, you need to hydrate more often.”
“It wasn’t a hydration thing, Freya. I was just feeling a bit shaky after the sheer panic of having Vince propose to me like that. Some people get butterflies in their stomach, but me? I had fucking pterodac
tyls.”
“Heh. Belly dinosaurs,” Freya said with a giggle. “I like it.”
“Of course you do, silly girl,” Daisy said with a laugh.
Despite growing up so incredibly fast––which was to be expected for a genius AI––Freya still showed her child-like side every so often. It was becoming rarer and rarer, though, and was therefore something Daisy relished whenever it occurred.
“So, I was thinking about your virus,” she said, taking another sip from her electrolyte pouch. “From what we saw during the attack on the Ra’az fleet, it looked like it was only able to disable some parts of their ships.”
“Yeah, that’s a pretty accurate assessment,” Freya agreed.
“Then what was the common factor that made those particular systems vulnerable to it? I mean, there’s no AI running things in any of their ships, so there has to be some sort of common source of vulnerability that made those seemingly diverse systems all susceptible to the virus.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Freya said. “We know the warp drives were almost all taken out of commission by the virus. I mean, we saw that pretty clearly when I infected the fleet. But some of the smaller ships were still able to jump, so if that holds true during the attack on the Ra’az ships surrounding Taangaar, that means the larger ships should be stuck there.”
“Which sucks, in that we will then have to deal with them, but is good in that they can’t escape or try to warn anyone else.”
“Exactly. But I do have to wonder if the virus will have any effect on their terrestrial-aimed weapons. It’s a crap-shoot, and we didn’t come up against any of those systems during the fleet battle.”
“I know. I think we’d better hope that Maarl’s rebels embedded within the fleet orbiting Taangaar were able to transfer over from their ships and make it into the battle stations to disable those systems.”
“That bit of sabotage would be a big advantage,” Freya agreed.
“Or the comms links at the very least,” Daisy said. “It won’t stop them entirely, but we’ve seen how they slow down when their communications are disrupted.”
“Hive species,” Freya said.
“Yep. Hive species,” Daisy agreed.
Their plan was audacious. Take out the orbiting fleet by subterfuge and sabotage, rendering them impotent, at least in regards to the pending fighting on the surface.
And as for the ground war, that was a whole other issue, but for the human ships, it was one they’d leave to the natives while they handled the orbiting threat. Fortunately, Maarl had taken full advantage of Arlo and Marty’s generosity with their time, while inserting rebels onto the planet. As a result, they had managed to produce a highly detailed map of both defenses in space, as well as key positions on the ground.
In addition, they also pinpointed vital locations in Ra’az and loyalist infrastructure that their forces needed to target and control as soon as possible once the fighting started.
Obviously, only the Chithiid could be effective as ground forces in the early stages because humans––and cyborgs who looked like humans––had never been seen on Taangaar. The much smaller two-eyed and two-armed creatures would stick out like a sore thumb
Thus, it was up to the rebels to mount the early phases of that assault on their own. They were full of enthusiasm, yet were barely trained, given the time constraints they had been under. Despite her feelings of hopefulness, Daisy found herself quietly wondering if they were up to the task.
“We’re ready to warp to Taangaar whenever you want to go, Daisy,” Freya announced as Daisy looked over the maps of the surface that Marty’s surveying runs had produced one last time.
“Have you looked at these since their last pass?” she asked, flipping through screen after screen of densely populated housing camps.
“I saw them when Arlo and Marty first sent them over,” Freya replied. “It looks like the majority of the planet’s cities have been replaced with those barracks systems and internment camps.”
“What kind of a life is that?” Daisy wondered. “Women and children, all locked away like sardines, while the men are sent away to do hard labor, or worse, taken off-planet and never seen again.”
“That would be the Ra’az for you,” Freya noted. “But at least they didn’t kill them outright.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Daisy reminded her. “If not for their immunity to the contagion the Ra’az spread, they would have been just another eradicated species rather than slaves.”
“Which is worse, I wonder?” Freya asked. “On the one hand, being alive is great, obviously. But on the other, living in slavery having known not only freedom, but also being an advanced people who can fully grasp the evil of what is being done to them, well, that’s gotta be hard.”
“I can’t imagine it,” Daisy said. “Well, I can, actually, and it would be almost unbearable. And then imagine the horror of watching your kids grow up, knowing that any time now they’ll either be taken from you and sent far from home to join a work force, or pawned off on some loyalist scum to stay on the planet as a new member of their breeding stock.”
“Treating people like animals,” Freya said with disgust. “And it’s not just the Ra’az doing it.”
“No, it isn’t,” Daisy said, zooming in on the images of the opulent loyalist encampments. “The Ra’az taking control of the planet just gave them an excuse for their actions. They can say it’s only a matter of survival, but the loyalist collaborators keeping their own people oppressed are evil to the core, no matter what cover the Ra’az invasion may have given them.”
Daisy looked over the details of one of the larger encampments. It seemed to indicate that the loyalists and their families handled the bulk of the Chithiid management for the Ra’az, much like happened with the Roman conscript armies and the collaborating moneyed families who voluntarily joined them.
Of course, there were also enough Ra’az housed nearby to quash any problems in the ranks instantly, and from what Daisy could see on the enhanced images, it looked as though more than a few Graizenhunds were positioned at the perimeters of the camps as well.
Marty’s videos had captured one disturbing event a few weeks prior. It seemed the massive beasts were there to not only serve as guard animals, but also to be used for the sport hunting of fleeing Chithiid as well.
As it stood, though, the vast majority of the Ra’az remained high above the planet in their ships, only venturing down to the surface when absolutely necessary. Disciplining their servants seemed to be one such necessity that they were glad to partake in, however, sadistically reveling in doling out punishment.
“Could they be bigger assholes?” Freya asked as she looked over the video logs accompanying Daisy’s still image files.
“I seriously doubt it, kiddo,” Daisy replied. “I look forward to seeing them crushed and driven before us.”
“What about the lamentation of the women?”
Daisy laughed. “That too, obviously.”
She looked around at the thinning-out fleet as they warped to join the others.
“Well, I guess that’s about it. You ready to go?”
“Yeah, I’ve been powered up for a while. But are you? We can hang out a few more minutes if you like.”
Daisy took one long look at the beautiful blue orb of Earth. She hoped she’d be back soon. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. Hit it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Freya was invisible to scans, both Ra’az and human, so her warp trajectory took her far closer to the planet than the other ships. The space would be almost entirely devoid of craft, and they could take a leisurely loop of the planet below for a last-minute survey of the surface and any changes since Marty’s previous run.
The stealth ship popped into a low orbit, exactly where she had planned.
“Shit! Freya!” Daisy called out.
Freya, for her part, didn’t even bother responding. That would have taken too long. Instead, she instantly tucked
into a barrel roll, narrowly avoiding the Ra’az cruiser that flashed by them at high speed.
All around them, ships were engaged in a massive battle, and not only the captured ones piloted by the Ra’az. The human fleet had engaged as well. The sky was one giant battlefield, and they had jumped right into the middle of it.
“What the hell happened? This wasn’t the plan,” Daisy said, confused. “The fighting wasn’t supposed to start yet.”
“Something must have gone wrong,” Freya said. “Oh, shit,” she blurted. “You’d better hold on. This is going to get rough.”
“But we’re in space. We shouldn’t pull hardly any Gs.”
“Sorry about this,” was all Freya said, then abruptly spun into a dive, piercing the exosphere of Taangaar as she broke fully into the planet’s atmosphere.
Her cannons and rail guns sprang into readiness, immediately targeting and firing on the swarm of Ra’az ships in the skies around them. Several burst into flames as her pulse blasts flew true.
Then Daisy saw the cause for Freya’s urgency.
Mal had been forced from orbit by a not-so-insubstantial force of attacking heavy cruisers. She would have been better off in space, despite the raging battle, but the Váli had been cut off, driven into the atmosphere where the ship lost any maneuvering advantage it had possessed.
“Shit,” Daisy blurted as she realized what had happened. “She’s loaded to the gills with Chithiid troops and equipment. Her maneuverability in the atmosphere is going to be horrible.”
“I know,” Freya grunted as she spun into a tight bank and took out another Ra’az ship. “I’m trying to get her cover to make a run for space, but there are too many ships. It’s daylight, and I’ve lost my advantage.”
It was true, Daisy realized. While the pursuing Ra’az craft were unable to get any sort of readings on the stealth ship, let alone a weapons lock, they were nevertheless hectoring Freya with line-of-sight bursts of weapons fire. Some shots were coming dangerously close.
Mal and her crew were doing all they could to stave off the Ra’az craft. Captain Harkaway and Reggie were both glistening with sweat from the effort as they manually fired the supplemental weapons systems they’d presciently mounted to the Váli before the mission.
