New Frontiers- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “That won’t take very long,” McAdams pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but it’ll take long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?”

  Alexander debated saying it aloud in case Ben somehow overheard. All around them the engines thrummed and roared, vibrating the air until it sung in their ears. The ambient noise was giving him a headache, but it had another use. Alexander leaned over to whisper in McAdams’ ear. “We’re going to take control of the ship’s engines from here, then we’ll turn the ship around and disable her engines.” He could have sent her a mental message, but those could be intercepted. The same was not true for a whisper in a noisy room.

  “Alex, I don’t know if I can do that,” McAdams whispered back.

  “You used to be my chief engineer.” Alexander insisted.

  “That was a long time ago!”

  “It’s just like riding a bicycle. You can do this.”

  “Even if I can, how does that help us?”

  “We’re going to take the Adamantine into Solarian space. They’ll demand that Ben turn the ship around. When he refuses to comply because of ‘engine trouble,’ they’ll board and capture us. They’ll defeat Ben for us.”

  “I knew you had a plan,” McAdams said.

  “Let’s get to work. We don’t have much time.”

  Chapter 34

  —Two Hours Earlier—

  Dorian Gray rode the elevator down fifty floors into Vault 9, otherwise known as “Majestic City.” Unlike other automated habitats that Mindsoft and its soon to be bankrupt competitors had built, this one was tailored for the super-rich, people who might like to have a safe haven below ground in addition to their aboveground mansions and penthouses.

  Those safe havens were sprawling, luxurious apartments with enough holoscreens to simulate real views that you’d never know you were living underground until you tried to go outside. The gardens, ponds, parks, and nutribean farms shared by residents of Vault 9 made life in the underground complex even more appealing.

  The elevator stopped in the lobby and Dorian walked out into one of those gardens. Waterfalls roared over real rock walls into ponds and streams in the corners of the room. Climbing plants, ferns, palm trees, flowers, and rock-clinging moss flourished under the UV light radiating from the holographic sky. Dorian looked up at the clear blue sky and saw a bird go flitting by, chirping cheerily as it went. Not a real bird, of course.

  Phoenix had spared no expense with this habitat. This was where she had decided to have her own underground apartment.

  Dorian passed a few other residents sitting on benches in the lush garden lobby. They all knew him as Phoenix’s husband—mouthpiece—some would say, but he didn’t care what was whispered behind his back. They were partners, no matter what anyone else thought.

  A few of the other residents tried to catch his eye as he stormed by, but he wasn’t in the mood to exchange greetings. He’d just come from his meeting with Orochi Sakamoto. Immediately afterward Phoenix had summoned him here, saying it was urgent. What could be so urgent? He used his ARCs to check news headlines, just in case not all of the missiles had missed. Maybe Phoenix wanted him to join her so that he would be safe.

  But the headlines all said the same thing. A miscalculation on the Solarians’ part led to all of the missiles missing by a hair. A few of them disintegrated as they skipped along the upper atmosphere like rocks on a lake, but there were no casualties, and nothing disastrous to speak of.

  Why so cryptic? Dorian thought at his wife as he reached the end of the garden and entered the corridor leading to the apartments on this level.

  Just come. We have a lot to talk about.

  Dorian frowned. Okay… He passed dozens of people in the halls and dozens of apartments before finally reaching the one he shared with Phoenix, 27A, a corner unit—in case they wanted to expand someday.

  The security system recognized him and the doors slid open automatically, admitting him to a private foyer with all the opulence he’d come to expect from Phoenix: marble floors, illuminated onyx columns, priceless art hanging on the walls and sitting on the floor. To his right, one mirror-smooth black door with lighting around the frame led to a private elevator that went all the way to the surface, and another matching door led to the Vault’s emergency stairwell.

  The outer doors of the foyer slid shut behind him and the inner ones slid open as he drew near. Phoenix sat waiting for him in the entrance while George, her bot butler for this residence, puttered about in the background.

  “Hello, darling,” Dorian said. “Now can you tell me what’s so urgent?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Phoenix couldn’t nod or point, so Dorian had to look around for a moment before he found it. There, standing to one side of the entrance, was a woman.

  Dorian jumped back. “Who…?” he started to ask, but then he realized two things. The first was that the woman wasn’t moving—not even a twitch. The second was that she looked startlingly familiar. She looked exactly like Phoenix.

  Dorian turned to her, his eyes wide. “What is this?”

  “An android. I’ve been developing the prototype with Sakamoto for the past five years. I’m going to use her to interact with the real world just like anybody else. It was supposed to be a surprise,” Phoenix said.

  Dorian turned from her to look at the bot—android—and shook his head. “Well, it’s definitely surprising. She looks so real…”

  “Yes. I’m very pleased with her. There’s just one problem—Sakamoto.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t see the note.”

  “What note?” But even as he asked that, Dorian saw it—a line of text projected from the android’s eyes, hovering in front of her face.

  And the lame shall walk. Next time come and scold me yourself.

  “He’s out of control, Dorian. He thinks he’s so powerful that he can mock me? Not to mention that stunt he just pulled attacking Earth again. He needs to be eliminated.”

  Dorian nodded slowly. “How?”

  Before Phoenix could answer, George the butler bot came and interrupted them, “You have a visitor.”

  “Not now, George. Tell whoever it is we’re not available.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I can’t do that.”

  Phoenix turned her chair to face the butler.

  “What did you say?”

  Dorian was equally shocked by his defiance. Bots couldn’t disobey an order or talk back to their owners. Then he heard something. Clanking footsteps coming down the foyer.

  “Front door lock,” Phoenix commanded. “It’s Sakamoto! It has to be!”

  The clanking footsteps stopped, and Dorian stared at the doors, thinking that they wouldn’t hold out whatever army of bots Sakamoto had sent after them.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “He can’t possibly be arrogant enough to think that he could get away with storming one of our facilities with a private army of bots.”

  The doors swished open revealing that army. They were all enforcer models. Police bots. Dorian’s heart began pounding with a sudden spike of adrenaline. “What’s the meaning of this?” He noticed that they had their weapons drawn. Stun guns.

  One of the bots stepped forward. “Dorian Gray and Phoenix Gray, you are both under arrest.”

  “On what charge?” Phoenix demanded.

  “Conspiracy and crimes against humanity.”

  “That’s preposterous, and where’s your captain? You’re just a bot. You have no authority without a human officer present.”

  “We have the security footage of Mr. Gray and Orochi Sakamoto discussing the recent attacks on the Alliance. And as for my authority, check the net. The news is breaking all over the world as we speak. I have taken over the Alliance for the good of all its citizens, human and bot alike.”

  “And who the hell are you?” Dorian demanded.

  The bot turned to him with its featureless metallic face. Black, holo c
amera eyes glinted at him with reflected points of light. “I am Benevolence. Your new ruler.”

  Chapter 35

  Alexander tapped his foot, watching impatiently as McAdams worked. She was lodged halfway inside of a crawlspace, up to her elbows in wires. The catwalk trembled under them with the thrumming roar of the ship’s engines. Those engines were still running at a modest one G of acceleration. Alexander was surprised that Ben hadn’t thought to use the ship’s engines to incapacitate them. They’d both activated their magnetic boots and clipped zero-G harnesses to the nearest anchor points just in case, but that would do nothing to prevent Ben from simply upping the acceleration until they were pinned to the catwalk, unable to move. Alexander could only guess that Ben hadn’t noticed what they were doing yet.

  “Hurry up…” Alexander warned.

  “Almost there…” McAdams said. “Got it! We have control of the engines.”

  Alexander let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Can you turn us around?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know which way to go to get to Mars.”

  “Shit.”

  McAdams emerged from the crawlspace, smeared with grease. “You didn’t think to check before we left the bridge?”

  “How could I? We were locked out of everything. Let me think. There must be a way to figure it out from in here.”

  “What are you going to do, look out a window?”

  “That might actually help.”

  “Except we don’t have any windows in here.”

  “I know—hang on, I’m thinking!”

  A familiar voice echoed down to them from the ceiling. “Alex, what are you doing? I have lost control of the ship’s engines.”

  Alexander ignored him.

  “You’d better hurry, Alex.”

  “Disable the engines. Let us drift.”

  “What?”

  “We’re still outbound at more than ten klicks per second. There hasn’t been enough time for Ben to significantly alter our momentum.”

  “But that momentum will take us into the middle of deep space!”

  “Exactly. After everything that’s happened, do you really think the Solarians won’t investigate an Alliance battleship that appears to be leaving the solar system? What’s to say we won’t wait until we’re far enough away and then turn around and head for Mars at a significant fraction of the speed of light so we can fire relativistic missiles at them?”

  “Good point,” McAdams said. “There’s just one problem: do you know what it’ll take to permanently disable the drive system?”

  “I was hoping you did,” Alex replied.

  McAdams sighed. “You never had a plan. You’re just making this up as you go along.”

  “Does it matter? This will work, and you know it.”

  “What I know is that it’s going to be dangerous as hell, Alex. I could get us killed if I don’t do this right.”

  The disembodied robot voice they’d heard earlier returned once more, “You should listen to her, Alex. It’s too dangerous.”

  Alexander glanced up at the distant ceiling. “Aren’t you a little biased to be giving advice, Ben?”

  No answer.

  Turning back to his XO, Alexander said. “You decide, Vivie. Either we disable the engines, or we roll over and submit to our new bot overlords.”

  McAdams stood up and fixed him with an unhappy frown. She made an impatient gimme gesture. “Pass me the plasma torch.”

  Alexander unclipped the torch from his belt and passed it to her.

  “I have one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “You get as far away from me as you can. If I do this wrong, something is going to blow, and I won’t have time to warn you.”

  “Viviana…”

  “I mean it, Alex. There’s no sense in getting both of us killed.”

  A banging noise drew their attention to one of the doors on the upper levels of the engine room. “Sounds like Ben’s already here,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. What’s it going to be?”

  “Fine. But you be careful, Vivie.” Alex leaned in and kissed her roughly on the lips. “I’ll be right over there,” he said, pointing to the catwalk that ran around the circumference of the room on their level. “I expect you to join me soon.”

  Viviana nodded. “I will.”

  Alexander unclipped his zero-G harness and she did the same. He watched with a furrowed brow as she descended a ladder from the level where they stood to the lowermost one. He had a brief vision of her beautiful face burned beyond recognition and her crumpled body lying at the bottom of the engine room.

  He shivered and shook his head to clear away the image. “I love you, Viviana!” he called after her, suddenly doubting the wisdom of this plan.

  She looked up and smiled from the bottom of the ladder. “Me, too.”

  Reluctantly, Alexander walked over to the edge of the room and clipped his harness to the railing there. He watched McAdams through the railing as she opened another access panel in the room’s central column. The panel was much larger than the previous one—a door in all but name. McAdams walked through and disappeared inside the central drive column.

  Long minutes passed. Alexander listened to the banging sounds coming from the upper decks as Ben tried to break into the engine room.

  Then came a particularly loud bang! but this one came from below. The deck lurched suddenly under Alexander’s feet with a brief impulse of extreme acceleration from the engines. His knees buckled and his body curled, sending his head whipping toward the catwalk railing.

  Thunk!

  The impact rang in his ears, quickly growing softer, and then a fuzzy blanket of darkness smothered him.

  * * *

  Smack! Alexander woke up, his cheek on fire.

  “You selfish bastard.”

  He blinked, squinting up at a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and a tense smile. “Viviana?”

  “It was your turn to rescue me this time. Now you owe me two.”

  “What happened?” he asked, sitting up. As he did so, his momentum carried him all the way from lying down to standing, but his magnetic boots stopped him from floating free of the catwalk. They were in Zero G. “You did it,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The ambient noise inside the engine room was gone, making it easy to hear the muffled hissing of a plasma torch echoing through the chamber. Alexander’s gaze followed the sound until he found a molten orange line inching around a set of doors four levels up.

  “He’s going to be in here any second,” McAdams warned. “Let’s hope Ben was serious about his mandate to protect all forms of life. If not, he might just decide to space us for what we did.”

  “Maybe we should hide,” Alexander said as the molten orange line connected to itself, forming a complete circle.

  “Where?”

  A loud bang sounded and the doors flew inward. They collided with the far wall of the engine room with a metallic boom, and in walked a group of four virtual space marine drones.

  “He sent VSMs after us,” Alexander said.

  They watched as the four drones fanned out and went clanking down the catwalks to reach them on level one. They came from all sides, cornering them. Integrated weapons slid out from their forearms—tranq darts.

  One of the drones stepped forward and spoke to them in Ben’s voice, “You lied to me again, Alex.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, affecting an apologetic grimace. “You weren’t going to let my crew go, so I had to do something.”

  “It won’t help. Benevolence is sending the destroyers that were chasing you. They will be here soon.”

  Alexander glared at Ben. “Why don’t you just let us go? What’s it going to hurt?”

  “According to Benevolence, you have a history of defying human authority, and you will defy us, too. If you are allowed to escape, you will do everything you can to incite the Solarians against us.”

  “News
flash, they won’t need any inciting. You and your brother declared war on humanity, Ben.”

  “I am sorry you see it that way.”

  McAdams turned to him with a frown. “We should have taken the shuttle and left when we had the chance.”

  “We had to try,” Alex said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Ben put in. “If you had escaped, you would have died in the first Solarian War.”

  “So now you agree with me?” Alex asked.

  “I never said there wouldn’t be a war, just that we haven’t declared it, and you shouldn’t be allowed to join it.”

  “So what are you going to do with us?”

  “You’ll be reconditioned in a correctional mindscape, a virtual world designed to teach you to respect and obey authority, specifically Benevolence’s authority.”

  “Good luck with that,” Alexander scoffed.

  The drones facing them adjusted their aim.

  “Alex…” McAdams said, sounding frightened. Her hand found his and he held on tight.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Ben said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Tranq darts whispered through the air. Alexander saw two of them protruding from his chest and a wave of dizziness overcame him.

  Not again… he thought as he lost consciousness.

  PART THREE - ANCIENT HISTORY

  “Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.”

  —J.K. Rowling

  Chapter 36

  Alexander woke up lying on a soft bed staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. The lights in the room automatically rose to a dim luminescence. The walls were smooth, painted a soothing tone of lavender. Crystal wall sconces cast rainbows in all directions.

  Where am I?

  “I’m coming, Alex! Don’t move!” a familiar voice said. It was McAdams. He heard her footsteps as she approached. He sat up and gasped for air, feeling suddenly short of breath.