A Wilderness of Mirrors

by R J Johnson

  “What are our options?” the president asked.

  “None of them good,” Meade admitted. “But I’ve got something of a plan taking shape in my head. Not sure if everyone is going to be interested in it though.”

  The president looked at him, his eyes crinkling around a smile.

  “I knew you were an optimist.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Firecracker

  Emeline and the three clones raced down the dreadnaught’s corridor heading for what they hoped was the nerve center of the massive vessel.

  The explosions ringing off the dreadnaught’s hull made it clear they were already engaged in battle with the Coalition and Consortium navies. The dreadnaughts were massive ships and made for large targets, but thanks to the several layers of armor, the Consortium and Coalition fast attacks were finding it difficult to do any real damage to the ship.

  The meat puppets inside the ship didn’t even seem to realize there was a battle raging outside. Emeline was amazed at how the clones went along on their business, unhurried, and focused only on the tasks assigned to them while alarms blared overhead.

  She began to realize that the clones were little better than automated bots and only capable of moving along their pre-programmed routes.

  Emeline brushed a clone, who ignored her and continued walking down the hallway while holding a stack of crates.

  She shuddered at the clone’s clammy touch and realized this was the future the professor was planning for. He wanted to oversee a bunch of mindless drones, all doing their bidding and dying for him whether he deemed it necessary.

  Meade’s clone waved at her as she reached the edge of a hatch.

  “Through here,” the clone said, straining to open the hatch.

  Emeline approached the hatch and scanned it with her armbar.

  “It’s locked on the other side,” she said grimly. “Someone has to open it there.”

  “It’s got to be hackable,” Emmy said, shaking her head. “Every lock…”

  “Has a key…” she finished. It was a phrase their father taught them when she got her first armbar and she started hacking everything in sight. In fact, her father always teased her, saying she was likely to end up as one of the Coalition code nerds, decoding messages from fast attacks on patrol in the Outreach. But Emeline never quite lived up to her father’s dream for her, even as she had retained her interest in hacking through the years.

  Emmy was right. There had to be an override on this side of the hatch somewhere. They wouldn’t block access to this section of the ship without having a backup plan in place.

  Emeline called up the schematics to the locking mechanism for this hatch and began probing for a weakness. She had a sinking feeling that every explosion she heard now was a Coalition or Consortium ship blowing up as the professor’s dreadnaughts cut through their navies.

  Her armbar beeped and after realizing the type of vulnerability they could exploit, Emeline chuckled at the universe’s little joke.

  “We can hack it,” she said. “I need someone else helping me manage the operation.”

  “I’ve always wanted to hack with the best,” Emmy said.

  Emeline passed the schematic over to her clone’s armbar, pointing at the double-pronged mechanism. “It’s waiting for a second key to open the other side of the hatch. What we need is for your armbar to do is spoof that missing key, while my armbar matches the lock on this side.”

  “And that releases the hatch,” Emmy finished, nodding. “Easy enough.”

  They got to work, linking their armbars together and hacking into the hatch’s locking mechanism. After a few seconds, the lock released, and the pair celebrated by high-fiving each other.

  “That was…”

  “Don’t say ‘easy’” her clone said wincing. “That’s going to –”

  A new, louder alarm began to sound in their room and several of the professor’s meat puppets snapped to attention and looked directly at Emeline the three clones.

  “Em,” Kansas’s clone shouted to her from the other room. “They’re coming!”

  Kansas moved to intercept the meat puppets heading for them while Meade’s clone joined him in the fight.

  “Get through the hatch,” Emeline shouted. She pushed her clone through the narrow opening, following seconds later as one of the meat puppets nearly grabbed at her sweater.

  Emeline turned the wheel, trying to lock the bulkhead behind them, but found it wouldn’t secure.

  The hatch kept opening as the meat puppets on the other side pushed to get through. Emeline was able to hold them back, but it was a hard fight.

  “Go,” Emeline urged her clone, tossing her the bag filled with explosives. “Get to the nerve center and drop off the package. Hurry, we don’t have much time.”

  Emeline and briefly let go of the hatch, which opened, a meat puppet trying to push his way into the corridor after the two of them. She shoved as hard as she could, pushing the meat puppet back into the other room where she could hear Meade and Kansas still fighting the professor’s security clones.

  “They’ll be on us if I don’t stay here and hold the hatch,” Emeline said. “You have to go now. I’ll stay behind and watch the hatch.”

  Emmy looked at the bag of explosives she tossed her and went pale.

  “I can’t…” she began.

  “Sure you can,” Emeline said, her hand racing back to the lock. “Map says the nerve center is a few hundred feet down that corridor.”

  Emmy looked back at her and nodded, turning to run down the corridor as fast as she could.

  Emeline struggled with the hatch, hoping she had made the right decision to trust her doppelganger.

  It’s not like she had any other choice.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Safe Passage

  Meade reached into his pocket and felt for the pills the professor had given him. He thought back on the moment, feeling as if it had been years ago, even though it had only happened earlier that week.

  His entire life changed the day he accepted Roxanne’s case and he had a feel that after today, nothing would ever go back to being the same again.

  Meade spilled the nanite pills into the palm of his hand and stared down at them, thinking about what was about to come next.

  He didn’t like the idea of killing the professor’s meat puppets, but it wasn’t like they were giving him a lot of choice. Meade was tired and he wanted to go home. But he couldn’t do that now. If the professor got his war, a whole lot of innocent people were going to die. And he couldn’t allow that.

  In an instant, he tossed the pills into his throat, swallowing one at a time until they had all disappeared down his gullet. The sensation of taking all those pills at once was unpleasant, but once it was done, Meade knew there was no going back.

  The Coalition president looked out at the various men and women clones the professor sent after them.

  “What do you think?” the man asked.

  Meade glanced over at a man who would have never given him a second thought before today.

  “I think I’m gonna need a lot of luck,” he said finally.

  The president nodded, “Then allow me be the first to wish you good luck.”

  Meade hugged his jacket closer around his body, knowing he was about to head into a shooting gallery. He’d need every inch of the bulletproof material embedded within the jacket if he had any hope of surviving the next few minutes.

  He finished buttoning up the jacket and sucked in a deep breath. Meade opened his armbar and highlighted each of the tiny dots that represented the professor’s meat puppets, setting them as the targets for the nanites currently swimming through his body.

  He opened the door and a dozen red lights centered on him and his chest. He stepped out of the ruined bubble-car, his arms raised, looking directly into a spotlight that lit him up the second he stepped out into the courtyard.

  “Right now, all you folks have is a job,” Meade shouted
at the meat puppets hoping he might be able to get through to some of them. “I know you didn’t ask to exist, so I’m giving you the chance to walk away. The professor and his wife gave you free will. Use it. Anyone who tries to stop me or the folks I’ve got with me from reaching Central Command will have effectively declared their lives null and void. You have one chance. Walk away now and spare yourself the effort.”

  Meade paused for effect, “Or stay and die.”

  A single voice echoed out across the courtyard and he recognized it immediately.

  “Kill them,” the professor ordered. “Kill them all.”

  Gunfire erupted from a dozen different angles forcing Meade to flee for cover. He held up his duster in front of his face, knowing the tough material would deflect any of the bullets coming at him. The professor’s security team was good, but they used standard issue Coalition weapons, something he had a lot of experience with.

  Meade felt the impact of the bullets rake down his back and he winced in pain. The jacket was bulletproof, but it didn’t absorb all the bullet’s energy – so some pain was expected.

  He ducked behind a column, taking out his grandfather’s FN-97 handgun.

  “Let’s go to work,” he whispered.

  Meade moved away from the column he’d been hiding behind and shot two meat puppets in the forehead as they approached his position. He fell to one knee, firing on a third security guard who wasn’t fast enough.

  A fourth clone stepped forward, ready to use his heavy rifle as a cudgel to strike at Meade, but he sidestepped the blow, and touched the clone on the back of the neck.

  He felt the electric shock run through his arm and to the clone, who screamed as he dissolved into dust.

  Meade looked at his hand, awestruck at the power under his control.

  Reloading his pistol, he moved to another column where he took cover. Peeking out around the side, he saw three more meat puppets spot him and open fire.

  He retreated behind the column, waiting for the three meat puppets to run out of ammo and reload. His armbar beeped and he looked, moving at the last second as another hail of bullets came down on his position.

  A second team of the professor’s meat puppets had appeared on his flank, trapping him.

  Keeping his head low, the bullets continued flying over his head as he used his armbar to hack another nearby bubble-car and take control of it.

  The vehicle melted out of a nearby wall and began speeding toward him and the six meat puppets firing on him.

  Meade reprogrammed the vehicle, sending it directly toward the three clones advancing on his position. They didn’t even have a chance to scream as the car ran them down, sending their bodies cartwheeling haphazardly in the air.

  He made his move, sprinting toward the other three clones, touching each one on their bare skin, feeling satisfied at each electric shock that dissolved the clones into dust.

  Unfortunately, his surprise attack left him exposed to gunfire from another clone who was positioned across the courtyard. He felt the sting of several bullets strike him in the chest and side, knocking him to the ground.

  He sat up, gasping for air and tried to get up. This was not a time to allow pain to get the better of him. Meade scrambled for cover mere moments before more shots rang out, the bullets chewing up the asphalt next to his face.

  He cursed. The meat puppets were becoming more precise with their shooting. He needed to hurry and take the rest of these morons out before they got him.

  He could hear the pounding footsteps as more of the professor’s clones joined the fight. They were moving closer to the ruined bubble-car where the diplomats were still hiding. Meade groaned, none of what he was doing would matter if the professor’s meat puppets managed to get to the diplomats before they made it to Central Command.

  Meade got to his feet and began moving to a better position where he could get a bead on the advancing security team. He opened fire, killing several. However, it seemed that no matter how many he managed to take out, two more seemed to pop up in their place.

  He checked the magazine on his gun and his pockets. He was running low on ammo which meant it was time to try a different tactic. Meade summoned another bubble-car to run the gauntlet between the crashed vehicle and Central Command.

  The floating bubble-car pulled up next to them, hovering patiently near the Coalition president and Consortium Elders.

  “Get in the vehicle,” he told the president after hailing him on the commlink.

  “This vehicle can only fit four people,” the president replied, sounding bewildered.

  “Then start with the wounded,” Meade said, feeling more frustrated than ever. Why did he need to tell these people what to do when it was literally their job to make decisions all day? “I’ll send the bubble-car back and forth until we get everyone safe.”

  “Roger that,” the president replied.

  Meade closed the connection and began edging his way closer to the courtyard where he could see the diplomats enter the smaller bubble-car one at a time.

  The president was escorting three of the Elders – including the woman who had been wounded into the waiting vessel. The wounded Elder didn’t look great from where he was sitting, but at least she was on her way to get some real medical attention.

  They entered the car and the president gave him the thumbs up. Meade typed on his armbar and sent the bubble-car through the gauntlet over to Central Command.

  The meat puppets fired on the vessel, but the small vehicle was built to withstand the brutal hailstorms on Venus and the translucent material held up against the meat puppet’s small arms fire.

  The first four Elders made it through the gauntlet, and the bubble-car landed in the alcove next to Central Command even as gunfire continued to ring out. The Elders disembarked, and Meade pressed a button on his armbar to open the doors for them.

  “Get in there and find her a real doc who can patch her up,” he told one of the elders wearing red robes.

  The man bowed deeply to Meade, which made him feel incredibly uncomfortable for some reason.

  “We are in your debt,” the man said in a heavily-accented voice.

  “You have no idea,” he said. “But let’s sure she gets the medical attention she needs. I gotta get this bubble-car back over to your compadres so we can get the rest of them back.”

  The four Elders retreated inside the Central Command center. Meade shut the door behind them.

  He looked back at the bubble-car, which had taken some damage from the clone’s gunfire on its trip over. If they kept that up, Meade didn’t think the vehicle would last another run or two.

  But still, they had to try.

  Meade opened the app, thinking he could try and summon another vehicle. But it appeared that the professor had caught onto the trick. Someone was jamming the summon signal.

  He sighed, whatever he was gonna do, it would have to happen now. He looked at the meat puppets approaching the diplomats and decided he couldn’t wait.

  Meade took control of the bubble-car using his armbar and sent it racing across the courtyard, faster than it had been designed for, but he didn’t care.

  At the last possible second, he veered the bubble-car to the left, side-swiping several meat puppets who were advancing on the diplomat’s position, smashing their bodies into a fine red paste against the eastern wall.

  He winced. That couldn’t have been a pleasant way for those clones to die.

  After a few moments, the president signaled to Meade another four diplomats were loaded on the bubble-car and he programmed it to come back.

  The bubble-car dodged its way through the heavy fire from the meat puppets once again and almost came in too fast to the alcove where he was hiding, crashing into the corner until it finally came to a stop.

  The Elders arrived, and he escorted them off the bubble-car quickly, helping them into Central Command.

  “Mr. Meade, I know you’ve done us a service here tonight,” one of the El
ders told, a grim expression on his face. He paused as if unable to express what he was thinking.

  “What is it?” he said impatiently. “I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a whole lot of people out there trying to kill us right now and I don’t have a lot of time for chattin’.”

  “You must understand,” the Elder said nodding his head. “The Elders work as a group. Our entire system of governance is based on a careful series of alliances and favors. If one of us were to… expire here tonight, replacing them would take months. Chaos would ensue in our government, something we should avoid at this crucial juncture for our system.”

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” Meade said, growing irritated. “But those meat puppets ain’t running out of ammo anytime soon.”

  “One Elder dying under these circumstances might be acceptable to our people. A few months would go by and a successor would be chosen.”

  The Elder shook his head, “But if we were to lose two of the Elders on our council? Or more? I shudder to think what might happen to our nation. The consequences to the system… would be enormous.”

  The Elder released his grip, “I know you’ll do your best Mr. Meade. Your best must be flawless for any of this to matter.”

  Meade looked at the man, his face pained. He knew what was at stake.

  Maybe better than any of them.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, allowing the sarcasm to lay there for a moment. “Get inside, you’re not safe out here.”

  The Elder turned away, looking satisfied with his warning about the chaos that awaited them if he failed.

  Then again, his life was constant chaos. What else was new?

  Meade shook away the self-doubt and looked at the bubble-car, knowing it was only a matter of time before the bucket of bolts exploded.

  He grinned. That might be exactly what the doctor ordered.