Eternal Enemy

by James David Victor

  “And that toad Vasad has his best facility only a few klicks away!?” Cread snarled in anger. The same place that houses the LOHIU, a small thought added.

  “Ahem,” the herald coughed, eager to say something. “That is, at least, one of the messages that I have been sent here to deliver to you, Commander-General Cread. The Architrex has informed the Eternal Empress that he is working night-and-day with the LOHIU device and is giving it his full attention.”

  “Meaning that he has closed the Gene Temple to everyone, even me!?” the Cread spat. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was a commander-general—one of only two—and, up until recently, the only one that mattered…

  A sudden thought occurred to Cread. “It’s that piece of scum Darius, isn’t it?” he accused the herald, referring to the other military general that occupied the complementary position to his. Cread had pulled back his support from Darius before he had come to Old Earth, refusing to give Darius the security codes to his Pillar-of-Empire ships in the quelling of the Red Judges’ insurrection.

  Because, well… Cread considered his own decision in a moment of rare retrospection. Who knows which way the intergalactic war is going to go, after all? Did Cread want to give away the three most powerful battle-stations in the entire Reach of the Throne if they were going to be destroyed? Used unwisely?

  Wouldn’t a wise and glorious leader like Cread have need of them, possibly, in such turbulent times?

  “Actually, Cread, the answer is no. Your current physical state is not the result of anything Darius has done,” the herald stated calmly. “And Commander-General Darius, I am sure you will be interested to know, is currently engaged with a three-planet uprising from the Red Judges, but does not appear to have made any headway in breaking their resistance.”

  Of course not, Cread thought. That was because Darius was a fool. An amateur.

  “No, Cread,” the herald continued. “Your current state is due to the Eternal Empress.”

  What!?

  “Which relates to the main reason why I am here,” the herald continued with a broader smile. “The Eternal Empress has a message for you, personally, and she has sent me to deliver it.”

  “I’m all ears,” Cread said in a low, disgruntled growl.

  “The Eternal Empress is displeased with you,” the herald said, with what could only be a purr of self-congratulation.

  Has she ever been pleased? Cread thought…a tad bitterly, he had to admit.

  “You have failed to contain the Ilythian-Mondrauk-Secari threat,” the apparition said. “And you have also failed to apprehend the psychic, J-14.”

  “Operation ongoing,” Cread qualified.

  “That as it may be—” The herald gave a small nod. “—the Eternal Empress is highly concerned about this particular PK and wishes him to be captured, not neutralized, immediately.”

  Then give me a damn contingent of Throne Marines! Cread almost railed. Of course, he could requisition one, but that would take time. Old Earth Sector was deemed a ‘special operations zone’ and the Eternal Empress had direct oversight of all operations.

  Let me fireball the damned forests! he thought, remembering how the PK J-14 and his damnable allies had run off into the wilds like scurrying rats. One simple firebomb! That is all that it would take!

  But such inflammatory fancies were, Cread knew, just that—fanciable desires. The Gene Temple sat not so far away—a fact he was very painfully aware of—and any firestorm would doubtless endanger that too, along with the LOHIU inside of it.

  The LOHIU is the key to the empress’s power… Cread thought. That had to be why she was so concerned with the prodigiously gifted J-14 being so close to it, wasn’t she? Another psychic of immense power, in the same place. What could happen?

  “She wants me to capture J-14 and deliver it to the Architrex, I presume?” Cread said, standing up on his new, cybernetic leg. He couldn’t feel a thing from it, which was slightly disconcerting.

  “Your intelligence is as sharp as ever, Commander-General,” the herald said with a graceful bow, and his form started to shimmer slightly. As Cread watched, the field-created creature started to glitter as flecks of gold drifted away from its form in that strange way he had when his task was done. Cread wondered if it was a teleportation, or a mere deactivation, and whether this exact same simulated intelligence would then reappear, a moment later, in the private holographic dreams of the Eternal Empress herself, an infinitesimal moment later.

  “However,” the voice of the herald returned, even as its form was slowly misting away into a golden haze of light. “I can personally assure you, Commander-General Cread, that it is my belief that were you to perform well in this task, in spite of the current agitation of the Eternal Empress, she would be most impressed with your abilities indeed…”

  And then the herald was gone, leaving Cread—and his new leg—alone in the room.

  “Would she, indeed…” the blond commander-general said to the emptied room.

  Cread’s eyes flickered a little as he weighed the empress’s pleasure at his possible acquisition against the possibility of himself controlling both the LOHIU and J-14…

  “Orestes!” Cread’s voice snapped into the air as he gave himself a slight shake.

  There was a dull chime and a soft flash of blue light, indicating that the much less sophisticated, but still highly advanced, simulated intelligence that ran the entire Port Helena facility was listening.

  “Authorization: Commander-General Cread. Alpha Gold-Black security.”

  “Security clearance granted, Commander-General Cread. How might I be of service to you today?” Orestes said statically.

  “I want full access to current search efforts against the invaders,” Cread said with easy authority.

  “I have dispatched a Throne Marine recon team to their location, sir,” Orestes answered, “where they engaged in battlefield operations against the invaders. Their location was shelled, and no survivors detected.”

  “Did they get visual identification on the bodies?” the commander-general asked.

  “Negative, sir,” Orestes said.

  Idiots. “Then I want their last-known location. Now.”

  “The invaders were last detected in the cuttings for West Subway 14A,” Orestes said. “It is a derelict part of the subterranean transit system for this part of Old Earth.”

  “Then I want the full map of that tunnel network, and I want Throne Marines, security drones, and sensors dispatched to map it. Entirely. Understood?”

  “Actioning, sir,” Orestes said.

  Cread wondered once more at the ineptitude of the Old Earth Throne Marine Corps. He would have to oversee this operation himself, of course.

  “And I want the best offensive air-to-ground craft you have!”

  4

  Capture

  The tunnel that Commander Corsigon, Dalia, Patch, and Jake trudged down was wider than it was tall and had a perfect semicircular roof arching over it, made of a deep red brickwork. The floor was chipped and graveled, but there were double sets of metal lines along the floor.

  “This must be some ancient kind of tram network,” Patch said, kicking at the metal lines that ran underfoot. The tunnel and the lines were illuminated by their Outcast suit lights, which somehow only magnified the idea that they were down here in the dark.

  “Those old humans weren’t entirely without good ideas then,” Patch said, just as he was passed by the trudging form of Jake, moving heavily and despondently forward.

  “Wait up a minute, Jake,” Anders said, but the psychic only muttered in a heavy voice.

  “This way.”

  “How does he know?” Patch cast a look at the hurrying Anders, attempting to catch up with the young psychic. He was answered not by their leader, but instead by Jake himself.

  “I can...feel her,” he said, which Anders knew meant the LOHIU. The psychic they were supposed to be coming to rescue, in order to destroy or stop the coming Blac
k Sun.

  “Okay.” Anders shot Dalia a look, as if to ask for her guidance. All Ilythians were touch-PK, after all, and without any trace of psychic abilities in either himself or Patch, the Ilythian was the only other person here who might know anything at all about Jake’s flourishing abilities.

  But she just shrugged just a little.

  “Well, at least somebody knows where we’re going,” Anders breathed, hurrying to catch up with Jake.

  There was a sudden flare of light up ahead. It was the clear, bright blue of throne field technology.

  “Sensor drones, sir,” said the politic voice of Moriarty in Anders’s ear. The tunnel ahead flashed blue as the small, metal objects moved toward them.

  “What generation?” Anders asked tersely. Everything hinged on whether they were the fourth-gen ones that could deliver micro-missiles or any of the earlier ones that could not.

  “From their field-output, I can safely diagnose the drones ahead as first-generation capture drones,” Moriarty confirmed.

  Capture drones? Anders blinked. They only used those when they wanted to apprehend a target rather than kill them. They were black-ops weapons, sent into enemy compounds to sedate guards and scouts. But first generation!? Anders thought. That was ridiculous for the power and reach of the Throne. Was the Old Earth colony severely underfunded?

  But whatever. Anders would take the good news. “Nobody move. A muscle. An inch.”

  “What is it?” Dalia whispered over their suit-to-suit communicator as she froze like a statue behind him, as did Patch—but not Jake.

  “Jake!” Anders hissed. The blue sweep of light was moving closer toward them up the tunnel.

  “What?” the youth said sullenly. It was getting harder to tell if his moods were more to do with his age or the effects of all of that strange energy coursing through him.

  “Please, Jake, just follow my lead. Please don’t move.”

  “Why?” There was the scrape of gravel as Jake turned on his heel to face Anders, and a flash of blue-field light behind him as the drones were getting nearer.

  “Those are only first-generation capture drones, which means that they’re motion-sensitive, not thermal or radionic. They just want to find moving targets, that’s all. When they do, they release darts or clouds of sedatives.”

  “We’re in power suits,” Jake said stubbornly. Which was totally true, of course. Anders had to give it to the youth that he could be quick-witted when he wanted to be.

  “Capture drones that can deliver sedative syringes can also broadcast our location to the hunting Marines outside!” Anders hissed again, still not moving. The sweep of blue light was very bright and very close about now… “And we’re stars know how far deep underground. The Marines will be able to block our exits. Drop a missile on our heads. Cut off our oxygen supply…” Anders tried to elucidate the many very real ways that they would be royally messed up if word of their position got out.

  “Then I’ll kill them.” Jake shrugged and turned to continue his walk.

  Anders lost his temper. “You won’t even see them, Jake!” he hissed, taking a step toward them. The tone of his voice was so sharp that it made the youth stop, and Anders could see his shoulders rising and falling in apparent suppressed rage.

  “They’ll know where we are, and before you know it, you won’t even get a chance to retaliate!” Anders pointed out the basic piece of battlefield strategy. “Please. Just do this one thing I ask. Once.”

  And besides, Anders thought more to himself. He really didn’t like the way that Jake was getting so used to killing people with his mind. As if it didn’t matter. As if it weren’t people that opposed them. Yes, they were Throne Marines, but Anders himself had been a Throne Marine once. He knew that inside those suits were humans, just like himself, just like Jake.

  Jake looked at Anders over his shoulder, and his face was sullen and resentful inside his suit. The commander had another eerie sensation that the youth could sense what he was thinking, but, just when Anders was certain that Jake was going to argue some more, there was instead another shrug of the youth’s shoulders, and that was that. Jake stopped moving, as did everyone else.

  The first capture drone emerged around the corner of the tunnel, and blue light flared over Anders’s face.

  Anders tried to remember from his training days—whether in the Marines or in the police—how sensitive the first-gen capture drones were, and failed.

  Can they detect if I blink inside my suit? he wondered. What about the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe?

  Whatever the answer was, Anders didn’t have much time to do anything about anything. The small dart of metal moved down the center of the tunnel, emitting its bright blue light, constantly swiveling back and forth as it moved, and was followed by two more drones.

  Each one moved with the barest hum that could have just been the sigh of air in the tunnel itself, for all that Anders could tell. He waited, feeling his heart thump in his chest, certain that the drone would suddenly dart toward to the cacophonous noise.

  But it did not. Instead, the first one merely slowed as it neared the first obstacle.

  Jake.

  Don’t get angry. Please, don’t get angry… Anders was begging the youth as he watched the capture drone slow to a halt just a meter away from the psychic’s chest. Its light flashed over Jake’s chest once, twice, and the drone bobbed up and down.

  Anders wondered what he would do if Jake did lose his temper. His rifle was held across his chest in his hands, a little too tightly, he thought. He knew that the capture drones were fast, but he might be able to shoot one of them down before it activated its transponder. Maybe Jake would destroy one too, but that meant the one at the back…

  The first capture drone in front of the stilled Jake suddenly veered around the youth, content that he was not a target but in fact some piece of scenery. Once again, Anders gave thanks that they were only dealing with these older drones, which didn’t have real-time imaging built-in.

  Anders was the next to be inspected, with the drone doing the same to him as it had done to Jake, before swerving away. It passed Patch almost without note, as he was a little further off to one side, and Anders knew that the supernatural grace of the Ilythian Dalia would only serve her well.

  Anders’s eyes flickered to the second drone currently finishing its bobbing in front of Jake before veering around him. This one had taken a lot less time than the first, and Anders wondered if these three were linked in some fashion. Which would be a good thing, Anders thought. Because if they could fool these three drones that they were, indeed, just a bunch of weird rock formations of broken, ancient, and derelict masonry, then that would be much more reason for the Throne Marines to leave off their search of where Anders and the rest were heading. In other words, they would have escaped the net…

  The second drone moved around Jake, toward Anders, and he held his breath as it inspected him briefly, moving around him toward Patch, and—

  Sckrckr! There was a sudden sound of gravel and Anders snapped his eyes wide.

  “Jake!” he hissed in alarm, certain that it was the PK who must have done something.

  But it wasn’t. There was the sudden, approaching wave of sodium lights at the far end of the tunnel, and in their glow, Anders could see a trio of people—people!—moving across the tunnel in dirty, ragged clothes, suddenly turning in shock to see the flash of blue light as all three drones swung past Anders, Dalia, Patch, and Jake, straight for the movement.

  And Anders could see, with fearful clarity, that at least two of those human figures ahead of them were children, with dirty, grubby faces and eyes wide with horror at what fate was screaming toward them.

  5

  The Eternal Empress/Archon

  Sector 1, Imperial 1

  Deep in the recesses of Imperial 1, the eyes of a skeletal figure opened.

  The figure herself was barely more than a scrap of sinew and bone, barely living tissue kept alive n
ight and day by the constant infusion of genetic therapies that poured, sluggishly, through the pipes that met her hands and face.

  This was Eternal Empress Helena Tri’Vi’Pathian, the golden, the immortal, already over five hundred years old, and who had seen worlds born and burned. She herself had been responsible for much of that burning.

  The Eternal Empress existed in a suite of rooms where every detail was sumptuous, and everything gold, yellow, ochre, or crimson. Her world was small even within the giant sphere of Imperial 1. Like a spider in her nest, the ever-living matriarch of humanity sat ensconced, doomed never to leave.

  Not that Helena had wanted to for the last hundred years or so, since she had ‘retired’ to these halls where the tiles on the floor were gold, the statues of Grecian nymphs were gold, and the curtains were of a deep, rich red velvet. And why would she want to? Her synapses and neurons were intimately linked up to the data-net, both her personal virtual sphere and the wider data-field that all of the reach enjoyed.

  Inside her mind, the empress could revisit anywhere, and anytime. She could view the digital impressions of any of her colony worlds, as well as dozens of periods of human history that only she remembered.

  The Eternal Empress had herself been walking through one such place—the parklands of an ancient human city—when she had been so rudely awakened. It was hard for the empress to say whether she dreamed these places anymore, as her dreams and digital realities had blurred into one.

  But that city had been beautiful, once. Even in the final days of the Earth Confederacy, the bright cafes that had edged the park had been filled with gentle laughter and excitement. Off-duty people walked arm in arm with their lovers. They talked about their trips to the Moon, or Proxima, about what it was like to use the nearest space elevator that stretched like an unlikely tree above their heads.

  That was before the bomb had hit, of course, and this great park with all of its life and drone-lights of New York City had been obliterated.