by Terry Mixon
Elise brought the map back to Alpha Centauri and began examining the worlds one by one. There was nothing in the habitable zone, so she started with the innermost and worked her way out. On the second world, one that was too hot to support life, she saw a blinking light.
“We’ve got a live one,” she said. “Or at least we’ve got a place where a facility once existed.”
She zoomed down in on it and discovered that it didn’t have anything aboveground that would’ve attracted the attention of people visiting the world. The second world would never have been a comfortable place to be, and it was too light to have any heavy metals that would be worth mining. Basically, other than being scientifically explored, it had been ignored.
Only now, she could see that the aliens had left a significant facility there. It looked larger than either of the two that she’d seen on the map thus far. And with nothing to hint that it was there, there was no reason humanity would’ve ever stumbled upon it.
She thought of all the ships that were blockading the flip point leading to Alpha Centauri from Terra. Did this mean that the AIs had found that facility? If so, that could be real trouble. If the master AI had defenses on that station that were related to this alien technology, this mission wouldn’t be nearly as easy as Kelsey and the rest had hoped.
And they hadn’t thought it would be easy to begin with.
“We need to get out of here,” she said. “We’ve got to warn them that they could be up against alien technology inside the science station.”
Carl nodded and gestured toward the exit. “It’s all up to you, Elise. If you can get us out of here now, we might still be able to get an FTL message to them in time to stop them from launching an attack, but that window is swiftly closing.”
No pressure.
17
Jared watched Kelsey out of the corner of his eye as the pinnaces departed Persephone and began their way toward the station where the master AI had been designed and built. The Marine Raider strike ship had closed the distance as much as possible, but she could only get so close without being detected.
As he’d expected, the ancient science station was well protected. And by well protected, he meant that it was surrounded by half a dozen battle stations, two dozen major vessels, and five times that many lesser ships. Of the larger vessels, he bet at least half were superdreadnoughts.
Even if he attacked with his entire fleet, he didn’t have enough force to crack that knot. The best they could do was destroy the science station—maybe—but that wouldn’t accomplish their primary mission.
Destroying the master AI wasn’t enough. They had to get it to send an order to its electronic minions to lay down their arms. To win the fight against the artificial intelligences, they had to get them once again under human control.
If they killed the master AI, that became impossible. Worse than impossible. The original AI was the only one that they could use the override on. If they couldn’t subvert the master AI, nothing they did was going to be able to stop the remaining AIs. They didn’t have the control codes that the master unit had.
There was only one path to success, and it lay right in front of them.
And because of her condition, he’d made certain that Kelsey wasn’t going to play any role in it, and that had undoubtedly pissed her off. Only she didn’t look quite as angry as he’d expected her to be.
He’d grown to know his sister very well over the last few years, and he knew what she looked like when she was upset. Her expression now was a bit more… complicated.
She’d be worried, of course. Who wouldn’t be?
But the rest of her expression was unreadable in a way that made no sense. Not to someone who had become very good at detecting her moods and reading her feelings based on her posture.
Deciding to take the bull by the horns, he turned to where she was standing on his right and gave her his full attention. With Angela leading the assault, he was in the captain’s chair, but Kelsey was the one giving the orders. The Marine Raider computer wouldn’t accept command authority from anyone that wasn’t a Marine Raider.
It was a bit cumbersome, but that was what they had to work with.
“What’s the matter?” he asked directly. “You look strange.”
She frowned at him. “I’m not strange. What do you mean by that?”
“I know that you’re angry with me, but this was the right call. With a little bit of time, you’ll understand that too. Trust me when I say that both your father and Talbot will be happy that you didn’t risk… anything this time.”
He’d almost said “your child,” but that would’ve been a mistake. No one else on the bridge was aware that his sister was pregnant, and it wasn’t his place to let that particular cat out of the bag.
“My father would understand that I was doing what I had to do, and so would my husband,” she said, her chin rising in defiance.
Something was definitely off.
“I wouldn’t worry overly much. Those pinnaces are filled with Marine Raiders. Not only is Angela there, but Julia has the codes that might be required to get into any computer systems that are still operational. We’ve got all the angles that we can think of covered. You being there would just be an unnecessary risk.”
She turned and stared at him. No. She glared at him.
“I don’t think you understand how much I really wanted to be there. It was my place to finish what we started. Julia is going to have to do this all over again in her universe, and now we’re putting her at risk twice. Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?”
There was a sense of wrongness to this conversation. It was almost like she was ignoring her own condition.
Or ignorant of it.
Fiona, he said through his implants. Is there any way to tell exactly who I’m talking to? Are we sure that this is really Kelsey?
Do you believe that this woman is Julia?
Knowing my sister, it wouldn’t surprise me. Can you check?
I can use the interior scanners to tell if the person in front of you has an artificial eye easily enough. It appears that your suspicion was correct. This is Julia.
He suppressed the urge to curse. He should’ve known that his sister would pull something like this. Dammit.
The pinnaces had gone too far to summon them back. His sister was committed to this attack now, and there was no point in being pissed off about it. She and Julia had fooled him just long enough for her to get away with it.
He leaned forward slightly and looked into Julia’s eyes. Then he sent her an implant communication request.
I know that you’re Julia. I only just figured it out, and I’m not going to give you away, because that’s not going to help any of us right now, but you need to understand that you’ve made a dreadful mistake.
His sister from another universe almost sneered. I didn’t make a mistake. Kelsey wanted to go on this mission, and you denied her. She deserves to be the mistress of her own fate.
And you think that I denied her just because I felt like it? Julia, Kelsey is five months pregnant.
The other woman’s eyes almost bugged out. “What?” she demanded out loud.
I can see that she didn’t tell you, Jared said dryly. It looks like I wasn’t the only one that was played.
Julia stood silent for a moment and then began cursing, drawing the eye of every officer on the bridge and obviously not caring.
Well, what was done was done. He’d just have to hope that Kelsey kept herself and her daughter alive. If she didn’t, there’d be plenty of blame to go around.
Carl tried everything that he could think of to talk Elise through getting them out of the obelisk. Nothing they’d tried had any effect.
They took a break and made another circumference of the large chamber. As she’d guessed, there were twelve small compartments that he assumed were all transports of some kind. They took a thorough video of all the runes inside them, and none were the same. None of them matched the con
trol runes that Elise could see either.
The only thing that was the same was that the rune that opened each chamber was identical. That particular rune had to represent this place.
He had to assume that this facility was linked with other places that made sense for it to be connected to. Places that the aliens that created this facility wanted them to have access to.
Judging by the lack of operational runes, the vast majority of those destinations were no longer available. Each small chamber held one hundred and forty-four runes. That meant seventeen hundred and twenty-eight individual symbols in all. Of that, over ninety percent were nonfunctional. Or perhaps they simply weren’t available to humans.
Interestingly, only the rune that brought them here was the same inside the transport cavern on the world with the dead city. That meant it was similar to the multiflip point nodes in that it had a different subset of possible destinations.
That still left them with one hundred and fifty-two potential destinations available from this cavern. More exploration than they could carry out in a lifetime, most likely, even if he could afford to dedicate any time to it.
They really needed to get the hell out of this place. The mission to probe Twilight River had probably already kicked off. Without him being there, there was no telling what would happen when their forces had a direct confrontation with the master AI, and it worried him. Not that he didn’t think his associates were competent, but he knew that he was better.
That wasn’t just his ego talking. He was quantifiably better when it came to messing with computers and programming. Yes, Ralph was a better hacker, but he didn’t have the breadth of vision he himself did. Austin was better with hardware but was limited in the same way as Ralph.
And all of that worried Carl greatly. They really needed to get out of here soon.
Once Elise had run through the easy manipulations, she started doing something new with the controls that she could see. Instead of touching only a single one, she touched one and then drew a line between it and another.
The fact that it allowed her to do so meant that what she was doing had the potential to increase the number of commands she could issue, but once again, they were just guessing at everything.
Until someone let out a shout and pointed at the tip of one of the oblong corners of the chamber. A large opening had appeared in the wall. Talbot trotted over to take a look.
“Looks like a tunnel,” he shouted back. “Not sure where it goes, but it doesn’t look dangerous. Unless we go into it, it closes, and then we can’t get out again.”
That was certainly true enough, but it wasn’t as if they had much choice. They hadn’t had any luck turning on the entrance, so perhaps once Elise had triggered the change in control, that was no longer a way out. This might be their only avenue to escape.
He hated taking a risk like that, but they couldn’t afford to leave anyone behind. Obviously, no one on the outside had been able to make their way in, so it seemed certain that that method of entry had been disabled.
“Gather up all your gear, everyone,” he shouted. “I don’t want to leave anything behind, because we may never come back this way.”
Carl hoped that wasn’t true. They’d been to a world that humanity couldn’t have ever dreamed of visiting on its own, and he certainly wanted to go back to plumb the secrets of this alien society that had vanished millions of years ago.
Well, he could only control so many things in life. He was reasonably sure that if they could get out, they’d be able to get back in. The aliens hadn’t built this entire facility just to confuse a small group of humans. It had a larger purpose, even if they didn’t know what it was right now.
And they might never know.
In any case, it seemed utterly certain that the aliens were no longer present in this universe. Unlike the Omegans, they hadn’t traveled to another reality. Well, probably not. They’d lived so long that their species had gone extinct, even though they’d been spread across the entire Milky Way.
Perhaps they’d simply lost the will to live and devolved. Or they’d transcended into something unimaginable. Maybe humans would one day find clues, but that was a matter for another time.
Four of the male scientists had grabbed the deactivated alien robot and were carrying it along with them. They didn’t look pleased with the added burden, but the device could tell them so many things that they’d never figure out on their own.
With a sigh, Carl shouldered his own bag, looking to Talbot and Elise. “I hope this leads to an exit that we didn’t spot from the outside. If it just takes us deeper into the facility, we may get lost and never find a way out. Try and bring up a different kind of map when we’re in the tunnel.”
Elise gave him a look that said she had her doubts but followed Talbot into the tunnel, made the now-familiar set of gestures, and gasped. “This map is different! It looks like some kind of facility map, and I see a blinking light very close to a large chamber. I think that must be me.
“I can see that this tunnel has branches that go out into different sections of the facility. This place is enormous. It leads to the side of the mountain. If there’s going to be an exit, I suppose that’s where it’s going to be.”
Talbot nodded. “As mountains go, this place isn’t much. Still, even a small mountain is a mountain. If this tunnel goes to the side, there’s probably a drop-off that’s ridiculous. Elise, let me see that map so I can try to figure out what’s waiting for us.”
After a moment, he shook his head. “That section of the mountainside is a cliff. It’s straight up and down. There’s no sign of any artificial structure or door, but we know that the aliens were experts at hiding their secrets. If there’s an exit there, it’ll almost certainly be one of those vanishing walls.”
Carl sighed and started walking. “Then we’ll just have to hope that our radios work when we open the door. Otherwise, our options are pretty limited. Let’s go.”
The group set out on what might be a fruitless journey, but he hoped that they were about to escape the alien facility. Getting back in might be challenging, but if the aliens had created a hidden entrance, there would be a way to use it. Maybe a rune that only Elise could see.
Of course, once they got out of the facility, there had to be a range at which her controls no longer worked. At least he hoped that was the case. Otherwise, his sneaking suspicion that the aliens had planted something inside her might prove true, and he worried about what that might mean for her and her unborn children.
Well, there’d be time enough to figure that out after they’d escaped.
18
Kelsey sat in her seat aboard the pinnace and worried. How long was Julia going to be able to fool Jared? She didn’t think it would be for very long. It wasn’t that Julia wasn’t smart enough to do it. She just didn’t know Jared like Kelsey did.
She was going to do something that made him suspicious. Kelsey just knew it. The only question was whether she was going to do it while there was still time to recall the pinnaces.
Or, Kelsey supposed, Jared could risk sending a shielded message warning Angela that Kelsey was aboard. That would be problematic as well, but it would be too late to really do anything to stop her.
One way or the other, she was on her way to finishing this fight. The real question now was whether she’d do so in a meaningful manner or have to get around Angela “protecting” her. Or Jake Peters, since he was Julia’s supposed bodyguard.
They were still a long way from the science station and would have to sneak through the defenses. Worse, there was always the chance that while they were still carrying out the mission, the Clan forces would break into the system and start a general attack.
If that happened, the odds of her and her friends getting away dropped precipitously.
While pretending to be Julia, she wasn’t presenting herself as one of the idea makers. That wasn’t Julia’s strength. That meant she had to sit back and listen to them make dec
isions that she might have made differently.
She supposed that was a good thing. Her way wasn’t always the right way. Besides, Peters had more experience than all of them at this kind of thing. He’d been a Marine Raider before the Fall and had served in that capacity for decades as a senior officer, commanding a ship just like Persephone. If anyone could figure out a plan that would succeed now, it was him.
Only she could tell that he was uncertain. It wasn’t in how he presented his ideas but in how little force he put behind them. He’d been crippled for centuries and hadn’t fought a hard battle like this since shortly after the Terran Empire had fallen. He’d lost confidence in himself.
Thankfully, Angela was more than making up on that front. She’d been a marine officer with the New Terran Empire before they’d found anything belonging to the Old Empire. She knew what it was like to command, and she had both the drive to do it and the willingness to put herself out front.
Her friend was less bold than she was, but it was no secret that Kelsey favored the smash and grab. If it were up to her, they’d find a likely entry point, blow their way in, and fight their way to the master AI via the shortest route possible.
Or, as Talbot would say, she’d use brute force and ignorance.
It was a personal flaw. She knew boldness was sometimes the wrong answer. If they could sneak in and take out the master AI without being discovered, that would give them time to deal with any unexpected surprises.
While it was likely that all the ships and stations protecting the master AI were computer controlled, that wasn’t a certainty when it came to any in-station protective measures. On the journey to Harrison’s World, they’d found autonomous weapons platforms being used on some ships. They hadn’t found any other places inside the Rebel Empire that had used that type of lethal hardware, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t in use here.