by Richard Fox
“Take it?” Haddar’s top non-commissioned officer asked through an ear bead.
“See if you can reach whoever’s in there.” Haddar touched a transmitter fixed to his throat. “We’re not charging into a hornet’s nest.”
“Roger.”
The sound of distant fighting carried through the ruined outer rings of the city. Just because Marshal Roland had sacrificed territory to set up the kill zone didn’t mean that the Geist hadn’t managed to breach the walls.
“Movement,” one of Haddar’s soldiers said and brought his rifle over the edge of the crater to cover the building.
A door on the building where they’d heard the shooting swung open and someone inside held out a gauss rifle, the barrel pointed up, the hand holding it obviously human.
“Friendly!” the man in the house called out.
“He doesn’t know the challenge and password?” the RTO asked.
“We’ll find out. Hold fire.” Haddar stepped up and exposed his head and shoulders over the edge. “Come out! 4th Provisional.”
A soldier with sandy-blond hair stepped out of the house, his uniform stained by human and alien blood. Laden with dust, he stumbled toward Haddar, his gait off and his breathing irregular.
The soldier fell over the edge and Haddar caught him before he could go face-first into the rocks. Dried blood marred his upper lip and his ears, and the size of his pupils didn’t quite match.
“Head injury.” Haddar pulled him against the crater wall and waved over the platoon medic. “Hey, you OK? Any Geist still in there?”
“Got ’em…I got ’em all.” The soldier opened and closed his eyes then swiped at some annoyance no one else could see.
“He’s nonfunctional.” The medic held up a palm in front of the soldier’s face and sensors fed data to a screen on the medic’s forearm screen and to an optic over one eye. “He needs to be evacced for treatment…he doesn’t have an ident chip,” the medic added, rubbing two fingers on the underside of the wounded soldier’s arm. “Weird.”
“Not every provisional’s got them,” Haddar said. “Get him evacced. Sector command wants this place cleared, and we can’t take his word for it.”
“Moving.” The medic helped the soldier to his feet and led him out of the crater.
Nakir kept his pace unsteady, grateful to be escorted deeper into the defensive lines. All it cost was the sacrifice of a Rakka platoon and a bit of theatrics.
Chapter 6
“And I don’t care!” Marc Ibarra tossed his hands up as he stalked around a vault buried deep beneath Euskal Tower. A single point of light in the middle of the room cast silver shadows off Marc, whose bespoke suit jacket was folded over a circular bar surrounding the light.
“You’re not allowed to crash India’s entire electrical grid, Jerry!” Ibarra shook his head and ran a hand through his thinning hair.
“The Chinese leadership council is meeting as we speak.” The Qa’Resh probe, the glittering needle in the center of the room, spun faster and a holo projection of a long table with serious-looking Chinese politicians and military officers appeared. One man was speaking, gesticulating with one hand as he spoke in Mandarin. “They’re debating a preemptive strike against the Indian Navy as a shaping operation before they attack Singapore and invade Taiwan.”
“Killing the power for tens of millions of innocent civilians is going to help this situation…how? Exactly?” Ibarra rolled his eyes.
“A massive domestic scandal will trigger a number of resignations within Prime Minister Goa’s cabinet. There is a ninety-four percent chance this will trigger national elections. Goa’s party will lose enough seats beyond my projected margin of error to install a new government less confrontational to Chinese expansion,” the probe said. New holo screens with pie charts and stock-market graphs appeared.
“You’re not always right, Jerry. Remember that disaster in Australia? We’re still dealing with that fallout.” Ibarra stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips.
“My initial data set on the nationalistic tendencies of the rural bogan ethnic strains was incorrect. I have more complete matrixes for both Chinese and Indian leadership.”
“Bogans are not an ‘ethnic strain,’ Jerry. It’s more of an economic and subcultural affinity. Good thing I’m here, as you still don’t understand human beings after all these decades pulling our strings.”
The probe flickered as it updated itself.
“We have eighteen hours to make an effective decision,” the probe said. “If we take no action, it will accelerate the Chinese expansion efforts by three years and start a major regional conflict. The current military strength of the United States is sufficient to defend Taiwan and Japan, which will negate their need for a future trans-Atlantic alliance. The possibility of a ‘peace dividend,’ as you put it, will negatively impact our—”
“And we won’t have the military strength to beat the Xaros.” Marc sighed heavily. “Every one of your rants ends with that.”
“That is the only reason I am here. If that end state becomes unobtainable, I will transmit a final update and disintegrate.”
“An alien AI with suicidal tendencies. I’m so blessed.” Ibarra reached into the many holo tables and pulled one to the fore. “If we slag the Indian power grid, there will be millions of deaths, Jerry.”
“The risk of a limited nuclear exchange during a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and Japan is at thirty-seven percent. Would you like to see those projections?”
“No.” Ibarra swiped the screen away. “You’re sure you can get the next Indian election to go our way? Prime Minister Goa’s very proud of his new—and secure—voting systems.”
“They’re not secure from me. Where should I release the mal-al-content attack?”
Ibarra’s face went stony and he stared at the probe. “Nice try,” Ibarra said. “Very nice try, Shannon. But this is still my mind. These are still my memories.”
The probe grew larger, morphing into Shannon in smart business clothes. She stepped through the railing like it wasn’t there and raised a hand. Lights rose in the vault, illuminating a single elevator door.
“You like this place for some reason,” she sneered. “So drab down here. Why do you keep coming back?”
“Jerry didn’t care much for interior decorating, and I didn’t come down here to relax. I had this place built with my first run of construction bots, then Jerry and I had them all slagged. Hurt to see them go,” Ibarra said, “but it was better than arranging an accident for any human workers. Secrets and such.”
“I have no memory of this place.” Shannon narrowed her eyes at the door. “Did you never bring my original down here or did you erase those memories?”
“Never brought her here.” Ibarra shrugged. “I never told her about Jerry or The Plan to save humanity. You always believed I was a megalomaniac bent on world domination or some such. Isn’t that right?”
“You were always…too competent. Things worked out in your favor far too many times for it to be a coincidence, but I never knew you to intentionally harm anyone, which is why I stayed with you through the decades. However, that wasn’t true. At all. You made the call to take down the Indian power grid days before a typhoon devastated Madras. How many people died that summer, Marc?”
“Eighty-two million.” Ibarra glanced up and to the left, remembering the number. “Beyond our models. But it kept the Chinese from moving before I was ready for them, and that bought my robot miners on Europa time to mine the quadrium I needed for the Saturn Colonial Fleet and to retake the Earth.”
“How many people died because of your decisions, Marc?” Shannon asked. “Did you ever stop and bring in the Tally Man?”
“The Xaros were coming for us. Trillions of murder drones that we couldn’t defeat, even if humanity bent every effort to our defense from the very moment Jerry arrived on Earth. There was one long shot at survival…a couple hundred thousand was the best I could do. That’s the number I cared abo
ut. Because the decision was between extinction or an ember. I chose the ember.”
“Did you ever feel like God? Choosing who lived and who died? Your decades-long game that would set you up as the great savior for as long as humanity could remember?”
“So much for that idea.” Ibarra chuckled. “Everything named after ‘Ibarra’ right now is for Stacey. I don’t mind; she’s worked for it.”
Shannon tilted her head slightly. Her mouth moved, but Ibarra heard nothing.
A wall of light swept through the vault. Ibarra was at the top of a narrow cobblestone tower. The stairway leading up was too wide and too steep for it to have been designed for a human. The city surrounding the tower was made up of fortified neighborhoods, some burnt-out and ruined, others with crystal buildings that glittered beneath a green sun. A massive equatorial space station arced through the sky, fed by sky hooks every few dozen miles.
Ibarra looked down, and a pack of six-limbed Toth warriors meandered past the base of the tower. Each carried crystal halberds, the golden links of the chain mail glinting in the late afternoon light.
“Curious,” Ibarra said. “I’ve never been here. How’d you make this?”
“The Kesaht insisted on exploring the Toth homeworld. They were determined to know if Lord Bale tricked them into fighting the Terran Union. Bale told them that humanity wiped out his homeworld…and that the Kesaht were in grave danger. The Toth left behind plenty of data—not that they had time to erase anything. Watch.”
“No…” Ibarra backpedaled to the stairwell, but Shannon grabbed him by the arm. Her grip fractured the colored shell, and silver cracks spread to his wrist and shoulder.
“You did this,” she hissed.
A silver star streaked through the sky, traveling parallel to the great equatorial space station. The tower rumbled beneath his feet.
“You get to see it!” Shannon flung him away.
Air rushed past Ibarra as he fell, tumbling end over end. His feet hit the ground and he slid down a poured-stone street, scraping color off his silver body. He stopped near a pack of Toth menials—smaller, four-limbed versions of the warriors with more bulbous eyes. One had a cluster of children clinging to it as they all watched the sky.
“I’m not here.” Ibarra put his hands to his temples and pressed hard. “House. My house and I’m making breakfast and—”
A warning siren rose in the distance. A sudden storm front—a roiling cloud wall filled with silver motes—rumbled through the city, bearing down on Ibarra. The Toth scrambled, panicking for cover as the low cloud wall accelerated. Shining Toth souls were swept up through the storm, struggling as they were sucked deeper into the cloud.
The cries, the fear of imminent and certain death, hit Ibarra. He thought of how universal that final moment of suffering was between the Toth and humanity. The storm front passed over him without sensation.
Toth collapsed all around him. Their eyes were wide and vacant, their lives snuffed out as Malal claimed them. None moved. Not the warriors, not the overlord drifting in his brain tank…none of the menial hatchlings.
Shannon was there, shaking her head.
“All gone.” She clapped her hands together and they were aboard the Breitenfeld. Ibarra and Stacey, both in the simple silver of their Ambassador bodies, watched the Toth homeworld from the edge of a shuttle bay, both stoic as the soul storm spread over the surface. A man in a Terran Navy uniform was decidedly less calm.
“Ah…Valdar…” Ibarra ran his hand over the damage to his body and his more pristine shell returned. “He wasn’t as on board with this as I thought he’d be.”
“Perhaps he was wise enough to fear the consequences,” Shannon said. “A Toth overlord escaped the holocaust. He recruited the Kesaht into a war against humanity, and how many more died in that conflict?”
“It had to be done,” Ibarra said. “Bale was a loose end. One that got tied off eventually.”
Shannon’s face grew pained. “Why did…why did Malal choose the Toth?” she asked quietly. “Why were they so worthy?”
Ibarra raised an eyebrow. “I’m not talking to Shannon anymore, am I? There’s a Geist behind your eyes.” Ibarra walked to the edge of the open bay door and looked down. “It’s not about ‘worthy’ with Malal, you fools. It was about power. We struck a barg…ain.”
He looked up and the Toth world vanished, replaced by a stage made of alabaster and gold, long ovals and mathematically perfect curves. A pale circle shimmered over the stage, and a shadowy figure appeared.
Ibarra stomped hard and the sound of his foot against the deck of the Breitenfeld sounded. The edge reappeared, and he stepped through the force field. The void returned and he drifted away from the ship, the three figures of his memory not registering him, while Shannon shook her head.
A gangly man with oily black hair and dark-blue skin rose up and seized Ibarra by the neck, his too-long fingers curling over themselves. Malal’s face elongated as he smiled, his teeth growing sharper and sharper.
“He didn’t choose you,” Ibarra said, his words working in the void of the constructed reality.
Malal hurled Ibarra back into the shuttle bay. Shannon raised a foot and stomped down on Ibarra, pinning him to the deck.
“What did he do with all that soul force, Ibarra?” Shannon asked. “The Xaros were already defeated by this time. Why? Tell us!”
Ibarra laughed, a simple chuckle that grew into a belly laugh. “He didn’t choose you and it’s driving you mad!” Ibarra laughed even harder.
Shannon stomped on Ibarra and he shook against the deck…which wasn’t the deck anymore. He lay in dust, the sky now gray and streaked by high, dark clouds. A cold wind blew over him, and he rolled over.
A metal X was staked into the ground in front of him. He looked up at a desiccated alien body, the blue-gray skin flapping in the wind. The two sets of eyes were dark pits. The limbs were splayed open, tied to each segment of the X. An ugly tangle of silver wires connected the back of the corpse’s neck to the crucifix.
Behind the dead alien was a field of crucifixes that stretched to the horizon.
Ibarra turned around. A ship shaped like a nautilus shell rose up, the upper edge lost to the haze of blown dust and sand.
The Ark.
“This was your choice!” Ibarra shouted to the sky. “You thought Malal would save your souls, but he never cared! He left you behind!”
There was a creak behind him. The corpse raised its empty gaze to Ibarra, along with all the others sacrificed on the crux decussates.
“What’re you going to believe?” Ibarra sneered up at the corpse. “That you’re his chosen people still proving yourself worthy, or that you were fools to believe the lies of a monster?”
The corpses didn’t answer as dust whipped up around Ibarra. He turned back toward the Ark and walked toward the giant Qa’Resh ship.
It never grew any closer, but he kept walking the dream wheel the Geist had him on.
Chapter 7
Ely followed Santos into a maintenance bay. More suits were in the same coffin-like enclosures he’d seen aboard the Breitenfeld. Robot arms welded new armor plates to the suits or rebuilt battle-damaged servos. Techs stood on the catwalk running in front of the service bays, their hands moving through a holo display visible only to them, the robot arms miming their movements.
Santos walked beside the catwalk, and one tech came running toward them. Ely recognized Sugimoto by her dark hair tied into a ponytail…and because she had a shapelier figure than the rest of the techs.
Santos beat a fist against his breastplate in salute. “I need a full teardown of his—”
“What have you done?” Sugimoto ran past Santos and skidded to a halt even with Ely. “I just got that suit up to specs, and why is there Vish goo all over your helm? Do you think I can just order new Abrams-pattern optics? Tell me you didn’t trip the shunt rods in your power pack. That’s a four-hour manual job and I’d have to mask up because of the fumes!”
>
Ely raised his hands in surrender. “Um…Santos? Little help here?”
“Better answer her before she gets really mad.” Santos stepped into a coffin station and robot arms began unfastening the breastplate from the suit.
“There was this…sky beam, OK? And then the Vish attacked and I was shooting them…and stuff. They fly now, by the way. One tried to eat my face—”
“That goo doesn’t come out of a Vish mouth.” Sugimoto shook her head. “Just get in bay Charlie so I can turn your suit around.”
“Where does it come out of?”
“Bay Charlie!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ely hurried to the coffin next to Santos and stood inside. “Aignar? Little help here?”
Ely shifted against the collar around his neck and his right arm began twitching. Aignar hadn’t said a word since he’d seen the battle on Earth, and Ely’s synch rating within the suit had suffered. Walking took more conscious effort than had been necessary, and curbs had proven to be a tripping hazard.
The UI came down and blurry text boxes popped up around a wire diagram of Ely’s suit. A prickling sensation grew in his feet and Ely stretched his legs out to push against the inside of his pod. He lost sensation in his feet, and a creeping numbness moved up his shins.
“Aignar…Aignar, is this supposed to happen?” The hunk of Qa’Resh probe embedded in Ely’s skull grew warm, heating up to the point where it felt like a poker left too close to a fire.
“Need my…compound…” He fumbled about inside the pod, his suit matching his movements, knocking maintenance arms away and provoking sharp words from Sugimoto and other techs. He got an injector out of the case and it slipped out of his hands, floating slowly in the thick amniosis.
Ely gripped it with two hands and jabbed one end against the side of his neck. He felt the pressure…but not the medication flowing into his bloodstream like before.
+You’ve got it backwards.+
The collar released him and Ely slunk to the bottom of the pod. He turned the injector over and administered a long dose to himself. Amniosis bubbled around him as it drained away faster than usual.