Empyrean Rises

by Spencer Pierson

  “But not good enough,” Piper said to herself, biting her tongue as she saw a mistake in the code. She had double checked her thoughts at least three times because the people behind this code had littered it with traps for the unwary. In a flash, she began nudging their counter-code toward that hole, slowly working her way into the enemy’s outer communication infrastructure, and hopefully toward answers.

  “Excuse me?” Said Tad, who had been floating behind her shoulder and double checking her work. “Talking to yourself again, Piper? Did you run out of your medications?”

  Piper snorted though her fingers never stopped moving. “I am not on any medication, Tad.”

  “Senility then? You are getting up in age, after all,” Tad returned.

  Piper rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she continued to push her electronic fingers deeper into the enemy firewall. “That only means I’m thirty-six, but both of us know that I’ve still got the body and mind of a twenty-year-0ld. Maybe it’s your code that’s going bad. I can always have you purged and re-booted.”

  Tad made a strange, brash noise that sounded like a bunch of nails being shaken in a box, his computerized face flipping from smiling to angry. The small drone spun around once before coming back to rest. “You wouldn’t dare. I’m far too important to you. What would you do without me?”

  “Have peace and quiet,” Piper rejoined, then arched an eyebrow at her errant companion. “Maybe get some work done, too. Work that is very important and very time sensitive.”

  Tad made an electronic sniff, then turned away and faced the large window that showed the darkness of space. “Someone is clearly touchy. By the way, that last line has a typo. You should be more careful.”

  Piper growled, but went back and found the errant piece of code that Tad had mentioned. There were some advantages to her DPA being able to touch her mind and even see through her eyes. Despite the controversy of tying a human mind in with an artificial one, so far, things had worked out very well. It had spurred the development of personality, and even understanding of some very obscure concepts in the AI, and had increased Piper’s own mental function by several magnitudes.

  This let Piper view the code in so many more ways than an un-augmented human, allowing her to see the weak spots in the firewall she was trying to break and take advantage of it before she could be detected.

  Finally, after what felt like an hour, but was in reality only a few minutes, Piper’s systems broke through the enemy’s heavy fortifications and let her peek into what was behind, or in this case, under the shack.

  “All right, Nathan, I’m through and into their systems,” Piper spoke into her comlink to the surface. “I’m sending you down a schematic of the base right now, but give me a few minutes to fill in the details. Their security is pretty tight.”

  A moment later, Nathan responded that he’d gotten the schematics and worked it into his holograph of the surrounding area. He stared at the revealed below ground infrastructure, studying the small installation even as cameras and security emplacements began to slowly appear, with red descriptions of why they were a threat next to them. Most helpful were the indicators of personnel that were stationary or moving throughout the complex.

  There were only three levels, with a large area holding the transmitters and computer core, surrounded by a small barracks, kitchen, and other facilities to maintain the hidden compound. The biggest problem that Nathan saw was the single elevator shaft that led downwards. It would be difficult to get by it and down into the base before they destroyed the computer cores, but it was the only way within.

  Nathan began to make plans while Piper filled him in on all the information she could find, each fire team leader able to see the same map he could. “Are you able to disable their security?” He asked after it looked like Piper had finished.

  “Yes, I think so, at least most of it. There’s a hard-wired gas dispersion trigger in what looks like the commander's office, along with a self-destruct rigged to the computer cores. I can’t touch that, but I can get the cameras, and auto-gun emplacements.” Piper answered. “I can’t tell what kind of gas it is, but the explosive isn’t one that will destroy the base. Just the computer cores. Will that be enough?”

  “It will have to be,” Nathan responded. They would have to get to the commander’s office on the third level as the first thing they did, bypassing the rest of the base. Otherwise, they will have wasted their time and likely end up with a bunch of dead people. “Our suits should be proof against the gas.”

  “Okay, give me fifteen minutes to disable security. You’ll see them switch from red to green on the map.”

  “Excellent. You’re a peach, Piper,” Nathan said, turning to the business of assigning his troops to their respective tasks. “Riley, I want you and your team on overwatch. I don’t want any surprises once we get in there. Sokolov, I want you to move up and follow Gonzales in through the front door and down the elevator shaft. Once inside, go to the computer core and secure it against any attempt to sabotage manually. Gonzales, you’re on point for the office. I’ll be going in with you to pad your team for the push. Any questions?”

  “Should we go inside the cores?” Sokolov asked a note of worry in his voice. “Currently there is no one inside, and If you don’t get to the office in time, that explosion will make us paste.”

  “No, keep outside and just stop anyone from entering. We have live feeds of everyone down there so will be able to see if someone makes a dash for the cores.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sokolov answered, raising no more concerns.

  Nathan waited for a few more moments, then fed the plan to the entire team, letting them digest what was required. If they had any concerns, they would talk to their team leads, but everything remained silent. Another ten minutes passed, and then Piper alerted them what Nathan could already see on the map. The security was disabled, and it was time to move.

  “Head out,” Nathan ordered, beginning his own movement through the trees at a fast pace. His holocloak was active, though movement diminished its effectiveness somewhat. However, the watchman had gone back inside and was currently sitting on an old couch within, unaware of the threat racing toward him.

  Chapter 8

  Time: May 6, 2036

  Location: Sea Base Atlantis, One hundred miles west of Empyrean Island, Pacific Ocean

  “How are our boys and girls doing?” Colleen asked as Alex walked into the lounge. It was one of her favorite places to be while she wasn’t working on one of her experiments. Rising a hundred feet into the water, it was relatively isolated, giving her a panoramic view of Atlantis below her. She liked to keep the lights dim as she sipped her tea, watching the occasional fish swim by.

  “They’re just heading in now. Nothing to report otherwise, as far as I can tell,” Alex said as he sat in one of the overstuffed chairs.

  “Colleen looked over with a twinkle in her eye. “Does Nathan know you’re watching them?”

  Alex pursed his lips, not meeting her gaze. “No, but I’m not going to interfere. I’ve read too many books about armchair generals, and I don’t know anything about military tactics. I’d just cause issues. Besides, he’s got other people watching that can call in the cavalry if needed. It seems like things are going okay so far, though.”

  Colleen just nodded, returning her gaze to the vast deep before her and took another sip of her tea. Several small fish attracted to the light in the lounge swam slowly by the glass. For a moment, she felt like she was watching a fish tank, but chuckled as she realized it was the exact opposite. They were the ones within the tank, while the fish outside watched them.

  She sighed but didn’t comment on Alex’s spying since she’d had Piper set up her own feed and was just as anxious. That was one of the reasons she was up in her sanctuary. To relax. She just couldn’t concentrate on particle physics while people’s lives were in danger.

  After several minutes of comfortable silence, Alex cleared his throat, catching his gr
andmother’s attention. “Helen wants to talk to us about some of her advances,” he said softly into the quiet. “I wanted to get your opinion on it before we discuss it with everyone. It’s a big deal, and I don’t want to make the wrong decision about it.”

  “Are you talking about the Methuselah serum?” Colleen asked, turning fully toward Alex and putting her tea down on the table.

  “Yes,” he said, putting a lot of weight in that one word.

  “It’s quite a genie’s bottle, letting people live longer. If we restrict it to whomever we select, we’ll create a separate class of people. It would be a group that will have extraordinary health and longevity over their fellow person. That will eventually be noticed, and it will create a large swell of resentment.”

  “I know, but the planet isn’t ready. We’re already seeing a huge population and not enough work to keep them busy. If people stopped dying of old age, it would just increase the pressure we’re already seeing.”

  “I agree, but break it down. What is the actual problem?” Colleen asked, prodding the younger man. She’d already given this much thought but wanted Alex to arrive at the answer, himself.

  Alex frowned, his eyes narrowing as he mulled over the issues in his head. Was it really population and resources? In a way, yes it was, but that was because of the terrible practices of most countries. Alex knew with their ability to create food on a massive scale, energy production, water production and reclamation, and improved building ability; they could actually accommodate far more people on the planet that were currently living. All this could be done without expanding the current human imprint on Earth.

  The problem was, they weren’t going to become heavy-handed with any country that didn’t want them. They would go where they were invited and had made excellent strides in those areas, but they wouldn’t force their way on anyone. Despite that, people needed something important. They needed a purpose, and that stress was clearly one of the major problems in the more developed parts of the world. That would just get worse with a larger population.

  So how could he eliminate that? How could he and his Empyrean team accommodate an explosion of population and give them purpose?

  Colleen watched as he came to the answer. His eyes lit up, and he smiled, grinning at his grandmother.

  “We colonize other worlds,” Alex said. “We give them land in which to expand, and therefore give them a purpose of working for something.”

  Colleen nodded. “Yes. That is exactly what we need to do. Expand, explore, and settle our solar system. I don’t think we should reveal the Methuselah serum until we have the production infrastructure built up on the moon and in the asteroid belt, but once we do, we’ll be able to really build out Mars, and several of the moons of Saturn. Then we will need colonists and lots of them.”

  “We’ll also be able to set the rules,” Alex said. “I don’t want politics to follow us into space.”

  Colleen gave him a look. “You know that’s impossible. Any time you get more than two people in the same room, you have politics, but I know what you mean. We will do our best, to make humanity the best they can be.” She paused, her voice lowering. “Something Johan Olmstead would be proud of.”

  Alex caught his breath but a moment later nodded. The sudden memory of his old friend bringing a tear to his eye. If Colleen had been his mother figure, Johan Olmstead had been the father figure. It tore at him that the old man couldn’t have lived for a few more years, but such was life.

  “Maybe Musk will have more company on Mars then he was planning on, though I have no doubt he’ll make a good neighbor.

  The two sat in silence for a while longer, each taking in the peace of the ocean moving outside of their comfortable prison. At the same time, both of them received an alert that Nathan was about to begin his offense. Exchanging glances with Colleen, Nathan waved Aristotle forward and asked him to project a hologram of Nathan’s operation.

  Both of the Drake’s leaned forward, their hearts in their throat as their friends moved into danger.

  Chapter 9

  Time: May 6, 2036

  Location: Somewhere North of Rio Araca in the State of Amazonas, Brazil

  Samantha and her team moved inwards toward the fence that surrounded the shack. There was an electric current running through it, but the detection system it was tied to had been disabled. However, even if fully active, it would have been no barrier to the armored warriors. The two-meter fence was hurdled in an instant, taking them toward one of the corners that faced away from the watchman inside.

  They ignored the exterior cameras, knowing that they were in a video loop and moved quickly toward the back door. Samantha paused there, each of her team waiting as Sokolov’s team reached the front door.

  Despite the rotten look of the doors and surrounding wood, they were highly reinforced barriers which would have taken explosives to dislodge. However, that wasn’t the plan. With an electronic nudge, the doors both released without a sound, letting Samantha and her team within. A moment later, Samantha sighted in on her target watching a television show and sitting on an old, stained couch. With a soft hiss, she fired a stun bullet at him which contained a neural charge, rendering him unconscious almost immediately. He’d wake up with a headache, but alive and well.

  Jefferson and Kelly immediately moved toward the elevator, detaching the bookcase that covered it and immediately pried open the stainless steel doors. A long, dark shaft appeared below them, with Nathan joining her team a moment later.

  “Attach pitons,” she ordered, watching as two of her team fired bolts attached to a too-thin line into the floor. Despite looking like old wood, the floor was hardened concrete which would efficiently support her and her team. A moment later, Johnson and Kelly rappelled down the shaft and into the darkness below. Samantha and Khalid followed a moment later with Nathan after that. Sokolov and his team gave them a count of twenty before undertaking their own mission into the darkness.

  As expected, the elevator was on the bottom flow where Piper had indicated it stayed when not in use. Samantha was just about to lift up the trap door when they were interrupted by Piper. “Hold on,” she said, sounding tense. “Something is wrong. An alert just sounded off that wasn’t tied in with the security system. Dammit!”

  Samantha ripped the trap door upwards, dropping down into the elevator. “Open the elevator door, Piper. We’re out of time!” she yelled into the command channel. Her team started to follow her down just as the elevator doors opened and revealed a hallway.

  She sprinted forward, heading toward the office that was their primary goal. The sound of footsteps echoed behind her, and her HUD showed her team, plus Nathan hot on her heels. A door whisked open beside her, and she briefly glimpsed a figure in the door with wide, surprised eyes. She ignored the man, letting her team take care of the problem while she raced to stop what she knew would be bad news.

  It was not an extensive base, so she only had to make one turn before appearing in front of the door she knew held the self-destruct mechanism. Kicking it open, she watched a short-haired man lean back in his chair and smile at her. She’d arrived too late.

  A moment later, she felt an explosion ripple through the base, and a greenish gas began to fill the room and hallway where she was standing. Growling, she fired off a stun round, taking the man out in hopes she might still be able to get him to safety for questioning. The man fell quiet but immediately began to spasm as the gas reached him. Even worse, a moment later, he began to melt as the paperwork sitting on his desk discolored into disgusting black splotches.

  “Everybody out!” she yelled into the open com, watching as all the blue dots that represented the Empyrean team began moving toward the elevator shaft. Instead of following, she lunged forward, grabbing a laptop that sat open on the melting man’s desk. She could see the gas affected the plastic just as it did the paper, but it was far slower. She just hoped her suit proved to be effective against whatever it was.

  Turni
ng, she high-tailed it back and reached the elevator. Nathan was the last man, hoisting Kelly up into the darkness before turning to Samantha. “Gonzales, next time you call a retreat, you better follow immediately.”

  Samantha flashed the laptop she’d secured in some webbing, though she noted the discoloration had spread. Whatever the gas was, it was vicious, and she cursed when she saw a flashing number on her HUD. The integrity showed Ninety-Three percent and dropping fast. She leaped up, grabbing the lip of the trap door and pulled herself up quickly, then re-attached the line to her auto-retrieval mechanism on her suit, ascending upwards a moment later.

  The good news was the elevator shaft wasn’t being pumped full of the gas, but some of it was beginning to leak up from below. When she got to the top of the elevator shaft, her team and Sokolov had already vacated the shack. Following close behind, she pushed outside and into the open air, watching her suit’s integrity slow, and then finally stop at just above seventy-two percent. Behind her, she heard Sokolov throw a couple of sealing grenades into the shaft, exploding into massive yellow foam that hardened almost immediately. It would keep the gas from leaking out from the base. Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked around at the rest of the soldiers.

  “Don’t take your suits off,” Nathan said, coming out of the dark interior. “We need to go through decontamination before we or anyone else touches the outside of our suits. I’ve never seen anything like that gas back there, so we’re not going to take any chances. Riley, it looks like there’s a pond half a kilometer to the north-east. Have two members of your team scout it out. I want you to come in and take charge of the prisoner, but leave Perkins out on overwatch.”