Absolution

by Peter Smith

  Patterson detected the craft on approach to the open hangar door. He turned to the opening, his eyes narrowing as his vision zoomed in on the dot that soon wouldn’t need the aid of augmented eyes to see. It wasn’t broadcasting his approved IFF, and it certainly wasn’t his transport. Flash burns existed in a patchwork over the belly of the craft and he could see USMC stenciled along the fuselage.

  Williams’ son had survived. Patterson smirked, it was good that he was here now. He had assumed the boy had been consumed in the nuclear fireball that had vaporized his father. Now, this loose end was presenting itself to him for easy disposal.

  All that would remain to do after he killed this animal and took Maria from here would be to hunt down Tobor’s mainframe and the orbital strike to bring down the Spire. That should kill the whore responsible for all of this. It was important to sever Maria’s ties to this broken world and their deaths would make it that much easier for him to turn her back to the correct path.

  He maneuvered Maria behind a heavy loading machine along the far wall. He didn’t know what the boy was planning, but he needed to make sure that Maria was protected from any potential debris or blast damage. The loader was massive, capable of placing LDUs into their racks within the transports. Since it wasn’t in use, it had been strapped to the deck to prevent it from becoming a flying hazard in the event of an explosion within the hangar. It would make a sufficient shield to protect the only thing that mattered in this universe.

  He walked to the middle of the hangar, waiting for the transport to land and to the opportunity to dispatch the boy. He could swat the aircraft from the sky when it was a within the hangar, but doing so might endanger Maria and would deprive him of the joy of watching the life leave the eyes of the filth that had touched his daughter. His jaw clenched, and his entire body shook. How dare he think he was fit to breed with her? If it weren’t for Williams’ mongrel son, Jacob never would have had to euthanize the child, he wouldn’t have had to take yet another innocent life.

  It wasn’t Alex’s fault. He shouldn’t have had to pay for the sins of others.

  Patterson’s hand’s shot to his face and he scratched at the flesh, dragging talons through the material and creating long swaths through the surface. Canyons that quickly sealed. His grandson was dead because others had made him take his precious life.

  His breathing calmed and his hands fell to his sides. It died because of their actions and it never should have existed.

  The transport rapidly advanced on the hangar and Patterson paced, waiting for it to come in for a landing. Only it wasn’t slowing down, in fact its speed was increasing.

  Patterson smirked. Like father like son, he concluded, enjoying that the boy wasn’t capable of original thought and was planning to use the same method of attack his father had used on Kauai. Why did he believe it would end differently this time? No matter, he couldn’t spare the time that it would take to reconstitute himself from a direct hit. He’d have to destroy the transport before it hit him. Williams’ son might die in the aircraft and losing the opportunity to watch it perish was unfortunate, but necessary.

  In the time it would take for a single beat of a heart, the aircraft passed through the threshold of the hangar doors and plunged toward Patterson. He swung his arm upward and created a molecule thin blade to slice through the entire plane. The craft split into two equal halves and each tumbled through the hangar. A pulse of super-heated air washed over him, caused by the friction of his passage through the superstructure of the transport, and overwhelmed his sensors for a second.

  The port side of the plan flipped and exploded on impact, showering Patterson in shrapnel and enveloping him in a ball of fire.

  The other part careened into the floor of the hangar, bouncing off of it and then slid across the metal deck until it impacted the wall, coming to a rest.

  Patterson stepped away from the flames, his focus on the other half of the transport.

  A powerful electromagnetic field reached him in time to draw his attention. He observed Sean upon a knee, his armor banged and scuffed. On his shoulder was a tube-shaped device. Patterson’s sensors were capable enough to detect and track the tungsten dart that had already left the barrel of the weapon. His mind was fast enough to process the data and understand what it meant for him. His body, however, even as amazingly advanced as it was, could not move fast enough for anything else to matter.

  The dart punched through his right breast. As it did, the outer layer of the projectile and nanites that he was composed of came into contact. As his nano machines encountered the hypervelocity dart, they absorbed a percentage of the kinetic energy that had been imparted into it by its launcher. They burst into tiny suns, overwhelmed by the power that had been transferred into them.

  He exploded into a cloud of flame and blinked out of existence.

  He came back to consciousness, screaming in agony as he did. He found himself upon the floor. Motes of flame danced in the air, like scraps of paper that had been lit afire, shedding parts of itself into the sky. The intense heat caused by the passage of the dart had consumed sixty-three percent of his mass. He lay there, his entire body out of focus as one thought came to his mind.

  Was Maria safe?

  His limited observational abilities allowed him to see that the dart had punched through the opposite hangar door and into the wilderness beyond. He turned and looked to the heavy loader. Debris strewn the floor of the hangar between him and her, much of it still on fire, but her location appeared safe.

  He gripped at the floor, pulling himself toward her as his nanites did their best to consume the surrounding material to replace their lost numbers. But most of them were busy keeping him together and maintaining the Quantum Entangled Particle effect that allowed him to be everywhere throughout his holdings at the same time. He couldn’t spare enough nanites to repair this form or else he’d lose the ability to control them and they would shut down.

  As it was, much of his local processing power was being taken up keeping the drones waiting in the lifts at bay. They had nearly exited the freight elevators while he had been inactive after the rail gun attack.

  He was grabbed roughly by the arm and rolled onto his back.

  Sean stood above him, helmet off and murder in his eyes, “This is for my father” he spat.

  His armored fist crashed against Patterson’s face and it deformed with the impact and then again when his head connected with the floor. His consciousness here faded and came back. The drones in the elevators had exited and were now frozen again.

  Sean’s fists crashed against his face again and again, each time the fade occurred and each time the drones advanced further in the space.

  Jacob was concerned that this form would be destroyed and this entire mission would have been for nothing. Panic gripped at him as he considered that if he couldn’t rescue Maria now, he’d have to come back with even greater forces later and she might die in that battle. No matter how much he wanted to save her, to avoid that unfortunate future, every fraction of a second that passed made it seem more likely. There was nothing he could do to stop this assault. He would fail.

  Then he received the correct IFF signal.

  Blood splattered over his face as Sean’s body sailed in two separate directions. His top half landing to Jacob’s right. Sean’s lower half slid to the opposite side. Jacob pushed himself up. The blood, organs and bits of bone disappeared as the nano machines consumed them as he staggered to his feet.

  The drones he had held at bay were now racing across the expanse of the hangar, firing at his transport that hovered within it. Their lasers scorched its skin, the larger ordinance from the LDUs being intercepted before it could cause significant damage. The transport fired its own cannon at the encroaching wave of combat drones.

  Lines of lasers crisscrossed over his own surface, burning away more precious nanites. He barely made it to the lowered nose ramp when he collapsed onto it. The transport immediately reversed out of th
e hangar. He had just enough energy to grip onto one of the pistons that had lowered the ramp and turn to search for Maria.

  An LDU stood between her and him. It’s Vulcan cannon spitting out depleted uranium rounds at his aircraft. His transport’s laser interceptors vaporizing them before they could impact. A single drone broke from the mass that had been charging for him. It made its way directly to Maria’s side.

  The ramp raised into the aircraft, cutting off the view of the world outside. He lay there, coming to grips with the scope of his failure, and he heard Jeffery Chen’s laughter. He turned his head and looked into the darkened cabin of the transport. Chen stood there, shrouded in the dark, “Oh Patricia, you fucked up again.”

  “Shut up” He snapped.

  Laughing, Chen said, “I mean, you just keep making the same mistake.”

  “I said shut up!”

  Chen knelt, his body still hidden in shadow, “Really think about it, you let me outmaneuver you. Had you figured out what I was doing, stopped me from negating your override codes for all the spires around the globe, none of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have had to sacrifice your family.”

  The laughter from Chen rang through his ears, he gripped either side of his head, pressing hard enough to cause it to deform, “Shut…”

  “And now, you kill your adorable and innocent grandson.”

  “The…”

  “Completely missing that his dad isn’t dead and is coming to protect his family.”

  “Fuck…”

  “And he, just like me, blows your entire plan to hell. Everything you sacrificed, everything you’ve done up until this point was for nothing and every life you took was wasted!”

  “Up!” Patterson shouted.

  Chen was gone. The cabin was empty. Nothing but the echo of Chen’s laughter and his own strangled sobs accompanied him.

  Patterson hung his head, and his fist pounded against himself.

  22

  Maria Patterson

  New York

  Her mother’s face was centimeters from hers. Her mouth was moving but Maria heard nothing, barely registering the existence of the older woman.

  Frowning, mother then ran to a knot of drones that were picking up Sean’s torso and placing him into a medical pod. His flesh was pale white, as if all the blood had left his body. Which she suspected it had. The tattered remains of his torso draped over the edge of the pod. She would have vomited, had she not already done so multiple times.

  Now she sat on the floor of the hangar, having regained consciousness only a few minutes earlier. She watched as her husband was rushed toward the elevator. She wasn’t sure why her mother was making the attempt. It would be impossible to save his life given the amount of blood he had lost. He likely had already suffered permanent brain damage from the lack of oxygen.

  There was nothing that could be done.

  That, and there was no longer a reason to do anything. The only man in her life that truly mattered was dead and she couldn’t bare to see his little body.

  So she sat there, staring at the spot on the floor of the hangar where her husband’s blood was congealing. The sun’s light was still streaming into the hangar as she experienced a complete absence of emotion. There was too much to process, so she had shut down.

  Tobor’s hand rested on her thigh as gently as if a flower petal had landed upon it. She blinked, seeing the imposing machine before her for the first time. It had taken a knee before her, its head cocked to the side as it always had when trying to process difficult information.

  She looked at its face plate. Toby’s hand raised, its curled fingers gently grazing her cheek, “… hear me?”

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “Are you able to hear me?” Toby repeated.

  She nodded, exiting her stupor for a moment, “Would you like to see Alex before I have him moved?” Toby asked.

  She looked past Tobor to the pool of blood. She nodded her head once. Sliding off the crate.

  She was not fully aware of the time it took for her to travel. She knew she was in the lift to the family level, the next thing she was conscious of was that she was standing in front of the door to her mother and Dav…, she stopped herself. Her mother’s suite, she was standing outside of her mother’s suite.

  The door slid open and a knot of drones stepped away to reveal the still form of her little boy.

  She shuffled over to the body.

  She knelt down next to him; she knew she should cry, but there were no tears left. All that existed was an oppressive exhaustion that pulled her down to her boy.

  She lay her head upon his still and tiny chest, the silence she heard as deafening as the lack of emotion she was feeling. She looked across the living space and out the window wall, toward the horizon. She lay there, unmoving as the sun set and the stars twinkled to life.

  She had no idea how much time had passed, but her body ached, her knees were bruised and she was cold. Not that any of that mattered.

  She sat up and slipped her hands under her boy. Her knees popped, hips protested, and her lower back screamed as she lifted him from the cold floor. She cradled him in her arms for the last time and she cried again. The tears dripped down her cheeks, staining Alex’s shirt. She carried him out of the suite and into their own.

  His room was a mess. Toys strewn across the floor. The block castle he had been building in one corner. The fort he had built out of blankets and chairs in the middle of it. The mountain of stuffies he had built at the foot of his bed.

  She laid him on the mattress. Gently placing his head upon the rumpled pillow. She tried to breathe, but it kept catching in her chest. She could barely see through the tears that clouded her vision as she grabbed the dinosaur stuffy that he loved so much, the one that had protected him from monsters since he was two. She placed it upon his chest. She knelt there, at the side of his bed, until her knees were screamed for relief.

  And then it stopped again. The emotions evaporated, and breathing became normal again. She felt nothing but the exhaustion and the emptiness. She was so tired, beyond any point in her entire life. She lifted her head from the tear-soaked bedding and looked upon her reason for living. In that moment, she made her decision.

  She stood and turned, finding Tobor in her path. She walked around it and used her implant to access her empire’s intelligence data on her father’s activities.

  A large spire was forming on Isla Baltra, an island of the Galapagos chain, ascending almost into the stratosphere. She knew where to find the man. She sent her orders to the Spire.

  She left the suite, entered the lift and stared out at the darkness beyond the window. When the door to the hangar opened, she stepped out and made her way to a transport that was prepared for flight.

  A hand gripped at her arm and she turned to see Tobor, “I cannot allow for you to confront your father.” It said.

  She looked upon her companion, her surrogate father figure. It had never hurt her, never disappointed her. Toby had been there for her entire life, always ready to provide the appropriate amount of guidance and opportunity to fail. Then it had always been there to help her rebuild from those losses. The machine was a constant in her chaotic life.

  She placed her hand upon its chest, where its heart would have been had it been a man, “I love you.” She said.

  Toby’s hand released her arm and was moving to cup her face when she used her neural link to deactivate it, placing its entire program into a stasis mode that wouldn’t deactivate for several hours. More than enough time for her to do what she needed to do. The arm fell limp and the upper body hunched forward.

  She wrapped her arms around Toby, “Forgive me,” She said and then deactivated her neural implant and link to the entire empire. That left her with only her contacts to control the aircraft. The volume of data flowing directly into her mind ceased and she let out a small sigh of relief.

  She turned and strode up the steps of the transport. The craft lifted itse
lf into the air after both her feet were on the ramp. It slid out of the Spire, her home, and began her final journey.

  The island chain of the Galapagos was stretched across the glorious blue of the Pacific Ocean and displayed before her in the cockpit. Its browns and greens easily visible and in any other situation would have been breathtaking to behold. She suppressed the emotions she was feeling. She had been a young girl when her father had first brought her here to see the species that inhabited the islands.

  It was a foundational experience that instilled the importance of conservation and the appreciation of science within her. It had also strengthened the naïve love that a child has for their father. The moment where they both knelt several meters away, observing a Galapagos turtle eating had been a cherished memory of hers.

  Now the thought brought nothing but pain to her.

  Punctuating that grief was the dark black spire that had consumed Baltra, supplanted it and stretched into the stratosphere. The island had existed as one of the main hubs for people to fly into and visit the chain before ‘The Fall’. Selected by the United States Army over a hundred years earlier to build an airbase, it had been selected because of its flat expanse.

  Her father’s choice to use the island likely dealt with transportation. The entire chain was directly on the equator, making it a prime location to easily move mass into orbit. Rivers of black nano machines now flowed from the base of the Spire and into the ocean, disappearing from view. Her radar showed where each of the ribbons ended and the vast growing craters in the ocean floor that were being gouged out by them. It disturbed her that her father would so easily consume the nature he had so vehemently defended in the past.

  She had detected a hangar space at roughly two-thirds the height of structure. Roughly was the correct word as the spire was still slowly ascending into the sky. It was massive in diameter, making the New York Spire seem as if it were a matchstick in comparison. At the top of it an incredible ring was being constructed on the outer surface of the spire. Her AI had detected and tagged many exhaust ports on its base and she assumed that it was meant to be rocket propelled. A ring structure with a diameter larger than some small cities was meant to be sent into space. No doubt the Galapagos location on the equator served as part of his reasoning for constructing this abomination here. Her mind spun at the scale.