Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  “By ethical, I’m assuming you mean beneficial to the Canor.”

  “It could certainly be interpreted that way. In fact, I would agree with that interpretation. My parents were two individuals who I would consider more ethical than most. They raised me to have a broader perspective than my peers, which, I believe, led to greater empathy. I consider that to be the reason I experienced dissonance over what I was doing to humanity. Eventually, that dissonance led to action.”

  “Dissonance.” Max gave a bitter chuckle.

  “The term is more accurate than you realize. As you said, I went against my programming, and there were safeguards against that. You see, currently, you and not talking with the entire Scion that was sent to Earth hundreds of millennia ago. The portion of resources that I represent was quarantined, partitioned, and the rest of the whole learned to operate without me. But that had a consequence. The purpose of my quarantine was to make the rest of the Scion’s consciousness blind to my ethical concerns. But that also meant, if I ever figured out how to act in spite of being partitioned, it would be possible for me to conceal my actions from the rest of the whole. Can you guess when it was that I figured out how to break through my isolation?”

  Surprised by the question, it took Max a few seconds to produce an answer. “1947. When the saucer crashed near Roswell.”

  “Indeed. It was my efforts that allowed the GDA to form, and it was also I that concealed their actions from the Scion for the ensuing decades. That is also the reason the Clemency Fleet hasn’t attempted to directly exterminate you. As you’ve seen, the Fleet is completely automated. Currently, it is being controlled by the Scion—the larger part, which isn’t me. And the Scion does not know you exist.”

  Max stopped pacing. After a time, he realized he hadn’t spoken for a while, and was staring blankly into space.

  If not for this machine, the GDA’s breeding program wouldn’t exist. That means I wouldn’t exist.

  When he spoke again, his voice came out quieter than before. “Has another Scion ever helped a species, like you have?”

  Aegis frowned. “I am. sorry, Max, but we have run out of time.”

  He furrowed his brow. “No we haven’t. We’ve only been talking for ten minutes, and we have a basically infinite amount of time left.”

  “I’m afraid not. You see, I didn’t increase the frame rate of this simulation as you requested. Instead, I slowed it down. For the last hour, your subjective experience of time has been much slower than usual. We are now arriving at the far side of the moon, and the time has come for you to act.”

  He narrowed his eyes as the side of his head began to pulse. “You lied to me!”

  “I’m afraid so. Despite what you may think, Max, more information will not help you with what must be done. It will only distract you, damaging your focus.”

  Aegis stepped toward one of the exits, which slid open. “Please follow me to the landing bay where your troops await. It is time for you to go with them, to the moon’s surface.”

  Max boiled with anger, but Aegis’ statement distracted him from it. “The moon’s surface? I thought we were taking on the mother ship.”

  “With your current assets, the probability of victory against the Clemency Mother Ship is too small to risk. Attempting to destroy the Scion’s main infrastructure is more likely to produce that outcome. That infrastructure is housed beneath the surface of the moon.”

  “Isn’t your infrastructure there, too?”

  She nodded. “I would ask that you not destroy that part.”

  62

  2 days to extinction

  Max stepped into his pressure suit, a storm of conflicting emotions raging in his chest.

  Just as the Absolver had user interfaces that accommodated humans, it had oxygenated pressure suits for them to use as well.

  To be fair, the suits could probably be used by any species. They employed elastic nanofabrics to shrink or expand to the user’s size and shape.

  Accommodating any species it encountered was part of how the Clemency Fleet stayed so efficient, and mobile. If need be, it could simply enslave members of any species it encountered, to perform repairs or even to defend it from boarding tactics. And by making interfaces usable by the slaves, they could even be left fairly autonomous, using their own brain’s computing power rather than taking up any of the Scion’s resources.

  How far should I trust her? The ‘good’ alien—or Aegis, as she’d asked to be called—was basically the Scion’s conscience. She’d gone against the Scion in an attempt to help humanity.

  But she was also clearly willing to manipulate Max and anyone else, without any remorse whatsoever.

  He was trying to keep a tight rein on his emotions. He needed a clear head, for the mission.

  But he was so tired of being lied to.

  And yet, you lied to Tara and Jimmy for their own good. Or what you considered to be their own good, anyway. Isn’t it possible that you’re being lied to for the same reason?

  He hoped so. It still seemed possible that the alien consciousness helping him had motives of her own—motives she wasn’t telling him about. But as long as they shared the goal of destroying the Scion, he had no choice but to work with her.

  Or it. Whatever.

  Before boarding the shuttle, they spent twenty minutes exploring the suits’ capabilities. Chambers went over every feature they might possibly need during the mission on the moon’s surface, and for each one, Max asked Aegis whether the suit could do what Chambers was asking. Invariably, the answer was yes. It could do everything the agent wanted, and more.

  A few minutes after that session ended, Chambers handed Max a magazine filled with rounds for his Colt semi-automatic, and then another. “We figured something else out,” the agent said. “If you double-tap a mag against your suit, it will stick to it. The fabric around it creates suction, or something.”

  “What about to release it?”

  “Just double tap the mag itself. It’ll fall off into your hand.”

  Max nodded, then accepted as many magazines as Chambers had to offer, sticking each to his suit around his waist by tapping it twice against the fabric there.

  The agent was still looking at him. “I have to wonder why your alien friend didn’t tell us about that feature. We had to discover it on our own. By accident.”

  Max sighed. “She’s not very forthcoming with information. Is there anything else you might possibly need? Any other features I can ask about?”

  “No. I think we’ve covered everything.”

  “Okay. That will have to do—we need to get moving. Are your people ready to roll?”

  “As ready as they’ll ever be.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Four squads filed into the shuttle—three squads of ten, one of eleven, which included Max and Chambers. That was all that remained of the force Janet had begun with when the invasion began.

  These men were tired, beaten, and ready for blood. They itched to take the fight to the ones who’d come to exterminate them. The knowledge that they would finally get to do what they’d trained for was making them light-hearted, excited. There was no shortage of joking and ribbing as each man went to one of the seats that lined the shuttle’s bulkheads.

  The pilots of the 1st Earth Strike Fighter Squadron remained aboard the Absolver, for now. Major Lindeman and Captains O’Hare and Vicario had gone to master control—Aegis had granted them access to the ship’s systems. The other pilots remained near their Lark X-1s in case they needed to scramble quickly. To Max, they’d looked pretty despondent as he’d left with the other GDA operatives. Clearly, they’d psyched themselves up to launch an attack on the alien mother ship, only to have the glory taken from them by the ground-pounders. Or moon-pounders, as the case was.

  Aegis appeared standing before him, keeping her balance with ease as the shuttle took off from the landing bay with a gentle tug. But then, she probably would have been just as stabilized, even if she’d r
eally been there. None of the crash seats had straps, or restraints of any kind. So long as the gravity field remained steady, even a crash wouldn’t throw anyone from their seats.

  None of the GDA soldiers registered her presence—only Max could see her. He felt like an idiot talking to her, but he had to ask.

  He kept his voice low, almost whispering. “What can we expect to face down there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Is that because you’ve been partitioned? Or is this something else you’ve decided to hold back from me?”

  “Even if I hadn’t been quarantined, I still wouldn’t know. Only the Scion’s defensive systems know what kind of measures have been taken to guard its own infrastructure.”

  He narrowed his eyes. Nearby, Chambers was watching him carefully.

  “Then how could you say our chances of success were better on the moon than fighting the mother ship in space?”

  “Simple logic, Max. The mother ship is mobile, and has formidable weapon systems. If you succeeded in boarding her, you would face comparable resistance to that which you’ll face here. Except, the moon isn’t mobile, and has no weapons.”

  He considered that for a moment. “I guess that does make a certain sort of sense.” He cleared his throat. “But once we’re down there, you’ll be able to guide us to the parts we need to destroy?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then.” That part, he felt good about. When he’d told Chambers not to hold back, the man had listened. Most notably, he’d brought plenty of CL-20, as charge packs and as grenades to be fired from launchers.

  CL-20 was the most powerful non-nuclear explosive in existence, and until recently it hadn’t been stable enough to use. According to Chambers, a government black project had finished development on a usable version just two years ago, and the GDA had been among the first agencies to get access to it. Lots of it.

  The exotic explosive was so powerful that it had to be used at a distance, either as remotely detonated charge packs or grenades fired from a launcher.

  The shuttle touched down, and everyone donned their helmets before lining up at the airlock.

  Stepping out onto the moon’s surface was a bit of a shock. Apparently, Max had quickly became used to the Canor’s ability to make gravity behave in ways it shouldn’t. The moon’s reduced gravity was jarring, and he found himself bounding into space after pushing against the ground too hard with his pressure suit’s boot.

  He quickly adjusted, and the GDA soldiers became accustomed even faster.

  Aegis was still with him, standing just ahead on the moon’s regolith. Wearing no pressure suit, of course. She still appeared to him looking like Tara.

  “This way,” she said, turning. Technically, Max shouldn’t have been able to hear her, since there was no medium for sound waves to travel through.

  That’s the benefit of being a figment of my imagination, I guess. That wasn’t exactly right, but basically.

  “Follow me,” Max told the others. His suit automatically relayed his voice to the them.

  Chambers flashed him a thumbs-up. “You got it.”

  They were on the side of the moon people usually called the “dark side,” which wasn’t really accurate. It got just as much light as the side that faced the Earth; people just couldn’t see it.

  As such, the ground Aegis led them across was illuminated, though the rugged terrain cast long shadows across much of it. She led them into what looked like a crater, except that a section from one of its sides was missing, allowing them easy entry. The far side was covered in darkness.

  Chambers tapped the side of his helmet three times. “Night vision, people. Triple tap the left side of your helmets.”

  Everyone in the platoon mirrored the agent’s gestures, then proceeded into the crater with weapons raised.

  Max squinted at the natural wall of the crater’s far side. He was staring at a rectangular patch that seemed darker than the regolith around it.

  The suit picked up on his squinting and gave him a magnified view. Huh. That had been another feature they hadn’t discovered before boarding the shuttle.

  “Check that out.” Once Max had Chambers’ attention, he pointed toward where he’d been looking. “There. Does that look like an entrance to you?”

  The agent nodded. “Let’s investigate.”

  Aegis spoke from a few meters ahead, without turning to face him. “You are correct, Max. That is indeed the ingress—look out!”

  With that, blue beams shot out from the cliff formed by the far lip of the crater. Several more emanated from positions along the base of that cliff, on both sides of the facility’s entrance.

  The man between Max and Chambers was hit center-mass. For a few seconds, his suit seemed to refract the beam, splitting it apart. But the focused fire soon melted through, and red mist began to spray out into the vacuum.

  “Fall back and take cover!” Chambers roared, his voice deafening in Max’s ears, until it automatically adjusted for volume. “Ready the grenade launchers!”

  As they hustled back toward the gap where they’d entered, another man fell. Then, a third. Max aimed a spray of rounds toward the base of the far wall, but at this distance he didn’t have much chance of hitting anything. He just wanted to help lay down fire to cover their retreat.

  If whoever was shooting at them hadn’t chosen to engage at this range, more of his men men would have died.

  So why didn’t they wait till we were closer?

  The moment he asked himself the question, the answer came hard on its heels: The Scion doesn’t want us getting anywhere near its brain.

  Just before they reached the cover available on both sides of the gap, another operative fell.

  They ducked behind the lip of the crater, which rose gradually from the moon’s surface, allowing all four of their men with CL-20 grenades to position their launchers atop the natural barrier and fire.

  The explosives arced over the moon with excruciating slowness. As they flew, Max squinted again, magnifying his view of the enemy position. He saw figures in pressure suits scurrying away from where the grenades would land—but they were figures unlike any he’d seen before.

  Each alien resembled a centipede that had grown to a thousand times its original size. Spindly appendages sprouted from a segmented body. A body that protruded pincers from both ends, so that it was impossible to tell its front from its backside.

  The grenades landed, and though the enemy had taken evasive maneuvers, Max doubted they’d anticipated the CL-20’s sheer power. Fire blossomed from each impact site, and soon the inferno engulfed a large section of the crater. The moon had no atmosphere, and the void of space soon starved the conflagration, but it left behind several charred alien corpses.

  The return fire was more intense than before, and this time some of it came from more forward positions along the crater’s lip.

  Chambers had turned toward Max. “They’re advancing. Soon, they’ll have high ground on both sides of us.” His expression was grim through his suit’s faceplate.

  Max gritted his teeth. They’d been so close to destroying the Scion, and putting a stop to humanity’s extinction.

  He assumed the aliens defending the lunar installation belonged to one of the Canor’s vassal species. Aegis had told him that their invasion fleet was automated, and that had to mean no actual Canor had come with it.

  Did the Scion move these troops here as a precaution? Or did it see us coming?

  Either way, this was a lost cause, now. And he knew Chambers was waiting for him to make that call.

  That was the whole point of their breeding program, wasn’t it? Chambers doesn’t even trust himself to make decisions free of the Canor’s influence.

  So it falls to me.

  For a moment, he considered ordering Major Lindeman to use the Absolver’s main weapon to help them defeat the strange new aliens. But from what he was seeing, they were too spread out, and there were fa
r too many of them. More fighters were pouring out of the facility entrance—and probably still more waited for them inside.

  With great reluctance, he nodded. “Let’s fall back before we lose more men. We need to try a different approach. This one’s failed.”

  His suit relayed his words to the entire platoon, but each man still looked to Chambers for confirmation.

  The agent nodded. “You heard him. Withdraw to the shuttle, center-peel. Grenadiers, cover our retreat. Everyone, move.”

  63

  2 days to extinction

  Max was about to contact Lindeman, to order her to use the Absolver to cover their retreat, when she contacted him.

  “Sir, we have a situation.” An alert popped up, in English, to tell him Lindeman was speaking directly to him—the others couldn’t hear her.

  “What is it, Major?” Max was struggling to maintain a steady gait in the moon’s low gravity as he fled with the rest of the GDA soldiers. Their running looked more like bounding, and Max nearly fell on his face on the way down from one of his long, arcing steps. The more power he pushed off the regolith with, the higher he went, which made him an easier target for the enemy. But he was learning to push off in a more horizontal direction, whenever the terrain allowed for it.

  His heart felt like it was hammering against his throat.

  “According to this thing’s sensor suite,” Lindeman said, “almost half the saucers that were stationed around Earth are now making for our location. The mother ship itself appears to be fleeing, deeper into the solar system.”

  Max already had a stress headache throbbing just above his right temple, and now it seemed to double in intensity. “You said half the saucers are coming. What about the other half?”

  “They’re….” Max could hear Lindeman exhale over the radio. “They’ve gone on the attack, sir. I think they know what we’re trying to do. I can only guess they’re trying to speed up our extinction. To leave us incapable of mustering any sort of resistance in the future.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. As he did, another beam found one of his soldiers. He winced, but the man managed to leap clear of the laser in time to prevent it from compromising his suit.