by Isaac Hooke
Frogger nodded toward the table, which had several beer mugs available for sampling. “Go ahead and take one anyway. For the taste, if not the drunk feeling. It’s a new recipe of mine.”
Eric shrugged, then chose a beer mug from the table.
He frowned.
“This beer is green,” Eric said.
Frogger shrugged. “It is St. Patrick’s Day.”
Eric took a sip. “Interesting flavor. Kinda minty.”
“Like all the best St. Paddy’s Day beer!” Frogger said.
“Ha!” Slate said. “I ain’t never had minty green beer. It’s supposed to taste like normal beer, even if it’s green.” He raised his wine glass. “Why do you think I’m drinking cabernet, rather than that shit?”
Eric took another sip, and thrummed his fingers on Bambi’s knee.
“What is it?” Bambi said. “Something on your mind? You seem distracted.”
“Of course he’s distracted,” Crusher said from his other side. “We all are.”
“I was just thinking about Banthar Prime,” Eric said. “The attacks are picking up. The rebels know none of us are present, and that their ‘Essential’ is busy fighting a war light years away. I have Dee running the show mostly while I’m gone, but I’m worried I’ll be called back to deal with something in the middle of the next battle. That would be bad.”
“When you lost your android in the last stages of the previous mission, we recovered well enough,” Frogger said. “We lowered the world killer’s shields.”
“Only to have him plow his ship into you guys!” Tread said.
“I still can’t believe you did that,” Crusher said. “You could have killed us all.”
Eric gazed at his hands, and closed his eyes. “I had to. I couldn’t take the risk that the world killer would repair its drives. We waited for your signal as long as we could, but when it didn’t come, I had to act. I sacrificed my ship to destroy the world killer.”
“Knowing that we were all still aboard,” Crusher said.
“I don’t blame him for it,” Marlborough said. “I would have done the same thing.”
“Thank you,” Eric told Sarge.
Marlborough nodded. “I mean it. Billions of lives were at stake. Lives that couldn’t be restored from a backup. Unlike ourselves. If given the same choice, I hope he’d make it again.”
“That’s kind of cold,” Bambi said.
“No, Sarge is right,” Brontosaurus said. “While I haven’t always liked the humans, and sometimes downright resented them for what they did to us, we still owe them everything. They were our creators. They made us who we are today. And if it means sacrificing a part of ourselves so that they can live on, I say go for it. That’s why we’re all here, after all. We know that any one of us could die during the upcoming mission. In fact, it’s more than likely that a few of us will. And we’re fine with that. We wouldn’t be going if we weren’t.”
Eric glanced at Bambi. She seemed conflicted.
“You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to,” Eric told her. “I can send a ship for you from Banthar Prime. Or you can go back to Earth, if that’s what you want. I doubt Banthar Prime will be any safer, after all.”
“No, I’m going,” Bambi said. She sighed, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I can’t leave you. Someone has to make sure you don’t screw up.”
“That’s what he has me for!” Crusher said. “I’m always looking over his shoulder.”
“Oh, of course,” Bambi said. “You’re his micromanager.”
“Uh huh,” Crusher said. “You got it.”
“What would you do if I suddenly collapsed in the middle of battle,” Eric said. “Because I was under attack at home, on Banthar Prime?”
“We’d drag your body with us, and wait for you to return,” Tread said.
“And what if I never returned?” Eric said. “What if my neural network was irreparably damaged during the attack? And I died.”
Bambi shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about it,”
“Nor I,” Crusher said.
“But it could happen,” Eric said. “What then?”
“Then we restore you from a mind backup,” Traps said. “Your mind will be smaller, and no longer in control of an entire planet, but at least a part of you will live on in an android.”
Eric smiled sadly. “A part of me. I’ve never fallen, not since I awakened that first time in a Cicada body. The thought of a ‘part of me’ living on isn’t all that reassuring to me. It is to all of you, I’m sure. But to lose what I have now, would be… heartbreaking.”
“It would be to us, too,” Crusher said. “Trust us.”
“Oh, I do.” He glanced at Bambi. “Losing you aboard that ship.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t easy.”
She nodded. “I’m glad I don’t remember it.”
Eric had offered to share the memory of her death, but she had refused. He didn’t blame her.
“Anyway, let’s just drink for a while, and not talk about death, or the coming mission,” Eric said. “Let’s pretend we’re back on Earth, before the second invasion came and all of our lives changed.”
“I’m all for that,” Dunnigan said. “A toast, to before our lives changed.”
Eric and the others drank to that. He suspected some of them were toasting to their human lives, rather than to their Mind Refurb days. He didn’t blame them. Those were much simpler times.
He almost yearned for them himself.
Almost.
5
Jain and the Mimic fleet were the first to enter the system. They cloaked as they passed through the shared rift, and activated their inertialess drives in turn as they emerged, accelerating along preset routes before shutting off their engines to drift at top speed. They did this because their inertialess drives could be traced while active, as they emitted a tiny amount of radiation just above background levels; however when the drives were offline, stealth countermeasures ensured that any gravity wave sensors out there didn’t penetrate their cloaking devices.
Jain couldn’t physically see any of the accompanying Mimic ships, nor were there any dots to represent them on his tactical display—they all traveled under radio silence at the moment. So it was very important that he followed the route given to him. He had to trust that everyone else would follow their assigned trajectories as well.
“We’re slightly off course,” Xander said.
Jain momentarily activated his inertialess drives to issue a correction, and then shut them down once more.
He had pulled out all the stops to ensure the Devastator was ready before the mission. In the predeparture hours, Jain had devoted all of his repair resources to mending the damage to his stealth countermeasures, and his reactor, so that he’d be ready when the time came to enter the system. Hephaestus had lent him termites to accelerate that process, which helped.
And now that he was here, it seemed almost anticlimactic. All that rush, all the work, for this. Quietude.
But he knew that quiet wouldn’t last for long.
Enjoy it while you can.
He glanced at the tactical display. So far, none of the enemy ships in the system were approaching. It would take a few minutes for them to detect the rift.
The Link members responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of the staging system were known as the Barrage. A brutal race of warriors who were renowned for offering no quarter in combat, they physically inhabited their vessels. They had no AIs per se, but aboard each vessel they utilized technology that allowed them to link their minds, forming a single intelligence that allowed them to operate their ships with a time sense and computational abilities equivalent to that of any AI.
A few minutes later Xander announced: “Enemy vessels are approaching.”
Jain glanced at the tactical display. Red dots representing those ships moved toward his location. He suddenly worried that those ships were headed directly for him and the others. Maybe the enemy had come up w
ith a way to defeat their latest countermeasures. But no, this was expected. The enemy had detected the rift gate, and these forces were dispatched to investigate. They weren’t tracking Jain and the others.
He hoped.
He stared at the display and watched the enemies approach.
“So Xander, what do you think?” Jain asked.
The black robed Accomp glanced at him, a curious expression on his face. “About what? Wait… you weren’t really expecting an answer. You’re nervous.”
“Yes,” Jain said.
“You’ve been in battle so many times, yet still the nerves come,” Xander said. “You’d think, by now, you’d be numb to it.”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Jain said.
“You could always disable your emotions…” Xander said.
“No,” Jain said. “I need my emotions, I realize that now. They help keep me focused. The only time I’d shut them off is if they started to get in the way.”
“Like if Sheila died?” Xander said.
Jain shot him a hurt look, but then looked away. “That would be a case, yes.”
He returned his attention to the tactical display. He was relieved when he realized that the incoming Barrage ships were indeed heading for the detected rift location, and not his own vessel, or the current positions of the others as calculated by their predetermined trajectories. The enemy hadn’t detected them.
It took a few hours until Jain was close to the planet where the main staging infrastructure resided. It had a moon that was about half the size of the planet itself, similar to Charon and Pluto. And it was just as cold.
In orbit were several small rifts, providing realtime communications with distant empire worlds. Rifts also randomly appeared throughout the system at least once per hour, allowing anywhere between one and ten ships to arrive. They always headed toward the staging planet after arriving.
There were large frameworks in orbit. Link warships orbited those frameworks, and small craft that could pass for shuttles traveled between the frameworks and the warships, no doubt ferrying supplies and repair elements.
Some of these ships looked like they had come from the Fresnal front lines, because their hulls were battered. If he zoomed in farther, he could see the repair termites crawling over their shells, 3D-printing metal into the damage.
He recognized the Tree class vessels of a race known as the Mapi, the Battlestars of the Gralos, the Farseeker Teleporters and Minelayers. There were even a few Vaernastians Barbells and Laser Pinwheels.
There were also ships he had never encountered before, but his Mimic database was able to identify them. The claw-shaped Revlon vessels, which were capable of launching rifts as weapons, and the cubical Veriarty ships, which could latch onto their enemies with grappling hooks and tear away portions of the hull with each flyby. The Barrage vessels, these globular shells looking like huge Buckyballs. They could fire plasma beams in several directions at once, from each point in the framework that composed it, though because of that multi-fire capability, the range was severely reduced.
As Jain neared his destination, he activated his inertialess drives to reduce speed. He fired those drives only for the briefest of intervals. If the enemy was paying attention, they would have spotted the weak radiation signal the drive produced. However, he hadn’t come to a complete stop relative to the system’s binary stars, so if any ships came to investigate, he’d be long gone.
The Other Mimics would be similarly reducing speed along their preset routes, also potentially giving away their positions. But once again, they hadn’t come to full halts, so any probing vessels would come up short.
So. He had essentially moved into position.
Now all he had to do was wait.
Eric created the rift.
“Dee, send in the probe to confirm that the position is favorable,” Eric said.
Via the nose camera feed he watched as the spherical probe ejected from his ship, and entered the rift into the target system. It returned a moment later.
“Position is favorable,” Dee announced.
Eric overlaid the data from the probe on his tactical display. He confirmed that the rift had opened well away from any enemy units, roughly halfway between the binary star system and their target planet.
“We’re good to go, Admiral Jhagan,” he sent.
He held the rift open while the rest of the fleet entered the target system. His Banthar traveled through first, followed by the Tyrnari, and lastly the Algorithmic Paladins—that was the fleet name Tanis had chosen for those members of Task Force 88 and Earth Defense Force 1 who had volunteered for the mission. Jacobs was his second in command. President Wilcox had also recalled some ships from the Eastern Galactic Front to join the Paladins, now that the fighting had died down in that portion of the galaxy. Meanwhile, the leftover members of Task Force 88 and Defense Force 1 remained behind to protect Earth.
The Void Warriors were still considered a separate flotilla, and were under Eric’s command until Jain revealed himself.
When all the other ships had entered, Eric flew the Bethunia II through the rift and joined them, letting the tear in spacetime collapse behind him. Before the rift imploded entirely, he launched a portable rift gate to keep it open, so that the remote signal to his homeworld would transmit here, too. It was so small, that the gravity waves it produced would be undetectable from the background levels. And the neutrinos it produced were directed outward, away from the ecliptic plain, so the chances the enemy would detect that maintenance rift were close to zero.
Eric glanced at his tactical display. So far none of the enemy ships in the vicinity had responded. It would take a few minutes still for the light from their positions to reach the enemy. Meanwhile, Eric and the others could see them all, of course, since light had been bouncing off those ships for quite some time and had already reached Eric’s position.
There were Vaernastians out there, which meant they probably had a jamming ship somewhere. That vessel would prevent the allied fleet from opening outgoing rifts. The rift he used to maintain his connection to Banthar Prime would remain open, of course, since he had created it in his home system. It was just too bad he couldn’t enlarge it somehow to escape the area later, because the only thing that would fit through the tiny spacetime rip right now was an object the size of an apple.
“Set a course for the staging planet,” Eric said.
“Setting course,” Dee said.
Around him, the fleet members headed toward the target.
He glanced at the deck of the virtual sailing vessel around him. All of the Bolt Eaters were with him this time, lounging on the deck. Only Slate was missing, as his consciousness was installed in the Bug Killer, which floated on the virtual waters nearby.
“So it’s almost time,” Eric said.
“You nervous?” Mickey said.
Eric smiled patiently. “What do you think?”
“Nope!” Mickey said. “Nothing scares you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Eric said. “But you’d be wrong.”
“Of course he’s not nervous,” Traps said. “Because he’s not really here. All of us, we have our consciousness in androids stowed aboard his cargo bay. But he’s sitting at home on Banthar Prime, relaxing with his feet up on the couch.”
Eric sighed. “You guys will never let me live that down.”
Traps shrugged. “Jain showed you how to transfer your consciousness in and out of neural networks without damaging yourself, or the network.”
“Yes,” Eric said. “But I’m reluctant to leave behind Banthar Prime. An attack could come any time. I want to be ready.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Traps said. “You’re just afraid of dying. You’ve been an Original so long, you can’t even bear the thought of shucking your mortal coil.”
“Leave him alone,” Bambi said.
“What, am I wrong?” Traps said. “Scorpion? Am I?”
“I am afraid of deat
h,” Eric admitted. “But that doesn’t factor into the equation. Like I said, I don’t want to abandon my hold on Banthar Prime. If we lose the planet, we lose the Banthar. It’s as simple as that.”
“Vessels are breaking away from the staging planet to intercept the fleet,” Dee announced.
“How long until they’re in firing range?” Eric asked.
“Two hours,” Dee replied.
“All right, we have two hours,” Eric said. He rubbed his eyes, then stood up, and went to stand next to the rail. He looked out across the sea. His virtual stomach was a bundle of knots.
He decreased his time sense, speeding up external reality. He gave orders to Dee to pull him out earlier if the situation necessitated it. Two hours was far too long to wait, in his mind. A few minutes of pre-battle tension was far preferable.
He heard the heavy thud of stiletto boots on wood, and knew Bambi was coming to join him—only she wore boots like that. She’d obviously checked his time sense and altered hers to match, otherwise her footsteps would have approached far faster.
A moment later Bambi stood at his side. She latched onto the railing; he knew her grip was tight, because her arm muscles corded, making the elk tattooed on her forearm stand out.
She noticed his gaze on her arm. “You’ve asked me several times over the years why the team calls me Bambi. I’ve always evaded the question, or given you some story.” She nodded to the elk. “The team calls me Bambi because of this. I’ve always worn it, even when human. ‘What is that, Bambi tattooed on your forearm?’ they asked. ’That’s right,’ I told them. The truth is, I’m very much like Bambi. For you see, I lost my mother at an early age. It changed me. I still bear the scars to this day. The tattoo reminds me of her.”
Eric nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
“As am I,” she said. She smiled faintly. “I don’t know why it took me so long to tell you. We’ve been together for so long, but I still hold back things from you. I still have secrets.”
“I do, too,” Eric said. “It’s only natural, I think. In a relationship, you can only give so much of yourself. You still need to keep some of who you are to yourself, so that you don’t lose your individuality. It’s why men have man caves, and women have she sheds.”