by AJ Super
Her head spun. She wasn’t going to be able to stay on her feet if she couldn’t control the voices. She vomited again, this time avoiding any of the clones.
This must have been what Yoon meant by voices. Each of the AI would have their own ‘voices’ to contain that controlled their powers. His literally manifested in the thousands of voices of the clones he controlled. What would Crius’, Phoebe’s, or even Erebus’ sound like? She never really thought about hers… She just reached into the silence and sent out her power with the force of lightning. It was a reflex now. There was still so much she didn’t know about what her powers were, what her code did, could do.
She wished her maman was alive so that she could get advice, be taught… But did her maman even know the extent of the powers of the Star of Nyx? Or were they lost to time? Only known now to the Progenitor and the Progenitor’s line and the fake Star of Nyx.
Nyx held her breath and reached out with her tendrils, gathering the little white flames surrounding the clones. The sapphire storms surrounding them had disappeared, no longer connected to Yoon. Now they were replaced with strings of white. Strings of Nyx. Tendrils that matched her own. She had completely replaced Yoon’s control over the clone army.
It was hers. Thousands of obedient fighters. All programmed to be loyal to the Star of Nyx. Even with individual programmed personalities, they wouldn’t betray her. And even if they did, she had the ability to breathe them out with a thought. They were Blessed by proxy of Yoon. She had an army of Blessed. There was something she could do with this…
If only she could think straight.
Nyx stumbled. The voices wouldn’t come under control. She gripped her head and bowed down. If she didn’t get the voices quieted, she would fade into their haze and lose this war.
A gurgle of a scream swelled in her chest. She bit her tongue. There was no use crying out, no matter how much she wanted to. It would just add to the noise. She had to be stronger. Stand taller. She straightened and took her hands from her ears.
Isabeau stood in front of her, angry red bruise around her neck where Nyx had grabbed her. Her fists clenched, and she struck out with a quick jab, snapping Nyx’s head and bloodying her nose.
Nyx blinked, surprised. She sputtered and took a couple steps back.
Isabeau spun, lifting a leg to kick.
Nyx raised her arms to block the roundhouse as it connected with her temple. The voices in her head screamed warnings. The clones around her whirled. Vomit swelled in her throat again, and Nyx stooped over and emptied bile from her gut. The kick disoriented her, but the nanomedics kept her from feeling the pain of the blow.
As she stood prone, Isabeau didn’t pause. She landed a solid punch with both fists on Nyx’s back, laying her flat in the puddle of fresh spew at her feet. Nyx rolled over, soaked with bile and saliva, confused as a foot connected with her temple again, a kick that likely would have killed anyone else, but her nanomedics set to repairing the damage the second the booted toe connected, barely keeping Nyx conscious.
“She’s pissed,” Yoon’s voice echoed through the chaos in her brain.
“You think?” Nyx whispered.
A foot landed in her stomach, and Nyx doubled over into the fetal position. She suddenly realized Isabeau was screaming.
“You. Picked. The wrong. Path. Weak. You’re weak,” Isabeau breathed, pausing between words to kick Nyx in the ribs.
Weak. She was weak? No. It took strength to sacrifice family to the greater good. It took strength to take what she needed to win this war. It took strength to protect those who would protect her, her greater family.
“Stop her,” Nyx said through clenched teeth. Yoon clones turned and lifted their headsets from their heads.
Isabeau froze mid-kick, gold curls a halo of fallen leaves around her shoulders. “Merde.” She turned and ran towards the door as Yoon clones reached for her. She dodged their gripping fingers without looking back.
“Stay,” Nyx squeaked quietly. “One of you must be a doctor… Help me.” She breathed heavily. She was going to lose consciousness. She could see the red edges fighting in her vision. The voices were quieter. Concerned. Sorrowful. Angry. Vengeful. Righteous. But quieter.
Nyx stretched out on her back as a Yoon squatted over her and tipped her head.
“Thank you,” Nyx said sleepily.
“You should try to stay awake,” Doctor Yoon-clone muttered. “You likely have a severe concussion. And while it looks like you’re healing quickly, from nanomedics, I assume, you will still need observation for…”
Nyx closed her eyes and sank from her red-edged world into the black.
39
Nyx stood in the middle of gold waves of wheat. She ran her hands over the fine heads as the breeze rustled the stalks. A familiar city rose before her, sparkling with new silver buildings, shining glass domes, and metal silos surrounding the outskirts. She walked slowly through the yellow stalks of wheat to the towering silos, fingers trailing through the fine hairs on the wheat-heads. Nyx stared at the city. It had the air of Elysion, but the buildings were too new, too shiny. And there were no silos surrounding the city that she knew. Downside and the docks were on the outskirts of her Elysion…
White cumulonimbus rolled through the azure sky above her, flashing lightning in their grey lining, and a breath of wind pushed Nyx from behind. Slowly, she turned around. From the edges, the fields began to turn to ash, blowing away softly in the wind like the petals of a cherry tree at the end of its blossom, until Nyx stood on bare fertile soil, stripped of life as far as the eye could see.
Nyx bent and ran the dark soil through her fingers. There was no reason for the fields to disappear. The ground was fertile. Healthy. But the world was changing before her eyes. The clouds in the sky roiled. And the barren ground around her began to sprout greenery that grew with the speed of her heartbeat. The clouds parted, and two suns rose, pale and hot, turning the blue sky white. The greenery clawed up into the sky, and as a jungle grew tall, the sky itself slowly changed from hazy white to light lavender. Nyx sheltered her eyes and looked up at the suns speeding in accelerated time, the day deepening from lavender to purple to amethyst night, until the emerald jungle climbed into the clouds.
Nyx pushed aside an overgrown spathyphylum with wide emerald leaves and pure white flowers, traipsing through ferns and palms. The silence of raindrops on rubbery leaves surrounded her. She listened for animals. But the monstrous quiet followed. Any animal life that had been here had starved in the time it took to grow this biome.
The ground rose beneath her feet. And while she couldn’t see the summit of the hill she climbed, a whispered voice said to keep going, the top was near. Through a break in the greenery, the vista spread before her. An unending expanse of green, torn by a smoggy grey city and gashed with muddy red streets, then in the distance, the twinkle of tarnished diamonds as buildings rose above the mud and puce haze.
It was Elysion.
Yoon stood next to Nyx, his hands clasped behind his back. “Even AI make mistakes.”
“This isn’t my memory.”
Yoon shook his head. “It’s mine. Paired with something extra special to come… You keep forgetting that I’m not the only one with whom you have intertwined powers. And what comes next isn’t the past, but a prediction of a possible future if you continue on this path.”
Nyx stared at Yoon, and he pointed to the city’s horizon. She turned and watched as the twin suns rose, terracotta and gold against deep amethyst.
An explosion in the center of the sparkling diamonds of Upside’s pristine high-rises mushroomed out silently, engulfing everything below it, concussion waves rising up the hillside and rushing windlessly past Yoon and Nyx. Flattening the flora. Nyx closed her eyes, expecting to feel the heat of the oncoming wave of fire, but it passed over her skin with a cold breath, burning everything to cinders and leaving the planet razed.
Nyx paled.
“How far are you going to follow this
path?” Yoon whispered.
Nyx held her breath. A black fog rose in front of her. Jaymes Boucher stepped out. Her scarred face was stony as she reached for her Queensman’s weapon. Nyx spread her tendrils and grasped the flame in Boucher’s energy.
Boucher walked to Nyx and pressed the energy pistol between Nyx’s eyes. “You will die,” she growled, pulling the trigger.
Nyx exhaled heavily. Boucher blew away, ash in the wind. Yoon put a hand on her shoulder.
“Is this what Phoebe predicts?” Nyx grit her teeth.
“One of many paths. But this, likely, is the most immediate.”
“How do I avoid it?”
Yoon shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not the prescient one. You share that power with the Star of Phoebe. Figure out how to control it better, and you may survive. Elysion may survive.”
“Why Elysion? Why is it at the center of this?”
“Because it has always been the center of the wars between AI and humans. Because our family destroyed it once already. Because the crux of our sins lay there.”
“Crius will turn if they find out Elysion is in danger. Underground will side with the Progenitor’s line, and I’ll lose the power of Downside and any that may convert to the Cult of Nyx.” Nyx swallowed. The one somewhat neutral party in her family would betray her, too.
“Isabeau has probably already taken the prediction of Elysion’s fall to Crius. They’ve probably already betrayed you.”
Nyx jerked. “How would Isabeau know this before me?”
Yoon pursed his lips. “The strategists have been talking. Phoebe and Isabeau. They’ve been sharing.”
A black cloud crossed Nyx’s face. “So, Phoebe has been exchanging predictions with a human?”
Yoon shrugged. “Does it matter? What matters now is that Crius will know Elysion is in danger.”
“How? Isabeau has nowhere to go. It’s just the black out there, nothing else.”
“What if I told you someone helped her off the Andraste? And she’s already sent a wave to Crius with the information. It’s been less than an hour. If Crius doesn’t know already, they will soon. Do the projections. Use your powers. What are the odds they haven’t already turned on you?”
Nyx closed her eyes and searched for the light buzz of Phoebe’s gold code. She slid along the maths and danced amidst the formulas surrounding Crius’ predictive behavioral algorithms. “Very low,” she grunted. “They have a family to protect as well. They have Rishi to protect.”
“At some point you’re going to have to do the same thing to Crius that you did to me. You know that, right? It won’t be as easy. They’ll fight back.”
“I know what I have to do. And I’ll take on their penance as payment. I won’t let anyone hurt Elysion.” Nyx stood straight, strong.
“Gather your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Nyx nodded.
“Then it’s time for you to wake up.”
“Wake up, Nyx. Wake up.” A distant voice sounded through the tumultuous clouds above the desolate planet. “Wake up.”
Nyx’s eyes fluttered open.
Kai knelt beside her while a Yoon clone held her wrist, counting her pulse.
“She’s going to be fine, despite the beating she took,” the Yoon-doctor frowned. “But she should really be taken to the infirmary for observation for the night. Concussions are serious, even with nanomedics of the caliber she has.”
“I’m fine,” Nyx croaked. “Je n’ai pas besoin d’observation.”
“You should really do what Doctor, uh, Clone says.” Kai grimaced and glanced at the Yoon. “Do you even have a name?”
“We haven’t been given instructions to choose names, and we haven’t specifically been given any individual names. We are nameless.” He gestured around him to the other clones.
“The Nameless Blessed. All Yoon, but not Yoon,” Nyx snorted as she sat up with a hand to her head, feeling the dried blood that had dripped from her temple. Sometimes she wished she still could hurt… Not just be surprised by a punch to the nose or a kick to the head. The jostling was unnerving, but pain would be welcome so she could know how hurt she was. She glanced up at the doctor and drew her lips thin. “Nameless no more. You are all ordered to pick names.”
The doctor stroked his chin in a very un-Yoon-like fashion. He tittered. “I like Doc Lone. Get it? Doc Clone?” He laughed from his belly.
Kai pinched his lips tight, and Nyx just stared at the Yoon-clone.
“Not the right audience? Oh well.” Doc Lone shrugged.
Kai’s lips twitched. “Better bedside than Lenus.”
The doctor straightened and brushed his Battle Station uniform flat. “I must commiserate with this Lenus. I’ll be in the infirmary. Please, at least come in for a check-up tomorrow morning with one of us.” He placed a gentle hand on Nyx’s head and walked away.
Nyx glanced at the rank and file of the Yoons being programmed. There were several hundred missing from the lines near her, headsets dead and on the ground. They were completing their training and heading to their stations on the Andraste. Soon the ship would be completely crewed and ready to fly… It would be a working Battle Station.
Kai plopped on the floor next to her. “Why did you do it?”
“What?”
“Kill your brother?”
Nyx blanched. For her, Yoon was still very much alive and in her head. She had just had a conversation with him. She didn’t realize that his body lay on the ground next to her. Lifeless.
To the rest of the world, Yoon Chung-Ae was dead.
“I—I didn’t kill him,” she stuttered.
Kai glanced at Yoon’s body. “You’re sure? Because it really looks like he’s dead.”
How was she supposed to explain to Kai, or anyone else, that the cloned body on the ground was just an avatar? That Yoon’s consciousness was a part of her and that she could return it to the avatar… in theory. And she would, when the war was over, and she didn’t need Yoon’s army and its blind obedience.
She glared at Kai. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought I left you at the asteroid.”
Kai shivered. “That place gives me the willies. No wonder Falak won’t leave the Thanatos. I heard from a little bird that he and Raphael aren’t doing well.”
Nyx raised a brow. Raphael had been so wrapped up in proselytizing and shuttling Nyx around that she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t have time for a relationship. She sighed. It was too bad. She would like it if her family could work things like that out and not fall apart from the get-go.
“So what are you going to do about him?” Kai nodded towards Yoon.
“It’ll all be fine, Kai. Yoon will be fine. We’ll preserve his body. We’ll keep him safe until after this is all done.”
He narrowed his eyes and tipped his head skeptically. “I can trust you, right? You’re not turning into some kind of villain, right?”
Nyx smiled and laughed. “Me? A villain? Never.”
40
The command deck of the Andraste was stark; shining silver metal covered every surface not black with a touch pad or screen. The white captain’s chair loomed in the middle of the deck, a daunting reminder of the power held by the Battle Station. She could nuke a world with this ship. It would be messy and take time, but she could end life on an entire planet. It was a wonder that the Queen’s Navy held so much power with these behemoths, and yet, they still wanted the power of the Star of Erebus.
Yoon’s clones sat at every station quietly.
Kai nodded to the seat, “I thought that the Thanatos would be your flag ship. You’re going to command from here?”
Nyx looked at him sourly. “Phoebe is going to command the Andraste once we face the La Terre. Plans haven’t changed. As Admiral, I’ll direct our little fleet.” She turned to the Communications Officer. “Wave the other ships. We’re going to meet at Elysion.”
Kai furrowed his brow. “Elysion? Why?”
“I n
eed to see my sibling there,” Nyx said as she walked to the pristine captain’s chair and sat. “I have questions to ask. Face-to-face, just in case I need to…” she paused, letting the silence fill the air between them.
Kai sniffed. “Do you think you’ll have to do the same thing to them that you did to Yoon?”
“Je ne sais pas,” Nyx whispered. “I hope not.”
Kai nodded.
“Navigation Officer, set course for Elysion,” Nyx ordered. “We leave as soon as jump space coordinates are shared with the other ships.”
Soon, the front view screen was filled with the image of jump space folding in on itself as the Battle Station plowed through the black to the lavender-skyed planet.
“Weapons Officer, all weapons ready. Communications Officer, relay message to ships. Battle station ready.” Nyx’s voice was a steady monotone as she issued order after order, preparing for the unknown that lay after exiting jump space. “I want a troop of a thousand ready to go planetside. Armored and armed.”
The clones simply responded, “Yes, Admiral,” and obeyed her orders every time.
Kai stood behind the captain’s chair, his hand on the back of the headrest. “A thousand seems a little excessive.”
“We’re going to liberate Downside. It’s what Crius wants. I have a prediction to avoid. I think I can if I just take the planet, starting there.”
Kai scrunched his face. “Aren’t you being a bit rash?”