by Terry Mixon
“I’ve told you a little bit about how circumstances have treated me. I’ve heard a little about how you’ve gotten the short end of the stick. I suggest that we start talking about things from when we were kids. That would give us some common ground, and once we have that, we can move forward into talking about the present.”
Julia sighed. She didn’t want to spend any time discussing the past with herself. In fact, she really didn’t want to.
“No,” she said. “There’s no need to discuss everything that’s happened since I was a kid all the way through the present. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re here now and that we have to work together. We’ve got to set boundaries, and we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to help one another.
“I’ve already talked this over with Mertz. He said that once everything is done here and you’ve got the override, he’ll send me with the key back to my universe. That’s all fine and good, except that it’s useless to me. I don’t have anyone in my universe that has the right DNA, except for the Bastard. He killed off everyone even remotely related to my father. How do we get around that?”
Kelsey shrugged slightly. “I’m not going to let Jared go back to your universe and help. From everything you’ve told me, he’s like a cartoon villain in your world. They’d string him up the moment they saw him, no matter what you said.”
“My version of Mertz isn’t a cartoon villain,” Julia disagreed. “He’s much worse than that. He’s like you described Ethan from your universe, only not so crazy. Maybe he’s just rotten to the core. Whatever he is, he’ll kill whoever he needs to, and destroy whatever he wants, to achieve dominance over the New Terran Empire.
“Even as we speak, he’s out there somewhere in my universe plotting and scheming to overthrow Ethan and take control of the Imperial Throne for himself. You’re exactly right that it’s not a good place for your Mertz to be, but that still leaves me with my problem.”
Kelsey leaned back and looked at her. “Once we’ve taken care of the Master AI here, we can send the override with you. That way you don’t have to make the trip to Terra at all.”
“That may be the only real option I have,” Julia agreed. “If my universe is anything like yours, I don’t dare go to Terra. By now the AIs have delivered the Omega Plague and Terra is a death trap.”
Kelsey blinked and opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again. After a few seconds, she nodded. “I hadn’t considered that. Without you to stop them, there’s nothing to keep the AIs from carrying out their plan, and we have to assume that’s exactly what they did.
“I suppose that you could drop down onto the Imperial Palace inside a vacuum suit, but that’s needlessly risking a horrible death. You’d still have to get past the System Lord and the automated defenses at the flip points, because you can be sure that they won’t remove that kind of protection from the Terra system, even after they kill everyone off. Worse, there’s no guarantee that they won’t start setting up to replicate the massacre everywhere else as soon as they can.”
They both sat silently for a few minutes. That was a lot to take in.
“With the Rebel Empire already having taken Pentagar in my universe,” Julia said, “I think it’s a given that they know about the New Terran Empire now. It’s not going to be long at all before they have warships making the trip to Avalon. My version of Elise will try to keep everything quiet, but somebody is going to say something that tips them off.
“By the time we’re done here, it might’ve already happened. Honestly, since I’m cut off from Pentagar, we don’t even have a way to find out. We’ll be operating in the dark once I get back to my universe, and I pretty much have to assume that the worst-case scenario has already played out.”
Kelsey leaned forward and put a hand on Julia’s arm. “Even if that’s true, we’ll still help. We’re recovering ships all the time from the graveyard. I’d wager that Omega can get a portal open between the universes. After all, that’s what he was created for.
“Since he knows where you’re from, when he has enough power saved up, he can open an interdimensional portal and we could take a fleet through.”
Julia shook her head. “Why would you do that? You’ve got your own fight here, and you’re going to need every ship you can dig up. There’s absolutely nothing that you can send across that’s going to make my situation any better.
“I’m going to have to do everything I can to help you succeed here, because I’m going to have to take the override home to even have a chance at this. There’s no other way this plays out for my people. Untold millions of them are going to die when the AIs invade the New Terran Empire. I just have to make their sacrifice mean something.”
The com unit connected to Julia’s implants made a tone in her mind to get her attention. It was an alert.
“All marines, this is Talbot,” her doppelgänger’s husband said. “We’ve got unknown people in the vicinity of the building. Everyone not already outside, gather up at the ramp. If they decide to come our way, we’re going to have a confrontation.”
Kelsey smoothly rose to her feet and jogged toward her armor. “The ready response team is already armored up, so let’s go help them. At least this time we can have powered armor to curb stomp anyone that really wants to push the issue of our trespassing.”
Julia rose and followed the other woman, already humiliated that she was going to have to ask for help getting into her armor. At least if there ended up being a fight, it would be brief and maybe let her release some of the tension that had built up inside her.
She really didn’t want to fight anyone. She wasn’t a warrior, and she hated the idea of hurting or killing anyone. If she could have, she’d have sat this fight out.
But she couldn’t because she had Raider augmentation, and that might make a difference in keeping some of the marines from being hurt or killed. If it came down to the other people or her allies, she’d kill the intruders and suffer for it later.
6
Talbot stepped out onto the ramp and joined the ready response team. Like him, they were in powered armor, minus their helmets. The rest of his on-duty marines were scouts, backing up the drones that watched in every direction.
Corporal Elena Boske, the ready response team leader, turned toward him, her short pink hair looking strange in the dark with his enhanced vision. “The unknowns are about five kilometers south by southwest of our position. Based on the path that they’re taking, they’ll pass about a kilometer away from our current location.”
He nodded. “We can’t count on them continuing on that course. If they divert, they can be here pretty quickly.”
“Faster than you’d think, sir. They’re on horses.”
He blinked in surprise, though he wasn’t sure why he should be shocked. Terra was the home of horses as well as humans. There were a lot of horses on Avalon. It had been a vacation world in the Old Terran Empire, after all. He wasn’t sure how common they were elsewhere.
Personally, he’d never learned to ride. He wasn’t sure that he knew anyone that had. Horses were either working animals on farms or the province of the wealthy on Avalon. Maybe Kelsey knew how to ride, but he wasn’t sure many others in their party did.
“What speed are they traveling at?” he asked as he checked the feed for himself.
“A slow walk,” she said. “While their speed varies, it doesn’t look like they’re hurrying, and that makes sense as it’s dark. I’m surprised they’re moving under conditions like this. I’m more than a bit worried that they’d like to use this building to set up a camp until dawn.”
“There’s no sign of anybody having been inside the building,” Talbot argued. “While they could be coming here, I’d think the odds are that they’re not. Does it look like they have a destination in mind, based on the maps we currently have?”
“They’re headed for the pinnaces,” Kelsey said from behind him. “If you expand the map out a little bit, it’s obvious tha
t’s where they’re going. They probably spotted me coming down. It wasn’t like I was being subtle or anything.”
No, she certainly hadn’t been. At the speed they’d come in, the crashing pinnace had probably been a streak of fire across the sky, visible for quite a distance.
A check of the path that the riders were taking confirmed that they were on the way to the crash site, with his implants giving that option better than a seventy percent chance. They’d find everything he and his people had been forced to leave back there, too.
Worse, they’d be able to follow the trail their people had made right back to them.
“They’re going to catch up with us,” he said grimly. “Even if they spent a few days at the crash site—which we can’t count on—those horses can make up the distance in a day.”
His wife nodded. “They won’t spend a lot of time there. They might leave some of their number to search the wrecks, but they’ll come after us. We’re probably in their territory, and they’ll want to deal with us as quickly as possible.
“On the plus side, that means we can wait for them here and get this over with while we still have the armored marines as backup when I talk to them. We don’t know if they’ll end up being friends, foes, or just people that want nothing to do with us, but we have to assume that they’re not going to be very friendly when they catch up with us.
“These people are survivors. It may have been generations since the AIs blasted them from orbit, but those memories are still going to be very sharp for them. There’s plenty of resources on Terra, but if you’re being watched and hunted, you don’t feel like you can gather them. That means they’re going to see us as a potential threat, and they’re going to want to deal with us as such.”
Julia, who’d come up behind Kelsey, looked uncertain. “Are you sure that you’re the right person to talk to them?”
Kelsey shrugged. “I’m the one with the most experience at that sort of thing. I’m also the one best suited to deal with any hostilities, if they break out.
“According to the drones, these people are carrying knives, swords, spears, and bows. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have access to something more advanced, mind you, but I’d imagine charging something like that would be a screaming bitch.
“On the plus side, I’m not very threatening. I won’t be perceived as a serious threat. Unless I want to be.”
That made Talbot go back to the drone feed and start counting the riders. There were thirty-three humans and roughly double that number of horses. He couldn’t tell whether the spares were meant to be packhorses or remounts to allow the riders to travel longer distances without having to stop.
In any case, the fact that they were traveling at night probably meant something as well. Maybe they were afraid of being observed. Perhaps assuming that these people were the ones who ran this area was a mistake. If these folks were raiders, then his people might be sticking their heads into an inter-clan rivalry of some sort, and that could get ugly.
“A thought just occurred to me,” he said before explaining his theory.
Kelsey nodded slowly once he’d finished. “That’s something we have to keep in mind. We know absolutely nothing about the situation on the ground. These people could be here to steal whatever they can get their hands on.
“Which doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. Tribes raided one another on preindustrial Terra all the time, and that didn’t necessarily mean they were evil. That’s just competition for resources. Raiding isn’t quite war, after all.”
She then tilted her head back a little, and her eyes went unfocused for a few seconds. “They’re not curving toward us, so they’ll be at our original camp within two hours. That’s going to be slightly before dawn.
“I think I should take a team of people and meet them there. That’ll give you time to set this place up in a more defensible manner. If I take marines in suits, we can get there fast. Not as fast as horses, but we’ll have plenty of power to fight if we need to.”
Talbot didn’t approve of her going, but he’d learned the hard way that trying to convince his wife not to carry out any plan that she’d set her mind to was doomed. He might as well see that she was as well protected as he could, since she was going, one way or the other.
“Another thing we have to worry about is that this might not be the only group we’ll have to deal with,” he said. “A lot of people could’ve seen the pinnace on its way down. If so, we might have more people showing up tomorrow.
“We can get some drones out to cover part of the area, but the smaller ones don’t have the range to cover all avenues of approach. You’ll have to be very careful not to get caught up in someone else’s fight, Kelsey.”
He turned to Boske. “Split the ready response team. Everyone going with the colonel needs to be ready to travel light and perhaps be separated from support for a couple of days. The rest of us will be ready to receive you, if things go sour and you have to come back here in a hurry. I hope that doesn’t happen, because that could mean that we’re going to have to fight every step of the way to the Imperial Palace.”
His wife shook her head. “I think the chances of us going undetected have passed. Hell, they probably never existed at all. We need to find some friends and learn the lay of the land. Knowledge, as they say, is power.”
“Be careful, Kelsey,” he said quietly as he stepped over to her side. “If things go badly, we won’t be able to get there in time to help you. You’ll be fighting with only what you can bring with you.”
“I can handle this,” she said softly, running her hand across his cheek. The cool metal of her gauntlet wasn’t anything like her hand, but it was still gentle. “No matter what happens, I’ll do whatever I have to do to get us to the Imperial Palace.”
Of that he was certain, even if it put her into deadly peril. He knew there was nothing he could do to change her mind, so he could only hope that she took fewer chances than she usually did this time around.
A hope he was virtually certain was doomed to disappointment.
Kelsey started getting pushback even before they’d set off for the crash site. She’d made the decision that she wouldn’t be wearing her armor for this meeting and gotten immediate pushback from her doppelgänger.
Even as she was stripping her Raider armor off and handing it to one of the other marines to carry for her, Julia was telling her just exactly what she thought about that idea.
“This is idiotic,” the other woman said, somewhat waspishly. “The odds of them shooting you are really high. Why would you willingly take away your best defense?”
Kelsey didn’t answer immediately, settling her weapons belt around her hips and double-checking that all of her guns were fully loaded, well seated, and ready for action. That done, she settled her sword harness securely on her back.
“The mistake you’re making is thinking that my armor is my strongest defense,” Kelsey said calmly. “It isn’t. My strongest defense is not being shot at in the first place. If they see some metallic monster coming at them, they’re going to react in a manner that I think we’d all consider extremely hostile. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be in any danger from the kind of weapons we’ve seen thus far, but convincing them to be our allies in this is my primary goal.
“If they decide to shoot first and ask questions later, I can handle that. They’re not going to lay in a flight of arrows at me all at once, because one woman is not going to be that threatening, particularly if I walk in with my hands conspicuously empty. Any rational being will want to talk before they engage in violence.”
“And what makes you think they’re rational?” Julia responded with a scowl. “We don’t know them at all. They might be cannibals. There’s no telling what they’ll consider a reasonable response to this.”
“I’ll grant you that point. That’s why you and the marines are going to be just out of sight, ready to respond if things go badly. I’d much rather settle this cordially, but I’m not going to
put myself at undue risk.
“If they want to fight, my Raider augmentation will be more than sufficient to get me clear before they can hit me. Then we can figure out the best way to respond.”
She could tell that Julia wanted to argue, but she didn’t. The other woman simply raised her hands in a show that she’d given up.
“Fine. It’s your life. I can’t control what you’re going to do, and you probably have a better idea of how this is going to work out than me anyway. That’s your call, but we still have to get there over some pretty rough terrain. Are you sure you’re up to running through that stuff in the dark without armor?”
Kelsey nodded and smiled slightly. “We’ve already been over this terrain once. We’re just going to go back in the same direction that we came from. I don’t remember any unexpected ravines along the way that might trip me up, and my eyesight’s pretty good. So’s yours.
“If we utilize our Raider augmentation and tune the ocular augmentation so that we’re using both infrared and ultraviolet, as well as the normal sight range, that should give us a pretty good idea what we’re going to face. It’s good practice for what we’ll need to do once we don’t have our armor with us.”
She rested her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Relax. We’ll keep it slow and easy. As long as we get there soon after dawn, I think everything’s going to be fine. Coming in during the daylight is probably better in any case. If they can clearly see me, they’re less likely to start shooting at shadows.”
She checked her internal chrono and made the decision. “We need to get moving. While they’re busy examining the crash site, there’ll be less of them ready to respond to my arrival. I’d like to let them notice me on their own, without me making a lot of noise to get their attention. Drama might look good on the vids, but it just makes people react hastily and do things that we’d all regret. Let’s do this slow and easy.”