by Terry Mixon
It looked as if the water had been intended to go into a reservoir of some kind, but the algae had clogged things up, and a fair amount of it showered onto the steps. They were now slick and treacherous looking. Everyone would have to be very careful when they went down them.
Jared turned to Clarice Beauchamp. “Keep up a running conversation with yourself. If the guards stick their heads in, make sure they can see you, and keep talking like we’re in one of the other rooms. That might be enough.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Then you might have to use your new sword.”
He’d taken her aside and given her the long blade from the Marine Raider cache before they’d left Frankfort. It wasn’t worth what helping them had cost her, but it was what they had to give. Her people wouldn’t accept high technology, but no matter how deadly and miraculous the sword was, it was just metal.
The warrior nodded and clasped her hand around the weapon’s hilt. “They will not pass while I still live. You have my word. Good luck, Admiral.”
Kelsey led the way down the stairs, moving slowly and keeping her hand on the rail. Her augmented vision would allow her to see what was in front of her more easily than he could.
That turned out to be unnecessary, as lights in the chamber below came on as soon as she started down. It turned out that the stairs only went down a dozen meters before they opened into a wide chamber directly underneath the common room in the Imperial Residence.
Once he’d made his way down, he saw that this room only had one exit, the short corridor that led directly to a lift. Jared walked over and pressed the call button. Moments later, the doors opened and revealed a lift car that could hold all of them. Barely.
Once they’d packed themselves inside, someone pressed the only button on the panel, the doors closed, and the lift descended. The trip took longer than he’d expected, but the doors opened again without any trouble.
Kelsey stepped out of the lift and into another short corridor that ended in what looked like a dead end, though there was a button prominently placed on the wall beside it. With a shrug, she pressed it, and the dead-end wall slid aside, revealing a larger corridor that led to the left and right.
He stuck his head out and saw that there was no button on the other side. In fact, it looked like this was a concealed door that no one would know was here.
“How do we keep it from closing?” he asked.
“I got a signal from the controller when I pressed the button,” his sister said. “It wanted my authentication codes, and in return, it gave me permission to remotely control it from the other side. We’re good on that front.
“The problem I see is that there was nothing on the map about this. Basically, it only told us to go to the Imperial Residence and use the secret passage. Which direction do we go?”
“Let’s split up and go in opposite directions,” he suggested. “We’ll only go a hundred meters and then come back. Be watchful for any security devices. These are the Imperial Vaults, and there’s no telling what’s down here.”
Jared found what he thought was the entrance to the vaults less than fifty meters down the right-hand side of the corridor, on the opposite wall from the secret lift. The large metal doors looked as if they would be sufficient to stop any kind of attack. There was a palm reader next to them.
A quick shout brought the rest of the team to his location, and Kelsey examined the reader for a moment before she quickly gestured for him to put his hand on it.
He did so, and it immediately prompted him to input an authentication code that he didn’t have. Thankfully, he knew someone who did.
“It needs your codes, Kelsey.”
She frowned. “I’m not getting any kind of prompt, so it must’ve just sent it to you because you were touching the reader. Let’s try together.”
Kelsey pulled off her gauntlet and placed a finger against the reader as he put his hand on it again. Once again, he was rejected, but for a different reason. Now it was complaining that there were too many sources of DNA.
“How can I touch the reader to get the signal without giving it my DNA?” Kelsey asked in a peeved tone. “I can’t give you the codes, because my implants won’t let me export them for obvious security reasons. What do we do?”
“Stick your hand out,” Carl said. “I think I have something that might help.”
The scientist dug into his tool bag and pulled out a small canister. He held it close to Kelsey’s hand and sprayed a moderately thick gel into her palm. He then started rubbing it in.
“Give it a few seconds to dry,” he said. “It’ll act as a sealer and keep any DNA from coming across from your hand to the reader. Just to be safe, you might want to rub a finger across the admiral’s skin before you use it so that it has his DNA.”
Jared nodded. “We’ll also be careful that it only looks like we’re putting one hand onto the scanner. I’ll keep my pinky a little bit up at the tip, and you can stick the end of yours just under it. Maybe if we do that, we can fool it.”
“Let’s hope this works,” Kelsey said as they positioned their hands just above the reader and put them down together.
“I can sense it demanding the code,” Kelsey said. “Sending it now.”
A few moments later, the huge doors began retracting into the walls. The group around them erupted in cheers even as Jared stared. The doors were significantly thicker than he’d expected.
At a guess, they were about three meters thick and looked like they were made of hull metal. They were thicker than the armor on his superdreadnought.
Basically, if the entire vault was sheathed like this, it was invulnerable to anything short of orbital bombardment. It would even take a nuke placed right next to it and probably protect the vault’s contents.
Thankfully, they’d made it inside.
“Let’s see if we can find the override,” he said. “Don’t touch anything. I hate to be a worrywart, but it would be just like some paranoid security type to leave something tempting to set off a trap for the unwary. We don’t want to be locked inside, because no one will be coming to rescue us.”
“That’s perhaps an exaggeration,” Kelsey said. “I’ve interfaced with the palace systems and reenabled the communication systems. We can interface with them via our implants—even down here—and have them connect us with Talbot or Lily. I’m confident he could figure something out.”
“Did you see that door?” he demanded. “I’m not willing to take chances, so everyone keep your hands to yourselves.”
With that, he stepped into the vault, and the overhead lights came on.
Julia stepped into the Imperial Vaults and was immediately overwhelmed by the scale of the place. As large as the Imperial throne room had been, this place was far more substantial.
And unlike the room above, this one was hardly empty. In fact, it looked like a warehouse. It was full of crates, all piled up to the ceiling a dozen meters overhead.
The air was dead, smelling of dust and age. No one had been here in a very long time.
“How are we going to find the override?” she asked grimly. “Are we going to have to start busting things open?”
The wreckage they’d made in the horde’s treasure chamber was fresh in her mind. And as tightly packed as these crates were, she didn’t think she’d have much luck knocking any stacks over.
Kelsey shook her head. “Emperor Marcus sent Lucian a full inventory of this place. He also told him exactly where we had to go to find the override. All we have to do is walk to the back of the room and pick it up.”
That sounded suspiciously easy. Nothing they’d done thus far had been that simple, so she’d believe it when she saw it.
“What’s in the rest of these crates?” she asked as they started into the stacks. “And why keep it all down here in an impenetrable vault?”
Kelsey shrugged. “I’d imagine this vault has been down here since they built the Imperial Palace. Whichever emperor was in charge at
that point must’ve decided that this would be where the important stuff went. It’s filled with gifts and offerings from various parts of the Empire, usually presented on the emperor’s birthday.
“That kind of thing went on pretty much the entire time the Terran Empire existed. What we’re looking at here is about ten thousand years’ worth of gifts from any number of worlds to the reigning emperor of the day.
“That means that this room is filled with objects of incalculable cultural value, and probably every precious metal and stone known to humanity. Unimaginable works of art. But we’re only interested in one thing though: the override.”
They continued on in silence while Julia looked at the immense stacks of crates all around them and imagined the kinds of things that would be inside them. It was mind-boggling. All of this should be on display in a massive museum, not buried under a dead palace on a wrecked world.
If she were successful in overthrowing the AIs in her universe, she’d make certain to start building one. Humanity deserved to see its heritage.
Partway back, she discovered that not everything was in crates. Off to her left-hand side was a statue that had to be at least three meters tall. It was made of pale, polished stone and looked hand carved. It was exquisite.
She had no idea who the woman was supposed to be, but what little clothes she wore seemed unspeakably ancient. Why men felt the need to have art in which women were scantily dressed, partly—or fully—naked, or in provocative poses, she just didn’t understand. It was one of the mysteries of life.
Just because she wanted to know who the woman was, she captured an image of the statue so that she could look it up later. If any records existed outside the list of contents that Mertz had, that was. She hoped so, as she’d rather find out on her own than ask him.
When they finally reached the rear of the massive room, Kelsey led them to a small crate. “This is the one in the picture that Emperor Marcus sent. He didn’t say anything about any security protocol. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would bother. It’s at the rear of a huge room in a small crate with no markings at all. Even diligent searchers would pass it right by.”
“We should still be careful,” Mertz said. “The last thing we want to do is to try and open it the wrong way and have it destroy the contents. That would be an utter disaster.”
Carl stepped forward and ran a scanner across the exterior of the crate. “It’s got no electronics in the box itself and no locking mechanism. Basically, it’s just wood and conventional packing materials around something technological that’s unpowered. We can open it up.”
Kelsey reached forward and gently tugged the lid until it popped free. Nestled among packing materials was what looked like a small computer drive. It had some type of port where it could be plugged into another system, but it was totally unremarkable.
And utterly irreplaceable.
“So, this is the override that stops the master AI,” she said slowly. “It looks so… normal.”
“It is pretty normal,” Carl said as he gingerly plucked the device out of the crate. “It’s literally a basic drive meant to plug into the AI hardware and shut down the system or override anything that the controller wants. The only thing that makes it unique is the encrypted code that’s bound to this one specific set of hardware.
“We won’t be able to transfer the code to any other drive. It has to be this one. I’ll have to take it apart and replace the power supply, but that should be simple enough.”
“Why didn’t they make more of them?” she demanded. “That might’ve helped humanity stop those monsters.”
“They didn’t realize that they needed them,” he answered with a shrug. “No one in their right minds would have believed that an AI that didn’t even have manipulators would be able to take over human beings to use as its toys. That’s horror novel stuff.
“If the Singularity hadn’t meddled, nothing like this could have occurred. Their agents had to have physically assisted the AI for those initial conversions. Only then would the AI have had a way to do more.”
Mertz took the override from Carl and put it into his pocket. “Kelsey, you’ve got the inventory. Is there anything else here that we should take with us?”
Julia’s doppelgänger shook her head. “Technically, everything here should be saved, but none of it’s useful for our purposes now. We can come back once this is all over and take it to Avalon.”
“Or move the seat of power here,” Mertz said. “When the Rebel Empire falls, it might be best if we just relocate the government here. Terra is more centrally located for the Empire as a whole. Once we start rebuilding, it’s not going to be convenient for the rulers of the Empire to be out on the rim like Avalon is.”
Kelsey snorted. “I can’t imagine my father would be happy about moving.”
“He has time to get used to the idea. With those modified Marine Raider medical nanites in his system, he’s going to be the emperor for a very long time.”
Her doppelgänger shook her head. “It’s a good thing that I’m not looking to inherit the throne anytime soon. Come on. I want to do something to the security system before we leave.”
When they arrived back at the main doors, Kelsey stopped at a terminal just inside them. “Jared, press your palm here just like we did outside.”
A few seconds later, she smiled. “Okay, Julia, press your palm to the door. I’ve got this gunk on my hands, so you’ll be working with me to register our DNA. I’m adding us all to the security system. If something happens, I want to make sure that someone else can get back into this place.”
Julia did so, and the system prompted her to set an access code. She used the one she had as the heir, and the system accepted it. She knew from checking that her authentication codes were exactly the same as Kelsey’s, so they were both covered.
She made a mental note that she’d have to get samples of Mertz’s DNA before she went home. With the right coating on her hand, she could fool the system just like Kelsey had. She wouldn’t need to keep her Mertz alive once she caught him.
It took a couple of minutes for everyone to add their DNA to the security system. Once the process was done, Kelsey gestured back toward the concealed lift.
“It’s time to get things in motion. We’ve gotten what we came for, and it’s time to get off this planet. That means we have to get the FTL com online so that we can contact Persephone. Carl, that’s your job.
“Once we know what’s happening in the rest of the system, we can decide if we’re going to take a shot at the AI in orbit. If we can get to it, we will. If we can’t, we’re going to have to just sneak away without being noticed.
“I don’t like leaving Terra under the control of these murderous AIs, but it’s not exactly like we have a battle fleet on hand to take it away.” She paused and then smiled. “Actually, I suppose we do. We just don’t know where it is right now.”
Mertz nodded. “Let’s get back to Persephone. We’ll get in contact with Marcus using the same trick that you used to signal us. There’s no guarantee that he’s going to recognize the attempted communication, but we have to try.
“We’ll hope that he’s a lot faster on the uptake than I was. If so, we’ll arrange to meet them somewhere mutually convenient. Our next stop has to be Twilight River. It’s time to end this war and free humanity.”
With that, they started toward the secret door leading to the lift. The endgame was upon them.
31
Talbot had been asleep for over an hour when Lily woke him up. She’d been able to use the large regenerator at the Imperial Palace to fully heal his damaged organs, but he’d been exhausted by the time she’d finished.
He levered himself up from the bed he was resting on. “Thanks, Lilly.”
She clapped a hand on his shoulder. “No problem, big man. That’s my job. Try not to get banged up so much next time. Especially if I don’t have anything to fix you with.”
“I’ll sure as hell try. Any wor
d on the trip downstairs?”
He felt comfortable asking because there were no guards in the room with them. They were probably standing out in the hall, making sure that he and Lily didn’t wander off. Peters was gone, so they’d undoubtedly taken him back to his hall.
“Kelsey called to let me know that everything went as planned. It seems that she’s accessed the palace systems and reenabled them for our use. We’re ready to exit stage left.”
He frowned slightly. “What does that mean?”
Lily shrugged. “Ask your wife. Since we’re ready to go, they think you need to have a conversation with Major Peters. We need to know for sure whether or not he’s going to come with us.
“Everyone else is either providing a distraction for the guards by doing otherwise mundane tasks or is with Carl as he works on making contact with Persephone. The admiral said to tell you that he’d prefer if Peters came with us.”
Talbot wasn’t sure he could convince the man, though doing something to fully repair the horrific damage to his body might well do the trick. The only way to find out for sure was to try.
“I’m on it,” he said as he stood.
Once he had his shoes on, he made his way out of the medical center, picking up an escort at the door, and headed toward the large room where they kept Peters. The man’s guards in their white uniforms stopped him outside that room.
“What is your business with the god?” a short woman with dark hair asked imperiously.
“I want to continue the discussion that we started earlier,” Talbot said, unperturbed. “There’s nothing to be worried about. I’ll be happy to leave my weapons here with you.”
The woman seemed somewhat suspicious, but she allowed Talbot inside once he’d divested himself of his weapons.
Peters sat up a little bit straighter on his couch as Talbot approached, waving the guards out of earshot. “You’re looking better.”
“I’m feeling better,” Talbot said as he sat on the edge of the dais. Even though he was fully healed, parts of him still felt a little tender.