by M. D. Cooper
“Shiiiiiit,” Sera drew the word out. “How so?”
“I don’t have all the details, so you’ll have to talk to Tanis about it when you next see her, but Bob confirmed that he and Earnest have been changing Tanis’s brain slowly and carefully for years to facilitate what ultimately happened on Pyra.”
Sera shook her head, incredulous disbelief flooding her features. “Why?”
“Bob’s argument is that it had to be done to keep them alive. If he’d let their merger proceed without intervention, she would have gone insane decades ago. They worked up some new picotech procedure that erected quantum-level barriers to direct how their minds merged.”
“Tanis must be pissed!” Sera exclaimed.
Jason nodded slowly. “I know I would be. She seems to be taking it in stride.”
“Is that because she’s ascended now? Or whatever she is?” Sera asked. “Stars, I should go see her. I need to know what she’s thinking.”
“From what I understand, she’s only semi-ascended.” Jason took another drink of his coffee. “Whatever that means. This is all pretty crazy stuff. But in all honesty, I’ve been living with the fallout from transhumanism my entire life. I was one of the first documented natural L2s, you know. Did a lot of work to free AIs—sucks to see that we’re still fighting that same fight.”
“I didn’t know that,” Sera said, examining Jason in a new light. She knew the basics of his story, born at Proxima Centauri in the early fourth millennia, grandson of one of the heroes of the Sentience Wars whose parents had gotten out of Sol to some place a little tamer. She knew he’d plied sub-light ships in the black for centuries, which gave him a sort of kinship with the FGT. Beyond that, she didn’t know too much else.
“So what does all this mean?” Sera asked. “What do we do with this information?”
“Damned if I know,” Jason replied with a grin that looked far more roguish on a young man’s face. “It’s not really the main topic I came here to discuss.”
His words caught Sera mid-drink, and she nearly spat out her coffee. “Seriously?” Sera paused to set her cup down. “The fact that Tanis is part of some millennia-long master plan to either save or destroy humanity is the side topic?”
“Well, we know that Tanis is too strong willed to allow herself to be controlled by anyone. Everything she’s done is evidence that she’s no one’s pawn.”
Sera let out a coarse laugh. “You’re right, there. Woe be to any super-being that thinks they can control her. She’s going to beat them at their own game.”
Jason nodded and lifted his coffee cup once more, tipping it back to drain the last remains before signaling to the servitor that he wanted a refill.
While the bot completed his request, the governor leant forward, placing his elbows on the table. “You’ve heard of our Aleutian site, right?”
Sera nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen it mentioned in a few places. You sent out the initial ships when I was still in New Canaan last year.”
“Right, we did. I assume you know what it is?”
“Sure, I guess.” Sera spread her hands wide. “A beta site for your people; I don’t blame you, New Canaan is in everyone’s crosshairs. I’m a bit surprised you all stayed.”
Jason chuckled as he watched the servitor set his coffee down on the table. “Jen,” he addressed Sera’s AI. “I assume you’re listening?”
Jen replied.
“Don’t I know it,” he agreed, while pouring a generous amount of cream into his coffee. “You now have Omega clearance, Jen. Top level.”
“There isn’t one. It means you have unrestricted access to any ISF and New Canaan intel. Sera has it too, now. The two of you don’t need to keep secrets from one another.” He paused and met Sera’s eyes. “But I’ll trust that you’ll keep what I’m about to tell you in the strictest confidence. Until we decide to take action.”
“Er…sure,” Sera said, her brows deeply furrowed.
“To your previous statement about us remaining in New Canaan: simply put, we’re a stubborn group. We put a lot of effort into building our colony, and a lot of lives were lost defending it.”
“But you’re realists,” Sera replied.
“We are, yes.”
“I’ll admit.” Sera’s eyes narrowed as she watched Jason’s eyes for any tells. “I’ve been curious as to where your Aleutian Site is, but Tanis didn’t volunteer the information, and I decided she’d share it when she was ready.”
“It’s in the LMC,” Jason replied tonelessly, not looking up as he stirred his cream into his coffee.
This time Sera nearly did choke. “The Large Magellanic Cloud? Like…the galaxy that’s a hundred and sixty fucking thousand light years from here?”
“Closer to one seventy, where we are,” Jason said, looking up and winking at Sera. “We like to do things big.”
“No fucking kidding,” Sera muttered. “Seriously, Jason. This is all getting to be too much. Ascended AIs scheming from the core of the galaxy, Finaeus building a secret staging ground in the 3kpc Arm, Tanis ascending, and now this. Are you all leaving?”
“You know about Project Starflight, right?” Jason asked.
“Yeah, Tanis told me that you guys are going to make Canaan Prime burn asymmetrically and fly it out of the Milky Way Galaxy. That’s some serious long-term planning.”
Jason nodded. “Go big, or go home, right? Well, I guess we finally got a home, so we’re going ‘big’ there. Anyway, the Aleutian site is the yin to Project Starflight’s yang. It’s the destination. But we’re not stepping out of the conflict. We’ll do our part, and help put things back together before we leave.”
“Leave,” Sera whispered the word. “So you are going to leave. All of you.”
“It’s not like it’s going to happen tomorrow, or even in a century. It takes a long time to accelerate a star to galactic escape velocity.”
“Sometimes you must wonder about the words you’re saying,” Sera laughed.
Jason snorted. “I’m just a simple guy from Proxima Centauri. You’re the one who grew up on a diamond ring wrapped around a Saturn-sized white dwarf star.”
“Touché.”
“There’s more.”
“Jason…seriously, just spill it already, you’re killing me, here.”
Jason nodded soberly. “This is serious stuff, Sera. We jumped to the LMC on the outskirts of the NGC 1783 globular cluster. Conditions were right for Class G stars in that region, and we found them. The Aleutian team is studying local cosmic events to determine if it’s a safe region—or if they should relocate. They’re also setting up an industrial base around a star they’ve named Cheshire.”
“Damn,” Sera whispered. “What does the Milky Way look like from out there?”
“I’ve not been there yet,” Jason replied. “But I imagine the answer is ‘amazing’.”
“OK, so, while this is way up there on the freakin’ awesome scale, I’m not sure why it warrants a private visit from the man himself.” Sera smirked at Jason as she spoke, the glib words and grin on her lips the only way she could deal with all the information Jason had hit her with.
“You’re right. I’m here to talk about what we found in the LMC.”
Sera’s eyes grew wide, and she slammed both hands onto the table. “You found aliens! I knew it!”
Jason barked a laugh at her enthusiasm. “Stars, I wish we’d found aliens. Well, maybe. Who knows, maybe they’re in hiding. Either way, what we found were humans.”
For a moment, the words didn’t make sense to Sera. “What? Seriously? Humans?”
Jason nodded. “Not just any humans, we found the Transcend.”
“OK, stop doling it out,” Sera said through gritted teeth, as the myriad implications of his words all but buried her. “Lay it on me.”
“Sorry, trying to make this…less nuts than it all is.”
“You’ve faile
d. Just give it to me.”
Jason took another sip of coffee and leant forward once more.
“While our people were setting up, they kept noticing strange variances in the light from a few stars not far away. Variances that didn’t match natural patterns. What they did match were massive fusion burns from planet movers undertaking terraforming operations.”
“Shit,” Sera whispered. “Really?”
“I thought you wanted me to just spill it. You’ve gotta stop interrupting for that to happen.”
“Sorry.” She pursed her lips and gestured for him to continue.
“The activity was coming from a group of stars at the edge of an open cluster about two hundred light years away. Once we had shipped in our backup gates, we jumped in a scouting team and took a closer look. What we found were three FGT terraforming groups, all working on establishing new worlds—well, that’s what they had been doing. When we came in closer, we saw that they’d ceased those operations and were stripping the systems down and building shipyards.”
“I…I have no knowledge of this,” Sera said. “I don’t think anyone here does.”
“We have a stealth ship doing a close fly-by as we speak,” Jason replied. “We’ll know more soon. But if you don’t know about this, there are only two options.”
Sera nodded and let out a long sigh. “Airtha, or some other rogue element in the Transcend.”
“Or a rogue element that is now under Airtha’s control.”
“My father had to have known about this,” Sera muttered. “What else did he have going on?”
“I don’t know,” Jason replied, his voice kind. “Chances are that, whatever it is, Airtha has the details, given her position at…well, Airtha.”
Sera nodded. “We need to accelerate our plans to stop her. TSF strategists are working on some ideas, but…they’re not ideal.”
“How so?”
“Well, Airtha has the Huygens System well defended. There could be as many as half a million ships there by now. We’d wondered why she’d given up so much of the Transcend to us without a fight. Now that I know she’s building ships in the LMC, I wonder if she has other, similar facilities spread throughout the galaxy—or even in the other dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way.”
“So what’s your plan of attack on Airtha?” Jason asked. “Or, at least the winning proposals.”
“This is all predicated on Airtha being linked to the ring and being unable to move from it. However, from the report you sent from Kara, who I’d really like to meet, it’s possible that Airtha is fully ascended, and may not be directly connected to the ring anymore.”
“Hard to say,” he replied. “From what we’ve been learning about ascended beings, to operate in our three paltry dimensions, they need some sort of physical presence. Earnest believes that they need to reconstruct themselves in other dimensions to fully leave this one, and that it may not be possible to do so entirely. Either way, she may still be tied the ring.”
“Or she may not,” Sera countered, and Jason shrugged before she continued. “Well, taking the Huygens System with our current resources is impossible—not if we want to be able to stand up to Orion afterward. However, destroying it is not.”
“Destroying it?” he echoed. “How will you do that?”
Sera signaled the servitor for another cup of coffee. “A derivation of what the allies just pulled off in the Albany system, but with bullets.”
“You’re going to have to fire a lot of bullets to get past those half a million starships.”
“Yeah,” Sera nodded. “But if we use chunks of neutron stars held in stasis fields and moving at relativistic speeds, Airtha’s defenses won’t be able to stop them all. And it will only take a few of them getting through to destroy Airtha’s ring.”
Jason whistled. “That’s one hell of a solution.”
Sera wondered what he thought of his allies now, knowing that they would consider the wholesale slaughter of a trillion people, just to take out their enemy. “It’s partially my fault. In a fit of frustration, I suggested that perhaps everyone on Airtha is fully under my mother’s sway, and that we’d lose too many trying to take the system.”
“Well, you’re probably not wrong on both counts.”
Sera snorted. “Yeah. I wish I was, though. We need to take out Airtha, but we can’t assault her directly. Especially because with the control she has over the AIs…we’d be murdering slaves. I tabled the wholesale destruction option, thinking that we could choke off her access to resources, but now she has extra-fucking-galactic shipyards!”
Sera’s voice had risen as she spoke, and Jason’s eyes softened with compassion as he stretched out a hand and took hers.
“We’ve not been given an easy path, that’s for sure. But we know that Airtha has these other facilities now, and we can destroy them, deny the LMC to her.”
Sera nodded, not withdrawing her hand, the realization hitting her that she hadn’t touched anyone romantically in over a year. Hugs with Tanis don’t count because they’re not romantic for her.
He shrugged. “It would take centuries to search the galaxy, we just have to assume that if we shut down that one expansion location, she won’t have had time to set up others. But what we really need is better intel. We only saw that location because the FGT had been there for hundreds of years already, and the light had reached the Aleutian site.”
“Of course, the intel we need is all at Airtha.”
“Would it be?” Jason mused. “Your father struck me as a very well-prepared man, generally speaking. Is there any chance he had a backup site for the Transcend’s government? A bunker of sorts in another system?”
“Given the fact that he was colonizing the Large Magellanic Cloud, I imagine he had a few out there.” Sera shook her head and drew a deep breath, trying to find options. “The only one I know of is in Airtha’s hands, nearly as well defended as the Huygens System.”
Jason’s brow furrowed, and then a small smile formed on his lips. “You know…if I were a paranoid megalomaniac who wanted the ultimate backup plan…”
Sera’s eyes widened. “The LMC locations are his ultimate fallback—that’s why even I didn’t know about them. And if they are, there would be data there about any other sites, and the resources Airtha has access to.”
“Bingo,” Jason grinned. “I’ll return to New Canaan and organize a strike team.”
“No,” Sera replied, and Jason’s eyes narrowed.
“No?”
“Well, yes, but also no. I’m going, too.”
Jason held her gaze for a moment before his solemn look turned into a grin. “That’s what I like about you, Sera Tomlinson.”
“What?” she asked.
“You’re a woman of action.”
NIETZSCHEA
STELLAR DATE: 08.31.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Valhalla
REGION: Capitol, Pruzia System, Nietzschean Empire
Garza’s shuttle set down on a landing pad at a level of the Imperial Spire known as ‘Valhalla’. As the cradle locked onto the shuttle, and the ramp rose, Garza composed himself for the meeting with the emperor.
After a minute, he rose and walked to the shuttle’s opening, noting that his guards were already at the base of the ramp.
Looking around, he couldn’t help but be a little impressed by the view. If he hadn’t known otherwise, it would have been impossible to tell that Valhalla was over one hundred kilometers above Capitol’s surface.
Before him stood a massive marble edifice, crafted in the form of an ancient fortress, featuring towers that stretched into space, beyond the limits of even Garza’s augmented field of vision.
Around the landing pad were manicured lawns and gardens, and beyond those, a lake that encircled the entire platform.
From the approach the shuttle had taken, Garza had seen that th
e water poured off the edges of the lake, kept from blowing through the thin atmosphere by grav fields, which made it seem as though there was a hundred kilometer veil, pouring off the spire.
The effect shrouded the spire’s shaft and made it appear as though it hovered on a pillar of mist.
None of that impressed Garza.
He’d seen his share of impossible feats of engineering: the ancient High Terra Ring, the Scipian ecumenopolis of Alexandria, the diamond Airthan Ring—though that one was only in a memory from a clone—and even a far-off view of Star City.
A spire like this was almost boring.
Even so, he’d come himself, sending a clone to deal with Praetor Kirkland. The Nietzschean Emperor was a tricky man; hard to pin down, and even harder to negotiate with.
It was a job he’d not send a clone to do.
Constantine also posed little threat to Garza—unlike Airtha and Sera. Garza was glad a clone had been sent to the Transcend’s capital. It came back entirely under Airtha’s thrall, though it did at least confirm that the abomination had finally ascended.
Praetor Kirkland may be a fool, but at least he had been right about the risk that Tomlinson’s former wife posed. Keeping her around had been a mistake, one that Garza was glad to know had finally taken Jeffrey Tomlinson out of the picture.
As Garza walked down the shuttle’s ramp toward the functionary that waited for him below, he couldn’t help but wish things had gone differently.
Jeffrey Tomlinson had started out as a good man. Stars, he had been the one to really kick-start interstellar colonization. He founded the Transcend.
It was possible that the man had been one of the most influential humans in all of history.
A flash of regret passed through Garza’s mind that he had needed to order Tomlinson’s death. He’d lost a valuable asset on the mission, as well. Elena’s placement with Sera had taken decades of work, and she threw it all away to kill Tomlinson herself, when Kent should have been the one to do it.
Still, Garza’s plans could move forward even with the wrinkle that the degenerate Sera presented. It was Tanis Richards who was the real problem. That his operation in Scipio had failed to kill her was more than infuriating; it put many of his other operations on the spinward side of Sol at risk.