by Paul Anlee
In the debris field, Mika recognized the scattered thruster flares of Cybrid workers trying to escape. He squinted and nodded—Yes, yes. As expected. There were a few longer, brighter exhaust trails from the MAM drives of asteroid miners fleeing the battle. Let them leave.
He had aimed his beam at the center of the asteroid station deliberately to avoid any of the more powerful mining Cybrids that typically clustered at the poles. No need to set off a matter-antimatter reaction and vaporize part of my Wing to stop one intruder. We’re not there yet.
He played his destructive beam through the debris, blasting gigantic chunks into boulder-sized fragments. He could have turned the entire asteroid and everything inside it to dust but, if he did that, they’d have no chance to capture their opponent alive. No, he wanted the intruder to flee the crumbling mountain. In open space, with nowhere to hide, the Angels would get that chance.
Suddenly, the Aelo was in front of him, floating meters away. The Angel deactivated his energy beam and swung his sword to dismember the intruder. The Aelo was gone before Mika connected. No matter; it couldn’t go far. With the asteroid reduced to pebbles, there was nowhere left to hide. And with five layers of entrapping decoherence shield, it couldn’t flee. The Aelo would have to fight its way to freedom.
The lead team of Angels, a thousand strong, split into Barbs of ten each and spread out across the space formerly occupied by the asteroid. Those in the innermost decoherence shell flooded the space they protected with microwaves. Anything bigger than a fist will be visible to all.
Mm, there you are.
The Aelo was revealed, shifting randomly and testing the boundaries of its confinement for any weakness. It knew it was trapped. It rushed at the enclosing shell, weapons firing bursts of coherent energy. The beams were easily absorbed and dissipated by the Angels’ defenses.
One-to-one, Aelo and Angel were evenly matched. However, in greater numbers, the Angels were able to link their energy absorption fields. To defeat even one Angel in a group, the Aelo would need hundreds of times more power, or more cunning.
The Angels’ flaring swords and coordinated energy bursts drove the intruder away from the shift blocking perimeter, and back into the middle of its prison. The inside groups gave chase.
A Barb would shift to wherever the Aelo was spotted and attempt to encircle it with a small decoherence field, a few dozen meters in diameter.
The remaining ninety-nine Barbs shifted close by and waited for the Aelo to jump away from its pursuer and, hopefully, into their midst where they would trap it.
The Aelo shifted continuously, randomly, trying to outrun the hundred determined teams of Angels and their continuous casting of shift-blocking nets. Once it was contained within a Barb, the Aelo would lose to the superior might and number of Angels that would descend upon it.
Neither the Angels nor Aelo would tire soon; this cat-and-mouse game could last for hours, days if necessary. Mika was certain of the inevitable conclusion. It was only a matter of time before the intruder was theirs.
The Aelo passed near the perimeter, and a few Angels in the decoherence shell wobbled. The shift-blocking lattice in their region wavered. Swords sputtered erratically.
Three Angels in the innermost part of the net deactivated their swords and began spinning. Their arms dropped to their sides and their wings flapped uselessly in the vacuum of space.
The Aelo moved past them, the first imprisoning layer breached.
Nanoverters!—Mika transmitted to his Wing. The Aelo’s earlier fruitless-looking charges at the shell had not been pointless, after all. It had been seeding the Angels with nanoscopic subversion viruses. Such viruses would cling to an Angel’s skin and work their way in along sensor endings or power conduits. Once in the control circuitry, they would overwhelm the individual’s will, tricking their senses and causing them to undertake odd behavior. Fortunately, nanoverters were easily remedied.
We are woefully out of practice—thought Mika. Too many millennia of peace in Alum’s Realm.
With the inner shell overcome, the Aelo earned itself several million cubic kilometers more space in which to maneuver. That freedom, however, came with an additional thousand infuriated Angels who formed another hundred Barbs and joined the ranks of their comrades in the chase.
Faster and faster the Angels sought, found, and tried to encircle the intruder.
Angels and Aelu had played this game many times before, and both knew its inevitable outcome. Try as it might, the Aelo could not outmaneuver so many pursuers forever. Soon, one of them would get a grip on an appendage and rip it off, damaging what little personal weaponry the alien possessed, or strike a lucky blow to the body, hurting its internal shift generators. After that, the chase would be over quickly.
As Mika anticipated his Wing’s victory, a swing of an Angel’s sword cleanly relieved the Aelo of an appendage tip. Mika smiled. One less weapon to worry about.
In the next second, another Angel managed to scratch the Aelo’s carapace, causing it to spew body fluids into the cold vacuum of outer space. The fight was nearly done.
The Aelo changed tactics, dashing to the shattered remnants of the Cybrid asteroid. Nothing bigger than a pebble there—Mika noted, as he monitored the alien and pursuing groups. In a chain of fast bursts, the Aelo jumped through the detritus of the asteroid.
Mika ordered a few hundred of his Wing to activate their swords and clear the debris field. The energy levels weren’t set high enough to kill the Aelo even if it were to get caught in the crisscrossing beams. Soon, the space the asteroid once occupied was filled with cooling dust particles, none larger than a few microns across.
The Aelo emerged inside the dust cloud, and the chase resumed.
The nearest team surrounded the Aelo in little time. The alien must be tiring—Mika thought. Two Angels moved in for the capture.
The Aelo spun on its long axis and its limbs wove in a mesmerizing dance that was too fast to follow. The enclosing circle of Angels exploded outward. In the ensuing confusion, the Aelo fled.
Mika shifted to examine his stricken team members. Every one of them had a hole through the chest, destroying their primary processors. A kinetic weapon? Impossible!
Some quick calculations determined that any reasonably-sized projectile would need to be moving at near light speed to inflict such damage. The Aelu had nothing that could shoot a projectile that fast, as far as Mika remembered. No organic or mechanical being could exert sufficient force to accelerate even a one gram projectile up to 0.95 light speed in half a meter.
Unless...Mika recalled a battle technique invented by some clever Cybrid near the end of the Aelu Wars. The Cybrid had cast a cylindrical mass-neutralizing field from a mountain-sized asteroid, perhaps a few hundred tons in size, out toward the surface of one of the innermost Aelu planets. It was a common enough kind of field that Cybrid miners used to help them move asteroids around. But Mika had never heard of the effect being projected in a long, cylindrical shape prior to that time.
Within the field, objects had essentially no resting mass. A gentle push would accelerate it to near light speeds as long as it stayed inside the field. The Cybrid nudged the asteroid to get it moving toward the planet. As soon as the asteroid hit the field, it accelerated to near light speed. The trick was to extend the cylindrical field almost to the surface of the planet ahead of the moving asteroid. After the success of the first strike, Alum constructed special Securitor Cybrids for the task.
But we never used that on anything smaller than a planet. Even at that, none had ever managed more than one field, and certainly not with the precision the Aelo had just demonstrated.
Mika surmised the alien must have collected pebbles to use as bullets from the asteroid debris before it was pulverized to dust. It’s field management had to be extraordinary. Clever. But the downside of using projectiles is that one always runs out of ammunition.
He wasn’t happy to lose a few hundred Angels before the Aelo ran out of
ammo. He contemplated the relative importance of capturing this intruder intact against the losses the Wing would take.
Now that we know the invader is a single Aelo, albeit a resourceful one, how much more do we need to know? It is alone with no accompanying fleet. The residual threat level is practically nil.
Mika imagined Alum’s possible reaction to the loss of this single alien. He’ll be unhappy if many of His Angels are sacrificed for such a worthless target.
The Commander ordered the decoherence blocking shells to shift inward. “Ensure you maintain the integrity of the containment field.”
The Aelo’s prison was closing in. Several Barbs managed to coordinate their efforts, and it became trapped in a volume of space under a kilometer in diameter.
Mika ordered the main shells to tighten up their formations, reinforcing their brethren’s efforts.
Three Barbs of Angels closed in on the Aelo, making it shift at shorter intervals and distances.
Surely, you tire of this game—Mika thought. Let it be done.
After another set of shifts, the Aelo found itself trapped by a group of thirty Angels, with thirty more inside still pursuing it.
It dispatched the five nearest with projectiles. Seconds later, another five stopped moving.
“You’re letting it get away!”—Mika broadcast.
So close to success, so close to finishing the chase, and yet so uncertain of the outcome, they couldn’t lose it now. There was only one acceptable course of action to prevent its escape.
Lord Mika shifted for a better perspective. Mm. Can’t be more than fifty Angels close to the Aelo at this angle. He drew his sword. He could destroy entire planets at this setting. One annoying Aelo and fifty inept Angels would not withstand the destructive beam.
He said a brief prayer of thanks to Alum for the courage of his team, and fired on the tight knot of Angels as they closed in on their prey.
The energy unleashed converted all in its path to plasma, Angels and Aelo alike. Lord Mika took stock of his losses. And blinked.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, Lord Mika stood alone on the Main stage in the Hall of Alum, facing the glorious mini-galaxy at the center.
He dropped to his knees, trembling at the might of his Lord. He was ready to atone for his failure to capture the adversary. Destroying it, along with tens of Angels, was a tactical disappointment.
Alum’s Hall appeared empty and silent but one never knew what kind of magic the Living God might use to isolate one supplicant from another. Mika wept at the majesty of his God and of the miracle that had brought him here across nearly fifteen million light years without a starstep. He had never experienced such a thing.
“Rise, my friend.” The voice was quiet, pitched low, and sounded...pleased.
Mika stood. Alum appeared on the stage in front of him, a simple man in front of the awe-inspiring, single-galaxy universe.
“I am yours to command, my Lord,” said the Angel.
“What is your evaluation of the engagement?”
“The Aelo intruder was vanquished with the regrettable loss of two Feathers of Angels and the Cybrid station, my Lord. The creature proved to be an extremely resourceful and skilled adversary. I thought it likely to prove impossible to capture without considerably larger losses.”
Alum said nothing. He stared at the Angel, giving no sign of judgment or emotion on his face. Finally, a hint of a smile formed on his lips. “And how do you think you will fare when you confront our true invader?” he asked.
Mika was confused. “How do you mean, my Lord? Is there another one?”
“This was simply a live test, so to speak. To ensure your Wing was properly prepared. We have lived with peace so long that the strategies and tactics of battle have been largely forgotten.”
Mika knew that anger was pointless. Still, he couldn’t help feeling resentment. “Many gave up their lives for this test, my Lord.”
“That was unavoidable.”
If Mika’s mercurial skin could have blushed with embarrassment, it would have radiated crimson at that moment. He realized his own role in the events of the past hours and felt a wave of humility wash over him. “I am imperfect as ever, my Lord.”
Alum raised his eyebrows. “Oh, no, not at all, my friend! You are not to blame. We shared in the development of this plan to capture or kill the intruder. Our losses were inherent in the strategy, not the implementation.”
He contemplated the miniature cosmos. “It wouldn’t have been useful to provide you with an inadequate adversary for this test. Fortunately, I have kept a small number of Aelu captive in stasis since the conquest. This one was more than willing to challenge your Wing.”
“Why would it do that, my Lord? Surely it must have remembered how thoroughly we dispensed with its people.”
“I promised it that if it could escape imprisonment, it would be free to seek out what remains of its people wherever they are hiding. Apparently, it preferred the odds against it, to being held in timeless imprisonment.”
“You believe the intruder is Aelu, then?”
“I believe the intruder is at least as capable as the Aelu and possibly more. Other than another Angel or Myself, it would be difficult to imagine a stronger adversary.”
“The Aelo fought well, perhaps even better than an Angel would have.”
Alum laughed and turned back to Mika. “My friend, though we have known each other for millions of years, you can still surprise me. I would not have thought it possible for you to admit such a thing.”
Mika bowed his head. “Perhaps we require improvements in our design,” he suggested.
Alum waved his hand dismissively. “I think you have proven yourselves admirably; you are up to the challenge. Let us not be overly concerned about minor collateral damage.” He touched the Angel’s shoulder. Instantly, they were in the more intimate environs of the well-appointed study they’d used for their last meeting. Strong, dark coffee sat steaming on the table between the sofas.
“Perhaps we could think of improvements to our strategy in the encounter to come,” said Alum. “Let us discuss this further.”
19
Leisha wandered the streets of twenty-first century virtual Manhattan, shopping for shoes. It was such a terribly antiquated diversion. She was surprised how much she enjoyed it. With so many important things to do in Alternus, it was a trivial extravagance to spend so much time on one’s appearance. But it was her only hobby.
She was glad Darya hadn’t forced her to adopt the avatar of the body she instantiated into in Alternus. Central bankers in the simulated Earth were clearly not selected for their physical charms, it seemed, but for other skills.
Bad enough that the game, itself, turned out to be so much tedious work. To have been saddled with that old hag’s face and physique would have made it unbearably dreary. The Alternus inworld planet is so much more attractive now that several million of its formerly mundane inhabitants have been overlaid with Cybrid avatars.
Leisha had been working diligently on her appearance over much of the tens of millennia of her relatively young existence. She wanted to be regarded as someone special. Sure, everyone was “beautiful” in his or her inworld avatar but it was a mundane, plastic beauty. Few made a serious study of beauty beyond the façade. Few studied fashion or behavioral nuances like the way a person moved or laughed or spoke.
Many of the characteristics the Cybrid mind found beautiful had their origins in the human brain upon which Cybrid lattices were modeled. Leisha was expert in all of them.
She wanted to stand out, and she did. Not the way Mary did, with her strategic compilation of brash obesity, asymmetrical features, and outlandish embellishments. That was too far. No, Leisha wanted to be known as someone who was mysteriously more elegant, refined, sexy, and fashionable than anyone else among the millions of inworld avatars with whom she might interact over her existence. She wanted to have a beauty people noticed but couldn’t immediately define.
It was a fun hobby and had led to thousands of interesting liaisons in Vacationland.
Leisha ditched her small security detail so she could enjoy herself freely, unfettered. She was looking for something unique, something special, to update her Fall wardrobe. Fortunately, her inworld salary as Director of the World Bank/IMF allowed a rather extravagant budget for her latest passion, and Manhattan happened to be the shoe shopping capital of the North American continent.
She’d spent all morning scouring the shops in the Bowery district and was hoping to have her afternoon occupied with the better stores in Greenwich Village. But, first, she was hungry.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. One frequently ate and enjoyed the exquisite flavors that were available inworld, but you never actually had to eat. On Alternus, eating wasn’t the luxury it was in other simulations; it was a necessity. One’s avatar became noticeably less efficient, even grumpy, if not regularly fed.
Leisha stopped at one of her favorite restaurants in the area, a lovely café that could have been taken right off the streets of Paris. She took a table on the small patio and ordered her favorite, the duck crepe and a glass of Shiraz. The wine arrived and she sat back to savor the complex bouquet.
“Excuse me, you’re Leisha aren’t you?” a stranger said over the cast-iron fence separating the restaurant from the public sidewalk. She looked up at the lean, handsome man with immaculately groomed graying hair.
Caught off guard, she sputtered, “Ah, ah, yes, I am.” She remembered where she was. “Outworld, that is. Here, I’m Natalie Grishwold. Do I know you?”
The man laughed, a casual, comfortable laugh as if between old friends. “Of course, Ms. Grishwold. I didn’t intend to make you uncomfortable by speaking out of character. Gerhardt told me your inworld name, but he neglected to tell me how stunning you are. The pictures from your official appearances don’t do you justice.”
Leisha relaxed and preened for the stranger, happy to let go of the need to keep up her strict, professional inworld persona, however briefly. “You know Gerhardt?”