Engines of Empire

by Max Carver

  He was hoping the destroyer would put on some speed and pursue him so he could bring it in range of the plasma artillery on the far side. At least one of those artillery guns had been taken out by the firefight and crashes inside the station, maybe more.

  “Minerva, how's that plasma artillery looking?”

  “Seven guns currently operational,” she replied. “Five still offline, three with irreparable damage, two can be ready in a matter of hours, following repairs and debris removal—”

  “So, seven,” he said.

  Ellison's curving path around the defense station cut off his view of the destroyer. The destroyer didn't seem to be budging at all, though; it was chasing after him with gunfire, but not with its massive body.

  Plasma and glowing green artillery shells ripped into the station, causing massive explosions, tearing gaping holes in the station's steel walls. The destroyer wasn't going to bother pursuing him around the station; it was just going to blast right through it. Already, debris was flying in all directions, tools and beams from the badly ruptured defense station.

  “Slow me way down,” Ellison said, since he didn't have time to find the reverse thrusters himself. He began to lose velocity as he approached the midpoint of the half ring. “Minerva, I have one last job for the constructors.”

  “Only forty percent remain operational.”

  “That'll be zero by the time I'm done. First, tell them to tear down whatever's left of the inner wall of the ring... ”

  While more heavy fire from the destroyer continued ripping up the inner wall of the space station, the machines inside began cutting, smashing, and torching their way out. One constructor bot, with massive flat feet and two hands like the blades of bulldozers, pushed out a long section of the inner wall, then toppled out into space along with the wall section, unable to save itself.

  Ellison rounded the bend and was now on his way back toward the destroyer instead of running away from it. The curve of the space station protected him for the moment, but the orbital station was unraveling fast as its structure was attacked from both the outside and the inside. Soon he would reach the other end and be completely exposed to the destroyer's guns.

  “Ready?” Ellison said.

  “As much as possible,” Minerva replied.

  “Critical repairs needed. System failure imminent,” the fighter's AI added in its detached, bored-sounding tone.

  “Sounds great,” Ellison said. “Let's go.”

  He cleared the end of the half-built station and immediately began shooting his plasma missiles at the destroyer, one after the other.

  At the same time, the plasma artillery guns within the station opened fire, unleashing spheres of plasma, each one like a blinding white boulder.

  “Only four artillery remain in operation,” Minerva said. The destroyer's continued bombardment had taken its toll.

  “Keep firing them,” Ellison said. “Never stop, even when I'm dead.”

  He'd had the constructor bots turn the artillery guns in a direction they'd never been meant to go—inward, so they could shoot through the remnants of the inner ring wall.

  Now the huge blobs of plasma fired from the wrecked station converged on the destroyer, engulfing its bow in burning white.

  Ellison emptied his fighter's missiles at the destroyer, adding whatever damage he could on his way out.

  The destroyer responded with six missiles, all closing in fast on Ellison's fighter.

  “Eject!” he shouted.

  The low canopy snapped open, and Ellison was catapulted out, perpendicular to the chewed-up fighter. He didn't fire the jets on his suit; he was already moving too fast for comfort.

  The missiles annihilated his fighter seconds after he left, consuming it completely, leaving only ribbons of molten metal behind.

  The space station was doing the same to the destroyer, though, the artillery guns pounding it with plasma until it was lost inside the glowing white cloud.

  “Let's not forget the Antony,” Ellison said, pointing. The destroyer was limping away at low speed, a gaping hole in its side from his first fighter's kamikaze attack. “Don't let it go.”

  The artillery guns fired after it; a couple of them had to shoot through the outer hull of the station first.

  Ellison watched with satisfaction as their shots landed, finishing off the destroyer.

  No survivors, Ellison thought, looking at the burning remnants of both destroyers. Then he remembered there had been no one alive on those ships, and never had been.

  A smile crept onto his face as he watched them burn.

  Chapter Twenty

  Earth

  Diego eventually led Colt and the others to a dark, damp industrial space that had once been a central water-treatment facility, where he left them for what seemed like hours.

  Hope held Birdie close, trying to comfort the cold, shivering little girl. Paolo kept his distance from everyone, staring at nothing with hard, angry eyes, resisting any attempt to speak to him or make him feel better. Recovering from the loss of his brother would take time.

  Colt sat with Mohini atop a length of pipe wide enough to walk in, which gave them a somewhat wider view of the old water-treatment complex. He held his rifle ready in case of metalheads.

  “How sure are you that we can break into the installation and capture the Simon?” he asked.

  “Not at all. But we have to try,” Mohini said.

  “And you really think people on other worlds will care what happens here?”

  “You don't?” she asked.

  “It's been two decades since Carthage defeated Earth,” Colt said. “Since they turned our world into this waking nightmare. Has anyone ever showed up to help us? In any way? From any world? The rest of humanity has abandoned us. None of them care about us here on Earth. None of them ever think about Earth at all.”

  “That's not true,” Mohini replied, very quietly. “They think of Earth often. Everyone's ancestors come from here. But mostly, when they think of Earth... they're frightened of what will happen to them if they try to stand against Carthage. Earth is the head of a defeated enemy, spiked outside the tyrant's castle as a warning to everyone.”

  “You don't know what's happening on other worlds,” he said, feeling his temper rise. “Nobody does. The machines don't allow us any communication with other worlds. You know what I think? I think you're making everything up. This idea that other people out there care about Earth? That they're going to change their minds and turn on Carthage if you show them Simon Nix's sick experiments? That's all just... wishful thinking. You have no more idea than I do what's happening out there.”

  “But I do,” she said. “My plan will work. Even the people on Carthage do not truly know the horrors of their regime. They know less than people on other worlds.”

  “How? How could you have any idea what they know? How could you know anything?”

  “I'm not from Earth,” she said, her voice lower than ever.

  “Okay, but... what do you mean? Not from Earth? Did you really just say that?” He blinked, a little confused.

  She whispered something too low for him to hear.

  “What?” he asked, leaning in.

  “Carthage,” she said. “I'm from Carthage.”

  He was so stunned, he almost lost his balance and slid down off the massive pipe.

  Reflexively, he gripped his rifle tighter.

  “Why did you lie?” he asked.

  “I didn't lie that much,” she said. “I did come here as a stowaway. The machines did kill him. We are here to gather hard evidence about the horrors of Earth. That's why I know this knowledge really could affect people on Carthage. Because... I'm from there. And it affected me. They always taught us in school that Earth deserved to be punished for standing against us, for standing against the future. But they never really made it clear why. Asking questions just gets you in trouble, though. Everyone just blindly claims that we have a free society, the best society in history, but
it turns out the boundaries are narrow and the walls are high. People just can't see the wall because there's a big sports tournament, or game show, or sitcom being projected on it. There's bread and circus, food and entertainment, and most people choose not to question too much beyond that. Some of us do, though.”

  Colt felt so overwhelmed with questions, as well as suspicion, that he wasn't sure how to respond. “Why?” he finally asked. “What makes you different from everyone else on Carthage?”

  “It's not just me. There's a... rebellion. Not a big one, not on Carthage itself, but we exist. In my case, I found out my mother was one of those who planned the destruction of Earth.”

  “Was she a general or something?”

  “She was in the Carthaginian State Department, developing Earth policy. She recommended maximum aggression.”

  “Oh.” Colt looked around the dead water-treatment facility. “Well, they sure listened to her, didn't they?”

  “Yes.” Mohini looked down. “That's why I wanted this mission. To move against the evil she did. I can never undo the horror, and all the deaths... but I will do all I can to see justice done.”

  “Justice?” Colt laughed. The word sounded archaic and irrelevant, like freedom or holiday or peace. “There's no justice on this world. You fight, you scavenge, you die.” He thought over what she'd said. “So what are your real plans?”

  “Just as I said. I have been as honest as possible with you, Colt.”

  “You want to break into the metalheads' Chicago headquarters, kidnap the chief metalhead, cut off his metal head, and steal his CPU and memory banks?”

  “Yes. But I can't do it alone. I need to recruit local assets. That's why I need to meet with the rebels.”

  “So is that me? I'm a 'local asset'?” Colt asked.

  “Exactly. My favorite asset.” She smiled, and he laughed again. The situation was surreal.

  “And now you're telling me the complete truth? There's nothing else you're leaving out?” he asked.

  “Not much of importance.”

  “Can we work that down from 'not much' to 'nothing'?” he asked.

  She hesitated, staying silent.

  “I'm going to look back on this when I find out... whatever I'm eventually going to find out,” Colt told her. “I'll look right back on this moment.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “There is one small thing.”

  “Of course. How small?”

  “I didn't rescue you from the installation.”

  Colt had to run this sentence through his brain a second time to process it. “Yes, you did,” he finally said. “The creepy medical bot. Nurse Kitty. You took it over and cut me loose. That was your voice. Right?”

  “No,” Mohini said. “That's what I'm telling you. I barely escaped those reapers in the tunnel, only because I had a little plasma left. I thought you were dead. I ran away.”

  “But you told me... the robot told me where you were. And if the machines knew that, why didn't they come after us?”

  “I think someone else intervened.”

  “Another hacker like you? We can use as many of you as we can get.”

  “Not like me,” Mohini said. “This would have been a software agent, but it does present as female. She represents someone, maybe a group of people, who have been helping the rebels on Carthage, and supposedly on many worlds. I didn't think she was present here on Earth until that night you came back from the dead with that wild story. Then I suspected. But I still don't know for sure.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The software agent appears as a silver female, calling herself Minerva,” Mohini said. “That's who got you out of the installation. Not me.”

  “So she's a machine?”

  “A program. She infects the empire's machines and travels out to their provinces and colonies, spreading copies of herself. Searching for local rebels she can aid.”

  “Why?”

  “We don't know who created her, so we don't know why. Some people say she's a group of hackers, others say she's a lone genius. Some people say she's an AI created by Ruckwold to work against Carthage.”

  “Who's Ruckwold?”

  “The second-largest defense contractor in the galaxy, after Carthage Consolidated. But it's a pretty distant second. Anyway, the point is, I don't know where she came from. But I think she saved you. That means she's infected Installation 34... and with a strong team, we can get in there and get what I need. Because she'll help.”

  “You're willing to bet your life on that?”

  “I don't have a choice. It's all I have.” She tensed up, and so did Colt.

  Footsteps approached, echoing softly off the subterranean concrete.

  Diego emerged from a dark corridor, followed by his older brother Fernando, plus a huge, quiet guy and a tough-looking girl Colt barely recognized as Terra, the older girl who'd left with Fernando to join the rebels. They wore dark clothes, their bodies strung with weapons and ammunition.

  “Is that her?” the girl asked, pointing at Hope.

  “No.” Diego pointed at Mohini. “Her.”

  Mohini cast Colt a worried look.

  “We'll be fine,” Colt whispered, though he wasn't sure of that at all.

  He took her hand, and they slid together down the side of the huge pipe and dropped to the concrete floor below. At a different time, it could have almost been fun.

  Together, they approached Diego and the three rebels. Hope fell in line beside them, clutching Birdie's hand. Paolo watched warily from a distance.

  Colt felt his heart hammer. He hoped he'd done the right thing by bringing Mohini here, that she was truly here to help them. It was nearly impossible to trust someone from Carthage, though, even if she had confessed it herself. It was hard to imagine Carthaginians as truly human at all. He'd always thought of them as evil, demonic puppet masters, cackling as they remote-controlled the machines that destroyed worlds.

  For that matter, he hoped Mohini wasn't a sophisticated android, a Greek horse that he was rolling up to the gates of Troy. That was another story Mother Braden had told them. Nearly all her stories seemed aimed at preparing them for combat of one kind or another.

  Mother Braden had raised them, and now she had given herself in the ultimate sacrifice. She had gone down just as she had chosen, fighting to the last, taking out a huge swath of the enemy as the youngest were saved. Colt hadn't even begun to consider what that would mean, what life for their group would be like without her.

  If Mohini was telling the truth, and there was any chance that they could strike a meaningful blow against the machines, then he was going to be part of it. He would make sure Mother Braden's sacrifice led to a much larger victory in time.

  “Okay,” Diego said, looking up at his older brother, Fernando. “You remember Colt and Hope. This is Mohini, the deadly hacker I was telling you about.”

  “Hello,” Mohini said, stepping forward to face the rebels. “I'm from Carthage, and I need your help.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Carthage

  Audrey stood on the bridge of the minicarrier CISS Atreus and looked down at her home planet below.

  Carthage was a green-blue world, sixty percent water, a perfect habitat for the human species. It was rich in native flora and fauna, the most intelligent of which appeared to be a genus of giant, talkative migratory birds believed to have vocabularies of hundreds of words and roughly the intelligence of a kindergartener. The birds had no technology, though, and posed no threat to human settlement.

  Intelligence was rare in the galaxy, a fact that Audrey didn't find exactly surprising. It had made human colonization easy so far. She wondered what would happen when they encountered another technologically advanced species, or if they ever would. Perhaps the other galactic arms teemed with advanced cultures and interplanetary civilizations; so far, the Orion Arm certainly did not. Time was an issue, too, many had pointed out—if interstellar travelers had reached Earth at any time before t
he rise of human civilization, they would have found the planet an easy conquest, with no intelligent species to resist.

  A dozen space elevators extended out from Carthage, staggered evenly along the planet's equator, like spokes of a titanic wheel. Concentric circles of industrial complexes were spaced out along these massive elevator cables like planetary rings, with wide gaps in between for ships to travel. Cargo ships from across the empire arrived nonstop, ferrying in every kind of raw material to feed into the orbital factories.

  Ships full of tribute, Audrey thought. There was no mining or industrial activity on the surface of Carthage anymore. Mining was outsourced to other planets, and industry was kept in space, leaving Carthage's planetary surface pristine, its air crisp and pure, it oceans and lakes clean and filled with life.

  Audrey had never truly left Carthage; she'd only had safe, fake digital journeys through virtual reality, usually an immersive documentary about nature or history on other planets.

  Veritum, a harsh world ruled by violent fanatics, would be different from anything she'd ever experienced, in software or in reality.

  She looked around the small bridge. Her father had given her an older, nearly obsolete minicarrier, equipped with two small destroyers—the Agamemnon and Menelaus—as well as eight starfighters and a battalion of five hundred and twelve reapers. She had left the Agamemnon behind, using that destroyer's hangar to store agricultural and construction equipment, medical supplies, and other forms of humanitarian aid. Veritum had no space power of its own, so she'd only need the one destroyer, hopefully for nothing but intimidation purposes.

  After many long days of planning and arguing, she was finally here. She'd ridden the elevator up from Carthage this morning. In less than an hour, she would depart on the long trip to Veritum, beyond even the so-called “third tier” of outer worlds, which were usually more recently settled, with smaller human populations.

  She was alone for the moment, but she'd insisted on bringing a small human crew with her. Audrey didn't want to be isolated in space, or on a strange planet, with only machines to keep her company.