Nepenthe Rising

by John Triptych

  Dhara ignored him as she floated out of the bridge and began making her way back towards the passenger areas. “AI, report defense bot status.”

  Her AI’s voice was cold, halting, and metallic. Despite having several audio options to choose from, she preferred to keep it distinctly machine-like. “Two defense bots available and ready for deployment. What are your orders?”

  “Defend Subject Zero. In the event of defeat, your last remaining unit is to execute her, is that clear?”

  “Orders confirmed. Deployment commencing.”

  Strand watched with his visor console as the lead battle drone successfully attached itself using nanocables along the length of the liner’s hull. “Okay, by the numbers. All warbots—deploy and breach.”

  At a distance, the battle drones resembled some sort of space wasps with glowing wings, since even these small craft needed magnetic radiators to bleed off the massive heat generated by their fusion engines. His small squadron of boarding craft had dutifully waited for nearly four days, just drifting stealthily near the dark matter field as they awaited the arrival of their quarry.

  Popularly known as shadow zones, these massive areas of dark matter tended to absorb waste heat and played havoc with ship sensors, so Strand had positioned his unit to lie in wait until the right moment. They even let the two ships slip by while they remained hidden in the shadow zone, using only their passive sensors to report and observe. When the liner came rushing back into the cloud, Stand’s strike teams knew their time had come.

  But the shadow zones carried their own elements of risk. Sensor readings tended to fail whenever a ship ventured too far into these unexplored areas, and quite a number of vessels had been lost in attempting to navigate through them. The most sensible of pilots tended to stay at the edges of the fields, just close enough to power up their t-drives in order to commence faster-than-light transit.

  Strand had heard of the old legends surrounding these shadow zones since he was born. Some told strange tales of starship crews encountering ghost ships in the black heart of the fields, while others said these hardly understood places might even be gateways to hell or to another dimension inhabited by beings unfathomable to ordinary senses. Many antecessor sects even worshipped these zones, proclaiming them to be the gateways to the Mysteries.

  Even though the spacers under his wing were visibly nervous as they drifted along the edges of the zone in their respective small craft, Strand had kept their morale up by constantly cracking jokes whenever he felt a need to speak to them over the com-link channels. Only when the sensors of his drone craft warned him of an impending ship arrival did he command his unit to go silent. With the operation now going smoothly, he could sense a renewed enthusiasm amongst his people.

  He watched silently as the first team breached an airlock with plasma welders midway along the port side of the liner. Less than a minute later, the second team sliced through part of the outer hull, this one closer to the crew section, near the bow. Civilian ships were the easiest to breach, for obvious reasons.

  Strand pursed his lips while he linked up with the optical video feed of the first warbot. Each keg-shaped unit was the size of a small land car, and bristled with armor and weaponry. Warbots were fully autonomous, and they could be given orders, just like the soldiers of old. Nevertheless, their simple AI systems tended to fight using predictable tactics, so it always necessitated having a sentient with them in case of unexpected situations.

  “Warbots six and seven, make your way towards the crew area and set up a blocking position near the main accessway—if any of the crew attempt to intervene, take them down. Otherwise just maintain and hold,” Strand said as his own drone ship began her docking maneuver. “Warbots eight and ten, you will act as reserves. Teams one and two, head to the passenger section.”

  He could see that Spacer Karem had gone first into a nearby side corridor. Not good. “Karem, don’t get ahead of the bots, stay behind them as cover.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Karem said. “I thought we could maybe cover more ground this way.”

  Strand frowned as the pod door opened behind him. Karem was always the daring one. “The procedures I trained you under are going to keep you alive. Stick to them. Don’t worry about the time, we’ve got plenty of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  One of his side monitors showed Karem’s point of view, since Strand’s command interface could cycle remotely through all of their helmet recorders. The ship’s passenger sections were a jumble of different corridors, and his small team could easily get flanked and cut off. Fortunately, the intelligence they had gleaned from their source had told them the resistance would be minimal, but Commander Creull didn’t want to take any chances, so she ordered a full-scale boarding operation accompanied by warbots.

  With his drone craft now attached to the hull of the drifting ship, Strand used his suit’s jump thrusters to propel himself towards the Tamaishi’s breached airlock. Standard operating procedure was for unit commanders to stay behind and command their forces from a safe distance, but he preferred to lead from the front.

  This was Karem’s second boarding operation, and he was high-strung. Days sitting in the pod bay of the battle drone had made him twitchy, and he was eager to prove himself to the senior officers of the crew. Forgetting the orders of his superior, he used the arm-mounted lasers of his battle suit to breach a number of doors, hoping to find their target ahead of the others. The AI implant on the back of his skull had a stored image of the person they were looking for, and it was now a matter of hide and seek.

  The first few rooms he had burst into held a number of shrieking civilians, all of them writhing in their crash chairs, some holding their arms up in the air while others covered their faces, too terrified to stare at a youth encased in an armored power suit with jutting weapons. Running the aspect recognition program on his visor, he scanned them individually to make sure they weren’t the target before he moved on to the next cabin.

  As the warbot to his right began to breach an unexpected closed bulkhead ahead of them, Karem turned to his left and noticed a small open accessway. With his visor detecting movement in this narrow crawlspace, his aspect guidance system outlined what looked to be a human form holding some sort of long rod in his arms, pointing at them.

  With no time to lose, Karem manually aimed the shoulder-mounted gauss rifle on his suit and fired two short bursts into the narrow tunnel, ripping the sides of the shaft open. Activating the powerful searchlight near the top of his helmet, Karem adjusted his sensor readings for a closer look. When the clear image of his target was finally revealed in his visor, he let out a gasp. Just a few meters down the length of the accessway were floating pieces of a man, his face locked in a silent scream, the corpse’s eyes staring straight into Karem. The tool the dead man had once held was a repair rod.

  Strand’s voice boomed over his helmet’s internal audio. “Karem, what the hell are you doing? I’m on my way towards your position.”

  The moment the lead warbot tore open the bulkhead, Karem gritted his teeth and used his suit’s thrusters to get ahead of it. With his concentration lost, he had become even more reckless, for now he would surely be punished for an unauthorized killing. Commander Creull had specifically told them to avoid civilian casualties. Karem’s guilt had compelled him to rush on ahead, in an attempt at finding their target right away to make up for the shame of what he had done.

  Strand’s voice over the closed circuit was louder than ever. He was clearly not happy. “Karem, hold your position, goddamn it!”

  The orders didn’t seem to affect him. Karem fired his thrusters again, moving rapidly through null gravity. An intersection loomed up ahead, and now his sensors were telling him the target was close by. With the two warbots behind him systematically breaching the nearby cabins, Karem had a hunch their quarry would be at the far end of the next corridor, so he raced ahead, for he wouldn’t let the machines beat him to it.

  Just as he
made it into the intersection, his suit’s alarms went off. Turning to his right, Karem yelled out in surprise as he stared at another bot just floating along the center of the passageway. This robot had a completely different make and paintjob, with the golden crest of the Union Star Force embedded below its main sensor module.

  He instinctively turned and tried to use his thrusters to get back behind the previous corridor, but it was too late. Karem’s suit was peppered with multiple lasers and gauss rifle fire. His armored suit took most of the damage, the front part of his ribcage nearly ablating away as the flash beams of the lasers tore into the battle suit’s outer shell. He would have survived the enemy warbot’s initial salvo to live another day had a lucky gauss rifle shot not penetrated the visor of his helmet, sending several shards of razor-like nanocarbon through his left eye and into his brain.

  Dhara could hear the fighting in the corridor just outside of their suite. The other defense bot was situated just inside the doorway, ready to blast at anything trying to get inside. She continued to float beside her ward, who remained strapped down on the crash couch at the far end of the room.

  Maeve gave her a look of bewilderment. “What’s going on?”

  Dhara didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Taking out a snub gauss pistol from her belt, she made sure it had enough charge for a full shot.

  Maeve tried to undo the straps once again, but she failed. “Dhara, please help me get out of this chair.”

  Dhara floated a few meters away from her. Gauss weapons tended to have more penetration at some distance, and she didn’t want to fire a second time. “You’re better off staying in the chair.”

  Maeve was crying, and it was fogging up her helmet visor. “Dhara, please let me go! I want to hold you!”

  Dhara wasn’t sure if she could do it, but she gritted her teeth and cut off her com-link to the girl’s suit. She could see Maeve waving her arms at her, frantically trying to get her attention, but all she could focus on was the pistol in her hand.

  When the door burst open, the defense bot began to fire through the walls, hoping to cause some damage at the enemy robots trying to make their way into the room. Since the pirates weren’t firing indiscriminately, the bot felt it stood a fighting chance. Its sensor readings were stating there were several enemy warbots just outside the corridor, so it continued to rake the walls with gauss rifle fire, for it had the best penetrative capabilities; it was reserving its laser batteries for up-close work should the enemy attempt to get inside the room.

  Dhara held onto the side of a table, trying to keep steady as her defense bot continued its fire. Each second seemed like an eternity as the warbots outside pinpointed the firing positions of her robot defender while it continued to shift back and forth in between prepared firing positions. Just as her robot moved to the alcove behind the door, the wall behind it was blown inward as the emerging pirate warbot fired its full barrage at the defending machine.

  She could only watch in despair as her defense bot turned and returned fire, even though it was clearly damaged. Another pirate warbot revealed itself, coming in from the open entryway, and the Union defense bot was quickly caught in a crossfire. The multiple salvos proved too much for even a heavily armored robot, and the machine’s last orders to kill Maeve were not carried out, as its core processing module shut down when its internal power unit was hit and disabled, along with the backups.

  Upon seeing her bot destroyed, Dhara clenched her jaw and aimed the gauss pistol at the teenage girl’s head. The wall behind her suddenly burst open and Dhara was tackled from behind by someone wearing a battle suit just as she started pulling the trigger. The force of impact drove her shoulders and helmet into the floor, knocking her out.

  3 Belief

  Sunday mornings on Earth were considered holy days, and there were still large numbers of worshippers attending the annual consecration of the antecessors, despite the lure of the modern-day, materialistic temptations of the world. Close to two thousand of the faithful showed up for the ritual at the Temple of the Mysteries in Rome, a tradition dating back close to two hundred years. Although the members of the congregation were mostly humans, the large numbers of synthetics in attendance made an impression for the hovering drones recording the event.

  Turning to his right, Director Erich von Steyr couldn’t help but be fascinated by the old building’s architecture. The temple itself was formerly an ancient church before its conversion into a place of worship for the antecessors. He was so engrossed by the carved gothic arches of old stone that he didn’t realize he was the only one who remained standing while the rest of the congregation had already sat back down on their pews.

  His secretary Hassan Obi gave him a gentle tap on the knee, and Erich quickly sat back down as the high cleric near the main altar continued his orations. Nobody else seemed to notice, nor would it have mattered.

  As a child, Erich had always wanted to be an architect, to design sweeping, larger-than-life buildings; being involved in every aspect of construction appealed to him. His father didn’t appreciate his “meager” aspirations and forced his only son to attend the most prestigious schools to prepare him to live the life of a corporate executive.

  “The corporations rule this union, don’t ever forget that,” his father once said. Despite his sadness at not being able to follow his dream, Erich could only thank his daddy in the end, for the elder one’s advice had ultimately proved right.

  The Union of Stellar Nations was formed from the ashes of the Great Schism, the pivotal event that divided galactic society into two distinct and competing factions. People referred to the unified federation as the Union for short, and it served as an effective government for over three hundred far-flung worlds, united in the concept of being governed by a representative democracy. With highly regulated markets producing all kinds of consumer goods and services for the benefit of the people, the Union continued to be economically and politically stable for over a hundred years. The Union prided itself on the concepts of free expression and merit through individual achievements, and the latest polls indicated its citizens were happier than at any other time since its formation.

  Erich knew better though. After quickly rising through the ranks of the executive class, he was groomed by his father to become his successor as head of one of the largest conglomerates in the galaxy. Erich’s father tragically passed away just before his son got promoted to the Executive Committee, yet good fortune remained within the family, for Erich’s ultimate ascension was close at hand.

  Even though elections were held twice every decade for numerous government offices, the political candidates of every planet were carefully chosen by the oligarchs of the Executive Committee, and woe to any ambitious politico bent on bucking the status quo. Even maverick outsiders who rode on the coattails of popular opinion to win an election quickly fell in line, as they each quietly pledged their allegiance to the true movers and shakers of the Union.

  Despite his heavy workload, Erich eventually found the time to engage in his hobby of architecture, indulging in virtual design work in his spare time. But in the end, he knew where the true power resided, and he felt lucky to have been born into a family of industrialists. Being part of the Executive Committee alone wasn’t enough to suit his ambitions, for he wanted to be its next chairman. To do so meant he needed to eliminate his rivals within the numerous directorates at any cost, and he was more than willing to do just that.

  When the ceremonies had finished, most of the congregation started filing out of the entrance, to once more indulge in the many luxuries available to them. Erich and his assistant made their way slowly towards the side exit, where there would be less of a crowd to wade through.

  Stepping out from a nearby alcove, Grand Cleric Frederico Santori met the pair near the northern vestibule, just below the archway. Santori gave a slight bow before extending his hand. “Good morning to you, Director von Steyr. It is an honor to have an esteemed member of the Executive Co
mmittee attending one of our humble services.”

  Erich shook the man’s hand. “Contrary to popular belief, we executives don’t just spend every waking hour in our stuffy little offices, your eminence. I’m here on business, but I also pay my respects to the antecessors.”

  Santori grinned and made a slight bow. He knew Erich had attended the services in order to be seen by the hovering camera drones recording the event, but it was better to remain polite in order not to antagonize the Temple’s biggest financial supporter. “Ah, despite all the worldly temptations of the flesh and mind, I’m gladdened that many still respect the Mysteries.”

  Erich nodded. “It’s always interesting to hear about the antecessors, although I’m not completely familiar with all of them. There are supposed to be twelve of these ancient races who once ruled the universe and gave rise to everything that came later, right?”

  “Correct. Though some of the smaller sects claim there are only ten, while some others say three, or even just one,” Santori said. “The ultimate knowledge of the antecessors remains hidden, and that is why we call it the Mysteries.”

  Erich looked around. “So which particular one of the Mysteries does this temple adhere to?”

  Santori beamed. “All of them.”

  Erich raised an eyebrow. “Really? Could you explain this to me?”

  “It shall be my pleasure,” Santori said. “Popular canon proclaims twelve separate antecessor races, of which only half are even named in the galactic archives via their characteristics. You have the crystalweavers, the stoneshapers, the obliterators, the lifeseeders, the methuselahs, and the gargantuans. The Temple of the Mysteries believes they’re all offshoots of the One Race, the ones who were there at the beginning of time, the creators.”

  Erich narrowed his eyes. “I understand now. A few hundred years before, this temple was a place of worship for another religion, one that stressed a single, all-powerful god ruling over everything. I can see how that ancient form of theology was adapted into this current one.”