The expression “right under your nose” flared in my mind. Did Damon know what had happened when he recruited Tress to find me? His notes made no mention of it, but maybe he created the memory drive prior to meeting up with him. If I was General Ambrose, I could have taken a number of loyal soldiers, plus additional recruits from the Starcade, and invaded a neighboring planet that didn’t have defenses or starfleets like Terra or Gaia. I could threaten the leaders of that world to evacuate, and then build my facility and set up defense grids around the planet.
“Tristain,” I finally said. “Tress told me his planet went on an evacuation alert. Later, when I flew into the system, I couldn’t scan the planet because of a weaponized defense grid.”
A hint of a smile played at the corners of Smithson’s mouth. He typed furiously on his desk and a holographic screen locked in on planet Tristain. But its image was fuzzy and glowed red.
“It’s out of range of my scanners. But that has to be it. All I need to do now is reconfigure my mainframe to merge with the artificial intelligence program.”
Al. “What?”
“I told you I needed the program, Daniel. That’s why I summoned you here, so you could bring it to me.”
“But what’s going to happen to Al?” I asked.
Smithson stopped moving his fingers and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he looked up at me, it was with a soft and sympathetic expression.
“Daniel, the artificial intelligence program isn’t a person. It doesn’t have a name. It’s a machine, constructed by engineers. One of those creators was your father, so I understand that you feel an attachment to it. But it’s obvious to me now that sending you into space alone was a mistake. You latched on to the program like it was a friend.”
Al was a friend, no matter what else he was.
“But you need to understand something. With the program installed into my mainframe, I can not only extend my search parameters to Tristain, but it’s possible I can use the artificial intelligence to connect to whatever computer they installed in the facility and disable it.”
“Meanwhile,” I said, trying not to think of Al being ripped out of my ship against my wishes, “what happens to the people and the soldiers who launch the attacks?”
“Daniel.” Again, he used my name with a sympathetic tone. “We are only two people. What can we do to change the course of two planets and their people? Even if we told the militaries that Ambrose worked alone, the Gaian people would still label him as a terrorist and launch against Terra.”
His words left me speechless. A man I once looked up to was ready to give up and not even attempt to try to stop the onslaught? Autumn stepped in front of me with her arms crossed and spoke louder than either of us.
“Do you know what Daniel did? What he went through up to this point? He risked his life to let me escape from the Sentinels and that Leondren monster. He risked his life and nearly died of blood loss when he surrendered himself to stand with the council . . . so he could save them!”
Not to mention when Granak stranded me in the Karthan solar system, and I flew through the battle between Gaian and Terran starships when I arrived.
“And where did that get him?” Smithson said. “Did it solve anything? We’re on the brink of war, General Ambrose and his mercenaries are still out there wreaking havoc, and more council members died.”
“All council members would be dead if not for him,” she said, her voice stern.
Smithson hesitated in his retort, but he was sure and confident in his resolve.
“War is tragic and people die. I want to stop the war as much as anyone, but we have to think of the endgame. If Ambrose is allowed to use his weapons and the fleets are destroyed, Sarah King and Infinity will have free reign to move into this system and claim it for their empire.”
When I first set foot on the Echelon years ago as a security officer, I was proud and honored to serve under my father’s friend, Gregory Smithson. I wanted to become him one day. The man who sat in front of me wasn’t the man I thought he was.
“What have you done?” I asked. The fear of insubordination was gone, and the thoughts that this man was somehow still in charge of me vanished.
“Excuse me?”
“All this time, the council being murdered and the Gaian economy being destroyed by the atmospheric device, what have you done to stop any of it? What have you done to prevent it?”
“I told you—” he started, but I threw up my hand and spoke over him.
“I heard, you’re thinking of the endgame. But while you’ve been sitting here, tinkering with your computer and luring me to acquire the artificial—no Al—people are out there dying. Ambrose is winning. Sarah King is winning. You go ahead and keep thinking about the endgame, Smithson. Meanwhile, I’m going to think about the here and now.”
Just like Autumn told me to do.
I walked out of the office, ignoring him as he yelled my name. Down the hall, I could hear the soft conversations of the council. When I walked into the living area, everyone grew silent.
“Mr. Quinn,” Burns said.
“Captain, actually,” I corrected. Was it Autumn’s words that gave me confidence, or maybe the thought of Smithson sitting in his office doing calculations like a coward? Either way, I knew what had to be done now. Tress needed to know about his planet. If there was anything we could do, we would, but this war had to be prevented first and foremost.
“Who among the council is native to Gaia?” I asked.
“I am,” Trent said.
“Okay. Everyone else is going to stay here. Trent, you’re coming with me.”
“Where are we going?” he said as he stood, favoring his left leg.
“We’re going to stop this war.”
Twenty
Trent and Autumn followed me out of Smithson’s house and into the Belle. We climbed to the first floor corridor and met Tress on the way to the bridge.
“Come with us,” I said to him.
Smithson didn’t argue against us leaving the house—why would he? With his control of Al’s program, he grounded us on Gaia, but that didn’t mean we were helpless.
The first thing I did on the Belle was reveal to Tress what happened to his planet, how it was most likely a staging front for outsourcing weapons and technology to Terra and Gaia.
“When I left,” he said, his eyes a deep shade of blue, “my parents were still there. I don’t know if they ever made it out.”
Al translated his words to Autumn and Trent as I spoke to him.
“We will do everything we can for your planet and people, but with the defensive grid surrounding Tristain, we have few options right now.”
“And what options are those?” Trent’s gritty voice was strained with fatigue. “Terra is about to launch and my planet is nothing but death. What the hell can anyone do now?”
“To fight a war, you need two sides,” I said. “You’re in a government role of some kind, correct?”
“Yes. I oversee the distribution of sustenance to all the Gaian military and make sure they have adequate food on their ships.”
“Then you should have some contacts in the military.” I leaned forward and folded my hands together. “We need to get into the Gaian military compound and speak to whoever is in charge. If we can explain the situation to them, maybe we can stop them from launching against Terra.”
“Commander Sutton. We could speak to him. Any request or transfer order has to go through him, but even if we convince him to not go to war, what’s going to stop Terra from launching an assault on the planet itself?”
“It’s a risk,” I said. “A damn big risk. But if Gaia lays down its arms and stands against war, then we can use the council to make a plea to any oncoming Terran forces and ask them to disengage. It might work, it might not, but I’m not willing to sit around while Gregory Smithson ignores the here and now.”
“I’m going,” Autumn said. Tress mirrored her comment, but I shook my head.
>
“No one else is going with us. Tress, you’re the only one besides Smithson who has any idea of how this ship works. I know your training is limited, but it might come to good use. Autumn, I need someone to stand beside Tress. I don’t trust Smithson to do what’s right for the council.”
Both of them nodded, though Autumn crossed her arms and glared at me, obviously unsatisfied with my decision. I needed someone here to watch after my ship and Al. Plus, if things went bad, I didn’t want either of them caught in the crossfire.
“Daniel,” Autumn said. “Your weapons are in the cargo bay.”
“My weapons?”
“After you left to stand with the council, and then the explosion, Reynold and I went looking for you. We found the Sentinel who disarmed you and Reynold took him down and recovered your weapons. I thought you might need them, just in case.”
In times of stress, one of the most relieving things is familiarity, and knowing my weapons waited for me lessened my anxiety. Autumn, Tress, and Trent walked down to the cargo bay while I stopped in my quarters. My tactical battle suit was damaged from the parade fight, but it still held the best chance of keeping me alive. Although the left arm and pant leg were sliced up, the rest was in good condition. I eased the shielded breastplate over my head and fastened the shoulder attachments, then attached the knee guards and my reinforced boots.
“Al?” I asked just as I was ready to leave.
“Yes, Captain.”
“I know that Smithson has control over you, but I want you to know I’m happy and relieved that you’re okay. I wish I could stop him from taking you away.”
“Your response is understandable, considering human emotion. I have been installed in your mainframe for five years, eleven months, twenty-two days, three hours, fifteen minutes, and seven seconds. In that time, because you were alone on this ship, you built a psychological connection to me and taught me how to speak more like a human and interact with you and others.”
“Right. Well, I just wanted to tell you that you’ve been an important part of my life.”
I exited the room and walked down the corridor, trying my best to fight off tears. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Al’s answer, but I hoped it wouldn’t have been so . . . predictable, so similar to something Smithson would have said. It hurt to think in our years together Al didn’t register the difference I noticed in him. He was a computer when it all came down to it, but he truly was one of my closest friends. If the reason was because of my psychological need for something to connect to, then so be it.
“Captain,” Al said through the corridor speakers.
“Yes, Al?”
“My programming finds existence would be . . . difficult without your presence, sir.”
This time I couldn’t hold back the tears.
Just as Autumn said, my weapons were packed into the cargo net in the bay. The door was still open, showing the view of Smithson’s home and letting in a warm breeze. I pulled the weapons out and looked them over. The revolver still had the majority of its plasma charge, and the blade looked sharp enough to cut through metal.
I reached back with the sword and the magnetic strip on my back pulled it into position. Smithson emerged from his house. He carried an assault rifle over his shoulder and stared grimly in my direction. Was he coming over to stop me from leaving? Should I aim my revolver at him before he could point his toward me?
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked when he reached the bottom of the ramp. His rifle didn’t move from its position, so I didn’t move mine either. All the same, I tried to be ready for anything.
“This war doesn’t have to happen.” I walked toward him. “I understand you’re concerned about this weapons facility, but there’s little use for distributing them if we can convince everyone to stop pulling the triggers.”
“So, you think you’re going to march into Gaian HQ and demand that they lay down their arms?”
“We’re going to try. Have you ever stopped scanning and analyzing to take a look at the worlds around you? Do you even know everything that’s happened? How three of the council were horrifically murdered? How thousands of people were probably killed in the parade bombing? Do you realize what the atmospheric device that’s killing Gaia’s plants means for its economy? Stop looking at just the facts and look past them, see what it’s going to mean for the people in the future. ”
He glanced back at his house and lowered his rifle.
“The computer will take another hour or two to stabilize and backup the data before I attempt to install the artificial intelligence. Despite what you think of me, Daniel, I want these people saved just as much as you do. And if you’re going to talk to the Gaian government, you’re going to need a ride there. So, let’s go.”
Smithson returned to his house without any response from us. I didn’t know what to think. Was this his way of supporting my opinions, or was it his way of keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t make a bad situation worse?
Either way, he said he had a ride, so I had little choice but to accept his offer, if you could call it that. A small wooden garage sat past his house. My bionic eye detected decay and rot in the wood. I didn’t notice the same abnormalities from his house, but at the time, I wasn’t focused on that. I didn't even stop to think about the atmospheric device’s ramifications on buildings.
A robust open-ended hover vehicle waited for us inside the garage. After we climbed in, Smithson activated its engines and sped into the open field. The closer we got to the surrounding forest, the more I saw just how bad the damage was. Leaves abandoned the numerous trees, and even their branches were wilting into nothing.
“If this device is killing plants and trees, how is it not affecting living creatures?” I asked.
“It is affecting us. Slowly, but many people have already suffered in health from unknown ailments,” Smithson said in a neutral tone. “In the last twenty-four hours, patient counts for the hospitals in the region nearly doubled. Whether the device is affecting us directly or through the water supply, we’re all going to start dying off one by one."
The thought of the tainted air I breathed made my skin crawl.
“Why hasn’t the military shot the damn thing down yet?”
“It has some kind of cloaking device. You can trace it and narrow its location, but the radius is still too wide to see it or disable it.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of facility could create devices so destructive and deadly. It seemed to me that Ambrose and King weren’t just trying to fuel the fire between the Terrans and Gaians; they were also trying to accelerate the process.
What was Infinity? And how did King fit into it? Was she its leader or another pawn being controlled by someone even more dangerous? A radical group seemed the perfect place for Raymond Erebos, what with his fear of alien races and aspirations for control. But when he showed up on Dawn with King, he claimed he held no allegiance to her whatsoever. If he told the truth, that meant humanity had two groups of dangerous people ready and willing to destroy or enslave alien life for the greater good of humanity.
How ironic that in her quest to strengthen her own species, she was willing to murder millions to attain her goal. It disgusted me.
The trip was quiet. Neither Smithson nor Trent muttered a single word. With the infected wind whipping at our faces, whistling as we drove past, my thoughts traveled to Granak. The last time I saw him was at Damon Derringer’s home, trashing it to make a statement. How did he fit into all this? And why would an alien hater like King hire him? Unless she didn’t hire him, in which case Ambrose did. So, did the cyborgs still retain some kind of individuality, or were they controlled completely by King? Somewhere out there in the galaxy, my best friend Jason Hobbes stood by her side, a mutated cybernetic freak all because of her.
Multiple structures appeared down the road. Each structure was dome-shaped with glass roofs and walls of a warm off-white. The buildings were spread out more than the Te
rran ones, which made this look less like a city and more like a rural town. As we drove closer, I scanned them to find that their walls suffered from the same degradation as the wood and grass around Smithson’s home.
Trent’s breath caught as he witnessed the desolate roads and buildings with no person in sight. Every now and then, my eye picked up movement past some of the windows, but Smithson quickly drove us beyond them.
“Last I heard, the emergency system requested everyone to get indoors and under a secure shield. Some mobile units were distributed as safe houses.”
And here we were outside, cruising. Smithson turned left at an intersection and drove another mile before we slowed in front of a five-story rectangular building. A steel fence surrounded it and camouflaged assault vehicles littered the parking lot. We drove up to a security access tower and stopped.
“That’s odd,” Trent said. “Someone should be here.”
“Maybe they just took shelter like everyone else?”
“Maybe, but each building has its own filtered air unit for protection from gasses.”
Smithson opened the door and eased out, aiming his rifle. My eye didn’t scan anything threatening in the vicinity, but it’s never a bad thing to be prepared. He climbed the stairs into the tower and opened the security gate.
“No sign of anyone being stationed there for a few days,” he said after he got back into the vehicle. We moved forward and stopped in front of the main entrance, where we got out. That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood erect and a cold tingle traveled through my body. On instinct, I drew my revolver with my left hand and reached for the sword with my right. I turned in a slow circle and made sure my eye scanned over every detail within my line of sight. Again, nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but when I focused on the entrance door, I saw that the locking mechanism was disengaged. I walked up to it and eased the door open. The room beyond was dark.
Antagonize (From the Logs of Daniel Quinn Book 2) Page 18