The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  The Securitors blasted their way into one of the upper tunnels leading to the central chamber, and were headed toward the center to detain her.

  Dar set the timer on the bomb for seventy-five seconds and raced down the narrow tunnel to the escape chamber. She lodged herself firmly inside and secured the hatch door. Eighteen seconds to spare.

  Safely inside, she detonated a chain of chemical explosives behind her. The capsule vibrated and rumbled as the kilometer-long tunnel collapsed all the way from outside her makeshift lifeboat to the central control chamber. If any of the Securitors had managed to make it to the center, the choked tunnel would give her a little extra time to make her escape.

  The variation in projected trajectories are within plus or minus 20,000 kilometers of Secondus, 80% of the time. Still too broad; I don’t like those odds. At least the fragment she’d be using as an escape pod could be expected to survive more or less intact 96 times out of 100.

  Goodbye, Tertius.

  As the timer on the atomic bomb counted down the last few hundredths of a second, she wished she believed in a Higher Power to whom she could pray. Sadly, she had parted ways with faith long ago. Keep me safe—she pleaded to no one, anyway.

  Zero. The 100-kiloton explosion vaporized the inner part of the asteroid. An expanding fireball forced gasified rock out through the venting tunnels, obliterating her lab, her work, the connecting tunnels, and the waves of Securitors moving through the labyrinth to find her, along with all traceable evidence of her existence.

  Tragic, but nice and tidy. A clean slate.

  As predicted, the extreme heat and pressure from the massive blast splintered the planetoid along the lines Dar had meticulously mapped out. It propelled fragments brutally outward in all directions, including the crucial chunk cradling her crude escape pod.

  Though her Cybrid bulk filled the titanium-lined escape capsule to within a millimeter, she was thrown around like a dried bean inside a rattle. She berated herself for not incorporating a dense foam lining to cushion the buffeting. It had seemed an unnecessary luxury. This is sure to knock a couple of screws loose. Regardless, it’s a lot better than staying behind and letting the Securitors catch up with me.

  Great Alum, the Securitors! I didn’t take them into account. More to the point, I didn’t include the additional explosive energy that would be added by their antimercury fuel packs. Dar, you idiot!

  The nuclear reaction would have destroyed their containment fields; the resulting matter-antimatter reactions would have altered the acceleration and rotation of the discharged asteroid fragments, including the one she was riding in!

  She was lucky it hadn’t just killed her outright in the first second. She was alive, but off course, out of energy, and too far from a recharging option to recover. I’m dead. Or hopelessly off course, and then dead.

  If I don’t bring at least some of the systems back online right now and revise the computations, I’ll die for sure. And if I do go online, I’ll run out of power before I get to Secondus and likely die, anyway.

  Dar counted to a hundred trillion, slowly, and started accessing whatever external sensors remained functional. The sensors verified her suspicions. Overlooking the effect of the Securitors’ munitions and fuel had cost her dearly.

  As the external sensors began streaming data, Darya watched her unfortunate oversight blossom into a problem, a big problem. The trajectory of the escape pod was above the orbital plane; it would miss Secondus by almost ninety thousand klicks.

  She needed to get out of the pod within forty-seven seconds. That was her only chance to propel herself on a safe intercept course for home. And I'll have to do it without being observed by any Securitors in the vicinity.

  The fragment’s external sensors revealed that about fifty percent of the Securitor team had survived the destruction of the asteroid.

  She had significant blind spots over a large portion of her visual field, especially behind the hurtling rock fragment where the remaining Securitors were likely waiting. Her lifeboat was now a few hundred thousand klicks from the blast center but still within an area the Securitors might actively search. With any luck, their remaining sensors were concentrated nearer the origin of the blast.

  She activated the hatch release. Nothing happened. She sent the signal again. It remained closed. She snaked out a manipulator tendril and used a risky amount of her remaining power to try pushing aside the hatch. Jammed! The explosion must have deformed the titanium shell.

  Time was running out. She had to start the self-propelled leg of her brief journey home soon. If she missed the launch window, there would be no way to get back on course without drawing attention. The jet stream from her main drive would be visible for millions of klicks, an emergency flare in the deep darkness of space.

  I’m moving at fifteen thousand two hundred and eighty-one point six three kilometers per hour in a sealed titanium capsule. My manipulators aren’t strong enough to push the hatch open. Even if they were, using them again, when I’m so low on power, is out of the question. My ultra-capacitors are almost dead. When they’re done, so am I–Dar contemplated, calm only as a result of shutting down her emotion modules.

  I can generate matter-antimatter power but if I fire up my rockets in here, there’s no way I could survive the heat or radiation that would build up before the hatch blew open. Viable options?

  In desperation, she set a few subroutines with exceedingly loose parameters running in the background, on the off-chance that she’d miss something she could use. Any solution, however risky or outlandish, would be welcome right now.

  Should I shut down everything except long-term memory and bank on the remote possibility of a recovery in the far future? She’d pulled off that long shot once before, ages ago. But it seemed pointless out here in deep space. Drifting aimlessly, she’d be far more likely to get swallowed up by some star or get picked up by Securitors than to be found by friends.

  She could reset, wipe her memory to protect the others, and terminate her existence voluntarily. Suicide would prevent further risk to other Resistance members, but would bring about her end, the end of the Princess Darya persona, and possibly the end of the Resistance. She couldn’t let all of their many efforts, struggles, and sacrifices come to nothing.

  I can’t risk ending the Resistance. Better to hope for rescue than to end it all here. A long-shot is better than certain failure. Shutdown protocol, it is.

  A subroutine pinged for her attention. Could it have found something? She took a look. That might just work!—she was surprised.

  Dar acted instantly. Activating an internal laser, she ablated some of the antimatter mercury from the frozen block in her propulsion system.

  When aimed at a matching normal-matter stream ablated from a separate block, the antimatter stream normally converted into a brilliant, pure energy. The system served beautifully as the basis for the main propulsion unit but, as it was, lacked the precision and finesse Dar now needed to get out of her escape pod.

  If I activate only the antimatter stream, I should be able to control the direction and intensity of the stream enough to create a crude cutting torch. Unfortunately, it’s also going to generate a high level of radiation as the antimatter reacts with the normal matter of the hatch. Can my shielding withstand the onslaught long enough for me to cut free? I guess we’ll find out.

  Dar decreased the sensitivity in her visual sensors and directed the anti-mercury stream along a narrow seam where the exit hatch was attached to the rest of the shell. After several circumnavigations with the spray penetrating deeper each time, the hatch finally gave way. She was out, with only a second to spare.

  The Cybrid accelerated away from her rocky cell and into the vacuum of space, leaving a small puff of metal vapor trailing behind her. She oriented herself toward Secondus, and fired a two-second engine pulse at full power to intercept her home base, hoping the surviving Securitors were too busy and too disorganized to notice. Her rockets pointed outw
ard at a sharp angle to her initial trajectory. She kept the propulsion exhaust as narrow as possible.

  Provided that no sensors had detected the flash of light when she cut through the escape pod or the radiation from her exhaust, she might make it.

  She didn’t dare use her active sensors to scan for pursuers, but her passive detectors could manage a wide scan with minimal risk. They weren’t as effective but they were low energy and might pick up the telltale signature of a Securitor rocket homing in on her position.

  Luck or destiny was on her side this time. Or maybe it was artfully employed science and technology. In any case, there was no sign of pursuit from any direction. She could only surmise that the debris from the blasted asteroid had covered her energetic bursts.

  For the second time in only a few minutes, Dar almost wished she believed in a real God, so she could thank Him for saving her. Almost. She knew better than to confuse luck with divine intervention. She settled for being satisfied that the probabilities, however slim, had worked out in her favor. Unfortunately for them, the probabilities had not worked out as favorably for the Securitors sent to investigate Tertius.

  I would rather not have destroyed the Securitors along with Tertius—even Securitors are conscious beings—but the Resistance must survive. Someone has to oppose Alum’s mad plan. For now, that means the Princess Darya persona must survive.

  Operating on the lowest possible power, Dar continued her journey to Secondus. With most of her brain shut down for the trip, she was reduced to the simplest and most mindless sense-and-respond machine she could ever imagine being.

  One klick from home, she reactivated her navigational subsystem and fired a blast to reduce her approach velocity. A few gentle pulses from the maneuvering jets brought her precisely to the main entry portal. The door recognized her weak, intermittent signal and opened to receive her. By the time she was able to connect to the solar recharging station, her sensory feed and computational awareness were both flickering in and out erratically.

  Safely home on Secondus base, Dar allowed herself to slip into recharge mode.

  11

  As meeting rooms go, this one was unique. A stained-glass table sat on a downy cloud hovering ninety meters above the sun-drenched Vitality Beach, affording select clientele a touch of privacy from the hordes of sunbathers below.

  Crystalline stairways connected hundreds of floating tables in the lower levels of the restaurant. But only select guests were permitted access to the highest table. As one might expect, obtaining seating at such a highly coveted spot required either miraculously fortuitous timing or considerable influence with the Manager persona. Darya had neither. She had, however, hacked the Assistant Manager Partial, ensuring access to a pleasant and secure location whenever she needed to meet with members of the inner circle.

  The privacy afforded by the cloud-top table Darya chose was conducive to work, despite the allure of the palm-fringed beach below. Sadly, today its postcard-perfect view was wasted on Darya’s four closest acolytes: Mary, Leisha, Gerhardt, and Qiwei. They were too deeply mired in despair to respond to the expanse of white sand and gentle aquamarine surf calling to them from far below.

  Vacationland was classified as a high-magic inworld, enjoying considerable relaxation of conventional physical and social rules. To help achieve the illusion of natural beauty and tranquility in this zone, a handful of rustic, thatch-roof cabinas were clustered among the palms. The original inworld programmers accommodated the many visitors with a little trickery. Thanks to their unique design and special dimensional properties, what looked like a small bungalow outside provided thousands of private suites inside, each offering the same breathtaking view of the beach and adjacent tropical forest, while assuring complete privacy.

  Giant transparent water globes with no visible means of suspension floated above the sparkling bay. Each pool had its own local gravity, enabling swimmers to skim the wet surfaces on all sides of the spherical globes. Ranging in diameter from twenty to a few hundred meters in diameter and cleverly interconnected by serpentine water tubes, slides, and water bridges, they were irresistible to swimmers and spectators alike.

  Body-variant visitors chased through the network. Dolphin, penguin, squid, and otter bodies were the most popular body shapes, any of which might be augmented by creative combinations of flipper, fin, leg, jet, and wing.

  Leisha glanced wistfully at the surfers honing their skills a kilometer out, on forty-meter virtual waves that rushed toward the coral reefs at exhilarating speeds. She appreciated the expertise of those performing one-arm handstands on the tips of their boards, a trick she had not yet mastered. Some of her friends eschewed boards completely, preferring the sensory experience of the waves directly on their simulated skin.

  As she'd learned firsthand, Vacationland was very forgiving of recklessness in the pursuit of sensory adventure. Depending on the severity of a simulated injury, one could normally expect to be fully healed within minutes-to-hours, and back inworld, enjoying the fun.

  Sim-death was a different story. Dying inworld got you kicked out for a full day in real-time. To Leisha, being banished to the outworld with no assigned tasks and no company but your own thoughts was more painful than whatever virtual injuries brought suspension from the inworld in the first place. She'd been sent for a time-out more than once.

  When she was looking for a less dangerous but equally thrilling activity, she headed to the waterslides. In keeping with the promise of offering bigger, better, and faster, the chutes towered a kilometer above the beach, and boasted turns and loops that would have been impossible on Earth or any real planet. They used localized and unpredictable changes in gravity along the length to slow or accelerate the patrons, testing their skills and virtual courage.

  Leisha loved that she could just as easily find herself accelerating on the upward half of a loop as being repelled away from the watery tube and having to push her arms and legs outward to press away from an inner lip of the next.

  Qiwei preferred the drier recreation found further inland, where the palm trees gave way to a deciduous forest that, in turn, worked its way up the hilly slopes then thinned out as it neared the rocky crags. Along the forest floor, he often joined dozens of like-minded patrons hunting lions, tigers, dragons, and all sorts of mythical creatures. True enthusiasts used only knives or bows and arrows to hunt. Qiwei was among those who considered it unsporting to arm oneself with more advanced weaponry to stalk the deadly beasts.

  In addition to the tens of thousands of virtual people that played or relaxed along the lengthy beach, even larger numbers of Partials dashed about on foot, wing, or fin, serving every desire of the instantiated.

  The Servitor Partials were tireless, always friendly and accommodating. They weren’t really needed, but the Vacationland designers had thought it a quaint touch to have food and drinks delivered by a "living being" instead of simply popping into existence on command. Simulated beverages and snacks were similarly unnecessary but made a pleasing representation of energy consumption back at the outworld recharging stations, where Cybrid trueself bodies docked while their minds visited inworld.

  Cybrid minds were modeled on human minds, and allotting them some time to pretend they were physically human again helped to keep them psychologically stable. Other types of imaginary worlds had been tried, but simulated Earth-like environments were the most effective and enjoyable over the long run. Still, a few magical enhancements didn’t hurt.

  Like most Cybrids, for Darya and her team, Vacationland was a lifesaver. The creative freedom and thrilling sensory experiences they enjoyed inworld helped maintain their sanity between tedious work contracts. And of all the imaginative inworlds available, Vacationland was the most popular.

  Darya’s perusal of the scenery was interrupted by the arrival of one of the Servitors with another round of simulated, though nonetheless delicious, margaritas. She returned her attention from the throngs below to the meeting of the Central Committee
of the rebellion.

  “So what have you four been up to these past few months?”

  Leisha, tanned and freckled, wearing a loose purple wrap over her bikini, was first to answer. “Just working and hoping the Securitors don't come grab me at any second.”

  The Lysrandia fiasco had decimated the ranks of Darya’s followers, and left the survivors demoralized. The Securitors still held over sixty percent of them in custody following the showy inworld dragon battle. Brutal interrogations led the Securitors to another fifteen percent of the original group. Over five hundred members had been lost. Only her four most senior people and a few scattered cells remained, a little over a hundred and sixty individuals to challenge the work of the millions bent on pushing Alum’s Divine Plan forward.

  “At least the rate of new arrests seems to have abated,” Gerhardt offered. Instead of sounding hopeful, it came across as dark and moody. The thin, athletic body he wore for this meeting was a noticeable divergence from his preference toward plump and philosophical. He was being cautious.

  Darya was glad the Securitors had not cracked their inworld avatar disguises yet. While she was thinking about it, she used her newly modified outworld connections to initiate an independent routine to revamp their avatar code before the meeting was finished. She included the revised interface-exit commands. Never again would her supporters be left stranded inworld, unable to leave except through "approved" routes.

  “Even so, we lost a lot of good people.” Qiwei noted. “And we're going to lose more once the Securitors start interrogating the latest group they brought in.” He had chosen an appearance as diminutive as possible. His moderate stature, mousy brown hair, lightly tanned skin, and computationally average appearance reflected the cultural norm of the mixed Cybrid heritage. Qiwei was so perfectly unexceptional that he almost stood out in Vacationland, where most people succumbed to their ideal images of self.