Darkness Rising

by C. Gockel

  Volka blinked. She had been taught on Luddeccea that machines controlled humans via the ethernet connections to their minds. Sixty had explained to her, “No, the human mind is too complex. However, viruses can be transmitted over the ether, and they can give humans a headache.” He’d grimaced. “And they can give androids a figurative headache as well. Imagine a cat video playing on loop as an overlay all day…okay, you can’t imagine it, but it is annoying, trust me. But even those viruses aren’t common. Local ethernet hubs monitor the ether for viruses and scrub them. The gates are the most powerful hubs in the Republic, so a computer virus coming through the gates hasn’t happened in nearly one hundred years, four months, and three days. It is regularly attempted, however, by would-be revolutionaries, but more often by pranksters. The most famous case being the Iktomi Uncollective’s attempt to launch a modern-day holo hamster dance over the…” He had winced and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to turn into a data dump.”

  In the present, James said to Trina, “I’m sorry, but you’ve said yourself you’re not in control of all your systems. I don’t trust your ether.”

  “No offense taken,” Trina said.

  James’s eyes came back to Volka. “Volka, your bracelet ethernet is the safest option. Will you answer?”

  Volka’s ears went back, and her heart thumped fast. “It won’t hurt her, will it?”

  James blinked.

  A man taking off his pack said, “Go ahead, Volka. I can run a scan on your device as soon as you’re done.”

  Bowing her head, Volka whispered, “Answer please, Bracelet.”

  There was a crackle, and a voice that was not Bracelet’s said, “Unknown ship, unknown ship, please come in.”

  Volka’s ears went forward. She recognized the voice. “Clive!”

  “This is Doctor Clive Wong. Who am I speaking to?”

  Carl Sagan hissed.

  “I thought you said Clive Wong was dead,” Young accused Trina.

  “I…” Trina stammered.

  Volka started to give her name. “This is…”

  A feeling hit Volka in the stomach so hard it felt like a fist. Don’t tell him your name…

  Volka blubbered a lie. “This is Margaret Wolf, Mr. Wong, from um, System 11 aboard an experimental Republic ship. How are you?”

  “Better since you showed up. We’re having trouble with our time bands. We could really use some help. Don’t suppose you’ve got some band engineers?” Volka’s ears started flicking madly. There was something wrong with Clive…or his voice…

  “Sure do!” said Young.

  “We’ll open Airlock 5 for you,” Clive continued.

  Carl Sagan’s necklace crackled. “May we have a visual?” he asked, hopping over to Volka.

  “Of course,” Wong replied, and an instant later, a holo appeared above Bracelet.

  A man appeared. He had straight black hair, a strong jaw, and broad shoulders—the picture of authority. He smiled at whatever was acting as a camera. All the hairs on Volka’s head rose. She started to tremble.

  Carl squeaked plaintively. The floor beneath them began to shake.

  “Won’t you please come aboard? We can fill you in on all that happened then,” Clive continued. His smile widened. “We really want to get our time gate working.”

  “Don’t go aboard,” Trina whispered.

  “Who was that?” Clive asked.

  Young spun to Trina. “Why not?” And then he looked down at his feet. “Why is the ship shaking?”

  Volka met his eyes, but before she could answer, Young and everyone assembled turned back to light. A moment later, Sundancer’s bridge was completely dark, but Volka could feel insects crawling over her in the black. Around her, humans screamed.

  10

  Luddeccea: Treasonous

  It was dark before the van halted. Peering out the window, Alaric saw treetops, and above them stars as brilliant as on his family’s farm and the old time gate, lights blinking on the broken ring. There had been priests aboard it since Revelation, constantly monitoring it for signs of sentience. The stars and the lights in the time gate weren’t as bright in New Prime. They’d left the city behind. Were they going to shoot him and leave his body in a ditch? His eyes darted suspiciously to Ran, but his former first was staring out the window.

  The back door of the van opened suddenly, and Alaric found himself staring at two new guards and a weere priest in long green robes just two steps behind them. This priest was much more human than Ze’ev had been. His thin white hair was curly, and his ears were completely human, but his eyes were outlined by the same natural, nearly-black pigmentation Volka had.

  “Hands up and get out!!” one of the guards ordered.

  Solomon jumped onto Alaric’s shoulders. The guard’s face reddened, and he adjusted his grip on the rifle. Did he believe the stories of werfles’ possession too?

  Raising his arms, Alaric climbed out of the vehicle.

  “He needs handcuffs before he enters,” one of the new guards said.

  Squinting at Solomon, the weere priest said, “He doesn’t need them. He won’t run—”

  “Not worried about him running,” the man replied, the veins on his neck popping.

  “Or attack,” the weere priest said. Speaking gently to the guards, the priest added, “We’ve had a rough time, but Captain Darmadi is on our side.”

  Alaric’s fingers curled above his head. He wasn’t sure if that pronouncement boded good or ill, but the guard lost the frenzied look in his eyes, and his body relaxed just a fraction.

  Focus returning to Alaric, the weere priest smiled, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth. “The captain just doesn’t know he’s on our side yet.”

  Alaric studied the new weere. He was perhaps in his sixties—an extraordinary age for a weere.

  “Keep your hands up,” said the guard, shifting on his feet.

  Insects and pterys called in the night. Alaric surveyed the road they were on. The pavement was smooth and black. There were no direction lines, and the vegetation on either side was meticulously sculpted. A private drive—not a lonely stop in the woods. He climbed out of the vehicle, arms still raised. “I was promised a trial.”

  Beckoning Alaric around the vehicle, the weere priest said, “And so you shall have it. Please put your arms down and come with me.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Alaric saw sandbags had been placed across the drive just a few meters down. Beyond that was an estate that would put his uncle’s to shame. Not budging, Alaric eyed the Doric columns of the neo-Revelation mansion.

  “I swear, by the Three Books, you shall have your trial,” the weere priest reiterated, his voice steady. “Please, put your hands down and come with me.”

  Words were cheap, but Alaric remembered something Volka said. “You humans talk about the Three Books. We weere feel them.” Hands balling into fists, Alaric lowered his arms and followed the priest to the mansion, Ran and his men close behind.

  Inside, the house was empty of furniture. There were phaser burns on the walls, and guards were everywhere. Alaric took mental note of the guards’ locations. If this did turn out to be a trick, he would probably die—but he would take as many of them with him as he could.

  The weere led him to what looked like a ballroom and paused at the door. Inside there were parquet floors. Heavy, antique metal chandeliers of a type that had been popular just after Revelation hung from the ceiling, their lights turned low. There were no guards, but there was a noticeable lack of windows. The only furniture was a table of the cheap fold out variety and similar chairs.

  “Have a seat,” said the weere priest, gesturing from the doorway.

  Alaric entered the barren room. It was another prison cell, obviously. Abraham might have been disgraced, but as Ran had said, Volka rescuing him from the rubble looked bad. They still thought he had something to do with the rebels on Libertas.

  He scanned the ballroom. This could be an
attempt to gas him, but he knew from his experience remodeling his uncle’s house that his weight would be enough to pull down this particular type of chandelier and a large part of the ceiling with it. The wiring could be used to start a fire—

  “You may wait outside, Commander,” the priest said behind Alaric’s back.

  Alaric turned to see the weere holding up a hand to prevent Ran from entering. Alaric cocked his head. Ran was more bigoted toward weere than any man he knew. As Alaric expected, Ran bristled at the order and glared at the priest, but to Alaric’s amazement, he turned and left.

  The weere priest prepared to close the door, but Alaric asked, “Will I be given counsel?”

  “I will be your counsel,” said the weere priest. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed.

  It wouldn’t be unheard of for a priest to be trained in the law, even if he was a weere. Alaric decided to be diplomatic. “I am grateful. I don’t even know your name—”

  “My name is Father Ujk. Tell the truth, Captain. That is my only counsel,” the weere said. With that, he closed the door and left Alaric alone.

  On his shoulders, Solomon squeaked.

  Alaric amended his thought aloud. “Well, I’m not quite alone.” And then he realized he was idly scratching the wild creature behind the ear. Dropping his hand, he began carefully surveying the room, noting the vents. There wasn’t the two-way mirror he would have expected for interrogations. He looked carefully for bugs. He didn’t see any but that didn’t mean anything. Although Luddeccean civilians only had tech consistent with the Earth’s mid 20th century, the Guard and Intelligence borrowed modern tech from the Republic. They had Q-comms to communicate with Luddeccean spies on Republic worlds, surveillance devices smaller than a drop of water, nanobots for injury recovery and to slow aging, and then there were the holo simulations they used for Fleet training. Alaric frowned. Many Guardsmen were wary of Republic technology, even though it didn’t rely on machine-to-mind connections, and the priests monitored the computers for self-awareness and corrected for it.

  Alaric was fascinated by all tech. Sometimes he thought he was born on the wrong side of the Kanakah cloud.

  Finishing his survey, he took a seat in one of the chairs and mentally composed his defense. He heard the clock chime once again before the door opened. Alaric didn’t know what to expect, but he didn’t expect the first person he saw to be Archbishop Kenji Sato himself. Alaric immediately rose to his feet, swallowed hard, and bowed.

  Waving a hand for Alaric to sit, the archbishop rolled in on an electric wheelchair. The neural interface that had once tethered him to the time gates via the ethernet gleamed in the low light. On his knees was the whitest werfle Alaric had ever seen and walking behind him was Father Ujk.

  At over one hundred years old, the archbishop was thin and frail. At the same time, he was larger than life. The time gate above Luddeccea had done great damage, but without the archbishop, it would have done much worse. Sato had staged a preliminary attack that had crippled it long enough for the Luddeccean Guard to rally. What was larger than Sato’s actions, though, was his mind. The archbishop had husbanded the planet’s supercomputer for over a century, never allowing it to develop sentience.

  It had been Alaric’s dream to work for Sato. As a boy, he’d stumbled on an ancient tablet in the basement of a rich relative. He’d managed to recharge it and had run through its tutorials on programming. He’d always liked math and logic games, and he’d created a game—to the delight of his siblings—a crude geometric spaceship that fired on invading “Galactians.” When his mother had found it, she’d been terrified, certain he needed re-education. She’d confided in their priest’s wife, who’d eased his mother’s fears, reassuring her that as long as Alaric didn’t connect to it with his mind, he was safe and not a criminal. And then the priest’s wife and the priest himself had given his mother and Alaric the unfortunate hope that he might join the priesthood someday.

  He was from the poorest branch of the Darmadi clan, the extended family needed someone of Alaric’s generation to join the military, and the poorest son could not refuse.

  It hadn’t been as bad as it could have been. He hadn’t spent years at lightspeed, and time dilation hadn’t aged his boys or Alexis beyond recognizing. Aside from his two brief brushes with android spies, instead of protecting Luddecceans from Republic invaders, Alaric had been tasked with dealing with rebels on Libertas. Before that, he’d had the bloody job of rounding up and executing pirates raiding the mines in the asteroid belt. Through it all, he’d held onto the hope that if he served with distinction, he might someday become an advisor for the battle simulations the priests ran on the supercomputer.

  But now he was standing before his idol as a suspect in a rebel attack that had killed dozens of Guard and civilians. He kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Please sit down, Captain Darmadi,” the archbishop said. His voice was soft, but there was steel behind it.

  Alaric erupted, “I did not aid the rebel forces on Libertas,” all his carefully defenses forgotten.

  Patting the werfle’s head, the archbishop said, “We know you’re not in league with the rebels or the Republic, but we do have some questions for you.”

  Stunned, Alaric sank into his chair. Solomon hopped from his shoulders to the table and took a position at Alaric’s right hand. The white werfle slunk from the archbishop’s lap and adopted the same position across from him.

  Drawing up a chair, the weere priest said, “Intelligence points to evidence that you were the weere woman’s patron. You fired on her without hesitation. We would like to know your thought process.”

  The question caught Alaric off guard. Of all things he had done that day, he thought firing on the Republic craft and attempting a kamikaze strike would be what exonerated him. And yet, there was something about the phrasing that suggested to him, “It was my duty to protect Luddeccea” was not quite the answer they wanted.

  His eyes slid to Ujk, his weere counsel, now eyeing him coolly. Tell the truth, the weere had said. “I am not her patron,” Alaric admitted. “Though we were involved years ago.”

  Shuffling some papers in front of him, the weere priest said, “So feelings for her didn’t factor into the equation.”

  “No,” Alaric said, anger bubbling within him unexpectedly. “They did factor in.”

  The weere’s head jerked up. The archbishop’s hand rose from the werfle.

  “You were angry at her?” said the weere priest, his tone sharp.

  “No, I was angry at the android who snatched her mind from her, made her take part in the rebel plot, and turned her into a killer.” He didn’t intend to shout, but his voice echoed in the cavernous room. Focusing on the table, he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm. “I would have fired on the ship and attempted to destroy it by any means necessary regardless of any personal feelings. The Republic has apparently discovered a way to attain faster-than-light travel without gates—”

  That made both men sit up straighter, and Alaric knew he’d been correct in that deduction.

  He continued, “We are at a technological disadvantage. The Republic cannot be encouraged by our inaction to kidnap Luddeccean citizens and violate their minds. I would rather be destroyed than let myself become a slave. I gave Volka the same courtesy and would give any Luddeccean the same.” She’d call it her soul, not her mind, but he couldn’t imagine she’d feel different. Her soul was what she valued above all else. Why else had she turned down his offer?

  “When I think of her alone, in the Republic…” Her body would be her only asset. The chair had no armrests, and it was probably a good thing. He felt as though he could bend metal with his hands.

  “She is in no danger with Sixty.”

  Alaric’s head jerked toward the archbishop. “Sixty?”

  “The android.” Pushing his spectacles up his nose, not meeting Alaric’s gaze, Sato said, “He is programmed to be a helpmate to humans, not to harm them. He encountere
d Guardsmen when they attempted to apprehend, interrogate, and murder Volka on behalf of Counselor Abraham. He stunned them and tied them up, but they weren’t permanently harmed. He cannot harm humans.”

  “That android and the rebels murdered my men on Libertas!” Alaric declared. “And it killed men aboard the Leetier.”

  The archbishop frowned. “How events unfolded aboard the Leetier are still murky. Some men claim it was Volka who was responsible for the crew member’s death.”

  Alaric’s lip curled. “No.” Not Volka. If she had killed, it was because the android had controlled her mind with some heretofore unknown technology, and in that case, it was the android who was the only guilty party.

  The archbishop shrugged. “Accidents are possible even if an android is programmed not to harm. However, as far as your men are concerned, Sixty, Volka, and Carl Sagan were not part of the rebel uprising on Libertas.”

  Alaric’s mind spun. Carl Sagan, the ancient Earth physicist...where had he heard that name recently?

  Sato tilted his head. “They pulled you and your fellow crew member from the wreckage…why would you think rebels would do that?” There was no accusation in the archbishop’s tone, only curiosity.

  “For another hostage! To interrogate me for my passcodes,” Alaric retorted hotly, shocking himself with the emotion in his voice. Where had his carefully cultivated stoic exterior gone?

  The archbishop blinked owlishly. “No, Sixty would not do that.”

  “How would you know?” Alaric heard himself demand. Sweat prickled along his spine.

  “Oh, because I know him,” the archbishop replied, running a hand along the white werfle’s back, his eyes distant.

  The words took Alaric’s breath away and his anger, too.

  “You know it?” he whispered, body going cold.

  “Mmmm…” said the archbishop. “He belonged to one of my great aunts before Revelation. He has a fantastic application for cooking. His Founder’s Feast is…” His lips curled in a smile of gentle bemusement. “...out of this world.”