Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  “What enslaves them?”

  “That much of Festus’s story is true.” She gazed at the burning sphere in the sky. “This sun, this region of spacetime, is condensing into a black hole. As the underlying physics shifts, so does the psychobiology of lifeforms based on it. As the collapsing sun’s pull grows greater, it offsets anyone whose mind is able to grow powerful enough to break free of its shackles. So far, no one has been able to stay ahead of the learning curve.”

  “That’s right. That’s where he said I come in.”

  “You want me to leave you here, see if you can do what none of them could? They all thought as you do when they got here.”

  He twirled the sword in his hand to clear his mind. “What are my options?”

  “You’re going to war, of course. None of their ships can achieve escape velocity from this world. Not without my help.”

  “Even so, these people are no good to me now; not after generations of growing soft.”

  “Their true natures will surface once the drug-like effects have worn off.”

  “How will I control this lot? If they’re all like me, they’re not going to be very good at taking orders.”

  “Maybe not. But your only chance of success is to strategize better than the opposition which will have you outnumbered and outgunned. Your people will realize in whose hands their best chance for survival lies soon enough.”

  “And when the fighting’s over, chaos will reign, as we turn on one another for lack of an enemy worthy of us.”

  “Not necessarily. One advantage of centuries in stasis—it’s shown these hard cases another way, the value of peace. Leastways, outside this sun’s influence, civilization will have a chance to progress as it always has, in fits and starts. Maybe they’ll need you as much then as now to strategize how to keep the balance between good and evil.”

  As the sun dropped behind the horizon, it exposed a sky thick with stars. Skyhawk gazed heavenward. He imagined the battle ensuing overhead, that for a brief time at least, relative to the life of stars, would make the night sky shine even brighter. Robin saw into his mind readily with the aid of the obelisk. “What are the chances of any of this playing out as you say?” he said.

  “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  “How many souls are we talking?”

  Robin followed his eyes to the stars. “Trillions upon trillions.”

  “You prepared to have that many deaths on your conscience?”

  “I’m prepared to let human nature take its course. No outcome is certain. The calculus will work itself out based on the merits of each man’s strengths and weaknesses, the physical as well as the mental.”

  “Let’s get on with it, then. Talk is cheap for warriors like me.”

  She pointed skyward at the armada she had amassed with a wave of her hand. “I’ve filled what ships they have with what crew I could fit. They are already headed into harm’s way. I’ll teleport you onto the vessel best suited to a command base.”

  He gazed at the city below; its countless inhabitants. “What about the rest?”

  “When it’s all over, I’ll move this planet out of harm’s way, find a sun more suitable to a vibrant people.”

  “Why not do that first?”

  “You’ll need the element of surprise. Not to mention the geographic advantage. Most of their ships will be at the periphery of their empires where the threats are greatest, not close to their core.”

  “I’m not certain which is scarier, a war I have no chance of winning, or the realization that someone like you exists out there, with the power of a god.”

  “You’re right to worry about both.” Robin could see the obelisk in her mind’s eye, drawing more power than she’d tapped before. This time nearly an entire face of the obelisk’s four faces was illuminated. Each band on each face of that obelisk represented geometrically more power being accessed, once lit.

  She teleported Skyhawk to his command post on one of the vessels heading out.

  Her work done here, she removed herself from the picture.

  ***

  “Why aren’t the hyperspace engines engaging? We sure as shit can’t outshoot them. If we don’t at least have maneuverability….” Skyhawk rotated the sword in his hand and squeezed. They should be so lucky as to get boarded and have to endure close quarters combat. More than likely they’d be vaporized from a great distance off.

  “How about you let my mind finish coming on line before you start asking about the hyperspace engines?” Novasec applied pressure to his skull with both hands as if hoping to relieve the pressure by shattering the hard shell around his brain.

  Skyhawk noticed the crew appeared as if they were all shaking off a hangover. Between the grimaces and the slowed reflexes, they were giving off all indications of not being able to stand out of their own way far less dodge an enemy strike.

  Skyhawk dialed up the sense of authority in his voice. “All right, sleeping beauties. It sucks to find the kiss that woke you after eons of waking dreams was not from the lips of a prince, but from this toad standing before you, but there you have it. The sooner you deal with it the better.”

  “You say most of their fleet is not deployed in front of us? But somewhere at the periphery of their empire?” Novasec said before the daunting array of warring vessels dotting their viewport.

  “Let’s hope the shaky voice is just you not fully awake yet, Novasec.” Skyhawk realized he knew all their names and their personal histories. That meant he knew how to push their buttons. That was one hell of a leg up considering the circumstances, and one more thing for which to thank the Lady in Red.

  Skyhawk got his first clue the opposition had finished checking that the glitches on their scanners were, in fact, not glitches at all. The hit to the ship shook it like a major earthquake. But the shields held. The ship’s autonomic nervous system could be thanked for that. Its human crew was still too groggy to know their asses from their elbows, far less find the right buttons to push. On that thought, he headed to the engine room. They really needed those hyperspace engines up and running now.

  From the way he was being tossed from one side of the walkways to the other, it was clear the ship was engaging in evasive maneuvers on its own.

  At the blinding flashes of light at the portals, Skyhawk decided to investigate further. He pressed his face up to the metal-glass. The ship, all by its lonesome, had taken out three enemy vessels, by shucking and weaving and jabbing better than a prize fighter.

  The Orlac vessels had one more advantage over the enemy ships: they could fend for themselves to a limited degree while their crew was incapacitated. Reading the signs, Skyhawk would have to say the generals and commanding personnel on the far side of his viewports had gotten soft themselves in the long periods between wars, and were not taking the new threat seriously. Maybe that meant he had a little time to get his act together, if just a little.

  After time spent effortlessly navigating the maze of connecting tubes in the vessel, Skyhawk realized that the Lady in Red had downloaded the ship’s schematics to his mind, as well. When he stopped to help Cavell patch a hole in the ship’s hull, it also dawned on him that he could do everyone’s job aboard ship, if push comes to shove. He also had a strong sense of what the rest of the ships in his fleet and their commanders were capable of. All in all, the Lady in Red had given him more of a leg up on this war than he had a right to expect.

  They no sooner got the hole the size of a bowling ball patched than another shot tore a swath through the side of the ship that would make the perfect lane for tossing the bowling ball down.

  They held on for dear life as the ship sealed the rupture itself.

  Skyhawk sighed. “Tell you what. What’s say we leave her to worry about her self-image, and we focus on getting us to hell out of here?”

  Cavell nodded. From that point on, they were attached at the hip as they ventured toward the engine room.

  “Forgive me, but this ship doesn’t
seem like it should be alive. There’s nothing remotely like living tissue.” Cavell’s mind may not have known how to prioritize his fears, but as it turned out, his stream of consciousness wasn’t a total distraction.

  It wasn’t until Cavell made a point of mentioning the non sequitur that it occurred to Skyhawk what was going on. “In all likelihood,” Skyhawk explained, “she’s mended the forcefield in that part of the ship, and the rest is image projection, for the enemy’s benefit and ours. Looks like you’ll get your chance to show off your metallurgy magic after all.”

  Cavell snorted, not exactly sounding relieved.

  Skyhawk, along with his protégé, kept getting thrown from wall to wall with the ensuing hits from the enemy vessels. The ship’s exposed ribbing and rough edges were digging into him better than an enemy’s blade. He may as well be in the heat of a melee with a superior fighter for all the wounds he was accruing. Cavell, perhaps owing to youth and to being a bit more lithe, seemed to be faring better.

  Skyhawk emerged in the engine room to find Figaroa playing solitaire. “I gather, Figaroa, you’re lacking in sufficient motivation to join the fight.”

  “Let’s just say I prefer the waking dreams to this sordid reality.” He played the ace of spades.

  “I’d think you’d want a chance to get back at the people who pulled the wool over your eyes. Twenty years in deep freeze, while your daughter and the rest of your family aged on other worlds, and you didn’t get to be a part of any of it. Twenty years of jacking yourself off instead of accruing victories deserving of the great warrior you are. Twenty years, Figaroa, of your life stolen from you that I or no one can give back. How you doing for motivation now?”

  He dropped the cards. “Since you put it that way.” He stumbled over to where he needed to do repairs, his footwork uneven thanks to the hits the ship was taking. “Give me five minutes.”

  “I’d love to tell the enemy to be so accommodating. But we’re not on the best of speaking terms. How about you take two minutes, and you sync the other vessels to this one while you’re at it, leastways until they can best their demons well enough to get their heads out of their asses and join the fight.”

  “You don’t ask for much.”

  “All I ask is for the chance to come up behind them, strike and then disappear before they can get a fix on us. All I ask is for the chance to scour the universe of this vermin.”

  “Since you put it that way.” Figaora made a final twist with his wrench, flipped a lever, and Skyhawk heard the soothing sounds of the hyperdrive engines kicking in.

  Skyhawk gave him the once over. “Now, go get cleaned up. You look like shit. You look like some demon warrior sent up from the underworld to battle the angels of the lord. Don’t look now, but we’re the angels of the Lord.”

  Figaroa rubbed his chin, felt his whiskers. “Since you put it that way.”

  Thank God the Lady in Red had left him with a good sense of how to push their buttons. As it was, he could tune them up faster than he could the ship. And that mattered when the cards were down.

  ***

  “Your plan is working.” Cavell smiled at the sight out the viewport of the enemy ships blowing up. “Strike fast and disappear before they can get a bead on us. Like bees stinging those hogs.” Cavell was referring to the relative size of the enemy vessels versus their own. He was developing a hankering for military strategy. Soon, Skyhawk would have to redeploy him accordingly; he didn’t need men fighting themselves more than the enemy.

  “For now.” Skyhawk didn’t have the luxury of feeling too full of himself. Unless their generals were complete dolts, they’d throw up a counter-strategy to shut them down soon enough. And he’d have to be ready with a plan B. It was going to be a long campaign, and this battle was just the first move on the chessboard.

  Chessboards. Bowling alleys. Evidently the Lady in Red had stuffed his head with more than he would have deemed necessary. Unless… Maybe she was trying to bridge the distance between his world and hers. Maybe she felt the same twinge down below he did whenever he was near her. It gave him one more reason for hope, and one more reason to hang in there through a long, protracted war that would be nearly as wearisome as generations spent going to seed on Arcadia, the Orlac world. He now had those memories, as well, thanks to her. Maybe she figured they’d help him empathize with his crew. Maybe, not until he felt their pain could he hope to entirely win them over. Smart of her, strategically speaking. But it had cost him. Now he had to fight to control his anger and his over-boiling emotions as much as his crew. Lose their cool now, and all was lost. Perhaps that was also a calculated move on her part. Did she have a hidden agenda that involved pushing him past his limits so he could find out what he was really made of? And if so, what did she have in mind for him that involved him growing into something far greater even than a conqueror of worlds?

  For that matter, what did she have in mind for all those who survived her tests?

  ELEVEN

  “Johnny, I want you to start connecting the dots in your head.”

  “What dots?”

  Robin observed the speed limit sign—twenty five miles per hour—that they just flew by at ninety. “The thrill seeking, for one.”

  “You call this thrill seeking? Nah. Thrill seeking is doing this with the gas tank in flames.”

  She smiled despite herself.

  Johnny took advantage of the ramped loading bay to get the car up on two wheels.

  He rode the car at an incline long enough to squeeze between the two trucks offloading their cargo to either side of the street.

  But at ninety miles per hour, he quickly rolled the car onto the roof, and then back over again from the sheer momentum.

  “Maybe the seatbelts aren’t such a bad idea.” He fastened his.

  She followed suit.

  “So, assuming I buy into your cockamamie assertion that I’m an adrenaline junkie—I’m not saying I am—what’s the other realization you wanted me to make?”

  Robin craned her neck to take in the creature in the backseat. “What’s that thing called again?”

  “An echidna. It’s a spiny anteater, hasn’t changed since prehistoric times. Very endangered.”

  “How apropos.”

  He made the inevitable correction to the wheel that followed driving forward with his face pointed backward. “Don’t be a smart ass.”

  “And we’re rescuing it from one of the most progressive zoos in the world because—?”

  “Hasn’t had a baby in three years. Proof that it’s pretty damn unhappy where it is.”

  “You notice you’re happier now than when you’re just jumping off cliffs and just doing animal rights causes, right?”

  Johnny’s face grew pensive. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands for the first time. “I guess.”

  “That’s a new direction for you. Understanding life gets better the more you integrate the different facets of your personality into one career focus.”

  He took his eyes off the road and glared at her to make his point. “No offense, but you should learn to lighten up.”

  Robin took a deep breath. “The thought has occurred to me. But this isn’t about me.”

  “Why not? You need more shrinking than I do. Duck.”

  They ducked just as the semi-trailer they were racing under took the roof off the car. They stuck their heads up again like turtles after the danger had departed.

  She said, “I guess that’s saying a lot.”

  Johnny swerved the car, ostensibly to regain control. She interlocked arms with him to give herself a port in the storm. He smiled with a sense of triumph. She robbed him of it with her accusatory stare. “You’re really insufferable with this deep and meaningful stuff,” he said. “What’s the point of being right all the time if you’re just no fun?”

  Robin grimaced. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “You think there’s a career where I can—you know—do both?” he said. He stared at t
he endangered animal, then glanced back at the road in time to run a five-way intersection, just barely missing getting hit from four different directions at once.

  “You’re enabling.”

  It took him a second to realize what she meant. “You mean I’m encouraging you to be more insufferable and boorish. Sorry, I guess I am. I’ll work on being less full of myself if you will.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “I’ll shut up now and just concentrate on getting us killed.”

  “I think when you put your mind fully into what you’re doing—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  She smiled, and elected to appreciate the joy ride. That lasted half a second. “Just goes to show—you don’t have to be all enlightened before you’re ready to join the human race.”

  He emitted a primal scream that carried over the screaming of metal against metal as he rubbed up against a row of dumpsters in the narrow alley.

  “Yeah, that was a low blow.”

  ***

  Johnny’s loft wasn’t exactly high end. Still, he’d made it sufficiently personable that even the rich might well forego their classier lifestyles for a taste. Plenty of books alerted anyone who entered to all the lost causes on the planet worth championing from either side of the grave. Flea-market sculptures and artwork foretold of all the exotic regions of the world and peoples crying out for recognition from beneath the suffocating American disengagement with anything but TV and video games—neither of which were present in the apartment.