by M. D. Cooper
If Kara and Aaron were his primary physical protection, Lear was one of his best children when it came to political projection of power. A deep thinker who could see a hundred moves ahead, Lear made sure that Adrienne always knew what was coming.
The only time Lear had utterly failed him was the situation with Sera. No one had predicted that her return would predicate the fall of Andrea. So much of his careful work had been upset by that change. Sera was not so predictable. Greed and a lust for power did not drive her actions—in fact, he had never gained a clear picture of her motivations.
The closest he could come to a full understanding of Sera was that she wanted to leave Airtha. Which was ludicrous, though it did fit her. She had never been a suitable scion for Tomlinson, though his old friend had long hoped for her to be. It was part of the reason Adrienne needed to secure control of the government as quickly as possible.
“Father,” Lear extended his hand as Adrienne approached, and they shook before getting in the groundcar. Kara entered one of the front doors and sat across from them, her wings carefully folded behind her.
Adrienne often wondered if the wings were more practical than anti-grav mods and jump jets, but his children seemed to believe that the shock and awe outweighed any practical considerations.
Not that they didn’t have anti-grav mods and jump jets crammed into their lithe bodies, as well.
Lear didn’t even glance at Kara, but Adrienne gave her a smile before looking out the window to see Aaron take to the skies over the car.
“We’re secure,” Kara announced.
Adrienne acknowledge her with a curt nod before turning to his son. “Lear, what I’m about to tell you does not leave this car. Not until the time is right. The President is dead—and possibly through events that Airtha set in motion.”
He watched as only a fleeting expression of surprise passed over his son’s face before Lear slowly nodded.
“That makes sense,” he said at last. “It fits with suspicions I’ve long held about Airtha…though they were never enough to bring to you. There were always rough edges to the puzzle, pieces that did not quite fit.”
Adrienne pushed down annoyance at Lear for not sharing his concerns. “Well, nothing is confirmed yet, but allow me to relate what occurred in New Canaan.”
As he spoke, his son’s frown deepened, and he could all but see connections being made in his son’s mind as the story unfolded.
Before long, the groundcar pulled onto a maglev track, which passed into a tunnel that would lead them up to Aritha’s ring. They felt a thud as Aaron landed on the rear of the vehicle, his taloned feet hooking onto a bar placed just for that purpose.
As Lear ruminated on what he had learned, likely examining new possible futures, Adrienne glanced back at his son and gave him a nod through the window. Aaron returned the gesture with a wave.
“Shit!” Lear cried out a second later. “We must go back. You must leave Airtha you are in grave danger!”
Kara grabbed the manual controls and the car slid to a stop as quickly as she dared. She punched a button for the car to reverse course, but nothing happened.
“Wha—” the word had barely left Adrienne mouth when something slammed into the back of the car and Aaron was gone. The maglev tunnel’s lighting failed, and Adrienne cycled through different vision modes as he looked through the car’s windows.
There was nothing in the tunnel—he couldn’t even spot Aaron’s body anywhere around the vehicle.
“Stay here,” Kara warned and pulled her rifle free from her back before kicking open a door. She peered out of the car, looking for whatever had attacked Aaron, when suddenly she was pulled free from the vehicle.
“Get out,” a voice said from the darkened tunnel. “Get out or die.”
AN IRREFUSABLE OFFER
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: High Airtha
REGION: Airtha, Huygens System
Adrienne glanced at Lear, noting the surprise and fear in his son’s eyes. Lear constantly imagined all possible fates at every turn. It was one of his best traits, but also caused him to lock up at inopportune times.
“Lear,” he said softly. “If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Lear replied. “I can imagine over seven hundred scenarios where they do want us dead, but they still want us to get out.”
“That’s where gut instinct is still a valuable tool, Son,” Adrienne replied. “Come on, let’s see what our visitor wants.”
Adrienne stepped from the vehicle, not looking back to see if his son followed him. The tunnel was still pitch black, but his augmented vision was able to pick up enough light to show him the floor, and he carefully dropped down to it.
“You have my attention,” he announced, looking forward, resisting the urge to glance around. “You didn’t need to hurt my children, though. I’m sure you could have reached out over the Link.”
All around the tunnel, figures began to emerge from the walls. At first, he thought that they were actually emerging from the tunnel, but then it became apparent that they were utilizing exceptional stealth tech that he had not been able to detect.
One by one, the figures resolved into full view and he realized that they were all automatons of some sort—military automatons, from the look of it.
“Yes, I understand your show of force,” Adrienne said. “You have my full attention.”
The AI’s voice chuckled in his head, sounding unnervingly like it was originating directly between his ears.
Adrienne glanced at Lear, who was just now exiting the vehicle. He could tell from his son’s expression that Airtha had not included him in the conversation.
Miguel didn’t respond, but Adrienne could feel his AI’s anxiety diminish, or at least fade away from his consciousness.
As he spoke to Miguel, Airtha replied,
Adrienne forced himself to breathe calmly, the fact that Airtha knew Helen would die—that she claimed to have set it in motion—leant further credence to the idea that this AI was somehow behind many of the events which had taken place in New Canaan.
He realized that at this point, his only hope was to play along, unless….
“As poorly as you’d expect. Jeff was brutal to say the least—he hoped to force Sera into understanding her place in the Transcend, to get her to properly accept her role,” Adrienne replied. “But can we talk about this later? Somewhere more inviting?”
“No!” Adrienne stretched out his hand as true fear gripped him. If the AI stripped the minds of those two, she would understand that all his children were his instruments, and she would strike out against them.
As though a wave had passed through them, the figures in the tunnel shifted their stances and turned to one another. Then, with a shriek and a crash, Kara fell from the ceiling above him, and a moment later, Aaron emerged from the wall to his left.
Both had been held and hidden by the machines surrounding them—so much that even their Link access must have been smothered.
“Children,” he whispered.
“We’re OK, Father,” Aaron replied, “but we must go, now! Get back in the car.”
Adrienne scrambled back up into their car hovering over the maglev rail, before pulling Lear back up with him.
Kara was still closing the door as Aaron threw the vehicle in reverse, racing backward down the maglev track. Seconds later, they burst out of the tunnel and the car launched off the track, bottoming out on road, before the car’s A-grav systems compensated and it lifted off the deck once more.
Aaron spun the vehicle around and raced back to the port while Adrienne confirmed that his pinnace was still on the pad. He didn’t know what his next move was, but it would have to follow getting off Airtha.
Chaos reigned around them, as cars veered off the road and pedestrians on the catwalk pressed on their temples. Traffic control systems went offline, and sections of High Airtha’s lighting shut down entirely.
“What in the stars is going on?” Kara asked as she peered out the windows.
“It’s the ‘correction’ from Angela,” Adrienne replied. “Miguel unleashed it…it must be spreading through the nets, freeing the AIs.”
“I thought you didn’t believe that was real,” Kara asked from where she operated the manual controls.
“Well, I do now,” Adrienne replied.
They sped through a security arch at the opening to the port, and Aaron wove through the docked ships and milling crowds, finally slamming on the car’s breaks mere meters from the pinnace.
“Go! Go! Go!” Kara shouted as she kicked her door open.
Adrienne didn’t have to be told twice, and he ran out of the car with Lear right behind him, dashing toward the pinnace’s still-lowered ramp.
He had just started up its slope when two mechs stepped into view at the top of the ramp, weapons lowered.
“NO!” Kara screamed and threw herself into one of the machines, knocking it to the ground, while two of her arms pulled out her handguns and fired at the second mech.
Adrienne glanced behind them to see another dozen mechs rushing toward the pinnace. Aaron was already in the air, firing her rifle’s electron beam into their midst.
At the top of the ramp, the second mech was down, its body riddled with smoking holes from her pistol’s plasma. However, the second mech was getting the better of her, and Kara let loose an ear-splitting shriek as the robot tore one of her arms off.
Then, its hammer-like fist slammed into her head, cracking her opaque face plate, and Kara fell like a rag doll.
The mech rose and stepped down the ramp toward Adrienne, who backed up toward the car, only to see another pair of mechs waiting there for them. He glanced up at Aaron as he fired on another group of enemy.
Adrienne called to him a moment before a flash of light lanced out from one of the machines below. It seemed to crawl through the sky, inexorably moving toward Aaron. Then, the beam hit and cut him in half. As the corpse of Adrienne’s son fell from the sky, he heard a scream and realized that Kara was struggling to her knees and had just watched her brother die.
He glanced at Lear, and realized that there was no way out for him and his son, but Kara could still get free. There was still a chance for her.
Adrienne felt a tear slip down his face as he thought of the uncertainty his daughter would face without his hand guiding her.
The mechs seized him and spun him about, robbing him of the final sight of his daughter, as he heard a scream followed by the pinnace’s engines coming alive, tearing the ship from the docking cradle and rocketing it into the sky.
The sea of mechs fired shots at the pinnace, but it slipped behind a descending freighter and disappeared from sight.
“Easy!” Adrienne cried out as the mechs dragged him around the car. As they did, he caught sight of Aaron, his once-perfect body now a crumpled ruin on the ground. His heart felt like it had split open and tears streaked down his face. Aaron was dead, Kara was gone, his two dearest children, taken from him.
He would have continued to fall into the deepening sadness, but a voice spoke directly into his mind.
You cannot run from me, Adrienne.
It was strange, the words did not come to him over the Link, they just were—directly in his mind, subsuming his thoughts.
Look at me.
He looked up and saw a strange luminous figure approaching, passing through the bodies of the mechs which Aaron had destroyed. It appeared humanoid in shape—though a meter too tall, and amorphous…transparent.
The more he tried to focus on it, the less certain he became of its shape and form. It was as though he was only seeing a portion of the creature, as though there was much more to it that he could not perceive.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice coming out as a hoarse whisper.
Adrienne…don’t you know me? It is I, Airtha. You’re now seeing me in my true form, not the shell of an AI that I masquerade as—that I used to masquerade as. The time has finally come for me to reveal myself to the Transcend. To show them the face of their ascended queen.
Ascended…? Adrienne’s mind was awash with wonder and fear. This thing was Airtha? An ascended AI? How was it even possible?
“You couldn’t be, we have safeguards…”
I made many of those safeguards, Airtha responded, her voice still coming directly into his mind. She drew closer, almost near enough to touch—though Adrienne was certain such an action would be his last.
“Sera,” he said, gasping like a drowning man as waves of energy flowed from the being, tendrils of light and power dancing across his skin. “Sera knows what you are. She will stop you…free the Transcend from you.”
Oh? the being asked. Do you mean my daughter? I think that you’ll find she is quite onboard with my plans.
“What—” Adrienne asked, but he never completed his question as Airtha’s luminous form drifted aside to reveal Sera standing behind, a warm smile on her face.
“Adrienne, you mustn’t fret,” Sera spoke softly. “I understand that this is all very confusing, but it will make sense soon enough.”
Adrienne couldn’t believe what his eyes were showing him. This creature had to be a clone—she had organic skin, hair, she wore clothes. This was not Sera, this was an imposter. It had to be.
He glanced at Lear, who stood shaking his head back and forth, whispering to himself. His son would be no help here. Lear’s ability to plot moves into the future would be his undoing now that they faced a situation with no predictable outcome.
“Come,” Sera said as she approached and placed a hand on Adrienne’s shoulder. “My mother and I have much we must tell you about your role in the future.”
He couldn’t resist, and fell in beside Sera as Airtha’s body expanded and encompassed them.
“You won’t feel a thing,” Sera whispered with a smile dancing on her lips.
CABIN ON THE LAKE
STELLAR DATE: 04.22.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2
REGION: In Orbit of Carthage, New Canaan System
/> The party was in full swing as Tanis walked out of the cabin with another platter of food for the guests that covered the laws, the beach, and were splashing in the lake.
It was bittersweet holding this celebration on the I2. The similarities to the celebrations they held after the Battle of Victoria were striking, but so many more lives had been lost this time. Landfall was in ruin, and her cabin on the planet’s surface was uninhabitable until the toxic spill in the lake was dealt with.
But the I2 had come through unscathed, and a hundred thousand survivors had boarded the ship to join in the release gained from a bit of music, revelry, and comradery with others.
Many of New Canaan’s people were still out there, working to stabilize the debris around Carthage so that no ships fell to the surface, and many others were scouring the system, hunting for any stray life pods which may have drifted off in the darkness.
Every day, more names moved from the lists of missing to those of the dead.
It could have been worse, she supposed. There could have been no survivors. The dream they all shared could have been over.
Tanis was continually amazed by the spirit of the New Canaan colonists—her people. None of them had expected anything close to the trials and travails they had faced. But they had been selected, each and every one, for their spirit, their drive to build something new.
That drive had been tested, sorely tested, again and again—and yet, here they were, still standing.
She walked down the steps, careful not to tip the platter piled high with sandwiches—they were BLTs after all—and carried it to one of the tables laden with food.
“You know, we have servitors,” a voice said from behind her, and Tanis turned to see Jason Andrews.
“Jason! I’m glad you made it up here,” Tanis replied.