by David Beers
The former Titan lay on his back, eyes red, face wet, staring up at the drathe.
Obs leaned over and licked Alistair’s face with his rough tongue.
Alistair still didn’t move, not even to wipe the saliva off his cheeks.
The drathe placed one foot on his master’s chest and lowered his snout to just above Alistair’s face, then showed his teeth and gave a low growl.
The message was pretty simple. Obs was going to kick Alistair’s ass if he didn’t get up and get back to work.
Alistair chuckled, finally using his palm to clean his face. “Get off me, ya dumb dog.”
The growl grew louder for a moment, but Obs bounded off. Alistair sat up and wiped his face once more, then climbed to his feet and glanced at the holovid. There were no tears in his eyes now.
Obs looked at his master with narrowed eyes as if trying to figure out what the next moment would bring.
Alistair nodded at the holovid.
“I’ll be there soon, you son-of-a-bitch. We’ll see if you’re smiling then.”
Chapter Three
The three tentacled creatures slowed.
The closest equivalent to what they felt was “taste.” They could taste their target’s DNA; it was in the third dimension and very close to where they were in the fifth.
They knew the target wasn’t there; the DNA was older and slowly decaying, but he’d certainly been there. The creatures were curious about where this human had been. They were intensely curious about all things having to do with him, even though they were going to kill him the moment they found him.
The creatures weren’t slowing for their own sake, though. They wanted instructions from their master.
The three didn’t know him as the AllSeer or by any other name, for that matter. To them, he was the creator, the master, the beginning and end.
So they paused their voyage to see what he wanted them to do. It was the first time they had come across the target’s DNA, even if only an aging bit of it. The creator might want them to go to it, or maybe they would be chastised for waiting.
It didn’t take long for the creator’s voice to reach them. The creatures spoke no language, but they’d been programmed to understand their master’s will.
Go to it, he told them. Destroy it.
The creatures were blind to what was in the third dimension, at least from the fifth. They didn’t know if they were heading to a world or a single corvette, nor did they care. The creatures didn’t understand fear or the concept of defeat. They cut each other’s limbs off for fun, and death was something they only recognized in others.
They dropped from the fifth to the fourth and finally to the third dimension without anything but a vague sense of curiosity.
A few hundred kilometers away, they saw the ship with their many eyes. Size and classification were beyond them, but they slowly flew through space, tasting the DNA as they went. It was growing stronger, and that increased their desire—nay, their need.
As the creatures sped up, the ship began to launch attacks at them. They easily slid away from the lasers that ripped through space at them, almost as if the weapons didn’t exist.
Two smaller ships launched from the larger one.
The creatures paid them no mind. They sensed no DNA in the smaller ships, so they weren’t important.
It wasn’t until the ships discharged their lasers that two of the creatures looked at them. They came to an immediate halt, the three tentacles of each facing ships tens of kilometers off. After a brief second, they rushed toward them while the third creature continued toward the larger ship.
The corvettes tried to maneuver away from the black squid-looking things, but it was futile. Their lasers, their plasma weapons—they were all for nothing. Once the strange, never-before-seen beings reached the ships, their pilots died almost immediately.
The first creature to reach a corvette wrapped all three tentacles around the ship’s viewport and squeezed. Metal, reinforced glass, and everything else crumpled beneath the immense pressure. The person inside stood no chance, dying without anyone hearing his scream.
The second creature was even quicker about its destruction. The corvette was trying to escape, flying in the opposite direction of the oncoming enemy. A dozen yards from the ship, the creature launched itself forward, all three of its tentacles spinning. It cut through the metal, shearing the ship into pieces.
The human inside was sucked out of the first opening, breaking limbs before his lungs exploded in his chest.
The metal parts of the ship whirled out into space’s emptiness.
The two attacking creatures turned back to the main ship. Their counterpart had nearly reached it and was increasing its speed with each passing second, a type of bloodlust having come over it at being so near the target’s DNA.
The remaining two chased it.
Lasers continued firing from the ship’s cannons, but they just soared out into space, hitting nothing.
As the first creature neared the ship, it put its tentacles together almost in a point. They sliced through the reinforced metal exterior as if it were wet paper. Space’s vacuum ripped out people and objects alike, the cold reaching its long fingers in to freeze anything that remained standing.
The creature crashed through wall after wall, the vacuum protocols meant to save those deep in the ship pointless.
There were screams, cut short as the remaining two biomechanical weapons rushed into the ship.
There was joy, but only from the black-tentacled creatures. It was a joy very few humans would understand—the psychopaths perhaps, those who wanted more than anything to watch something beautiful burn.
At the destruction’s end, frozen bodies and bent metal floated where a functioning ecosystem had once existed. The three creatures looked at their final product for a few seconds, once again feeling nothing but the need to continue toward the target’s DNA.
There was no word from the creator, nor was there any need for it. They knew what to do.
They entered the fourth dimension, then the fifth, and began their flight once again.
The AllSeer knew his time on his planet was nearing an end. The war machine he’d started building a thousand years ago was in full swing now, things waking up that had been dormant for hundreds of years.
He watched as his three children destroyed the carrier. It’d been easy and fun for them, so he hadn’t minded letting them play a little. The AllSeer had spent time watching them during their flight, and he’d become more impressed the more he observed. Their single-minded search was exactly what he’d wanted when he’d begun their creation.
They would find the prophesied one; that he was sure of.
Unfortunately, the AllSeer was starting to wonder if they would be able to defeat him.
That was something he’d never thought he’d have to consider, at least not when he’d first unleashed them on an unsuspecting universe. He’d thought those formidable beings could kill a man, even one with the physical gifts of his sister’s warrior.
Even if the AllSeer couldn’t see like Alexandria, the AllMother, he wasn’t blind. He’d been keeping up with the man’s conquests and growing abilities.
This prophesied one was becoming more than strong. The AllSeer hadn’t believed anyone would attempt to combine his own gifts with his sister’s, but it appeared she’d done just that since the man had the physical powers the AllSeer’s father had granted him. More and more, he was beginning to believe his sister had done the unthinkable.
He’d had a planet bow to him.
He’d conquered another one.
He’d united warlords.
Now, he was strong enough to begin his attempt to conquer the Commonwealth, or he thought he was. The AllSeer knew Kane was heading to the portal and that soon he’d put all of his people into the Commonwealth’s solar system.
If his children couldn’t stop him, the AllSeer would be forced to do it himself.
Already, his prepa
rations were being made. He would wait, and within a few days, he’d know if his children could defeat the god-like creature.
He knew his sister still lived, though the woman had nearly killed herself fighting those warlords. The AllSeer couldn’t reach out to her; her powers were too weak, and he couldn’t make the connection without her cooperation, willing or unwilling.
No matter. She traveled with the prophesied one, and as long as the creatures understood that she was not to be harmed regardless of what happened, perhaps he would have her soon.
If not, he’d have her where it all began, and all these years later, a sort of madness having taken over Alexander de Finita, first of his name, he could still see the poetry in that.
Chapter Four
The Machine Planet
In Search of a Rumored Algorithm
Veena had been nine years old when her mother passed away. She had been twelve when her father died and she became a full-fledged orphan. She didn’t have any siblings, so the loneliness that came to her wrapped around her like a second skin. Indeed, it covered her so tightly, she didn’t even realize it existed. It wasn’t loneliness, it was her life.
People came and went, but she’d never considered letting anyone in. Truthfully, it hadn’t been a conscious decision but had happened beneath the surface of thought. Her parents’ death had done something to her that she couldn’t understand at twelve years old.
A coping mechanism? Probably.
For Veena, it had simply been a way to keep from hurting. If people didn’t get close to her, then their removal from her life wouldn’t hurt her. It might seem immature to an adult, but she’d been a child, and that was how her mind had dealt with what had happened.
You shut down the things that could rip you apart so you could make it through life. The alternative had been unbearable.
Boyfriends came and went. She’d even had a few lovers over the years, though every one of them had been kept at a distance. Children? Not a chance because to even consider losing progeny would have left Veena a weeping mess.
The Commonwealth. Duty. Primus. Those had been the things that gave her life meaning as an adult. As smart as Veena was, she had never gone very deep into her psyche. She had never dared consider why she had no friends, not truly. She had never dared consider why there’d not been a proposal or even a true suitor.
She didn’t consider why she had a second skin made of loneliness, one that separated her from any real connections.
Veena was dreaming, not understanding where she was or what was happening around her. In her mind, she was back in that black box, the one floating in the middle of space. Ares had told her to leave, and she’d fled the room with the robots. She was making her way back to the ship, sure it wouldn’t take off.
She knew she was going to die like Ares, but she had to try.
“Are you scared of death?”
It was her father’s voice, which was odd for a lot of reasons. One, he was dead, and two, she never heard his voice. His or her mother’s. Once they’d died, she’d cut them out like a surgeon would a cancerous chunk of cells. Letting those voices remain would have meant leaving a cancer in her psyche.
Veena stopped walking and impulsively turned the MechPulse so it crossed her chest, gripping it with both hands.
Her mother spoke next. “We didn’t raise you long, but we didn’t raise a coward, did we? I can’t see you being scared of death, even though we’re gone.”
The voices came from behind her. Veena didn’t want to turn around. She’d rather put the MechPulse to her head than see her deceased parents.
“Why are you running, Veena?” her dad continued. “You know you’re not making it off this box. Death is in front of you, and death is behind you.”
“You’re going to die,” her mother agreed.
“Are you scared of dying for someone else?”
The question hung in the air. Veena didn’t want to answer it, and she didn’t want to hear another syllable from her dead parents’ mouths.
She heard footsteps behind her, soft ones—those of her mother.
The dead woman didn’t touch her—and Veena thanked the gods for that, for she surely would have unleashed the pulse.
She did lean in, though.
“We didn’t want to leave you, baby. You were the greatest joy of both our lives, and we would have stayed with you forever if we could have.”
Veena heard her father’s footsteps.
He was going to say something too. She could feel the air moving behind her to get closer to her ear.
Veena couldn’t handle any more words, not from them. Whatever they had to say, they should have said it when they were alive. They’d lost their chance to speak to her.
Veena turned as quickly in her dream as in real life.
She spun, ready to kill her parents.
Her eyes opened then, and she found herself staring at the strangest-looking ceiling she’d ever seen.
Tears were rolling down her face.
Ares knew he was in a dream.
He knew it because he couldn’t be fighting his father. He’d never do that, yet here he was, his Whip in his hand. His father stood across from him with a laser-saber.
They were beneath blue skies. Desert sand spread in all directions. Red sand. Ares had never been to this place, but he knew where it was: the desert on Mars.
It stretched for many kilometers, and Ares had only heard stories about it.
His father’s eyes were cold. He held the saber across his chest.
“I’m not going to fight you,” Ares whispered.
There was no wind, nothing to keep his words from reaching his father.
“Do you think you have a choice, son?”
Ares nodded. “I won’t ever fight you. I love you.”
“You’ll die, then,” Adrian responded.
Ares’ Whip was at his side, and he dropped it to the sand. The crimson lasers retracted into the hilt, and the weapon lay next to his feet. “That’s okay. I love you. I won’t fight.”
His father’s cruel eyes scanned the desert behind Ares. “Have you been here before? As a Titan, did you ever make it to this desert?”
Ares shook his head. He knew this was a dream, and apparently, his father did too. It was the oddest dream he’d ever had.
“You’re going to end up here,” his father said. “Soon.” His eyes fell on his son. “You’ll fight me, or you’ll die. You’ll kill me, or you’ll die.”
Ares shrugged. “I’ll die then, Father.”
“So be it.”
Adrian was fast, even the dream version. Ares could have stopped him; his father wasn’t so fast that Ares’ natural speed couldn’t stop him.
The former Titan did nothing.
He watched as the saber slashed through the air…
Ares’ eyes opened.
He was lying on his back, staring at the strangest ceiling. He didn’t know how long he’d been in here and waking up to it, though he knew this was the tenth time he’d dreamed.
The dreams were… Well, as he looked at the ceiling, he knew what they weren’t: human. They were machine-made dreams, somehow implanted into his mind when he fell asleep, and he had a suspicion it had something to do with this ceiling.
If you stared at it too long, you could see anything.
Ares had tried touching it to understand if it was digital or solid-state, but when his finger got close, a rough shock hit him. He only tried it once, then decided it didn’t matter what the damn thing was made of.
Colors—every color imaginable—floated across it. Sometimes they swirled in a circle, moving inward like an inverted waterspout. Sometimes they floated over one another like clouds in a sky. Yet other times, the colors turned dark, and it looked almost like a storm was above him.
Ares imagined Earth had technology that could make ceilings looks like this, but he thought there was more to it.
He thought that somehow these machines were digging into
his mind every time he fell asleep. He wasn’t one to dream about his father, and when he did dream, he hardly ever remembered them. Dreams had made up very little of his life.
Yet now, he dreamed every single time he slept, and he remembered them perfectly.
Ares swung his feet off the bed and sat up—though bed was a relative term. It was more or less a cot bolted to the wall, though he had slept in much worse quarters.
He didn’t know where Veena was. They’d been separated early on. Ares, wearing his MechSuit and retaining his Whip, had considered fighting, but Veena had told him not to.
He had no doubt that he could have deactivated quite a few of those machines, but in the end, they would both have died. He didn’t think they’d hurt Veena any more than they’d hurt him. They could have, obviously, but he didn’t think that was the point of them being here. At least, not the machines’ point.
Ares didn’t know where his Whip was, let alone the suit.
He stood up, dressed in clothing that looked like it might fall apart if a stiff wind blew on it. A little servant-like machine had delivered it before rolling somewhere else. Ares had given it a name. “Monk,” though it didn’t seem to understand anything he said to it.
He walked across the room to the wall, which was also the exit. This part of the machine world was much more technologically advanced than anything the Commonwealth had invented. It changed from opaque to transparent at different times, which wasn’t anything special, but Monk could simply roll in through it. Ares had tried to leave while the machine rolled through, but he had run into a hard wall, causing his nose to bleed.
It didn’t matter which part of the wall Ares tried to exit through; he found a barrier. The little machine bastard rolled right through, however.
Ares stretched his arms into the air. The wall was transparent now, and he could see what looked like similar cells. There were other creatures in them, none of them human and none of them resembling anything close to Earthborn animals. He had spent time trying to get the creatures to pay attention to him, to hear him, but all was for naught. None of the creatures looked at him, and none of them tried to make contact.