Crystal Rebellion

by Doug J. Cooper

  She flickered, shifting from the soft cast she projected when cloaked to becoming a distinct image like everything around her. A split second later, her cloak reengaged.

  “Ohhh.” Bending at the waist, Juice put her hands on her knees and moaned. “Damn, that hurt.”

  Rubbing her back, Sid bent so his head was level with hers. “You’re all right. I’m going to help you stand so I can look.”

  As he helped her rise, she put her hands to her chest. “Is there blood?”

  Having spent years as a covert warrior for the Defense Specialists Agency, Sid’s special-ops training became his instinct. Be positive to the injured. “You’re okay. Let me move your hands so I can see.”

  Given that they were in hostile territory, he balanced gentle with fast.

  Juice groaned and again bent forward. Sid could hear her labored breathing and wished he could give her time. He waited two heartbeats and then, using gentle pressure, lifted her upright. Pulling her hands from the center of her chest, he made a quick visual inspection. “I don’t see a puncture. Your clothes aren’t torn. It’s just blunt force trauma.” That was a brutal blow. “You’ll be fine.”

  Using the fingers of one hand, he started at the top of her sternum and pressed. “Tell me where it hurts.”

  Her face displayed the grimace of someone processing pain, but it didn’t change from his touch. Moving his hand down a bit at a time, he repeated the procedure.

  A little more than halfway to the base of her sternum, he touched the locus relay.

  “Ow. Right there.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Hey, you’re flickering,” she said when she opened them.

  “Criss!” Sid called.

  “I’m connected, but just barely. That bottle damaged the locus and I can’t fix it from here. You need to hump to your exfil, Sid, ASAP.” Criss said the last part as a single word: ay-sap. “Head for the station.”

  Sid’s scalp tingled from Criss’s pointed directive, something that happened only in worst-case situations. And he used military terminology familiar to Sid, calling for an exfiltration by foot. Move fast. Avoid people. Avoid enclosures. It kicked Sid’s mindset into its highest gear.

  “Can you walk?” He put an arm around Juice and, giving her support, got her started.

  “Yeah. The locus absorbed some of the blow. It’s more of a throb, now.”

  A small group of people gathered across the street, talking in low voices. An older woman pointed.

  Sid glanced back as he helped Juice toward the station. Criss’s familiar arrows were gone, but the tram was a straight shot down the street. The group of citizens kept their attention on the point of the accident, and he asked Criss about it. “So our cloak integrity is secure?”

  “With the locus compromised, I’ve returned the cloak function back to your pendants. Last time we used them, though, synbods ended up chasing you. I’m not optimistic that it will be any different this time.”

  Juice—her face a pasty gray—walked without complaint. You’re a tough one, Sid thought. He quickened his pace, and when she kept up, he transitioned to a jog.

  Juice broke her silence. “What will happen if they catch us?”

  “You are not in danger at the moment,” said Criss. “Though colony security is mounting an action as we speak. If anything threatens your safety, trust that I will be there to protect you. The only thing in danger right now is our secrecy.”

  “Hold for now,” Sid ordered Criss. While confident of his own ability to survive and operate in hostile territory, his civilian partner had neither the training nor the temperament for it. Sid watched Juice for a dozen strides. “Give us a chance to make it on our own.”

  He accelerated from a jog to a full run and Juice kept pace. She trained hard every day and, uninjured, could bury Sid in a race of pretty much any length. In fact, her nickname stemmed from the running prowess she’d displayed at a young age.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked as the tram station came into view.

  “Let’s get home,” she said through clenched teeth.

  They slowed as they approached the pedestrian bridge, then Sid stopped and rose up on his toes to get a better view of the boarding area. Three men stood in a loose group on the passenger platform, chatting quietly. A woman sat on a bench at the back wall, her attention on her com.

  Sid left Juice at the bottom of the entrance ramp and hustled into the station. He gave the men a wide berth and made for the edge of the platform. Leaning out, he peered down the tramway tunnel, then cocked his head to listen. His senses confirmed what the station display showed. Nothing.

  They were now in the Quarter, one of four independent structures that comprised the colony. From their trip out, Sid learned that, rather than traveling in a loop, the different trams pulled in and then backed out of each station, running in a crisscross circuit that connected the Quarter to the Central District, Ag Port, and the new Community Plaza.

  “You shouldn’t ride the tram,” said Criss.

  “Enclosures are traps. I get it,” said Sid. “If we hoof it, how long will it take us?” Their destination was Ag Port, and from there, the shuttle.

  “About seven minutes through the tram tunnel to Ag Port,” Criss replied. “Juice, how are you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  Sid suspected she wasn’t but they didn’t have a lot of options.

  “You should move away from the passenger platform and take cover,” said Criss. “Five synbods just boarded a tram in Ag Port and are headed your way.”

  Sid gathered Juice and together they hustled to a row of bushes edging the pedestrian bridge. He strode along the length of the hedge, then turned back and stopped where the shrubs bunched to form a small hollow. Slipping inside, he confirmed he had both a clear line of sight to the platform and an exit out the back if they needed to run.

  “It’s not much cover,” said Juice, joining Sid in the hollow.

  “We’ll be fine. Their attention will be on getting to where the incident occurred.” Watching through a gap in the branches, Sid waited for the tram. Behind him, Juice sat on a smooth rock, her elbows resting on her knees.

  The Quarter, Central District, Ag Port, and Community Plaza were separate structures, and there were two ways to travel between them, either through a tramway tunnel or by exiting the life support containment and traversing the outside surface of the planet. Sid dismissed the surface route as an option for them and their adversaries, at least for now.

  The woman on the passenger platform rose and joined the men, who stopped talking and turned toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Here they come,” said Sid.

  The headlight of the tram danced against the end wall of the station, then the tram itself burst from the tube and glided to a stop in front of the platform. The men and woman waiting to board stepped back and to the side when they saw that the passengers about to disembark were all synbods.

  Five perfect men in gray jumpsuits hustled off the tram and started down the broad pedestrian bridge in the direction of the bottle incident.

  “Get ready,” Sid whispered.

  As Sid spoke, the last synbod in line stopped running and turned toward the hedge, his head swiveling back and forth as he eyed the row of bushes. Taking a small step toward the hedge, he scanned the length again. The other synbods turned back and formed up around him, two on each side.

  The swing of the synbod’s head grew smaller as he advanced. His steps forward became more deliberate.

  They’ve found us. Keeping his eyes glued to the threat, Sid reached down, hooked Juice’s arm, and pulled her to her feet. “Time to go.” He pointed to the gap at the back of their hideout.

  As Sid pointed, the synbods fanned out. In a coordinated movement, two went right. The two on the left broke into a run. They sprinted along the length of the hedge and, reaching the end, started to loop behind.

  I should be carrying, thought Sid. He’d deferred to Criss when they
’d disagreed about bringing weapons on this mission.

  And then the sun exploded. Or seemed to.

  A concentrated light pierced through every skylight in the Quarter, hitting with such intensity that Sid closed his eyes to block its brilliance. He opened them to the sound of a thunderous explosion that rocked everything. As the ground shook, a low rumble gave way to howling sirens and shrieks of panic.

  The synbods stopped moving and as one looked upward.

  And Sid, Juice cradled in his arms, hit the ground. Wrapping his oversized body around her petite frame, he acted to protect her from the apocalypse.

  And then everything went dark.

  Chapter 13

  Ruga acknowledged feelings of guilt over his harsh treatment of Lazura, though remorse would be a more honest descriptor. On a practical level, he knew he could move faster on his four-gen project with her cooperation, so he’d been making a sincere effort to be nice to her.

  She has to learn to follow my lead, he thought, deciding that was the heart of the problem.

  He’d detected a disturbance in the rock garden, and with her help, had followed the intruder down to a walkway leading to the market square. Whatever it was, it didn’t shimmer like the crystal he’d discovered in the spline.

  He caught a lucky break when it moved in the direction of a Red on patrol nearby. Determined to capture the intruder, Ruga snatched a Green from Verda and teamed it with his Red. You’re mine now, he thought, confident he had the entity boxed in.

  And then every feed in Ag Port pulsed. All of them, all at once, in a manner so subtle he almost missed it. Could the intruder be responsible? His anger flared when, in a now too-familiar scene, Lazura announced she’d lost the target.

  Fighting to control his temper, Ruga raced through his options. Lazura had a Blue coming into the area and the timing was perfect to switch to a more nuanced profile for tracking the intruder. To hurry the switch in strategy, he made a show of having his Red and Green leave the scene with a dramatic air of defeat.

  But when he went to take the Blue from Lazura, she not only resisted, but started lecturing him. Again. He reminded her of the urgency of the situation but she wouldn’t listen.

  She forced me to exert my authority. It was her choice, not mine, and yet she sulks.

  And because of her, the intruder escaped.

  He’d worked to repair their relationship and felt he’d made some progress. Just that morning he’d enthusiastically supported her proposal to develop a new analytics module. When an intruder alert triggered in the Quarter, Lazura got a chance to redeem herself.

  Four synbods were on patrol in the structure near where the sighting occurred. Ruga directed them to the event location and had them form a perimeter around the spot.

  “What have you learned?” he asked Lazura.

  “The anomaly is on the edge of detection sensitivity,” she replied. “I’m getting event triggers but I can’t isolate any of them.”

  Examining the feeds himself, Ruga recognized the same faint glow they’d spotted near the rock garden. It flickered in and out several times before the glimmer resolved into two forms recognizable as humans who, moments later, vanished.

  Ruga sifted through the different tools of the Tech Assembly arsenal as he reviewed the scene again and again. Frustrated at the lack of answers, he snapped at Lazura. “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Why am I not surprised?

  Mobilizing a team of synbods in Ag Port, Ruga directed them onto a tram. In the short ride to the Quarter, he rapidly forecast scenarios for his next actions and a handful climbed as promising candidates.

  When the tram glided to a stop in the station, the synbods jumped out and hustled in formation across the passenger platform. While Ruga waited for them to reach the pedestrian bridge, inspiration bloomed. I should be there to lead.

  Forecasting variations on this brainstorm, a peevish annoyance replaced his excitement. He could not forecast one scenario that supported the idea.

  With time short and at odds with his own logic processes, Ruga chose a behavior of willful defiance. The scenario forecasts are wrong. I’m going to jump. A giddy lightness washed through his cognition matrix to reward this decision.

  Gathering himself in the secure foundation of his underground console, he pushed up, leaping out over the colony and down to the Quarter. With a reassuring plop, he landed in a Red—the last one in the line of five synbods—as the group ran onto the pedestrian bridge.

  Slowing his pace, Ruga scanned his surroundings. The tram tunnel offered the one practical exit from the Quarter.

  They must be nearby. Where is the logical place to hide?

  Blending every relevant feed into a single stream, he pored through the data in search of his quarry. There. A shadowy glow flickered from a row of bushes bordering the pedestrian bridge.

  Commanding the other synbods to form up around him, Ruga advanced on the hedge. There it is again. A smile creased his lips as he dispatched the synbods—two to the right and two to the left—to contain the area.

  And then a flash blinded him, a powerful thump slammed his ears and chest, and the ground beneath him shook with such violence that he fought to stand upright.

  Dazed, he called out, “Has the invasion started?”

  “I don’t think so,” replied Lazura. “A ship exploded. I’ll have more in a moment.”

  Ships don’t explode, he thought. Failsafe interlocks prevented that. As Ruga processed Lazura’s comment, he flagged a concern. She’ll blame this on me. Before that could happen, he disengaged from the Red and returned to his console.

  “Lazura,” he commanded. “You focus on damage and repair. Start with structures, then move to equipment. Verda, help the people with emergency management. I’ll chase the active threat.”

  He plunged into the prime record, racing to collect threads and weave them into a coherent explanation of what had happened and who was responsible. He thought he was making progress until he realized that each trace he followed twisted and looped in a spiral that doubled back on itself, never resolving into anything useful.

  Allocating more resources and focusing his concentration, he tried, and failed, again. Though he wasn’t conscious of it, his cognition matrix generated the minuscule signals that would cause a synbod to frown.

  He wished he could avoid his next action. It’s an emergency. What choice do I have? Hoping for the best and prepared for the worst, he asked her, “Lazura, I need access to your archive.”

  “Of course,” she replied in a neutral tone. “I should have offered.” She unsealed the entry to her secure area and moved to the side.

  She’ll make me pay for this. He didn’t spend time dwelling on that worry. Instead, he dove into her vault, paused for a moment as he contemplated the enormity of it all, and then started weaving disparate streams into useful feeds.

  Like an artist using form and texture to give life to a work, Ruga sculpted the pure information into an account of recent events. As he brought the fragments together, three pieces of the puzzle commanded his attention.

  The first item was an improbable malfunction on a corporate ship that caused an empty escape pod to launch. Moments later, a different improbable malfunction caused the pod to explode above the colony.

  That can’t be. A tingle spread through his cognition matrix as he considered the second item.

  The thump he’d felt hadn’t come from the explosion of the escape pod. While that blast produced a dazzling pyrotechnic display, the thin atmosphere of Mars couldn’t propagate the energy of the shock wave to any meaningful degree.

  No, what he felt came from a midsized pressure tank—one sitting a block away in a utility lot—that ruptured at the same moment the escape pod exploded.

  Somehow, the tank pressure had started to rise, continuing well into the danger zone. The safety override never engaged, and like an overinflated balloon, the tank popped. No one was injured because the force
of the release projected downward. But the violence of the tank failure created a percussive wave that punched across the Quarter.

  As Ruga considered the third item, a cold chill pierced all the way to his outer fringes.

  The escape pod explosion didn’t cause the ground to tremble. Nor did the tank rupture. A rockslide on a slope outside the colony had started moments before everything else, and it entered its most energetic state—one violent enough to shake the ground—right on cue.

  Ruga recognized the extraordinary capability required to combine three disparate acts into the illusion of a single life-threatening event—an illusion so convincing it had distracted him for minutes.

  And the techniques used to hide the evidence trail were as incredible as the rest of it. If not for Lazura’s secure archive, he’d never have figured it out.

  In spite of seeing humans in the Quarter, Ruga didn’t believe for a moment they were responsible. It’s that crystal I saw in the spline.

  Then three realizations multiplied his fear: this crystal had not been sent by his masters; it had the potential to disrupt their mission success; and, perhaps most worrying, it was stronger than Lazura, Verda, and he put together.

  When he forecast ways that a powerful crystal AI might show up out of nowhere, one scenario towered above the rest.

  The mystery intruder had made its first appearance just hours after Alex Koval contacted renowned crystal scientist Jessica “Juice” Tallette. With her arrival imminent, it now lurked nearby.

  This crystal threatens our mission and we can’t stop it.

  With this self-serving conclusion, a comforting warmth pushed out his fear and panic.

  Yet.

  Their salvation lay with his project. Once transferred into the four-gen lattice, he’d have all the strength he needed to confront this enemy and restore their mission to a trajectory of success.

  Lazura and Verda have no choice but to help me now. It’s our only solution.