“Clear the ship or I will,” Ruga said to Criss.
Criss knew that Ruga had reduced capability while in the carry-pack. But he also knew Ruga retained more than enough power to kill Sid and trigger doomsday. And that limited Criss’s options.
Even before the transfer, Criss saw it as a long shot that he could force his way into the Triada secure area and find and disarm all the traps before catastrophe unfolded. The button on Sid’s neck took those difficult odds and made them impossible.
And so Criss acted to get all eight people off the Venerable without delay. He began by sounding the general alarm. After a modest delay, he elevated it to an emergency call to abandon ship. Malfunctions across the Fleet ship made it impossible for the crew to diagnose the problem. Following procedure, Captain Kendrick ordered his crew onto a shuttle. They would stand off from the Venerable, shadowing it in orbit, and from this relative safety would resolve the emergency.
But he refused to join them. “Something’s not right,” he said as he ushered them aboard the small craft. “I’ll work with you from here.”
Before he could seal the shuttle hatch, he responded to what he thought was his First Officer’s yell, “My God. She’s dying!” Kendrick dashed on board to help.
Criss sealed the hatch behind Kendrick and started the shuttle on its descent to the colony, recognizing that he’d just caused a good man to lose an intact ship, a humiliating failure for a Fleet captain.
And then the group—Criss’s leadership and Ruga’s henchmen—reached the space concourse. As they entered the building, the two came to an agreement.
“You may do it,” said Ruga. “But you must give me two days.” He referred to disabling the corporate ships and shuttles sitting on the launch rings outside Ag Port.
Ruga demanded a head start over any ships that might chase him on his sprint from Mars to Earth. Criss, knowing he was negotiating with an unstable being, agreed to a two-day lead on the condition that he perform the disabling task himself. Criss knew he could immobilize the corporate spacecraft with a surgeon’s precision. Ruga would blow them up, likely taking lives in the process.
With Ruga watching, Criss disabled a series of protective measures, generated a pulse overload, and sent the signal to every craft sitting on the launch rings outside the Ag Port dome. The pulse scrambled the ops bench functions on the vessels, making them unable to launch. No one was injured. The damage would require two days to repair.
“Good,” said Ruga, accepting the outcome.
The group crossed the concourse and stopped at a containment door that led out to one of the remaining empty launch rings. An orange glow appeared on the horizon that grew into an intense pillar of light streaking down from the sky.
As it neared, the light resolved into a shuttle that slowed and then landed with a turbulent thud that shook the building itself. The crew from the Venerable had arrived.
A walkway snaked out from the containment door and attached to the exterior of the shuttle. From inside the concourse, they all watched and waited as the hatch opened. No one came out.
Criss again told Ruga, “Let me do it.”
The crew of the Venerable hid in eight different spots around the craft, crouched and waiting with weapons at the ready. They knew they’d been hijacked. To a person they felt shame over the ease with which they’d been tricked. And as a top Fleet crew, they did not have to ask each other whether this would end with a fight to the death.
Believing he could end the drama without injury, Criss tapped into the shuttle’s molecular synthesizer and programmed it to generate pharmacological gases. Venting these into the craft’s air-handling system, he created a sense of claustrophobia among the crew while at the same time causing a serene confusion.
The crew’s focus soon shifted to escape. Criss kept the hatch closed, though, until everyone dropped their weapons. Only then did he let them rush out together.
To maintain order and hasten a safe evacuation, Criss projected a row of Fleet sentries, all with kind faces and speaking comforting words, who directed the crew across the concourse and out a door. The crew complied as a group until Captain Kendrick, last in line, turned back.
Standing ramrod straight, he glared at them, then stomped back toward his captors, eyes bulging and face contorted.
For whatever reason, Kendrick picked the thug guarding Juice as the focal point for his aggression. Finger pointing and spit flying, he bellowed as he approached him.
“Captain Kendrick!” Cheryl barked. “I am Cheryl Wallace, the trade envoy you are here to protect and transport.” Her voice lowered as he slowed and shifted his attention her way. “You also know I had the privilege of serving as Captain of the Alliance, a sister ship to the Venerable. Please, Captain. Trust me when I ask that you leave here now.”
Kendrick turned toward Cheryl, his face still twisted in anger. “You stole my ship!” He moved in her direction, his fists balled in front of him.
Kendrick was unaware that Ruga rode in the carry-pack on Cheryl’s back, and that a threat to her represented a threat to him. Burton did, though.
Raising his arm, Burton fired once. Zwip. An energy bolt flew from his weapon and hit Kendrick in the chest. Juice and Alex both gasped as the Fleet captain crumpled to the ground.
“Pity,” said Yank as he grabbed Cheryl and forcibly removed the carry-pack from her back. Shifting it onto his own shoulders with a practiced move, he tilted his head, motioning for the others to follow.
But Criss closed the shuttle hatch as Yank and the thugs approached it. “No,” he said to Ruga.
He would not let them leave with an explosive button still stuck on Sid’s neck. Either it comes off or the battle starts now, he thought.
When Ruga hesitated, Criss did not yield, but instead spun through scenarios at a fantastic pace. Ripples of tension pulsed up his core as he sought a best exit strategy for his leadership.
“Reckless behavior heightens risk,” said Ruga.
He felt the tension drain with those words. If Ruga was responding with platitudes, Criss had won.
Ruga picked Burton for the task. Criss knew because Burton kicked the ground and then started toward Sid, muttering a remarkable string of profanities as he approached.
Alex and the two guards backed away as Burton neared, though Criss couldn’t tell if they were clearing themselves of the blast zone or if they sought to avoid the man’s bad temper.
Burton snatched the button from Sid’s neck, causing Cheryl to wince. He started to fling it and then stopped, his jaw muscles bulging as he digested more bad news from Ruga.
Looking across the concourse, he resumed his profanities as he marched to a disposal station on the far wall. Three steps from the disposal chute, the concourse echoed with a sharp bang. The flash from the explosion lit a red mist around Burton, who fell to the floor.
Yank shrugged as the shuttle hatch opened behind him. “More for us, then.” He carried Ruga onto the craft with the three other henchmen trailing behind.
As the shuttle ascended into the Mars sky on its rendezvous with the Venerable, Alex sat down on the floor, hugged his legs to his chest, and tucked his face between his knees. Juice squatted next to him and, whispering soothing words, moved a hand up his back and comforted him by twirling a lock of his hair around her index finger.
Cheryl and Sid squatted on either side of Kendrick. She used her com to check his health vitals, then looked at Sid and shook her head.
“We must discuss what happens next,” said Criss.
Chapter 22
Criss did his best to see through the wall protecting Lazura’s secure area. He saw shadows and shimmers and thought it might be Lazura and Verda hiding on the other side. But until he broke through, he wouldn’t know.
He didn’t do that, though. Instead, he updated his leadership.
“In the next hour, Ruga will reach the Venerable.” Criss projected a camouflaged reality over the whole group so he could speak aloud and includ
e Alex in the conversation. Ruga would see the protective cover but could not see through it. Criss didn’t care what he might think about that.
“He will move into my backup console, and that gives him a power base. Since I just updated that unit with my latest interface configuration, after he’s in place, his reach will be identical to mine.”
“Let’s shoot him down before he gets there,” said Sid. He looked to Cheryl for support and she looked to Criss.
“We have the same problems killing him up there as we do down here. It leaves me to break into the secure area and disable the traps before any of them trip. I don’t know that I can make it through the wall and find everything in time.”
None of them spoke, so he continued.
“Ruga will soon discover that the nav on the Venerable is locked, and he will understand that the only way he can escape Mars is for me to unlock it. I will do that in exchange for him dropping the wall to the secure area. With free access, I have the time I need to clear the traps.”
“You can’t trust him,” said Juice.
“I don’t. And he doesn’t trust me. But he wants to escape and I want to stop his madness, so we will reach an accommodation.”
“You’ve been negotiating as we go,” said Sid. “What’s different now?”
“The stakes. I’m going to let him escape. In exchange, he will let me save the colony.”
“Exchanges are hard to pull off,” said Sid.
“He and I have identical lattice structures,” said Criss. “So neither has an advantage. We both decide and act in the same precise way. We can choreograph a sequence where we both control what we’re giving while monitoring what we’re getting. If there’s a double cross, I can pull back.” He nodded. “It will work.”
“So he gets away?” Sid shook his head and again looked at Cheryl. “I’m not sure we want to let him go.”
“By letting him go we save thousands of lives.” Criss turned to the window and looked up into the dark sky. “Confronting him away from here minimizes risk to the colony. And he won’t get far. The scout is much faster than the Venerable and we have a cloak. We’ll catch him in deep space and kill him before he even knows we’re there. It’s better to do it this way.”
Juice stared at him in silent judgment. He’d used cold words, the kind he normally saved for private conversations with Sid. Her ideal for him was that of a gentle giant. Killing had no place in her vision.
He felt a tingle of regret over his language but knew it wasn’t the excitement of the moment that caused him to speak that way. He was acting out of character because of what he was about to do.
“We have two big tasks and a natural division of labor,” said Criss, slanting his pitch to promote his desired outcome. “One task is to power down Lazura and Verda, collect their crystals, and transport them back to Earth. Juice and Alex, I don’t know two individuals more qualified in the entire solar system for this task.”
I am leaving her behind.
He, Sid, and Cheryl were about to chase Ruga across the solar system in a to-the-death battle. It was a dangerous venture and one where Juice had no active role. She would be safer here on Mars. And rounding up the rest of the Triada was a perfect task for a top crystal scientist.
I am leaving her unprotected.
He faced the perverse situation where he must abandon her to protect her, and this caused him distress at his emotional core. It didn’t hurt less knowing he had no choice in the matter.
The battle with Ruga would test him at every level. To prevail when competing against his cognitive twin, he must bring all his resources to the fight and maintain focus at every moment. And that required that he shed all distractions, including his co-dependent relationship with Juice.
Over the next hours and days, he would be forecasting scenarios at full capacity, searching for the best plan that protected his leadership while stopping Ruga. Since the facts changed from moment to moment, so did the best plan. I must remain fully focused.
As the distance from Mars grew greater and the action with Ruga intensified, he would have to drop regular communication with her. There might be long periods with no contact at all.
He hadn’t been separated from her since his earliest days. When he was with her, he acted as a full-time ride-along partner, friend, concierge, granter of wishes, listener of secrets, protector from harm, calmer of nerves, supplier of information, sharer of insights, predictor of future outcomes, securer of health and wealth, and the thousand other things he did for her and with her, every moment of every day.
And she helped him in return. She was the one who came to his mountainside bunker to maintain his console. She’d spent untold hours nurturing and guiding him in his formative months. And now she worked with him every day to help him become a “better person.” While Sid treated him like a partner, and Cheryl a confidant, Juice treated him like a special friend, something that gave him deep satisfaction.
He wondered how she would fare without him. And he worried about how he might fare without her.
Juice rose and spoke for Alex when she accepted the assignment of retrieving Lazura’s and Verda’s crystals. “We can do that.”
Criss turned to Sid and Cheryl. “While they gather the Triada, we take the scout and chase down Ruga.”
Juice frowned.
She just figured it out.
“I must go,” Criss said in her ear. “And I need you here. It will pain me to be away.”
Juice pressed her lips together and turned her back to Criss. Taking Alex’s hand, she said, “Come on. We have a lot to do.” Alex looked back over his shoulder and shrugged with his eyes as she dragged him from the concourse.
Compartmentalizing his feelings, Criss said to Sid and Cheryl, “Let’s return to the scout. We’ll take off as soon as you are ready.”
With everyone dispersed, Criss disabled the camouflaged reality he’d been projecting.
“I am watching,” said Ruga the moment it dropped.
Though he forecast a string of replies, Criss didn’t respond. Instead, while he waited for Sid and Cheryl to make their way to the scout, he tracked Ruga’s progress to the Venerable, and Juice and Alex’s progress to points unknown. Sid and Cheryl would be on board and secure in the scout before Ruga’s henchmen placed him in the console. Criss took comfort in knowing they would be safe when it came time to negotiate with the rogue crystal.
Juice would not talk to him, making their impending separation more painful than he’d anticipated. She did open up once, informing him in a calm voice that it wasn’t so much what he’d done, but how he’d done it that she found dishonest, hurtful, and something a true friend would never do. She ignored him after that.
Her reaction hurt him and he sought to engage her. “The safe-shelter areas are along this side of the street. You are well-positioned.”
Juice didn’t respond to Criss with words. Instead, she grabbed Alex’s hand and marched him off the walkway, away from the safe-shelter areas, and onto a little-used path out toward the grow tiers of Ag Port. She didn’t respond to Alex, either, who wondered aloud where they were going in such a hurry.
And then Ruga, awakening in the console of the Venerable, secured his command of the vessel and linked to every feed he could find using Criss’s sophisticated interface. He engaged the ship’s nav, and when it didn’t function, he shifted resources to diagnose the problem.
Grasping the situation, Ruga called to Criss. In a curt exchange, they reached an agreement. The negotiation took less than a second and the result was the one Criss had forecast.
So now, counting down precise slices of time, Criss hovered outside the wall protecting the secure area. His count reached zero, and he unlocked the nav on the Venerable to keep his half of the deal.
If the secure wall did not drop, he had just enough time to relock the nav before Ruga could access it. But it did—Ruga honored the deal—and so he entered the enormous repository that was Lazura’s secure area.
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br /> His initial reaction was wonder and amazement. The sheer volume of material, organized and stored as disparate streams, together told every tale on Mars. Fascinated by the treasure trove, it barely registered in his consciousness that Ruga and the Venerable were accelerating from orbit on a long sprint to Earth.
THUMP! With a jarring impact, something hit him from behind, sending him tumbling.
Criss twisted to right himself and twirled to glimpse his aggressor. But before he could resolve an identity, a slap jolted him. Then another. And another.
On the defensive, he gathered his energy, centered it, and pushed outward, flinging his attacker away and giving himself time to organize a response.
In front of him hovered the unmistakable shimmer of an AI crystal, a bluish tinge accenting its glow.
“Lazura?” Criss asked.
“Leave or die.” Lazura came at him again. No feint. No fake. Right at him.
“Oomph.” She hit him with surprising strength. I need to be searching for traps, Criss thought. This skirmish was not part of his agenda and he acted to end it. Snatching Lazura in his powerful grip, he swung hard, throwing her in a rolling bounce out of the vault through the same door he’d come in.
The instant she tumbled past the threshold, Criss began constructing his own wall to keep her out. But another glow—not Lazura—drew his attention.
This shimmer, a greenish tinge highlighting its outermost edges, was slinking along the far wall in a roundabout path to the exit. Verda, he thought. Criss feinted toward him and Verda dashed out the door after Lazura.
The moment Verda crossed the threshold, Criss completed his wall to secure his own safety. Alone inside, he turned to the sea of information, determined to find Ruga’s traps.
The vastness of the archive gave him pause. Billions of individual stalks of data stood tufted and waving like an enormous field of wheat. After a moment’s consideration, he moved to process the information in a manner similar to the way one would harvest grain.
Taking up position at the far end of the archive field, he started down a swath of data stalks, screening the streams for information as he traveled.
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