The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  He pulled in a deep lungful of air and slowly released it. His ghostly reflection stared back at him from within the transparent wall. It was all up to Moros now. As for the Dhaldric lobe donor, Jack was looking at him.

  Captain Moros sat in a comfortable chair in the overlord’s audience chamber. Of all the rooms in the Parthian, Moros thought this was the most beautiful. Situated at the top level of the iridescent teardrop that formed the Parthian, the gentle curvature of the transparent walls and ceiling showcased the twilight sky. The Ripper, wearing his familiar black uniform, ivory daggers, and pistol, lounged in the shifting violet of the Throne of Decision, backdropped by Altreia’s magenta globe.

  Moros stared at The Ripper, trying to decide if his friend had completely lost his mind.

  “You be wanting me as overlord?” Moros asked.

  “Can’t think of anyone better,” said The Ripper.

  “And to accomplish that, someone be cutting open my head and splicing in part of your brain?”

  The Ripper laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but yes.”

  “All so that I be able to channel the power of the Twice Bound?”

  “That’s right,” said The Ripper.

  Moros shook his head. “The Twice Bound be desiring you as overlord, not me.”

  “With my backing, the Khyre people will accept you.”

  Moros did not like a single thing that The Ripper was telling him. “Even if true, this be leaving you brain damaged and vulnerable. Why do it?”

  “My reasons are my own.”

  “And I be needing to know them,” said Moros.

  The Ripper looked down at his thumbs that were circling each other above interlaced fingers. When his eyes came back up, the set of his jaw indicated that he had made a difficult decision. “I’m a fake.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not the person you see before you. I’m not even Dhaldric. My mind was swapped into this form while my body lies inside a chrysalis cylinder on the world the planet killer was supposed to destroy. It’s called Earth. Moros, I have done what I came here to do. Now I want to go home to my family. I need you to become overlord so that some asshole doesn’t undo everything we’ve accomplished.”

  As startling as this statement was, it explained The Ripper’s odd decision to recall the planet killer and his desire to use the Altreian space fleet to defend that distant world. And suddenly Moros could hear a distinct change in The Ripper’s mode of speech. He stiffened, his muscles going rigid.

  “I think you be crazy,” Moros said.

  “You aren’t the first to think that. But maybe this will help.”

  Suddenly, The Ripper’s eyes locked with Moros’s, the red glint in those black orbs dancing in the dim light. And as Moros stared into them, the world around him faded. A lifetime of memories flashed through his mind.

  A young alien boy named Jack sat in the front row of a ceremony, watching in horror as an executioner severed his father’s head from his body. This was followed by scenes of bloody combat as that boy grew into a feared assassin.

  Flash. Jack making a death deal that allowed Khal Teth’s mind in.

  Flash. Jack holding a gun to the head of a tall woman who smiled back at him, the woman who would become his wife. Flash. A laughing boy who resembles Jack standing hip deep in water, holding a long pole in one hand and a flopping fish in the other.

  On and on it went, the memories filled not just with sights and sounds but with emotions. The sequence ended with Jack climbing into the chrysalis cylinder inside the AQ37Z research vessel and rising from an identical chamber inside the Parthian, wearing the body of Khal Teth.

  All doubt disappeared from Moros’s mind. Jack was the friend whom he had come to know as The Ripper.

  So now he knew The Ripper’s motivation. But what about his own? The odds of this bizarre operation being successful didn’t feel good. Even if it worked, the idea of infecting himself with part of Khal Teth’s brain was horrifying. What if he picked up some of Khal Teth’s megalomania?

  By the void, he could die on the operating table . . . or The Ripper could. Did Moros even want strong psionic powers? Did he want the responsibility of leading the Twice Bound through what would certainly be an expanded civil war? The Dhaldric would never willingly accept a Khyre overlord.

  Then a new thought occurred to him. He didn’t care about the Twice Bound. He cared about the Khyre people. This presented an opportunity to free them from bondage forever. If he went through with this and became the overlord, he could set loose the mutant gene among the Khyre population. Given time for it to take effect, he could make them the mental equals of the Dhaldric, restoring the natural balance. Was that not worth the personal risk?

  Captain Moros rose to his feet, turned, and walked to the nanoparticle door. As The Ripper transformed it into an insubstantial mist, Moros paused and spoke the words that filled his heart with dread.

  “I be willing.”

  Then, without waiting for a response, he strode out of the overlord’s quarters and into the Parthian’s curved perimeter hallway. Right now, he needed to find a boat and get out of the Parthian and onto the Altreian Ocean. Perhaps the sea spray in his face could wash away all thought of the abomination he had just agreed to become.

  CHAPTER 20

  SMYTHE FORTRESS, NEW ZEALAND

  6 March

  Nikina Gailan stepped through the Earth gate and was met with handshakes from Mark, Heather, and Janet as the portal winked out behind her.

  “Glad you made it back, Nikina,” said Janet. “We’ve gone over the data you sent, and it looks great.”

  “So,” said Nikina, allowing herself a false smile, “you’ve already confirmed the location?”

  “Not entirely,” said Heather, “but the recorded satellite data of the surrounding area shows personnel and equipment movements that make it likely. We’ll know for sure by tomorrow.”

  “You must be tired,” said Mark.

  “Not really,” said Nikina. “The little bugs in my veins are doing their thing.”

  “Hungry, then.”

  “That I am. Thirsty, too.”

  “We can fix that,” said Janet. “But not down here in the dungeon. This calls for a celebration out in the sunshine.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “In the Netherlands, yes,” Janet said. “Welcome to New Zealand.”

  Janet turned and led the way along an aisle through all the combat robots that crowded the twin high-bays, with Nikina and the others following close behind. They passed through the hallway at the far end, turning off into a room with an industrial-sized elevator. Janet pressed the call button, and the doors whisked open to admit them.

  As Nikina followed the others inside, she felt a warm glow in the pit of her stomach. A single word popped into her mind.

  Finally!

  Rob had just learned something new about himself and Eos, one of those fortuitous accidents that often precede great discoveries. He’d known for a long time now that letting Eos use his weak telekinetic ability enabled her to enter any computing system within his direct line of sight by manipulating the flow of electrons within the device.

  What he hadn’t realized was that together, the two of them formed a god. Well, maybe not a god, but a damn close approximation when it came to controlling electronics.

  After their failure to hack their way past the defenses of the robots that had run wild in Hanau, Germany, Rob had begun to doubt himself and Eos. There, they had failed miserably, and their failure had led to the gruesome killing of thousands of innocent civilians. That memory had dogged him day and night. His need to understand why they had failed had become an obsession that led him to secretly experiment on some of the new combat robots.

  He’d removed the weapons from six robots and sent them into the cavern where last year’s combat test had gone so badly. Having been confident that the upgraded containment systems wouldn’t allow a repeated
breakout, he had split the robots up into teams of three and repeated the capture-the-flag exercise on a much smaller scale. But this time he modified their programs to prohibit any self-destructive acts or harm to humans.

  However, just as last time, the robots had opted to take actions that he had not anticipated in their attempts to win the game. And just as last time, Eos had been unable to penetrate their anti-hacking firewall.

  Rob still didn’t know what had made him shut down the stasis field that covered the only exit in order to enter the room. He had just wanted to get a closer view of the action as the robots moved to counter one another instead of observing the video feeds through his SRT headset. But immediately upon entering the cavern within which the robots struggled, everything changed.

  Eos suddenly gained complete control of every one of them and marched them into a single file, where they stood obediently waiting for Rob’s inspection.

  “What just happened?” he asked. “How did you bypass the firewalls?”

  She paused for only a second, but in the timescale upon which the alien artificial intelligence operated, a lifetime had passed.

  “Your telekinesis seems to be limited to what you can physically see. Once I have control of the flow of electricity within the machines’ circuits, I own them. That is true whether their programming is in random-access memory or in read-only memory.”

  Over the next several days, Rob and Eos had confirmed the truth of her statement. There were two worlds out there: the one inside the bubble of his telekinetic powers and the one beyond what he could see with his eyes. In that outer world, he and Eos were limited in what they could do. But within . . . well, that was a different story.

  So, yeah, just as he had thought, the Rob-Eos combination was at least worthy of minor god status.

  He hadn’t yet informed Janet, Mark, or Heather of his newly discovered ability. For one thing, they’d be severely pissed off at his reckless, unauthorized experimentation. It was the kind of violation of the rules that had led him to modify the programming of the robots that had attacked Hanau. And although he knew that he would soon have to disclose what he had done and face the consequences, the big reveal could wait at least one more day.

  Right now, he had a picnic to attend topside.

  Prokorov shook his head in consternation. Whatever he had imagined being assimilated into the Kasari Collective would feel like, this was not it. His moods were the same as they had always been, including the mounting frustration he currently felt. He understood why. The nanobots making up the cortical array that linked his brain to the hive-mind had the capacity to override a person’s actions should his desire be contrary to the will of the collective. But they did nothing to alter his mood. Perhaps he would eventually grow accustomed to accepting the collective will without question. Somehow he doubted it. Then again, why should he have expected the Kasari nanite infusion to provide some kind of soothing balm whenever his will was overridden?

  As he looked around at the activity in the cavern that housed the Friendship Gate, he could see no evidence that Commander Shalegha had taken his warnings of an impending attack by the Smythes seriously. If she had, she hadn’t bothered to inform him of her plans. And despite his recent promotion within the collective, he was denied access to that information. Apparently, she had determined that he did not need to know. So, since she had not bothered to respond to his mental questions, he would confront her in person.

  He spotted her standing atop a large elevated platform that provided a view of the entire chamber, a place she had designated as her temporary headquarters. Prokorov eschewed the lift, choosing to climb the fire escape–style metal stairs instead. Despite the rapidity of his steps, he arrived at the top without any noticeable change in his heart rate or breathing.

  “Liaison,” Shalegha said, turning toward him, “so you have chosen to make this long trip without informing me of your coming.”

  Other members of her military staff glanced up from their workstations before returning to their tasks.

  “Since you have not answered the questions I posed via my mental link, I thought I would come see for myself the state of this facility’s defenses. I see that you have decided to ignore my warning about the Smythes.”

  Her upper right hand moved so swiftly he had no time to dodge the blow that struck him on the side of the head. Prokorov crashed to the grated metal flooring, spitting blood, only to feel her lower left hand grab him by the throat. She lifted him until he was face-to-face with her, his feet dangling a foot above the surface.

  Prokorov didn’t struggle, even though he could not breathe. He merely returned her glare as he felt his split lip knit itself back together. A slow grin spread across Shalegha’s vaguely reptilian-looking features as she set him back on his feet and released her grip. Then she ran a hand through her short-cropped orange hair.

  “You have spirit,” she said. “That is a trait I value in my subordinate leaders. But my tolerance for insubordination has its limits.”

  “You knew I was coming.”

  “Of course. If I had wanted to stop you, I would have taken away your will to make this journey. But then I would have denied myself the opportunity to teach you this little lesson.”

  Prokorov suppressed the scowl that tried to crawl onto his face. “I understood that there was no fighting among the members of the collective.”

  “Is that what you thought? Where would be the fun in that? We Kasari have no internal wars. But local disputes can be settled without the necessity for distracting the collective from far more important matters. This little world of yours is but one of thousands currently undergoing assimilation. As group commander, I am expected to execute my mission as I see fit,” Shalegha said.

  The lingering dizziness made Prokorov sluggish in processing what she had just told him, but he managed. He might be her liaison to humanity, but to her he was only a cog that could easily be replaced. That knowledge did not sit well with him, but it was familiar. He had been forced to overcome many similar obstacles on his rise to his current position of power. Although it would take time, he would work his way up the rungs of this ladder as well.

  “The Smythes will try to destroy this gateway,” he said.

  “I believe you,” Shalegha said. “And when they do, we will be ready for them.”

  She walked to the railing that bordered the platform, and Prokorov stepped up beside her.

  “Look down there,” she said, extending her upper right hand. “Tell me what you see.”

  From this vantage point, Prokorov saw what he had been unable to see from down on the floor. A large rent had been gouged out of the southern wall, doubling the size of the cavern. And within that area stood a much larger gateway, one capable of passing through a warship, something that the Kasari were in the process of doing. Only this was no seagoing vessel. The hive-mind supplied him with the information he requested. It was a fighter designed for space combat.

  “That is the first of several fast-attack ships that will be pushed through the new gateway and then transported to the surface for deployment into orbit,” said Shalegha.

  Prokorov felt a sense of awe at what he was seeing. This ship bristled with weapons that made Dr. Stephenson’s Rho Ship and the damaged Altreian vessel at the Bandolier site seem impotent.

  “So you see, Liaison,” said Shalegha, “if your Smythes come, we will be more than ready.”

  Having dismissed Prokorov, Shalegha continued to watch the progress of her work crews.

  In truth, she had no concern for the Smythes or any of their supposedly advanced technologies. But the technologies that had been demonstrated by the rogue crew aboard the stolen Kasari world ship was an entirely different matter. The two crew members who had hijacked the vessel from its mission here on Earth were humans. And they were still a potential threat.

  That was why she had pushed her engineers so hard to finish the construction of this full-sized Kasari gateway. Such an allocation of re
sources had delayed the construction of a second assimilation center. But as she stared down at the attack ship slowly being maneuvered by the stasis field onto the mag-lev hauler that would carry it to the surface, Shalegha knew that she had made the prudent choice.

  And it was not the only precaution she had taken. On Scion, the rogue crew had demonstrated the ability to deliver weapons through subspace, bypassing protective stasis shielding around a target. But in so doing, they had allowed Shalegha to gather enough data for the collective to design countermeasures. And they had been installed within this facility.

  Let Jennifer Smythe try to bring her rogue ship into this star system. It was a rematch that Group Commander Shalegha very much looked forward to.

  CHAPTER 21

  MERIDIAN ASCENT, MOON

  20–21 March

  When Jennifer stepped into what she thought of as their subspace moving van, she accidentally bumped into VJ. As VJ stumbled, Jennifer reached out and caught her in her arms. As she helped her shipmate regain her balance, Jennifer’s grasp of reality shifted, just a little.

  “Sorry about that,” she said.

  VJ’s face flushed. “That’s okay. I guess I’m still getting used to my new body.”

  As VJ resumed her work, something about the oddly normal interaction left Jennifer baffled. Was Jennifer affected by the fact that VJ would have fallen if she hadn’t caught her, or by the very human feel of VJ’s body, or by the embarrassment that she noticed in VJ’s eyes?

  None of these things would have been remarkable if VJ had been a real woman. But VJ was only a biosynth with simulated emotions. Wasn’t she? A sudden chill raised the gooseflesh on Jennifer’s arms and legs. Then why did she sense VJ’s emotions? And why could she touch VJ’s thoughts?