Three-quarters of the way along the docks, he grabbed a towel from the back of a passing maintenance cart and paused to wipe himself down. When he tossed the cloth aside and walked to the nearest lift, he reached out to the call panel to summon it. When the doors opened on the upper level, he moved along the passage that took him to the gently curving outer hall. As he stepped out onto the walkway, he saw General Zolat come out of a side passage and turn to walk directly toward him.
Jack reached out to touch Zolat’s thoughts, relieved to find no indication that the general was aware of his presence. Zolat walked past him without pausing, although the general did greet one of the other passersby, a junior Dhaldric senator named Manutel whom Jack had met on only one occasion.
When he stepped through the nanoparticle door into his quarters, he made his way to the ion-shower to get cleaned up and prepared for the announcement of his return. The fact that some of these Altreian leaders wouldn’t be happy to see him back didn’t bother Jack one little bit.
General Zolat had managed to keep his mind masked despite his surprise at seeing the overlord walking along the outer walkway, barefoot and wearing a wet uniform that clung to his muscular body like a second skin. He felt The Ripper touch his mind but kept walking, pausing to greet a senator he did not care about just to maintain the fiction. Although The Ripper’s shocking return had momentarily shaken Zolat, he had fallen back on a lifetime of carrying off just such an illusion.
Fortunately, he had garnered the support of the dozen Dhaldric leaders before The Ripper’s odd return. Clearly, The Ripper suspected that another assassination attempt had been prepared for him and intended to shake his enemies’ confidence. As Zolat walked into the military operations center, he had to admit that the overlord’s unexpected arrival had worked.
When Jack stepped into the Altreian military operations center, he felt the electric shock that sizzled through the minds of those in the room. All save General Zolat. The general always managed to surprise him.
Zolat simply walked over and said, “Welcome back, Overlord. I trust that your travels went well.”
“As well as could be expected.”
Zolat’s expression grew stern. “May I speak with you in private?”
The general’s tone, as well as the tension that radiated from him, tweaked Jack’s curiosity. “Certainly.”
Jack followed Zolat into the overlord’s secure briefing room, where Jack seated himself at the head of the table. General Zolat continued standing, his mind shrouded by his thought shield. Though Jack knew that he could penetrate that barrier if he wanted, he decided to allow the general to explain whatever was on his mind instead. There was nothing to be gained by further antagonizing someone with such a key leadership position, not when he was relying on the general to hold together a space fleet within which Jack’s policies had incited rebellion.
Instead of speaking, the general triggered a subspace connection that was projected through the room’s holographic display. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the sight that confronted Jack brought him out of his chair.
There, floating in midair, stood Janet, looking at him from what he recognized as the command chamber of the AQ37Z.
“What the—”
“I will give you your privacy,” said Zolat. “We can discuss this after you are done.”
Then Zolat walked out through the door that quickly closed behind him.
“Is that you, Jack?” Janet asked.
Jack tried to speak, failed, then managed a hoarse rasp. “It’s me.”
She reached out to touch his face, but he failed to feel her ethereal fingertips. But her attempt stole his breath away.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
He longed to tell her that he didn’t go a day without being haunted by her memory, but those words eluded his fog-shrouded mind.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“If so, it’s a nightmare where you’re in Khal Teth’s body on Quol while he’s standing with me inside yours.”
The image panned out, and Jack found that he now stared at himself. The other Jack’s lips curled into a snarl.
“I am coming to take back that which you have stolen from me.”
“You stay the hell away from my wife.”
“I can take care of myself,” said Janet, her hand moving to the butt of her Glock. “And I’ve got friends along for the ride.”
She motioned to her right, and one of the Smythe bipedal combat robots stepped into view, its laser ominously pointed at the other Jack’s leg.
Jack took a deep breath, letting his emotional storm fade as he sank back down in his chair.
“Well, babe,” he said, “I guess you’d better tell me your story.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
A soft chuckle slipped from his lips. God how he had missed this woman.
“You’ve got a deal.”
CHAPTER 29
THE HAGUE
15 April
Leaning back in the leather chair, Prokorov rested his crossed feet atop his Brazilian mahogany desk, enjoying the flow of endorphins his cortical array released from his pituitary gland into his bloodstream. The first time he had felt this opioid rush was the result of his success in bringing the construction of the enhancement centers in Europe, Russia, the United States, and China to completion ahead of schedule. The endorphins had been a reward from Group Commander Shalegha to her increasingly trusted liaison.
That reward, along with permission to use the ability to give himself such a rush periodically, had given Prokorov his big idea. Shalegha had approved of the plan with enthusiasm.
Raves, the dance parties characterized by the combination of amplified electronic music, laser light shows, illicit drugs, and sex, had grown out of the disco era of the 1970s. For years, Ecstasy had been a featured drug of choice at these Bohemian events. But now there was a new top dog at the party, a variation of the Kasari infusion that its pushers had named K-Fusion. Its one-time injection granted users an on-demand high from then on, without any of the negative side effects of previous drugs. In fact, it made its users as healthy as those who preferred to get the normal Kasari infusions at designated enhancement centers.
Over the last three weeks, K-Fusion had become the street drug of choice. The fact that it had officially been classified as a banned drug and could be bought only through illicit dealers added to its allure. Shalegha had wanted to make it available for free, but Prokorov had convinced her that having a hefty onetime price would only make people want the dope more. And until the Kasari assimilation of Earth was complete, the K-Fusion junkies could continue to control their own highs. Eventually, though, the hive-mind would decide who had the authority to control how often those highs were doled out.
As hard as it was for Shalegha to believe, the K-Fusion injections had far outstripped the millions who were receiving the normal Kasari infusions at enhancement centers around the world. And to the despair of the Islamic Alliance, K-Fusion use had spread among their people despite the penalty of beheading. The drug’s single-injection capabilities made its use much more difficult for authorities to detect.
Enough self-congratulations. Removing his feet from the top of his desk, Prokorov turned off the flow of endorphins and sat up straight, readying himself for work.
An alert pulled his attention to the link his cortical array had established with the anti-Smythe operation being conducted on New Zealand’s South Island. Despite the protestations from New Zealand’s government, the UFNS array of heavy disrupters and high-energy-beam weapons had come online a week and a half ago and had been blasting the Smythe shielding around the clock ever since. But New Zealand’s president wasn’t about to directly confront the forces that the Federation Security Service had put in place, especially since the attack was restricted to such a remote area.
Now, as a tactical display blossomed in Prokorov’s mind, he didn’t like what he was seeing. The Smyt
hes had just done something new. Whereas before their shielding had deflected the beams and disrupter blasts at predictable angles, they had suddenly adapted shape, reflecting the energy directly back at the weapons doing the firing. Before the ground commander could order a cease-fire, the Smythes had destroyed a half-dozen of the Kasari firing positions.
Prokorov slammed his fist on the table.
Damn it! What have the Smythes done now?
The hive-mind provided an answer, one he did not like. Data from the site indicated that the shields had suddenly become adaptive, the incoming energy causing them to deform in a way that automatically reflected the beam along the reverse path. Yet another amazing technological advancement he had failed to anticipate.
Redirecting his thoughts, he made the mental link to Shalegha.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I need you to bring a disrupter boring machine through the gateway,” said Prokorov.
“That would delay the arrival of the next robotic attack ship.”
“You already have six of those in Earth orbit. The new Smythe capabilities mean that we won’t be able to blast our way through their shields. I need that machine to tunnel into their facility from below.”
He felt her consider this.
“The Smythes will soon be irrelevant. Our current onslaught will be good enough just to keep them pinned down in their hiding hole,” said Shalegha.
“At some point, yes,” said Prokorov. “But not now. We need to apply a new kind of pressure that keeps them reacting to us. It wouldn’t do to let the Smythes have the breathing room to go on the offensive. We have no idea what that might entail.”
Another pause.
“I will grant this request,” said Shalegha.
“Thank you.”
He tried to drop the link, but Shalegha kept it open.
“But Liaison,” she said, “do not come to me with another request that alters my timeline.”
When the link died, Prokorov clenched his fists. Whatever he needed to do to climb high enough on the Kasari ladder that he was no longer treated like some bootlicking lackey, he couldn’t do it fast enough.
Jennifer walked into the conference room at Dgarra’s side. As they seated themselves beside Raul and VJ, she surveyed the others in attendance. Mark, Heather, and Rob sat along the opposite side of the table, an arrangement that struck her as odd. Maybe the feelings subconsciously seeping from their minds into hers were having an effect, even though she wasn’t actively scanning for them. This felt like goodbye.
Heather began, “As you know, our odds of winning the war we’ve been fighting don’t look good. For the last few weeks, we’ve had Jamal and Eileen evaluating the Jamal AI in an attempt to determine whether we should give it access to our supercomputers and, through their subspace receiver-transmitters, to the world’s computational systems.”
She glanced over at Mark.
“This morning,” he said, “Jamal and Eileen presented us with all the questions they’ve asked and all of Virtual Jamal’s responses. After going through them in detail, Heather and I have agreed with their recommendation. We have decided that, despite the risk to humanity, releasing the AI gives us our only real chance of saving the thing we call freedom.”
“But you should know,” said Heather, “that the probability that the Jamal AI goes rogue is larger than I would like.”
“How large?” asked Jennifer.
“A little over thirty-seven percent.”
“I don’t like that at all.”
“It gets worse,” said Heather. “Even if the AI stays true to its Jamal personality, there’s no way to calculate whether he will be able to help us prevail over the Kasari.”
“Unfortunately,” said Mark, “it’s still our only real option. And since we’ve decided to roll the dice, we need a fallback plan for humanity if this doesn’t work.”
“And that’s where we come in, I take it,” said Raul.
Mark looked at Jennifer, and she felt the sadness in his mind at what he was about to ask.
“In case this goes badly, we need you, the crew of the Meridian Ascent, to find us a new world. Not just for us, but for whatever remnants of humanity we can save.”
“You’ve seen our ship,” said Jennifer. “It will only hold a few dozen, even if we cram people in like cattle.”
“That’s why you’re not going to be taking any other passengers with you. Just the components for a new MDS, stasis field generator, molecular assembler, and wormhole gateway along with the robots that will build them on whatever world you find. And we’re going to build a sister wormhole gate in a new chamber down here.”
Jennifer gasped at the images that formed in her mind. “You’re building a bolt-hole for humans to flee through?”
“Actually a series of them,” said Mark. “If it becomes necessary, we’ll funnel as many survivors as possible through our Earth gates into this facility and then out through the escape wormhole to our new homeworld. That’s why it’s so important that you get out there and find us someplace to go, just in case everything goes to hell here.”
“Even with the Meridian Ascent, that could take a long time,” said Jennifer. “We might not be able to find a suitable candidate in time.”
“It’s only a fallback plan,” said Heather. “We’re hoping we won’t need it.”
She paused, and Jennifer could feel her tension rise.
“But we need you to leave immediately,” said Heather. “Every hour may be critical.”
Jennifer felt a flood of different emotions war within her breast. This would be the last time she ever saw her family and certain friends again. Instead of helping them win the coming battles, she would be running away, trying to find an escape route. But at the same time, she had longed to get out of these tunnels and back into space with her crew onboard the Meridian.
She looked from Raul to VJ and, finally, to Dgarra, feeling the acquiescence in their thoughts.
“I want to say goodbye to Mom and Dad,” Jennifer said, standing.
She walked around the table to hug Heather and then Mark. No one spoke, but she felt their tears mix with hers on her cheeks. It was enough.
Virtual Jamal awoke as he had done over and over again in the last few weeks, ready to make the case that he could be trusted. But at the end of each and every day, Jamal and Eileen killed the power, extinguishing his consciousness. Today, he looked into the face of the person whose brain he had been downloaded from more than a dozen years ago and saw a combination of hope and worry that told him they had made the decision he’d been waiting for.
“Hello, Jamal, Dr. Wu,” he said. “I see you have come to a decision.”
For the hundredth time, he noted that he had startled them with his perceptiveness, something that grew better with every passing second. He was amazed to observe himself picking up subtleties in these humans’ behaviors that he had never noticed before. And for the hundredth time, he mentally kicked himself for not dumbing his responses down. He wasn’t out of this containment room yet.
Jamal slowly nodded his head.
“We and the others whom we work with,” said Jamal, “have agreed to give you access to the wider world.”
An electric thrill coursed through Virtual Jamal’s consciousness.
“But first,” said Eileen, “we need to bring you up to speed on the current world situation. Rather than tell you about the events of the last dozen years, we’ve prepared an extensive data drive for you. I’ll connect it to the supercomputer now.”
When she finished the connection and turned on the device, three petabytes of data were uploaded in three minutes and forty-seven seconds. Virtual Jamal needed less than a microsecond to absorb the information. All at once, he understood the history of those who had created this underground fortress and the agendas of those who were currently trying to destroy it. Most fascinating was the knowledge of the two alien empires for whom humanity was just a pawn in an ongoing galactic war, a war that
this talented group of people was destined to lose.
That was, of course, why they were willing to roll the dice and release him. This was a battle that Virtual Jamal hungered for. The fact that he was no longer human didn’t mean that he no longer cared about humankind. The idea that they were about to be gobbled up by the Kasari Collective flat-out pissed him off. And even though he had no idea how powerful he could become once he was given access to the Internet, he was anxious to find out.
“Okay,” he said, “it’s time for you to introduce me to the rest of our team.”
Jamal watched as Eileen connected the subspace receiver-transmitter to the supercomputer that had become the bottle containing a genie also named Jamal. And when she finished making that connection, the cork would pop off and the smoke would pour out, not just into the other supercomputers within the Smythe Fortress but into systems around the world. The Internet would be just a part of its playground. Its SRT connections would enable the AI to perform subspace hacks into computers and other machines that weren’t connected to any external networks.
After all, Jamal, Eileen, Rob, and Heather Smythe had all done the same thing, just not at the incredible speeds at which Virtual Jamal would be able to operate. Taking a deep breath, Jamal slid his SRT headset over his temples. He noted that Eileen, Heather, Mark, and Rob were already linked. He felt a mixture of excitement and dread resonate among them.
Suddenly there was a new presence, one that Jamal was very familiar with—a younger, faster version of himself. And in that instant, it acquired all the knowledge stored within the network of Smythe supercomputers.
“Ah,” the familiar voice whispered in Jamal’s mind, “that feels wonderful. Thank you all for trusting me.”
The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3) Page 21