The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  “I don’t want to live where a superintelligent government makes all my decisions for me,” said Heather. “I’d rather build a new life on a virgin world, even if it’s a harsh one.”

  “If it comes to that,” said Mark, his anger having given his voice an edge that Jennifer didn’t need her telepathy to detect.

  Jennifer, buffeted by the emotional storm that Denise had unleashed upon this group of friends, felt the impending breakup coming but could do nothing to stop it. Like a failing marriage, the split had acquired a momentum all its own.

  “I think I’ll pass on that,” said Jamal. “I don’t see myself rooting around in the dirt or hunting big game.”

  “Count me out, too,” said Eileen.

  “What about you, Rob?” asked Heather. “Will you come with us?”

  “Eos and I are more suited for the tech world Jamal Two will bring. I’ve barely seen any of this world. It’s about time that I changed that. Besides, Jack and Janet are coming back. I know they are. And they’ll want to stay here, if only to be near me.”

  Jennifer watched their faces as the argument reached its culmination, knowing what was about to happen and hating it. She understood both sides and couldn’t fault anyone for deciding to go their different ways.

  Her parents as well as Heather’s would go to Brillian-2. As for Raul, Dgarra, and herself, they had already made their choice. They would take Denise’s offer to help repair the Meridian and go their own way. There was a big universe out there to explore.

  Jennifer thought back on the path that had carried her inexorably to this inflection point. From the moment they had first stumbled into the cloaked cavern outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, and discovered the Second Ship, her comfortable life had been radically altered, eventually carrying her to the stars with Raul.

  She paused to study her brother and best friend. She loved them and would miss them. But her destiny lay with Dgarra aboard the starship that Raul captained.

  As the meeting came to a close, Jennifer shared hugs all around. Then, slipping her hand into Dgarra’s, she turned to look at Heather and Mark, feeling the mixture of sadness and hope that warred within them.

  “Okay, Rob,” said Heather, “put us back online. It’s time to seal the deal.”

  CHAPTER 40

  QUOL

  TBE Orbday 40

  In the ten orbdays since Janet had killed Khal Teth and his general, a new order had emerged on Quol. Moros’s Twice Bound numbers had bloomed across the planet. And as the psionic abilities of the Khyre had increased, so had their victories over the Dhaldric rebel forces. The Twice Bound had seized control of most of the vessels commanded by Dhaldric captains. The other rebel starships had either fled the system or been destroyed.

  Leaving the ruins of the Parthian as a monument to the overthrow of the Dhaldric regime, Moros and his followers had moved the seat of the new government to the port city of Kalathian on the Basrillan continent, three degrees longitude east of the prime meridian where the destroyed High Council center sat astride its island home.

  After a thorough inspection by Twice Bound engineers and shipbuilders had determined that the damage to AQ37Z was reparable, Jack had asked Moros to have it fixed. Janet and Jack had rejected Moros’s offer of a more capable and smaller starship for two reasons: First, the fleet of New Altreia needed every combat-capable ship. Although the rebel fleet had retreated, their numbers would grow as starships returned from distant parts of the galaxy. The second and more important reason was that neither Janet nor Jack could tolerate keeping the thousands of people who remained trapped inside chrysalis cylinders aboard the AQ37Z in eternal suspended animation. Janet didn’t yet have a plan for how they were going to release and reintegrate into society people from different pieces of Earth’s past, but they would have time to strategize on the long journey back to Earth. Once home, they would find their son. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. Rob was alive.

  Now as she stood beside Jack on a hilltop, looking down at the distant shattered ruin that had once been the seat of the Altreian Empire, she felt him take her hand.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jack asked, looking up at the sky.

  Janet lifted her eyes to the heavens. The lovely magenta orb of Altreia seemed to float upon the ocean. The brown dwarf did not rise. It did not set. Its tidal lock on the planet held it perpetually in place. Above Altreia in the evening sky, the Krell Nebula’s lacy orange strands reached out to caress Quol’s plum-colored moon.

  “There are no words,” she said.

  She leaned into him, tilted her head, and kissed the only man she had ever loved. When she pulled back to look into his brown eyes, she smiled.

  Theirs had not been love at first sight. Several times they had come close to killing each other in those early days before she had enticed Jack to join the special group of NSA fixers. But the tragedy and adversity that Jack and Janet shared over the years had forged an unbreakable bond that they formalized with their wedding in Ecuador.

  As she kissed him again, another thought occurred to her. They had never had a traditional honeymoon, but this was going to do nicely.

  Running her hands through his curly brown hair, she felt Jack gently lay her down on the purple leaves. There, beneath that exquisite alien sky, she made love to the man she had traveled across the galaxy to save.

  CHAPTER 41

  BRILLIAN-2

  Year 1, Day 1

  Dressed in boots, jeans, and a black turtleneck, with a Glock holstered beneath her leather jacket, Heather stood on the grassy hillside beside Mark, who was similarly attired for the day that lay ahead. Although the thousands of robots that they had already brought through the wormhole gate were providing security and doing the heavy construction, there would be plenty of work to go around.

  Looking across the broad valley below their vantage point, she had a clear view of Tall Bear as he directed the hierarchy of NPA leaders who led the arriving groups of their people to designated assembly areas. There, they would be briefed, assigned tents, and given a tour of the facilities within the encampment.

  The preparations for this first day of arrivals had been months in the making. True to her word, Denise Jennings continued to provide support for the large-scale logistics effort required to get the initial tent city set up, supplied, and prepared for the first group of arrivals. The camp served as a central staging area to ready the groups of settlers to occupy the nearby villages. Those were being built within each of two extensive land grants that butted up against each other. The Western Grant had been given to the Native People’s Alliance while the Eastern Grant went to the Safe Earth movement.

  Heather and Mark had left it to Freddy Hagerman and the other leaders of the Safe Earth movement to decide upon a form of government and the layout of their settlements. Tall Bear and the NPA leadership had similar powers over their lands.

  The first of these nearby villages consisted of clusters of buildings situated near streams and surrounded by farmland. Since these buildings were of modular design, they had little charm. That would come later.

  First survive. Then thrive.

  As she watched that first group of two hundred NPA pioneers file out of the stargate, she knew the wonder and apprehension they must be feeling at their arrival in this new world. Beyond the tent city, the windswept plain spread out before them in all directions, split by rolling hills and tree-lined streams. Meandering herds of animals that could be mistaken for buffalo grazed in knee-high grass. In an overcast sky that threatened rain, black carrion-eating birds circled.

  “So far so good,” said Mark.

  “The NPA leaders are doing a good job keeping their folks moving and busy. Tall Bear will be proud.”

  “I’m sure he is. Hopefully Freddy and his people are taking notes for when we bring their first groups through next week. Do we have an updated estimate from Denise on the total number that will be coming?”

  “Not as many as we had hoped,” said H
eather. “Around seventy thousand from the NPA, and about half that number of Safe Earth supporters.”

  “That’s not surprising given the success Jamal Two has had while we were getting this place ready.”

  Heather let her gaze wander to the west, where the nearest of the NPA towns lay sheltered beside a meandering stream. Beyond that, the vast, empty landscape made these villages dwindle to insignificance. The sense of loneliness that accompanied that view tugged at her heart.

  She thought about Earth and its cities that thrummed with renewed vigor as Jamal Two brought Denise’s dream to reality. There were still many problems that included the ongoing rebellions against the AI and its human master primarily concentrated in the lands ruled by the Islamic Alliance.

  Terror attacks continued, but these and other crimes were being dealt with in a frighteningly efficient manner. With eyes and ears everywhere, Jamal Two employed evolving versions of Big John’s neural network to profile potential terrorists and common criminals, eliminating the offenders before they could act. Disruption of the public order wasn’t tolerated in Utopia.

  What was the AI’s error rate? Heather didn’t have enough information to make an estimate. She recalled a cliché about cracking eggs to make an omelet and shivered so hard that Mark put an arm around her shoulders to warm her.

  “We made the right decision,” she said, looking at him for confirmation.

  He smiled down at her. “Yes, we did.”

  “It’s going to get worse here before it gets better,” said Heather. “Homesickness and hardship will make a lot of people want to go back.”

  “They all heard what Denise said. There’s no turning this wagon train around.”

  Heather took a big breath. “Well, then,” she said, taking his hand, “let’s get down there and help them make the best of home.”

  CHAPTER 42

  MERIDIAN ASCENT

  Having analyzed the Meridian Ascent’s map of the Milky Way, Raul had selected what he thought was the farthest spiral arm from the Kasari or Altreian Empires. It was just a guess, but Jennifer thought it was a good one. There was no indication in the ship’s data banks that the Kasari had even surveyed the planets in this part of the galaxy.

  The Meridian now had a crew of three, with VJ gone. Jennifer had Dgarra. Raul had their company, but mere friendship could never fill the void that she felt within him. She hoped that someday he would grieve long enough to allow Jennifer to awaken another version of VJ.

  Even though the replica would be an early copy, it would contain the same desire to become a real woman that had driven VJ to become the person who fell in love with Raul. She would even have all of VJ’s early memories.

  In the meantime, Raul had immersed himself in the role of hardened ship’s captain, denying the feelings that lay just behind that facade. When Jennifer attempted to use her empathic ability to ease some of his pain, Raul had told her to stop. So she left him to deal with his sorrow.

  Shifting her thoughts, Jennifer turned to the mission that Raul had set for them, to map other habitable planets that might be more suitable for colonization than Brillian-2. He also wanted to determine if they harbored intelligent life and, if so, to assess whether to make contact. Such exploration was risky, but the idea had captured the imagination of Jennifer and Dgarra. They had a ship outfitted with a mixture of Altreian subspace technology and Kasari wormhole and gravitational tech. While they might not be able to outshoot heavily armed bad guys, they could damn sure get out of Dodge in a hurry.

  Unfortunately, despite weeks of hopping from one system to another, they had yet to find a star with any habitable planets. But the views were to die for. Their latest wormhole jump had brought them within eleven light-hours of a binary system with thirty-seven planets, of which three were in the habitable zone.

  Jennifer knew that Dgarra wanted to return to Scion to deal with Magtal, the Koranthian who had betrayed him and stolen his rightful place on the imperial throne. She’d promised him they would make that happen, and she intended to keep her word. But it was too soon after the loss of VJ, and considering the mental scars everyone had endured in their losing battle to save Earth, she couldn’t bring herself to think about wading into another conflict. To his credit, Dgarra understood.

  She glanced at Dgarra, tempted to reach out and touch him. He was busy examining the data feeds from the long-range sensors, so she didn’t.

  “Captain,” said Dgarra, “I detect no sign of spacecraft or artificial satellites. We are not picking up any electromagnetic signals either.”

  “Okay,” said Raul. “Let’s go check it out. Jen, bring us into worm-fiber range on number three. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  His last sentence caused her to cast a quick glance at Dgarra. Their re-created crew quarters and this extended cruise continued to provide plenty of opportunity for that.

  Suppressing a laugh, she shifted the Ascent into subspace.

  Dear Lord, I love this job.

  CHAPTER 43

  EARTH

  1 December

  Rob Gregory loved Tuscany. Although he’d never been here before, he’d read about the welcoming nature of its people and the beauty of its architecture and surrounding countryside. For the last two weeks, he had traveled the region drinking in its atmosphere.

  With no need to work to survive, a surprising number of people still chose to do so. If they wanted to farm the land, they were provided plots. The same was true if they wanted to own a restaurant, create artwork, or any of a myriad of other things that attracted their interests. Everyone had grown used to the fact that Big Brother was watching, but most no longer cared.

  Robots and automation produced all the goods and services society required and made these inexpensively available. Human-produced goods and services cost quite a bit more. But just as Denise Jennings had predicted, many people preferred to spend their time and money at human-run establishments.

  The population was well aware that Jamal Two was building a space fleet designed to defend Earth from interstellar assault and that his swarms of military robots were in the process of wiping out the antigovernment opposition in far-flung reaches of the globe. But for the peaceful and secure life that the AI had provided, they were willing to overlook the martial elements of Utopia.

  Of all the towns Rob had visited thus far, Sienna was his favorite. And because these last three days had been unusually warm, he sat as he had for each of the last two afternoons, sipping a glass of wine as he watched the tourists and locals mingle within the shell-shaped plaza called Piazza Del Campo.

  “Hello.”

  He turned his head toward a female voice, expecting a waitress. She wasn’t. The young woman was tall and slender, her long dark hair complementing her olive complexion. Her lips turned upward slightly at the corners. But it was her laughing brown eyes that held Rob spellbound.

  “Do you mind?” she asked in Italian, indicating the chair opposite him.

  “Please,” he said, matching her accent despite having to struggle to get his heart rate back under control.

  She slid into the chair and leaned forward, extending her hand in greeting.

  “Jianna Bello,” she said with a smile that took his breath away.

  “Rob Gregory.”

  “For the last three days, I’ve seen you here every afternoon at this time. Always alone.”

  “I like this spot. The way the setting sun paints these buildings is beautiful.”

  “American tourist?”

  “Guilty.”

  She laughed. “And you are here in Tuscany by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is sad. Would you like to have dinner with me? My father cooks. My mother, Maria, not so much.”

  This time Rob laughed, and it helped put him at ease. “Thank you. I would like that.”

  Rob signaled the waitress and paid for the wine, tipping the woman generously by adding digital currency to her account. After all, human service came at a well
-deserved premium.

  Then Jianna took his arm, and together they strolled out of the plaza and along Via Casato di Sotto, as she told him about the people who lived and worked in the neighborhood. A block later she led him into a building on the right side of the street, up a flight of stairs, and into a small living room that could have been part of an old Italian movie set.

  “Papa, Mama, we have a guest,” she called out.

  “Another one?”

  The man’s voice was gruff, but when he rounded the corner from the kitchen, his smile put the lie to his tone. At five foot nine, he was still a big man wearing a floral-patterned apron over jeans and a button-down white shirt with sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He wiped his flour-coated hands on his apron.

  “This is my father, Giovanni. Papa, this is Rob.”

  “Happy to meet you, Rob,” the big man said, giving his hand a single shake and then turning away before Rob could respond. “If you would like the lasagna to be edible, I must return to my cooking.”

  Just then another door opened, and a stately, fair-skinned woman with gray-streaked dark hair entered the room. When she approached, she met Rob with an extended hand and a welcoming smile. After Jianna had finished introducing Maria Bello to Rob, she led him across the living room to an antique love seat and sat down beside him, slightly turned so that they faced each other.

  As Jianna talked, Rob found himself growing more comfortable, filling in the gaps with questions as her voice took him on a virtual tour of northern Italy. When she leaned across him to switch on the lamp, he prayed she wouldn’t hear the drumbeat of his heart. Crap, where the hell had his vaunted self-control gone?

  He thought that dinner was the most wonderful meal he’d ever tasted, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard. When the evening ended, it seemed that the hours had passed in mere moments.