Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star

by Gregory Faccone

  The sound of aphid fans echoed. Kord bounded out of the water and sagged against a pile of boulders, striders folding. The end of this chase wasn't going to be about his bracer running dry. All the shielding and bending couldn't conceal him from aphids directly overhead.

  "The anti-air was nice while it lasted." His body trembled, but he remained otherwise still until the sound of the fans receded. "Directions."

  His legs felt rubbery after striding so long. He surveyed the area. The surrounding Thule-Riss woodland was repetitive and unremarkable. Memories of being there were vague. The term "woodland" was only technically accurate. Large swaths of Adams Rush had yet to be arability terraformed. Nothing grew in those sterile regions. Even here in the Thule-Riss, only a few types of tree were compatible. Fauna was almost non-existent. It would take years of painstaking work to build even a minimal ecosystem.

  Following Highearn's ret path, things became familiar. With the dragging feet, he trudged up a rise covered with thick trees and boulders. Kord recalled picking this spot because it seemed a good place to make a stand.

  A stand. He chuckled sardonically and looked up. The egress wasn't visible, but he felt its weight all the same. And then what? The aphids didn't bode well for even far-fetched escape plans.

  Counting the boulders, he touched the third. Highearn's resonance transmission caused a small purplish stone to rise partially out of the dirt. He palmed it, and a series of idents, codes, and checks were performed before a stone box broke the surface.

  The box opened at his touch. It may have been one of Kord's more meager stashes, but at the moment it was more valuable than a treasure trove of platinum group metals.

  His eyes danced over the items. "Nutristrips." His mouth watered at the prospect of gnawing on one, but something made him grab the scutum instead. He clasped the defensive clamshell item over his forearm.

  "We're being observed," Highearn said.

  He crouched, intuitively angling toward the threat before Highearn even indicated it.

  "It's intermittent," the AI link-said. "I believe another attack is being vectored."

  Kord was reluctant to leave the hard sought cache. Its contents were the only chance he had. He glanced with longing into the sculpted rock box before Highearn pinged an alarm, and an inhumanly fast shuffle was audible.

  "Oh, drak."

  An unconscious zoomie command provided a magnified view of a fearsome combat bot. Carrying only integral weapons and closing fast, it dashed from tree to tree, not pausing at any. Kord's lightning combat response reflected years of training. His grister was out, the autostock in place on his primary side, and controlled bursts were scoring hits on the robot's head. The grister pushed hard against his wounded shoulder.

  The impacts were impressive for the range, but wholly ineffectual. A combat bot was almost as well armored as a dawg. The bot raised its offense arm, and a barrel rotated into place amidst radiating sparks. Kord had just enough time to raise his left arm and yell, "Shield!"

  The outline of a rounded rectangular shield unfolded from the clamshell device. The open area within blurred and took on a bluish tint—hard air.

  He glimpsed distortion from the bot's offense arm. Then waves of arcing green current and bits of debris washed over the scutum shield. The impacts drove his arm back, and he was barely able to pull his body behind the tree.

  "A spasm shock rifle," Highearn said.

  "No drak!" Vittora wouldn't appreciate that outburst.

  Portable nonlethal options were often energy-based, and thus stopped by a bracer's cold plasma field. It was why laser bursters and particle pistols had fallen out of military vogue. It required the power of a sniper gun, almost a miniteleforce beam, to penetrate cold plasma. And those results were lethal. A spasm shock rifle, on the other hand, fired ceramic darts encapsulating variable pulsation current. Once the dart passed through the cold plasma and penetrated skin, it released the current to temporary disrupt the nervous system.

  "I've uploaded specific disbursement protocols to your clothes and micros," Highearn said. "You may be able to withstand one dart."

  Staying conscious wouldn't matter if he was hit in the leg. The forced muscle spasms would render him immobile. Kord's mind raced with last-ditch possibilities.

  Communication suppression made calling for help difficult. Too much trying could give his position away, and even if he did get through, what could anyone do for him? What firepower could they bring to bear? He accepted that inevitability two days ago when he chose to lead the owl off so that his wife may escape.

  With only seconds left, he inspected the box for any hope of salvation. A sheller with specialized ammunition would make short work of that bot. The box contained no sheller. Only nutristrips, a medkit, a couple of bees and a battle rifle, an old grister, and an automount. The seed of a long shot sprang to mind. First, he needed to emerge from the next 20 seconds conscious.

  "How long?"

  "Five seconds," the AI answered, understanding his meaning.

  Kord holstered his pistol. It required two tries. He was losing motor control in his right arm. He grabbed the battle rifle, and it hummed to life from Highearn's resonance commands. With practiced motions, he loaded the first magazine his hand acquired. Ammunition type wouldn't matter much at this range.

  Dirt scuffing mechanical shuffles grew close. Loading was taking forever with a painfully clumsy right arm working around the bulky scutum.

  "It's here," Highearn said.

  Kord didn't even look up. He barely had time to get the scutum between him and the approaching mechanical man. The bot swung its defense arm. The impact drove the scutum into Kord, flinging him into the tree. Flashes of color mottled his vision, and a burning sensation ran down his back.

  The hardened bones and robust bodily structures from Aristahl's ravelen kept him in the fight—for about two more seconds. No one went hand-to-hand with a combat bot for long. His enhanced strength was dwarfed by comparison.

  The bot raised its offense arm. Lying at the base of the tree, Kord pulled his body behind the scutum. To his right he saw the barrel of the loaded rifle lying within reach, but his arm refused to obey. The combat bot closed to remove the shield from play.

  Through sheer force of will, Kord finger-crawled his hand to the front of the rifle. With its butt against the tree, he used every ounce of strength to raise the barrel. With two quick strides, the bot was upon him and pushed the shield aside with brute force.

  "Highearn!" Kord yelled.

  The AI understood and resonance fired. The ground shuddered with pulse waves. The battle rifle's twin accelerators fired ammo-nuts at tremendous speed. At this range any longchain ammunition became armor-piercing.

  The first burst stood the bot up as sparks and debris flew. Kord struggled to keep the barrel pointed at its chest as Highearn fired two more bursts. Ricocheting shards penetrated skin in multiple places as the bot staggered back from the sheer impact, but it wasn't incapacitated.

  Kord acquired a combat grip. A targeting reticule drew in his rets. With the butt of the rifle braced against the ground, he fired with purpose. Fallen needles danced as he focused a long burst on the bot's head sensors. Glittering embers flowed off like a fountain as the outer armor cracked and shattered.

  The bot raised its offense arm. Kord aimed at the mounted spasm shock rifle almost as fast as he could focus upon it. He let loose another burst and the just firing stun weapon exploded. Staggered, sparking, but still on its feet, the formidable bot reconstituted its offensive capability. Limited to non-lethal, it moved in to physically restrain its prey.

  An indicator on Kord's rets told him the rifle magazine was exhausted. He wouldn't have time to reload. With great effort, and a sense of serenity at odds with his desperate situation, he drew his pistol and aimed at the damaged head as the autostock's spars did their best to adjust to his atypical position.

  He thought commanded, focus shot, then held down the trigger studs. Like a st
ring of angry hornets, the grister's ammo-nuts ripped past the blown off armor of the bot's head. As they penetrated, the bot raised its defense arm. Kord kept firing, locked on target. He felt the pistol switch to the second magazine. A scutum was just unfolding from the bot's defense arm when its head exploded.

  The bot froze in place as a large portion of its longchain dome blew straight up. The decapitated machine teetered over as airborne parts returned to ground.

  Kord took several deep breaths but didn't lie still. Getting to his knees, he reached into the box and jammed a nutristrip into his mouth.

  "This model has also never been fielded," Highearn said.

  He detected a hint of frustration in Highearn's voice. His AI prided itself on a comprehensive knowledge of military hardware. "I don't think the Archivers use anything stock."

  "It was remarkably... durable," the AI said, exhibiting a rare display of personality.

  Kord drank quikblood from the medkit and scrunched his face. "Ugh, three days without food and this stuff still tastes like dirt." Then came the inevitable, uncontrollable coughing and shakes.

  "I'm using the additional micros to coag the new puncture wounds. I should be able to re-stabilize your shoulder, but biological systems are hard to predict with certainty. You're going to need surgery."

  "I've got to live that long first, for both our sakes."

  Highearn's final service to the Wilkrest family would be to slag himself if captured. Kord would put an ammo-nut in his brain before he betrayed his wife to the Legion and his son to the Archivers. On a less depressing note, a farfetched escape plan was crystallizing. He reached over and put a hand on the combat bot's offense arm initializing resonance transmission.

  "With its command systems shot away, can you access fire control?"

  "Our forward unit has been destroyed," the command bot said in its deep voice.

  Rewe shook his head. "Useless."

  They had picked up their pace. The squat, multi-treaded utility bot next to the commodore bucked wildly in its efforts to keep up.

  "Auscultare," Rewe said, "give me something useful."

  "We received adequate images for face rec," the mystic spaceship AI said from orbit. A VAD before the commodore hovered rock-steady relative to his head as he trundled through the woods. On it was the image of a bloodied and bruised man behind a scutum. "No hits yet. Perigeum records are scanty for the Asterfraeo, and Adams Rush purposefully maintains no databases."

  "How was the slag destroyed?"

  "Battle rifle," Auscultare and the command bot answered simultaneously.

  "No mystic detected?"

  "None," Auscultare answered. "Commodore, the Legion aphids are closing on that area."

  "We've lost contact with our forward espy, sir," the command bot said.

  Rewe stared at the image of an exhausted, wounded man. Perhaps his caution was unwarranted. This wasn't the Sojourner level mystic user from the other night. But chances were he was associated with him. Rewe would have that information.

  The commodore's wheelies compacted back into his treaders, and striders unfolded, lifting him.

  "Put a wedge in front of me," he commanded the remaining combat bots. "Intercept approach."

  He bounced once on his striders then bounded forward. Behind him the utility bot gave off a sad chime. The commodore cast a disgusted glance over his shoulder. "Oh, pick him up."

  Water ran off Kord's legs and down his striders. He panted in the stream. The latest espy was flushed out and destroyed. Above, an open wedge of sky pointed toward the city.

  "This spot is adequate," Highearn said.

  One of the two bees rose to the top of Kord's stor-all. The reconnaissance projectiles were good for scouting enemy positions. Launched from a rifle, they traveled too fast to be arced by bracers.

  "Is it accepting the new protocols?"

  Bees sent reconnaissance information back to the user through line of sight burst transmissions. Their design wasn't for two-way communication.

  "Yes," the AI answered, "but I can't guarantee success."

  The rifle configured for manual slug shot, and Kord pushed the bee into the accelerator chamber with his thumb. An arcing vector high in the sky showed on his rets. He aligned the rifle to it.

  "Many variables need to go our way," Highearn said. "Even so, we'll only get about twenty-three seconds. It won't work at all if the movement's communications array has locked out your priority codes."

  "I believe this experience has brought out the pessimist in you, Highearn."

  The rifle bucked from a max power slug shot. New VADs displayed visual information sent back from the bee and an open audio comm window.

  But would anyone be listening?

  Vittora was still graceful, tiptoeing in an elegant, simple two-story ceramic structure. Its owner—late owner—Isadore left a gaping hole in the movement to take back Adams Rush governance. He'd been a mentor to her husband during his tenure in the Assembly. Afterward, they had remained friends. His clear reckoning regarding the subtle erosion of freedom and political chicanery was uncanny. Isadore's jovial spirit and passion for life were contagious. She would miss him.

  "Legion martinets," she rasped painfully into her nonfunctional jaw. Her voice had not been restored, nor her disfigurement repaired.

  She'd hardly slept in three days¸ catnapping only when her body could no longer stay awake. Thanks in part to Aristahl's ravelen, her strength and balance were fast returning. Other repairs could wait. A secure option for the kinds of medical services she needed was not available anyway. The Legion was applying pressure through every public entity and media avenue.

  Her close-fitting, sleeveless bodysuit was the dark red of cooling lava. On bare feet she glided past a deactivated mirror. She was neither going to focus on her wounds nor see a hint of helpless countenance in her reflection. She rejected hopelessness. A lifetime of training, love, and faith shaped her thus.

  "Status, Rel," she sub-whispered.

  Like roughly 50 percent of humankind, Vittora preferred a non-personality AI. After long adolescence, many perceived the privacy and streamlined interaction of a nonsocial compy preferable. With proper training, such AIs understood their admin as well as their social counterparts. If they required more work to fine tune, it was made up in lack of unwanted interaction.

  "No new communications matching your criteria," Rel said from the platinum ring on Vittora's right hand. Its only adornment was a gold stripe around the circumference. "There's additional Legion activity at the Thule-Riss."

  Vittora schooled a threatening pang of worry, instead using that energy to speed her arrival to the second story "pigeon loft." Isadore's place was one of the communication hubs for the movement. His only child, Solia, had given it the avian moniker long ago, and it had stuck.

  The local movement had adopted Solia as a sort of goddaughter. She was around Jordahk's age, just on the cusp of leaving long adolescence. Vittora felt close to her, perhaps because she had no daughters. Isadore's wife had been a contract spouse. She left Adams Rush five years earlier at term expiration. Solia had grown closer to Vittora ever since.

  Vittora stepped onto the stair plat. Though preferring simple steps, her recovering body didn't complain as it slid to the second floor. Rel displayed updated Legion movements, keeping the VAD off to her right in deference to her wounded and weakened left eye. Two aphids were moving toward something. Opposite that, a trail of unnatural activity pointed toward an estimated Archiver ground position. The factions were converging.

  Large bold letters interrupted the display. "Priority Code Override! Accept?"

  A deep alert chime echoed repeatedly from the second floor. Vittora leaped off the stair plat before it reached the top with strength her injuries had not stolen. The command room took up much of the second floor. The entry side was open to the rest of the house. Arched one-way windows around its upper circumference let in generous light. It did feel like an avian roosting place.


  Solia and Ermine were at opposite ends. Solia likely felt this place her part-time home. Ermine, who had every right to be there considering the recent leadership vacuum, still was an outsider. He was dressed in advanced outerwear, not unlike her husband. But where Kord's quickly bore the subtle signs of heavy use, Ermine's always seemed new. He was wearing "the monochrome," dark gray at the bottom gradating up to a blue-black. His shoulder-length hair was cut flat. The last inch fashionably colored blue-black to match the top of his clothes.

  Both he and the girl spoke simultaneously. "You think it's really him?"

  "Told you we should have changed the priority codes just as we would have with any captured member," Ermine said.

  Solia continued, undaunted. "It's some sort of time sensitive emergency protocol. Something about anti-air codes."

  "The Legion could be using this to uncover us!"

  The situation left no room for argument. A timer attached to the priority protocol change ticked down scant seconds.

  Vittora sub-whispered, and Rel amplified it to a volume slightly louder than necessary. Her eyes past briefly over Solia before flashing on Ermine. "If he were captured, why would there still be that circus up the mountain? Rel, accept the override." She tried to stay calm on the outside, but her heart beat wildly.

  Kord's voice sounded in scratchy low fidelity. "Only a few seconds."

  "Kord?" Vittora said through Rel's simulation of her voice. How could four words raise her spirits so?

  After a frustrating delay, and the time continuing to tick down, his voice came back. "Vittora! Okay, look... much time. Any anti-aircraft left?"

  Ermine touched a control, and a wall display updated. "There's one quad launcher nearby and an alpha single across town. They've found everything else."

  "Ermine? I need... accept these... and protocols," Kord said through frustrating audio drops.

  An ident sphere on the control panel pulsed with light. Such weapon authorization changes needed physical confirmation.