Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus

by Michael McCloskey

  This is for your own good. You will all learn the challenges and your society will be reordered. You will improve yourselves. We will create a new god to watch over you. You will come to see that you can be so much more than you are now.

  Xinmei listened to the speech carefully. The thing didn’t sound like it came from another corporation.

  It sounded alien.

  ***

  After the battle, Lieutenant Sun Xinmei’s first coherent thought started as nothing more than an instinctual fear.

  Am I the only one left?

  But as she rummaged through the blasted fragments of her unit, smelling the burned flesh and slipping in their blood, it started to evolve into a rational conclusion.

  They’d come in strong with the advantage of surprise. They dropped through the thin atmosphere in the massive Breachmakers. The assault craft were a cross between giant drills and mobile airlocks to keep the fragile atmosphere inside the mazelike tunnels of the mining colony. Their battle machines entered first, Badgers and Circle Sevens with three flame platforms in support. Machines so powerful they charged the air that flowed through the tight confines with the spillover of their weapons. Those machines met the security hardpoints of the Vothriles in the underground city of interconnecting tubes and metallic-walled chambers.

  The battle raged and then festered, refusing to end. In desperation, the marines threw their weight behind the remaining Circle Sevens and tried to repair a flame platform while taking fire. In a rare perfect match of strength, the humans just barely managed to exterminate the Vothrile garrison with severe losses of their own when they ran out of independent oxygen supplies and had to crack open their suits. The air inside the mountain had enough oxygen to support human life, but it had also been laced with toxins deadly to humans and harmless to Vothriles. The humans had air scrubbing machines with them, but many had been destroyed in the fighting and the others couldn’t clear the air in time.

  Xinmei had salvaged a couple of oxygen bottles from dead marines in a side passage and wait it out. When she’d finally cracked open her suit, all she sensed was the smell of the carnage. She survived. She’d tried her link but it had been knocked out by an EM pulse or a Silencer virus. Every command she tried to route through the device gave no results. She couldn’t communicate with the assault computers or any other survivors that might be out there.

  When she had been a kid thinking about war, she had usually imagined that she would be a lucky one. One of the few to survive. Now she was a real soldier in an all-too-real war and it had come to pass, but her familiarity with the Anthropic Principle made her simply accept it. If anyone else had been the survivor they’d be tempted to wonder if they were chosen to survive, and if no one had survived no one would be thinking they must be special. She’d just been lucky. The giant number cruncher called the Universe had taken the input state, run the tiny planet through a transformation called the Laws of Physics, and had spat out the answer: Xinmei survives, for now.

  She took in a deep breath. She’d avoided the Vothrile battle constructs, the lasers, the bullets, the shrapnel, the suffocating gas, seeker bomblets and the nano-deconstructor spray they called Vothrile skin acid. Had the assembled host of horrors unerringly consumed every life but her own? She wandered through the corridors, looking for the answer. Everywhere she saw carnage and death. Dead war machines. Dead Vothriles. Dead humans. Whole sections of the complex were shut off to contain fires and to stop advances, but large holes in many of the tunnels had added passages and intersections where none existed before.

  As she staggered down a narrow corridor, bathed in green light, her addled brain crawled back to functionality. Xinmei had another thought worse than the first.

  What if I’m NOT the only one left?

  Perhaps a single Vothrile had also survived, and even now it wandered around just like Xinmei. It would arm itself with one of the hundreds of deadly manual weapons left lying around. If it saw her first she’d be dead.

  Xinmei’s hands found her personal assault weapon and brought it up. The infantry called it a PAW, and even though it was a laughably wimpy thing compared to the robotics that had gone in before the human soldiers, it could kill a Vothrile in short order. The main system was a high energy laser with a very limited power supply, but it was backed up by a projectile weapon of more traditional design with a hundred rounds. Xinmei had used some of her energy pack but she’d found another.

  She started stopping in sheltered spots here or there, then she would just sit and listen. Waiting. Each time, nothing came walking by for her to shoot at. If there was something out there, maybe it was waiting for her the same way.

  She quickly glanced around the tiny bay into which she had walked. If something Vothrile popped in from one of the connecting tubes right now, would she hear it? Would she notice? Or would it get the first shot and be regarding her dead body on the floor ten seconds later?

  She didn’t bother to worry about what would happen if one of the Vothrile battle robots still roamed the base. A lone human would stand no chance against such a death machine. Both humans and Vothriles had managed to create things that could kill whole cities of soft biological lifeforms if they weren’t protected by powerful killing machines of their own.

  So it might already be out of her hands. But if there were only one or two of the enemy left... what should she do? Was there still a battle to be won, or had she been reduced to simple survival?

  If her link had been working she could have passed the question on to the assault computers or even a cached officer’s guide database. But it remained silent, so the plan would have to be hers alone.

  She had a weapon. What else would she need? Food, water, air... she realized that she should test the air. She remembered there were some antidotes she could take if some poisons lingered in the station.

  She found a backpack with a minimal amount of gore on it. Somehow she had left her own back in the bay where she’d weathered out the last of the battle. Her hands still shook. She told herself it was normal. Xinmei dug through the pack, sifting through food packets and a bunch of equipment kits. She saw a climbing kit for traversing vertical Vothrile tunnels (they didn’t use elevators) and an interrogation module. She came to a section with big red crosses on the packets and pulled them out.

  “Here it is,” she mumbled. “Air test kit.”

  She ripped the foil kit open and flipped a small switch on the side of the tiny air test module inside. The test took about ten seconds. She’d used units like this before in training, it was mostly idiot-proof with or without a link. She’d never lost her link in battle before but all the marine training prepared you for it, because the Vothriles had gotten good at disrupting human communications over the years.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw a single red line in the output display: TOXIN FOUND. The field test had a positive result for a known Vothrile warfare chemical. It displayed a result code.

  Her hands shook as she pulled a small leaflet out of the field kit. Normally the device would connect through her link to give her a detailed report complete with a virtual interface in her mind’s eye. Without her link, she only had the result code. But maybe some explanation would be in the tiny booklet. Was it a nerve agent or was she just so rattled that she couldn’t keep her hands steady? She concentrated on focusing on the compact writing.

  She searched through the pages, breathing loudly, until she found it. There was only one paragraph.

  VCA565 variant 3. Lethal doses induce violent hallucination followed rapidly by death. Sub-lethal concentrations often cause hallucinations, deterioration of judgement, miscalculation, and impeded critical thinking. Antidote Family: VCA560-600A.

  Xinmei laughed aloud. Impeded critical thinking. She supposed her plan of action, whatever it turned out to be, might likely have some flaws in it. And then there was the hallucination part. If she saw a Vothrile it might not even be real. But she’d sure as hell shoot anyway.

  Sh
e had an antidote code. Once again, without her link it was up to her alone. Somewhere in a supply crate near one of the breach locks, an antidote pack with VCA560-600A awaited her. Unless they’d all been destroyed, which seemed unlikely. Stores of food and medicine were probably fairly low on the targeting priority for the Vothrile machines, and since it had been a dead-even battle chances were they hadn’t worked their way that far down the list.

  So a plan formed in her brain. Find the antidote. Find out if she was alone. Hope a human ship arrived at the mountain before a Vothrile one.

  She wandered upward, toward the breach locks. Now that she had a clearer purpose, she moved more quickly, stopping less often. Her weapon was always up, pointing left, then right, sweeping her danger areas, ready to shoot any instant.

  She came to a breach point. A burned out husk of a robot the size of a tank lay in the passageway, blocking half of it off. Beside the ruin, crates had been stacked. Men lay behind the barricade, dead. The burned bodies clutched their weapons in ashen fingers. Xinmei pulled some crates aside and started to look.

  She opened the crates one by one and had to eyeball their contents, since her link was out. The first crate contained ammunition, as did the second crate. She stopped and listened with her rifle ready. Nothing. She drug down a third crate and cracked it open. It was filled with food.

  Finally she found a crate filled with tiny medical packs. The crate had a cybloc in it that was supposed to help her, but since her link had been blown, she’d have to do it manually. Each pack held several doses of a mix of drugs.

  She found an antidote pack that included 600A.

  She heard something. Had it been an echo of her own movement? She crouched in place, taking cover behind the two crates. Weapon or antidote? She put her weapon down.

  Another noise. Closer this time. Xinmei concentrated on the pack. She held it up to her wrist. She felt a tingling sensation as it dispensed a group of antitoxins into her blood. She let the pack drop to the ground and seized her PAW.

  Something moved nearby. Xinmei kept her trigger hand on the weapon, ready to manually actuate it, and snatched up the medicine pack in her other hand. She tossed it up over the dead tank next to her.

  As soon as she heard the sound of the pack falling a few meters away, she rose from her position.

  A Vothrile stood at the barricade. It had turned to cover the direction of the noise. It had no eyes, no nose, only maroon-colored patches on the top of its warty gray body. Its rubbery tentacles clutched more than one weapon.

  Xinmei fired. She drained an eighth of her charge into the thing, incinerating it. As soon as the burst was over, she flicked a knob on her weapon to switch over to projectile fire. But it was dead.

  The challenge ended abruptly. Xinmei found herself back in her own body in the luxurious quarters. There was no sign of Slicer.

  The scenario had been so real, so gripping, that it had completely absorbed her. She had no idea what a Vothrile was, doubted they really existed, but like a dream, whoever she had been in the challenge had known of them.

  Victory, an automated voice announced through her link. Promotion. You are advanced one level.

  Xinmei ran into the bathroom and threw up.

  Seven

  Within forty-eight hours of Zhengqing’s death, Feng Li was promoted to Kong Jun Shang Wei, a captain in the Divine Space Force. The Ascending Dragon’s commander gave notice that officers at his rank and above would be serving from aboard the ship in impending boarding actions, despite the communication difficulties they had during the last battle.

  He sent an email to Xinmei informing her of his promotion. The act made him feel a pang of sadness because he knew he’d get no reply. She was still marked as out of contact on duty. How could he possibly complain when he might well have the same status himself for months on end in the space service?

  Feng’s duties now included the oversight of all robotic forces deployed by the ship. The only exception was the battle director, which remained in the control of a specialized team on the ship. He had no say in matters of the director although he would use the special interface to communicate his objectives to the computer. Feng had come to realize that the battle director was dangerous to the ship itself, perhaps even to the entire PRC, because of its intelligence. It made him feel a bit better to know that a special team used the controller and had sole authority over its use, which meant that maybe they could keep it isolated from the rest of the ship and the internet.

  Feng received a notification of new hardware added to his force via rendezvous with another cruiser the coming day. They were adding four of the heavy Yongshan machines to his battle group.

  The Yongshan machines were a welcome addition to his forces, but the new hardware came with a tsunami of PV forms and logistics nightmares. He stayed up late each night laying in his bunk in the officers’ quarters, sifting through the necessary work in his PV.

  A day later, another PRC ship, the Martial Dragon, arrived at the Grand China station. The new arrival wasn’t a station cracker, but a battleship, made to destroy other ships in space. It carried Admiral Huang Yaotang, who arranged a meeting with the top officers of Feng’s ship.

  The VR meeting site looked like a peaceful pagoda sitting atop a low hill. The interior was empty except for a single giant table with a legion of chairs emblazoned with the Chinese flag.

  Admiral Huang appeared at the table, piped into their PVs from the Martial Dragon, yet a few light seconds away.

  The admiral was a large man, perhaps overweight but in any case with a wide barrel of a torso. His face was wide, square, and stern.

  Admiral Huang shifted slightly in his virtual seat. His eyes focused on the group as whatever communication he had been immersed in terminated.

  “I’ve read several reports about the incident at Pearl River station. We are forming a battle group as a precaution in case this proves to be more than an isolated case of corporate sabotage.”

  Everyone sat stiffly and watched the admiral.

  “Before we can oppose our enemy, we must know: who is our enemy? Someone has attacked our station, yet we don’t know who. If this is an action of the UNSF and not an errant corporate skirmish, then it is critical we prepare for a fight. We have to find out if this is the beginning of a campaign against our interests in space.”

  The admiral took a loud breath.

  “I was told I would receive an up to date analysis from the captain in charge of the science lab.”

  An officer stood from the far side of the table. Feng didn’t recognize the captain.

  “The technology of the robot we captured is a total mystery that cannot be easily unraveled. In fact, it is not even a robot at all. It contains living tissue— or, rather, I should say, once-living tissue. It was a cybernetic organism.”

  “What do you mean a total mystery?” the Admiral said. “Of what origin are the cyblocs it contains? Western or Chinese?”

  The captain shook his head. “It doesn’t contain cyblocs at all,” he said. “At least, not as we know them. The interior is so complex that we are unable to analyze anything but the coarsest of its physical functions. We have, of course, enlisted the aid of our comrades back on Earth. There is no progress in the area of linking this to any known government or corporate electronics.”

  “Admiral, please excuse me, but I must say clearly, we now believe this is an alien war machine,” said Captain Lin.

  Feng’s eyes widened.

  Alien?

  The admiral turned to regard Lin imperiously.

  “I’m aware of your position on this matter, Captain, and I must tell you that if you don’t support such a wild story with ample evidence, I’m here to relieve you of your command.”

  Captain Lin nodded.

  “The machine awaits your personal inspection,” Captain Lin said.

  An explosion rocked the Ascending Dragon. Alarms went off in everyone’s PVs.

  A damage control view opened at the for
efront of Feng’s PV. Feng had seen the view before in training exercises. It would route crewmembers to damage control activities as necessary. But the view in Feng’s head didn’t issue him any instructions. That was to be expected, given his rank and the duties assigned to him, although the fact they weren’t in battle might have increased his chances of being recruited to control a fire or seal a hull breach.

  Feng was able to gather that the explosion had occurred in the main lab, and it had been contained to that immediate area. Since they now sat a fair distance from that spot, no one in the meeting room had been routed to help out. Feng wondered for a fleeting second if the presence of the Admiral somehow affected the priority calculations of who was directed where in an emergency.

  “It was the robot. A piece of it exploded,” said the captain across from Feng who had described the robot as a cyborg.

  “Captain Lin, you are temporarily relieved from duty,” said Admiral Huang.

  He believes the captain of the Ascending Dragon would destroy the machine to avoid exposing some kind of fraud? Feng thought.

  “Admiral, with due respect,” started another officer.

  “Say nothing. I will get to the bottom of this,” said the admiral. “This meeting is dismissed.”

  Feng said nothing.

  ***

  “The investigation is still going on,” Sheng said to Feng the next day. “I think Captain Lin will be cleared. The video records show our lab people opening a system of the machine we didn’t understand, right before the explosion.”

  “Well, can we learn anything while that mess is being cleaned up? I mean the political mess, not the destroyed lab,” Feng asked.

  “We have recordings of the initial investigation,” Sheng said. “The armor is quite a puzzle. When we took the remains, the machine had two clear holes in it where the robot had been hit. Over the next half hour, those holes disappeared.”