Which meant what? The billions of people inhabiting the galaxy were being served up as unwitting appetizers to the aliens while the feuding empires continued to fruitlessly beat upon one another? Were they to be given no opportunity to prepare or defend or flee?
She had gotten so entangled in the train of thought it took her several seconds to realize the meeting had concluded. People were standing to depart, and the disgruntled chatter indicated nothing had been resolved. Not that she had expected anything to be resolved. She had attended because her absence would have been noticed and because she did need to keep tabs on the state of her adopted planet.
When the governor’s eyes roved over her table she gave the woman a polite nod, then wound her way out. She needed to get home.
Mia crawled through the drop ceiling above Meno’s room clad in leggings and a tank. Thick trunks of crystalline fiber cables lined the flooring; she gingerly climbed over and around them as she strung a new line. Sweat dripped down her temples from the stuffy environs and the exertion of lugging ten-meter-long cables through the obstacle course comprising the ceiling space.
At a large junction diode box installed into the wall she threaded the cable into an open port, then attached a new length of fiber to the matching outbound port and continued on. She repeated the process at two more junctions before finally reaching the open panel in the ceiling.
Cable in hand, she dropped through the opening to land semi-nimbly on the floor below and promptly begin sneezing dust out of her nose. When the fit subsided she lugged the heavy cable to the primary input unit, purposefully located at eye level halfway down the single row of servers. Most of the hardware resided behind the wall in an insulated cleanroom.
She blew out a breath, decided for the tenth time this was both necessary and perfectly safe, and slipped the neck interface on. If something did go wrong—which it wasn’t going to—she needed to see it coming and be able to react more rapidly than she could in an automatous conversation.
Good afternoon, Mia.
“Good afternoon, Meno. I have a present for you I think you’ll like.”
I do enjoy presents.
“I know you do. But this isn’t merely a present. I need your help with an important matter.”
It would please me to help you.
“I’m glad. In a minute I’m going to plug an exanet feed into your hardware.”
This will make me most happy. She swore its voice gained a tinge of excitement.
“I’m sure. Now you won’t be able to communicate out, as it’s a one-way feed.” She felt confident in the truth of her statement. It didn’t matter how smart the Artificial was, it couldn’t defeat hardware walls.
That’s what the junction diode boxes represented: physical hardware blocking any signals flowing in the opposite direction. She had long ago placed dozens of dynamic software security feedback loops and exit traps as well. But should they all fail to stop Meno from escaping the confines of her home, the hardware would not.
“Are you ready?”
Yes, Mia.
She held her breath as she plugged the conduit in and activated the port. Three seconds ticked by, then four.
This is most fascinating.
“Take time to familiarize yourself with the data coming in. I know it’s a lot to absorb.”
It is indeed a lot.
So it only took four hundred zettabytes/second of streaming data to impress the Artificial. “Do you remember the files I gave you the other day about the Metis Nebula?”
Of course. They deeply concern me.
“They concern me, too. What I need you to do is monitor everything coming in from the exanet for two things: any information which may correlate with the data I gave you, and any unusual events on or around the easternmost colonies closest to the Metis Nebula. Do you understand what I’m asking?”
I believe so.
“Excellent. You can send summaries of anything anomalous to our message box.”
I will do so.
“I’ve got to go to the spaceport, but I’ll check in later this evening.”
Before you go, I believe I have found information which meets your parameters. The colonies of Gaiae, Andromeda, Gaelach, Zetian, New Riga and Lycaon have ceased communicating with the exanet infrastructure.
She froze, her hand halfway to the neck wrap. “All of them?”
Yes, Mia. All of them.
18
PORTAL PRIME
UNCHARTED SPACE
* * *
ONLY WHEN IT GREW SO DARK he couldn’t see a meter in front of him without the optical enhancements did Caleb concede the futility of continuing on. He found a level area beneath one of the larger trees and patched together a basic camp.
Resting his body against the tree trunk, he finally gave exhaustion permission to consume him. The incline was steep and he’d set a grueling pace. No adjustment to the chemicals in his bloodstream occurred to ease the ache of his muscles. Lactic acid burned through his thighs and calves, and the breadth of his shoulders grumbled in protest when he tweaked them.
He honestly didn’t care. If it were an option he’d keep walking. But walking looked to be impossible for the next several hours so instead he pondered the merits of kindling a fire. He had run across several variations of critters in his long afternoon and evening of hiking, none larger than a medium-sized canine and none overtly aggressive. Food for the dragons.
In the ‘pros’ column of building a fire: if the critters were used to being hunted by the dragons, the flames should keep them away while he slept. In the ‘cons’ column: if the dragons hunted these woods, they may spot the fire and treat him as one of the critters while he slept.
So no fire. He took a swig of water and closed his eyes.
“What if we only ran a fire long enough to whip up a bit of hot food?”
Samuel glanced at him askance and pulled a sleeping bag out of his pack. “You want the surveillance drones to spot us? Cause if you do, then hey, I’m up for a shooting match. I did forget my shoulder-fired SAL, however, so I don’t particularly care for our odds.”
The man was right. They wore thermal shielding to mask their heat signatures. As they hadn’t found room in the packs for a larger cloaking shield, a fire would be counterproductive. Resigned, Caleb sank down on his sleeping bag and dug out a field ration.
They camped forty kilometers into a rain forest on Elathan and another twelve kilometers from their goal, an underground storage facility for a group of gunrunners. The bunker was too deep below ground to air bomb and needed to be destroyed from the inside. They also hoped to catch some of the ringleaders onsite, which explained why they were sneaking in on foot rather than landing on top of the facility.
And there was the training.
This constituted his third live mission at Samuel’s side. He’d undergone ‘official’ training first—a whirlwind Galactic year of learning the tech for every situation, surveillance and hacking techniques, flight techniques and killing techniques. The lessons were grueling but not difficult. He suspected they were unlikely to have recruited him in the first place if they hadn’t expected he’d prove a natural at most of the work.
He technically now served as a field agent for the Senecan Federation Division of Intelligence, authorized to act against any and all enemies of the Federation, foreign or domestic. But he wasn’t permitted out on missions alone until Samuel Padova certified him ready to be permitted out on missions alone. And he had no idea when that might be.
He didn’t mind the company. He liked Samuel a lot. The agent was a touch insane and overdid the ‘grizzled old man’ shtick—he knew for a fact Samuel was all of fifty-four—but the man possessed a witty sense of humor, a good-natured perspective on the world and, most importantly, turned out to be a freakishly effective teacher. Caleb had learned more in the two and a half missions accompanying Samuel than in the entire year of classroom training.
Having set the perimeter sensors, Samuel crac
ked open a field ration and joined him on the ground. “So, I heard you got a girl back in Cavare.”
Caleb chuckled. “You’re about as subtle as a circus billboard.”
“Who said I was trying to be subtle? If I were truly being subtle, you might not even realize it.”
“Sure, sure….” He sipped on a water packet. “I guess I do. Jesse’s working on her doctorate in chemical engineering at Tellica.”
“Smart lady, then. What’s she doing with you?”
He responded by lobbing one of the small rocks littering the ground at Samuel’s head. “Cantankerous bastard.”
“You love her?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“A relevant one.”
“We’ll see.” He finished the field ration and stowed the trash, then lay down and wound his hands behind his head. “Old man like you, how many times have you been in love?”
“Hell, Caleb, I’m in love every other weekend.”
“I said in love, not in lust.”
“There’s a difference?”
“I’m fairly certain there is, yeah.”
Night had fallen in full and he was unable to get a clear view of Samuel’s expression. But the slight shift in the air implied he had grown serious. “To answer your question, exactly once.”
He carefully removed the earlier teasing tone from his voice. “What happened?”
“I was running an infiltration on this child sex slave ring. Nastiest bunch of vicious sons of bitches I’ve ever encountered. Swear I needed to take a shower every time I left them.” He crossed his legs and allowed his elbows to drop to his knees. “I came so close to meeting the principal, but I got over-eager. I screwed up—difficult to imagine, I realize. They found out I was undercover. I didn’t know until I went home one night and…they had killed her. Not a clean kill, either. She probably…well.”
“I’m sorry.” It sounded as pathetically inadequate on his voice as it had in his head.
“Yep, so am I. Made them pay though, tenfold over. Earned me a three month suspension, but I didn’t give a shit. So that’s why I—” he cut himself off, and seconds ticked by in silence “—why I say ‘never have anything you can’t walk away from.’ Especially a woman. For them, because this is a dangerous life we lead and you never know if or when it will blow back on those close to you. And for you, because trust me when I tell you there exists no greater perdition than the guilt of causing the death of someone you love.”
A beat and most of the usual wryness returned to Samuel’s voice. “So this Jesse? Enjoy her as much as she’ll let you for as long as she’ll let you, but don’t fall in love with her. And when it becomes necessary, walk away.”
God, he’d been so damn young. But he had taken the advice to heart, learned from it and after he received his first serious infiltration mission he’d walked away from Jesse. And he’d been right to do so.
If he’d possessed a shred of wisdom at the time he would have recognized how much those events had shaped the man Samuel became, well before they’d ever met. But back then he held the world on a puppeteer’s string and couldn’t begin to conceive of the loss of someone, even someone he cared for, altering his life to such dramatic and devastating effect.
He sure as hell could conceive of it now.
Caleb awoke with a jerk, his senses quickly sharpening to full awareness.
He blinked, but no infrared filter activated in his ocular implant. What had he heard? He consciously stilled and waited. To his right, farther up the mountain, there echoed the yelp of an animal. It resonated pain. A final cry rang out, followed by silence.
His suspicion regarding the purpose of the native wildlife was now all but confirmed. The cry also gave him a direction to head.
No time like the present. It wasn’t yet dawn but the sky appeared a slightly lighter shade of black—a velvety, starless indigo—and provided enough light for him to pick out a path through the woods. He pulled yet another energy bar out of the pack, strapped the blade across his back and the water bottle to his hip and started off again.
Less than two minutes after waking he was on his way.
Without an active eVi he couldn’t access a clock, but he thought he’d slept maybe three hours. Though three hours as measured at home, or as the hours passed here? Two days in this place and he was no longer able to discern the difference. Regardless, it was sufficient sleep. Troubled sleep decorated in fire and death, but sufficient.
He had no way to know where the dragon’s lair was located, if it possessed a lair at all, and if it did whether the beast had taken Alex to it. The wooded mountains provided poor distance visibility and no opportunity to see potential shelters. He had nothing but an indefinable perception he traveled in the correct direction—a perception now bolstered by the cry of an animal as it became a meal for a dragon.
She could be dead. As a rational being he had no choice but to recognize it as a possibility. He’d lost people on missions. He’d lost Samuel, though he had been powerless to prevent it. He wasn’t powerless now.
So while he recognized she could be dead, he refused to believe she was. He was going to save her; there was no other acceptable outcome.
When he thought about her being dead he felt as though he were suffocating, as if he had been robbed of the capacity to breathe. So he didn’t think about it. He put distance between himself and the thoughts by pondering the mystery of this planet.
Hidden in the blackness of an utterly empty space where time sped forward, it orbited no star and rotated on no axis. Visibly devoid of civilization, it nonetheless exhibited an artificial day/night cycle mimicking that of Earth.
Then there were the dragons. They protected this region—a region which actively repelled technology, an act feasible solely through the use of technology. Something lay hidden in these mountains, something more than merely a dragon lair. Something highly intelligent, highly advanced and highly secretive.
Which was why though she could be dead, in fact she was alive.
The obsidian orb hovered a meter above the ground. Its surface reflected not a spec of light, such that in the corner of Caleb’s vision it resembled a hole in the world—absence where there should be detail.
He crouched to study it at eye level. Fifteen centimeters in diameter, it exhibited no motion: no vibration, no rotation, no wobbling. It hung still as death. The metal was seamless and unmarked to the naked eye. It would be helpful to be able to scan it—with a tool, with his implant, with something—for non-visible light characteristics. No such luck.
He slowly eased his hand toward it, and felt resistance. A repulsive energy fought against him but not overwhelmingly so. When his hand was several centimeters away, he thrust it forward and wrapped the orb into his palm.
Now it did move, vibrating fiercely as it struggled to escape his grasp. A stinging sensation raced through his fingers and up his arm inside his skin. The orb did not care for his cybernetics. He brought his other hand up to grip it securely and yanked it toward him.
The orb went dead. All movement ceased, along with whatever energy it had been generating. The surface color faded to a dull pewter. It now resembled a syncrosse ball and while there was no way to be positive absent a full analysis, it appeared inert.
He tossed it in the air a few times. It was extraordinarily light, weighing a hundred grams or so. He considered it a moment, then opened his pack, dropped it inside and continued his trek.
Thirty minutes later he located another. Now that he recognized what to look for, they weren’t quite so invisible. He wondered how many he had missed in a day of hiking. Judging by the spacing at least two dozen, possibly more.
Once he had disabled and collected four of them, he leaned against a tree and contemplated his options.
The orbs were generating the tech repulsion field; he was sure of it. An argument could be made he should return to the ship and acquire a more formidable weapon at a minimum, and possibly locate the ne
cessary equipment and reactivate his eVi as well.
The round trip would be two days. Though he knew the way now, he’d need to stop and disable every orb he came upon on the way back to the ship, then retrace his steps precisely if he wanted to avoid getting tossed a couple of hundred kilometers.
He did not have the time—unless it meant the difference between success and failure. So the question became this: did he genuinely believe he was going to be able to kill a dragon using nothing but a makeshift sword and his own unenhanced strength and reflexes?
Goddamn right he did.
19
DESNA
EARTH ALLIANCE COLONY
* * *
SPACE OUTSIDE THE SHUTTLE looked calm, even peaceful. Stars glittered against an empty landscape marked solely by a faint gleam originating from Desna’s sun, which remained outside his field of vision.
The shuttle banked to port, the planet came into view and Malcolm patted the pilot’s shoulder. He then found his seat and strapped in. The ride in was going to be rough.
As if on cue, the sky lit up with the first volley of what would be the largest battle thus far in the Second Crux War. Then the atmosphere engulfed the shuttle and he could see no more. He wished them luck, but his mission was on the colony below.
At General Foster’s order the entire 2nd Division of the Northwestern Regional forces was assembled to retake Desna from the Federation. Four cruisers, the largest carrier in NW Command, twenty-two frigates, over eighty fighters and ten electronic warfare vessels now approached Desna from the west.
Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two Page 13