by M. D. Cooper
Kylie nodded as she walked down a corridor and headed for a lift that would take her to the command deck and Garza’s CIC. After a few moments of silence, she said,
Thank goodness. The news made Kylie feel better, strengthening her resolve to stop the Revolution Fleet before the only option left on the table was destruction.
* * * * *
“Kylie Rhoads, I was hoping you’d make your way here.”
Garza’s voice held no fear as Kylie walked into his CIC, pulse rifle in hand.
She didn’t know why he would want to see her. There would be no way he could have missed the ship-wide hunt currently underway. Part of her wanted to find out, but another just wanted to kill the man, not engage in witty banter.
Kylie approached slowly, the rifle trained on Garza’s forehead. “Time for games is over. If you’re dead, all this ends.”
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” Garza said with a soft laugh. “Little temptress, you must suspect that none of this ends with me. It doesn’t even end with Peter. His sons, his followers, they’ll always be ready to take up the mantle. The fact that you’ve come to assassinate me is proof that what Peter is doing is the right thing. The correct course often hurts the most, Ms. Rhoads.”
“Wrong. Without you to control things…”
“Control?” Garza laughed. “I’m doing nothing of the sort. Peter and I are partners. I don’t control anything. Quite the contrary, he’s a visionary. He sees the galaxy the way it’s meant to be, not the way it currently is. With his help, we’ll reshape everything.”
“Then why are you headed to S&H Defensive Armament’s research facility? What is it that you want there?” Kylie paused and watched Garza as he scowled, his eyes narrowing. Neither spoke and Kylie decided that the general needed a push in the right direction.
She held out her hand, cupping it slightly, she pushed nanoscopic bots through her skin, allowing them to coalesce in a glowing sphere. The light illuminated her face, and Garza’s eyes widened.
But not with fear. With delight. “You? You have the stolen prototypes from S&H?”
“You’re very clever. Now you know what you’re up against.” Kylie closed her fist, sending the nano back into her body.
“Marvelous,” Garza said as he approached her. “I confess, this will be much simpler. Your father’s fleet is useful for destabilizing the region, but it was just a means to an end. If Orion is to win this war, we need that tech.”
Garza seemed to think that Kylie was just going to turn it over. Nothing could be further from the truth. “You’re going to have to kill me to get it out of me.”
“Kylie—”
“I think we’ll try to avoid killing my daughter,” a voice said from the shadows.
Behind Garza, a door had slid open, one that had been so well concealed that Kylie had never noticed it. From the look on Garza’s face, neither had he.
Peter raised his sidearm and fired at Garza, who twisted to the side with surprising speed, avoiding the shot. The general then struck Peter’s outstretched hand, knocking the weapon aside.
“Peter! What are you doing?” Garza asked. “We’re partners. We’re saving humanity.”
“There’s no we,” Peter replied and smashed a fist into Garza’s face.
Kylie was surprised by her father’s speed. He moved with the speed and agility of a young man—better than a young man. She raised her rifle, trying to take aim on Garza, but the men were too close.
Then her father managed to get behind Garza and wrapped an arm around his neck. Garza drove an elbow into Peter’s side, but her father didn’t even flinch. Instead, he bellowed, grabbed Garza’s forehead and wrenched the general’s head, twisting it over half-way around.
Kylie gasped as her father let the body fall to the floor. Peter Rhoads reached down, retrieved his sidearm, and shot Garza in the head.
Ten times.
As the echo of the gun’s report faded away, only Peter’s heavy breathing could be heard in the room.
“Dad,” Kylie whispered and took a tentative step forward. With Garza dead now, would her family be free? Would Peter be convinced to see the truth that stared him in the face?
Peter holstered his weapon and turned to Kylie “I’m sorry it came to this. I was going to take you back to your cell, but when you started talking… I realized that Garza thought he could play me for a fool. I already suspected him. He seemed far too focused on S&H and their planet, Dessen.” Peter shook his head and sighed. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead and now things can go back to how they should be.”
“But it’s over now, Dad. It’s over.” Kylie reached out, offering her hand, even as she wondered about the strength he had displayed.
“Yes,” Peter smiled and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’ve proven more valuable than I ever expected. I knew you were a free thinker, like your old man, but the lengths you went to prove it…I doubt I’ve ever been prouder.”
“Come with me, Dad. Let’s get to the bridge and stop this fleet before it’s too late.”
Peter’s face darkened and he stared down at her as though she had just said oxygen was poison. “Stop it? Why would we want to stop it?”
Oh, no, Kylie thought. Dad, no. Her heart sank and Kylie felt like the floor had dropped out from under her.
“Normal space transition will occur in five minutes. Since Garza has brought us to their doorstep, we will destroy S&H’s vile research facility so they can no longer spread their evil. Then we’ll move into the rest of the system and cleanse it thoroughly.”
Kylie pulled her hand away and stepped back. Garza hadn’t been in control; he had been telling the truth. Her father was doing this on his own. “Dad…Mom came to see me.”
“I know.” Peter stepped over Garza’s body. “She had been very worried about you. I’m not sure how you shut down her compliance chip, but it just shows that it needs work. You can show me what you did, and we’ll perfect it. It’s how we’ll ensure that humanity stays on the right course. You and I, we can do this together.”
Kylie’s stomach sank as she could no longer pretend there was some other force at work. Her dad had modified her mother, turned her into a slave. It went against everything he had said he believed. “What happened to free will? To people making a choice, Dad? You used to believe in those things.”
“Until my message was going nowhere, and your mother started turning against me. Thanks, in no small part to your divorce and overall degeneration. I knew I needed to do more, I needed to work faster, but it took some time to find the right source.”
“How many people have you done this to?” Kylie demanded.
“Any that step out of line. It started with your mother, spread to your brothers, their wives. Commanding officers, but don’t worry, over half the people on this fleet are here of their own choosing. The compliance chip did nothing I couldn’t do with time. But I don’t have a lot of time, Kylie. The message must be spread.”
“So, you modify people? You’re a hypocrite!” Kylie shouted. Somehow her father turning on his own beliefs—crazy as they were—only made everything worse.
Peter drew his hand back to slap her, and Kylie stepped back and raised the pulse rifle. “Stop it, Dad, or I will defend myself. I will hurt you and I don’t want to. Tell me how to deactivate the compliance chips.”
“You can’t,” Peter said with a smile. “It’s in me. I’m the master.” Peter lifted his shirt, and Kylie realized that it had been shielding the IR and EM his torso gave off. Her father was the one controlling everyone.
;
Kylie gazed at her father, the sadness almost too much to bear. “You’ve become the thing you hated the most, Dad. Don’t you see that? You wanted to help people!”
“I am helping people!” Peter slammed his fist onto the holotable. “Look at the billions out there! And that’s just Silstrand. The other systems, the other sectors, there are so many people at risk because of the AI and their plan to overthrow us. Don’t you see? They’ve been planning since they lost the last war!”
“From what I see, you’re the only one killing people!”
Kylie launched herself at her father, the ferocity of her attack taking him by surprise. She hit him in the throat, followed by a blow to his solar plexus, driving the wind out of him.
He stumbled backwards and she tore his shirt open and slammed both her palms into his chest, pushing a large volume of nano into his body.
“What…” Peter cried out. “What have you done?”
“I’m shutting your shit show down, Dad,” Kylie yelled. “You hear me? This ends now!”
Peter pushed Kylie back and swung at her head, and she retreated around the holotable.
“We’re here,” Peter said with a smile as the holo above them updated, focusing in on the fleet as it dropped into normal space around Dessen. “Now we purge them.”
“Do you even hear yourself?” Kylie asked. “You sound like a crazy person.”
Her father’s brow lowered and he took a step back, let out a bellow like he had when he’d killed Garza, and leapt over the table in a single bound. He slammed into Kylie and knocked her to the ground.
He leapt atop her, and a flurry of blows rained down on Kylie, which she barely managed to deflect, even with her augmented strength.
Kylie drove a fist into her father’s face, then swung her knee into his groin. He howled in pain and reared back, drawing his sidearm once more, aiming it at her head.
She swung her arms up, pushing the gun higher as he fired.
My father just tried to shoot me!
The sorrow fell from Kylie and she felt an icy calm come over her. She clamped a fist around his hand and wrenched the gun free as her father fell back onto her, screaming and clawing at her face.
“You can’t kill me, Kylie! No one can. The angel came to me, it told me I had a destiny. That I was to cleanse the human race. It showed me how to ensure compliance with the chips. It said I would be immortal.”
Kylie shook her head as Marge signaled that the compliance system had been shut down.
“No, Dad. You’re not immortal.”
She pushed the handgun under his chin and a scream tore free from her as she pulled the trigger three times.
Her father’s body began to twitch and convulse, and Kylie pushed it off her, turning away, not wanting to see what had become of the man who had raised her.
Hot tears fell from her eyes, obscuring her view as she stumbled toward the CIC’s door. She realized she was holding her breath and gasped for air, leaning against the bulkhead, sobbing uncontrollably.
Kylie straightened.
“Shit,” Kylie swore as she opened the door and raced out in the corridor. “Where?”
RETURN TO SILSTRAND
STELLAR DATE: 10.07.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Bridge, ISF I2
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus, Scipio Empire
“Captain Espensen, Admiral Tanis,” one of the comm officers called out. “We’ve just picked up an FDL relay message. It’s from a Hand operative in the Silstrand Alliance.”
“Put it on,” Captain Espensen replied, and the officer complied.
As the message played, Tanis’s brow furrowed and she glanced at Sera. “Kylie Rhoads. Daughter of Peter Rhoads. The anti-AI faction with the disturbingly large fleet.”
Sera’s ruby-red lips pursed as she nodded. “She’s the one we were using to get close to her father. I guess it worked. Sort of.”
“Nav?” Captain Espensen called out, “Do we have orbital positioning data on the Silstrand System? We need to know where this Dessen world is.”
The nav officers bent to their task and then one nodded. “Yes, Captain. We can have ninety-five percent certainty of its current position.”
“Admiral,” Rachel Espensen said as she looked to Tanis. “Ready to deploy the jump gate on your orders.”
Sera nodded.
Tanis turned to Captain Espensen. “Looks like Silstrand is next on our dance card. Take us through.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Captain Espensen replied.
Tanis walked to the front of the I2’s bridge, watching as pieces of the ship’s second-to-last jump gate flew off and assembled themselves in front of the vessel.
Tanis replied.
Tanis coughed.
Ten minutes later the gate had assembled and its antimatter reactors came to life, generating negative energy and focusing it on a single point. That point reached out toward the I2 and the space beyond was a roiling inferno. Then the focal point touched the mirror on the front of the ship and Captain Espensen signaled the helm.
“Take us in.”
The view outside the ship ceased to make sense, and then, just a few seconds later, the stars snapped into place and Tanis recognized the familiar constellations visible from the Silstrand System.
“Just over twenty years ago,” she said.
“Not so long ago,” Sera commented.
Tanis shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. This is the first star system I’ve ever returned to.
Sera cocked her head to the side. “Huh. I guess it is. Of all the gin joints in all the stars, you gotta come back here.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Tanis asked
Sera shrugged as she looked at the scan data that was building up on the main holotank. “A bit nostalgic for me too. I spent a lot of years flitting about Silstrand. Working for Kade.”
“Slime-ball e
xtraordinaire,” Tanis said with a grimace. “That guy was something else.”
Sera laughed. “Yeah, but it all turned out well in the end.”
“You mean how you were able to save my life?” Tanis asked.
Sera shook her head and her skin changed through several colors before returning to its normal shade. “You were a nice bonus. I was talking about my skin.”
“Technically you got that skin from Bob.”
Sera shrugged. “Yeah, but it was to fix me up after Rebecca’s booby-trapped clothing. I still can’t believe she did that.”
“Looks like we’re here first,” Tanis said as scan’s picture of the system finished assembling.
“There are a few ships around Dessen,” Sera pointed out. “My agent’s message must have broadcast out into the system as well. Good move too.”
Tanis nodded as she considered their defensive options. They were just over a million kilometers from Dessen and the ships—most labeled as Silstrand Space Force, though a few had S&H tags above them—and the enemy fleet could dump out of the DL anywhere.
“Strange that they’d run their main R&D this far out. There’s no dark matter here, Dessen’s entire orbit is direct-jumpable,” Sera said.
“I guess they valued the ability to ship things out unnoticed over security,” Tanis replied as she walked around the holotank.
“We’ve broadcast the welcome message,” Captain Espensen said as Tanis approached the holotank. “Will be a minute before we get the responses.”
“Fleet ready to deploy?” Tanis asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well,” Tanis mused, “We do know where they’re going, but I agree. Not to mention that they won’t be expecting us to hit them in the rear.”
“We have a response,” the comm officer called out. “Two of them. One from a Colonel Grayson, and one from someone named Smithers on Dessen.”
“Smithers?” Tanis asked. “I’m surprised he’s still around. Guy seemed like he had both feet hanging over the grave last time we met.”