by M. D. Cooper
“Shit, that’s Oris,” Brandt said from behind Tanis.
Tanis was about to reply, when enemy fire stopped splashing against the Aegeus’s shields and instead began to cut through the ISF cruiser.
Tanis caught sight of dozens of missiles streaking out from the Theban cruisers toward the Aegeus.
The shockwave tore through the vacuum of space, colliding with Appalachia Station and buckling its torrid ring. Tanis dove the shuttle below molten debris as the pieces of the Aegeus streaked through space all around them. Above them, the looming form of the station began to fracture, breaking apart piece-by-piece.
“Strap in!” Tanis called back as she dove under the disintegrating station, joining in with the swarm of ships and escape pods heading for the planet below. Then something struck the ship, and one of the engines failed.
NOT THE WARM WELCOME…
STELLAR DATE: 08.17.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Andromeda
REGION: Edge of the New Canaan system
Katrina turned and saw Cary standing in the room’s entrance with her sister, Saanvi, behind her. Both women wore sober expressions, and Cary stretched out her hand.
“What are you doing?” Katrina asked, backing away. “Joe? What is this?”
“I want to hear your impressions when it’s just you in there,” Joe replied. “We’ve had no end of misery from ascended AIs lurking in our populace. Our trust comes with a cost. This is it.”
Katrina opened her mouth to speak, but her breath caught as silver filaments streaked out of Cary’s hands and into her body.
Her own internal nano defenses seemed unable to stop them, and Katrina felt something change. It was indescribable, and she couldn’t discern if the feeling was good or bad.
Then a white light began to form between Cary’s hands, and, a moment later, she held a glowing orb.
“It’s done.” Cary said in her strange voice. “I’ll take it to the lab.”
“Wait!” Katrina called out, reaching for Cary. She was stopped short by Joe grabbing her wrist.
“How do you feel, Katrina?”
“Like you becoming an admiral has turned you into a raging asshole!” Katrina shot back. “You had no right—”
“This isn’t about rights.” Joe cut her off. “We’re in a fight for our survival. One interpretation of what has occurred today is that you secreted an enemy onto our base. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional, but I’m disinclined to trust ascended AIs at present. From what you’ve said, they seem to be responsible for just about everything that’s gone wrong since humanity reached the stars.”
Katrina felt drained—whatever Cary had done to remove Xavia’s memory had left her barely able to stand. “Don’t hurt her. Please. She’s a gift from Xavia.”
“We won’t, so long as you don’t tell us to.”
“What?” Katrina’s knew Joe’s words should make sense, but they just didn’t line up. “Why would I tell you to hurt Xavia’s memory?”
“Well, if you were under duress, you may change your mind about your feelings toward her.”
“Joe!” Katrina wanted to bang his head into the wall and see if she could knock some sense into him. “What’s it going to take to convince you that she wasn’t manipulating me?”
Joe sighed. “I don’t know, yet. Come, let’s go to the lab and see what Xavia’s memory has to say for herself.”
“What? Just like that, we’re all friendly again? You just tore a part of me out of myself.”
Joe took a step toward Katrina a finger in her face. “No, I took a foreign entity who has the ability to control all of your words and deeds out of your body. How can I trust you with that thing in there? For all I know, you’re so conditioned at this point that you have no idea who you even are anymore.”
“Joe…” Katrina began to speak, but he turned and walked away. She followed him out of the room to see a squad of ISF Marines waiting.
Somehow that felt worse than anything else. Like Joe had betrayed her. Some of these Marines could be friends, or even family, and now they saw her being treated like a criminal by one of their leaders.
Joe glanced over his shoulder.
Katrina didn’t reply; her teeth were clenched so hard she thought they might break. To have struggled so long to stay alive, only to be treated as a criminal upon her arrival…. Part of her wished she’d never come back. To think of all she had sacrificed to get this information to New Canaan, only to have it end up a catastrophe.
But Xavia had told me that I must.
A sliver of doubt crept into Katrina’s mind, accompanied by an unwelcome memory of how she had controlled people like puppets back in the Midditerra System. A mind-control technology that had eventually worked its way across the stars to destroy countless lives in a dozen conflicts.
Could I have been under her spell?
Katrina shook her head, knowing that her own doubt was evidence that she was not under Xavia’s sway.
Katrina almost missed a step.
A feeling of sadness welled up in Katrina. This was not at all how she had envisioned her reunion going. It was supposed to be joyous. In her imaginings, Tanis had thanked her for revealing that Bob had ulterior motives…they had taken steps to avert the war that was brewing.
Now Joe was ruining everything with his rampant paranoia.
Katrina didn’t speak further to Joe or Corsia as they walked through the base’s corridors. After five minutes, they reached the doors to Earnest’s lab, also under guard by ISF Marines.
The guards opened the door, and Joe led her into the room.
It was a cavernous space—as Katrina had expected—much of it shrouded in darkness. To her right was an illuminated area, where Earnest stood beside Cary and Saanvi, along with another man and woman.
At the edge of the space, a dozen tall columns stood, each containing a white orb wrapped in silver bands. Katrina was shocked to see so many captured remnants.
How do they do that?
Then Cary moved, and Katrina saw another orb on the table in the center of the space. “Is that her? Is she OK?” Katrina asked as she rushed past Joe.
“Yes, yes, Katrina,” Earnest said without taking his eyes off Xavia’s memory. “Safe and sound. So far as we can tell, being trapped in the brane doesn’t do these Scubs any harm.”
> “ ‘Scubs’?” Katrina asked, and the woman next to Earnest nodded.
“We were calling them ‘Self-Contained Sentient Sub-Entity Shards’ but that was a mouthful, and SCSSES sounds too much like ‘skuzzes’, so we ended up with ‘Scubs’,” the woman explained.
“Uh…thanks for the etymology lesson,” Katrina muttered.
“She says she’s sorry,” Cary said, still speaking in the strangely ethereal voice. “She knew we wouldn’t trust her, but she didn’t know we could see her. She’s not happy that the Caretaker’s Scubs are here.”
“Is there any more we can learn from them?” Joe asked.
Cary and Saanvi both shook their heads, and Saanvi replied, speaking in the same unnatural voice as Cary. “Doubtful. Most of what they say are lies and misinformation, anyway.”
“Then perhaps we should terminate them,” Joe replied. “So far as we know, Scubs aren’t actually sentient beings.”
Earnest held up a hand and wobbled it back and forth. “Eeehhh, that’s debatable. They’re smarter than the average human, and there is much to learn about their abilities.”
“Regarding the intelligence, you could say the same about an NSAI,” Joe replied. “The question at hand is whether or not Scubs are sentient.”
“They might be,” Cary said. “If they are, do we need a trial before we execute it?”
Joe ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, we would. Not that it would escape conviction. Murder and attempted murder are hard raps to beat.”
“I can wall them off,” Cary said, and suddenly the orbs in the pillars were completely occluded by black spheres. “Hmm…that has made Xavia happy.”
“What do you mean?” Katrina asked. “Why is she happy?”
“This will become tedious very quickly,” Saanvi said. “I will speak for Xavia’s remnant. It is more than a memory, Katrina. This is a being, not a recording. If it has led you to believe that, then it has been lying to you.”
Katrina chewed on her lip. Xavia’s memory had never claimed to be anything in particular, it just helped out from time to time. But Katrina had also never considered it to be a sentient being—if it was at all. There did not appear to be a consensus as yet.
“Ask her…ask her if she lied to me,” Katrina said to Cary.
“I do not need to relay it, she has enough of a foothold in this portion of space-time to detect the vibrations you make in the air,” Cary replied.
“I have never lied to you, Katrina. That is not my way,” Saanvi said, channeling Xavia’s words.
“Then what is your way?” Joe asked.
“I seek to foster peace between humans and AIs,” Saanvi said.
Joe glanced at Katrina, and then turned back to the orb. “How do you plan to foster this peace? Through conformity of thought? Removal of all potential harm?”
“I said foster,” came the reply. “It is not possible to force peace.”
“Well, that much we agree on,” Earnest muttered.
“What was your purpose in coming here?” Joe asked.
Saanvi did not speak for a few seconds, and Joe cocked his head in question.
“She’s not saying anything.” Saanvi shrugged.
Katrina took a step forward. “Xavia?”
“I wanted to get you here to keep you safe, Katrina. And I needed you to share with Joe the information about Bob, Tanis, and Angela. Together, we must all stop them from starting a war that will consume everything.”
“She’s already working on that,” Joe replied. “Her goal is to take the head off the snake as quickly as possible.”
“How will she do that?” Katrina asked.
“By making the strongest alliance. Tanis plans to establish an accord between humans and AIs, the Transcend, Inner Stars, Orion. Us all.” Cary replied.
Katrina snorted. “And how long will that hold for? A century? A millennium? She’ll have to enforce it.”
“It’ll be a lot easier after the core AIs are dead.” Joe crossed his arms and stared at Xavia’s sphere. “How does that strike you, Scub? If we kill the Caretaker, and all your kind.”
“She laughed,” Saanvi said, then smiled. “If that is your goal, then I shall freely assist you.”
CRASHED
STELLAR DATE: 08.17.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Jersey City, Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Tanis pushed the impact foam away and leant over to check the Marauder pilot.
She was dead, a spar was driven through her torso, sticking through her chair and into the rear cabin.
“Brandt!” Tanis called out as she pulled herself out of the cockpit. “You’d better be alive, you old battle-ax.”
“Gonna outlive you, crazy woman.” A muffled voice came from the back.
“Ma’am,” Johnny reached into the cockpit and grabbed Tanis’s arm. As he helped her up, Tanis caught sight of Anne’s broken body and clenched her teeth.
Well, now the Niets have made it personal.
She blinked at the thought, wondering whether it came from her or Angela.
Ahead, Brandt was helping Ayer out of her seat. Tanis stopped to kneel beside Anne.
“Your parents would be proud of you,” she whispered, knowing that there was no family left to tell of Anne’s sacrifice. Everyone close to the Marine had died in the attack on Carthage last year.
She triggered the Marine’s tech scrub, then rose and grabbed the woman’s weapon before following Johnny to the door. He slid it partway open before it jammed.
With a cry of rage, the Marine kicked it open the rest of the way and peered out into the darkness outside.
It took Tanis’s eyes a moment to adjust before she could make out a darkened city street. She’d tried to avoid any buildings when they came down. From the gouge in the street behind the shuttle, it looked as though that much had been a success.
Johnny exited the shuttle, followed by Brandt. Tanis looked back at Ayer, who was shaking the Marauder soldier. “Don’t you die on me, Ben. We’ve got a lot of terrain to cover, and my leg’s fucked up. I need your stupid ass as a crutch.”
Tanis could see that Ben was already dead; his chest was still, and there was blood running down his side.
“He’s gone, Ayer,” Tanis said, reaching for the captain. “Look, he got shot back on the station.”
“Get the fuck off me!” Ayer screamed at Tanis. “Look what you did! You got the General killed. It’s all over.”
Tanis grabbed Captain Ayer’s shoulder and spun her away from the dead Marauders. “You want to stay here and mourn your people, I understand that. Stay. But do it quietly.”
Ayer just blinked at Tanis and then turned back to looking at the general.
“We gotta move,” Brandt said, leaning into the shuttle. “Dropships are raining down like…rain. We need to find some sort of local garrison. Hold out ‘til the Derringer gets here.”
Tanis rolled her eyes as she stepped out and looked up at the sky. Above them, hundreds of red streaks glowed against the darkness; beyond hung the glowing smudge of what remained of Appalachia Station.
And the Aegeus.
Tanis nodded. Not only was Oris a traitor—mostly likely for the Nietzscheans—but the only way she could have subverted the Aegeus’s ship AI would be with help. The sort of help that didn’t come from people with Nietzschea’s level of technology.
Johnny took up a position at the front of the shuttle and called back.
Tanis looked around and saw lights on in the buildings nearby, and people standing in windows and doorway
s. A sound came from behind, and she saw Ayer step out of the shuttle.
“Damn Jersey City. I can’t believe I’m going to die here.”
“I’m not dying,” Tanis said. “Keep your head down, and you won’t, either.”
Tanis nodded as she looked up the best route to the spaceport, sending it to Brandt and Johnny. Then she turned back to Ayer.
“Captain. I’m sorry about Mill. I really am. I just lost hundreds of my people, as well. But I’m not going to leave you here to wallow in sorrow. You can mourn later. Right now, stay sharp so we can give ‘em hell later.”
Ayer drew a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “Where to?” she asked, and Tanis added her to the combat net.
The Marauder nodded and lifted her rifle, holding it across her chest.
At first the small group made good time through the streets of Jersey City, but it didn’t take long for the roads to become crowded with fleeing people—some on foot, some in ground cars, all trying to get out into the surrounding countryside.
Then the Nietzschean dropships started to touch down, and the group’s progress slowed further as they kept to the shadows, checking corners and scurrying through open spaces as quickly as possible.
Several hours later, they were holed up in a sublevel of an exotic food store, waiting out a squad of Niets who were working their way down the street, rounding up any citizens.
Ayer stood near a small window, watching the boots of Niets move past. She was still favoring her one leg a bit, but it seemed to be better than when they’d left the shuttle.
Tanis was tempted to tell the captain to stand back. She was being sloppy in her grief, almost acting as though she wanted to die. Yet Tanis worried that if she ordered Ayer to move, the woman might start yelling again.
Instead, Tanis deployed a small passel of nano to create a film on the glass and dampen any motion or EM.