Retaliate

by Alex Albrinck

  For now, though, sleep was their best course of action.

  Mary curled up near the children, laying a protective arm across both of them.

  Wesley watched them for a while. Then he grabbed a pillow and a blanket and stretched out on an open patch of the floor.

  Sleep came, but only after one final thought ran through his mind.

  They'd survived so far, but they'd been very lucky.

  He hoped that luck hadn't run out.

  —21—

  MICAH JAMISON

  THE RESPONSES FROM the ancients came in, albeit slowly. And while they weren’t dismissive of his request to help, they showed little interest in participating. It wasn’t surprising, after all; they’d long believed there was little reason to involve themselves in the affairs of the world. They had all they needed or wanted, and were clever enough—especially now, with his aid—to avoid any threats unleashed by their more active peers: the elites of Phoenix.

  He was allowing sufficient numbers to come in to see if there was consistency of opinion, evidence of collusion and conformity of responses… or evidence that there were small factions of the ancients ready and eager for a good fight.

  Thus far, there weren’t.

  As he allowed the response totals to mount, he returned his processing focus to the Sheila Tracker, his kludged-together monitoring system tracking his human friend as she worked her way to his ship for a return flight to Eden. The sensors had lost her. Micah didn’t panic; he was a robot, after all. But the loss of signal wasn’t evidence of a problem any more than its presence was proof positive of her continued survival. There was little reason to believe that the equipment he’d hijacked could adequately cover the entire space station. If Sheila moved, she might move out of range, and then back in once again.

  He hoped that, in moving about, she found her way to the ship without incident.

  No, that wasn’t what he hoped. He hoped she wreaked havoc upon the living quarters of the elites who’d left the surface prior to what they’d euphemistically called the Cleansing, and that they’d spend so much effort recovering that they’d pay little attention as she blasted free of their tractor beam.

  He sent a command to his ship. If Sheila arrived aboard prior to his deadline, the ship was to execute the escape plan immediately. He’d already adjusted the ship’s security to allow her in the instant she arrived, and to rebuff all attempts by others to gain entry.

  He set a trio of alerts: one to let him know if Sheila had arrived early and the ship was leaving early; a second to let him know if Sheila hadn’t arrived as of the deadline; a third to let him know if communications chatter aboard the space station provided evidence of her death or active retaliation against the elites.

  Then he pushed the code set to the background and resumed focus on gaining the cooperation of the ancients.

  He ran their responses through his archive of billions of emails and speeches, assessing tone and subtext, intent and content, looking for those clearly unwilling to participate, flagging those individuals who might be persuaded. For the latter group, he used his filtered library of the most persuasive texts and speeches through two millennia of record human history, tying the verbiage and tone and proffered excuses to the best possible language to persuade them to help. He did not send any of this batch of draft responses, not yet. Experience told him that it was best to wait; people who tried to make excuses would often convince themselves in a far more effective manner than anyone else could manage.

  There were messages he responded to instantly, as they showed interest by asking fact-checking questions. About why he’d not reached out to them before now if he knew they still existed. About why he’d not broadcast concerns about the Ravagers sooner, especially to them, as they had better chances than most to disrupt their old foes’ attempts to destroy much of the world.

  He answered their questions with honesty. Centuries worth of evidence said their kind—the ancients on the side of good—were long gone, and thus he had no reason to look. But he’d gotten chance evidence in the past few years that called that assumption into question, and he’d started looking. They’d hidden themselves well, hiding in plain sight and not existing in any official manner. It was only through his unique skills and dogged persistence—few would know about the old satellites, be able to influence their orbits, or have the patience to scan millions of images looking for evidence of people who didn’t want to be found—that he’d finally made this tenuous connection.

  As to the Ravager threat, he answered their question with a question: prior to seeing the machines in operation, if they’d heard claims that a secretive cabal had culled from the ancients a technology they’d adapted to raze the land of everything living, including all humans, to claim the entire planet just for themselves… would they have believed him? He’d been asked that question by other colleagues still alive and now aware he’d known, he told them, and they’d admitted they would have thought him crazy, a spinner of crazy tales. And he had no physical evidence he could show to prove his claims.

  Had he made his claims publicly, he would have been laughed at… and then quietly made to disappear. He’d not found evidence of the ancients’ existence prior to the Ravager scheme being set in motion, and he certainly had no way of contacting them. He’d done what he could with what he’d known and the capabilities he’d had at each moment. History might judge him a failure, but his conscience was clean.

  He’d left out a few pertinent details, namely why he’d not directly acted against the Elites, and the fact that he’d been suspicious about their possible existence for decades, having found the idea that only the “evil” ancients survived to this day. Finding Jeffrey and Desdemona made his belief stronger. But they’d lived isolated from any of the old crew for decades and had no way to know if any survived, or how to reach them, or where to look. It was only in sniffing through Internet traffic that he’d gotten his proof and his means of opening a conversation all at once. But those facts weren’t his to share. His identity as a robot was one known only by Sheila, though a few others were likely suspicious.

  He’d told them the truth, as much as he could. He’d let them determine their own reaction to his responses.

  He got responses back from those he’d answered, and his heart—metaphorically—soared. They understood. They would help. But they needed direction; they needed the gift he’d promised them to unlock the old magic in themselves to put the final fight to the enemy. Fighting against the purveyors of the philosophy existent throughout human history—a belief that the masses were meant to serve and live at the pleasure of the very few—had been burned into their blood since before the dawn of the Golden Ages. They would fight.

  And they would win. If properly armed.

  And protected.

  Micah opened the Ravager control program. The primary screen showed a map of the entire surface, with the location of his Ravagers overlaid on top. He didn’t “see” the map in the human sense; rather, his primary processing unit “saw” the planet as a series of bits with different values indicating the type of terrain—plain, mountain, plateau, water—with a second matrix indicating if a Ravager occupied a spot. He activated a third such matrix, one he’d developed through analysis of the satellite images, which indicated where both Phoenix outposts—and future palatial estates—were located, and a fourth indicating where his new friends among the ancients lived. The Ravager swarms were moving due to his earlier commands, occupying spaces around the Phoenix outposts, hiding as best they could from human site. He added an update to the code, siphoning off a portion that would seek and surround the people and property of his new friends. The code of this batch of Ravagers would emit a special signal to block their counterparts from inflicting harm. In essence, he’d programmed batches of the nanobots to become invisible exoskeletons around his friends, which would act as a shield much as Diasteel and water did against the original version.

  He pushed that code to the backgrou
nd to let it work without his “consciousness” interrupting progress and returned his attention to the East, where he could tap into his vast network of hidden cameras and try to pinpoint where Roddy’s family might be taking the ship, and more critically, where they might make landfall. Roddy was already en route to the original island of their departure. Micah hoped to give him better and more current coordinates to shorten the time before the happy reunion.

  Something was wrong, though. Micah’s human face reshaped into a frown, reflecting the alarming condition his sensors detected from the video network data.

  More accurately, it was his reaction to finding that every one of his cameras had gone dark at the same time.

  There were only a few explanations for this, and none of them were good.

  The Ravagers of the East were now active, and had destroyed his cameras, his signal relays, or an appreciable combination of the two. That seemed unlikely; his most recent satellite images, less than twenty minutes old, showed no Ravager activity in the East. It was highly improbable that they’d launched and destroyed so much in so short a time.

  Every one of his cameras or communication relays had suffered a power loss at the same time. That also seemed unlikely; the power sources were contained in each separate device, and the odds of a failure in every one at the same instant were statistically zero.

  A missile of a type lost to history had exploded in the East, creating an electromagnetic pulse that damaged every unshielded electrical device. He discarded that idea as well; the elites didn’t want to live with any type of radioactive fallout, and he doubted his new friends either had such a weapon or would launch it at all, let alone so quickly.

  Which left him with only one plausible option.

  They’d caught him.

  They’d found the signal he used to transmit his video feeds to hubs positioned around the world… or, worse, they’d found the one he used to transmit data back to Eden. They’d jammed his transmission signal, cutting him off from the vast types and quantities of data he so desperately needed.

  If they found the signal, if they’d jammed it, it meant they could likely track it as well. And that meant…

  Micah issued an immediate cessation of communication in to and out of the island. He activated an old receiver on the frozen southern continent and rerouted all traffic through a slower backup server farm he kept running in a hidden chamber far below the surface. If they’d not traced the signal yet, they’d be sent scurrying to an area featuring the deadliest climate on the planet.

  He stood up and moved to the portal room.

  Thus far, he’d only deactivated the doors. But he retained the ability to start the links back up and resume transportation at any time, assuming he possessed sufficient power to manage the transports. Though unlikely, it was possible that someone might stumble upon one of the doors, attach power sources to the frames, and find themselves suddenly able to reach Eden in a single step.

  He rummaged around and found small timed explosives, and spent the next hour in a chore his consciousness module would describe as “heartbreaking.” He’d move to each door, check the tiny video screens showing the activity around the paired door on the other end of the connection. Once convinced of no activity, he’d push power into the door to start the connection, open the door, mount the explosive on the door frame on the opposite side, and start the short countdown timer.

  Then he shut the door and watched as the remote camera feed went dark.

  When he reached the portal door leading to the island where Mary and the children escaped the initial Ravager swarm, he hesitated. It wasn’t for reasons of sentimentality. He pulled up the Ravager control program and initiated a special code session for the devices he’d missiled to that remote island. He ordered those Ravagers invisible and directed them to the shed housing the portal door. When the control program showed all were inside the shed, he powered up the portal and opened the door, allowing the machines to enter Eden, watching for any sign of activity. Once all were on Eden, he repeated the process he’d used for the other doors, eliminating the remote door and the threat to the security of Eden.

  The only remote door still standing was the one on the space station. He left that one alone. It was a risky move, but he suspected the ability to reach the enemy stronghold in an instant without detection might prove useful in the final battle.

  Controlling risk was critical at this late stage of the fight.

  He used the control program to build an exoskeleton for himself and watched the devices swarm over his body form before turning them invisible. He couldn’t “feel” them in the human sense, and the visual let him know that the devices had completed his assignment.

  He fed the others images of Sheila. They were to leave her alone. But they were to subdue—and, if necessary, kill—any other human or robotic presence that reached the island. He found videos of spiders cocooning future meals with silk, and provided the imagery as instruction for how to accomplish that command.

  There were no new messages from the ancients.

  He had no further “sightings” of Sheila aboard the space station, though there was email chatter about a number of “disturbances.” He suspected those were Sheila’s doing, and he smiled.

  His Western Ravagers were moving efficiently into position. He distributed the color change code and flipped them all invisible.

  There was nothing more to do now until the ship arrived on Eden with Sheila aboard.

  When she arrived, they’d head East together, and she'd sleep along the way. They’d help Roddy locate his family and get them back home. If there were others friendly to the cause, they could return to Eden with Sheila aboard his ship.

  As for him, he’d remain behind, burning through this newly armored body form while he sought out activated and dormant Ravagers alike, doing everything he could to spare the people of the East the horrors that destroyed the West.

  He wouldn’t last long. But he could come back again and again, as often as needed, until they’d all been destroyed or they assumed control of the East’s server.

  Good thing he had new body forms and brains under construction.

  He had a feeling he’d need all of them.

  —22—

  SHEILA CLARKE

  SHEILA FLOATED ALONG above the tiny woman, sensing the power and energy packed into her small frame. She knew she was impervious to anything right now, but she couldn’t help but feel cowed by the oversized personality.

  The woman’s side began chiming, and Sheila realized it was the woman’s communicator. She snatched the device with something approaching ferocity and held it to her ear. “This is Delilah. Go.”

  Sheila moved closer, eager to hear both sides of the conversation. The caller’s voice amplified well, and she had little trouble understanding what he said. “We've got… trouble.”

  “Useless statement. Define trouble.”

  “We’re getting reports of random explosions from devices procured from the armory a few hours ago. Our investigators were there instantly, but couldn’t find the stash despite the inventory system tracking them leaving. We wondered about a malfunction, but thus far the remnants of each explosive device match the serial numbers of the missing devices.”

  “How many aren’t accounted for?”

  “I’m not certain of the exact—”

  “I need numbers. The tracking chips should be traceable within the facility. Find them, disable them.”

  “Right. We’ll get on that right—”

  “Any injuries?”

  “Latest count is thirteen dead, forty injured. Ten dead and twenty-eight injured are part of security.”

  Delilah sucked in her breath. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  There was a pause. “Yes. One of the explosions—five devices going off at the same time—took out the secure doors for the Brig. On duty guards died in the explosion. No casualties among the prisoners.”

  There was a pause. “They need to
be recovered immediately and housed elsewhere. Commandeer one of the large social halls and put them there. Most people here don’t know that we have a Brig. Let’s keep it that way.”

  There was a pause, which didn’t suit Delilah. “The proper response would be, ‘Yes, we’ll get on that immediately.’ Try it.”

  “Well, you see—”

  “That’s not what I told you—”

  “They’re armed.”

  Delilah stopped walking. “What?”

  “The theft of explosives earlier? They took guns, ammo, grenades. Quite the stockpile. When the prisoners emerged… they had it all.”

  Delilah closed her eyes. “Pull all security from other shifts, wake up everyone who’s asleep, get them all armed and working to contain the threat. The escapees are to be captured if possible, but deadly force is authorized.”

  “Of course, we’ll get working—”

  Delilah started walking again. “Don’t call me again until you have good news.”

  She almost broke the device as she severed the connection.

  Delilah picked up her pace, brow furrowing, brain obviously trying to figure out exactly how prisoners locked away in a Brig most here didn’t know about were suddenly freed and armed, with random explosions claiming the lives of her security team.

  Sheila sped up, trying to keep pace.

  Delilah stopped suddenly, and Sheila flew overhead and beyond her before she slowed to a crawl, waiting to see what the woman would do next.

  Delilah tapped her pursed lips once, twice, three times. Then she nodded once and began walking again.

  Baffled at the odd mannerisms, Sheila followed once more.

  The tiny woman stopped and held her palm by a reader near a door with an ornately detailed frame. The alarm clicked and the door unlocked. Delilah pushed the door open and held it open, letting the corridor light into the dark room while she fumbled for a light switch. Sheila squeezed through the open door, taking advantage of the space offered above the short woman. Delilah found the switch and light bathed the interior. Sheila glanced at the name etched and painted into the door before it closed, stifling a gasp as she read the name.