“The shield can only make us invisible to the ships. But they know where we are because they got a lock on us before we disappeared,” Skyhawk explained.
“But the modified energy shield is supposed to act like a bug zapper, disintegrating everything that passes through it,” Ariel protested, her tone suggesting she didn’t appreciate being talked down to.
“Yeah, about that…” Skyhawk said. “Working on the tweaks now. Dragon ships seem for all intents and purposes too damn hard for the shield to dematerialize.”
Ariel panted and seethed. “Between you and Cassandra, one of you had better come up with a fix fast.”
“I’m betting on Cassandra,” Satellite said, just to provoke Skyhawk. He looked up and twitched his eyebrows at Ariel. “I suggest we make love under the fireworks of exploding dragon ships to help motivate Skyhawk further, see if he’s truly worthy of joining our little three-way.”
She smiled at his typically crude teen one-track mind, even now. After thinking about it, she said, “Sure.”
Skyhawk looked good and rankled, all right, and determined to solve this problem in time to earn his way into the three-way that picked now of all times to become a thing.
Later, seeing Skyhawk faltering with his Tesla grid tweaks, wondering if she had to step up her game with the boys, Ariel said, “You realize three-way means three-ways, right?” Ariel said.
Satellite and Skyhawk regarded one another in terror.
“Yeah, I suppose chicks would dig that stuff, if we, you know…Like seeing two of them go at it,” Satellite said.
“Well, I guess we could check out one another’s junk, and, I mean, the smallest one takes the top. Anything else would just be cruel,” Skyhawk suggested.
Satellite frowned: “I didn’t realize you were such a humanitarian.”
Ariel looked more amused by the two of them at this point than turned on.
“Um, anything particular you like in bed?” Satellite asked Ariel.
She showed them an animated mockup of zero-gravity sex-ballet.
The two boys surveyed the footage. “Omega Force,” Satellite said, pushing the iPad back in her face.
“Yeah,” Skyhawk agreed, “You definitely need to be dating someone on Omega Force.”
“Cassandra,” Satellite suggested.
“Yep, definitely Cassandra,” Skyhawk chimed in.
“Don’t think I haven’t given her due consideration.” Ariel sighed and then huffed. “Fine, we’ll find something the Klutz patrol can handle without twisting an ankle and provoking a blood clot.”
“Damn charitable of you,” Skyhawk managed with a frown. Then he sighed. “I’m not doing any pity fuck.”
“Why not?” Satellite protested. “Wait, you’ve actually had some other kind?”
***
ABOARD THE DRAGON SHIPS ATTACKING EARTH’S MOON
Cassandra had found the barrier buster.
And in true Cassandra fashion she started punching it to death.
When she had the protective shell fragmented, she pulled back what was left of the rind of the fruit to examine the contents inside. Scanning. Before dismantling the piece in her hands. And moving on to the next piece.
Leon understood better now the reason for so many copies of herself.
She was not maximized like Natty for this kind of assessment and brainwork.
Engineering was not her thing.
But with enough versions of her, parallel-arrayed, and chi-flow enhanced, she could work like a parallel-processing computer, using hundreds of mindchips in concert to tackle the problem.
And tackle it she did.
In the next moment the moon ramming came to a stop.
The latest wave of dragon ships never finished materializing before getting sucked back to the Kang dynasty, and their galactic corner of The Collectors’ TGE.
Leon breathed a sigh of relief, as his knees buckled.
Cassandra was right; he wasn’t rated for this. And he’d outlived his life expectancy. His nanites had surpassed their abilities to keep him alive on the moon any longer.
He felt blackness coming over him like a comforting, warm blanket in winter.
***
HAARP INSTALLATION ON EARTH
The entire room erupted in cheers, laughter, and exuberance, with scientists jumping up off their chairs, fist-pumping the sky, hugging one another, dancing a jig, and displaying other generally over-the-top behavior more suited to a drunken bacchanal. They’d earned the moment.
The Earth’s Tesla-enhanced energy shield was up again—and this time no dragon ships were getting through. Better yet, no lingering dragon ships menacing Earth by hovering just beyond the barrier, refusing to go anywhere.
Natty was the most ecstatic of them all, dancing a jig on the highest desktop he could find. He jumped off to hug and kiss Laney. “We just did the impossible! And we didn’t even let the trifling matter of a full-on Kang invasion distract us. Not for one minute!” The twosome kissed again.
Suddenly, another uproar rippled through the room.
“Reports are in that the moon’s energy shield is up as well,” Laney said after investigating. “The two shields are syncing and reinforcing each other.”
“Yes!” Natty shouted. After a fist pump, Natty picked Laney up and swirled her about in midair. When he dropped her to the ground, he said, “I told you the whole world revolves around me. What more proof do you need?”
She smiled at her arrogant husband and made a throat-clearing sound. “For your information, Cassandra and Omega Force fought off an armada of dragon ships, not just one, attacking the moon to make this happen. Alpha Unit’s tech modifications on the fly allowed the actual grid to go up around the Earth and the moon. To say nothing of…” She sighed. “If ever there was proof that we are each the center of the universe, that was it.”
He smiled back and graciously said, “Fine. No reason my minions can’t share in some of the credit too.”
She smiled and shook her head at him, and both turned to see the mad party just getting madder all around them. Natty and Laney were soon hoisted off the ground and carried overhead, being passed like trophies from one set of shoulders to the other.
***
Cassandra pulled herself together, allowing the various clones of herself scattered across so many dragon ships to collapse back into one, as she landed yards from Leon’s prostrate body.
“Idiot.” She crouched down, slipped her arm behind his neck, propped him up, and shoved moon dust into his mouth.
She saturated the sand with her own nanites, allowing the ones on the surface of her body to bleed into his mouth. She needed to help the sand get down his throat in the absence of swallowing and peristalsis, so Leon’s nanites would have the feedstock they needed to replenish. But she needed her nanites inside him to supervise the restoration of his more primitive nanites.
Yes, the Nautilus could theoretically print him a new body and download every memory he had up until his final moments, probably in under a couple minutes. But who the hell had a couple minutes to spare?
Someone had discharged the flare to signal that the Earth was about to enter its first transgalactic war.
She could feel it.
Her nanites, supercharged with chi, could sense the force rippling through the most distant regions of their universe.
The Collectors had gotten wind of what was going on.
They were coming for them.
The Kang problem contained for The Collectors by Cassandra herself, there was now the relatively simpler task of returning the humans to the coop.
Mother, sensing the same danger, linked with Cassandra’s mind, forcing it into Singularity Time. Natty, and the rest of the brain trust, were being coordinated with Mother in Singularity Time as well. Linked to one another as well as to Mother now, they could sense how close this was going to be—even with their thoughts now moving at the speed of light.
THIRTY-TWO
EARTH
<
br /> THE HAARP COMPOUND IN ALASKA
OMEGA FORCE AND ALPHA UNIT, CLONE TEAM TWO
WITH DOPPELGANGERS OF LANEY AND NATTY IN TOW
Natty hovered over Ariel in the underground bunker. “And what useless thing are you doing?”
“I’m coordinating with the other Nautili in the other timelines. We’re going to need a lot more than 11 of those craft to bioprint enough bodies to fill an entire galaxy all at once—and that’s not including the space habitats from the Dead Zone. Well, not fill the Gypsy Galaxy, exactly, more like give us the barest of toeholds on worlds we might want to safeguard if and when they come under attack. At the very least, they can send up a warning flare, hold the fort until rescue arrives. Even if it’s just the worlds in the Goldilocks zones for now, or already inhabited worlds in need of protection…I’m hoping the percentage of them will be a manageable enough size that the Nautili bioprinters can possibly meet the demand.”
“Huh. Suppose that isn’t entirely useless.” Natty tried to squeeze how impressed he was out of his voice. “You know the Nautili are going to have to send out probes to investigate those various habitats first so they can bioprint bodies perfectly matched for their environs.”
“Duh.”
“Duh?”
Ariel kept playing with the holo screen in front of her, taking the probes apart and retrofitting them.
“You’re weaponizing the probes?” Natty tried to keep his jaw from going slack, but it was a hopeless feat of self-control he wasn’t about to pull off.
“We don’t know if they’ll get to complete their assignments while still out of harm’s way. With this approach, in the event we can’t avoid a collision of the Gypsy and Kang galaxies, however briefly, and they’re captured by the Kang on their way back to the Nautili, the probes can transmit their information, then blow those dragon ships to hell.”
Natty nodded. “Nice.” He leaned into her. “You know, I could use another wife, for when Laney and I are having one of our many falling outs. Sort of a place-filler.”
Ariel smiled distractedly, keeping her mind and her hands on her work. “How much does that job pay exactly? I assume it’s a paid position.”
Natty shook his head slowly. “Ha-ha. Everyone’s a comedian.” He stared at her handiwork. “You can do all that with your mindchip, you know? It’s not like you need the hologram.”
“I think better with my hands.”
“One more reason, if you’re going to get to really know me, you should consider crawling all over me at night.”
She ignored him.
Exasperated, Natty said, “We have a Mars war god for things like this, you know?” He gestured at the holo depicting her bomb-making in progress.
“You don’t think it’s going to be busy enough coordinating a galactic-scale war? You’re the genius, Natty. How many billions and billions of stellar bodies alone is that? Before we factor in the space habitats we’ve acquired? What’s more, many planets and Dead Zone habitats will have countless assets of strategic value worthy of someone’s attention.”
Natty considered her point. “Techa, you’re right. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe because it’s hard to believe my mind isn’t big enough to get around anything.” He was pacing and running his hand through his hair. “Maybe we can tap all the Nautili that are not currently facing crises of their own in the other timelines.”
“I have the Mars war god in a number of them running the simulations now, should The Collectors mistakenly slap the Gypsy Galaxy down on top of the Kang Galaxy, as to how things will play out. But not all the Nautili from all the other timelines have a Mars war god.”
“You’re going to need help fishing through those timelines,” he said, pushing her aside to make room for him to work on the canvas of light she was painting with her hands.
She pushed him back away. “You have your own problems, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, sobering. “You sure you got this?”
“As much as any of us has anything.” She stopped to glare at him when he refused to move, freezing up, as if he were going into shock. “Natty, this isn’t going to work if you feel you have to micromanage everything. Leon learned to trust his people a long time ago because he didn’t have any choice. You’re facing a similar situation now—one in which you cannot possibly tackle all the geniuses-only-need-apply tasks. Stop shouldering eternity; let some of the rest of us carry our weight.”
He suddenly felt like an idiot and returned to his own project.
Ariel interrupted the two projects she was working on simultaneously, to entertain an idea for a third. She opened a COMMS line to Theta Team’s Theseus, overseeing the work underway in The Dead Zone.
“Theseus here.” His voice sparkled, none of the crackling static she was used to hearing on a COMMS line. This, despite the fact that they currently weren’t even in the same galaxy. No time delay between transmission and response. “Gotta love these Singularity phones,” she mumbled. They opened wormholes between sender and receiver to tunnel through any amount of time and space necessary to traffic their information.
“I’m working on getting the various Nautili to beam in and out from their own timelines,” Ariel explained, “just briefly enough for the Mars war gods to help with coordinating a galactic-scale war, and with populating the worlds of the Gypsy Galaxy and, of course, the Dead Zone habitats.”
“Like fireflies glowing briefly in the night before disappearing back into the darkness again. Is that Earth analogy correct?”
She smiled. “Yes, it is. In fact, that’s what had me thinking. Glow in the dark entities… maybe that’s how the race that inhabited the Dead Zone once escaped. Not just into another physical form but by…”
“Morphing into energy beings. One step ahead of you,” Theseus said.
“I’m smelling a new Special Forces unit, Theseus. If Natty likes playing with his Nautilus toy chest, you know how Leon likes his Special Forces teams.”
Theseus laughed. “Again, one step ahead of you. We even have them named, Epsilon Ethereals.” Theseus’s tone suggested just how much the idea was absorbing him.
“Epsilon Ethereals!” Ariel was delighted by the choice of name, even if she felt cheated on her stroke of genius. She finished up her work on the probe modifications, closing out that screen and moving back to her COMMS channels fishing for Nautili in other timelines with Mars war gods of their own.
The Mars supersentience, specializing in war games, was an 11-dimensional brain that Solo had cooked up for them on The Star Gate mission. She was definitely about to put it to work in ways not even he imagined.
She continued troubleshooting the issue of the Epsilon Ethereals with Theseus while she worked on the COMMS challenge.
“We already have a brigade of energy beings, in the works,” Theseus informed her. “Chi Corps, fed entirely off of chi energy. They’ll be like exposed energy bodies without physical outer coatings the rest of us associate with mortality. Imagine human physiques made out of golden light. They will feel the force coursing through the universe better, I imagine, than the mythical character Yoda from Star Wars. They will be paired with Psi-Force, meditating monks who thought project and thought receive, slipping in and out of minds better than full on telepaths.”
“Whoa,” Ariel said absently, still multitasking. “I get it. Chi Corps can amplify the amount of chi flowing through anyone’s body they come in contact with, not just their own. So if Psi-Force projects thoughts into their heads, Chi Corps can make them all the more compelling by jacking the amount of energy flowing through them…”
“Which leaves us with the question of how Epsilon Ethereals fit into the picture,” Theseus said. “We believe the Kang have a way of getting the dead to fight for them.”
Ariel was already smiling and nodding. “So you want to sic the Epsilon Ethereals on them, like a ghost brigade, more connected to the spiritual realm, than the physical realm, presuming there is a thing like Valhalla, and ghos
ts.”
“Soldiers that can move readily between the living and the dead serve one purpose,” Theseus said. “I’m thinking the Epsilon Ethereals could serve more than just one purpose. If they’re not made of material, as we understand it…”
“Then they’re not confined to the limitations of the material world. They could do things like being in multiple places at once, or…”
Completing her thought for her, Theseus said, “or initiating butterfly effects. The small little actions, the whisperings in someone’s ear that could turn the tide of a galactic or trans-galactic conflict, because…”
“They might be able to see across all of space and time.” Ariel’s mind was afire. “We’d be stuck on the chessboard, having to deal with move countermove, because it’s the best we can do, but they…Even if Psi-Force could psychically see far into the future, there’s no way they could calculate butterfly effects. Humanoid brains can only do so much, hell, even supersentient AIs.”
“But the technically dead…”Ariel continued, still riffing off one another’s thoughts like a pair of jazz musicians, “Aren’t they, by definition, all the more plugged into the calculating ability of the godhead, or the supercomputer running the simulation of the cosmos we take as reality?”
Theseus paused to run with the idea. “I’ll get on it, and how best to approach Mother on the subject of the creation and proper coordination of these three teams. There ought to be plenty of clues aboard the abandoned Dead Zone habitats as to how that civilization pulled off their escape from The Collectors that might lend themselves to the creation of all three teams. And if anyone’s qualified to fill in the missing pieces…”
“It’s Theta Team,” Ariel said.
“I just hope we have the time to do anything with these genius ideas.” Theseus sighed. “We’re stretched pretty thin now just activating these space stations after so many eons of vacancy. Many have fallen into decay.
“Two hundred billion stars in your typical spiral galaxy. Assuming this one is average-sized. Multiply that by seven or so to come up with the average number of planets. Multiply by another ten or so to come up with the amount of space habitats we’re dealing with made by dissembling those worlds and reassembling them into artificial worlds. Mother is practically hemorrhaging her bioprinters now just to get enough Theta Team operatives who are better designed for these various habitats than we are…
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