“So, let Leon deal with her. Isn’t that kind of what he does?” Ajax wasn’t of a mind to yield ground. “It’s not like Thor won’t have parental supervision—of sorts. This Schopenhauer guy is a general. What more could Corin want?”
Crumley looked at him as if he couldn’t possibly go any softer in the head. And then he sighed, caving. The facts were what they were. They had to get at Leon’s intel that he was fishing from the other timelines. It was a key piece to the puzzle of how the hell to escape The Collectors.
Crumley figured he better do one last check with DeWitt, who, last he recalled, was Thor’s actual father. “Well?”
DeWitt shrugged. “When I was a kid, it’s what I always wanted. It’s hard for a father to deny his son, especially when he’s living vicariously through him.”
Crumley returned his gaze to the child. “Fine, Hailey, whatever your counterpart on Earth wants.”
“Excellent.” Hailey relaxed her arms. “You can get back to your cable subscription to MindWave TV. I’m sure by the time you clubfoot it back there, I’ll have the Nautilus stripped of the offending malware.”
“Who infected us, if you don’t mind me asking?” Crumley said.
“The Citro Galaxy. They specialize in cyberwarfare. I’m sure when Leon convinces them to join the TGC he’s putting together, they’ll be quite the asset. Until then, they’ve stationed ships like repeaters throughout the Gypsy Galaxy to fast-track their hacking into most everything. Personally, I would suggest you knock out those repeaters. But by all means, watch MindWave TV, if you want. Apparently the bioprinted Hailey is very tolerant of dweebs suffering PTSD.” She stomped off.
Omega Force regarded one another with guilty looks on their faces.
“I would like to reiterate our stance that we’re best used as the intel sorting brain center of all information coming out of Leon’s deep dives into eternity,” Ajax said.
“Taking out the repeaters does sound like a job for Alpha Unit,” DeWitt suggested, addressing Crumley. He wasn’t sure when leadership of the team had switched over to him, but he knew he was out of bright ideas, and Crumley was Omega Force’s deep thinker.
Crumley thought about it a while longer. Nodded. “Inform Alpha Unit of its latest assignment. We better get back to our regular broadcasting so we can start assigning cloned Omega Force units tasks worthy of them.”
“They have their own cloned Leons for that,” DeWitt said.
Cronos whacked him on the back of the head. “And they’re flying blind without the timeline-fishing Leon to coordinate them. I swear, it’s true what they say, lightning doesn’t strike twice. I’ll say a prayer.”
DeWitt sighed. “You do that.” He got on the COMMS to Alpha Unit, using his mindchip as the relay.
Crumley added, “And make sure that when it comes to live assets, they understand that we’re just dishing out spankings for now. We’re not killing allies, even if they don’t yet know they’re allies.”
DeWitt nodded his understanding of the directive.
“I’ll get them the list of the ones going to heaven and the ones we’re sending to hell,” Cronos said, “that Xenon put together for us.”
Crumley nodded, understanding. “Smart. The Galactic Empires refusing to play ball, who I’m guessing Leon is going to leave behind in The Collectors’ prison, who’ve penetrated the Gypsy Galaxy with their ships intent on war… It seems taking those ships out remains a legitimate call.
“Looks like the politics of The Collectors is about to change, from imprisoning noncompliant GEs and GCs wrongly, at the behest of corrupt TGC and TGE heads, to imprisoning the status quo types who refuse to embrace the future, and instead will do everything in their power to keep it at bay.” Crumley nodded some more. “I can’t think of one philosopher king who would object.”
***
Patent reconnoitered with Leon from Clone Team One in the middle of one of his more customary vigils, staring out the Nautilus’s hull port at the stars. The Nautilus, and for that matter, being in deep space, was all still very new for this Leon.
Patent barely brought himself to a stop beside Leon before bursting out, “I want to try Alpha Unit out in the role of Space Navy.”
Leon took a deep breath. “I’d rather the chief supersentience on those ships autopilot them, without human minds slowing them or dumbing them down.”
“Give the teens a chance, Leon. If I’m wrong, I’ll eat my shirt. I hear it’s made largely of nextgen silk proteins anyway. I could probably use the extra fiber in my diet.”
Leon took another deep breath, held it. If this were anyone but Patent making this request… “Very well, Patent.”
Patent turned to face the port, verbalized what he was sending over his mindchip. “You’re a go.”
The Alpha Unit ships were already heading out of Mother’s docking bay directly below them. Patent took a power breath to brace himself, hoping he hadn’t stuck his neck out for no good reason. Granted, the skirmishes in the days ahead would be little more than what constituted “meet and greets” with their galactic neighbors looking to encroach Gypsy Galaxy space to find out what the locals were made of. Well, their neighbors were about to find out.
Still, costly mistakes this early on, on the part of Alpha Unit, would be hard to bounce back from, even if the Nautilus could spare the ships and the cloned crew.
First impressions mattered.
Patent didn’t have any more time to worry about it. He was never one to let anyone charge ahead onto the battlefield before him and he wasn’t about to start now. He tapped the Nautilus insignia on his chest in order to have Mother beam him to the landing bay on the deck below.
SIXTY-NINE
SOMEWHERE IN THE GYPSY GALAXY
Citro Galaxy cyber-hacking hardware had saturated the Gypsy Galaxy and Alpha Unit had been tasked with shutting it down, so here they were at the latest Mother-located hotspot. Mother’s nanites permeating the entire Gypsy Galaxy had no trouble locating the interlopers. The question was, what was Alpha Unit going to do to shut down the alien spyware?
“Is it me, or do each of these things exhibit one-of-a-kind designs, like snowflakes,” Ariel asked.
“Hell, the towers even look like giant snowflakes—each the size of a Starhawk,” Satellite said, studying his dashboard monitor. “And each pole on that snowflake is receiving and broadcasting on a different frequency.”
“Um, guys,” Skyhawk said, analyzing his handheld display being fed the stats by the ship’s chief AI and its scanners. “These stations are not just here to spy.”
All heads on the bridge craned toward Skyhawk, as much on his ominous tone as his words.
The ensuing silence was as close as anyone came to prayer around here, allowing the one on the team about to birth a revelation the sacred space needed to complete the act.
“Shit,” Skyhawk said, his eyes still staring at his own display in awe. He put the images up on the big screen in a picture in picture format, with each smaller image connected to the tips of each of the arms of the giant snowflake. “These transmitter-receivers are altering the genes of all life on the planets within reach.”
“What are they trying to do?” Ariel asked, jumping into analyze one of the signals herself.
“Turning the lowest of bacteria into cannibalizing the planet, or into making the biospheres inhospitable to humanoids so while everything is quite alive, everything is also quite toxic to us, fast-tracking evolution toward raising armies to turn against us, pick from among your worst fears,” Skyhawk said. “All of the above? Who the hell knows?”
“I suggest we don’t waste time hacking the signals to find out,” Satellite said, “we just shut them down.” He was already taking steps to such ends.
“Shut the signaling down, Satellite,” Ariel interjected, “but don’t disable the snowflakes. This is technology we can make use of as soon as Mother can reverse engineer it.”
“I’ll signal Mother to use her nanite saturation of
Gypsy Galaxy space to create interference for these snowflakes, blocking the transmissions, until we can get a lock on the snowflakes themselves, and get them into the hangars to study them,” Skyhawk said.
“Good idea, but do we really need them all, or just one?” Ariel asked.
“These things likely have one-of-a-kind designs for a reason, you know,” Skyhawk said.
Ariel sighed. “Yeah, I guess better safe than sorry.” With another few strokes on her dashboard computer she said, “I have this snow flake in a tractor beam so we can tow it back. I suggest Mother release whatever automated scavenger ships she has stowed away to grab up the others. We can’t afford to lose any more humanoid mind power on this.” She was talking to herself and notifying the others of her thinking at the same time.
“This is just one of the many Galaxy Penetrating Snoopers in the Citro Galaxy arsenal?” Satellite said. “Thank God Leon feels strongly about getting them to link up with the Gypsy Galaxy.”
Ariel sighed again. “Yeah, I much prefer the idea of these guys as potential allies than enemies.”
“Better leave that snowflake for a salvage vessel,” Skyhawk said. “We’ve got another fire to put out. The Macoon have come to pay us a visit.”
Ariel released the tractor beam, as she engaged the Starhawk’s warp drive engine to take them to their new location. “You should know, there’s already another Skyhawk clone on location with another Alpha Unit team, flying a Rapier.”
“There was never a battle situation that required two Skyhawks to resolve,” Skyhawk said. “Mother must be going soft in the head.”
“Must be headed into one gnarly fight,” Donovan said. The rest of the team shouted “hell yeah”s and high-fived one another.
SEVENTY
ABOARD AN ALPHA UNIT RAPIER
ALPHA UNIT-SQUAD 1
“Shit, this thing moves at light speed.” Rake pulled back on the wheel and instantly was headed the other direction just as fast. Rake’s hair, rainbow-colored in horizontal bands, together with her hawkish features, gave her the look of forever standing in front of a wind machine. So when she zipped the ship about like that, she seemed merely to be going with the current.
“Duh. It’s one of Mother’s Rapiers.” Donovan couldn’t take his eyes off the face of the Macoon on the split screen to the left of their navigation screen. That was one puss-faced loser. As for Donovan, he still had enough facial acne that he could relate.
“No way.” Rake pulled them out of the wake of return fire just in time to save them from becoming toast.
“Hundo P.” Donovan fired on the Macoon fighter, one of many caught up in the dogfight with them. Puss Face swelled up and exploded before his vessel did, his pustules igniting first, then what was left of his face and body.
“Dope.” Rake yanked the wheel hard and pulled up slightly at the same time, sending them corkscrewing through at least six of the Macoon fighters. The split screen on the left showed a different Macoon pilot the instant before he burst. The pustules on their bodies were sentient! And they knew what was coming next. They made a break for it, hopping out of the Macoon bodies, vacating their homes like parasitic lifeforms that had decided on a better home, or possibly caught in their seasonal migration. But the ships exploded anyway.
“Grody.” Deadthrall usually didn’t engage in badinage when in the heat of battle. He found he was a split-second slower if he did, and this was not the time to be a split-second slower. Still… His nickname Deadthrall had been given him because he had that forever dead-man-walking look and vibe to him; he gave the runt of the litter concept a good name. “They’re like rocks that walked out of the sea carrying their opportunistic creatures with them.”
“Turnt up the whole time.” Rake laughed, yanking at the helm again to evade a barrage of fire coming from their backside. “You know those symbionts secrete some sic drugs to keep the Macoon this dialed up. The Macoon look like they’d kill one another if it wasn’t for us.”
The sight of the latest opportunists to flee the Macoon bodies was even more dramatic than before. They scampered over the cockpits looking to eject themselves before the fighters got overheated from the plasma blasts passing over the fighters like slow-moving molasses. The former symbionts pushed every button they could think to push. Some of them actually succeeded in finding the eject button, breeching into space to glob on to meteor chunks zooming by.
Yeah, that meteor shower they were flying through wasn’t making this dogfight any easier. Moving at light speed didn’t leave much room for course correction either. So far that was taking more of a toll on the Macoon than it was on Alpha Unit, who could better steer through the paths plotted by the AI for them regarding escape-worthy vectors.
The four Alpha Unit cadets were co-piloting the rapier, side by side, in narrow chairs with joysticks at the end of each arm rest. Each joystick was loaded with firing options.
Patent was standing behind them, back near the elevator, covering their six, and doing his best to hold on via the strap above his head, which would have worked great if this was a muni train traveling on a track going fifty miles per hour.
Rake craned her head toward Patent. “Who’s the creeper?”
Everyone looked behind them at once before rubbernecking back to the port screen. “Damned if I know,” Deadthrall confessed.
“That dude is like King of the Multiverse,” Donovan explained, yanking the wheel so hard he thought he might have pulled a muscle in his back.
“I thought that was Leon,” Rake replied.
“Nah, I hear he got promoted to king of the multiverse of multiverses,” Donovan said, pushing down on the wheel this time and letting the crisscross of laser fire take out several more Macoon fighters for them, dumb enough to get caught in the crossfire.
“Huh. Cool.” Rake and the rest of them turned in sync again, as if still moving with one mind, gave Patent a quick salute, and returned their concentration to their dogfight in progress.
Patent frowned. But their lack of decorum was the least of his problems right now, providing it didn’t broach certain limits.
“Who’s keeping points around here?” Deadthrall asked.
“The AI. Our scores are on the bottom of the port screen so we can compare,” Donovan explained.
“Nasty!” Rake said laughing pulling them out of another mess at the last second. They’d just watched on the split screen showing close-ups of what was going on in the Macoon vessels—courtesy of the rapier’s AI hacking their COMMS—as the opportunistic lifeforms—indeed looking very much like sea life on earth, urchins, anemones, crabs, eels, et al, inhabiting the coral-like bodies of their hosts—turned on the pilots rather than trying to flee this time. Ejecting poisonous gases, jettisoning drug-tinged needles, or whipping about as if the Macoon had taken to self-flagellation for each misfired shot. This time the Macoon soldiers went up in smoke, melted, turned to ash…while the invasive lifeforms nested in their bodies attempted to take over the planes. It was doubtful they knew how to fly. But they were less interested in the dogfight than in avoiding the repercussions.
“There will be no laughing at our enemy’s misfortune!” Patent snapped. “We’re running a respectable war here, and the enemy will be shown the respect they’re due.”
The four teens swiveled toward him in unison briefly before returning their attention to the screen. “Is he for real?” Rake asked.
“Wanksta,” Deadthrall mumbled under his breath.
“Ooh, watch this!” Donovan said, trying a different firing option. The nanite bomb dusted a Macoon fighter, devouring his craft and leaving him unharmed.
The Macoon fighter took advantage of the kinetic energy he still carried from the trajectory his former vessel was on to bullet toward the rapier and cling on for dear life.
They heard the Macoon fighter pilot pulling back at the rapier’s hull. “Shit. That was probably not the best idea,” Rake confessed.
“Great, another race that wouldn’t thin
k to hamper themselves with a space suit,” Deadthrall mumbled.
Donovan swiveled toward Patent. “You’re up, Pops. Keep that thing off us until this dogfight is over, or we’re all toast. And fix that hull breach! We’ve lost light speed. And while you’re back there, get Skyhawk’s sorry ass out of bed. In case you haven’t noticed, this is an all-hands-on-deck affair.”
Patent’s look could peel paint, but it didn’t improve Donovan’s complexion any; he appeared immune to the “face peel.” Besides, finished issuing orders, he’d swiveled back to the port screen.
Patent backed up into the elevator, not wanting to take his eyes off the port, compromising his take on breaking intel, which wasn’t good. The soldier crawling his way back to the more pliable hull plates was twice Patent’s size, and Patent was a monster by human standards. “Why can’t I ever get the short ones?”
Rake laughed at Patent’s joke. The others glared at her. “What? That was funny.”
Patent had already been forgotten. The battle too pressing to give him another thought.
“The Macoon fighters are skurting.” Donovan didn’t exactly do obvious. But the fact was shocking enough to bear giving witness to in words.
“This can’t be good, right?” Rake asked. “I mean, they’re winning, finally. So why drop back?”
“This is definitely not good,” Donovan said. “Check the fan tails.”
The torpedo-like Macoon vessels, moving in to fill the voids left by the retreating fighters, were opening up in front, like night blooming jasmine favoring the starlight. The Rapier’s AI gave them a look inside the bridges on the split-screen to the left.
“Female Macoons. Sweet.” Deadthrall was already texting several of them pretending to be texting just one at a time, fishing, hoping for a hit. “Let’s smash after.” “CU46.” “GNOC.”
Donovan glanced at Deadthrall’s individual texts going to each of the Macoon females. “Like they’re going to get Earth acronyms.”
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