The Complete Clockwork Chimera Saga

by Scott Baron

  “Daisy, the warp didn’t move us in space.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “It moved us in time.”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “So that means...” She paused a moment, collecting her thoughts into a cohesive assessment.

  Oh yeah. Here it comes. Watch her go, Sis.

  “That means we did, in fact, create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, but whatever happened, we wound up bending spacetime in such a way that our warp bubble didn’t push us through the walls of mere spatial distance, but rather, through the boundaries of time itself.”

  “And now we’re observing the final moments of the second attempt of our predecessors to retake the planet,” Daisy added.

  “Daisy. We can save those ships!”

  Freya quickly powered up her drive systems.

  “No, Freya!” Daisy shouted. “Power down!”

  “But––”

  “I said power down!”

  Reluctantly, she did as she was told.

  “But why? We can save them.”

  “Freya, I understand why you want to do that, and Lord knows I want to help them too. But this is history. Ancient history, for us. If we interfere, we could alter events in such a way that could make our future never even happen, or maybe make it even worse. Do you see? We could create a fatal paradox.”

  “You’re right,” Freya said, dejectedly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You were thinking that you wanted to help all those people, and that was a good thing. But now that you’ve thought about it, you know we just can’t interfere, even though we want to. It sucks, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions no matter how much it hurts.”

  “I know,” she replied. “It’s just painful to watch, knowing I could stop them.”

  “Freya, you’re an amazing kid, and this is an amazing ship, but on our own, we wouldn’t survive this battle. For now, until we can figure out exactly what happened to us, and what the hell is going on, your stealthiness is our biggest asset. There’s almost no record of this time period. Gathering intel could be a great help when we get back.”

  “If we get back.”

  I know, but there’s no need to make her any more upset than she already is.

  Daisy looked at the blue orb hanging in space below them.

  Hundreds of years before I ever saw it, and most of the major cities are still intact.

  “You know you shouldn’t go down there, Daze,” Sarah cautioned.

  Not to land, of course not. But a stealthy flyover? I think that’s doable.

  She shifted in her pilot’s seat and tightened the harness.

  “Tell ya what, kiddo. How about we see how good you are at avoiding Ra’az scans? Let’s ride down in the wake of some debris to camouflage our approach and take a look around. You think you can do that?”

  “Daisy, of course I can.” Freya sighed, sounding almost exasperated.

  “Uh-oh. Here comes that surly teenager phase I warned you about.”

  But she’s only a few months old.

  “Not in AI years,” Sarah said, thoroughly amused.

  Daisy chuckled softly to herself.

  “All right, then, Freya. Let’s go take a little look around.”

  The powerful stealth ship quietly slipped behind a large piece of one of her mortally wounded AI cousins as they plummeted to their death, the burning metal masking Freya’s heat signature as she followed their reentry.

  Her nanite-composite stealth material skin cooled almost instantly when it hit the atmosphere, becoming invisible to thermal, as well as other forms of Ra’az scans all across the spectrum. Short of a direct visual contact, they’d be invisible to the world.

  The sky over Europe was a clear blue once they reached the atmosphere. The flaming debris raining down from above wasn’t terribly bright against the daytime sky, but Freya might stand out should anyone look closely at the non-burning speck flying amid the wreckage.

  “Freya, redirect us toward the eastern US. It’s still night there and you won’t stand out so much.”

  “I don’t stand out. They never saw me, remember?”

  “Yes, but that was in the darkness of space, and only against a pair of small ships. Head for the East Coast. If we stick to dark skies for now, we should be able to do a fairly complete survey of the planet without risking notice.”

  “Should we go to New York and see if they’ve built the communications hub yet?”

  “Kid’s getting good at this, Daze.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Yeah, good idea, Freya. We’ll survey New York, then cross the continent, mapping out what we can while we head for key destinations. The San Francisco facility won’t have been constructed yet, but we can probably get a good look at Sydney and Tokyo while we’re at it.”

  “We already blew them up, Daisy. In the future, I mean.”

  “I know, but humor me, okay?”

  Freya altered her course and headed for the dark skies to the west. What they’d see was anyone’s guess, but it was certain to be a sight different than the Earth they were familiar with.

  When Daisy had first visited the planet several hundred years in the future, the Ra’az Hok had already mostly departed, leaving behind a much smaller contingent to oversee their conscripted Chithiid workforce as they deconstructed the planet. Now, however, they were still there en masse.

  The main fleet had departed, and their numbers were nowhere near what they’d been in the days of the initial invasion, but a large enough fleet was still on hand to handle the hopeful human armada with relative ease.

  The first attempt to retake the planet several years earlier had keyed the aliens to the fact that there were human survivors with AI ships attempting to make a comeback. Knowing what to expect––and having eliminated that first group of vessels before they could report back to their follow-up fleet––the Ra’az were ready and waiting with a very specifically targeted defense strategy.

  Hordes of smaller ships had launched an AI virus barrage on the entire attacking fleet at close range, breaking down firewalls and rendering all but the non-AI piloted ships infected and impotent.

  It was during this assault that her mentor had first become stranded on the moon, destined to spend decades alone with no company but the lone AI she managed to drag across the barren surface and reconnect.

  As she and Freya silently flew through the fresh air of Earth, Daisy couldn’t help but think of her friend, currently toiling on the surface of the moon, fighting a horrible battle with the harsh environment for her very survival.

  Chapter Two

  Freya’s dark form blended in with the night sky, her silent power systems and atmospherically aerodynamic nanite-composite airframe slicing through the wind with barely a sound. She quickly stored her latest scan for additional review at a later time, should Daisy so desire, then banked for another slow pass over Tokyo.

  The city––much of the entire island nation of Japan, for that matter––had been a high-tech hotbed of innovation and invention. As such, it had been one of the Ra’azes' primary targets for AI virus infection and Chithiid deconstruction. While many other cities had been able to disconnect in time to save their minds, Tokyo had fallen early to the sheer force of the attack.

  “Daisy, look at the pattern of the disassembly.”

  “I see it, Freya. They started with the factories, it seems. Most of the non-industrial region is still completely intact. And look at the towers––untouched, while the less shiny but more advanced fabrication facilities have been undergoing a massive scrapping operation.”

  “I don’t see any communications hub. At least, not anything permanent looking.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. I guess they hadn’t constructed it yet at this point. It is kind of interesting seeing how things progressed from their initial invasion to what’s happening now, to what’s going on up ahead in our own time.”

  “So that makes neither New Yor
k nor Tokyo. Do you think Sydney will be the same? I mean, maybe they haven’t built a single one of their permanent communications facilities.”

  “Seems to make sense, especially if they still have a sizable contingent of ships stationed here. From what Fatima said, it was only after the second wave was repelled that they began thinning their numbers somewhat. And it wasn’t until Mrazich’s fleet was destroyed many decades later that the Ra’az finally felt comfortable enough in their superiority to leave a greatly reduced presence on Earth.”

  “I guess they figured they kicked everyone’s ass enough times to feel confident they could do it again.”

  “Yep, and that meant they were comfortable posting up with less resources, lucky for us. In any case, I’m willing to bet Sydney will be more of the same, but let’s head down under and see for ourselves.”

  “Okay,” Freya replied, changing course.

  They circled high above Tokyo a few more times, then peeled off and departed for the skies over Sydney.

  As they flew, they surveyed the alien craft they passed, cataloging all of the Ra’az ships they observed along the way, both airborne, as well as on the ground. Seeing the relatively limited variety of large-scale vessels that constituted the actual Ra’az fleet was enlightening.

  There were what appeared to be Ra’az-only vessels, higher-tech and larger than the others, to accommodate the Ra’azes bulk. Then there were mixed-crew ships, carrying both Ra’az command staff, as well as Chithiid loyalist crew, from what intercepted comms transmissions seemed to confirm. Interestingly, Daisy found she could understand the basics of Ra’az language, though nothing like her knowledge of Chithiid.

  And as for the Chithiid vessels, there were the hulking but cramped worker transport ships, packed to the gills with cryogenically stored laborers, held in stasis until the next planet needed their brawn to harvest its resources. Those massive flying warehouses were no frills in their design, with no creature comforts, merely used to shuttle their conscripted workforce from planet to planet.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand how Maarl and his rebels might infiltrate the fleet,” Daisy said.

  “Seems to make sense, actually,” Sarah replied.

  “Yeah, that was a really cool plan,” Freya said.

  “Sorry, Freya, I was talking to Sarah. But you’re right too.”

  “Oh, my mistake. Sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Not a problem, Freya,”

  “She says no worries.”

  “Hey, Daisy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking. It would be nice to actually get to talk with Sarah without you always having to repeat everything to me.”

  “I hear that,” Sarah agreed.

  “It would be nice, sure, but she’s tucked away up here,” Daisy said, tapping her forehead. “Unfortunately, that means I’m the only one who can hear her.”

  “Well, I might have figured out a way around that, actually,” Freya said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, really?”

  “I mean, it’s totally theoretical, and I doubt anyone else could make it work, but because of the unconventional way my brain works, I think I could fine-tune a minor neuro-band to pick up just Sarah’s channel and link it into my data core. There might be a second or two delay as human brainwaves translate into AI code, but with my unique processing structure, I think it could work.”

  Daisy wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Tell her I’m game.”

  But a neuro? You know what happened––

  “This sounds totally different. Ask her. It’s read-only, I bet.”

  “Hey, Freya. Sarah was wondering if it’s a read-only type of neuro-band.”

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, I totally have the machinery to fabricate a full-on neuro-stim, but this idea is something much more fine-tuned to a specific, narrow band.”

  “What the hell, let’s give it a try, then,” Daisy said, a bit of curious optimism warming her mood.

  “It might take a bit of trial and error, though,” Freya added. “I just want to be totally sure you guys know that. I mean, I’m confident I can make it work, eventually, but I don’t know how long it’ll take to make it actually functional.”

  “Well, kiddo, looking at our current conundrum here, stuck hundreds of years in the past until we figure out how the hell we can get back to where we belong––”

  “When.”

  “Right. When we belong. I think we may have a lot of time on our hands, if you know what I mean.”

  Freya did a relaxed barrel roll as they zoomed on their way to Sydney. Daisy just went with it, letting her kid have some fun while she could. Odds were, things would get far busier, and far more serious, in the coming days and weeks.

  As she soared high into the exosphere after scanning and surveying Sydney and the surrounding areas, Freya had only just exited to Earth’s orbit when a large ship powering away from the planet caught her attention.

  “Daisy, look!” she said, excitedly.

  As the vessel flew, a faint blue glow, consisting of hundreds of small warp bubbles linking together, was forming around one of the orbiting Ra’az cruisers.

  “They’re going to warp. Freya, you’re scanning and recording all of this, right?”

  “Duh. Of course I am,” she said with an exasperated groan.

  “There she goes, getting lippy again.”

  I’ll deal with that later. For now, I just want to understand this warp process, and hopefully figure out how we got here, and how we can get back home.

  The small bubbles completed their cycle, finally linking together. Moments later the ship flickered, then vanished, a slight crackling blue ring left in its wake.

  “Daisy, I pulled data from the warp, and I have to say, that was a really, really underpowered warp jump. Like, I’m surprised it even worked. If that’s all they’ve got, they really can’t jump far at all like that.”

  “They haven’t salvaged my power cascade and worked it into their warp designs yet,” Daisy noted. “Not for a few hundred years.”

  “Yeah, but even so, it’s kinda amazing their current system even works.”

  “Barely functional is still enough to give them enough of a technological edge to conquer other worlds, though. And even underpowered like this, over a few hundred years, they could still cover some serious distance.”

  “Well, of course. But for individual jumps? I mean, their system is kind of crap.”

  “Your opinion is noted, Freya,” Daisy said with a little laugh. “Now, how about you get cracking on extrapolating parallel energy signatures from this new info and comparing it to ours to see if it somehow helps explain how we got here.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Me either.

  “What is it, Freya? What haven’t you told me?”

  “Um, about those files.”

  “Come on, spill it.”

  “Well, when you tried powering off the orb, it kind of scrambled my real-time data recording system a bit.”

  “You lost them?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just, well, I’m having to rearrange a bunch of data to make the files readable.”

  “You want me to take a look?”

  “No! I can handle it. Jeez, it’s just something strange happened when we jumped. Let me work on it, okay?”

  “Totally in moody teenager phase,” Sarah said with a hearty laugh. “Oh, man, you’re in for it.”

  Oh, shut it, Sarah, Daisy quipped. I’ve so got this, she said, confidently

  “You say that now. I’ll remind you that you said that when things get really crazy.”

  Hey, at least she won’t have to go through puberty, so there’s that, right?

  “Sure, but what if whatever the AI version is winds up being worse?”

  Pessimist, Daisy replied with a silent chuckle.

  “Okay, kiddo, you take your time o
n that stuff,” Daisy said. “Hey, you know what? Since it seems we have all the time in the world, it seems, I’d kinda like to take a little side trip and check in on an old friend.”

  Chapter Three

  Dark Side Base looked far different than the facility Daisy had come to call home over the preceding months. As Freya slowed her approach, settling into a gentle hover along one of the rocky ridges rising above the bombarded facility, the familiar view of Dark Side was anything but familiar.

  “Hooooly...” Daisy trailed off as she surveyed the scene, finding herself at a rare loss for words.

  “You said it, Daze. Good God, just look at the place.”

  While Fatima may have told her stories of the utter destruction she had first encountered on the barren surface of the moon, the brutal reality of the scene was far more horrific than Daisy had ever imagined.

  The areas of Dark Side that were not protected beneath the base’s rocky overhangs were nothing more than a collection of shattered living quarters and work facilities. The Ra’az bombardment had been so intense, some of the silicon dioxide in the rocks and jagged grains of soil surrounding the buildings had even turned to glass from the intense heat of the brief, yet effective, attack.

  “Oh my God. Daisy, are all of those––?”

  Yeah, she replied. Those are all bodies.

  There were dozens of long-dead base crew resting on the lunar surface. While some had remained intact, killed by the shockwave of the impacts, or snuffed out by the harsh oxygen-starved surface of the moon, others were not so peaceful in appearance.

  Contrasting the other corpses were bodies torn to pieces by the blasts, some in the false security of space suits, others blown into the vacuum from the supposed safety of their quarters.

  “Daisy, this wasn’t in Sid’s records,” Freya said, quietly.

  “I know, kiddo. All the data from this period was lost when Dark Side’s original AI melted down. Until Sid got plugged in, no one was monitoring the base.”

  Motion on the surface caught all three of their attention.

  “Daisy, it’s Fatima.”