by Brett Patton
Nobody paid him any mind in the main corridor of the Last Rising ship. When he arrived at the bridge, the doors cycled even before he could approach the camera.
The bridge hadn’t even been rebuilt yet. Technicians still worked on replacing the broken railing.
Captain Gonsalves stood comfortably by the captain’s chair, watching the navigational screens. Esplandian still glowed dimly outside the slit windows. The Last Rising ship hadn’t moved at all.
Captain Gonsalves looked down and locked eyes with Matt. “Welcome back, sir.”
Weird. “I thought there were no ‘sirs’ here.”
Gonsalves paused, and his jaw worked, as if he was biting back his first response. “There were no ‘sirs’ in El Dorado, or in Esplandian. But in Last Rising, there is the right of succession and allegiance.”
“Sucession and allegiance?” Matt shook his head.
“Allegiance to Mr. Lowell, successor to Rayder, sir,” Captain Gonsalves said.
Allegiance to me? Matt’s mind whirled. He gaped at them. He’d killed Rayder—
—to become their new leader?
“Allegiance to Mr. Lowell, sir,” chimed the guards and technicians, in unison.
Seven Corsairs met Matt’s gaze, patiently awaiting his orders.
* * *
Matt slumped against a bridge rail, his mind swirling in surreality. “You’ll all do anything I say?”
“Please wait until the succession order has been fully transmitted to the fleet and outlying agents, sir,” one of the navigators said. “Otherwise, you may not be recognized as the Last Rising’s Ultimate Arbiter by second- and third-class citizens.”
Matt’s stomach churned. They weren’t playing. He’d inherited Rayder’s entire organization. And they would slavishly follow anything he ordered them to do.
All of them.
The enormousness of it hit Matt like a hammer. If I wanted to be an emperor, I have the power now.
It was too much to take. “Don’t follow me!” Matt cried.
The technician blinked in confusion. “You are not going anywhere, sir.”
“No! I mean, don’t do what I say. Release everyone from mind control!”
“It is impossible to refuse your orders, sir. I’m afraid your second statement makes no sense.”
A hand fell on Matt’s trembling arm. Matt jumped. It was Hector Gonsalves. His expression looked both troubled and sad.
“The programming is too deep in the second- and third-class staff, sir,” he said. “I understand your meaning. Unfortunately, I can’t comply with either the first or the second statement.”
“Stop calling me ‘sir’!”
“I can’t, sir.”
Matt groaned. Captain Hector Gonsalves, formerly such a strong leader—now reduced to this.
“You’re aware you’re mind-controlled?” Matt asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I order you to release yourself from it?”
“No, sir.”
“There’s got to be a way to reverse the process!”
Hector shook his head. “I’m not sure, sir. I can check with the medical technicians.”
“Please do so!” Matt cried.
But, he realized, why would they have a reversal procedure? Rayder didn’t care about anything other than controlling his hordes. Matt knew the Union doctors had succeeded in bringing Kyle Peterov out of Rayder’s mind control once they’d returned to Mecha Base, but he didn’t know what they’d done, or how complex the procedure had been.
“Is there anyone serving under Rayder who isn’t programmed?” Matt asked.
“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Captain Gonsalves told him.
“How big a force does Rayder command?”
Gonsalves shook his head. “I don’t know the full extent, sir.”
“It depends on the metric, sir,” one of the technicians said. “By direct measurement, Last Rising is one hundred fifty-three thousand persons approximately, sir. If you include planets and colonies on which Last Rising is a de facto controlling government, we are approximately one hundred sixty-five million citizens. This excludes the approximately fourteen thousand agents in rival IGOs.”
A hundred and sixty-five million people. Matt’s head swam. It wasn’t a gigantic number in terms of the Union’s billions, but it was enough to make Matt shiver with dread. Was he now responsible to all of those people, as their new Ultimate Arbiter?
It was too much to take. Being their leader was worse than being their enemy, Matt thought.
“If, however, Mr. Lowell is interested in the fighting force he can command, we must factor in the approximately one thousand five hundred piloted and fifty-five thousand autonomous biomechanical Mecha. This force is easily the superior of any interstellar governmental organization, sir.”
Wait. Had the technican just said what he thought he said?
“Your Mecha force is greater than the Universal Union’s?” Matt asked the tech.
“Yes, sir.”
Matt shook his head. That was unbelievable. For one faction of the Corsairs to move past the Universal Union in Mecha forces in a single year—it seemed impossible.
One single, driven, desperate faction, Matt’s mind whispered. They wouldn’t care about pilot addiction, neural buffers, or any of the parameters the Union had forced on Dr. Roth. It was entirely possible they were ahead of the Union in technology and firepower.
“What about Esplandian?” he asked Gonsalves, who was bent over a screen, talking with a medical team.
“It’s currently in sorting and programming mode, sir.”
“Stop! I mean, cease operations. Release all citizens of Esplandian who haven’t been mind-controlled yet.”
“Sir, that could cause conflict,” Captain Gonsalves told Matt. But, deep down, did his eyes suddenly spark with a tiny fleck of hope?
Unfortunately, Gonsalves was right. If they simply released everyone right now, the Esplandians would use every cutting laser, Taikong pistol, and field machete they had to massacre the Last Rising personnel.
“Ignore that last order,” Matt told Gonsalves. “Cease mind-control processing, but hold the rest of the population in secure areas.”
“Yes, sir.”
Matt nodded at the screen. “If there is a way to reverse programming, begin applying it to the Esplandian citizens first. If there isn’t, put all medical resources toward developing a reversal procedure.”
“Reversing programming may be dangerous, sir,” Captain Gonsalves told him. “Last Rising citizens may not continue to follow you after the procedure is complete.”
Matt turned to Captain Gonsalves, laughing. “Good!”
* * *
The equipment the Last Rising used for programming looked like old-fashioned imaging gear, but it was coupled with an injected psychoactive substance that was sealed in biohazard-secure packages. The doctors muttered about “applying inverse patterning in the active state,” and promised to have the results of testing back to Matt as soon as they could.
Matt had a technician to take him on a tour of the Displacement Drive ship as he waited for word on the reversal procedure.
The Last Rising’s flagship, Helheim, was impressive even in the context of a Union battle-hardened Displacement Drive warship. The fact that it had been built in less than a year made it even more stunning.
It wasn’t finished, of course. Work continued as Matt followed the gray-suited technician through the ship’s corridors. Groups of diggers worked around the clock, widening and deepening the tunnels within the asteroid, while riggers welded stainless plate on steel scaffolding to strengthen the ship.
Even unfinished, it was a fully functioning, battle-ready warship. Its heavy-matter weaponry was capable of targeting all
eight sectors of approach, and it was augmented by antimatter beam weapons fore and aft. Its power-generation core ran the latest Taikong antimatter reactors as well, for a charge-and-Displace capability almost equal to Helios—forty seconds. Combined with armor comparable to anything Matt had seen on a Union ship, Helheim clearly had only one purpose: to lead assaults on heavily defended territory.
Matt went down to the Mecha Research cavern deep within Helheim, where new forms grew in gel suspension. It was like a scene from Dr. Roth’s own labs. The pilotless, autonomous Loki were grown in vast numbers. The black Mecha were piloted, and grown much more sparsely. But there were dozens of other shapes in the tanks. Some were low, flattened discs with six or eight arms, like spiders. Others were long and slim, like centipedes or snakes. Still more were hunched and heavily armored, looking strong enough to withstand a full Zap Gun strike. And in between all of those types were one-offs, ranging in size from only a couple of meters across to hulking giants as large as Matt’s Demon.
What the Union’s been doing to HuMax, the HuMax are doing to Mecha. Experimenting. Tweaking. Changing.
Matt’s slate chimed. It was Gonsalves and the doctors.
“We have results, sir,” one of the doctors said.
“And?”
“We have processed twenty subjects through the test reversal procedure, sir. Nineteen showed no significant effects. One is restrained in a psychotic state.”
Great, Matt thought.
“Keep at it,” he told them.
* * *
Matt went to visit Ione on Esplandian with Gonsalves at his side.
The asteroid was still a mess, barely functioning with a skeleton crew of mind-controlled Esplandians. Whole blocks of housing had been turned into holding cells for the population awaiting processing. Mind-controlled Esplandians had a full-time job shuttling food through a series of security locks that separated the apartments from the rest of Esplandian.
The crew also had to tend to the needs of the entire asteroid, as well as repair the damage from the battle with Last Rising. Matt saw lots of exhausted faces among the mind-controlled crew as they shambled through the motions of their jobs.
It hurt Matt to think about what they were going through, but there was nothing he could do about it. Helheim was busy repairing their own damage, as were the three other Last Rising ships.
When Matt arrived, Ione lay sweating on a gurney, strapped down to its stainless rails. Her face was flushed, and the straps had rubbed the skin at her wrists raw. She’d been left there alone!
Anger shot through Matt like an electric current. “Where’s Arksham?” he snapped at Gonsalves.
“He’s awaiting programming in the residential blocks marked as temporary holding cells, sir,” Gonsalves said.
“So you just left her here?” Matt exclaimed, pointing at Ione.
“I’m sorry, sir, but nonfunctional staff are given lowest priority.” Gonsalves looked genuinely sad.
So they would have left her here to die! Matt grabbed Gonsalves by the lapels of his suit, wanting to slam him against the hard stainless walls of Dr. Arksham’s office.
Gonsalves didn’t resist. He just looked apologetically at Matt and waited for his punishment. He was only a messenger. In some ways less than a machine. Matt blew out a long breath and let Gonsalves go. “I’m sorry,” Matt said.
“For what, sir?”
Matt shook his head. Gonsalves wouldn’t fully understand, not while he was still programmed.
“Get Dr. Arksham out of the residential block,” Matt ordered. “And get him back in this office!”
“It may take some time, sir.”
“Do it now!” Matt snapped. He went to bend over Ione. Her breath came slow and steady, despite the heat radiating from her body.
“I’ll save you,” Matt said. “I will.”
When Gonsalves came back with Dr. Arksham, the man shot a single angry glance at Matt before going to work, attaching Ione’s intravenous feed and stuffing her into a cooling bag again.
“What’s going on?” Arksham asked as he worked. “Am I to take from your attire that you’ve made another conversion of convenience, and now salute Rayder?”
Matt looked down, suddenly remembering the uniform he was wearing. His face reddened in embarrassment. He had to get some real clothes.
“I killed Rayder,” Matt told Arksham. “He’s dead.”
The old man looked over his shoulder at Matt, his eyes deeply skeptical. He studied Matt for several seconds before seeming to come to a decision. “If that is true, congratulations. At the moment, please forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.”
“It is true. And I will make this right. Just as soon as . . .” Matt trailed off.
“As soon as what?”
“As soon as we figure out how to reverse Rayder’s programming.” Matt explained the problem to Arksham. The grizzled HuMax listened patiently, his expression softening slightly as Matt told his story.
“Not a clue,” Arksham said. “Doesn’t sound like any technique I’ve come across.”
Matt nodded. The closest thing was Kyle. If he only knew what the Union had done to reverse the process—
Wait. Pieces fell into place with almost palpable thunks. Matt turned to Gonsalves.
“A technician said that Rayder has fourteen thousand agents at other IGOs. Are any of these deployed in the Universal Union?”
Gonsalves studied his slate. “Five thousand one hundred of them, sir.”
Matt started, then bellowed a laugh. Five thousand Corsair agents in the Universal Union? Congress would come apart at the seams if they knew!
“Find out if any of our agents have access to Mecha Corps captain Kyle Peterov’s medical records, specifically a procedure he’d undergone on Mecha Base.” It was possible they were sealed too deeply, but it was also possible that was the shortcut they needed.
“Will do, sir,” Gonsalves said, and headed out the door.
When he was gone, Matt went to sit beside Ione’s bed. The medical readouts were incomprehensible to him, except the most basic. But he saw her vital signs were still in the green, and the display appeared to indicate she was still being nourished intravenously.
“It’ll be all right,” Matt said, taking her hand. It was warm, very warm. Calluses from her hard work in El Dorado still felt rough on his fingertips. But her hand was limp. She didn’t respond at all, didn’t make a sound.
“It’ll be all right,” Matt said again, his voice high and tight. It was very loud in the still room.
Was he trying to convince Ione?
Or himself?
* * *
Even with Kyle’s medical records, it took an entire week to work up a process to reverse Rayder’s programming. Rayder had refined his process significantly from the first time they went up against him. How significantly, Matt didn’t know, until he requested access to Rayder’s private files and was eagerly given it.
Rayder had stolen amazing amounts of technology from Jotunheim—much of it after Matt and the Union had left him for dead. An automated safety process of the long-dormant HuMax city had sucked him in before he burned up in the core of the planet, and robotic medical systems had brought him back to health. It was an unthinking reflex of the grand city, something Jotunheim would have done for anyone falling through the shaft.
But what it let Rayder do, more importantly, was to gain access to the deepest level of surviving HuMax technology, without the Union discovering him. He’d brought advanced mind control with him when he finally came to the surface, months later. Its first deployment had been on a Union Displacement Drive ship, which he’d used to escape Jotunheim.
Rayder had also brought Mecha tech out of Jotunheim—and, adding to Matt’s rage, much of it was based on a fragment of Matt’s own Demon, ra
ther than HuMax technology. Some HuMax tech was blended in to create both the segmented silver Mecha and the black humanoid ones, but the majority of it was Dr. Roth’s.
I gave Rayder the key to Mecha, Matt thought bitterly.
At the same time, how could he blame himself? Matt wondered. He was a pawn of the Union, just as Gonsalves was a pawn of Rayder.
No more. Never again.
But there was more. Much more. The mind-control process was clearly Rayder’s crown jewel, but the autonomous Mecha with the Mesh-scrambling system interrupter was another important by-product of his time alone on Jotunheim. If Matt hadn’t killed him, Rayder would have been in a position to take on the Union directly in a matter of months. With his web extending through the most powerful Corsair factions, and even into the highest echelons of the Union—one of Rayder’s agents was a high-placed aide in the Union Congress—the outcome might have been the complete overthrow of the Union.
The rest of the tech that Rayder had brought into his personal archives was nearly incomprehensible, though. Much of it read as madness. However, Matt was able to surmise it was these shrouded conversations that led Rayder’s agents to dig on Keller.
At least a third of it was text transcriptions between Rayder and another party identified only as “Contact.” Contact’s replies were heavily stilted, in a manner that suggested many layers of machine translation after hard encryption:
RAYDER: The key biomechanical principle is an advanced magnetorheological application, allowing transformation of form without losing integrity?
CONTACT: No. Not. Imperfect/oddly affected thinking/language.
Biomechanical/transformative equals molecular/nuclear analog of lifeforces/communication. (reference to translation animation 0.105-03; imagery indistinct and not interpretable—support note.)
RAYDER: Nanotechnology?
CONTACT: No not no again not increase understanding! Imperfect analog/representation; higher level forces in play/in work. Life not perfect. Biotech approach perfection of form/thought/life.
RAYDER: You’re not suggesting a metaphysical interpretation?