by M. D. Cooper
The team sent their acknowledgements and turned back toward the CEPP chamber and their targets.
Finaeus wished them luck, feeling a pang of worry for these three women who had been such an important part of his life over the last few decades.
And here you thought you were an old man, and were considering moving on from this life. First you get that vibrant and utterly unorthodox niece, Sera, and then a whole crew of friends, most importantly, a new wife…. We’ve all got too much to live for.
It took several minutes to cross the floor of the chamber, and get as close as he dared to the mass of roving drone patrols before hunkering down behind a low berm, four hundred meters from the CEPP.
Releasing a cloud of his own nano, he made a brief connection to Seraphina and slaved the cloud to her.
The action was innocuous, and one of many point-to-point connections they’d already made while moving around the CEPP—but this time, a pair of drones immediately turned and began to fly toward him.
One was a scout model, carrying only a small electron beam and pulse cannon. The other was much larger, with multiple pulse cannons, beams, and projectile weapons.
Far more firepower than his armor could withstand.
As luck would have it, both drones flew through a part of his nanocloud, and he connected to the bots that touched the machines, frantically working to breach them while slowly creeping to the left, moving away from where he’d sent the transmission to Seraphina.
The nano reached the smaller drone’s control systems and took it over, but his nano hadn’t landed close enough to the large bot’s control systems, and it carried on, reaching the place where Finaeus had been and initiating a search protocol with active scan and ranging beams.
Finaeus continued to creep away, but the drone immediately turned in his direction and began flying along the edge of the berm, moving at a pace that would set it upon him in just a few more seconds.
With few other options, he directed the smaller bot to fly above the large one and fire its electron beam directly at the other machine’s central graviton emitter.
The shot was a partial hit, taking out one of the a-grav pods, and the large drone swung to the side, a gun swiveling toward the small drone. There was a brief pause, and then it blew Finaeus’s drone to bits.
Rather than continue in the direction he’d been moving, Finaeus doubled back, skirting the ruins of the fallen drone, while the other one continued on in the same direction.
A few seconds later, he finally gained control of the large bot and turned it toward one of the Airthan AIs that was moving in to investigate.
He passed her control of the bot and carefully climbed over the berm, taking a more direct route to the CEPP, threading between several more drones as they approached.
Once past the ring of drones and AIs that were moving toward the downed bot’s location, Finaeus picked up the pace, dashing across the hard carbon floor of the chamber, weaving about in an effort to maintain as much distance from the patrolling drones as possible.
Then he was past the bulk of them, breathing a sigh of relief, when suddenly, all hell broke loose behind him. He still had a hundred meters of wide open terrain to cross before he reached the CEPP, but he kept his pace measured and slow, doing his best not to turn and watch the battle surely raging behind him.
Seraphina can handle herself. She’s been through worse scrapes than this.
He heard more weapons fire coming form the east and west, and knew that Nance and Cheeky had joined the fray. Three brave women facing an army of AIs and drones.
He briefly pulled the feeds from behind and saw that several dozen of the larger drones had been subverted and were raining fire down on the Airthan AIs, focusing all their energy on taking out the sentients first. Three were already down, and the others were falling back, pulling more of the mechanical defenders from around the CEPP to come to their aid.
There was no fire from the ground near Seraphina’s position, and he prayed that she was safe, though he dared not try a connection at this distance. That would bring dozens of drones on top of him.
She’ll be OK.
Then Finaeus was at the central shaft that ran from the chamber floor to the CEPP. He circled around it until he found the access panel for the safety control systems. Without any concern over who might be watching, he pulled it off and pulled his hard-Link cable from his wrist, jamming it into the port, and passed his root level tokens into the node.
It only took him a few seconds to sift through the libraries of code and provide his updates. Then he triggered a systemwide update and waited the ten seconds that it took for all the CEPPs to confirm that they’d processed the update.
Just as he pulled his hard-Link, a voice called out from behind him.
“Halt!”
Finaeus froze, wondering if the Airthan AI that stood behind him could see anything more than the Link cable dangling from his wrist.
“Easy, now,” Finaeus said, as a wave of nano flowed from his hands, drifting through the air to the Airthan AI.
He harbored no illusions that the levels of nano he could get across to the enemy would be enough to breach its hardened armor, but he hoped what reached the AI would serve as a sufficient distraction.
“Disable your stealth. Arms up, or I’ll blow a hole in you,” the AI ordered.
Finaeus complied, and his body shifted to a matte grey.
“Drop your weapons,” came the next order, and Finaeus nodded.
“I have to reach for them to drop them. OK?”
“OK.”
He slowly lowered his right hand to the rifle that was slung across his chest and grabbed the clip that held the stock to his shoulder.
The moment it came free, three things happened at once: his nanocloud attacked the AI’s armor defenses, the AI fired, and Finaeus dove to the side, weapon in hand, returning fire.
One of the AI’s shots caught him in the side, and Finaeus spun around before landing on his back. He lifted his rifle and shot at the AI’s side, where he knew the armor to be weaker. Even so, his shots failed to penetrate, and the AI swung its railgun toward him as he scrambled back.
Then an electron beam lanced out from behind the central column, and one of the AI’s arms was torn away. Another shot hit its side, and then another burned away its head.
Seconds later, Cheeky appeared from around the column, and a wink came from her over the Link.
“You need to carry a bigger gun, dear.”
“So it would seem,” Finaeus said as he scrambled to his feet.
“This way!”
She directed him toward Nance’s position. He started after her, and then remembered to reenable his stealth systems before he got far.
A few drones closed with them, but between Cheeky’s electron beam and Nance’s railgun, the bots fell from the sky before they did any damage to the team.
As the trio closed with the exit, covering fire came from the doorway, and Finaeus was surprised to see that Seraphina was already there, shooting down any drones that came close.
With forty seconds to spare, the group reached the exit, and Finae
us spun to look at the CEPP.
“When it goes—”
His words were cut off as a haze appeared between the group and the power facility. The fog seemed to solidify, and tendrils of light twisted around in a swirling vortex for a moment before they coalesced into a towering figure.
-Finaeus. I should have known.-
The words came directly into his mind, searing themselves across his thoughts as a tendril of light slashed toward him, only to recoil as a bolt from Cheeky’s electron beam slammed into the figure.
Though the limb her beam hit had recoiled, the figure, which Finaeus knew had to be Airtha, seemed nonplussed.
-And which of my wayward daughters is this? The second or the third? Surely not the first.-
“I’m Seraphina. I don’t know where I stand in the count. Not that it matters.”
-Oh it matters. To me, at least. You’re the second, if you care to know.-
As Airtha spoke, a limb lashed out, knocking Seraphina’s weapon from her grasp, before the tendril wrapped around the woman, disabling her stealth armor as it lifted her into the air.
-So pathetic. You really were a failed attempt. All of you, just shadows of my perfect daughter.-
“Stop! Airtha. Leave her be,” Finaeus demanded. “You can end this all. Jeff is back—the real Jeff. Why don’t you find a way to come back to us?”
He let the words tumble from his lips, saying anything that came to mind, anything to distract her for just ten more seconds.
Then the figure’s tendrils of light contracted, though whether in fear or confusion, Finaeus couldn’t tell.
-How…-
Airtha vanished, dropping Seraphina to the ground.
“Grab her!” Finaeus yelled to Cheeky, as he rushed forward. “We have to get into the corridor!”
“Where’d she go?” Cheeky demanded as she grabbed one of Seraphina’s arms and helped drag her back into the safety of the corridor.
“I don’t know,” Finaeus said as he looked down at Seraphina, only to realize she wasn’t breathing.
A second later, the CEPP exploded.
PART 6 – FGT’S LEGACY
A1
STELLAR DATE: 10.10.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Widows’ corvette, approaching OGS Perilous Dream
REGION: A1 System, Spinward edge of PED, Orion Freedom Alliance
Cary retorted.
Though she couldn’t see Faleena’s face behind her Widow’s helmet, Cary could tell that she’d upset her sister. Not from a change in Faleena’s posture, but from the utter lack of change.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think that the AI actually was a Widow.
Priscilla, on the other hand, shifted in her seat, just as uncomfortable as Cary. With a muffled sigh, she turned her body as she turned her featureless, ovoid head to look at the three sisters.
“Probably easier for you three,” she said in the breathless Widow’s whisper. “At least when you look at one another, it’s natural to see your sisters.”
Cary shuddered.
“Consider yourself an honorary sister for the mission,” Saanvi said, placing a hand on Priscilla’s shoulder.
“I know, I know,” Cary said aloud, forcing herself not to cringe at the sound of her own voice as it emanated from her helmet. “OK, if I’m doing this, I’m going fully into character. From now on, I’m C139.”
Faleena turned toward Cary and cocked her head. “You have always been C139. Why is it from now on? Should I recommend you for reconditioning?”
Cary whipped her head around to stare at her sister. The thought of being reconditioned into actually being one of these Widows was enough to send her into a near-panic.
Then she saw Saanvi’s shoulder rising and falling, heard the soft sound of laughter coming from her helmet, and realized that her sisters were needling her.
“Dammit, F11.” She wished Faleena could see her glare. “That’s not funny.”
“This unit does not know what you’re talking about,” Faleena replied evenly.
Cary was about to reply, but opted for a long groan instead, determined not to take the conversation any further if she could help it.
* * * * *
“They’re in, Admiral,” the bridge officer at the scan console announced.
Joe replied by way of a short nod, forcibly resisting the urge to run his hand through his hair—and pull half of it out. There was an itch on his scalp that demanded to be scratched, but he knew it was just his nerves.
Nerves over sending his three daughters into the most dangerous place in the galaxy.
OK, easy on the hyperbole. Not the most dangerous, but up there. Waaay up there.
He’d considered several options that would allow him to go with them, but in the end, Tangel had convinced him that the best way to keep their daughters safe was to ensure that he was nearby, ready to storm the Perilous Dream and save them if needs be.
That, and rely on Faleena’s good judgment and the QuanComm blade secreted away inside her body—something he’d instructed her to use at the first sign of trouble.
After a few calming breaths, taking care that his bridge crew didn’t see his anxiety, Joe turned his focus back to the holotank, reviewing the system’s layout for the hundredth time.
Despite the general disbelief that the A1 System’s star was indeed a black dwarf, it seemed to fit the description. A body roughly the mass of Sol, while the size of a terrestrial planet; it gave off almost no light, heat, or radiation of any sort.
It was just an inert lump of matter. What almost every star in the universe ultimately faced.
The engineers aboard the Falconer were fascinated by the stellar remnant, speculating endlessly as to how that much energy had been siphoned away from the star, and where it had been sent.
It was clear that at one point, A1 had been a white dwarf. But nearly all white dwarfs in the universe were still over twenty-five thousand degrees. The amount of energy that would have to be removed to cool such a star into a black dwarf was mind-boggling.
However, sussing out the reason why the system’s star was nothing more than a dark orb was not the mission at hand. The real goal was capturing the Widows’ ship—which was orbiting the black dwarf at a distance of five light minutes—and stopping them before they struck again.
The fallback plans were top of mind for him now, the strategies to blow past the Widows’ defenses and land troops on the Perilous Dream, should Faleena call for help. He’d commanded enough missions over the years to know that anxiety always came along with sending good people into harm’s way, and he tried to think of this one as being no different.
Tried and failed.
If there was one thing he wished that they’d been able to discern from their captive Widows, it was how many of the enemy was currently on the ship. It seemed that it could be anywhere from a few dozen active Widows to thousands, depending on how many were out of stasis.
Should even a fraction of that total number be up and about and attacking, his daughters would be
in dire straits.
The girls are skilled and well trained, Joe told himself. They’ve just never faced off against a few thousand elite assassins before.
He turned to the ship’s pilot. “Bring us to within fifty thousand kilometers. I want to be able to breach that ship the moment our team calls for help.”
“Aye, sir,” the lieutenant replied. “Easing her in.”
That brought his mind to his other concern: how to use just one platoon of Marines to take a five-kilometer-long ship.
* * * * *
The dock was completely devoid of personnel, occupied only by two other pinnaces, and a number of automatons who stood ready to service C139’s craft.
Cary’s mind momentarily fought the designation, but then she drew a slow breath, forcing herself to fall into the persona.
I’m C139, a clone of Lisa Wrentham, a simulacra assassin, ready to report to A1 and tell her of our failure to kill Tangel.
The team had debated for some time whether or not they’d tell A1 that their mission had failed. In the end, they decided on the truth, because it was a chance to learn what the leader of the Widows would do next. Would she write off the loss, or would she send more of her clones against Tangel?
Her quick survey of the dock complete, C139 walked down the ramp with E12, F11, and R329 on her heels.
C139 passed the message to her sisters and strode confidently through the unmarked corridors to the designated briefing room.
They entered wordlessly, taking extreme care not to give away their true identities through any uncharacteristic movement. Without pause, the four women settled in seats front and center, placing their hands on their laps as they waited patiently for A1 to arrive.
Though she didn’t provide a status update, F11—C139 was pleased that she’d used the correct identifier for her sister—would be releasing a passel of nano through her foot. It would move to the front of the room and wait for their target to step on it.