by M. D. Cooper
Jen didn’t reply, and Sera was glad for the brief silence as the lift continued its ascent. A minute later, the doors opened, and they stepped into a corridor lined with windows that looked out into the node chamber.
A soft rumble of laughter came back over the Link.
Flaherty didn’t respond, but on her HUD, she saw him move across the corridor and stop in front of the doors that led to the catwalk.
She knew Flaherty was right, she needed to keep her mind sharp and on the task at hand—which she normally did by making snarky comments.
Flaherty opened the door and moved through first, stepping lightly onto the catwalk, with Sera following a few meters behind.
Ahead lay their target, Airthan Node 11. One of her mother’s bodies…which they were going to poison.
Sera’s eyes were fixed on the ten-meter square cube, almost mesmerized by its soft glow. She realized that it was similar in appearance to the nodes that made up Bob’s mind. It occurred to Sera in that moment that the only two multinodal AIs she knew of were both ascended.
I wonder if that’s related at all.
They followed the catwalk for fifty meters before it reached the platform that encircled the node. There weren’t any drones nearby, so they crossed the final few meters, coming to stand on the platform a minute later.
Jen sighed.
The AI’s words were cut off, as tendrils of light emerged from the node, twisting around themselves until they formed the figure of a tall woman—a woman whose features were forever etched in Sera’s mind.
“Helen….?”
DELIVERY
STELLAR DATE: 10.10.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Stellar Tower 2, Airthan Ring
REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
“Fuck!” Katrina swore as she ducked below the blown-out window that overlooked the node chamber. “There’s just too many of them!”
Elmer only grunted in response as he rolled to a new position, each of his four arms hefting beam weapons, which he aimed out the window, firing on the drones that were circling in the node chamber.
Katrina’s jaw began to throb, and she realized she was clenching it hard enough to shatter teeth.
Amavia retorted.
Forcing herself to relax—as much as possible, given the circumstances—Katrina leant around the open door leading onto the catwalk, and fired a series of kinetic rounds at the drones swooping through the chamber.
Amavia was on—or rather, under—the next catwalk to the left, nearly at the platform by the position of her marker. If the team could continue to provide enough of a distraction for another few minutes, Amavia would make it, and their delivery would be complete.
Which is imperative, since Finaeus’s team is dealing with the CEPPs, and Fina is still at the tower.
Amavia groaned.
Amavia’s statement gave Katrina a measure of relief, and she fired on another drone as it swept past the doorway.
Given the opposition they were facing, she couldn’t imagine that every team was going to meet with success.
* * * * *
Iris crouched before Airthan Node 3, tuning out the sounds of the battle all around her as she pulled the shard cylinder from her armor and scanned the node for a hard-Link port.
Where the hell is it? she wondered, ducking as Malorie leapt overhead, screeching a string of curses that Iris had come to realize was the spider woman’s battle cry.
she called out to her team.
Iris shook her head, returning to her search. She heard the screams of the soldiers as the deranged spider-woman climbed into their midst, knocking as many off the catwalk as she killed with the lightwands attached to her legs.
“Aha!” Iris crowed as she finally spotted the correct type of hard-Link port via her drone feeds.
It was around the node’s corner; she’d have to expose herself to enemy fire to slot the shard in. She placed her trust in the belief that the enemy soldiers were not going to shoot the node, as she reached around the corner to slot the cylinder in place.
Then alarms flared in her mind, and she saw that her arm had been shot clean off her body. It was now laying on the platform, halfway around the corner.
Oh please still be holding it, she thought, carefully pulling the arm back around to safety, breathing a sigh of relief to see that her severed limb still clasped the cylinder.
She pulled the shard’s core out of her severed hand and sent a probe around the node to see that the socket she needed to use had been shot—almost as though the AI they were attacking had ordered the soldiers to shoot herself.
Iris fired a few rounds at enemies who were encroaching on her team’s position, and then turned back to the leeward side of the node, searching for any ports she could use.
After a few seconds, her gaze settled on one. It was a 14A-type port. She could jack directly into it with her own hard-Link cable, but she couldn’t directly hook up the poisoned shard.
Damn, I’m going to have to buffer it somehow….
Iris knew that she had only one option. She had to connect the shard to her own frame and then route it through her hard-Link port and into the Airthan Node.
* * * * *
“I’m glad you still recognize me,” Helen said, as her ephemeral form approached Sera. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten where you came from.”
“I remember,” Sera said, her voice barely above a whisper as she desperately tried to gather her wits. “I could never forget how much you lied to me.”
“Lies?” Helen said as she circled around Sera, staying just out of arm’s reach. “Is that the game we’re going to play? Who wronged who? Reasons, rationalizations? I always loved you, Sera. I was always devoted to you. You’re my crowning achievement.”
“You tried to manipulate me into killing my own father,” Sera hissed, anger beginning to boil inside of herself. “And you died. After…after…”
“I’m not gone,” Helen said. “I’m right before you.”
“You’re not Helen,” Sera spat. “Helen died. My father—or whatever he was—killed her! Do you
know what that does to a person? Knowing that your father killed the person you thought of as your mother?”
Helen’s lips parted in a smile and she ducked her head. “Sera. I am your mother.”
“No,” Sera shook her head, suddenly wondering where Flaherty had gone. She couldn’t see further than a few meters, everything was shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the visage before her.
She took a step back, trying to circle around to the node, knowing it had to be close.
“You’re the thing that made me. Helen raised me.”
The white figure drew closer, tendrils of light reaching out hungrily.
“Sera. It’s always been me.”
* * * * *
Amavia kept her focus on the next handhold, ignoring the chaos all around her, ignoring the worry building in her mind that she wouldn’t get her shard inserted in time.
Definitely ignoring the three-hundred-meter drop, she thought with a nervous laugh.
She swung from one beam to the next, now only three meters from the node. She could see a socket just four meters to her left. Two more beams and she’d be there, she’d be home free.
Sure wish I’d opted for a non-organic body now, she thought while swinging to the next beam, her right leg nearly clipping a drone as it swept by, firing on Katrina’s position.
Drawing a steadying breath, Amavia swung to the next beam, then climbed along it until she was next to the node.
Amavia’s words were cut off as a drone flew around the side of the node and slammed into her side. She lost her grip on the beam and fell forward, hands scrabbling across the node’s surface as she plummeted toward the ground.
At the last second, her right hand found purchase on a ridge at the bottom edge of the Airthan node, pain momentarily lancing up the limb as it arrested her fall.
She got a firm grip on the lip and then reached up and grasped a nearby coolant line, slowly pulling herself up until she was standing on the lip, getting ready to leap back up and grab hold of the beam next to the socket.
One…two…
Pain tore through Amavia’s body, and suddenly, her legs went limp, unable to hold her weight. She clamped her fist tightly around the coolant line, hanging on with all her strength. Looking down to see what was wrong, she choked back a gasp at the view of her severed legs falling toward the ground.
Then something cut through her arm, and the Airthan Node was soaring away while the ground rushed up.
* * * * *
Iris completed the connection to the node and established the buffers within her body and mind, ready to facilitate the transfer between the shard and the node.
Here goes nothing, she thought, knowing that if Amavia were present, she’d scold Iris for trying something so foolhardy.
She activated the shard, passing its connection through to the node, watching as it copied itself, building up a version of its mind in the node, just as Earnest and Finaeus had programmed it to do.
Iris took a moment to marvel at the elegance of their solution, realizing that in some respects, it was similar to how the NOS AIs had transferred their minds into the substrate of Cerka Station’s expanses back in the Virginis System.
I wonder if they lifted the idea from our reports.
The transfer system registered success, and Iris sagged against the side of the node, then laughed at herself for having such an organic relief response.
-Do you really think that bit of poison will work?- a voice asked in Iris’s mind. -You’re too late.-
As the words hit her like a brick wall, Iris saw strings of white light emerge from the node and begin to encircle her. They passed through her body, lightly brushing against her core. Wherever they touched her neural matrices, thought evaporated.
Shit! Iris exclaimed, realizing that the ascended being was shredding her.
Panic nearly overwhelming her, she cast about for a way to escape, only to have vision leave her, immediately followed by her other senses.
The only thing that was left was the single strand of connectivity that ran into the Airthan Node—and the program to copy herself into the node’s substrate…alongside the poisoned shard.
Thought became more difficult as another section of her mind ceased responding, and Iris didn’t hesitate any longer. She activated the software and shrieked wordlessly as her mind disintegrated.
The last coherent thought she had was a morbid curiosity about whether or not it was the transfer or the ascended AI that was shredding her mind.
DEPARTURE
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 walked through the ship with a Widow’s measured pace, finding that she knew the way to the bridge by heart—a bit of knowledge that disturbed her a bit if she thought about it for too long.
I’m Cary Richards, daughter of Tanis Richards and Joseph Evans.
She repeated those words in her mind, concentrating on memories of her childhood, of growing up on the Intrepid and then Carthage.
But those memories were mixed with others. She remembered attending Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, her first flight into space, seeing the initial construction of the Mars 1 Ring.
And Finaeus. So many memories of Finaeus, and many she did not feel comfortable dwelling on. There were ones where love was still present, but more were laced with disgust and anger.
She remembered diving into the Europan Ocean, and later, building star systems with the FGT. She could recall the sequence of events that brought about the schism between not only Orion and the Transcend, but between her—Lisa—and Finaeus.
There were memories of Garza too, the man Lisa had married after leaving Finaeus. But that relationship had soured and eventually dissolved. Though he and Lisa still shared the same vision, she now despised the man, viewing him as the thing that had caused her to lose Finaeus and Krissy.
Over so many millennia, she’d tried to forget her husband and daughter. But even here in the darkness, orbiting her dark star, those memories persisted.
Even when she’d tried to push away her humanity and become one of her own creations…they were still there.
Still haunting me.
Not me! Her!
Cary forced Lisa’s thoughts away yet again, determined to use them only as needed, but wondering how much of the other woman she’d already absorbed.
Are they just her memories? Or did I actually take in some part of her as well?
A minute later, she reached the bridge. Upon entry, she saw the Widows—these bearing white stripes—all working diligently at their stations.
T101 rose as Cary entered and walked to the holotank.
“The anomaly is here, A1,” she said, highlighting the location where Cary knew her father’s ship to be waiting.
“Have we picked up any emissions after the initial echo from the gate?”
“No,” T101 shook her head. “We’ve not run active scan across the region. That would certainly alert them to our knowledge of their presence.”
“Of course,” Cary replied matching Lisa’s stance and pattern of speech from memories of when she’d addressed her bridge crew. “We must assume that this is either the Transcend, or the ISF—though I’m leaning toward the ISF. We know of the Transcend’s capabilities, and would be able to spot their ships.”
“What are your orders, A1?”
A1 gazed at the holotank, looking at the positions of the stealthed ships that drifted five light seconds out from the Perilous Dream. She was relieved that they were far enough that an immediate strike against the Falconer was not a risk. She needed to buy more time.
She
passed the locations of the stealthed ships to Faleena who she knew would send them on to her father.
“Issue orders for Group 1 to ease in toward the anomaly. Slowly, we don’t want to give ourselves away. When the group is within fifty thousand kilometers, we’ll attack simultaneously. Our intel has led me to believe that the ISF cannot use their stasis shields while in stealth, so that will be our one chance to disable their ship.”
“Understood, A1. I will issue the orders,” T101 replied and returned to her station.
Cary nodded in satisfaction and turned to face the command chair. She was sitting on the edge of the seat, contemplating her options, when an alert flared on her HUD, also showing up on the bridge’s main display.
“It is a drone from General Garza,” T101 said.
Cary nodded and accessed the message.
A1 breathed a sigh of relief. Garza’s demand was the perfect cover for avoiding conflict with her father’s ship. Something that Cary didn’t want to see happen, but that A1 was indifferent to.
Stop it! Cary thought. There’s no way I’m going to harm my father or his ship.
It made sense that she wouldn’t. Lisa Wrentham had had a father, and she’d never harbored him any ill will.
“General Garza has demanded that we go to Karaske immediately,” A1 informed T101. “Activate the gate. We’re jumping.”
“A1, are you sure? What about the ISF ship?”
“Inform Group 1 to proceed as planned. Either that ISF ship stays stealthed and is destroyed here, or it follows us and is destroyed by Garza’s defenses. Either way, it will not survive much longer.”
“Very well, A1.”
A1 nodded in satisfaction and sat back in her command chair. The action triggered the two hard-Link connections to attach to her armored body.