Rise of the Forgotten

by Rebecca Mickley

  “Understood.” It was their call, and I understood their position; there was no way they could let this stand.

  “If that is all, Shifted One, I have much to attend to here. I must update the council about this human Gate network,” Darnack said.

  “Actually, I have one more question, and I don't know if you can answer it, you may have to do some digging,” I added. It was a long shot, but there was a pattern in Daedalus and Umbra I couldn’t ignore. Erebus Industries had an uncanny understanding of Mendian technology.

  “I will do my best to help Shifted One, but please be quick,” he said, obviously rushed by the developing crisis.

  “Has a Mendian delegation, scout or even Nasarian, ever been sent to Earth, at any time in our history?” I wondered briefly where I could requisition my tinfoil hat.

  “You ask a strange question,” He replied.

  “I’m serious. Maybe look into it for me, anything, even an old legend would be something to go on. I don’t have anything solid, but I have enough to ask questions,” I continued.

  “Very well Shifted One, I will look into it. Darnack out.” The feed cut out, and I waited two minutes while Jill finished up her conversation with Jon, who was naturally freaking out.

  It felt like the beginning of a very long day.

  Chapter 35

  Aboard the Bridge of the Zulfiqar, standing with Jill behind me, I had an odd experience of near deja vu, as if I was re-enacting a scene from my distant past.

  “Etrana stands ready. Our ship is your ship, yes yes!” she chirped and warbled.

  It was time to begin.

  “Ki-Wan-Jo, open Earth Diplomatic Command Red Line.” It was the direct access point to the highest levels of UEA government, established under the Treaty of Light negotiated by Dawkins. The line was modeled off a similar version used during the cold war. It maintained an unofficial line of communication between two warring super powers, allowing them to do more than just come to blows.

  “Establishing protocol!” Ki-Wan-Jo exclaimed excitedly.

  “This is Colonel Mathis of Earth Central Command, military liaison and contact point for the Red Line. Go!” he snapped over the com.

  “You are recording?” I asked.

  “Confirmed, In accordance with the Treaty of Light, all messages will be relayed to UEA Minister of State, and Chancellor, followed by a secure communications event,” he parroted his mission, as he had been trained.

  “I am Key, of my own House, and I speak for the Mendia, and the Council of the Elders. Earth will hear my words.” I was pulling the protocol directly from my memories of the treaty my predecessor had negotiated.

  “We demand the return of our abducted citizens, the Matron of House Detraxia and her aides without pause or delay. Failure to do so will result in a unilateral declaration of war. Receive the words of the Mendian people,” I intoned, delivering the message.

  “I have it. Per Treaty of Light, you will have a reply in six hours. Mathis, out.” The line clicked off.

  “Ki-Wan-Jo, please send a message to Darnack and update him on our progress,” I asked more than ordered; this wasn’t my ship.

  “Roger Roger, Ki-Wan-Jo transmits!” He punched keys with youthful abandon enraptured by his role one the bridge.

  Time danced in the hourglass, the last sands were falling. There was so much left to do, and so little time left to do it. Six hours till reply, then negotiations, then war. I was seized by a sudden sense of failure that shook the deepest parts of me.

  All of the blood and tears of the last decade and it was all falling to ruins around my paws.

  “Secure communications request for Key, from Chancellor Apep,” Ki-wan-Jo chirped. My blood went cold. He was moving ahead of schedule. “Chancellor Apep requests a private audience with Key.”

  “Etrana, may I use the bridge briefing room?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Of course. Silly question!” she replied, and I hopped in with Jill, as the doors slid closed behind me. I stood in front of the monitor and she stayed slightly off screen.

  It briefly dawned on me that I had not yet pushed my second bug-fix patch. Sighing, I loaded my Latin program and disconnected my English sub routines.

  I was getting rather accustomed to not understanding English when it suited me. With the translation protocols fully running, I opened the line to the bridge.

  “Paratus,” I thought, “Ready,” came the reply from my onboard vocal processor.

  He would not be able to catch me with a surprise shutdown request again this way.

  The demon appeared on the monitor.

  “Key, such a curious affectation,” he announced, dismissively, as if he was regarding an insect.

  “Ego sentio meruit eam” …. “I feel I earned it,” I replied.

  “This isn’t a social call. Return the Matron,” I demanded, having no time or patience for his games.

  “I wanted Darnack, you know,” he admitted. He was giving me everything I needed to expose him. It made no sense. He couldn’t be this arrogant. What wasn’t I seeing?

  “Keep talking, by all means,” I goaded him, and he grinned.

  “Going for the trope eh? The super villain monologue? You want to hear my big plan, push it out to the net, and win the day? Roll credits,” he chuckled, obviously enjoying himself.

  “You’re not taking this seriously,” I chided.

  “I assure you I am. It’s just that I’m still moving into my secret bunker at the base of the super volcano.” Now he was mocking me, and it was pissing me off.

  “I already have enough to end you as a chancellor. There still might be war, but with the files I have in my possession, I can bury your administration. Return the matron, liberate the morphic columns and I'll be content with your resignation and quiet retirement,” I ordered. It was time to take off the gloves.

  He sighed, looking suddenly bored.

  “Ok, I’ll walk you through it, since you're too blinded by nobility and stirring declarations to be useful. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that,” his words chilled me.

  simile infernum… I thought.

  He lifted a tablet and began punching commands into it. The screen drew back to two windows, Erebus occupied one side, my predecessor occupied another.

  Oh shit.

  “My name is Snow Dawkins, UEA colonial citizen and this is my recorded confession,” the file played.

  “For the last ten years, I have been working as an agent for the Mendian government, using my access as ambassador to grant them key access to both Central Command and the UEA government in the Hague."

  "Part of my mission was to sew a disinformation campaign designed to subvert faith in Earth First leadership, and aide the morphic and transgenic movements in the rightful conquest of Earth. We are the ones that have undergone the perfection of the Path of the Other. It is now left to us to purge those that will not evolve with us. I have been aided in this plot by Jon Harper, and Jill Saito."

  "This confession is being recorded in an agreement for leniency for my co-conspirators, as for myself, I throw myself on the mercy of the court.”

  “Don’t remember saying all that do you? Memory destruction got so much easier the more digital you became. You see, I needed a reason to start a war, but now that seems no longer necessary. Still, it’s good insurance. You try and expose me, I’ll expose you, and every morphic, to a special kind of human rage. They get genocidal when they feel threatened you know,” he laughed.

  “You don’t get to my position without knowing how to manage risk,“ he continued, quickly dropping the games.

  Strategically, he had the upper hand; with the fourth column in orbit, and the current tensions, it would be a bloody massacre.

  “You’ve made your point. What do you want?” I said, and he let the paused image of my tortured predecessor hang there, frozen in time on the lower part of the screen.

  Sadistic nothus

  “Surrender,” Erebus said. “Hand yourse
lf over to me. I’ll consider returning the matron, and not releasing your confession, but your cooperation with your debugging will be required to ensure it doesn’t leak out on Space News.”

  “That’s nothing. You’re offering nothing.” I felt as if I was falling, with a rope around my neck. Stuck in the inevitable moment just before the line goes taut and the world goes black.

  “Exactly, and I have no reason to not release that file now, it’s just not been very pressing. You understand things have been very busy around here of late. One of my labs was recently broken into, a ship was stolen. Nasty business. It’s the times,” he said, switching back to his bizarre, joking manner.

  There was a part of me that desperately wanted to deck him.

  “Anyway, take my offer back to your Mendian friends, Thoth, and think it over. My patience is not infinite, and honestly I’m very curious to see your choices. After all, some of my code will be involved in that process. Ciao.”

  The screen switched off as I quivered with rage.

  “Key?” Jill inquired, more worried about me in that moment than anything.

  In stony silence I sat there, beyond expression, beside myself with both despair and fury.

  There was no logic, there was no calm orderly process of routines and subroutines; there was nothing in my awareness at that moment but a white hot sea of rage, desperately homicidal as my vision pixelated and my world swooned around me.

  You will stay online... Not going to crash. Not now. I held on desperately to the internal words, like a mantra, as the storm raged around me.

  I wanted to kill him, had to kill him, up close, feel his blood on my paws. He had threatened everything, everything I loved, cherished, held dear, everything my predecessors had worked for and I had inherited. He was the scourge, the oncoming storm. He was the death that took children in the night and the son of a bitch had to pay.

  An instinct of survival, desperate and feral charged out of some deep part of me.

  “Get me Darnack!” I roared through the Com. Ki-Wan-Jo clicked on as Etrana entered the room, obviously considered.

  “Key…”

  “Get me Darnack, or I’m plugging in and doing it myself,” I screamed. Etrana winced, shocked, and pulled back wounded.

  It immediately tempered the storm that I had hurt her; within the torrents of rage, I found a point of calm and pulled back desperately from the brink.

  “I’m sorry. Truly I am sorry. I… I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid… I’m scared. Help me,” I said desperately. “I’m scared please, help me, please, I don't know what to do.” Systems were glitching on all fronts, I couldn’t process effectively. Words were strange, thoughts were worse. Shame, then fear, then rage, over and over like a twirling kaleidoscope of hell.

  Motor processing failed, and stability control with it. I tumbled to the ground and convulsed into a ball. It hurt.

  Cascade Failure in processes Aqd31156r though Xd565999… Resource Interrupt, Buffer Overload.

  “Fetch healer. Now, fly!” Etrana ordered. Distantly, I heard Ki-Wan-Jo summoning them to the bridge.

  “It’s ok Key, we are here. Try to talk,” Jill said, as always by my side. More subroutines went down, like circuit breakers popping open one by one, including my translation program. My English subroutines were still disabled.

  “Non intelligitis,” I reported.

  “The hell?” Jill said.

  The System is going down... Now!

  Core dump in process.

  Restarting…

  I blacked out, suddenly in the deepest sleep. Then, I was aware again, and sat up in the med bay.

  Systems Restored. Neural Activity detected, initiating logs.

  Jill and Etrana were standing nearby nervously. A monitor beeped beside the bed.

  “You’ve been out about an hour,” Jill announced.

  “56 minutes 32 seconds,” I corrected, checking through my internal logs.

  “Are you ok?” she asked.

  “Initial systems are checking out ok, but I’d prefer to not do that again any time soon. I think that was a kernel panic,” I replied.

  Distant memories of yelling at Etrana were among my last solid thoughts and they hung near the front of my awareness.

  “I apologize deeply for losing my temper like that.” The words felt hollow, chintzy.

  “Key, I was there, I heard the whole thing; I about lost my temper too, and I would have if I wasn’t so scared,” Jill answered honestly.

  “Key is new and still learning. Etrana will heal, we will grow closer from this, yes?” she asked and offered.

  “I hope so, I think I am going to need all of the friends I can get,” I answered back, honestly.

  “On that note, Harper is on his way in from the Excalibur. We need to bring him up to speed on all of this, and start making a plan. Key, war is coming. I have no doubt.” Jill's tone possessed a determination and an edge I had never heard in her before.

  “I agree. Etrana, this is going to be hard for you, but I am going to ask you to keep your distance from what we are going to be doing. You’re an official representative of your government and we cannot give the UEA a reason to attack Corvaldia,” I said, and Etrana looked puzzled.

  “We have a treaty with the humans, and we have nothing they could want, why would they attack?” she asked, innocently.

  “In a war, allies can sometimes suffer the same fate as combatants. It is not something I would expect your species to understand, having no history of large conflicts,” I explained, gently.

  “This whole process grieves and disturbs Etrana greatly. All should be friends, no reason for such dim. I do not understand this sadness,” she continued, using first person for emphasis.

  “Non-combatant Corvaldians should not be here in Earth orbit yes? Dangerous soon. We move to Venus orbit perhaps? Or Mars?” She asked, seeking advice, out of her element.

  “I’d recommend Mars,” Jill volunteered. “It’s closer to the edges of the Inner Space boundary, but close enough where the UEA shouldn’t object. Not to mention it’s in control of the Marauder, a solid ally. Call it a training exercise, crew shakedown.” Her years working in government were apparent, always have an official excuse.

  “That’s brilliant. Also with everything pulling in towards Earth, it should be easier for the Mendians to pull you out from Mars orbit if it becomes necessary.” I echoed Jill’s point.

  “Etrana does not understand, but trusts. Etrana will go and begin arrangements,” she responded, and left.

  There were times when I deeply envied her innocence.

  “Let’s get down to Alpha-889 and make preparations to leave.” It was too risky to the Corvaldians for us to remain any longer. I needed to talk to both Darnack and Harper before I decided where I was to go next.

  “Read my mind, Boss,” Jill replied.

  “I’m not Snow,” I corrected gently.

  “I know, but you still need me, so shut up,” she answered in a good humored tone.

  I would have smiled if I had the ability.

  Chapter 36

  Harper had arrived. Darnack was on the central monitor of the 889; it was essentially a war council.

  “The most I can do is what I promised previously,” he admitted. “What you’re asking for is a level of treason I can’t tolerate.”

  “That’s the most important part, the safety of the Fourth Column. Earth will be well protected by the rest of the UEA, especially with no access to the defense grid like I asked,” I said, stating the obvious. “Darnack, where are we on evac?”

  “The council of Elders, in exchange for your services, and in humanitarian interest has agreed to move the Fourth column to Centioc One, far from human influence. Once there, we will establish relations and support for the colony,” Darnack reported.

  “It’s the founding of a new civilization, Key, free of Earth and its influences.” Jill’s tone was hopeful. I suppose after seeing the Ascension Protocol and a few weeks s
leeping in a hallway, she'd had her fill of human hospitality.

  “It’s an opportunity to start again,” I echoed. Across my awareness, every feed I was monitoring passively began to clamor for my attention. I pulled myself back, isolating from the inner noise.

  “I hate to break this up, but something big is hitting.” I put Space News up on the screen. Chancellor Apep, was standing at a podium, with a Mendian, the Matron of Detraxia and her two aides.

  “The humans have never been told the entire truth of the Mendian society; of the millennia of cruelty and second class status my House has endured because of an ancient wrong. We have fought hard to regain what place we have in their society but no longer. Two days ago, I requested asylum, aboard the UEA ship Intrepid, and Chancellor Erebus Apep has graciously granted it. I look forward to getting to know my new home,” the matron said, towering over a grinning Erebus, as flashbulbs erupted in a sea of white light that interrupted the feed.

  Harper’s com chimed. He raised it and clicked it on. “Harper, go ahead.”

  “The Orbital Militia has just been ordered to active status, sir, we need to return to the fleet” came the voice of a bored crewman from his shuttle.

  “Roger that, I know why, on my way; warm her up and get clearance from the bridge,” Harper ordered.

  “It was getting to the point where I needed to leave anyway,” Harper admitted. He was still a UEA soldier, and there were limits to where his honor would let him cooperate.

  “Be safe,” I said, knowing I most likely wouldn't see him again until after whatever was coming was over.

  “Yeah Jon, watch yourself out there,” Jill said, and hugged him fiercely.

  “Civilians,” he teased. “So dramatic,” he smiled, and left.

  I turned my attention back towards Darnack on the open com, the news report drifted in the background as the demon made his official statements.

  “The Zulfiqar is currently en route to Mars, and most of the fleet is retracting inward, I’ve found a hole in the grid here...” I sent coordinates in a secured packet, not wanting to speak them over even a secured line. “We will launch from there, and rendezvous with you, similar maneuver to when you brought us back from Corval. From there, we can return to the Nest, and begin planning next steps and working with the council. Does that plan seem amenable to you?” I asked. It was better, at this point, if I wasn’t in Earth controlled space.