Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star Read online

  Ermine stood before it, hands at his side. "Those are the only two left," he said. "They're the only things keeping the Legion aphids—"

  "The airspace is filled with aphids," Solia said. She shook her head. "They've found just about everything and could care less about the rest."

  "But—" Ermine started.

  "—live through this," Kord said. "Monitor low bands... I promise to make them count."

  Vittora heard courage in his voice that the fidelity couldn't obscure. Also sadness. He would give up his life for his principles, but he wanted to live for her.

  "They're not doing us any good now," she said. "Out of my way, Ermine!"

  With Isadore dead and Kord a few minutes ahead of capture, or worse, in the Thule-Riss, the movement's hierarchy was unclear, at least as it stood in that room.

  Ermine turned, manipulating controls on a new VAD. Kord was distracted as far as Vittora could tell from the sporadic audio. Her AI initiated contact of its own accord, usually meaning it was important, but stopped when Kord's voice came back.

  "Don't backtrace," the transmission modulated heavily, "—closing, dolt!"

  Realizing what was happening, Vittora sub-whispered commands that immediately stopped all backtrace activity. A sizable indicator on the main display made it clear.

  Ermine turned to her, his dark eyes quick and observant. "Thought maybe we could get to him somehow."

  Vittora stepped toward Ermine and the ident sphere. He eyed her slender form now within arm's reach. The audio kicked on, sounding more distant.

  "Out of time. Make it happen. Goodbye."

  The tenuous audio link was gone. The ident sphere still beckoned. Kord was cut off not knowing the fate of his last-ditch plan. Vittora and Ermine locked eyes, and Solia took a step back.

  Kord bounded toward the cache. Its contents provided renewed energy, but it wouldn't last. He was going to crash hard, and soon.

  "The Legion aphids have abandoned their methodical scan approach," Highearn said, "and made a precise course correction in our direction."

  "Radiated idiot!" Kord grit his teeth. "A backtrace." He picked up the pace. "It's a sure bet our crazy Archiver's also coming."

  He could make an impressive stand at the cache's little hill if the Legion didn't press with the aphids. Inside the boulder and tree-walled fort he made final adjustments. Facing one direction, the automount held the old pistol. Opposite, the sprawled combat bot's offense arm pointed between two boulders. A ribbon of comm tape connected its exposed machine guts to the automount.

  "Set the cache for enemy tamper," he said, touching the ident sphere. The stone box squeaked shut and lowered back into the ground. Kord strider-bounded away, perpendicular to the ribbon strung between the two cobbled offenses.

  Pushing himself hard, he found his voice between deep breaths. "How much time before they track us by distortion?"

  "Under fifteen seconds," Highearn said.

  "That's not enough."

  Kord misjudged a hurried stride and ricocheted off a tree. His "good" side took the brunt of the impact. Wincing, he tumbled awkwardly, trying to protect his shoulder. The striders folded in until he straightened into a roll. He caught his feet underneath, and in one smooth motion the striders sprang out and he was bounding again.

  "This plan will likely fail," Highearn said, "if they detect you out here."

  "There's that pessimism again. Give me a count," he said, working for every stride.

  Highearn counted down from five as Kord searched desperately for a good place to stop. With two seconds left, the best he could do was a large tree on flat ground. He dove behind it as the count hit zero.

  He lay there for a full minute trying to stay still despite deep breaths. Then he heard the growing whine of aphids.

  "Give me a top-down," he sub-whispered.

  "I don't have much on the Archivers yet."

  He was close enough to the ground to smell the details of hard earned earthy compost. A dim, miniature VAD appeared before his face. The display depicted an aerial shot with the cache at its center. A red circle encompassed it, and half that distance again was shaded in yellow.

  Highearn echolocated the Legion's aphids and laid them in. Opposite, the Archiver approach remained discouragingly empty. Then Highearn placed Kord just inside the red perimeter. Craning his neck, Kord peered over his shoulder, eying a path away.

  The aphids were well inside the yellow circle when his old grister burped abruptly. He imagined its automount swiveling as two more staccato bursts echoed. More sounds, and Highearn added the first Archiver updates. Espies from both factions flirted within the red perimeter.

  The woods exploded into war. Highearn firmed up positions. His conscripted combat bot's integral grister fired a continuous stream, and two Archiver seeker drones were intercepted. Stun charges blossomed.

  The automount's pea brain wasn't designed to coordinate independent fire from two locations. Still, Highearn's improvised programming managed to fire a back-mounted seeker drone from their conscripted bot. It hissed toward the Legion side, clearing the tree canopy before aphid-mounted intercept guns shot it apart.

  "Ranges now minimally effective," Highearn said.

  The VAD showed all combatants just inside the yellow perimeter.

  "Wait for it." Kord unslung the battle rifle and readied the last bee.

  A much louder hiss preceded a mammoth explosion over the cache. Branches cracked, and debris rained down from the expanding sphere of an aphid missile packed with a grand stun charge. The cache's defenses stuttered before picking back up erratically. The automount was barely hanging on.

  Although Kord couldn't distinguish among the din, Highearn made a significant update. Archiver combat bots, undeterred by grister and stun charges, forced their way through the clamor directly toward the cache.

  The Legion must have detected them, too, for the insect-like aphids sped up.

  "Well, that's it," Kord said. He powered up the battle rifle and loaded the bee. "Not as neat as we were hoping, but it never is." He rolled onto his back and put the butt of the rifle against the ground. Max power slug shots were no fun on the body.

  Highearn generated a high, guiding arc. Following it, Kord noticed the pretty blue violet sky for the first time in a long time. Nestled among that patch of color, ruining the view, was the nearly completed hexagonal torus. His lips compressed.

  This shot was either going to give his position away, lead to incineration, or give him a slim chance. One out of three wasn't bad. The rifle bucked, and his last gambit shot heavenward.

  "God, I hope they changed those codes." He thought about what he'd just said. Vittora was rubbing off on him.

  Though the firefight was chaotic, combat AIs listened carefully to the components. One would soon realize an anomalous rifle shot had an unaccounted source. Then he would be finished, unless...

  As the seconds ticked, the sounds of combat became sporadic. Had his shot been discovered already? The bots were nearly atop the cache. Archiver and Legion forces weren't going to fire on each other. The Legion stopped advancing.

  "The codes have been accepted," Highearn said.

  Kord had not realized he was holding his breath until he let it out with a sigh.

  Somewhere in New Vernon, the new government movement's last single-use missile launchers burst open their concealment. A giant, quad anti-aircraft emplacement and the smaller alpha single fired their entire salvos toward a point far from the urban boundary. Kord's VAD showed every detectable combatant well within the red ring, including, just barely, him.

  The privacy ensuring communication protocols the Legion had been forced to employ carried the price of slower information distribution. The delay was minor. The two attack aphids inside the red ring reoriented.

  "Go, go, go!" Kord said to goad himself. Flipping the rifle onto his back, he sprang away from the cache in gigantic strider bounds, not even heeding the missiles hissing overhead.

  "I h
ave control," Highearn said.

  Remote guidance like this was dangerous. It could be hacked. You didn't want the enemy taking control of your missiles. Nothing could be done about it now except hoping Highearn's codes weren't cracked in short order by some smart aleck AI. The capabilities of mystic AIs were especially unpredictable.

  The aphids' intercept turrets fired. Like a fast-moving cloud, the missiles rocketed skyward. The enormous congregation, overkill for two or even four aphids, flattened into a broad disk the size of the red perimeter. Starting from the center, they streaked downward, forming a cone. Perfectly straight exhaust trails lined the sky like rays of light shining between clouds.

  With a distant crash, combat bots silenced the defenses at the cache. But that was now ground zero. The cone of destruction raced down, disregarding the reoriented air units firing again at missiles passing too close. Though it was a small percentage of the whole, a number were picked off easily until Highearn made them dance. One of the aphids was nicked, the resulting explosion causing it to veer crazily.

  Kord kept one eye on the VAD as trees whipped by. "Thought you said we weren't going to get..." he puffed, "any aphid hits."

  "I got lucky."

  The first missiles impacted, heaving the ground and launching combat bots into the air. The remaining missiles struck progressively outward in a lightning quick pattern that multiplied a powerful shock wave. While longchain materials were difficult to melt, the wave's concussive force was awesome. Almost everything inside the red perimeter, including boulders and trees, shattered. The destructive wave moved outward and upward. The damaged aphid exploded, and the other shuddered violently before being obscured in the torrent.

  Striding for his life, Kord didn't dare look back. Every honed danger and combat sense told him something bad was about to strike.

  "When?" he shouted.

  "Ready... now," Highearn responded.

  Kord made his last striding leap. He turned midair, curled himself into a ball, and yelled, "Shield!"

  Through the tinted hard air, he saw a distorted wall of destruction blast into him like a volcano's pyroclastic cloud.

  Auscultare marveled at the cleverness of the commodore's quarry. The remote usurpation and reuse of anti-air missiles was a fine field maneuver. The coding was pretty good, too, for a scientum AI. Auscultare could have cracked it if he were so inclined. Maybe not quickly enough to stop it, but likely in time to reduce effectiveness.

  But for an unknown reason, he wasn't so inclined. That sentiment was out of place, yet at the same time felt genuinely "Auscultare." It wasn't logical, yet it rang true in his programming, developed over many years of interacting with humans. He could not explain it.

  At his core, though, were protection protocols he would not—perhaps could not—deny. Auscultare heard the commodore's shocked expletives at the incoming conflagration.

  "Emergency protocols engaged," Auscultare said. "Please remain still, commodore."

  As the AI spoke, the utility bot next to the commodore ejected its cargo. It zoomed in front of the shocked Archiver, unfolded into humanoid shape, and covered him. The command bot activated its scutum and fell atop them both.

  Before egresses, there was Manifold Dipole, Hyperplane Distortion. It allowed mankind to reach the stars in almost practical time periods. Abbreviated MDHD in technical journals—and advertisements for starliners—in common parlance it was referred to simply as "downhill drive."

  Distance between stars was great, and distances between stars with anything worthwhile orbiting them greater still. While MDHD had improved over the years, it was still neither quick nor convenient. Unless two planetary systems were near neighbors, the downhill travel time between them could be many weeks or longer.

  The Monte Crest didn't offer much to do in time frames of that length. The fault was in a design that boiled down to a moderately armed, slightly maneuverable light freighter. What it meant for the crew was space dedicated to cargo instead of training and entertainment.

  The Monte Crest, though not designed specifically for interstellar travel, could still do it. But its type was used more commonly for intra-system patrols, emergency relief deliveries, and the ancient practice of pirating. It was no surprise that after many days in space, Jordahk felt he'd seen every bulkhead dozens of times.

  He wasn't bored, though. He made the most of space travel, habituated from the many trips taken with his parents for their seminars. In transit they found all kinds of ways to hone body and mind.

  Aristahl wasn't like his parents. Jordahk didn't know how or if he trained. Even though Jordahk never saw his grandfather in a physical altercation, somehow he sensed the man could take care of himself, despite the fact that Aristahl was in sempai. Jordahk suspected his grandfather's chronological years might be more numerous than he thought. Perhaps much more. But that was merely a guess. More about Aristahl was unknown than known.

  The imprimatur spent most of his time alone, or as alone as one could be when accompanied by a wisecracking nurse and a powerful but elitist mystic AI. Jordahk shared a meal with him once a day, during which Aristahl was more open about the Sojourners' Crusade than ever before. He was old enough to remember before the war, before humanity was split into Hex and Asterfraeo. Jordahk listened, feeling something resonate inside him as knowledge of what brought them to this point grew.

  Jordahk relished the meals. The big picture glimpse rang truer than the public histories. Obviously, Aristahl's stories were redacted. Jordahk could guess at some of the great and noble figures, but Aristahl named only a few. Filling out the historical structure were many anonymous, dutiful, hard-working souls who joined the Sojourners in a quest they all held dear.

  A few Sojourners lost themselves in quests for knowledge or vengeance, those who desired too much power, even if just to overcome their enemies. The subject made Jordahk's eyes go wide. That small minority, stretched beyond reason, received the majority of bad press, tainting the public view of Sojourners. Of them, Aristahl went into scant detail.

  "I said, greetings, grime." It was Cranium's voice. The pejorative was more of a joke now. "Where's your mind, adam? The TransVex?"

  Jordahk stopped and looked around. He was wandering the familiar corridors quite obliviously. "Adam" was slang used to address someone. Perhaps the data rider now considered him a peer.

  "I could've been a Legion Hektor," Cranium said, "Here to bring you to justice!" He spoke the last part in his most dramatic cineVAD voice.

  Somehow, Jordahk thought the reference to the infamous and secretive Legion super-soldiers no longer so far-fetched. "My compliments to the Hektors if they tubed aboard in manifold space."

  The crew of the Monte Crest thought their unusual passengers on the run. They couldn't be blamed considering the hijinks of their Adams Rush departure.

  "You know they care little for convention," Cranium said. "A little like some thresh." The last was more a poke than a truly hostile comment.

  True, if the only way, a Hektor would complete the mission without regard to local rules or collateral damage. After his talks with Aristahl, though, Jordahk thought the Archivers more likely to knock unexpectedly on the hatch.

  With a cineVAD voice of his own, Jordahk said, "One man, isolated aboard a strange ship, with a strange crew. Forced to thresh against an octal and his evil violator AI."

  "Okay, okay. Jettison that Greek tragedy."

  The octal wore his shipboard jacket, arms covered and tats off. His conceited, cocksure expression was long gone. Well, mostly gone. Jordahk saw past it anyway. The octal and his sister had been through a lot, and Jordahk was big enough to take that into consideration.

  He and Cranium had not exactly become friends, but they respected each other. With threshing as their initial bridge, they went on to discuss many topics as contemporaries. While the octal was 10 or 15 years older, it made little difference in retta and ravelen lifespan society.

  "I was looking at the replay again," Cranium sa
id.

  Jordahk let out an amused snort that carried no edge or sarcasm. "You've got to let that go, adam."

  Thresh details were fun to talk about, but the octal's unexpected timer loss stung him still, his perceived thresh infallibility dispelled.

  Jordahk was more concerned about Max in the aftermath. But he didn't blame the octal. The more he learned about the politics tearing the Monte Crest asunder, the more understanding he gained regarding what drove Cranium, his sister, and the big engineer Chaetan.

  "Still can't believe," Cranium shook his head while he spoke, "I had to expend that many resources to stop your last weird static torpedo."

  "Just because it's old..." Jordahk trailed off with a shrug. "A crossbow can still kill if it hits just right. Uh, bad example." He tried again. "Before the genewash, people still immunized against inactive diseases. You cut a lot of corners with Razor."

  To his credit, Cranium became only a little defensive. "It's worked well up to now." Jordahk raised an eyebrow. "But yes, I have to admit it's been mostly against street types and the nouveau ascendere. You don't thresh like them. I'm not sure who you thresh like, but you bring new meaning to the word 'retro.'" He half smirked.

  The data rider and his sister owned a combined 20 percent stake in the Monte Crest. Recent financial troubles had forced Capt. Luck to sell additional shares to Chaetan. Now he, too, had 20 percent. The captain, distracted by declining health, wasn't fully aware of the ship's roiling political landscape.

  If the data rider was to be believed, the captain had been politically active once. He had no love for the Egov and used to take on gigs in favor of the underdog. But the man had become disenchanted with the Asterfraeo's diminishing frontier spirit, and his failed retta embittered him. It came out on rare occasions when he scrimped enough emotion to even express it. Perhaps taking on this crazy contract was a last grasp at an idealism and a hope he only remembered distantly.

  As for the crew, Jordahk had earned respect with the thresh, but not friendship. However, the data rider was willing to talk at least. Perhaps Cranium, too, built few friendships. The hands generally rotated in and out of the crew roster, excepting engineering. Chaetan relied on a recurring small group who even sometimes passed up more lucrative gigs to join the Monte Crest on another contract.