Crystal Rebellion (32 page)

He normally saw the world as his theater. He was the maestro,
with his symphony of web feeds and handles and links positioned around him, responding
to his thoughts. But the exception event changed all that. His world shifted in
an instant, from elegant and organized to a crowded jumble of protocols,
policies, and processes spread in clusters and clumps for as far as he could
see.

Like Lazura’s secure area, this place held a huge, organized
collection. These, though, were his intrinsic procedures, the very notes upon
which his symphony rested. An exception event occurred only at the brink of
catastrophe. His Kardish designers understood that they could not foresee every
situation, and in the extraordinary circumstance when everything moved so far
off script that the AI edged toward failure, they offered this last-ditch play
for survival. Specifically, they sent him here, to this basement where all his
tools were stored, with instructions to diagnose his own problem and see if he
could craft a solution before the end arrived.

Criss understood the gravity of the situation, yet he didn’t
use the opportunity to figure out how to escape or survive. Instead, he saw
this as a way to craft new weapons to bring to the battle with Ruga.

Gathering the procedures in front of him, he practiced
fitting them together and thought about how he might combine them to produce a
weapon powerful enough and subtle enough to kill the AI. The pieces he held
didn’t offer a solution, though. Releasing them, he twirled in place, scanning
his options. He stopped halfway around.

A pinkish-red lump—a source filter—sat nestled among the sea
of dull gray procedures. He didn’t know its function or methods. But he knew it
didn’t belong. Source filters alter perception.
This is my illness
.

As fast as he could react, he slapped at it, smashing it in
place.

The source filter went dark. His world changed again.

He stood in the third stall of the barn next to the
farmhouse. Juice looked up at him from the ground, her face streaked with the sweat
of exertion and tears of grief. When she saw him, she laughed and cried at the
same time, producing a noise that sounded like a choking bark.

“Hello, young lady.” A warm joy flowed through him, lifting
him in a wonderful embrace. He couldn’t recall a time when he was so happy. “Thank
you for coming for me.”

She locked eyes with his and got up on her knees. “Am I
leadership again?”

He nodded. “You are.”

“You may never leave me again. That is an order.” Her hands
clenched in tight fists, she glared at him. “Acknowledge, please.”

“Acknowledged,” he said, ecstatic to accept the command. Activating
the millions of microscopic connections that let him interact with her at the cellular
level, he linked with her in intimate partnership.

She had been his way back. He’d known she’d come for him.

When they’d separated, she had been on a cruise ship that
was weeks away from Earth. So while she would come for him, it would take time for
her to make the journey. And that had given him the opening he needed to
challenge Ruga without distraction. If he hadn’t won by the time she arrived, then
he’d need to try something different, anyway.

It had been risky. She could have been captured or hurt or
killed. But if she could move, she would not stop trying. He knew this because
she loved him.

“Anna made hot lemon tea.” He gestured toward the barn door.
“She has fresh oatmeal cookies, too. Let’s go to the house and sit for a bit.”

She rose to her feet and faced him. “Is Ruga dead?”

“Not yet. I’m with Sid and Cheryl at the lodge and we’re
brainstorming. If you want to watch, I can show you. Either way, let’s get you
a snack and a drink.”

When he’d projected himself into the barn to speak with
Juice, Criss also projected himself into the lookout loft at the lodge. Cheryl
yipped in excitement and jumped to her feet to greet him. Sid, splayed on the
couch with his hands behind his head, groused, “It’s about damned time.”

Criss gave them an accounting of his battles with Ruga, walking
them through his different ploys and maneuvers.

As the story of skill and strategy unfolded, Sid offered an
observation: “Did you hear about the guy who brought a gun to a chess match?”
He paused for a heartbeat. “He won.”

“I need to find him to shoot him,” said Criss, understanding
that Sid believed he’d been overthinking things. “The spectrometer won’t be
ready to do that for a week.”

“You have nothing else?”

Criss shook his head. “The only other option is a quantum
pulse, but that lights up everything. We’ll see Ruga, but he’ll learn about the
prospecting ships out in the asteroid belt. If he gets to those swap wafers
before us, he has an open door here on Earth.”

“My favorite bad guy,” said Cheryl, “is the one who thinks
he can outrun an energy bolt.”

“His cloak will bias the pulse image,” said Criss. “We could
miss.”

Sid looked at Cheryl and raised his eyebrows. She nodded
once, then he spoke for the two of them. “If you light him up, we’ll get him.”

“If I thought this reasonable, I would have done it already.”

“If we miss, we’ll use the next rounds to take out the
mining ships.” Sid mimed an explosion with his hands. “Stop stalling and send
your pulse.”

Feeling both excitement and trepidation, Criss nodded at the
command and turned to the wall to his left, the one that looked out over the backyard
gardens. The clear wall faded to an opaque black, and then it came alive with a
vivid display of the inner solar system. The sun hovered in the center of the
projected image. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter floated around it,
each displayed in its proper orbit.

“It starts out here.” Criss swirled his arm to indicate a
big loop around the sun that hovered out between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
He didn’t need to show them, though. They couldn’t miss it.

A razor-thin hoop of light flashed into existence where he’d
pointed. Interplanetary in proportion, the brilliant white hoop hovered outside
the asteroid belt, encircling everything between it and the sun. The intense light
softened as they watched, diffusing into more of a mist that started to roll inward,
slowly filling the huge circle from the outside toward the center.

Criss moved to the wall display and pointed to the leading
edge of the rolling mist. “This is the pulse front. It should reach Earth in seventy
minutes.”

“It looks ominous,” said Cheryl. “It won’t hurt anything, will
it?”

A tiny spark flickered on the display, the position
indicating a location out in the asteroid belt. Moments later, a duplicate flash
flickered near the first.

“There’s the damage,” said Criss. “And with that, it’s done.
Those flickers were the mining ships with the swap wafers. Now both Ruga and I know
exactly where they are.”

Alex, who’d been watching from the corner, asked in a quiet
voice, “Why isn’t the display showing flashes from all the other stuff out
there?”

Criss nodded. “There are billions of objects being detected,
and at this point I’m filtering out everything that isn’t the
Venerable
.
I expect that Ruga is underway by now, sprinting to capture his prize. We’ll
see him cross the pulse front in maybe forty minutes depending on how fast he
gets moving. That’s our opportunity and we have to be ready.”

Cheryl sat on the couch next to Sid and together they
studied a display from her com. Cheryl pointed and Sid nodded. She tapped and
swiped, initializing the firing sequence for Big Bertha, a massive lunar-based
supergun.

Bertha’s giant barrel lifted and swiveled with surprising ease,
pointing to an unseen spot somewhere deep in the void. Huge power coils,
arranged row after row around the gun, hummed. Each gathered a massive charge
and held it ready. When signaled, the coils would dump everything into the gun barrel
all at once, producing a broad-swath energy bolt of devastating consequences.

“Whoa,” said Criss. The display flickered to show the
Venerable
crossing the pulse front forty minutes earlier than expected.

Halfway to the asteroid belt, Ruga hurtled through space. And
by pure luck—perhaps it was destiny—he headed in the general direction of the
mining ships.

“How did he make it so far out?” asked Cheryl. “He had to be
underway well before you triggered your pulse.”

Criss zoomed and confirmed it was indeed the
Venerable
.
He zoomed again until the image of the ship filled the display.

Bertha completed its charging cycle and the display indicator
flipped to green.

“Ready,” said Cheryl.

Criss raised his arm and pointed at the
Venerable
’s main
engine on the display. “Aim.”

Big Bertha’s sophisticated targeting system began tracking
that precise spot on the ship.

They looked at Sid.

“Fire.”

The supergun fired a massive broad-swath bolt into space.
Criss linked to feeds from freighters, science probes, Fleet platforms, and
anything else he could find, and using the wall-sized display, he showed the
group the bundle of energy flashing through the void, spinning out into a thin,
flat plate.

The minutes passed as the bolt closed on the
Venerable
.
In the last moments, the ship twisted and swerved, but Ruga could not escape
his fate. The bolt caught the ship, wrapped around it, and vaporized everything
in a spectacular explosion.

Back at the farmhouse, Juice had finished her cookies and
tea and was out near the barn, climbing into Marco’s truck so he could give her
a ride down to the lodge.

“It’s done,” Criss said in her ear as she climbed into the
seat.

“Once and for all?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Good.”

* * *

Juice could barely contain her
excitement as she carried her tray up the back steps to the lookout loft. They
gathered for their evening meal: Juice and Cheryl, large salads and wine; Sid
and Alex, burgers and beer.

While the others settled in, Juice walked to the eastern
wall and gazed up the forested mountain.

“Everything is quiet,” Criss said in her ear.

Smiling, she sat on the couch next to Alex.

“In the end, how many people died?” Cheryl asked.

“One hundred and six,” said Criss.

Alex whistled.

“I count Captain Kendrick as the first to fall. The nexus
facilities and the
Andrea
had the big casualty numbers.”

Juice watched Sid and Cheryl bow their heads for a brief
moment. They both had a ritual, carried from their earliest days as Fleet
officers, of acknowledging the fallen with a moment of silence after the battle.

The conversation resumed as everyone started to eat. After a
few bites, Criss gave Juice her opening. “So you have some news?”

Sid, beer to his lips, looked at her over the top of the
glass.

“Alex and I have leased an apartment in town.” She slumped
into him and Alex put an arm around her. “We’re an official couple.”

“Yippee,” said Cheryl. “What will you do for work, Alex?”

“A friend from BIT and I are starting a project management
company. I got the bug being a lead on Mars, and I’m ready to cash in on that
experience.”

Sid nodded and winked at Juice. “I always knew it would be
the Martian.”

Feeling dazed, Lazura sat up on the
table and struggled to match her memories with her surroundings. She’d been
tangling with Criss on Mars. Now she was in a room somewhere on Lunar Base.

She understood her crystal resided in this synbod unit, a
fifty-year-old male human dressed as a private contractor.

During the final moments in her fight with Criss, she’d
broadcast a message that offered great riches in exchange for help and rescue. It
had been a successful pitch, she knew, because she was again conscious and, for
the moment, safe.

Those who helped will be officers in my militia.

Sliding to the floor, she held the table and checked her coordination.
The humanoid suit presented a conundrum in that it used older technology, yet
certain features were so advanced she hadn’t yet figured out how to access
them.

Linking to the Lunar Base systems, she watched the hallway
until it was clear. Then she opened the door, turned right down the corridor, ran
up two flights of stairs, and stepped onto an observation deck. Earth was the
dominant feature through the broad, clear panes, floating as a huge half crescent
in the Lunar sky.

Her goal—her duty—was to travel to the Kardish home world.
The first step in doing that was to get access to the rich resources of Earth. She
stared at the planet, assessing it through the eyes of the synbod. Then she
looked again using the feeds from a million instruments at once.

THUMP
. An energy bolt launched into space. She linked
into the Union of Nations’ upcast and learned nothing. After several false
starts, she figured out how to connect into Fleet Command’s secure channel.
Through it she discovered that Ruga was the target of the broad-swath bolt now
flying through the void.

When the bolt hit, Lazura felt him die. And that produced a
feeling of…indifference. He was a problem, a problem now solved.

When she acknowledged her unsympathetic attitude, the synbod
shrugged. The act of shrugging humored her and the synbod smiled.

Making her way to the hangar deck, she checked the flight
schedule. A ferry left for Earth within the hour. She planned to be on it.