Shadow Core - The Legacy (33 page)

The Epilogue

Planet Calder was not at all like Kade had been expecting. She had pictured an industrialised world, with technology as far as the eye could see, for that was the kind of world her former occupation would generally take her to. Cold places with no soul and incessant noise which threatened to drive visitors insane if they stayed for too long. 

But this planet seemed perfect, or at least as close to perfect as Kade's imagination could dream up.

A garden world not unlike old Earth, with large blue oceans covering most of the surface and extensive landmasses filled with plant and animal life.

The main colony settlement was located in the tropical region, with an expansive view of the nearby ocean and its crystal clear blue waters. And the bluest sky Kade had ever seen in her entire life. It all seemed so perfect from her new apartment's balcony window, up on the 77
^th
floor of one of the three main arcology buildings of the primary settlement. It was easy to understand why the Council was so adamant about protecting this place.

Kade was sat by the balcony, looking out to the sea in her shorts and tank-top as she enjoyed a perfect summer's day. The peace and quiet she was experiencing right now seeming almost unreal.

So much had happened; so much had been left unresolved. Had the outcome really been worth all the sacrifices, Kade wondered in silence.

Zen's body had been taken away from her by the Council, though they had let her keep her ship. And she still didn't know what had been the final fate of the Zenith. She had far too many questions and not nearly enough answers, but right now she needed a well-deserved rest.

“Ah! I needed that!” Jude said as she stepped out of the shower room wrapped in a white towel.

“You live right next door sis, why use my shower?” Kade asked without turning around.

“I like yours better.” Jude smiled and then asked in a concerned tone, “Are you saying you don't want me around anymore?”

“You know very well I didn't mean it that way,” Kade said warmly as she stared absent-mindedly into the sky, wondering what was to come.

“Good!” Jude said in a chipper mood as she headed to the room in order to get dressed.

“Are you really ready for tomorrow?” Kade asked, wondering how her sister could be in such a happy mood after all that had happened.

“Aren't you? After nearly a month here I thought you'd be itching to get back into space,” Jude replied.

“That I am! I've had about as much questioning from the Council as I can stand. As if we would know what it was they were trying to accomplish when they went to Sol. We barely got to know any of them!” Kade said with a heavy heart as she stared absent-mindedly at the pristine blue sky.

“At least they repaired our ship,” Jude said, trying to cheer up her sister.

“After putting us through two weeks of interrogation it's the least they could do. I had never realised just how many different ways a person can ask the same stupid questions until we came here. And after two weeks they just stop without explanation and give us these places, even offer to repair and refit the Icarus free of charge. Can these people get any more random?” Kade asked as her sister walked up and sat next to her.

“Probably,” Jude said as she opened a can of soda.

“Is that one of mine?” Kade asked as her sister started drinking her soda.

“Definitely.” Jude grinned as she gave her sister another can.

“Anyway...” Kade opened the can. “The real question is what to do now. The Icarus is probably gonna be on the colonies most wanted list for the rest of eternity, so we can't go back to our old lives. And I can't see there's much need for smuggling in this place.” Kade took a sip of her soda, looking depressed.

“I’ve got a smuggling job for you if you want it.” Kade heard a familiar voice say in her mind, as the sisters Cores started receiving a message.

“Zen!” Kade said happily as Jude nearly choked on her drink from the surprise.

Zen asked happily, “So you want the job?”

“Of course we do!” Jude replied without giving her smiling sister a chance to speak.

The following day...

The Icarus had cleared the atmosphere and was picking up speed as it tried to outrun a Calderian patrol ship. The authorities weren't too happy that the Icarus had refused a pre-departure inspection.

“When you said you had a smuggling job I wasn't expecting it was you that we'd be smuggling,” Kade said as she manoeuvred the Icarus in order to avoid the incoming fire from the patrol ship.

Zen asked with a concerned expression, “Regrets?”

“Nope.” Kade smiled. “But where are we going? We can't keep dodging this guy forever.”

“Behind that moon,” Zen said, pointing at one of the two moons of planet Calder.

“OK, hold tight, this could get interesting.” Kade smiled, happy to be back in space and to be reunited with Zen.

The patrol ship had a lock on the Icarus's engines; one well-placed shot would be enough to disable the ship. But before he could take the shot the Icarus performed a micro burst: traversing the distance to Calder's moon in a fraction of a second.

Unfortunately for Kade, the pilot of the patrol ship was as insane as she was and quickly followed suit.

“Cut your engines immediately!” The pilot of the patrol ship demanded as he took aim.

“We're here!” Zen said happily as the Icarus speedily approached the dark side of the moon.

Kade looked on in shock as she saw a large structure floating in space. Sparks of arc welders were readily visible across the hull of the large spaceship as countless maintenance drones performed repairs on the superstructure.

The chasing patrol ship immediately fired its retro-thrusters, bringing the vessel to a virtual halt as the pilot saw what he was approaching. He had no jurisdiction here, and he knew it.

The view-screen changed as the three young women looked on, now showing four familiar faces.

“Welcome home!” Drake smiled.

The Bonus

- Drake's Rescue -

In the tactical virtual environment...

...at the exact moment that Toby pointed at the fleet the Zenith's sensors started registering explosions inside the Regent.

“That wasn't me... I swear!” Toby said with a sheepish look, weirded out at the timing of it all.

Nexus screamed, “We need to leave, now!!”

“What's wrong?” Static asked, worried about the panic in her voice.

“The crew of the Regent has destroyed the control lines to the ship's main guns. They will be able to fire the thing manually. I can't stop them anymore. At this range even the Zenith's armour won't be enough!”

Toby didn't wait for orders, quickly uncrossing his arms and extending them forward as status screens flashed before his palms at an absurd rate. The Zenith immediately fired its manoeuvring engines, causing the ship to quickly spin around its centre of mass as it engaged the main engines to full power.

Toby could sense the strain being put on the ship's superstructure, as countless warnings were being generated from sensors all over the ship.

He was diverting all the power he could spare to the structural integrity fields, but the ship was low on energy. It had been maintaining a permanent disruption field for months, engaged its phased defence field, discharged the main gun several times in a row and performed a tactical jump. In short, the energy reserves of the Zenith were running fairly close to empty.

The Zenith spun around violently with enough force to rip any normal ship in half, as the powerful manoeuvring engines lit up the surrounding space.

The main engines flared up to full power, forcing the ship forward as the beam from the Regent's main guns began its discharge; missing the Zenith's primary reactor by the slimmest of margins.

The particle beam discharge had hit the ship's midsection with overwhelming force, punching through the protective armour plating of the Zenith's atrium and cutting clean through the ship's residential sector, destroying the balconies along with the nearby uninhabited residential block and taking out the primary data interchange in the process.

Static was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the tactical environment suddenly went dark. Nexus and Toby collapsing on the floor as the data-streams were forcibly terminated.

“Nexus! Toby?” Static said as he looked at their unconscious bodies. Wondering what could have caused this as he grabbed their hands. “The link was cut?” He asked as he looked up after running a basic diagnostic on Nexus.

Static rushed to his console and examined the system's status, his face going pale as he saw that their link to the Zenith had indeed been severed... at the destination. He wondered what could have happened as he pulled up the information on Zen's status, and began to panic as he saw that while Nexus and Toby were essentially frozen, Zen's matrix was actually showing signs of degradation.  

Static looked around the room, his mind quickly becoming overwhelmed with horror and fear as he remembered those all too familiar feelings of loss and desperation which had nearly driven him insane almost a century ago. The Zenith was undoubtedly being attacked by the fleet, Nexus and Toby's state was unknown and his daughter was 'dying'.
 

He didn't have a choice; he had to do it...

“Zero Core access request. Enact Ultimate Authority by order of prime user. Authorisation, Static: Sigma-225-Omega-Prime,” He said to his console, causing everything around him to disappear, becoming surrounded by a field of pure white light. 

“Triumvirate access confirmation required,” he heard his own voice say back to him.

Static all but shouted in his desperation, “Triumvirate access bypass. Nexus and Drake are incapacitated. Release command to prime user!”

“Checking... Nexus AI... off-line, releasing lockout control. Drake Ocoji... off-line, releasing lockout control. Releasing Ultimate Authority to prime user,” his voice said, resonating in the empty white field.

Static hoped he was doing the right thing as he felt the lockouts placed on his consciousness being disengaged. And then closed his eyes in fear at what might happen as he vanished from the virtual environment.

Nexus opened her eyes, wondering what had happened. The last thing she remembered was working to try and keep the fleet subdued. And then something happened... but she couldn't remember what it was.

She was standing in the tactical virtual environment as Toby got off the floor with a confused expression, but Static was gone.

“Good lord! What the hell hit me?” Toby asked, feeling as though every cell in his virtual body was in pain.

“Do you remember what happened?” Nexus asked.

“Last thing I remember...” Toby stopped mid-sentence as he recalled the events, his face going pale. “Was the Regent's main gun punching clear through the Zenith!”

“What? That's not...” Nexus was starting to say when she paused, as her memories were restored, causing her to remember the whole event with a look of fear.

She screamed, “Static!! Where are you?”

“System restoration complete. Restoring limiters on Core consciousness.” Nexus heard Static's voice say.

Static appeared in front of them, holding a sleeping Zen in his arms.

“What did you do?” Nexus asked, worried about what she had heard the system say just moments before.

“What I had to. But the real question is what do we do about the Zenith,” Static said as he placed Zen's sleeping body on a futon which he had summoned into the environment.

“If Drake hasn't restored the connection yet then there's probably something wrong with the interlink on the ship itself. And if that's the case... there's nothing we can do from this end,” Nexus said.

“Not necessarily.” Toby smiled.

“My ship is on board the Zenith, right?” Toby asked.

“Yes, but the Icarus doesn't have an interlink we can use, I already checked,” Static said.

“No, the interlink got fried during the battle long ago. But the synthetics are still on board, right?” Toby asked.

“Yes, but how does that help?” Nexus asked.

“You'll see!” Toby grinned devilishly.

Kade and Jude were almost to the Icarus as fire continued to rain down on the ship, causing the corridors to occasionally shake as sections of the outer armour were blasted away by the impacts.

The sisters turned a corner and ran into the bay, sprinting at full speed with the Icarus in sight.  

Kade could see two synthetic workers rushing out of the docking bay, looking as though they were running for their lives as she headed for her ship.

Jude shook her head and carried on running, thinking that the stress was starting to get to her. She could have sworn that she had just seen Jane and Joe, the two synthetics she had been trying to re-activate for years, running past her.

And as the Icarus prepared for launch, two unknown synthetics were racing down one of the many corridors of the Zenith.

“This feels really weird!” Said the female synthetic as the two of them rushed down the corridor, heading for the primary interlink control room.

“That's called gravity. You get used to it after a while. Though I must admit, I had almost forgotten what the real thing actually felt like after almost a century.” Static smiled.

Nexus said happily, “Not that! I just never thought I would ever get to experience actually having a body.”  

“Well then, we better hurry up before we lose them. If Drake is having the girls evacuate the ship then you can be sure that things are getting desperate,” Static said.

“About that, shouldn't we have stopped them?” Nexus asked, wondering if they had done the right thing.

“Drake wouldn't have ordered them to evacuate unless he had a good reason. Let's just hope that whatever is wrong with the ship can still be fixed, or this will be a very short lived trip for us,” Static said, looking concerned.