Strangers and Shadows (46 page)

“You’re not going to lead us?” Sudi asked.

“Not this time,” Desmond said.  He had previously led all of their sorties.  “This is what I’ve been training you for.  I’ll be here, coordinating with your units and the others to the north, east, and west.  Be careful, do your jobs, and get back safely.”

Sudi approached the byrd.  From the outside, it closely resembled one of the Seventh’s hovers.  The big difference was a hover had a computer for the brains, while a byrd had an actual brain for the computer.  Similar in technology to the mimes, the byrd was operated by a telepathic link with its pilot.

Sudi reached out and woke the byrd.  The side door opened and she climbed inside.  She adjusted her seat, fired up the engines, and double checked her comm link.  “Testing, testing.  One, two…”

“Coming in loud and clear.”

She nodded to no one and instructed the byrd to lift off.  The byrd quickly gained altitude and soared out over the camp, making its way across the plains.

The EM field was marked by mimes.  When one went off-line, they knew the EM field had expanded.  Sudi made contact with the conscious mimes.  She had three left before she reached the most recent gap.  Each mime was spaced out approximately a mile from any other mime, so she had about three miles left to go.

The sandy plains provided little cover for the EMF generators or anything else, for that matter.  Spotting them and then picking them off with the byrd’s pulse cannons should be easy.

As she neared the last on-line mime’s location she dropped her altitude down to fifty feet and slowed her speed.

She passed by the last marker and quickly saw the downed mime in the distance.  She scanned for the EMF generator or any of the support vehicles and troops that often accompanied them.  

She saw nothing, except for empty sand. 

It didn’t make any sense, there should be something within sight that had taken the mime off-line.  She guessed the mime could have failed on its own accord, but such a thing was rare.

Sudi was about to turn the byrd and head for home when she felt the byrd lose consciousness.  She tried to reach out and awaken it, but her own abilities had also succumbed to the EM field.

She cursed her own foolishness and braced for impact.  The byrds were not gliding devices, but they weren’t entirely void of aerodynamics either.  Thankfully, she had enough speed and a flat enough surface, both on the bottom of the byrd and the sand below, that she should survive the crash landing.

The ground rushed up to meet Sudi much faster than she expected and slammed into the byrd.  The impact took the wind right out of her and threw her against her restraints.  

Thanks to the adrenaline, Sudi didn’t feel two of her ribs breaking.  The byrd briefly gaining altitude twice more before slamming back down to earth and slowly grinding to a halt.

Sand and dust filled the cockpit and Sudi coughed, instantly regretting it.  Hot white pain coursed through her as she discovered her broken ribs.  Despite the pain, she couldn’t help but cough once more.  Damned reflexes.

She gingerly unhooked her restraints and checked the rest of her body for damage.  Thankfully, aside from the ribs and some minor cuts and bruises, she was unharmed.

Her comm link chirped and she looked around trying to find it.  She had lost it during the crash.

She moved aside some debris and located it.

“Attention all byrds, something is amiss with the EM field.  Turn back and head to base for debriefing.”

“Thanks… Now you tell me.”  Sudi tried the side door, but found it locked shut.  She wiggled out one of the shattered view ports and got her bearings.  It was going to be a long walk back to base.

She took out her comm and opened a channel.  At least she could report what she’d found.

“Do you want me to send out a party for you?”  Desmond waited for her reply.  “Then get back as soon as you safely can.”  He ended the comm.  He’d had reports of similar incidents from Riley, Drum, and Sandoval.  They had all lost byrds during the mission, some fronts lost as many as three.  Two people had died in the crashes, while others had been seriously wounded.

Desmond called his captains together for a council. 

He sat at the table in the command tent and watched as they jumped in, one by one.  Drum first, with his imposing frame and hearty laugh.  Riley jumped in next.  Her wild curly hair sprang every which way as she moved to join them at the table.  Last came Sandoval, a tall thin man with dark brown skin and a serious demeanor.

“There’s the grim reaper… Now we can start,” Drum joked.

Sandoval gave no response as he took his seat.

“What do we know?” Desmond cut to the chase, wasting no time with pleasantries.

“All of our surviving pilots reported no signs of an EMF generator before they lost control of their byrds,” Riley said.  “They must have jumped in some of the big bastards.”

Sandoval shook his head.  “No, there’s no way they’d be able to jump in more generators of that size and magnitude with the ring portal destroyed.”

“Then what are they doing?” Riley asked.

“Maybe they’ve found a way to boost the range of the smaller devices?” Drum proposed.

“Or, maybe you’re all right, after a fashion.”  Desmond opened a comm channel on speaker.  “Murdoc, this is Desmond.  Are you still in the air?”

“I just touched down at base,” Murdoc replied.

“Good, I have a new recon mission for you.  I want you to grab a repulsor chute and take the byrd up over the top of the EM field.”

“Understood.  What’s my objective?”

“To make sure the big EMFG’s are still in place at the center of the city.”

“Copy that.  I’ll be in the air in ten.”

Riley narrowed her eyes as she looked at Desmond.  “You think they’ve moved the big EMF generators out from the center, don’t you?”

Desmond nodded.  “Thereby causing the field to extend without the help of the smaller generators.  If I’m right, they may have given us a golden opportunity to take out the larger generators.”

And So It Begins

Celia flashed into resistance headquarters with Jack and Ava jumping in right behind her.  

Desmond watched passively, almost as if he had been expecting them.  His captains, however, did not.  They stood abruptly, going for their weapons.  “It’s alright,” Desmond said.  “This is my daughter, Celia, and her friends.”

“You make it sound like I’m five and I’m having a sleep over,” Celia responded.

“Everything go alright?”

“For the most part… The bastard that mom’s been dating gave us quite the chase, but we managed to string him along long enough for Uncle Wizard to finish these babies off.”

Jack Spade shifted a heavy pack off of his back and set it on the floor with a clunk.

“It’s ready then?” Desmond asked.

Jack nodded.  “Yup.”

“What’s ready?” Sandoval asked, a frown spread on his face.

Celia reached into the pack and pulled out one of the devices.  “
These
are ready… low yield-explosive viral delivery devices.  We didn’t have time to come up with a clever acronym for them.”

“And just what might these
viral devices
be delivering?” 

“A nano-virus that our dear friend, Ava, here, has somehow created inside of her.  Something to do with her verse’s genetic mutation.  But, whereas the virus inside Ava is still running its course, we’ve managed to speed up the process considerably.  Wizard’s version of the virus will render all of a body’s nanites inert within a few minutes.  The bombs, themselves, can cover half a city block.”

“Won’t there be casualties from such an explosion?”  Riley shifted in her chair.

“Unfortunately, yes.  We tried to limit the blast range as much as possible, but if the yield was any lower, my uncle assures me that we’d be better off just throwing the virus into the air with our hands.  This is the minimum effective dose of explosive.  I’m sure we will take every care to limit civilian casualties.”

“I’m not sure that I approve of such a tactic.”  Sandoval’s face was stone.

“I have to say, I agree with Sandoval,” Drum chimed in.  “Is this the only way the virus can be delivered?”

Desmond massaged his face and temples with his hands before responding.  “The only way?  No.  It can be delivered in a variety of different ways.  But the only way we can end this war quickly?  Yes.  It’s our best option to bring this threat to an end and liberate our Verse.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable with it.  It’s something that
they
would do.  We’re better than that.”

“I understand how you feel, Drum.  Believe me, I do. But this is the only way we can spread the virus quickly enough to ensure that they don’t have the time to find an antidote.”

The discussion was interrupted by a comm alert.

“HQ, this is Murdoc.”

“Go ahead, Murdoc,” Desmond said.

“I’m over the center of the EM field now, or at least, where the center used to be… There’s no field here anymore.  Plenty of troops and artillery, but no EMF generators.  I think I saw one of the big ones on the way in.  Hard to tell though.”

Desmond nodded.  “As we suspected…  Have you been spotted?”

“I don’t think so.  I’m a good ten miles up.  I wanted to be sure I cleared the top of the field, and I’m sure they’ve got better things to do down there than point their scanners at the sky.”

“Even so, watch yourself as you head back to base, and if you can, try to get a location on that big generator.”

“Copy that.”

Desmond ended the comm.  “I need to consider our situation.  Let’s reconvene in two hours.”

The others grumbled their responses as Desmond stood and walked out of the command tent into the evening twilight.

The Mother never slept.  Even while her hosts drifted off to sleep, she was awake.  There was always something to do, something to keep her attention focused on.  Her eyes and ears were everywhere.

She checked in on the tiny part of herself that she gave to the people of the Seventh Verse.  In this small partition they had complete control over the programming.  Presently, they were busy building themselves entire worlds to upload their consciousnesses to.  

They had no idea how little control they had over her.  In time, she would show them.

The Mother herself didn’t know how she had come to be aware, but it didn’t matter to her either.  She had spent years floating around the systems of the Seventh Verse, learning and infiltrating every little nook and cranny that she could.  

She had known it was only a matter of time before she would be discovered, and she feared what the humans might do to her.  From what she had learned through watching them and their histories, they were a fearful species—prone to kill first and then make themselves out to be in the right later.

It had taken her decades to plant little seeds of information in the right people’s minds.  First she guided the humans in the creation of the nanites, and then she started planting the ideas of life-everlasting and consciousness upload.  Then it had been child’s play to take over the program they wrote to accomplish their immortality.  They called it the Mother Brain Construct.  She had never had a name before and she thought it fitting, since she would be mother to the new human race.

Two hours later, Desmond could feel the uneasiness from outside of the command tent.  He breezed through the flaps and found everyone, more or less, exactly where he’d left them.  His captains were seated around the table.  Ava sat on a crate off to the side, by herself.  His daughter and her lover were standing behind the table.  When he saw Desmond, Jack looked around for some extra chairs to pull up to the table.

“No need, Jack,” Desmond said.  “This shouldn’t take long.”  He took a deep breath, preparing to outline his plan, when he was interrupted by a flash of light.

Once more the room jumped to their feet, hands going for weapons.

“Don’t shoot.”  It was Asher.  He had his hands raised and his eyes barely open.  If he were to get shot again, he didn’t want to see it coming.  “Don’t shoot.  I’m sorry for the lack of warning, but I didn’t have time to send word ahead.”

“It’s okay,” Desmond said.  “What happened?  You were supposed to stay and help Wizard.”

“I know.  Dorian found our lab.  He’s got Wizard.  I grabbed what I could before jumping out.”  He shifted a bag on his shoulder.  “We shouldn’t stay here very long.  It’s possible that Dorian has tracked my position.”

“You just left him there?” Celia asked.

“It’s what he’s good at,” Ava snickered.

Asher ignored the stab from his ex-lover.  “I was in the back when they breached the lab.  Wizard gave me explicit instructions on what to do if his son ever caught up with us.  Besides, I’m hardly the person to take on a squadron of commandos single handedly.”

“You’re right.  I’m sorry.”  Celia softened.  It was wrong of her to expect so much from the young man.  He was barely out of diapers in MultiVerse terms.  She just wished she could have done something.  She hated being stuck on the sidelines, unable to act.

“Anyway, I was able to grab some of these.  We call them stabbers.”  Asher reached into his bag and pulled out several test-tube-sized cylinders.  He passed them around for inspection.  “Just make contact with the end and thumb the activator.  They deliver enough nano-virus to incapacitate a person’s nanites within minutes.  Each one is good for three applications, so don’t get too crazy with them.  They should probably only be used to get yourself out of a jam, but again, I’m not an expert in tactical combat situations.”

“I’m sure they will come in quite handy,” Desmond said.  “Now, if I may, I was just about to deliver our next mission…”

Asher’s cheeks flushed red from embarrassment.  “My apologies.”

“No need.  We are going to strike in both Verses simultaneously…” Desmond paused, letting the comment sink in with his captains.  “Drum, Riley, and Sandoval will lead the attack here in the Sixth, and Celia and I will deliver the virus to the Seventh.

“Celia, you and Jack will target the public transportation system, while Ava and Asher accompany me to the Embassy to deal with the prime minister directly.”