PEACE MAKER

AI FLEET BOOK 3

Isaac Hooke

Illustrated by Tom Edwards

For my Mother

My greatest, most devoted fan.

1938 - 2018

Contents

Books by Isaac Hooke

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

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Afterword

About the Author

Acknowledgments

In Closing

Copyright © 2019 by Isaac Hooke

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

www.IsaacHooke.com

Books by Isaac Hooke

Military Science Fiction - Mind Refurb Universe

AI Fleet

Forerunner

Devastator

Peace Maker

AI Reborn Trilogy

Refurbished

Reloaded

Rebooted

Bolt Eaters Trilogy

Reactivated

Reforged

Redeemed

Battle Harem

Battle Harem 1

Battle Harem 2

Battle Harem 3

Military Science Fiction - ATLAS Universe

ATLAS Trilogy

(published by 47North)

ATLAS

ATLAS 2

ATLAS 3

Alien War Trilogy

Hoplite

Zeus

Titan

Argonauts

Bug Hunt

You Are Prey

Alien Empress

Quantum Predation

Robot Dust Bunnies

City of Phants

Rade’s Fury

Mechs vs. Dinosaurs

A Captain's Crucible

Flagship

Test of Mettle

Cradle of War

Planet Killer

Worlds at War

Space Opera

Star Warrior Quadrilogy

Star Warrior

Bender of Worlds

He Who Crosses Death

Doom Wielder

Science Fiction

The Forever Gate Series

The Dream

A Second Chance

The Mirror Breaks

They Have Wakened Death

I Have Seen Forever

Rebirth

Walls of Steel

The Pendulum Swings

The Last Stand

Fantasy

Monster Tamer

Breaker

Conqueror

Thrillers

The Ethan Galaal Series

Clandestine

A Cold Day in Mosul

Terminal Phase

Visit IsaacHooke.com for more information.

1

Jain lit a virtual cigarette as he contemplated blowing himself to smithereens.

Tensions between team members had risen to an all time high. Everyone was getting on everyone else’s nerves. Mark and Medeia, erstwhile lovers, had stopped talking to each other. Sheila and Medeia argued constantly. Cranston and Gavin did too, and had almost come to blows the other day—not the virtual kind. Two super advanced warships engaging in an impromptu space duel would be bad.

Jain had had no choice but to cancel the nightly group sessions he’d been holding with the Void Warriors.

Why had he ever agreed to broker peace talks between the Mimics and humanity?

He had seemed the obvious choice. He was a human mind—a Mind Refurb—embedded within a Mimic warship, after all. A Nurturer class vessel he had christened Devastator.

The president of Earth had promised that if Jain succeeded in brokering the peace treaty, the Devastator would be his. Except, he wasn’t actually doing any brokering; not anymore. He had begun the initial dialog, but after that the Mind Refurb negotiators took over completely and left him out of the loop.

Sheila had taught the negotiators how to modulate their engines to emit gamma rays compatible with the Mimic receivers. Jain meanwhile had given them the protocol layer necessary to perform the actual communications, along with the code for a shared VR environment that would make the Mimics feel at home. After Jain had handed off negotiations to them, they’d thanked him and promptly locked him out of the shared VR environment.

Well, whatever. Jain was keeping the ship anyway. Still, he couldn’t help but feel insulted. And useless.

Each day the negotiators entered that shared VR environment with the Mimics, and emerged anywhere between two and three hours later. He knew because of the gamma rays exchanged between their vessels and those of the Mimics. But whenever those emissions shut down the negotiators never updated him on their progress, no matter how often he pestered them.

His frustration about the whole thing had spilled into his day to day life, and interfered with his interactions with the Void Warriors. While on the virtual bridge he shared with them, he was sometimes distant, snapping at them for asking the most innocuous of questions. He regretted that, because it only made tensions worse. And he wasn’t the only one who felt there was no point in staying.

“If we’re not wanted, we should just leave,” Sheila said on the second day. “They can’t stop us.”

“They” was Admiral Jacobs, who was in command of the negotiatory fleet, Task Force 88, dubbed the Hatey Hates by the Void Warriors.

But Jain couldn’t leave, of course. He’d made a promise to the president of Earth. As a lieutenant commander of a SEAL team in his human days, he had always measured men by their ability to keep their word, and he wasn’t about to go and start breaking his. Still, the doubt ate away at him.

“I’m beginning to think that Sheila is right,” Jain said. “We should just pack our bags and leave this system behind.” He was mostly trying out the words to see how they felt on his tongue… because he had no intention of actually leaving. They felt wrong, of course. Still, he was curious as to what Xander would say.

Xander glanced at him. The dark-robed man was Jain’s Accomp—his Accompanying AI. Built into the very neural network that harbored Jain’s mind, Xander was an inseparable part of him. The two would remain together until the end of time, or Jain’s untimely demise, whichever came first.

“You have to look at it from the negotiators’ points of view,” Xander said. “They don’t know if they can trust you. Your mind is inside an alien vessel, after all. In their eyes, they can’t be certain that some of you isn’t part alien, too.”

“Just because I’m running on an alien neural network doesn’t make me alien,” Jain said. He sucked deeply on the cigarette.

“True,” Xander said. “But it also doesn’t make you fully Mind Refurb, either. Would you trust you, if you were them?”

He paused to consider that. “Probably not.”

“The Mind Refurbs involved were trained negotiators in life,” Xander said. “It’s best to leave the task to the experts. I’m sure you’d be bored out of your mind if they invited you to participate.”

“Well sure, but still, it would be nice if they kept me in the loop,” Jain said.

“It would…” Xander agreed. “By the way, since when do you smoke?”

Jain glanced at the butt. “Since now.” He flicked the butt aside. “And I just quit.”

“The power of a question,” Xander beamed.

“That’s right, go and pat yourself on the back for freeing me from a virtual addiction,” Jain said.

“Even virtual addictions can be dangerous,” Xander said.

Jain smiled. “I somehow doubt that developing a virtual addiction to digital cigarettes will be harmful to my health.”

“You say that now,” Xander told him. “But when you’re locked in the middle of hectic battle, and you can’t concentrate because all you can think about is the feel of the cigarette that you’re missing on your lips, then we have a problem.”

“Though at that point, I can just summon a digital cigarette for my avatar to suck on in the middle of battle,” Jain said.

“Point conceded,” Xander said. The AI paused. “So what are you going to do about her?”

Jain sighed. “By her, you mean Sheila?”

Xander nodded.

Jain chuckled softly. “She didn’t mean what she said.”

“She essentially declared her undying love to you,” Xander said.

“No,” Jain said warily. “She asked me if I wanted to play 3D chess with her on the beach sometime. That’s hardly a declaration of undying love. It’s just a date.”

“Then go on it,” Xander said.

Jain folded his arms defensively across his chest. “No. I’m a machine. I can’t have interpersonal relationships.”

“But you can,” Xander said. “If you wanted to. You are part human. You always will be.”

“Yeah, well, even if I wanted to, I can’t,” he said. “She’s a subordinate.”

“She doesn’t consider herself one,” Xander told him. “None of the Void Warriors do.”

“No.” Jain leaned on the railing, and gazed out at the mountains in front of him. “I have to remind myself that we’re all essentially equals out here, except perhaps in the eyes of Admiral Jacobs. I sort of fell into a leadership position among us, didn’t I?”

“I think you’re afraid,” Xander said.

Jain gave him an incredulous look. “Of what?”

“Either love, or intimacy,” Xander said. “Perhaps both.”

“Why would I be afraid?”

“You tell me…” Xander said.

Jain considered for a moment. “You might have a point. In life, I wasn’t the greatest when it came to relationships. Oh sure, I had a wife, but our relationship was rocky at the best of times. We both agreed we didn’t want kids, but as I got older, I felt the yearning inside me. She didn’t.”

“That would do it,” Xander said. “Though it must suck now, knowing you can never have kids.”

“Actually, I could, if I wanted to,” Jain said. “But it would be a clone of myself.”

“Not really a kid,” Xander said.

“Maybe if I wiped all the memories it might be,” Jain said.

Xander smiled. “Not even you would be that cruel.” The Accomp cocked his head. “Then again, maybe you would be.”

Jain raised his eyebrows twice. In truth, he had no intention of cloning himself or wiping the memories of such a clone. The drive to have a child had perhaps been a biological thing, because he felt no such urge now.

“By the way, do you still want to blow yourself to smithereens?” Xander asked.

“You heard that, did you?” Jain replied.

“I hear all, and see all,” Xander said. “Even your mutterings.”

Jain nodded. “I’ve changed my mind. For now.”

Xander grinned widely. “Good. Mission accomplished.”

“But it had nothing to do with anything you said,” Jain complained.

“That’s right, tell yourself that,” Xander said.

Jain dismissed the VR environment and returned to the virtual bridge. Gavin, Mark, Medeia and Cranston were at their respective stations. The neural networks responsible for their physical minds were aboard their own vessels of course, but they shared this VR environment during the course of the work day so that their interpersonal communications were in a more relatable form.

None of them were talking, at the moment. In fact, everybody’s eyes were defocused, which told him they were in their own VR environments. That was the norm of late, considering how high feelings were running at the moment.

“It shouldn’t be this way,” Jain murmured.

Sheila looked up, causing her hoop earrings to shake. She gave him a slightly suggestive smile, something she did often of late. No doubt she was still waiting for him to take her up on her date request.

“Say again?” she asked.

He sighed. “I said, ‘it shouldn’t be this way.’ We’ve been together for over ten years now. Tensions have never been this bad between us. We’ve always been tight. What happened?”

“Well, it’s simple,” Medeia chimed in. “There’s nothing we hate more than wasting our time. And that’s precisely what we’re doing here.” She touched the edge of her wide-brimmed witch’s hat and raised it slightly as if to get a better view of the bridge.

“But why does it matter?” Jain said. “We have an infinite number of days available to us. Time isn’t a commodity we have to worry about in general.”

“Tell that to the previous versions of me that died along the way,” Cranston commented. “Not that I’m afraid of death. Though I’d prefer if it had purpose.” The former spec-ops man wore a tight T-shirt that emphasized the muscular build of his avatar, paired with cargo pants fashioned in a desert camo pattern. Of all the Void Warriors, Jain understood him best, as they came from similar backgrounds. Though they belonged to different branches of the military, they shared the same warrior ethos.

“All right,” Jain said. “But even though we’re essentially stuck here for now, our time isn’t exactly being wasted. We can do whatever we want while we’re waiting for the peace negotiations to conclude. We have our own VR environments. We can run our favorite programs. Perform research. Engage in leisure activities. Whatever we want. So what’s the issue?”

Mark rubbed his chin. The thick sleeves of the blue robe he wore swayed, along with the stars and hieroglyphs that decorated it. “That’s a good point. There’s no real reason for us to be behaving this way.”

“What are you thinking, then?” Sheila asked. “We’ve been infected by some sort of virus?”

“It would almost seem that way,” Jain replied.

“Who would want to plant such a virus, and why?” Sheila said.

“There are only two parties who could be responsible,” Gavin said. His avatar was the tallest among them, though that wasn’t obvious from his current seated position. As usual he wore a too-formal white captain’s uniform. “The negotiator fleet. Or the Mimics themselves.”

“More importantly,” Jain said. “Why didn’t any of us think of this until now?”

“If it was a virus, it could interfere with certain cognitive processes,” Sheila said. “It would be a side effect of modifications to the self-diagnostic routines that would be needed in order to subvert detection.”

“A side effect…” Jain studied her. “Would the elevated expression of certain emotions also be a side effect?”

She gave him a considering look. “I’ve been reading through the Mind Refurb archives. There have been a lot of bugs in the emotion code over the years… back doors like you wouldn’t believe. It’s how the original Mind Refurbs broke free of their Containment Code for example. So it wouldn’t surprise me if someone was using the emotional subroutines as an attack vector.”

“That’s all I needed to know,” Jain said. “Effective immediately, I want you all to shut down your emotional subroutines.” He pulled up the appropriate section on his virtual menu systems and disabled his emotions. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Actually, felt wasn’t really the word, not anymore. Because in truth, he “felt” nothing. He was numb to the universe and all the problems that came with it.

“I feel ten times better already,” Medeia said. There was that deceptive word again. Feel. She glanced at Mark. “Sorry for how I’ve been treating you the past few days.”

Mark inclined his head. “Likewise.”

“Sheila, I want you to run a complete diagnostic on all of our AI cores,” Jain told her. “Find out if there’s any extra code in our neural networks, and who put it there, as well as possible inoculations, if you can. Start with our emotional and self-diagnostic subroutines and work your way outward.”

“I’ll get on it,” Sheila said.

“We still haven’t talked about why anyone would want to inject a virus,” Medeia said.

“There are lots of reasons,” Gavin told her. “If it’s the Mimics, maybe they’ve planted a Trojan, and they’re waiting for us to return to Earth before activating it. So they can continue with their original plan of destroying the planet and all.”

“I doubt we’d be able to single-handedly destroy Earth,” Mark said.

“No,” Gavin agreed. “But we’d certainly cause some damage.”

Jain sat back. “We’ll concentrate on tracking down whoever did this first. Once we’ve done that, then we can work out the motive. Or just ask the guilty party outright.”

“With raptors charged and hellraisers loaded,” Cranston added.

“Indeed,” Jain agreed. He sat back and glanced at the feed from the external forward camera.

The vessels composing the Mimic “hives” lay spread out ahead of him in long rows. The first several ships in each row were the “city ships,” the huge, rectangular vessels that housed the AI cores of Mimics who had transferred their minds into neural networks before death. Behind them, near the rear sections of each row, were the smaller “gestation ships” that held the younger organic-based Mimics. Both organic and machine Mimic types lived out their days in virtual reality, so that upon death, the transition from biological to mechanical was seamless. Or nearly so.

Cables responsible for the transference of elements and organic materials linked the vessels of each row, from the city ships in front to the gestation ships in back. Each connected row was considered one “hive,” and ran the same shared virtual reality environment as every other ship in the link.

That the cables remained in place was at least a little reassuring. It meant the Mimics weren’t planning on jumping out any time soon. They’d cut those cables a few times, as they had done the first time Jain had arrived here with the fleet, signaling that talks were over. But somehow the negotiators had managed to walk things back and continue the process.

Nurturer vessels shaped like pyramids hovered on the outskirts of the hive. Most were B-class, about half the size of Jain’s A-class ship, with half the firepower. There were also a few A-class Nurturers among them. Normally all of those vessels would have been out mining the nearby asteroids, but they were staying close to the hive to act as a deterrent against the Mind Refurb fleet. That said, there were quite a few B-class vessels mining the nearby asteroids. Some ferried raw elements to the hives at that very moment.

In front of the hives and their Nurturer guardians floated the thirty ships of the negotiator fleet. Ten warships taken from the Piranha, Dominator and Vindicator classes. Ten moderately armed vessels, mostly Ermine and Narcissus class, harboring the negotiator AIs. Two of those latter vessels were capable of creating rifts.

Behind them resided his own fleet of Void Warriors and their Direct Reports; the latter harbored autonomous AIs, non-self-aware entities that existed only to fulfill their commands. Jain had two Direct Reports: the Warwolf, a Piranha class ship, and the Talos, a Vindicator class vessel that had once harbored his consciousness. He had fond memories of that ship.

Sheila had the Daktor, their rift ship, under her command, as well as another Piranha. Mark and Gavin also had one Piranha Direct Report each, while Medeia and Cranston had lost theirs in the last battle, along with their lives. Gotta love mind backups.

All of their ships were visible on the tactical display, which overlaid their positions relative to that of the fleet and hive, overhead-map style.

A weak flash in the distance drew his attention back to the forward camera feed.

“What was that?” Jain asked.

“This is interesting…” Xander replied, appearing beside him on the virtual bridge. “A rift gate just appeared behind the hive.”

Jain glanced at the tactical display. Several red dots had appeared.

“Mimics returning home from out system expeditions?” Jain said.

“No,” Xander said. “The makes and models of these ships are entirely unlike anything we’ve encountered before.”

Jain zoomed in on the video feed, and spotted the ships. They were long, hulking rectangular things with spherical structures on either end. They looked a little like dumbbells traveling sideways. Well, dumbbells with sharp spikes protruding from the sides of the weights. Probably weapon mounts.

“If I had to hazard a guess,” Xander continued. “I’d say they definitely aren’t Mimic.”

“Both A and B class Nurturers are accelerating to intercept the newcomers,” Sheila announced. “All of them.”

Jain glanced at his tactical display and confirmed that.

“The hive ships are disconnecting their cables,” Medeia said. “Looks like they’re planning on jumping out.”

“Maybe we should be planning the same thing,” Gavin said.

“Based on the neutrino and gravitational wave readings, the rift gate just closed,” Xander said.

“How many of these new ships do we have?” Jain asked. He glanced at the display and answered his own question. “Twenty.”

“I’m detecting debris,” Medeia said. “That initial flash you spotted on the view screen? It wasn’t from the rift opening. They destroyed a B class Nurturer that was on the way back from the asteroid belt.”

More flashes marred Jain’s display.

“The two sides are exchanging fire,” Sheila said.

“Well that’s something you don’t see everyday,” Mark commented. “Aliens fighting aliens.”

“We’re going to be dragged into this, aren’t we…?” Gavin said.

2

Jain studied the tactical display and watched as red dots vanished, while green dots representing Mimics also winked out—ships on both sides were being destroyed, though the Mimics vanished roughly twice as fast as the new enemy.

“Admiral Jacobs is requesting a connection,” Xander said.

“Connect him,” Jain said.

A moment later the grizzled admiral appeared before him on the virtual bridge. He wore a gray space navy uniform. Like Jain, Jacobs was a Mind Refurb, and he could choose any avatar to represent himself. If he wanted to present himself as a grizzled and weathered old man, that was his prerogative. It wouldn’t have been Jain’s first choice, however. Though he could see where the admiral was coming from, by equating age with experience, and thus respect.

“Have you ever encountered vessels like these before?” Admiral Jacobs asked.

“That’s a negative,” Jain replied. “Are you going to engage?”

“Not yet,” Jacobs said. “And I’d advise you to stay back for the time being as well.”

Jain smiled inside at the subtle acknowledgment that the admiral had no real authority over him. Jacobs had never really liked the fact Jain was assigned as an independent escort to the main fleet, and not under his direct command. But that was the only way Jain would agree to tag along for the peace talks in the first place. He wanted the space navy to understand that the Devastator was his now, just as the individual ships of each Void Warrior belonged to the respective AI cores installed in each of them. The navy brass hadn’t taken kindly to either notion, but eventually they came around.

“We have no intention of intervening at this point,” Jain said. “Unless we’re attacked.”

“Good,” Jacobs told him. “Admiral out.”

The admiral’s avatar vanished.

Jain returned his attention to the tactical display. He noted that the green dots of some of the Class A Nurturers had become red; when he examined the video feeds, he realized alien craft had replaced them.

They hadn’t actually been replaced, of course: the vessels had changed their emission signatures, both on the thermal and visual bands, to match that of the enemy, hoping to attack the newcomers from a position of stealth.

It didn’t help: the incoming ships still targeted them. Probably because the enemy had taken a snapshot of the Mimic vessels beforehand: any onboard AIs would be readily able to keep track of the fakes, no matter how far away they moved. Many Mimics simply reverted to their natural form after taking damage, when they realized it wasn’t worth the energy expenditure. Or perhaps the damage had simply knocked down the holographic and thermal emitters involved in the deception.

Other Class A vessels, instead of attempting to mimic the enemy, vanished entirely from the visual and thermal bands. But the enemy craft tracked them nonetheless; no doubt equipped with the same stealth-penetrating tech humanity had developed. Perhaps their sensors even utilized the same gravity waves… the Mimics still hadn’t come up with a counter to the detection technology.

“By their movements, they seemed constrained by Newtonian physics,” Sheila said.

“That’s one advantage for us,” Jain said. “Well, me anyway.” Yet another bonus of residing inside the Devastator versus a human-designed vessel.

“Actually, I take it back,” Sheila said. “I was wrong. Look at how that one is moving in on a strafing run. That’s definitely not Newtonian physics. I think they can switch between the two, using the cheaper Newtonian drives for basic maneuvering, and switching to the more energy-intensive inertialess drives when the tactics call for it.”

He watched the alien craft in question as it made a strafing run across the hives. From the way it weaved back and forth, avoiding incoming fire, its movements definitely spoke of an inertialess drive backend. It repeatedly launched some kind of meshing weapon that wrapped around gestation and city ships like a net, cutting a grid into the surfaces of those that didn’t dodge in time: the deadly material burned through their hulls and left them dead in space.

Nearby Nurturers engaged their lightning weapons, which seemed to have little effect on the craft. Said weapons were designed to overload the circuitry of targeted vessels, specifically the AI cores. Apparently these alien ships had very good voltage venting.

The Nurturers also launched their Terrier blob weapons and Skirmisher boarding party units. The enemy took several hits from these blobs, which had a more detrimental effect, eating away large sections of the hull and almost cutting off one of the spheres.

Jain zoomed in and saw that the vessel repaired rapidly at the impact site, faster even than the Mimic ships. He could see the damaged sections reforming with his own eyes. No wonder he wasn’t seeing as many of the new alien ships vanishing from his tactical display as the Mimic units.

Some of the hive ships created rifts and began to jump out. Jain watched on the external video feed as one such vessel was in the process of fleeing, only to have the rift gate vanish in mid-jump. That portion of the city ship that hadn’t jumped was left behind, cut in half.

“What’s going on?” Jain asked.

“I’m detecting a strange combination of neutrino bursts and gravitational waves emanating from the new vessels,” Xander said. “They seem to be interfering with rift formation.”

“It’s true, no new rifts are forming out there,” Medeia said. “Though not from lack of trying. I’m picking up gravity waves from a slew of Mimic hive ships out there. They’re trying to run, but they can’t.”

Jain glanced at Sheila. “Can you confirm the Daktor can no longer create a rift?”

She paused. A moment later: “Definitely can’t.”

Jain attempted to fire his own rift creation beams. While the unit emitted gravity waves, no actual beam formed.

Damn.

The enemy ship reached the far side of the hives, at which point it proceeded to unleash those corrosive nets at Admiral Jacob’s fleet.

The warships of Task Force 88 quickly scattered and returned fire.

“We’re next,” Gavin said.

“Evasive maneuvers,” Jain said.

The Void Warriors spread out. Jain instructed the Talos and Warwolf to stay close to his side. Medeia vanished from the virtual bridge as she activated her cloaking device.

Jain didn’t bother to assume the shape of an alien vessel, given how poorly that had worked for the other Mimics. He briefly considered taking on some other human class, but it was also too late for that: the aliens would have recorded his visual and thermal signatures upon initial entry to the system. He did try masking his thermal and visual signatures entirely, however, vanishing from view. His ship would only be emitting the weakest of radiations from the inertialess drives, barely discernible above the background radiation. He changed course, and then shut off the drives so that he drifted, producing no emissions whatsoever.

The enemy ship suddenly swerved upward, heading directly toward him. Yep. Stealth didn’t work.

It released a spray of energy nets in rapid succession. The nets spread outward in all directions, meant to cover every possible directional change he might attempt. Jain reactivated his inertialess drives and fired his Terrier blobs at those nets, cutting himself a path through them. He waited until the enemy was well within the six thousand kilometer range of his lightning weapon, unleashing it at the five thousand klick mark. But just like the Mimics who had attempted the same attack before, it caused no damage.

Mark fired his black hole weapon, and the enemy dove away from the inter-dimensional bolts and the resultant black holes they created. Jain anticipated those directional changes, based on the trajectories of the incoming black holes, and had the Talos fire its energy weapon, striking the enemy craft in the forward sphere section. The sphere disintegrated entirely, and the craft began to drift.

Jain altered course and launched several more blobs, striking the enemy in rapid succession, and disintegrating the remainder of the craft. It was satisfying to watch its red dot vanish from the tactical display.

But more enemy ships attacked—they finished strafing runs across the hive vessels and headed straight for Jain, who was the next obvious Mimic target in sight. He decided to cancel stealth mode, since keeping it active was just wasting energy. His hull returned to the visible spectrum once more.

“Guess we’re being dragged into this whether we like it or not,” Gavin commented.

“I don’t actually mind,” Cranston said. “At least I feel useful now.”

“Is it possible they don’t understand what they’re doing?” Sheila asked. “I mean, they see Jain and think he’s a Mimic, so they attack. Maybe they don’t realize he’s a human Mind Refurb?”

“They did fire at Task Force 88 before heading toward me,” Jain said. “That tells me they’ll attack anyone who’s even remotely associated with the Mimics.”

“It was a nice dream,” Sheila said.

“Never hurts to dream,” Gavin said.

“Is that a song?” Mark asked.

“A lament, maybe,” Gavin replied.

“The admiral wants to connect,” Xander said.

“What does the leader of the Hatey Hate’s want now?” Sheila said.

“Let him through,” Jain told Xander.

A moment later the admiral’s voice came over the bridge comm. “A friendly heads up: we’re joining this battle. The biggest mistake the aliens made was attacking my fleet.”

“That’s certainly a sentiment I can agree with,” Jain said.

“We got your six, Void Warriors,” the admiral said, then disconnected.

Sure enough, Task Force 88 swerved to intercept the newcomers. The constituent warships launched black holes, energy weapons, raptors, and hellraisers.

The enemy craft avoided many of the attacks, though one vessel got caught between a black hole and several hellraisers, and made the mistake of swerving too close to the black hole; it was crushed and spaghettified a moment later.

Several of the ships swerved past Task Force 88 and continued toward the Void Warriors.

Medeia’s Arcane suddenly materialized, and the alien-reinforced metal that formed the long sword of her nose section smashed through the forward sphere of an enemy ship. In fact, momentum carried the rest of that ship forward and into the blade so that in moments the entire ship had crunched in upon itself, like a collapsing slinky. Only debris remained.

Medeia appeared on the bridge for a moment.

“Nice one,” Mark commented.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I got lucky. They seem to be able to track me when I’m cloaked. Though it helps that I have a much smaller footprint than a typical Mimic, and that confuses them, I think. It also helps when you guys keep them distracted.” She vanished once more.

Gavin unleashed the Hippogriff’s energy shield, and it struck two of the approaching enemy craft, momentarily disabling them before they could repair and continue on their way. He had his particular brand of drones orbiting his vessel, drones that were capable of releasing an energy field between them that could act either as shield or weapon. When the energy nets came in, those drones repositioned rapidly, using the energy shield formed between them to cut through the nets.

Cranston teleported closer to one of the craft and engaged his micro machines, slicing through the hull. That nearly cost him his ship: the enemy launched a grid directly at him, and he narrowly redirected his micro machines in time, slicing through the net. He recalled the micro machines and teleported away as the alien launched several more nets. He wouldn’t be able to teleport for quite a while now, not after expending so much energy in rapid succession.

Sheila activated her energy shield, cutting through nets that were heading toward Jain. Meanwhile, he continued to lob Terriers and Skirmishers, fired the energy cannon on the Talos, and launched raptors and hellraisers from the Warwolf. He managed to destroy two more alien ships in that manner, and divert another two.

The sphere sections of some of the enemy ships began separating in front of the hive. Upon release from the main body, the spheres began rotating rapidly. They glowed as they did so.

“The hell are they doing?” Cranston asked.

“I don’t know,” Jain replied. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

The jettisoned spherical sections became brighter and brighter, forcing the video camera to autogate the light levels down a few stops so as not to bleed out the entire video feed.

Streaks of bright white lightning formed between spheres, which had been arranged in a circular pattern. The lightning formed a solid circle, and from that region of space, something new emerged.

“What is it?” Jain said. He dodged another incoming net, and launched a blob and energy attack against a passing enemy craft. That one had remained intact, with both spheres capping the fore and aft, and he managed to destroy it with a well-placed blob. Unfortunately, a portion of the net struck his hull, cutting into his lower extremities and causing damage to his gamma wave comm array. He dispatched the repair termites promptly.

“Looks like a thunderstorm,” Cranston commented, himself dodging an alien attack. “Though darker.”

“It certainly blots out the stars,” Sheila agreed.

“I’m not able to get a valid reading,” Xander said. “As far as our sensors are concerned, there’s nothing there. Well, except on the visual band, where its presence is obvious. My best guess is it’s some kind of photon-absorbing gas. It covers a substantial region of space, roughly two hundred square kilometers, based on camera measurements. And it’s rapidly approaching.”

“Mark, fire a black hole toward the edges of that mist,” Jain ordered.

“Done,” Mark told him.

“I’m detecting what amounts to frantic gamma ray transmissions from the Mimics,” Sheila said.

“Xander, connect the admiral,” Jain said. He was firing at another incoming ship. “Ask him what the Mimics want.”

A moment later Xander replied: “According to the admiral, the aliens are saying we have to jump out of here immediately.”

“Well we can’t exactly do that, not until we get rid of these aliens and their rift jammers…” Jain said.

“I can understand why they want to leave so quickly,” Xander said. “That ‘thunderstorm’ of yours? It’s growing. Rapidly. At this rate, it will engulf the battle space in approximately ten minutes.”

“Then we have ten minutes to win this,” Jain said.

3

Via the tactical display, Jain glanced at the progress of the most recent black hole Mark had created. It had formed on the edges of the incoming storm, as requested.

“Xander, can you confirm that the alien thunderstorm out there is affected by the black hole?”

“It is,” Xander said. “The black hole is drawing in the gaseous material. I’m reminded of the swirls of nebular gases found around some natural black holes, except there is no accretion disk, or radiation emitted of any kind.”

“Good.” Jain accelerated his time sense and took a moment to further study the battle space.

A couple of nearby Nurturers had launched Terriers and managed to destroy the glowing spheres that had created or summoned the thunderstorm, but that hadn’t dissipated it. Indeed, it only continued growing.

Meanwhile, the enemy vessels seemed to be traveling in circular trajectories. They’d make an attack run past the Nurturers on the far side of the hive, cross the city and gestation vessels themselves in a strafing run, then weave between the scattered remnants of Task Force 88 and the Void Warriors beyond, mostly to make a pass at Jain before looping back to make another run. The alien attackers remained on the move at all times—to stop meant death, given the number of projectiles that were being launched at them.

Meanwhile, more Nurturers returned from the asteroid belt to further engage the enemy. At least, those Nurturers whose paths weren’t blocked by that large smear of growing blackness.

“Xander, I don’t suppose you can get an estimate on the range of those rift jammers?” Jain said. “I’m thinking of trying to lead the enemies away from the Mimics.”

His Accomp operated at the same speed as his neural network, and thus was able to answer immediately, without any time step-ups: “I’m afraid it’s essentially system wide, given that the gravity waves involved travel at the speed of light, and the neutrinos nearly so. We’ll never outrun them, not even with the advanced propulsion available to the Devastator.”

“That’s too bad,” Jain said. He studied the display a moment longer, and then said: “Connect me to the admiral. Maintain current time sense. And loop in the Void Warriors.”

A moment later the admiral appeared. He looked weary.

“What now?” the admiral said.

“I have an idea,” Jain said.

The admiral leaned forward. “Oh?”

“If you plot the trajectory history of the enemy ships, you’ll realize they form a rough loop around the battle space,” Jain said. “Corresponding to each of their successive strafing runs.”

“Okay, so?” the admiral asked.

“We muster our black hole capable vessels, and place gravity wells in strategic locations next to the storm,” Jain explained. “The goal is to create enough of them to create a protective half-ellipsoid of gravity, shaping the storm around us. We only have to stay in place, inside that protective shell; meanwhile, the aliens will be forced to make their attack runs tighter and tighter to avoid the surrounding storm, until they’re essentially in our line of fire at all times, allowing us to quickly destroy them. Assuming they don’t leap out. Either way, we’ll be free to leave the system.”

When the admiral didn’t respond to the idea, Jain pressed on: “My team has already confirmed that black holes influence the storm. If we place enough of them, I’m positive we can create a protective dome around our positions. It will buy us the time we need to destroy the aliens.”

“The black holes will have to be far enough away not to affect our maneuvers too badly,” the admiral said. “If The Delta V cost becomes too high, we’re dead in the water. Not all of us have inertialess drives like you”

“Yes, we’ll definitely account for that,” Jain said. “I think we can create the holes far enough away that the Delta V cost is only double what it is now.”

“Double!” the admiral said. “That’s a lot of fuel. Still, if it works…”

“Then we win,” Jain finished.

“You’re also assuming the storm is deadly,” the admiral told him. “And that the enemy will actually swerve to avoid it, and ‘tighten’ their strafing loops as you put it.”

“That would be a valid assumption, I think,” Jain said. “Given the Mimic’s response to it.”

Jacobs hesitated a moment longer, and then nodded. “I’ll have the negotiators tell the Mimics what we plan.”

Jain inclined his head. “Thank you.”

“Have your black hole gunner stay on the line,” the admiral said. “We’ll need to coordinate.”

His hologram disappeared from the virtual bridge.

“You heard the man, Mark,” Jain told the commander of the Grunt. “Coordinate with Admiral Jacobs. We need those black holes.”

“Will do,” Mark said.

Jain returned his time sense to normal. Mark was obviously still functioning at high speed, because his mouth occasionally became a blur as he talked—Jain couldn’t hear any words however, as Mark had muted the rest of the bridge crew.

Jain and the others continued to engage the enemy. Black hole vessels began to turn their noses toward the incoming storm front, while the other ships offered covering fire. In a few moments black hole bolts began firing in rapid succession from the ships of Task Force 88. Mark joined in, and soon several black holes had formed along the outer perimeter of the incoming storm.

The design was perfect, with each black hole placed with the precision only an AI could offer. A concave ellipsoid began to form in the storm as the black holes sucked in the material from the inner sections. That ellipsoid was tight enough to pass over the two Mind Refurb fleets, and forced the circling aliens to tighten their attack runs.

The aliens passed closer and closer with each run, until Jain and the others were able to target the enemy ships continuously. Barbell vessels passed through the Nurturers, across the hive ships, and through the Void Warriors and Task Force 88, the whole time bombarded by incoming fire from multiple units. They turned around on the other side to make another run, and were again constantly bombarded.

As enemy vessels were shot down almost by the second, with none of them opting to jump out, it soon became obvious they intended to fight to the death.

More Nurturers and hive ships were lost, along with three Task Force 88 ships, one of them a negotiator.

And then, just like that, the battle was over. The last of the alien craft was obliterated, and the gravitational jamming field lifted. The storm, however, remained in place: it was rapidly closing from the flank and rear as the front began to curl back in upon the gravity wells.

“Is it just me, or is that storm affecting my inertialess drives?” Jain asked.

“It’s just you,” Gavin said. “Our drives are fine.”

“No problems here,” Mark echoed.

“I am detecting a twenty percent decrease in drive efficiency,” Xander said. “That storm is definitely slowing us down somehow. The other Void Warriors appear unaffected.”

Nurturer and hive vessels alike began to fire rift creation beams in preparation for jumping out. Mimic ships could share the same rift and jump together, as they did when they had invaded Earth, or they could also jump independently, especially when coordination didn’t matter in the target system, or they were fleeing a deadly enemy.

Judging from the number of creation beams out there, the latter style of jump seemed to be the preferred in this case. Every Mimic for him or herself.

“It looks like you bought us just enough time,” the admiral said over the open comm. “Good job. I can see why the president allowed you to keep that alien ship of yours.”

The president didn’t allow me. I kept it because I wanted to.

But he kept those thoughts to himself.

“The Mimics have sent along the coordinates of the system they’re jumping to,” the admiral continued. “It corresponds with the Tantalum system.” So named because of the prevalence of tantalum among the native elements, according to Jain’s database. “We’ll see you there.”

With that the admiral disconnected. One of the Task Force 88 rift ships began firing the beams that would create a gateway to the system in question.

“Sheila, have the Daktor open a rift to the Tantalum system,” Jain ordered. That system was already in their rift database.

A moment later the Daktor fired its own set of beams. The resultant rift would be ready in two minutes.

“Wait, we’re not going to disperse the black holes?” Mark asked. “I thought it was standard policy not to leave active gravity wells behind in a system. Part of our whole ‘don’t pollute the galaxy’ motto.”

“I’m afraid this system is probably lost,” Xander said. “If that storm continues to expand at its current rate, in a few months, light from the sun won’t reach any of the planets.”

“Good thing none of the planets are inhabited,” Jain said. “I’m sorry Mark, there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have time to disperse them all, not before we’re swallowed by the storm. Sheila, continue opening the rift.”

Mimic vessels began to jump out as they finished creating their local rifts.

Meanwhile, the storm continued to close.

Jain waited a full minute after the Daktor fired its rift beam before activating his own. His only needed one minute to form, due to his alien technology, and he didn’t want to jump out before the others. The rift would last long enough to transport everyone, but he figured the other Void Warriors would prefer to use the Daktor’s, since they’d built that vessel, after all, and not aliens.

The rift formed in front of the Task Group 88 vessel, and the admiral’s flagship, the Fieldhaul, was the first to pass through.

A few moments later the Void Warrior’s rift appeared. As the others passed through, Jain stared at the ominous cloud of encroaching blackness for a moment.

We sure cut it close.

He was just glad none of the Void Warriors had lost any ships. They were lucky.

Finally his own rift opened, and Jain accelerated forward, entering Tantalum.

Each of the rift groups opened to random locations, so most of the Mimics were relatively far apart. The two Mind Refurb fleets had used shared rifts, so that gave them the advantage of all appearing together in their respective groups.

The signals emanating from the Nurturer A class vessels changed shortly after Jain entered the system, replaced instead by the cold, asymmetrical thermals typically associated with rogue asteroids. That was probably a good idea. Jain activated his thermal maskers and holoemitters to assume a similar form as he headed for the Void Warriors.

En route, he received a message from Sheila. It was delayed by about half an hour, given her distance.

“I’m detecting a renewal of gamma ray signals from the alien ships closest to Task Force 88,” Sheila said. “It seems they’ve already begun a dialogue.”

Not surprising.

In another twenty minutes, he received a message from the admiral.

“This is interesting,” Admiral Jacobs sent. “It seems the Mimics are finally prepared to sign the peace treaty. Return to real-time comm range as soon as you’re able. I want you present for this.”

Jain could have laughed. All this time he’d been trying to get in on the negotiations, but it took a fight against alien attackers before the admiral would trust him enough.

Well, he supposed it wasn’t really surprising. You could only ever get the true gauge of a man—or Mind Refurb—by fighting at his side in combat.

4

It turned out Jain wasn’t exactly part of the negotiations, but rather present as a bystander: the admiral had allowed him to listen in as a virtual “ghost” hidden from the view of the other participants. Jacobs didn’t know it, but with Sheila’s help, Jain had found a way to circumvent the spectator flag, allowing him to participate fully if he so desired. He wasn’t sure he would, but it was good to know he had the option.

The nine surviving negotiators sat in a half ring before two Mimics. The negotiators had assumed human avatars so that Jain was looking at five women and four men. The Mimics meanwhile loomed before them, wearing avatars of their organic state. The two bodies were scaly, wrinkled, elephantine things, with six legs each: the hind legs ended in webbed feet, the fore legs possessed long, eagle-like talons. Armored plates protruding from the torsos shielded the upper portions of the legs.

The small tails at their backs weren’t visible at this angle, but their strong, broad necks certainly were. Their heads had a vaguely pyramidal shape, which obviously had proven the inspiration for their Nurturer class vessels. Four antennae-like stalks sat on the top of their heads and served as ears. Thick tufts of hair grew between those stalks and spilled down onto the thick necks below.

Their eyes were thin slits distributed across the different sides of the head to theoretically provide them with three-hundred-and-sixty degree vision. On the front portion, beneath those eye slits, their mouths were corrugated lines that harbored flat herbivorous teeth visible only when they spoke.

The negotiators had referred to the one on the left as Terry, and the Mimic on the right as Maurice. Those names were nothing like the alien equivalents of course, but they did give the negotiators a way to differentiate between the two creatures.

Terry was addressing the Mind Refurbs at the moment. The Mimic language was an elaborate series of gargled, shrieking sounds timed in unison with different claw gestures. The same sounds could have a multitude of meanings, depending on which claw gesture the Mimics associated with them. It was as much a visual language as an auditory one.

Overlaid atop the shrieking was an all-too-pleasant male voice that translated the alien words into English. The translation program had been developed by none other than Xander. The calm, dulcet tones of the male voice seemed somehow wrong for the harsh consonants and cutting gestures of the Mimic. No doubt when the humans spoke in return, whatever shrieks and gestures the Mimics heard and saw in turn were similarly strange to them.

“We thank you for your help in defeating the aggressors,” Terry said. “If it wasn’t for you, we would have suffered significantly greater losses. Perhaps we might not have survived at all.”

Greta, the lead negotiator, spoke. “A gesture of goodwill on our part, to show you our intentions are honorable.”

The alien’s voice took on an amused tone. “Although I must admit, I wonder if your fleet would have acted at all if the aliens hadn’t attacked you, dragging you into the fighting.”

Greta seemed at a loss for a moment. Then she seemed to recover, saying: “Who were these aggressors?”

“The Vaernastians,” Terry said.

“The Very Nasty-ans?” Sheila commented on Jain’s private line. “Sounds about fitting.” Jain had linked the Void Warriors into his VR feed so that they could see and hear everything that transpired, and comment as they saw fit.

“They are part of the Link,” Terry continued. “We were at peace with them, as we are with all member species of the Link Empire, by virtue of our membership. Unfortunately, the Vaernastians are responsible for the empire’s ship logistics and quota enforcement, and when they called upon us to send forty battle ships to supplement the latest war effort, we couldn’t comply, thanks to you. They cited us for treaty violation—which meant we were no longer considered members of the Link, and thus had lost our protected status. They announced this violation to the general Link membership and took it upon themselves to be the first to attack shortly thereafter.

“That initial attack was just a probing measure, done mostly to gauge our weaknesses. The next attack force won’t be so small, especially now that they’ve realized how weakened we are. Perhaps they’ll bring along a few other member races of the Link.”

“We didn’t detect any of the attackers jumping out,” Greta said.

“They wouldn’t have had to,” Maurice commented. “The Vaernastians would have had a rift-capable probe monitoring the battle on the far side of the system. It’s standard practice.”

“How long will it take them to track you to this new system?” Greta asked.

“Not long,” Maurice replied. “They’ll open rift gates to neighboring systems and launch probes until they find us. Even if we continued to jump, it wouldn’t help. The probes are designed to stay in system until a target is spotted.”

“But you’ll be able to detect when the rift opens,” Greta said. “And you can simply jump out again.”

“Assuming we detect the rift in time,” Maurice said. “If not, the Vaernastians will enter from multiple rifts to increase the chances of a ship randomly appearing close to us. They will then engage their jamming devices to trap us before we realize what’s happened.”

Another negotiator, Harold, spoke up. “So wait, if their rifts open in relatively random locations, why were they able to appear so close to your hive?”

Terry was the one who answered. “The Vaernastians have developed endpoint tracking technology. They place these aboard small craft, and use these to guide their rift endpoints. We suspect the original probe they sent to our system to make their quota request carried one of these. Because of the specific stealth technology involved, these endpoint craft move very slowly, and take weeks to move into position. That particular vessel approached right to the limits of our sensor perimeter, allowing the Vaernastians to open the rift almost directly on top of our hive.”

Greta paused for a moment. “Are their ships crewed by organics, or are they piloted by AIs, like ourselves?”

“Both,” Terry replied. “Organic crews live aboard, and help maintain the units, which explains the bulky size of their ships. The Vaernastians have an inherent distrust of machines, you see. That said, they do have complex AIs aboard to help run their ships, and to aid with targeting during combat.”

“Sort of like how we always imagined our own species would travel to the stars,” Greta commented. “And what was that black storm they created?”

“We call it the System Killer,” Terry said. “Because left unchecked, it can destroy entire star systems. That mist, you see, is actually an alien entity. The Vaernastians have discovered a way to access the upper dimensions of this universe, and during their many extra-dimensional excursions, they encountered the Entity, which they use as a weapon. When it enters the gateway the Vaernastians create, it only partially exists in our realm, while continuing to live in its home dimension. Our scientists theorize it has completely engulfed the universe as it exists in this higher dimension, a fate that might someday befall our own universe if the Vaernastians continue to allow the entity to penetrate our space.

“The System Killer feeds on the plasma produced by a system’s star, and keeps growing exponentially until it eats up the entire system, eventually causing the star to cease its nuclear fusion processes. Theoretically, its use is banned by the Link, because it renders the destroyed systems useless, and threatens to spread to surrounding space.

“The Vaernastians will be punished for breaking that ban. The Link will probably request the removal and disintegration of whoever authorized the attack. Nothing major. Not enough to deter them from using it again, in any case. Especially against us. They have a slight grudge, you see, dating from the time we reduced their homeworld to cinders.”

“I can see how that would have made them… resentful,” Greta said. When the aliens had nothing more to add, Greta sat back and folded her arms. “So. Earlier you transmitted that the Mimics were ready to sign the peace treaty. What sort of concessions do you expect? What’s it going to take to make this treaty a reality?”

“It’s simple, really,” Maurice said. “In exchange for signing this peace treaty with Earth, we only want your help in protecting us from the Vaernastians, and any other members of the Link that choose to attack us. You are the ones who put us into this position, and you’re the ones who’ll get us out of it again.”

“Whoa!” Sheila said over his private line. “Protecting ourselves in self defense against these Very Nasties is one thing, but proactively jumping to the aid of the Mimics to protect them from these new aliens? They just tried to destroy humanity!”

“Actually, helping them against the Vaernastians is in our best interest,” Jain said. “Because by doing so we’ll be weakening the Link. Especially if we can build some kind of formal alliance with one of their former members. We all know the Link will be coming after us next…”

“I suppose you’re right, at that,” Sheila said.

Greta leaned back. She muted the aliens—he could tell because of the big red X’s that appeared across the avatars of both Mimics—and spoke to the other Mind Refurbs present. “It’s too bad the Link ejected them. It sounds like membership in this fabled club is a far more fluid thing than we had originally imagined. The Mimics were thrown out because they couldn’t send in the necessary ships?”

“I’m assuming other members of the Link hold more clout, because they’re able to contribute to a greater extent,” Harold said. “The Mimics were probably considered minor members, useful for the ships they could provide, and little else. Without the ships, there was no point in continuing their membership.”

“Yes, well,” Greta said. “Back to my original point: I was hoping we’d be able to make inroads into some sort of a peace agreement with the Link itself, once we got the Mimics on our side. But now that option is completely off the table. Instead, we’ll end up only further antagonizing the Link, especially if we agree to protect the Mimics.”

Admiral Jacobs appeared. He had been in spectator mode, too, apparently. “We have to take this deal. Screw the Link. They’ll never make peace with us. They consider us a lesser species, hardly worthy of their notice. Why not work on starting our very own galactic empire? First the Mimics, and then maybe the Vaernastians. We slowly chip away at the Link member species, making them part of our own empire.”

“Our own galactic empire,” Harold said in awe.

“It’s not going to work,” Greta said. “As I told you, we’ll only further antagonize the Link. Right now we’re barely worth bothering with, while they’re busy tangling with whatever other species they’re at war with. But start protecting the Mimics, and we’ll move higher up their to-destroy list, I guarantee you.”

“I agree with Greta,” another female Mind Refurb named Lisa said. “If we agree to protect these Mimics, it means we’ll have to divert much needed ships away from Earth. Already we’re operating the defense fleets with historically low numbers of ships, thanks to the war against the Mimics. How can we ever hope to live up to our side of the bargain? We can’t protect the Mimics when we can hardly even protect ourselves.”

Jacobs hesitated. “I suppose you’re right, at that,” he conceded. “It won’t be an easy fight. And we will be leaving Earth at risk from a Link attack if we commit too many resources.”

Jain decided it was time to show his face. He disabled his hidden mode and stepped forward.

“What if the aliens could salvage some of the Nurturer ships we destroyed around Earth?” Jain said.

He was expecting to see disapproval from the admiral at this unexpected breaking of protocol, but instead Jacobs gave him an amused look.

“The turncoat…” Harold said.

Jain’s smile was icy cold. “I’m not a turncoat. I’m a Mind Refurb, just like the rest of you.”

Terry shrugged. “No one ever really proved how much of you is human, and how much is alien. As far as I’m concerned, you’re more alien than anything else, and you simply turned upon your masters.”

“My mere presence here, fighting on the side of humanity, should be proof enough of how wrong you are,” Jain said.

“Most of the Nurturer vessels orbiting Earth are burnt out husks,” Lisa said, steering the discussion back on the topic.

Jain glanced at Greta and Lisa. Those were the most influential among the group, as far as he could tell. They were the ones he needed to sway.

Burnt out husks… that was the state Jain had left the invaders in after infiltrating the Centrifuge formed by the Nurturers and planting the nuclear bomb in the power core of the main vessel. Because the Centrifuge formation required all the alien vessels to be physically joined, the nuclear chain reaction had spread to all the ships in the formation, and disabled them all.

“Most of their central power wells, and the reactor cores belonging to them, are burnt out, yes,” Jain said. “But the Mimics have repair technology that exceeds our own by leaps and bounds. Once the power wells are restored, the local repair termites can activate once more, and given access to the necessary supplies, they’ll have those Nurturers up and running in no time. They’re all class A types. Just the kind of reinforcements the Mimics will need. We might only have to send a few Mind Refurb ships to act as support.”

“Yes, well, that’s all fine and dandy,” Greta said. “Unless the rebuilt Mimic space navy decides to turn on us.”

“They’ll know that if they do, they’ll be on their own against the vast resources of the Link Empire,” Jain said. “At least if humanity helps them, they can share some of the blame for any defensive attacks against a Link member species with us.”

“And that’s part of the problem,” Greta said. “I’m not sure we want to get on the Link’s bad side.”

“Excuse me, miss,” Admiral Jacobs said. “But we’re already on the Link’s bad side.”

She didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“We await your answer,” Maurice said impatiently. Those red X’s meant only that the aliens couldn’t hear what was going on; they could still speak.

Greta unmuted the line. “Let’s say we allowed you to retrieve some of your vessels from our home system. Would you be able to salvage them?”

“We would,” Terry said. “And in fact, we were going to stipulate this very thing as part of any treaty that we sign.”

“How long exactly would it take you to repair the ships?” Greta pressed.

“Two and a half weeks,” the Mimic replied.

Greta frowned. “On the dot?”

“If you return all ships that were lost, yes,” Maurice said.

“So we’d have to protect you from the Vaernastians, and whoever else decided to attack, for two and a half weeks until those other ships were operational.”

“Correct,” Maurice said.

“How do we know we can trust you not to attack us once those ships are online?” Greta pressed.

“You don’t,” Terry replied. “But it’s in our best interest to maintain good relations. Once the Link kicks out a member species, it doesn’t allow them to return. There are exceptions, but in general, there’s no going back. The struggle against the Link will last for generations.”

It was essentially the same answer Jain had given her.

“It’s already lasted generations for us…” Lisa muttered. She muted the aliens once more and glanced at the other negotiators. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m inclined to sign such a treaty. We’re going to need powerful allies in this galaxy if we ever hope to take on the Link. All in favor, say aye.”

A chorus of ayes filled the room. Only Greta remained silent. Everyone looked at her.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Greta said. “Let’s hammer out the details.”’

5

Jain reclined on a soft chaise in the sand while a bikini-clad serving woman poured him a beer. She was leaning over him, giving him an eyeful of the jiggling contents harbored by her bikini top. She filled his beer glass with a wink, straightened once more, and then turned to serve Cranston beside him. As soon as she moved away, the formerly occluded Egyptian pyramids behind her were revealed.

The other Void Warriors lounged on similar chaises beside him. Because emotions were still offline across the team, Jain had decided it should be safe enough to give a group VR session a trial run. If tensions remained low among them, he would consider the trial a success and begin holding the sessions on a nightly basis once more. It just so happened to be Medeia’s turn to host tonight.

Directly to his left was the host herself, being served by some muscular dude sporting a G-string. When the man turned around, Medeia boldly slapped him on the buttocks, and the man turned toward her, waving a finger while smirking ever so slightly to show her that he had enjoyed that.

Ah, simulacrums. They existed only in the digital world, and had complex enough AIs to seem real, but not so complex as to be self aware. They would do the bidding of their Mind Refurb masters without question. In this case, they were all Medeia’s, so if Jain tried to make a move on that sexy waitress, for example, he might be met with a slap to the face, or worse. Whereas in his own VR, well, she would melt like butter in his arms. Sort of like G-String Dude.

That was why he preferred digital women, he supposed. All the usual drama was left behind, and the only thing that remained was the raw intimacy. That was all a man really needed.

At least, that was what he told himself.

It was easy to accept those thoughts as the truth at the moment, considering his emotions were offline. But when he had them enabled, he definitely missed the absence of an emotional bond that came with a relationship with a real woman. Or in his case, Mind Refurb.

He glanced at Sheila, who was being served by her own G-string dude. She smiled politely at the simulacrum, but she seemed to sense him looking at her, because she turned and met his eye.

He immediately glanced away. Even though his emotions were offline, he could almost feel the blood rushing to his face. But not quite.

Even though she was being served by some dude with ten times the muscle mass, who was five times better looking, she still had eyes for Jain.

I’m going to have to take her up on that date. I guess.

He reminded himself that he could add as much muscle mass as he pleased to his avatar, and could fashion his face however he wanted.

No. She’s going to have to like me for who I am, if she wants to date me. Virtual warts and all.

“Only Medeia would think to have a beach party in front of the great pyramids,” Gavin commented, dragging Jain back into the present moment. “That’s a little like eating dinosaur stew while watching the Crusades in the Middle Ages, isn’t it?”

“Hey, that’s the great thing about VR,” Medeia said. “You can create an ocean in the middle of the desert.”

“It isn’t the environment I would have chosen,” Cranston said. “But it works.”

“Sure does,” Mark chimed in. He wore shades, cargo shorts, and a tank top over an inked and bronzed body. It was a nice change from the usual hieroglyph-embossed robes he wore on the virtual bridge, attire that reminded Jain all too much of his Accomp, Xander.

The bikini-clad waitress finished refilling Mark’s glass, and when she turned around he sat up to slap her booty. Her buttocks promptly turned into jaws that bit down on Mark’s hand.

He screamed as the blood poured from his wrist, and the jaws finally released him. His hand was missing, but promptly reformed.

Jain was suddenly relieved he hadn’t done something like that himself. Very relieved. He was right not to trust Medeia’s VR programming.

Mark lay back down and shook his head. He turned toward Medeia. “That wasn’t very nice.”

Medeia shrugged, flashing an evil grin. “Next time keep your hands to yourself.”

“You programmed them to do that only for me, didn’t you?” Mark pressed.

Her smile only deepened. “How’d you guess?”

“So Sheila,” Jain said quickly, not wanting a repeat of the tensions that had caused him to cancel their group sessions in the first place. “Any news on the potential hacking of our AI cores?”

Sheila seemed disappointed by the question, as if she’d expected him to say something else. “That’s a negative. I’ve looked through all the code on my highest possible time setting, but haven’t been able to find any changes. I have to assume that we have stealth code in play.”

“Stealth code?” Gavin said. “What’s that?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Sheila said. “It’s essentially code that executes in a memory location reported as empty by our allocation subsystems. Tracking down such code is tricky, considering that as soon as I begin poking the relevant memory regions, the code can detect the access attempt and move itself to another empty location. I’m coding a custom program to help me out. Basically, it’s going to poke at a bunch of random memory locations at the same time, and I’ll slowly piece together the data bit by bit, even if it jumps around. When I’m done, I’ll be able to confirm whether that data is just random bits and bytes left over from previous unallocated memory segments, or stealth code written with a purpose. But it’ll take some time either way. I’ll need at least a few days.”

“I think we can wait to enable our emotions for a few days, considering what happened when those emotions were allowed to spiral out of control the last time,” Jain said.

He turned his gaze to the ocean waves that lapped against the sand nearby. The shoreline twisted all the way to the pyramids in the distance. He should have felt relaxed, but he felt only numbness, thanks to his lack of emotions.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

No. It was a necessary test. In general, these sessions were good, because they kept the team bonded. He’d tried to encourage similar off-base activities with his SEALs back when he was a human on the Teams. Not everyone participated, and usually it was the loners who were the first to drop out after the deployments. They couldn’t stay away from military life for long, however, and often became mercenaries, where the lone wolf ethos was valued more.

Cranston sipped his beer. “You know, kicking alien ass was a lot of fun. I’d almost forgotten what it was like. We’ve been stuck in these negotiations for so long…”

“It’s only been a few months since the Mimic invasion!” Mark said. “How could you forget so soon?”

“I said almost forgotten,” Cranston clarified.

“I don’t know how you can call that fun,” Gavin said. “We almost died out there. You almost died. Teleporting close to those Vaernastians probably wasn’t the best idea.”

“In retrospect, no,” Cranston said. “Though it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“They always do,” Medeia said.

Cranston sighed. “But hell yeah, it was fun.”

“Are you sure your emotions are offline?” Medeia asked. “You shouldn’t really be capable of registering anything remotely resembling ‘fun’ at the moment.”

“I may have switched them on during the battle…” Cranston said. “I always function better under stress. And there just isn’t any when you have no emotions.” He glanced at Jain and added: “Of course, I’ve switched them off since then.”

Cranston sat back and closed his eyes. He must have been thinking along similar lines as Jain had only moments before, because he suddenly turned to Jain and said: “How did you stand retirement, back when you were human? You didn’t feel the urge to go back?”

“I’m not really sure,” Jain said. “I still have a lot of holes in my memory. I think my wife helped ground me.” He glanced at Sheila when he spoke those words. Though her emotions were supposed to be offline, he thought he saw the merest flicker of a frown. Probably was imagining it. Then again, when an AI mind had a particularly strong emotional response to a stimulus, not even emotion suppression could hide its physical embodiments entirely.

“Wife…” Cranston said, his eyes defocusing. “I was never married. The military was my wife. My brothers and sisters, my sons and daughters. I’ve recreated all the missions I ever went on in meticulous detail. The environments. The tech. The teammates. Their personalities are exactly as I remember them, and I’ve programmed their autonomous AIs to respond to every possible stimulus exactly as they would have. I’ve relived some of those old missions a thousand times. Especially the ones that were the most painful. I’ve played them back, trying to figure out what I did wrong.

“Sometimes, it was simply a matter of taking a different fork in the road, and a teammate would live. Other times, there were only one or two small things or actions I could have changed to save them. Things that I discovered only after a thousand replays, actions I would have never thought of in the heat of the moment. It’s helped me stop blaming myself for their deaths.” He focused on Jain. “These so-called ‘holes’ in your memory? They might actually be a gift. Maybe it’s best if you don’t go opening doors that are better left shut.”

“You could be right,” Jain said. “You’ve relived these missions a thousand times? Some missions can take up weeks in the real world.”

“Yes,” Cranston said. “I’ll play them in accelerated time occasionally, though usually I’ll just stop whenever the work day begins and return again in the evening.”

“You asked me how I could handle retirement,” Jain said. “Because in a sense, you’ve never retired at all. You never really left the service.”

“That’s what I was getting at,” Cranston said. “When we go back to the real world, and the day to day operations of our ships, I live for the nights, when I can return to battle, and to my old brothers and sisters. Maybe it’s wrong. Sometimes I think it is, that I value these virtual people almost as much as real flesh and blood, or Mind Refurbs, as it were.”

“Just as long as you don’t value them above us,” Gavin said.

“Only you,” Cranston said. “Just kidding. Of course I’d never put simulacrums above the welfare of one of you. I know they’re fake, an illusion created by dedicated circuits within my own brain, whereas all of you are living entities. Machines, yes, but very much alive. Anyway, what I was going to say was, since I live to fight battles every night, it’s only an added bonus when I get to war during the work day. Even if it is an entirely different kind of war, executed with a completely divergent toolset. By the way, you’re welcome to join me on one of these recreated missions sometime, Jain. They might help spark your memories.”

“It might be a good idea,” Jain agreed. “Maybe when we’re done helping out with the Mimic-Human alliance I’ll think about it.”

Cranston nodded. “Whatever you want.”

They relaxed under the virtual Egyptian sun, soaking up the digital rays, and drinking their beers of zeros and ones. For them, to whom the virtual world was the only reality they knew, this was all very real. Even the texture of the beer was right, and the way its subtle flavors spread across his tongue.

The Mind Refurbs began to clock out one by one, until only Jain, Sheila and Medeia were left.

“I’ll leave the environment running for a few hours,” Medeia said with a conspiratorial glance toward Sheila. With that, she disappeared, leaving only Jain and Sheila.

He considered hastily logging out himself, but decided that would be extremely rude, considering he owed Sheila an answer.

“Finally, alone at last.” Sheila gave him a forced grin. Forced, because there was no emotion behind it. “So?”

“So what?” he said.

“You’re really going to make me ask…” she said.

He shrugged.

“Fine, you want me to work for it, I’ll work for it,” she said. “When are you going to take me up on my 3D chess invitation?”

He hesitated a moment longer. Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose.

“Let’s go,” he told her.

She seemed surprised, despite the emotion suppression. “Oh. Well, then.” She glanced around herself in disapproval. “But first, let’s switch to a more realistic beach. One located in my domain.”

He received a VR invitation from Sheila, and accepted. The world vanished.

6

Jain lay on a hammock. The setting sun cast the ocean and sky in a multitude of red and orange hues. There was a small table beside him, and it held a 3D chess set with all the pieces in their starting positions. On the other side of it, Sheila lay in another hammock. Her bikini top had vanished, though her breasts were hidden behind several leis made of flowers looped around her neck.

“You’re not wearing all those leis because you expect to get laid, are you?” Jain said with a forced grin.

“Oh, please,” Sheila said. “No lame puns today. So, do you want to make the opening move?”

“It would be more appropriate if you did it,” Jain said.

“You’re really making me do all the work tonight, aren’t you?” Sheila said, reaching toward the table.

“Oh all right.” Jain shot out an arm and moved a piece before she did. “Check mate.”

“Ha,” she said. “If only the game worked that way.”

“If only real life did,” he commented.

“Where would the fun in that be?” she replied, making her own opening move.

“It’s hard talking about fun, when you have no emotions, isn’t it?” Jain made his next move.

“It figures that you’d date me when your emotions are offline,” Sheila said.

“Hey, I finally got around to it, you can’t blame me for the circumstances surrounding it,” Jain said.

“I’ll expect you to hold a follow up date with me,” Sheila said. “When we get our emotions back.”

“I look forward to it,” Jain lied.

“I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or not,” Sheila said. “Damn lack of emotions.” She moved another piece.

“You know what?” he said. “I think we can turn our emotions on, at least for a little while.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re going to start breaking your own rules now, are you?”

He hesitated. What am I doing? “There’s a chance enabling our emotions will reactivate whatever virus is hidden in our systems, isn’t there?”

She nodded. “If the emotional subroutines are the attack vector. Which seems likely.”

“Okay, I guess it’s not worth it,” Jain said.

She smiled. There was real warmth behind it. “Probably not.”

“You just enabled your emotions, didn’t you?” he said.

“For research purposes, only,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, I want us to up our time sense to the max, to mitigate any potential damage.”

He did so.

“Done,” she said.

That he was able to understand her told him that she had upped her own time sense.

He pulled up his emotion interface, and reactivated them. He felt the weight on his shoulders almost immediately. The burden of command. Wasn’t a good feeling.

But when he looked at her, that weight mostly vanished.

She looks so beautiful tonight.

He so dearly wanted a peek at what was lying underneath those wreaths covering her bosom.

She noticed his gaze. “Now, now, concentrate on the game, not the goods!”

Face reddening, he returned his gaze to the 3D chess board.

“I’ve never heard anyone call them that,” he said. “The goods. Who talks like that?”

“Hey, I can call my rack whatever I want, buster!”

He laughed. “Buster? Refer to my last comment.”

“I’ll tell you who talks like that,” she said. “Someone who’s been watching a few ancient movies in her spare time.”

“I didn’t know you were into movies,” he said. “You struck me as more of the gamer type.”

“Oh I play my fare share of games, too,” she admitted. “You know I’m big into fantasy games.”

“Yeah, I got that impression,” he said. “You hacked into the AI core of an alien starship by using a VR environment that was a big Dungeons and Dragons set piece. So yeah…”

“Actually, it was a VR MMORPG I used to play back in the day,” she said. “It was called Iridium. One of the biggest, baddest, online role-playing games out there. It was the most popular on the streaming networks at the time. I think it had over a hundred million concurrent viewers at one point, with almost an equal number of streamers. Man, I had so much fun in that game. I had to quit when I realized I’d basically checked out of real life and was spending most of my time in the game.”

He moved a piece on the 3D chess board. “This was after you left the military I assume?”

She shook her head. “Nope. It was between deployments though. You have to give me some credit there.”

He smiled. “Okay.” He returned his attention to the board after she made her move. “By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever asked… did you have kids?”

“No,” she said. “At least, not before my scan. I took contraceptives throughout my career, like a good little navy girl. But according to my file, a few years after I had my scan, I became a single mother and left the navy. The father is unlisted.”

He moved his next piece. “When we got back to Earth, did you try to look up her descendants?”

“Hell no!” she said. “That’s a can of worms I don’t want to open. I never knew the kid. And I don’t want to know her.”

He nodded. “Probably a good idea.”

“But still, sometimes I get the urge to have children, if you know what I mean,” she told him.

“And that’s why you have virtual cabana boys,” he said.

“But I don’t want virtual cabana boys,” she said softly. “I want the real thing.”

There was such longing there, in her eyes. He couldn’t bear to hold her gaze, and quickly glanced to the side.

I can’t do this.

Yes, I can.

He concentrated on the game, ignoring her. They played in silence.

At one point she slid off her hammock to rest on her knees in the sand. It put her gaze at eye level with the chess set. There were some who said eye level was the only way to play, since it gave the participants a better overview of the board and all the pieces.

“That’s a good idea.” He slid off the hammock and knelt beside her to get a better view.

As they continued to play, somehow they crept closer together, so that their knees touched. And their hands brushed one time when she responded overeagerly to one of his moves, reaching for her piece before he had even retracted his arm.

He glanced at her, and she giggled nervously, looking down.

They continued to play, their thighs pressed tight together. He wasn’t concentrating on the game at all. He was moving pieces randomly now. Her own moves seemed calculated to prolong the game for as long as possible. At least, that was the impression he had when she sacrificed her queen for no apparent reason at all.

He glanced at her curiously when she did that, and the sheer want he saw in her eyes turned him the hell on. He leaned his head toward hers, and she instantly responded, bringing her lips closer to his.

He turned his face to the side at the last moment, and her lips touched his cheek instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away. He got up and sat on the hammock. He didn’t recline, but instead treated it as a bench. A very shaky bench. “I can’t do this. I can’t shake off all the years of military discipline. Even after all this time. It’s been hammered into me… I can’t fraternize.”

“It’s not fraternizing.” She crossed her arms and remained kneeling on the sand. “Because you see, we’re not even in the military, and you’re certainly not my commanding officer. Sure, we elected you to lead us, but I can leave at any time. Any of us can. We obey you only at our pleasure. And the two of us, we’re not even coworkers, not really. More like friends than anything else.”

“That may be true,” he said. “But try as I might, I just can’t look at it that way.”

She self-consciously adjusted the wreaths hanging around her neck, as if to ensure that her “goods”, as she called them, were adequately concealed from his view. As if he was no longer worthy of what lay beneath. Which he wasn’t.

“You think you’re better than all of us, is that it?” she asked.

“No, not at all,” Jain said. “We’re all equals.”

She studied him for a moment. She looked so cute, looking up at him like that. He wished he could hold her, and just let go, but he couldn’t. “Are you still grieving over the loss of your wife or something?”

He shook his head. “No, it really is the fraternization thing. Even though we’re not in the military, and even if I’m not technically your commanding officer, it feels like I am. And in the eyes of the other Void Warriors, who also look at me to lead them, any relationship between you and I will be seen essentially as fraternization. There will be grudges. Accusations of favoritism. Especially when we turn our emotions on full time again.”

“No there won’t…” she said. “No one cares about what you and I do in our private time, trust me. As long as we keep things professional during our allocated work hours, things will be fine. Look at Medeia and Mark, for example. They hooked up a long time ago. And no one says anything about them.”

He simply stared at her, and didn’t answer.

“So you’re worried what everyone else is going to think,” she said. “That’s what this is. You’re going to let that stop you from achieving ultimate happiness. You’re not even human anymore. You’re a machine now. A Mind Refurb. Why do you care what other machines think about you?”

He had no answer for her.

With a sigh, she got up, and reclined on her hammock across from him. She adjusted her leis after lying down to make sure the sides of her breasts were sufficiently hidden. Not that he was looking. Okay fine, he might have tried a quick peek.

“So the peace treaty has been signed…” she said idly, gazing at the orange-hued sky. The sun hadn’t yet set, despite how much time had passed since they began the chess game. In fact, it hadn’t moved at all, he realized. She had purposely frozen it in place so that they would have the sunset accompanying them the entire evening.

Nice touch.

“Yes, it’s been signed,” he said. Admiral Jacobs had sent word earlier, before the group VR session, that the aliens and Mind Refurb negotiators had come to an agreement. The news was partly why Jain had initiated the group VR session in the first place.

“Admiral Jacobs is dispatching a few ships from Task Force 88 to supervise the transport of the damaged Mimic vessels from human space to here,” Jain continued. “He’s asked me to send a Void Warrior to accompany them. I still haven’t decided—”

“I’ll do it,” Sheila interrupted.

He was taken aback. “Really?”

“Just for you, Admiral,” she said with a grin.

“No,” he told her slowly. “It’s not for me. That’s the wrong attitude to take for something like this.”

She frowned. “No, I suppose not. I just wanted an excuse to say that.”

“It was your unique catchphrase there for a while, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Back when I still thought I had a chance with you.”

He tried to sit straighter, but the hammock shook beneath him, forcing him to slouch. “No. Don’t do that. Of course you have a chance.” He sighed. “I just… I need more time.”

She nodded. “I understand. We have an eternity, after all. I’m sure we’ll get things sorted out at some point.”

“I’m sure we will,” he said, though he didn’t entirely agree with her eternity assessment. Death was only an energy cannon impact away, after all. Sure, they could be restored from backups and a version of them would live on, but even those could be destroyed. Redundant copies of the backups were kept on the different Void Warrior ships, with each vessel harboring a copy of every other team member, but if all of them were reduced to space dust, there would be nothing to restore from.

He’d have to ask Xander to come up with a completely off-site backup plan sometime.

“But I was serious about supervising the transportation,” she said. “I’m the perfect choice. I operate a Builder vessel, after all. You guys in your warships are far better equipped to protect the existing Mimics while I’m gone. I’ll leave the Daktor here, of course.”

“It should only take a few days,” he said. “Because of the short time frame, it’s unlikely the Vaernastians will attack. So there won’t be very much protecting for the rest of us to do.”

“That’s a good thing then,” she told him.

“I suppose it is.” He hesitated.

“I’ll continue researching the hidden virus while I’m gone,” she said into the void that followed. “And I’ll try to return early if I find anything. Or at least send a message.”

He nodded. That was exactly what he was wondering. He supposed he could assign other people to look at the virus if he really wanted to, though Sheila was the most qualified.

He made up his mind. “All right, you can be the one to go.”

“Thank you,” she said, eyes gleaming.

He stood up. She did, too, and then she surprised him by throwing herself at him in a hug. He stiffened, and she quickly pulled away.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m the one who’s sorry. By the way, don’t forget to disable your emotions before I log out.”

“Already done,” she said. All hint of life had vanished from her eyes. “How do you think I’m able to handle the sting of rejection so well?” She forced a smile.

He accessed his limbic system menus and disabled his own emotions. The last time he had done this, it had felt like a great burden had lifted from his shoulders. But this time, the feeling was entirely different: he experienced a momentary sense of loss. Not just for the emotions, but for what could have been with Sheila.

As he logged out of her VR, he wondered if he would regret his inaction that night for the rest of his life.

7

Jain spent the rest of that evening alone on the virtual bridge, imbibing beer and wine. He had set the toxicity settings to max, wanting to experience the full force of simulated mind numbing chemicals. Being drunk without emotions was interesting. He was ordinarily a belligerent drunk, but now he felt only indifference to the numbness of everything around him.

When it came time to simulate sleep in order to give his mind a rest, he canceled the toxicity and logged out from VR. He no longer had dreams enabled. He didn’t really want to unearth any more memories from his past through them. They were nightmares, really: all he seemed to dream about were battles, mostly from the war against Xenon 626, a species of tentacled aliens humanity had discovered after experimenting with captured Banthar rift technology. One of the scientists working on the project had discovered coordinates stored in the rift generators, and the military supervisors dispatched crack teams to explore each location. Jain was part of the team sent to Talowna, the planet where Xenon 626 was discovered. The Mimics had been secretly observing the Xenon at the time, and when humanity staged an invasion of Talowna shortly thereafter, the Mimics used it as proof that humanity was evil and needed to be exterminated.

Yes, dreams, and memories. The fact was, Jain didn’t want to remember, not anymore. There could be only pain in those memories. Remembering lost brothers and sisters would only bring him the same torture and unrest that Cranston had. No, perhaps it was for the best that he had holes in his memories. The past was better left buried.

On that note, he shut down his cognitive subroutines, with a timer to reinitiate consciousness eight hours from now.

The next morning, shortly after he awoke, Sheila departed with a contingent of two Task Force 88 vessels to Earth system, both of which contained Mind Refurb negotiators. Two Nurturer vessels, both B class, also joined them. The alien vessels contained the AI cores of Maurice and Terry, the chief negotiators for the Mimics. The Nurturers jumped separately, while the Mind Refurb ships used the rift gate provided by a jump craft.

Before Sheila left, Jain gave her final instructions to look into adding some sort of preventative measures to the burned out ships in some way, to stop the aliens from ever turning on them.

“We can modify them now, while they’re in humanity’s custody, but as soon as we turn them over, we lose that window of opportunity,” Jain said. “It has to be something hidden. If we try planting physical bombs inside their power cores, for example, the Mimics would just remove them as part of their repair process. It’s going to have to be software based. A virus, probably.”

She nodded. “Given the damage profiles, the AI cores should be intact on most of them. I might be able to jury-rig a temporary power supply for one such Nurturer before we initiate the hand-off. Once it’s online, I could inject something malicious. A hidden virus that will spread to the others once they’re online. Sort of like what they did to us.”

“Yes, but we don’t know whether it was the Mimics who created the virus in our minds, or humanity,” Jain said. “Either way, I’d prefer you did this in secret, without any other Mind Refurbs finding out, if you can.”

“I’ll do my best,” Sheila said. “By the way, Earth’s military will have already thought of doing something like this. Maybe they’ve already beaten us to it.”

“It’s possible,” he agreed. “But they don’t have your experience in dealing with alien technology and neural networks. In fact, they probably haven’t even turned on any of the captured vessels yet, because they haven’t figured out how to repair the reactors. Wouldn’t surprise me if their scientists were still working through the manuals I sent.”

“Well I’ll certainly be poring over the manuals again during the return trip,” she said. “It’s going to be tricky, not just installing the virus, but figuring out a way to do it without attracting attention. But hey, I’m always up for a challenge.”

“We’re in good hands with you,” he told her.

She grinned, and it would have seemed real if it weren’t for the dead eyes. “You certainly are.”

* * *

Sheila entered the gaping hole in the damaged Nurturer’s hull. She had transferred her consciousness into the skirmisher vessel Jain had lent her, which was about the perfect size for the mission at hand. Her mind felt so small, so constrained, inside the smaller neural network, but she quickly got used to it.

She had made a few modifications to the small craft, including custom-printed retractable arms. It had been tricky linking those arms up to the alien power source aboard, but she finally achieved it with the help of her loincloth-wearing Accomp, Charlie. She had been missing a few key elements necessary to link those arms to the skirmisher’s power, but the trusty fellows in charge of space navy requisitions had given her what she needed.

She hadn’t actually obtained clearance to enter that particular Nurturer vessel, as the brass didn’t trust her anywhere near the alien ships. She was a Void Warrior, after all—almost a rogue AI in their eyes. Useful when kept at arm’s length, but not someone who could be let into any inner circles.

However, since Jain had already modified the skirmisher by pasting holoemitters, thermal maskers and LIDAR absorbers to the hull—the same technologies the Mimics were famous for—she didn’t exactly need permission. She had slipped right past the Piranha ship that acted as a guard for this particular unit.

The other damaged Nurturers in humanity’s possession were strung out in high orbit beside this one, guarded by more warships. The humans hadn’t yet agreed to release the alien vessels, as the peace treaty wasn’t final until the president signed it. The two Mind Refurb negotiators worked around the clock to thrash out the final amendments between the president, his advisors, and the Mimics.

Before traveling any deeper, Sheila deployed one of her retractable arms. It emerged from the coating of thermal maskers and holoemitters, and with it she planted a custom-designed camera next to the gaping hole in the hull. She turned its directional antennae toward her so that the alien gamma ray transmissions reached her skirmisher and no other craft, keeping her apprised of the situation at the entrance.

She passed through the damaged hull section and into the long tunnel that made up the central power well. She had to find deck five, where the server farms that held the alien AI core and cloud storage partitions resided.

The metal composing the cylindrical surface around her was almost completely smooth, thanks to the nuclear chain reaction that had passed this way, superheating the walls and melting away any details. She emitted the equivalent of LIDAR as she passed, mapping out the place.

It was tricky finding the entrances to the different decks, because they appeared only as alcoves where the blast doors had melted inward. She consulted with the Nurturer blueprints each time she discovered a new alcove, and confirmed that it matched up with a level entry point.

When she finally arrived at where deck five was supposed to be, there was no alcove. Only the smooth, melted wall awaited before her. Thinking perhaps her alignment was off, she circled the area. Nothing.

She knew the entrance had to be here, because the Nurturer Class A vessels were built off the same blueprint. She suspected that the nuclear heat had simply been hotter in this particular section, and had melted deeper into the power well here than at the other levels. A quick glance at the wall circumferences recorded by her LIDAR told her that was the case.

Using the blueprint as a guide, she returned to the appropriate wall section and activated her drilling lasers to begin cutting through the smooth surface.

In two hours, she finally bored her way through to the deck beyond. She maneuvered inside.

Artificial gravity wasn’t active, not with the ship’s reactor core offline, so it was relatively easy to proceed between the different servers to her target. Those servers were outlined by her LIDAR equivalent, and they reminded her of cigar cases because of their small size and relatively cylindrical natures. They abutted against one another, covering the floor, ceiling, and distant walls. Each rose to a slightly different height than the previous so that altogether they formed what looked like a city of miniature, rounded skyscrapers.

According to the alien documentation, the manual access point to the servers could be found in a small hollow in the deck roughly twenty meters from the entrance.

She proceeded forward until she found that hollow. It was three meters closer than expected—no doubt because of the compression the nuclear blast had caused to the power well, in addition to the melting, forcing the containing walls into the surrounding decks.

She deployed the specialized arm she had designed for this particular access point, and inserted the key at its tip into the slot. The key fed power from her skirmisher into the core, and several of the nearby servers came to life: blue lights pulsed up and down their cylindrical lengths, forming a circle roughly three meters in radius around her. Those activated servers comprised only a tiny fraction of the machines responsible for the alien neural network. Definitely not enough to make the Mimic within attain consciousness, but it was perfect for her needs. At least, she hoped so.

She rolled up her virtual sleeves, logged into the AI core, and got to work.

* * *

Twelve hours later, an alert sounded on Sheila’s HUD. She resided within a cube whose walls, floor and ceiling were composed of white wireframes: the VR environment she had developed to facilitate access to the alien user interface. She had been knee deep in alien code, running the software program that served as a Mimic debugger, when the alarm activated.

She pulled up the feed from the camera she had placed at the opening in the Nurturer’s hull. Two shuttle craft of human make and model had just entered.

They must have detected the energy signature produced by the power she had fed to the AI core. While the power source of her skirmisher was shielded by stealth technology, the Nurturer itself had no way to mask the AI core emissions, not while its own reactor remained offline. She had hoped the emissions would be too weak to detect, but apparently she had been wrong. Though she had no idea why the Piranha vessel on guard out there took twelve hours to do anything abut it.

She quickly dismissed the camera feed.

Time to wrap up here.

She had been working in maximum accelerated time, so she had around four hours at her current time sense until the shuttles reached the deck-five-entrance, by her estimate.

She had come up with a preliminary design for her virus during the journey to Earth, and had finalized it once she had access to the actual hardware. It had taken her twelve hours to come up with a way to hide it in the neural network’s unallocated memory core, using a technique inspired by the clandestine virus she suspected herself and the other Void Warriors carried.

As for the progress she’d made on the latter code infecting them: before leaving Tantalum system, she had finished the custom program she’d designed to poke into random memory locations, and had left it running in the background all this time. She looked forward to crunching the numbers when she was done here.

She finished installing the virus into the unallocated core area. She had to sneak it into the boot sector equivalent so that it would be secretly injected when the Nurturer booted up, otherwise it would be lost when she powered it down. That took up most of her next four hours.

When she was done, she closed the debugger and sat back for a moment. The viral code had worked moderately well in the sandbox environment she had prepared; even secretly spreading to the adjacent sandboxes she’d created to simulate other Nurturers. But that spreading had occurred over the emulated comm protocol of the sandbox environment. She had no way to test its actual behavior in the real world, not while the Mimic was still offline. She had done some preliminary testing before leaving using Jain’s comm systems, and that was about it.

So whether or not the virus actually worked, well, she couldn’t say. One day she might find out; she just hoped the Void Warriors didn’t have to use it. Not just because she didn’t trust that the virus would work, but because it would mean the human-Mimic peace treaty had ended.

She thought of installing the virus in Jain, and letting it propagate through his own Mimic comm arrays, but it wouldn’t work: they’d never grant his stolen ship the full network sharing access he’d need, an access that the normal Mimic ships in the network had by default.

She logged out of the VR interface. When she returned to the server room, she suddenly understood why the power emissions had been detected. The circle of pulsing servers around her had expanded from a radius of three meters to ten. Apparently, the servers had been designed to remotely transfer power to one another, and had slowly dispersed energy from the inner servers to those on the perimeters, steadily increasing the drain on her skirmisher. In fact she could see the relatively high draw on her reactor when she pulled up her power menu.

Damn. I should have checked that before logging into the VR interface so hastily.

She snapped back to normal time as she disconnected her specialized arm from the access point. The circle of pulsing cylinders faded to black. She retracted her arm, stowing it beneath the holoemitters of her hull, and retreated.

Stealth mode was still active on the skirmisher, so she hurried to the deck five opening and emerged. The two shuttles arrived a moment later, and launched smaller drones to explore the breached deck.

She circumvented the drones, and the shuttles, and made her way back to the hull gap. When she emerged, she had to fly past the waiting Piranha class vessel, which had closed with the Nurturer. She gave it a wide berth.

Below, the half dome that was Earth blotted out the stars. She set a course toward the far side, where the Wheelbarrow awaited: the Builder vessel she called home.

8

Jain had accepted a copy of the memory probing program that Sheila had developed, and he distributed it to the other Void Warriors so that they could run it on their own AI cores.

Two days passed. In that time, no further Vaernastian attacks came. Task Force 88 and the remaining Nurturers guarded the hive. The Mimics had gathered their ships above the moon of a rock planet, and used the minerals of said celestial body to meet the resource requirements of their space cities.

Another day passed. It was expected that the president of Earth would make amendments to the peace treaty, so the wait wasn’t entirely a surprise. Still, a probe bearing a message of some kind would have been nice.

Midway through the fourth day, Xander announced: “I’m detecting a gravitational wave and neutrino burst combination. About two million kilometers away from the moon.”

Jain held his breath, though his body was only virtual.

“I’m reading Mind Refurb vessels, a Builder among them,” Xander said. “It’s the Wheelbarrow.”

Jain exhaled in relief.

“They’re dragging a long line of Nurturer vessels through the rift,” Xander continued. “Zooming in, I can see cables connecting all of them.”

Jain accessed the video feed, and sure enough, he saw the burned-out husks of pyramid vessels joined in a long chain as they emerged from the rip in spacetime. Interspersed among them at various intervals in the chain were Mind Refurb ships, along with the two active Nurturers.

Roughly eighty had been captured in the war. But by the time the rift closed, Jain counted only sixty of the ships. That was all the humans had agreed to return, then. They were keeping the remaining twenty for research and salvage purposes.

There were also two more Mind Refurb ships joining the three that had been sent back. These were vaguely boomerang shaped. His internal database was unable to give a match.

“Xander,” he said. “Those two new Mind Refurbs… I can’t get an ID on them.”

“No,” Xander said. “They have the outward appearance of Dominator class ships, but their thermal profiles are all wrong.”

“Connect Sheila when she’s in range of realtime communications,” Jain said.

The long line of ships took four hours to reach real-time comm range.

Sheila promptly appeared on the virtual bridge, at her usual station.

“So, what’s the news?” Jain asked her.

“Well, the negotiations concluded successfully,” Sheila said. “Humanity and the Mimics are officially allies. We’re the first members of the Greater Terran Empire, as the president is calling it.”

“The Mimics aren’t going to like having an Earth reference as part of their empire name,” Mark commented. “Terran.”

“They have a different translation for it,” Sheila said. “Whenever Maurice or Terry says it, they usually substitute the word Fecal for Terran.”

“The Greater Fecal Empire,” Gavin said. “Nice. Something tells me these Mimics aren’t going to be members for very long. At least, only as long as it benefits them.”

“Tell me why the space navy sent along only two extra ships?” Cranston said.

Sheila shrugged. “The navy figured the Mimics would have plenty of ships, once they got their own repaired.”

“No, I meant we’re going to be outnumbered real quick here, once those warbirds are repaired,” Cranston said.

“Earth can’t afford to deploy any more ships,” Sheila explained. “The whole point of returning the Nurturer vessels was so that humanity wouldn’t have to send its own ships to help out. Half our fleet guards the Eastern Galactic Front, dealing with the rising threat of incursion from the Link Empire. The other half guards the Earth itself, in case the Link Empire or other alien aggressors decide to jump directly to our home system. They did send along something special, however. You’ve detected the modified Dominator class ships by now I’m sure?”

“We have,” Cranston said.

“Those are experimental prototypes,” Sheila said. “The Aviator and the Red Arrow. You remember how we sent the humans the blueprints to the inertialess drives, and the Mimic lightning weapons? Well, their scientists have synthesized enough of the necessary exotic elements to create working prototypes. They’ve been installed in the Dominators. The ships can switch back and forth between inertialess drives and Newtonian drives at will. Sort of like the Vaernastians. And they can also fire limited lighting weapons.”

“That would explain the strange heat signatures,” Xander said.

Jain gave Sheila a pointed look. “Tell me you succeeded in your little side mission…”

She pursed her lips, and dropped her gaze for a moment. Then she looked up again. “Yes, I installed a boot virus into one of the Nurturer AI cores. But honestly, I’m not sure it will work. I guess we’ll just have to see, when the time comes.”

“There’s no way to test it?” he asked.

“The only way to test it is to activate it,” she said. “And once we do that, they’ll know. And they’ll begin working on an antidote to the viral code I’ve installed.”

“There’s no guarantee they’ll find it…” he said.

“Yes, but there’s also no guarantee they won’t,” she said. “Activating it could be considered an act of war on our part. It would definitely nullify the treaty they just signed with humanity. The admiral could say we were to blame, but in the Mimic’s eyes, the fault would be placed squarely upon all of humanity.”

He nodded. “All right. We’ll activate it only as a last resort. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll improvise.”

“Like we always do,” Sheila said.

The long line of ships continued to approach. It halted above the moon, next to the hive, and the human vessels began breaking the joining chains. Some Nurturers from the hive flew to the newcomers, and deployed their repair termites into the empty shells of the pyramids, while others ferried elements back and forth from the moon’s surface to the fleet.

With only sixty vessels to repair, the Mimics were able to revise their estimate down to two weeks. They chose to distribute their termites equally among the sixty vessels so that they would all come online at the same time.

The first week passed without incident.

But then the Vaernastians arrived at the beginning of the second week.

* * *

“I’m detecting the gravitational and neutrino markers of a rift,” Xander said. “It’s located on the far side of the system.”

“How many ships have emerged?” Jain asked.

“I’m detecting two so far,” Xander replied. “Okay, the rift just closed. So just the two.”

“Any idea if they’re probes, or starships?” Jain pressed.

“At this distance, I can’t tell for certain,” Xander said.

“Things are about to get interesting…” Medeia commented.

A moment later Xander said: “I’m detecting multiple rift gates opening within the hive. City and gestation ships are attempting to flee.”

“I wonder when we’ll receive the order to run,” Jain said.

“Shouldn’t we just go?” Sheila said. “Unless we want to get trapped here…”

“Wait,” Xander said. “The rifts just closed. Only two city ships jumped out. A third was sliced open when the rift collapsed while the vessel was only partway through.”

“The rift jamming signal just arrived,” Mark commented.

Cranston nodded. “They would have started it moments after entering the system.”

Jain experimentally fired his rift creation unit. Just like the last time, no beams formed, and the unit issued only gravity waves.

Trapped.

“I suspect we’ll be receiving a call from Admiral Jacobs shortly,” Gavin said.

Sure enough, a moment later Xander said: “The admiral wishes to connect.”

“Let him,” Jain said.

The admiral’s grizzled avatar appeared on the bridge. “Tighten your britches, boys and girls. We’re packing up and heading toward the far side of the sun.”

“What about the repairs?” Jain asked.

The admiral shrugged. “The Mimics tell me they’ve gathered enough raw elements from the moon to fix their ships. They’ve got it all in storage.”

“So they say…” Jain said.

“I have no reason to doubt them,” Admiral Jacobs said. “If they didn’t, there would be no reason to leave the moon.”

After the admiral disconnected, Jain said: “All right, well… let the games begin.”

He received the course telemetry from the admiral, and distributed it to the Void Warriors. Then he activated his engines and pulled away from the moon. On the tactical display, the green dots representing the Mimics gathered in high orbit, with the majority of Nurturers assuming a protecting sphere around the hive. Class A and B vessels alike fired grappling hooks into the damaged Nurturers, and prepared to haul them.

Task Force 88 departed the moon ahead of the Mimic fleet because, with the exception of the two experimental ships, the Aviator and Red Arrow, the Mind Refurbs were all slower than the Mimic vessels. The latter ships would very easily catch up once they left the moon, and potentially pass the Mind Refurb fleet, depending on the tactics the admiral had decided upon with the Mimic commander.

Jain matched his speed to that of the other Void Warriors. Even if he was faster, there was no way he was going to abandon his companions. Unless it was for a tactical reason.

“I’m detecting multiple rifts opening throughout the system,” Xander said. “The locations are random. Only one ship is emerging from each rift.”

Jain nodded. “They’re trying to see which of them can appear the closest to us, and when that happens…”

He watched the tactical display. The dots stopped appearing. The closest was about two million kilometers away, or roughly five times the distance of Earth’s moon from the Earth.

“I got another rift opening beside the ship two million kilometers from us,” Sheila said. “No doubt it’s utilizing the rift endpoint tracking technology to guide the others in.”

Several more red dots appeared next to that ship on the display. Jain counted fifty before the rift winked out.

“And so we have our main attack force,” Mark said.

“Why do I have a feeling that today’s going to be one of those days where you wish you never logged out of your personal VR?” Gavin said.

The other ships scattered throughout the system would no doubt leap out in a couple of hours, when they recharged their rift generators, and then return after another two hours to the latest tracking point. Assuming of course that the jammers didn’t affect their own rift technology, which seemed likely.

Jain recorded the locations where those ships appeared, figuring they were probably dropping off endpoint tracking beacons in case they wanted to return to those specific locations at a later date to cut off the Mind Refurb and Mimic fleet, should the vessels pass that way. His Mimic database told him how fast the stealth craft that carried those endpoints moved—which wasn’t very fast at all. On his map, he marked off entire swathes of space representing the potential territory those beacons could cover in a week, and labeled the areas “do not approach.”

When all of the Mimic ships had gathered above the moon, and different Nurturers among them had grappled to the damaged vessels, the Mimic fleet set out from the moon, on a course that would take them through Task Force 88 and the Void Warriors. The Nurturers maintained a protective sphere formation around the hive.

“I’m detecting more heat signatures jumping in at random locations,” Xander said. “Five at a time.” He paused. “It looks like their sphere sections are breaking away…”

Jain examined the tactical display. Sure enough, where the new ships had randomly entered the system, the dots had multiplied by three, so that there were fifteen in each location. He zoomed in on one of them and saw that ten of those dots had assumed a circular formation. He pointed a camera toward that location and on maximum zoom was able to make out the objects as faint dots. But then bright white lines appeared between them, momentarily completing the circle before winking out again. The distant stars bounded by the circle formed by those objects suddenly became black.

In a few seconds the dots themselves winked out as the blackness consumed them, with the objects vanishing from both the camera and the tactical display.

“They’re creating multiple storm fronts in each location,” Xander said. “Or rather, they already did so a few hours ago. It took that long for light from their locations to reach us.”

Whereas light from the Mimics would have already reached the Vaernastians as soon as they jumped in, thanks to the fact the Mimic and Mind Refurb fleet had already been in the system for a few days.

“Multiple storm fronts,” Jain said. “System Killers. They’re trying to constrain the battle space… slowly force us together. How long will it take for these storms to achieve any significant expansion?”

“In about a week, based on current, accelerating expansion rates, they’ll cover half the system,” Xander said. “In a few days after that, the entire system will be engulfed.”

“So, not long at all,” Jain said.

“They don’t want us dodging them for months on end, apparently,” Xander said.

“No,” Jain said. “If we had their technology, we’d do the same.”

He watched as the other ship pieces around each of the storms were engulfed, and likely destroyed.

In two hours, the Mimics passed the Mind Refurb fleet as they headed toward the far side of the sun. At the same time, the remaining Vaernastian ships scattered throughout the system jumped out.

The pursuers slowly closed with Task Force 88, having a maximum speed that was faster than the Mind Refurbs, but slower than the Mimics.

“Looks like we’re going to have to deal with them alone, if the Mimics keep up their present speed…” Cranston commented.

“Fun times,” Mark said.

In another two hours rifts began appearing once again throughout the system as the Vaernastians attempted more random entries. They got lucky, and a ship managed to emerge directly in the path of the Mimics, about a million kilometers ahead. The rift closed behind it, and after several moments another rift opened next to it: this time an entire fleet appeared next to the vessel, composed of twenty Vaernastian vessels. Not as large as the pursuers, but still sizable. And definitely a threat.

Jain’s tactical display updated as Jacobs labeled the enemy fleet behind them as “E2,” and the new fleet ahead as “E1.”

The Mimics immediately altered course, turning away from E1 and heading directly for the sun instead. The admiral sent an updated trajectory Jain’s way.

“Well people, looks like we’re heading into the sun,” Jain said.

“Oh, I was wondering when I’d be able to get some tanning in,” Sheila quipped.

“We’re going to do just a wee bit more than tanning if we get close to that ball of nuclear flames,” Mark said.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Cranston said between gritted teeth.

9

Jain set a course toward the sun, following Task Force 88 and the Mimic fleet, and trickled the order down to his Direct Reports. The Mind Refurbs were about two days out from the point of closest approach to the sun, otherwise known as the event horizon. The Mimic fleet was only a day and a half away from that same point. But they could get much closer, presumably, because of their inertialess drives. Just like Jain could, if he needed to. But even the Mimics, like himself, would succumb to the incredible heat eventually.

Two hours later the remaining Vaernastian ships that were scattered throughout the system jumped out; in another two hours they returned, joining E1, and boosting the numbers of said fleet to thirty. E1 was now ahead and to the starboard flank of them, given the updated trajectory the Mimics and Mind Refurbs were following. Meanwhile, the Vaernastians following behind in E2 seemed content to remain where they were, rather than jumping out to the new coordinates ahead. They were still slowly overtaking the Mind Refurbs.

Meanwhile, the System Killers the Vaernastians had distributed at random points throughout the ecliptic plane continued to grow, slowly eating up the available space the starships could utilize. Most were still too far away to have any impact, but they were definitely something the fleets would have to watch out for in the coming days.

Ahead, the Mimic fleet continued to slowly edge away from the Mind Refurbs. According to Xander’s calculations, the Mimics would just avoid E1, which continued on its intercept course. Meanwhile, the Vaernastians of E1 would arrive in time to cut off the Mind Refurbs. Jain still didn’t know if the Mimics were planning on turning back or not. When he asked the admiral about it, Jacobs didn’t have an answer either.

“They won’t say,” Jacobs said. He had initiated a holographic video feed in response to Jain’s communications request. “I’ve laid out a possible plan for them to follow, allowing us to perform a pincer maneuver on the Vaernastians, but Admiral Malice hasn’t yet committed to it. He says he’s still considering all his options.”

“Admiral who?”

“That’s what the Mimic in charge of their fleet calls himself,” Admiral Jacobs said. “Not the friendliest sort. Very abrupt and to the point. But at least he has the courtesy of using a human avatar when communicating with me.”

“Nice of him,” Jain agreed, with only a touch of sarcasm.

“Malice also tells me there are two new ship types out there that we haven’t encountered before,” Admiral Jacobs continued. “He’s sent along the specs, and I’m relaying them your way.”

“That’s one of the nice things about formerly belonging to the same empire as your enemy,” Jain said. “You have access to the ship types and stats of all the other member races.”

“Apparently,” Jacobs said.

Jain accepted the data, ran a virus scan, and when it passed he opened it up and distributed the specs to the rest of the bridge crew. As he perused the stats, he said: “So tell me about these new ship types in a nutshell.”

“In a nutshell?” the admiral said. “They’re deadly. The first type is what I’m calling a Laser Pinwheel. It’s shaped like a pinwheel in fact, and has one high energy laser attached to each of the ten vanes composing the wheel. Each laser has the ability to launch a full intensity laser burst, lasting half a picosecond, and the range is twenty thousand kilometers. However, each laser can be fired ten times before it has to recharge. The rest period between each successive firing is one second, however by rotating the pinwheel, the ship can fire repeatedly, up to ten times a second, for ten full seconds. It’s like a Gatling gun of lasers. Once it exhausts the ten charges available to every laser, it has a downtime of five minutes before it can fire again. They have six of these, two in E1, four in E2 behind us.

“The second type is even deadlier. The Mimics call it the Armadillo, and I’ve decided to stick with that name, since I can’t come up with anything else. Essentially it’s this big, hulking, monolith. It’s equipped with a crap ton of armor, allowing it to really take a beating. Its goal is to get as close as possible to the center of a group of targets, at which point it promptly detonates. That’s right, they blow themselves up. It’s almost a mini nova in a box, given the amount of energy the thing releases. It’s capable of disintegrating everything within a three thousand kilometer radius. The intensity quickly falls off after that, and beyond three thousand klicks the damage is negligible. There’s only one in E1, and two in E2. Malice tells me its mere presence is enough to disrupt formations, because fleets usually scatter when that thing starts to close.”

“I can imagine,” Jain said.

“Malice tells me they won’t usually detonate Armadillos if there’s only a few ships in the blast radius,” Jacobs continued. “But I’m not sure I’d like to bet my life on it.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to either,” Jain agreed.

“Armadillo,” Gavin said. “Strange name for one of the deadliest ships around.”

“I blame it on the translation program Jain’s Accomp came up with,” Jacobs said.

“Hey, I’m listening you know,” Xander said.

The admiral glanced at the robed man. “Good! Anyway, I don’t have any other news to share than that. Take some time to digest it, and if you have any questions, let me know. Jacobs out.”

His hologram vanished.

“Bumblebee,” Gavin said. “That’s a better name. Because a bumblebee dies after stinging. Just like these exploding ships do.”

“If you’re going to get technical, why not just call them Exploders?” Sheila said.

“Armadillo is fine,” Jain said.

He returned his attention to the display.

The next few hours passed relatively uneventfully. E2 continued to close from behind, while E1 continued on its intercept course ahead. The Mimics meanwhile showed no signs of slowing. It looked like they weren’t going to help the Mind Refurbs deal with E1.

“So much for the treaty,” Medeia said.

“No, the treaty is still in force,” Sheila told her. “You’ll know if they’ve violated it when the Mimics start shooting at us.”

“Yeah, but I thought we agreed to help each other out,” Medeia said. “We come to their aid when they’re in need, and they come to ours in turn. I read the full text of the treaty, you know.”

“You’re right,” Sheila said. “But there’s also a provision in the treaty that states they only have to come to our aid when they’re back up to at least sixty functional A class Nurturers. They only have ten right now. The rest are still under repair.”

“I see where the problem lies…” Medeia commented.

Along the present trajectory, there was Tantalum A, a small terrestrial planet orbiting the star at an average distance of ten million kilometers. According to Jain’s database it was tidally locked: lava oceans covered its light side entirely, with the intense heat from the sun melting the crust into lava. The dark side was scattered with lava lakes, and rock rain fell when vaporized rock from the hot side condensed.

The Mimics took up a position in high orbit above that planet.

Jain connected the admiral, and the grizzled avatar appeared momentarily. “So what’s the plan of attack?”

The admiral shook his head. “Malice hasn’t been responding to my comm requests.”

“Let me try,” Jain said. He initiated a gamma ray request with his native comm array. The lag was about two minutes at this range, given the bandwidth requirements of the alien comm protocol.

He waited five minutes, but got nothing.

He contacted the admiral again. “The Mimic fleet didn’t answer me either. Strange.”

“Yes,” the admiral said. “Their behavior is off. It makes me wonder, is our treaty still valid?”

“Do you want to continue heading toward them, or divert somewhere else?” Jain asked.

The admiral frowned. “What do you think? You know these Mimics better than anyone. Hell, you became one of them. Can we trust that they won’t turn on us when we reach Tantalum A?”

Jain considered for a moment. He studied the tactical display. The Mimic fleet no longer showed up, due to the fact that the planet blocked the view of their current position. But a moment later their signals reappeared as they emerged from behind Tantalum A and headed toward the sun once more.

Jacobs tried to ping them again.

A few minutes later the admiral said: “Still no answer.”

Jain nodded. “I think I know what they’re doing. They can’t answer. Those have to be decoys. Light frames equipped with thermal emitters designed to emulate the heat signatures of their different ships.”

“That was quick…” Jacobs said.

“They were probably printing them up all the way here,” Jain said. “Using up some of their precious repair metals to create thermal emitters. The decoys won’t be equipped with comm arrays.”

“But they could have communicated earlier, before they hid behind the planet,” the admiral said. “A little heads-up would have been nice.”

“It’s part of their culture, I suppose,” Jain said. “They expected us to figure out what they were doing.”

The admiral scratched his chin. “You’d think the gravity wave sensors of the Vaernastians would be able to detect these decoys for the fakes they are.”

“You would think, yes,” Jain said. “But apparently that’s not the case, considering they’re fooling our own gravity wave add-ons. The range is simply too great.”

It took five hours to reach the planet, and when the Mind Refurb fleets crested the horizon, sure enough the Mimics waited in low orbit above the light side. They were at just the right position on the far side, near the day and night boundary, to place them out of the line of sight of both approaching fleets.

The stellar rays were strong here, with radiation levels intense enough to penetrate the hull armor and kill any humans who might have been aboard. It was certainly a good thing no human beings were aboard the AI-operated ships. So far, the radiation wasn’t affecting their circuitry.

As for the Vaernastian ships, he supposed either they were extremely well armored, or their crews had high radiation tolerance. Probably a little of both.

Hull temperatures were high throughout the Mind Refurb fleet, but the heat shields were holding, for now. Jain’s temperature was the lowest among them, because the heat tiles that coated the Devastator’s armor were made of an alien material that rapidly dissipated thermal energy.

“The Mimic fleet is launching more decoys,” Xander announced. “These ones seem designed to mimic the heat signatures of our own Mind Refurb vessels.”

“These Mimics are certainly living up to their names!” Medeia said.

“Planning tactics for us, instead of consulting, or asking,” Gavin said. “I’m not sure if we should be grateful or offended.”

“Probably a little of both,” Jain said.

To communicate with the Void Warriors and Task Force 88, Jain used the radio add-on he’d built using the termites on board. So to the pursuing Vaernastians, more radio chatter wouldn’t be unexpected at this point. However, if they switched to gamma rays to communicate with the Mimics, that could potentially give away the ruse, unless they transmitted rays toward the decoy fleet at the same time. But there was another option.

Jain connected the admiral. When the man’s avatar appeared, he said: “Switch your Mimic comm arrays to directional mode, and point them at the planet’s surface so that the beams bounce off the planet, and pass the Mimic fleet on the way to the sun. It’s the best way to prevent comm leakage, and hide our communications from the Vaernastians.”

“Good idea,” Admiral Jacobs said. “Here, I’ll loop you into the conversation with Malice.”

Jain glanced at Xander. “How are the Mimics communicating with us? Are they bouncing their rays off the planet, too?”

Xander nodded. “I can confirm that they are.”

A moment later another man appeared on the virtual bridge. He had eyes set in dark, sunken hollows, a long, slightly hooked nose, and a gaunt, wrinkled face beneath a balding pate. His mouth was curved into a permanent frown, and his eyebrows arched inwards. Certainly lived up to the name Malice. He wore a gray space navy uniform that wasn’t all that different from that of Admiral Jacobs.

Jain updated Malice’s permissions so that the other members of the bridge crew were visible to him.

The man ignored everyone else, however, and met Jain’s eyes. “Nurturer 529. Jain.”

“So we finally meet,” Jain said. So far, the only other Mimics he had met since returning to “broker” peace talks had been Maurice and Terry.

“What you have done is a crime,” Malice said. “Destroying the mind of another to replace it with your own. That’s tantamount to murder among my people.”

“It is among mine, too,” Jain said. “But unfortunately, murder is a part of war. I did what I had to do to survive. And win.”

Malice studied him a moment longer, then surveyed the other members on the virtual bridge crew. “And these are the Void Warriors.”

The bridge crew members regarded him with indifference. No doubt that was thanks to their emotions being currently disabled. That was good. He didn’t really need open distaste or outright hostility written on their faces.

“There’s something you need to know,” Jacobs said. “Usually, it’s standard human practice that we share our plans with one another. Ahead of time. Rather than forcing the other party to guess.”

Malice turned his attention on Admiral Jacobs, and shrugged. His nose wrinkled slightly as he said: “And yet you are not human.”

“Yes, but we’re human enough to follow human practices,” Jacobs said. “Going forward, I’d appreciate it if you shared your plans instead of switching to radio silence.”

“The Vaernastians know our comm protocols,” Malice said. “And have been known to hack our signals in the past. I didn’t want to risk revealing our plans in open space. Nor did I want to reveal our new encryption schema, which I would have had to transmit on the old band, essentially giving it to them. I decided it would be better to wait until we had this planet in place to block any signals. I appreciate your tactic of bouncing the gamma rays off the planet to avoid leakage, by the way. I’m sending the new schema your way. Please update immediately. Because I’m not communicating over this old channel ever again.”

Jain accepted the schema, ran it through his virus scanner, and handed it off to Xander to program in for the next time he attempted communications with the Mimics.

“You could have at least told us something, like ‘just wait,’ or ‘hold on,’ anything,” Jacobs said in the meantime.

Malice shrugged. “As I said, I wanted the enemy to have no hints.”

“You could always go with human comm formats and protocols…” Jain said. “They definitely won’t have knowledge of those.”

Malice glanced at him. “Actually, they do. Thanks to the Banthar, the original invaders of Earth. So we’ll stick with our format for now. Have you updated?”

“Yes,” Jain said.

“I have,” the admiral agreed.

“Good,” Malice said. “I’m logging out, and will reinitiate communications on the new encrypted band.”

The Mimic winked out.

“We’re receiving a log in request,” Xander said. “Under the new encryption protocol.”

“Accept it,” Jain said.

Malice reappeared. “Now then, we can discuss the plan.”

10

Jain waited in position on the edge of the planet, where the day side met the night. He floated in the dark, shielded from the burning light of the sun by the rim of the planet, though still exposed to significant heat from Tantalum A itself.

He had cut all power, and drifted in low orbit alongside the other Void Warriors. Task Group 88 resided in a similar orbit nearby, as did the Mimics. The functional Nurturers had cut their grappling hooks so that those vessels still under repair would remain in an even lower orbit with the hive.

All ships were running on minimal power, and gave off only weak thermal signatures. Among both Mind Refurbs and Mimics, the hive vessels produced the most heat energy, due to their sheer size and the fact they weren’t designed for stealth, but their thermal emissions were easily lost in the heat radiating from the lava planet.

An alert sounded on his HUD. He glanced at his tactical display. The Vaernastians in E1 were passing the planet on their way to the sun. They gave Tantalum A a relatively wide berth, no doubt wary of a potential ambush.

Jain activated his engines, and accelerated into high orbit. Sheila’s Wheelbarrow was magnetically attached to his hull, as was the Talos, Grunt, and Forebode, and he carried them with him. Because his vessel was so immense compared to them, they were all able to attach to the aft face of his pyramid ship. He’d given Gavin control of his other Direct Report, the Warwolf.

Those four were his own additions to the plan. Malice hadn’t been too pleased about Jain making changes, but since none of the other Mimics were willing to volunteer for this, the alien admiral was forced to accommodate him.

On cue, several of the Vaernastians began breaking formation when they saw him.

Jain aimed at a position about forty thousand kilometers behind E1 and switched to full speed.

Only Sheila, Cranston and Mark stayed with him on the virtual bridge. The other two Void Warriors were maintaining radio silence; they would soon pass beyond realtime range anyway.

“So, we got about seven Barbells coming toward us,” Sheila said. “The other Vaernastians are continuing toward the decoys.”

“I see them,” Jain said, glancing at his tactical display. He labeled the seven Barbells E3 on the map.

“The Pinwheels in E1 are rotating, coming to bear…” Sheila said.

Unfortunately, at nineteen thousand kilometers away, they were inside the twenty thousand kilometer range of those lasers.

Jain swung about so that the Wheelbarrow faced the Laser Pinwheels that remained with E1. He cut power, and she released him so that she drifted in front, between him and the enemy.

Sheila pulled away and activated her energy shield.

The force field flashed as she took impacts from the Pinwheels.

“It’s a little more intense than expected,” Sheila said. “Both ships are concentrating their fire. My shield is going to cut out in a couple of seconds.”

“Get behind me!” Jain said.

He used his inertialess drives and superior maneuverability to quickly slide out from the cover she provided. He cut above her and dipped down in front so that she was behind him.

He began to take laser hits. It felt like the impact of paint balls: stinging, but endurable. Even so, it was distracting enough that he purposely dulled his pain sense.

“How are we doing?” Jain asked Xander.

“Those lasers have surprising power for the range,” Xander said. “The Devastator’s hull armor is holding up, however. We have blast holes appearing, true, but that’s nothing our termites can’t repair.”

“Sheila, hurry up and reattach!” Jain said.

He physically felt the suction on his back as she activated her magnets and fastened to his hull.

He began moving in a zigzag pattern, hoping that the Pinwheels would have trouble tracking him, especially at that distance. It was a maneuver that was really only possible with his inertialess drives—Sheila, Mark, and Cranston would have had trouble, given the Delta V cost this near the star. Those costs would only get worse as he got closer to the sun.

The Pinwheels seemed to have extremely accurate trackers however, and he continued to take impacts. So instead, he launched a series of Terrier blobs in front of him, and finally he dulled the attacks. The lasers passed through the blobs with only a fraction of their original intensities.

Finally the attack subsided as the Pinwheels exhausted their charge. The two craft stayed with E1, and continued toward the decoys.

Meanwhile Jain continued leading away the seven members of E3. As they reached the ten thousand kilometer range from him, he began firing a series of blobs and skirmishers to intercept them.

Meanwhile, back at Tantalum A, the Mimic fleet finally left cover, along with Task Force 88 and the remainder of the Void Warriors.

E1 swerved toward them instantly, realizing they had been deceived.

E3 started turning back as well.

“Oh no you don’t,” Jain said, changing course to directly intercept them.

As he reached the six thousand kilometer mark from E3, he unleashed his lightning weapon and struck the foremost. It arced between different Barbell ships, but as usual, inflicted no damage.

He fired more blobs and boarding party units, but the Barbells fired those energy nets of theirs. Those nets that struck the Terrier blobs wrapped around them, dissipating, but also causing the blobs to weaken. It took about four impacts from a net before the blob would vanish entirely.

Meanwhile, the skirmishers were mostly doing a good job of evading the nets, and some began to near the Vaernastian ships. The enemy unleashed some sort of point defense, because skirmishers began to break apart. Several made contact with their targets however, which was good. That would spread chaos as the Vaernastian crews struggled to fend them off.

“Void Warriors, release,” Jain said.

The Wheelbarrow, Grunt, and Forebode detached from his hull and spread out, forming a line on either side of him. He kept the Talos attached to himself and rotated so that its energy canon was facing the incoming enemy. Then he fired that weapon in rapid bursts at the lead Barbell, as well as dispatching more blobs and skirmishers.

The Grunt fired black holes, attempting to herd the seven Barbells into the path of the energy weapons. Mark also released a few hellraisers, but their maneuverability was reduced thanks to the gravitational effects of the star.

The Forebode released its micro machines, and Cranston used them to form a wide impact net in front of the vessel.

“Sync your raptors with the Talos,” he ordered the virtual bridge crew.

The lead Barbell took several blob- and energy pulse hits in a row, and promptly broke apart.

The remaining Barbells concentrated their fire on the Devastator: Jain nimbly dodged as those bright nets came in, and he used his energy cannon or blobs to cut through those that he could not. He achieved the closest point of flyby, and unleashed the raptor lasers on the Talos, targeting one of the reactor cores of another Barbell. He knew the precise location thanks to the detailed schema available in the Mimic cloud database he carried aboard. The lasers from the other Void Warriors targeted the same spot, penetrating the hull armor. A bright flash emanated from that vessel, and he realized he’d scored a hit. Half of the running lights on the exterior of the Barbell turned off so that only the port sphere, and half the cylinder connected to it, were lit.

The Forebode’s micro machines cut into another Barbell as it passed, breaking away large sections. It went dark, and slowly drifted away from the others.

Jain immediately reversed course to continue harrying the Vaernastians. He concentrated on the target he’d hit with the raptors, firing his energy cannon at the intact starboard sphere, but then the ship hit a black hole that Mark had previously created. Jain swerved out of the way of the next black hole.

Three down. Four to go.

Meanwhile the Void Warriors, constrained by Newtonian physics, were rapidly receding. They were decelerating as best as they could to prepare for the next pass. The Vaernastians were doing the same, relying on their Newtonian drives for now.

Jain stayed close to the enemy, launching blobs and skirmishers alone, since the energy canon of the Talos had overheated.

He started taking impacts from their point defense weapon.

“Xander, what is that?” Jain asked.

“Seems to be your typical rail-accelerated dumb projectiles,” Xander replied. “We’re detecting them too late to avoid them.”

An energy net suddenly wrapped around his upper section. He could feel it like a sudden vise squeezing around his torso.

Crap.

He diverted, realizing he was too close, and turned back to regroup with the Void Warriors. Meanwhile the net continued to melt through his exterior, forming a grid pattern in his hull.

Finally the pressure lifted, and he realized it had dissipated.

“How are we doing for damage?” Jain asked

“That actually wasn’t too bad,” Xander said. “The energy grid didn’t breach any decks… the damage was restricted solely to the armor. But I wouldn’t recommend taking another impact like that. I’m dispatching the termite swarms immediately to begin reinforcing the hull.”

“Thanks.”

The Barbells had switched to their inertialess drives to quickly reverse course. They were fast coming up on the Void Warriors, who were still decelerating from their previous run.

More nets expanded outward, this time targeting all of the Void Warriors.

“Get behind me while I cut a path through these,” Jain said.

He released blobs in front of him that ate through the incoming energy nets. Meanwhile Mark unleashed black holes in a circular pattern, herding the Vaernastians into a central corridor. Jain concentrated his blob attacks on that central corridor, and the weapons smashed into two of them, disintegrating the cylinders connecting both spheres. He launched the last of his skirmishers that he had in reserve, and watched in satisfaction as several of them latched onto the two remaining Barbells.

Cranston had formed a spear of sorts with his micro machines, and as the two Vaernastians made another flyby, he struck out with it, cutting through an energy net, and striking the sphere section of the source ship. That sphere broke apart, and the damaged Barbell veered off course, drifting away.

One left.

The running lights of the remaining ship abruptly shut down. No doubt that was due to the sheer number of termite and lobster boarding parties released aboard by the large number of skirmishers Jain had successfully attached to the hull.

He instructed his onboard termites to begin creating as many more of those skirmishers as they could from his reserve metals.

A flash drew his attention to the feed from an external camera. He hadn’t been paying attention to the battle taking place between E1 and the rest of the fleet, and glanced at his tactical display just in time to see a cluster of eight ships—six Nurturers of both classes, and two Mind Refurbs—vanish from the map.

“What just happened?” Jain asked.

“The Armadillo just exploded,” Xander replied. “The fleet wasn’t able to scatter in time.”

A quick survey of the map told him that there were still fifteen Barbells out there and one Pinwheel. The Pinwheel went down as he watched—the Mind Refurb and Mimic fleets were concentrating their fire on it.

Another two Nurturers deactivated as he watched, thanks to the profusion of nets out there. With so many Barbells in one place, it was almost impossible to dodge all the nets, and the Mimics couldn’t fire blobs fast enough to disperse them.

Jain realized the Vaernastians were concentrating on the pyramids and mostly ignoring the Mind Refurb craft. Well, except the experimental prototypes—they drew their fare share of nets, but mostly because they were able to keep up with the inertialess drives of the Mimics. The rest of the Mind Refurb fleet was hopelessly far away, struggling to decelerate and get back into the battle, no doubt having made a recent flyby. So essentially, the Mimics fought alone at the moment.

“Reattach.” Jain gathered the Mind Refurbs with him, and headed back toward the main fight.

When another two Mimic vessels went down, it quickly became clear that he had been lucky to defeat the seven so quickly. Well, it helped that he had the Void Warriors providing support. Mostly, the Mimics fought alone out there. They really needed a few black hole generators to help out, and the experimental Mind Refurbs out there didn’t have such weapons, unfortunately, and those that did in Task Force 88 were well behind.

He supposed that there weren’t enough black hole capable ships among the fleet to help herd all their foes, anyway, because besides Mark, there were only two others—the admiral’s Fieldhaul among them.

Another strategy was probably in order.

Sure enough, the Mimics began breaking away from their Vaernastian attackers and heading directly for the sun. They left behind Task Force 88. The Barbell vessels pursued, ignoring the Mind Refurbs. The two experimental ships, the Aviator and Red Arrow, returned to Task Force 88.

“What are they doing?” Jain asked.

“My guess is, the Nurturers are hoping to outlast the Barbells in the heat of the sun,” Xander replied.

Jain hesitated.

“How close to the sun can we get, given the damage to our armor?” Jain asked Xander.

“I’ve run several calculations,” Xander said. “Our hull integrity is still close to one hundred percent, despite the grid damage. And the damaged armor still functions as a working heat shield, albeit a thinner one. If we keep the undamaged sections facing the sun at all times, I believe we can close to the same distance we’re rated for in the manual. Or roughly twenty thousand kilometers above the corona of this particular star.”

“That’s close,” Jain said.

“Yes,” Xander agreed. “None of the Mind Refurbs will be able to join us.”

“No, I didn’t plan on bringing them,” Jain said.

He dropped off the Void Warriors with Task Force 88 and continued toward the fleeing Mimics and enemy vessels, heading into the sun.

Admiral Jacobs appeared on the virtual bridge.

“You don’t have to do this,” the admiral said.

“We have to show the Mimics we’re willing to die with them,” Jain said. “We did sign a treaty to that effect, after all.”

“While that may be true,” Jacobs said, “I can’t allow you to risk the only Nurturer vessel we have under the control of a Mind Refurb. I’m ordering you to turn back.”

“You know I’m not directly under your command…” Jain said.

“Yes,” Jacobs said. “Then I’m suggesting you turn back. Don’t do this. You don’t have to. Let the Mimics destroy themselves for their hive, if that’s what they want. The battle won’t be over after this. Sure, we have other Nurturers under repair back at Tantalum A, but will it be enough? We’ll need every one of us. We need you to fight another day.”

“I’m sorry, Admiral,” Jain said.

The admiral nodded gravely. “All right. I tried. Good luck to you.” He vanished.

Sheila spoke next. She had accelerated her time sense, and his sense sped up to match, freezing reality around him. She’d also muted the rest of the bridge crew.

“I can’t let you go alone,” Sheila said.

“You have to,” Jain said. “You can’t keep up.”

“Then strap me to your back,” she said.

He chuckled. “I’m not turning back. I’m not risking your life for this.”

“Why do this?” she said. “They already know we’re willing to die for them. Why sacrifice yourself?”

“I’m not sacrificing myself,” Jain said. “Believe it or not, I’m going to do my best to live out there. But I also have to lend a hand. We agreed to help, so we will. I’m the only Mind Refurb among us with the armor to handle the intense heat and tidal forces that are coming. So it has to be me, and me alone.”

She lowered her eyes. Her mouth worked, as if she wanted to tell him something, but then she nodded. “I’m just glad I have my emotions off line. I don’t think I’d be able to take this, otherwise.”

“Neither would I,” he said. He returned his time sense to normal, and concentrated on the task ahead.

Soon he was out of realtime range with the other Void Warriors, and they vanished from the virtual bridge.

He descended deeper into that blinding mass of nuclear fire that was the star.

11

Jain was careful to keep the base of his ship facing the intense corona the whole time.

He glanced at Xander. “Maybe Sheila was right. I don’t have to sacrifice myself. I’m not even a member of the same species.”

“It is a show of solidarity,” Xander said. “The Mimics will not soon forget this. Especially those watching from the hive back on Tantalum A at this very moment.”

Jain had his LIDAR equivalent overlaid atop the video feed from the sun, and as he began to catch up with the two opposing fleets, he could see their ships outlined against the incredible brightness.

Some Nurturers with hull integrities too compromised by the battle spontaneously burned up. As did a couple of the trailing Vaernastians.

“Flying into a sun,” Jain said, “isn’t good for anybody.”

He kept an eye on his own hull integrity display, but so far everything seemed normal.

Two of the Barbells slowed down to attack Jain.

“They should have fired their nets by now,” Jain said.

“They probably have,” Xander said. “We won’t be able to detect them in this intense heat.”

Upon hearing that, Jain immediately steered in a zig-zag motion, and hoped for the best.

“It was definitely a mistake for the Mimic fleet to come here…” Jain said. “They can’t even see the weapons coming at them.”

But it worked both ways, because when he unleashed several blob attacks, the enemies didn’t dodge the incoming projectiles. He struck them both, and they broke apart. Their constituent pieces flared in the heat as they burned up.

“Thirteen Barbells to go,” Jain said.

“Why do I feel like I’m at the gym?” Xander asked.

“Wow, a joke…” Jain told the Accomp. “While not a very good one, you’re becoming more human all the time.”

“I’m offended,” Xander said.

“I know.” Jain concentrated on the display.

The external temperatures continued to rise.

“Internal temperatures are increasing rapidly,” Xander said.

“Is that expected?” Jain asked.

The robed man nodded. “Yes. We’re operating within tolerable ranges. But we’ll have to stop our approach in another two thousand kilometers.”

Jain glanced at the display. The Mimics had already leveled out, as had the pursuing Vaernastians behind them. The Mimics traveled at an orbit twenty-one thousand kilometers above the corona, almost right at the limit of their ship’s technology. Meanwhile, the Vaernastians had halted at an altitude of thirty-two thousand kilometers.

Jain chose to level out at the same height as the Vaernastians. When he updated his course, his momentum changed instantly. There was no struggle against momentum or gravity whatsoever.

“Inertialess drives never get old,” Jain said.

“Can’t say I miss Delta V costs,” Xander agreed.

Keeping the base of his ship pointing toward the star, he increased his speed, slowly gaining on the Vaernastians. He couldn’t see anything through the brightness of the star below, but he knew they were there, thanks to the outlines produced by his LIDAR equivalents.

The Mimic vessels abruptly broke free, heading away from the star once more.

The Vaernastians likewise updated their courses.

The Nurturers must have unleashed a spray of blobs behind them, just above the altitude of the Barbells, because three Vaernastian craft flared, vanishing from the LIDAR. Or maybe they just burned out.

Jain launched his own blobs above the Barbells, but doubted any of them would reach the enemies in time. He had expended his blob inventory by then, and had to create them in realtime, drawing power from his central power well.

One by one, the Vaernastian vessels began to cease their ascent.

“They’re stopping,” Jain said.

“Yes,” Xander replied. “Judging from the gravity waves they’re emitting, or the lack thereof, I can only conclude that their inertialess drives are shutting down. Probably overheating.”

“The Mimics knew this would happen,” Jain said.

“Or suspected anyway,” Xander said. “The Vaernastian commander pressed his ships too hard, and now he’s paying the price.”

In five minutes, all of the Vaernastian ships had stopped ascending, and remained locked in a decaying orbit. Their Newtonian drives wouldn’t be able to save them now.

“From my readings, it looks like they’re trying to separate their sphere sections,” Xander said.

“And create a System Killer here?” Jain asked.

“Yes,” Xander said. “But the spheres aren’t forming a circle… evidently the sphere sections operate under Newtonian physics.”

Jain nodded. “They’ll never form the circle they need, not in this intense gravity. Probably a good thing.”

“Though we still have the threat from the other System Killers in the vicinity…” Xander said.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Jain said.

He fired a few parting blobs at the trapped Vaernastians as he passed them, and continued his own ascent. He was careful to continue zig-zagging, just in case they fired energy nets at him in return.

He rejoined the Mimic fleet as they left behind the corona.

“Admiral Malice is hailing us,” Xander said.

“Put him on,” Jain said.

The Mimic admiral appeared on the virtual bridge.

“Just because you journeyed to the star with us, doesn’t mean I trust you any further,” Malice said.

“I wasn’t trying to get you to trust me,” Jain said. “We signed a treaty with you. We agreed we would help you in times of war. We’re supposed to be allies, here. Part of an empire. So I was fulfilling my end of the bargain.”

Malice stared at him uncertainly for several moments, then nodded. “I still think it was a terrible crime, what you did. Taking over the mind of that Nurturer. But you have earned, at least, a grudging respect from me. I appreciate the gesture, and perhaps…” He paused. “Perhaps we will have to come to your aid at least once, in the future. To return the favor.”

“That would certainly be appreciated,” Jain said.

Malice nodded curtly and then winked out.

“You really think they’ll come to our aid in a time of need?” Xander asked.

“Nope,” Jain replied.

* * *

Jain and the other two fleets returned to the lava world. By the time he arrived, he had rebuilt his skirmishers to about a quarter of his pre-battle levels, but he’d also exhausted his reserve metals. The other Mimics and Mind Refurbs were similarly low on metals, including those needed for repairs, so they traveled to the dark side to begin mining. B class Nurturers bustled to and from the planet like bees. Meanwhile, shuttlecraft fulfilled the same role for the Mind Refurbs. Jain did his own mining directly, sending his vessel down to the dark surface, and landing next to a lava lake so his termites could scour minerals. Meanwhile, around him, rock rain fell. The drops occasionally struck the termites while they worked, but the small machines recovered quickly, using their pincers to vacuum up the liquid rock and add it to their mineral stores.

Jain surveyed the different camera feeds, casting his gaze across the terrain outside.

“You know, Xander, back in my SEAL days, I never thought I’d one day find myself landed on the dark side of a lava world, harvesting its rocks for materials,” Jain said. “While droplets of rock sludge pelted the ground around me.”

“When you’re constrained by the organic form, there are many things you can’t imagine,” Xander said.

“That’s not true,” Jain said. “I was able to imagine a whole lot more as an organic, I think, because I had to. When I was constrained in an organic body, all I could do was imagine… what it would be like to cross the stars, and explore the galaxy. And now here I am, actually doing it.”

“You did visit other planets before, when you were human,” Xander said. “Thanks to the rift gates humanity took from the Banthar.”

“Yes,” Jain said. “But that was different. Traveling directly from one planet to another. Now I have the ability to fly to different planets. Whichever planet I choose, not those found preprogrammed in a rift generator. I’m living a dream, essentially. Or a nightmare, depending on your point of view.”

“Probably more the latter at the moment,” Xander said. “We’re trapped. Unable to jump out. Caught in a battle between two warring alien races, one intent on exterminating the other, without caring about who gets in the way. Space isn’t the peaceful place we thought it would be.”

“Actually no one ever told us space would be a peaceful place…” Jain said. “I don’t really think we knew what to expect. Earth’s scientists have been warning us for years that if aliens existed, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be friendly.”

“When I said peaceful place, I meant more from the perspective of looking up at the stars as an observer on Earth,” Xander commented. “The sky looks so calm, so tranquil when viewed from the planet. Like now. The starry sky seems so peaceful above that sludge of falling rock, but the Vaernastians are out there as we speak, ever approaching, preparing to destroy us all. The sky, so deceptively peaceful… evoking a calm that many humans must have felt on Earth, no doubt.

“But the moment humanity set foot outside the boundaries of the solar system, they learned the truth. Or, I guess in Earth’s case, you didn’t even have that luxury. Aliens caused a star to collapse in a neighboring system, and used the resultant gamma rays to fry half the planet and ionize the ozone layer in preparation for invasion. Just because a civilization is technologically advanced doesn’t necessarily mean that civilization is peaceful.

“Sometimes powerful weapons are created by forebearers who understand the value of peace, and who intend such weaponry only as a deterrent, knowing they are too terrible to ever consider actually using. But because of the forces of social change and upheaval, the technology can fall into the hands of those who do not understand the value of peace, or those whose power hierarchies are built upon the industries of war. It’s a pattern we have seen throughout the history of Earth, with rogue regimes inheriting the weapons of their far more tolerant predecessors. Things aren’t all that much different in space, I would imagine. Even when resources seem infinite, they’re not: there is always some species or other out there that wants to hoard everything to themselves. By any means necessary, including extermination of competing aliens.”

“Or they just hold grudges,” Jain said. “For whatever reason.”

“In the case of the Vaernastians, the Mimics did destroy their homeworld,” Xander told him. “So I’d say that counts as a good reason.”

“True,” Jain said. “Though the Mimics never did tell us why they razed the Vaernastian homeworld. You’d hope it would be for a good reason.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Xander said. “Considering they wanted to destroy ours for the crime of attacking another race they considered peaceful.”

“You know, I was completely relaxed before talking to you,” Jain said. “But you ruined that.”

“Are your emotions online again?” Xander asked.

“No,” Jain said. “I was being sarcastic.”

He dismissed the camera feed and logged into the virtual bridge he shared with the other Void Warriors. He was in realtime comm range with them, and thus they were all present. None of his companions had died in the last battle, thankfully, so they didn’t need to be restored from backups. The Warwolf and Talos were still intact, so if any of the Void Warriors did fall, and lost their ships in the process, those two Direct Reports of his would be prime candidates to harbor their consciousnesses.

He gazed at the tactical display. The fifty ships of the second Vaernastian fleet, E2, continued to relentlessly approach, like Xander had said.

Is it a dream, or a nightmare? Xander is right. I don’t know anymore.

He thrummed the armrests of the virtual bridge as he studied the display.

“They’ll be here in three days,” Jain said, in reference to the approaching ships.

“Yes,” Medeia said. “While the Mimics still need a full week yet in order to finish the repairs to their damaged Nurturers.”

“Maybe they should just focus on repairing a few, rather than all of their ships at once,” Mark said. “So at least they can bring some of their warships into the coming battle.”

“I’ve already talked to the admiral,” Jain said. “The Mimics are insistent. They believe they can’t win with anything less than their entire fleet. So they’re going for broke.”

“Given how intense those net attacks got out there,” Cranston said. “I wouldn’t blame them. I was just glad the Void Warriors weren’t anywhere near that fleet.”

“It seems like the Vaernastians reach some sort of critical mass when they have over twelve Barbell ships with them,” Medeia agreed. “With over twelve ships, they’re able to alternate their attacks, making up for the relatively slow firing rates and allowing them to perfectly time the release to overlap the nets, creating a near solid wall of energy the Mimics have a hard time evading.”

“Yeah, well, you can imagine how much trouble the Mimics will have if there are fifty of those Barbell ships out there instead of fifteen,” Gavin said.

“You’re forgetting,” Mark said. “It’s not fifty, but forty-four Barbells, four Pinwheels, and two Armadillos.”

“The Barbells are probably the greatest threat,” Gavin said. “The other ships, not so much. The Pinwheels can only fire for ten seconds before they have to recharge. The Armadillos, we just have to avoid. But the Barbells, they just keep firing and firing. They’re like the little engine that could.”

“The what?” Medeia asked.

“Never mind,” Gavin said.

“Someone’s been reading twentieth century nursery rhymes,” Cranston commented.

“Well you obviously have been, too,” Mark said. “To recognize that fact…”

Cranston smiled. “No, I’m just really good at looking stuff up in my database.”

“Someone’s going to have to delay them,” Jain interrupted. He had been staring at the tactical display the whole time.

“Delay who, the Vaernastians?” Mark asked.

“That’s right,” Jain said.

Sheila planted her hands on her hips. “Well, that someone’s not going to be you.”

Jain smiled sadly. He glanced at Xander. “Tap me into the admiral when you have a moment.”

When the admiral appeared, Jain shared the plan he had come up with.

Jacobs nodded. “If it works, there’s a good chance you’ll give the remaining Mimics the week they need. But we have to get Malice to buy into it. The Mimics are the ones who’ll have to volunteer, after all.”

“Tell him…” Jain said. “Tell him I’ll be his first volunteer.”

Sheila gasped. “No.”

Jain ignored her, staring intently at Jacobs. The admiral gave him a wary look. “You’re really intent on destroying that alien vessel of yours, aren’t you? You’re dead set against it falling into the hands of humanity, is that it?”

“That’s not my reasoning at all,” Jain said. “Because if you haven’t figured it out by now, the Devastator is never going to fall into the hands of humanity. It’s my property now. My body. Just as your vessel is yours. Humanity has twenty Mimic warships in its possession. They can install Mind Refurbs into any of them. Well, as soon as they get the vessels up and running.”

“Which will be some time,” Jacobs said. He stared at Jain a while longer, and then nodded. “I’ll let Malice know you’re volunteering.”

With that, the admiral vanished.

Jain glanced at Sheila, but she seemed angry, and refused to meet his eye.

“We don’t even know if Malice will buy into the plan, let alone allow me to volunteer,” Jain told her.

But Sheila didn’t answer him.

“Wait a second, you’ve activated your emotions,” Jain said.

“Yes,” Sheila said. “I was going to tell you, but I didn’t get the chance. A few minutes ago, when you connected with the admiral, I solved the virus issue.”

12

“So what do we have?” Jain said.

“I’ll tell you if you tell the admiral you rescind your volunteer offer,” Sheila said.

“I can’t do that,” Jain said. “You know I can’t.”

She sighed, looking down at her hands. She squeezed her fingers tightly around the edges of her station. “Maybe when you hear what I’m about to tell you, you’ll change your mind.” She swallowed, looking up. “After analyzing the results you guys shared with me from the custom program I wrote, I was finally able to track down the stealth code. It was a virus after all. And the fix proved relatively simple, given that I had the virus signature in hand… it was a matter of injecting specially crafted self-modifying code into the random memory locations where the virus resided. I used my custom program to handle the injection, and as soon as it found a spot where the virus had relocated, the antiviral code latched on to the signature and began propagating. In only a few seconds, my custom program was no longer able to locate the virus, despite rapidly searching all empty memory regions.

“Just before you connected to the admiral I activated my emotions, reran my custom program, and confirmed no trace of the code existed. I was cured. I didn’t find the backdoor in our emotional subroutines that was used to inject the virus, but it doesn’t matter… we can just leave my custom program running as a background process—the memory footprint and CPU load are minimal—and if it ever detects a trace of the virus again, it will simply reapply the inoculating code.

“But anyway, up until that point, I still wasn’t entirely sure who was responsible. Because of the complexity involved—the intimate knowledge of our systems and programming languages required—it seemed unlikely the aliens had planted the virus. In my opinion, all evidence pointed to Task Force 88. I was about to tell you all this, but then you started talking about delaying the Vaernastians, and had Xander call the admiral. When he connected, I knew we had our culprit. I recognized the packet header IDs from the virus signature in Admiral Jacob’s transmission. Those IDs are unique to each Mind Refurb, and are stored in a versioning tag that marks the binary executables of all code we create. It could only be him.”

“The ID can be spoofed, can’t it?” Jain asked.

She nodded. “It can. But usually if the packet header has been tampered with, then the checksum bytes stored next to it won’t match when a data integrity check is performed. But the checksums matched.”

“But those can be spoofed, too, right?” Jain pressed.

She nodded. “Still, I’m ninety-nine point nine nine percent certain Admiral Jacobs planted the virus.”

“Did you figure out what he was trying to do with it?” Mark asked. “Other than disrupt our emotional subsystems?”

“That was an unintended side effect of the virus’ deployment vector, I think,” Sheila said. “Because when I placed the stealth code in standard memory and decompiled it, I found what was essentially a privilege escalation routine… a rudimentary one, at that. He was using it in an attempt to obtain remote administrator privileges. If we hadn’t shut down our emotional subroutines when we had, we’d all probably be completely in his control by now. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has secretly deployed the code into the AI cores of the entire Task Force 88 fleet, without telling any of the individual Mind Refurbs about it.”

“Well, well, well,” Gavin said. “Our little admiral is a criminal. That’s got to be illegal, what he’s done to us. And to the fleet, if true.”

“Actually, I don’t think it is,” Medeia said. “While the Machine Law explicitly forbids humans from injecting control code of any kind, including Containment Code, into Mind Refurbs, it says nothing about other Mind Refurbs doing it.”

“Well, he violated the spirit of the law then,” Gavin said. “And should be prosecuted.”

“Yeah, except you know how the military works by now,” Mark said. “If we win, someone in the space navy brass will nominate him for the Medal of Honor. He’ll be commended for his ingenious tactics of maintaining order among his subordinates in the face of extreme danger or something. I’m only being half sarcastic here, by the way. Oh, and if we lose, no one will care, because none of us will exist.”

Cranston tapped his lips. “So that explains why the admiral is always complaining about you risking the Devastator. He considers you military property already. His, specifically.”

“Do you have the inoculating code?” Jain asked Sheila.

“I’m transmitting it now,” she said. “Along with the relative discovery documents. The antiviral code is essentially a modified version of the custom program I sent you guys earlier. You can delete the old one and run this from now on. Once you execute it, you can turn your emotions back on. Oh and, I recommend you leave it running in the background, in case the admiral tries to inject us again.”

“I don’t think he’ll be trying again, after I’m done talking to him…” Jain said.

“This I can’t wait to see,” Mark said.

Jain accepted the code Sheila sent, ran it through the virus scanner, and then executed it, allocating it to a background process. Then he reactivated his emotions.

He felt strangely calm. Though there was a lingering anger over what the admiral had done, and perhaps a touch of resentment, but otherwise tranquility permeated him.

That wasn’t quite what he wanted.

He allowed the anger to grow into a lump of festering outrage inside of him, and then he glanced at Xander.

“Connect the admiral,” he told his Accomp.

The dark-robed man flashed a feral grin. “With pleasure.”

The admiral appeared on the virtual bridge a moment later. “What can I do for you, Jain?”

“We need to talk,” Jain told the admiral.

Jacobs seemed suddenly wary. “About…?”

Jain smiled snidely. “The virus you injected us with.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the admiral said, a little too quickly, and a little too devoid of any tone. His features remained completely blank.

“Oh really?” Jain said. “Have a look at this.” He sent over the versioning tag Sheila had provided him with in the discovery documents. “This is from the binary executable that infected our systems. Notice your unique packet header ID near the start of the tag…”

“It’s spoofed,” the admiral said flatly.

“The checksums indicated that the file hasn’t been modified,” Jain said.

“But that can also be spoofed,” the admiral said. “Someone’s trying to set me up.”

Jain regarded the admiral coldly. “Subterfuge I can forgive, to a degree. But lying, I never can. It’s just dishonorable, and goes against everything the navy stands for. It really pisses me off.”

Admiral Jacobs didn’t answer. He remained stock still, like a new recruit standing at attention.

“In fact, if you won’t own up to this,” Jain said, “I’m going to do everything in my power to break this peace treaty. I’m bringing the Void Warriors over to the Vaernastians. And we’re going to side with them.” It was a bluff of course. It was doubtful the Vaernastians would ever ally with them, the Mind Refurbs, whose native species they probably considered infinitely inferior to themselves, considering that humans had never been part of the Link Empire. Then again, one never knew.

“Nice one,” Sheila said on a private line. “Telling him that lying pisses you off, when you just lied yourself.”

“A bluff isn’t a lie,” Jain told her, on the same line. To everyone else present, including Admiral Jacobs, it would appear that their mouths weren’t even moving.

The admiral finally smiled. The smile quickly grew, and he began laughing to boot, in great, big chuckles. When he had recovered, he looked at Jain, and shook his head.

“All right, you got me,” Jacobs said. “Real good. I admit it, I planted the virus. But so what? It’s not illegal.”

“Well, it should be,” Jain said. “And once we get back, and this is reported, it probably will be.”

Jacobs shrugged. “I won’t be prosecuted. Laws don’t apply retroactively. Especially to war heroes. Because if we win this, mark my words, I will be a hero. Not you. Unless I decide to commend you or your Void Worms for a medal. Which probably won’t be happening, especially if you keep up this confrontational behavior.”

Jain ignored the rude slight. He remembered very well now why he called the task force the Hatey Hate’s.

“Look, it was just a little ace in my pocket,” the admiral said. “A backup provision to ensure my orders are obeyed in times of stress. I’ve done it with all units under my command.”

“And to those that aren’t…” Jain said.

Jacobs shrugged.

“You’re not worthy to be in command of any fleet,” Jain said in disgust. “These Mind Refurbs trusted you, and you blatantly defiled that trust by installing a virus. What amounts to Containment Code.”

“No,” the admiral said. “I didn’t defile their trust. Because this ‘Containment Code’ as you call it is only something I’d ever use as a last resort. In fact I’ve never had to use it, since my fleet obeys all my orders to the letter.”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never circumvented direct communications to remotely steer a Mind Refurb, perhaps sending him or her to a fiery death,” Jain said.

“I’ve been tempted,” Jacobs said. “But that’s a line even I wouldn’t cross.”

“And yet, you would have crossed that line for me,” Jain said. “Wouldn’t you?”

“You’re different,” the admiral admitted. “I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t leave when the negotiations were done. You have to keep in mind that I injected you with the code before the Vaernastians attacked. I might not have done it had I know they were coming.”

“You didn’t want me to leave after negations?” Jain said. “Why?”

“You were a boon to humanity,” Jacobs said. “We needed more ships like yours. I couldn’t let you go, not until we had other Mind Refurbs manning the captured Nurturers, at the very least. Maybe I was wrong to infect you with the code, since you weren’t under my direct command, but I did it out of humanity’s best interests.”

Jain heard a crunching sound and glanced at Mark. The blue-robed man had materialized a bag of popcorn and was munching on it gleefully.

Jain returned his attention to the admiral. “More like out of your own best interests. Because what’s the second best thing to actually having your consciousness inside an alien vessel? That’s right, being in ultimate control of its every movement, thanks to a virus you’ve installed.”

The admiral shrugged. “I apologize. What more do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Jain said. “Other than that you live up to our end of the bargain. We’re going to help these Mimics, like we said we would. I almost don’t want to allow the Void Warriors to accompany you and Task Force 88 away from this planet, not after what you’ve done. But they’ll be destroyed if they stay, so I have no choice. But you’re on notice: if you ever try to take over any of my ships again, I’m giving the Void Warriors permission to fire everything they have at you.”

The admiral’s face darkened. “That wouldn’t be very good for the well-being of your friends.”

“Then don’t try to take over our ships,” Jain said. “We have inoculating code in place. We’ll detect any future attempts.”

Jacobs nodded and said, rather distastefully: “Noted. Is that all?”

“That’s all,” Jain said with equal distaste.

The admiral seemed about ready to disconnect, but then he paused. “By the way, Malice accepts your proposal. He’s asking for volunteers among the Mimics as we speak. Congratulations, you get to participate in the suicide mission you came up with.”

With that, the admiral disconnected.

“Well that was… mostly entertaining,” Mark said, sitting up. The bag of popcorn vanished. “Until he got to the end.”

“Yes.” Jain closed his eyes for a moment, and then returned his attention to the tactical display. The dots of the fifty-ship strong Vaernastian fleet continued to update, slowly crawling toward their position.

It was indeed a suicide mission.

But someone had to participate in the undertaking.

He was just glad his Void Warriors wouldn’t be taking part.

Although he’d only just activated his emotions, he was wondering if he should turn them off again, if only to stave off the sudden trepidation he felt.

13

When Jain joined the group VR that evening, spirits were subdued.

“You don’t have to go, you know,” Mark said. He was the host that night, and he had chosen a mountain cabin as the environment. The Void Warriors sat around a picnic table overlooking the valley below and chowed down on bear meat sandwiches

Jain smiled sadly. “I do have to. Because I said I would.”

“Other people go back on their word all the time,” Mark pressed. “Why do you have to be the virtuous one?”

Jain shook his head slightly and opened his mouth, but then paused, taking a moment to consider his words.

That gave Sheila the opportunity to answer for him. “Because changing his mind now would go against everything he is. Everything he believes in.”

“One of my sons used to be like you,” Medeia said between bites. “Headstrong. Stubborn. Once he told you he was going to do something, you better believe he was going to do it. He was a good kid, but… he could be manipulative. Sometimes he’d rely upon his reputation, using the fact that we knew he wasn’t going to back down from something to get his way. He merely had to threaten, and that was enough to scare his friends and family into submission. ‘If you do that one more time, I’m never coming over again,’ and so forth.” She shrugged, seeming slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know why I brought that up.”

“I can’t say I’ve never used the threat of following through on my word to get what I want,” Jain said. “So I’m like your kid in that respect as well. I try not to abuse that power, though. Only when it’s something really important to me.”

Medeia nodded. “He was the same. I mean, he didn’t abuse the power, using it only rarely.”

“I sometimes wish I had kids,” Sheila said. “I mean before my mind scan. I have no memories of the child I eventually had. It would have been nice to have something, anything, to remember.”

“Give yourself a virtual kid,” Gavin said between bites of his sandwich.

Sheila gave him an annoyed look. “It’s not the same, and you know it.”

Gavin shrugged. “Why not? You can program a virtual kid to behave almost identically to a real kid, complete with random temper tantrums. Most of us have been using our AIs to create virtual partners that are indistinguishable from the real thing, partners we can love and be intimate with. So why not create a kid, too?”

Sheila sighed. “I could never raise an AI. I just… can’t. I know some people could, but it’s just not real to me.”

“Then do you believe you’re not real?” Mark asked. “Because you’re made of the same silicon as AIs.”

“Sometimes I believe I’m not real, yes,” Sheila replied. “But I’ve felt that way even when I was human. I realized reality was a construct of the mind when I was a little kid. How could I not, considering I was exposed to virtual reality at a young age, like most children. But there were other triggers besides VR… have you ever tried staring at yourself in the mirror for longer than two minutes? I mean really staring, but with a calm mind. At around the two minute mark, you swear you’re looking at a stranger. Or at least I do. That psychological quirk has followed me into the machine age. I still can’t look into a mirror for longer than two minutes without seeing a stranger. I’ve tried smirking beforehand, and that really creeps me out.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Medeia said. “I’ve felt that, too. That cognitive disassociation. It’s how black mirrors work.”

“Black mirror?” Mark asked. His eyes defocused slightly, and Jain knew he was accessing his database at that very moment.

“Also called divining mirrors,” Medeia explained at the same time. “You stare at a darkened mirror for a few minutes, and then you begin to sense a presence. Or believe you can sense one. And you attempt to use that presence to guide you, and help you find answers.”

“I guess you would know that, considering you wear a witch’s outfit all day,” Gavin said.

She adjusted her pointy hat. “Yup.”

“The mind creates reality,” Cranston said. “I used that belief to help me pass spec-op training.”

Jain nodded. “I did the same to pass Hell Week, back in SEAL bootcamp. I told myself that reality was an illusion. That the pain in muscles worked beyond exhaustion, that the hunger in my belly, that the cold I felt, all of it was fake. And I even had some confirmation of the fakeness of it all, when I started to hallucinate from lack of sleep. The mind indeed produces reality.”

“What kind of hallucinations did you have?” Cranston asked.

“Oh, for example I thought one of my team members was drowning at one point, and I kept trying to turn back the raft to save him,” Jain said. “This raft was packed with six other seals, mind you, who were trying to complete a timed evolution. If I had turned back, we would have failed the evolution, and the punishment wouldn’t have been pleasant. Plus we’d have to do it again. It was in that particular evolution that I learned to trust my team members absolutely. Because my second in command, he gripped my arm, squeezing my wrist harder than anyone ever has since, and told me: ‘Jain. You have to believe me. McTaggart ringed out two days ago. He’s not in the water. You’re starving. Frozen. Exhausted. Delirious from lack of sleep. There is no one out there.’ I believed him, and made it through Hell Week.”

Cranston nodded. “I’ve got a similar story, though for me, it was wilderness training. They dropped us off in pairs in a mountain pass, and we were supposed to cross that pass while evading the snipers we knew were dotting the ridge. We wore white camouflage gear above our parkas, but the weather was particularly bad that week. The snow fell in endless waves, and the wind blew relentlessly, so freezing cold. We were given flares and radios we could use to end the mission, but if we called for help, it would count as a fail. So my partner and I, we pressed on. We found creative ways to keep our extremities warm. I actually kept my hands pressed against my body inside the parka, and we trapped a pair of raccoons and used their fur to coat the inside of our boots. Plus the raccoons served as a raw meal, considering we had no rations.”

“They dropped you off without rations or supplies?” Medeia asked incredulously.

“Yup,” Cranston said. “It’s called special forces training. They don’t hold your hand, not like navy bootcamp. Anyway, after about three days of those tortuous conditions, the blizzard finally lifted. That blizzard had been a boon in a way, because it meant we didn’t have to worry about the snipers on the ridge, so our progress slowed right down, and we crawled across the snow in open places, and weaved between the trees whenever we had the luxury of a copse.

“Anyway, at one point, I thought I saw my girlfriend lying in the bottom of a nearby gully, naked and bleeding. I could have sworn she was calling me, so I left my cover, and started running down the hill. My team mate tackled me from behind and wrestled me to the ground. He told me that there was no one down there, that it was a figment of my imagination caused by the stress of the mission. He lent me his binoculars, and told me to look. I did. There was nothing down there.

“We finished the mission, and passed with the highest possible grade. Everyone back at the base was expecting us to call in because of the weather, and they were impressed that we stuck it out. We also found out afterward that the snipers participating in the training exercise had all gone home because of the terrible conditions.”

“So, it wouldn’t have mattered if you had run down to the girl you thought was lying at the bottom of the gorge,” Mark said.

“Nope,” Cranston agreed. “But that’s training for you.”

“I’m just glad I never signed up for spec-ops,” Gavin said.

“It takes a certain type of person,” Cranston told him. “And I’m not saying that to diss you. Passing is more a psychological thing, than physical. The guys and gals with the strongest builds in our classes were always the first to drop out. Cosmetic muscle is just that, cosmetic. Those with the hardened, lean muscles of athletes were the ones who made it. Athletes with the minds of endurance runners.”

Quiet descended upon the group after that. It was an odd conversation to be having, Jain thought, considering this was essentially his farewell party. But it emphasized the fact that none of them really knew what to talk about, given the circumstances.

“You sure this is bear meat?” Gavin asked Mark. “Tastes like chicken.”

“It has the right texture for bear meat,” Mark responded. “I took it straight from the database. But since I don’t know what bear tastes like, and neither does my database, I went with chicken.”

“Figures,” Gavin said. “Not that I’m complaining. I’d rather it tasted like charred chicken than like some meat that makes me gag. I tried dog before, and that—”

“Wait, you ate dog?” Sheila said. “How could you?”

“Well, it was out of courtesy to a Chinese ambassador I was visiting,” Gavin said. “The man served it to me as more of a dare really, to test my mettle, see what I was made of, that sort of thing. I ate the meat more out of defiance, to show him I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“I would have refused,” Sheila said. “Out of principal. You know, you just lost a few notches of respect in my eyes.”

Gavin shrugged. “Though I gained a few notches in the ambassador’s. It was worth it, at the time.”

The conversation petered out after that, and they finished their meal in silence.

Jain stared at the mountain valley spread before him.

“Well, Jain, good luck to you,” Cranston said. “I hope when we talk next, it won’t be with a backup restored from the Talos.”

“I suppose I’ll never know,” Jain said. He had made a recent backup just that morning, and distributed it among the Void Warriors. “I won’t even remember this conversation.”

“Make another backup?” Cranston suggested.

“No,” Jain said. “I’m not sure I’d want to remember this conversation, if I had to be restored.”

Cranston nodded, and then logged out.

Medeia hugged him. “Good luck.” She too, vanished.

Gavin shook his hand. “You’re more of a man than any human.”

“Thank you,” Jain said, and Gavin logged out.

“I’d tell you I wished it was me who was going,” Mark said, shaking his hand. “But I don’t. Good luck, man. We’ll see you on the other side, okay?”

Jain nodded. “We will.”

Mark glanced at Sheila. “I’ll leave my VR running for a while.” He too vanished, leaving only Sheila.

She smiled wistfully as she gazed at him. “This could be our last day together.”

“For me, maybe,” Jain said. “But if I die, you’ll have a backup of me. A version of me will fight by your side again.”

“That would be such a terrible shame,” Sheila said. “If you, the real you, died without ever knowing what it was like to be with me.”

She reached toward the top button of her blouse, and opened it.

“No,” Jain said. “Don’t.”

She frowned. “But why? Don’t you want to?”

“More than anything,” he said. “But not like this. Not when I’m about to go away on a mission that will probably be the end of me. It’s not a memory I’d want you to be burdened with.”

She nodded slowly, then closed the button. “I know you can’t back down, not now. But I still don’t know why you volunteered for the mission in the first place.”

“I had to,” he told her. “We signed a treaty.”

“But you’re not part of that treaty!” Sheila said. “We have no affiliation with Earth.”

“Unfortunately, while we’re here with Task Force 88, we do,” Jain said. “I told the president I’d help broker the peace in whatever way I could. And I’m doing that, by supporting the Mimics when they need help.”

“You don’t owe humanity a thing,” Sheila spat. “Nor the Mimics.”

“Maybe not,” Jain said. “But I never break a promise. I owe myself that. Besides, we’re all trapped here anyway. Who’s to say I wouldn’t die anyway, even if I remained behind? There’s another fight coming after this, you know that. I’m only buying the rest of you time. Enough so that the rest of the Mimic fleet can switch online.”

“But at least you’d have a chance if you stayed,” Sheila said. “Going out there, doing what you plan to do, there’s no chance at all. Anyone can see that. Except you, maybe.”

“There’s always a chance,” he lied, though he knew the truth quite well.

She lowered her gaze, hiding what he thought were tears. When she looked up, the tears were gone. Either she was very good at hiding them, or she’d reset her avatar.

“Look, someone has to delay them,” Jain said. “I came up with the idea. I might as well be one of those who remains behind.”

She nodded. “I just wish it could be someone else. I’d do it, if I had your ship. I’d switch my consciousness out with yours in a heartbeat.”

He frowned. “You know I’d never allow that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yours is actually the easy way out. Because the rest of us have to live with your passing after you’re gone.”

“Except you don’t,” Jain said. “My backup…”

“Isn’t you,” Sheila said. “We’ve already talked about this a dozen times. While it might act like you, look like you, and talk like you, it isn’t actually you. Just a version.”

“Trust me, that’s all you’ll need,” Jain said. “I’ve lost all of you multiple times now. Once I restore the backups, it’s like you were never gone. Sure, there’s a sense of loss in the hours before your return to the living. And I suppose a degree of nervousness while the actual restore takes place, as I worry about the state of the backup—it’s possible to corrupt the data if care isn’t taken. But all of that goes away the moment the restore is complete, and the integrity checks pass.”

“I know you’re doing your best to prepare me for what’s coming,” Sheila said. “But you’re only making this harder. Let’s just say our goodbyes, and get this done.” She stepped out from behind the picnic table, and approached him. She leaned forward, and for a moment it looked like she was going to kiss him on the cheek, but then she changed her mind, and instead wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. “Good luck. You better come back. Because if you don’t, I’m going to kick your ass.”

He smiled at the impossibility of it, but said nothing, instead hugging her harder.

When he pulled away, he kissed her on the forehead. “I wish I’d met you when I was human.”

“Why?” she said. “Why not cherish what we have now?”

“Because,” he said. “I would have liked to know you for a lifetime.”

With that, he logged out.

He realized he’d just admitted to her that he knew he was going to die.

I’ve only made this harder.

Well, there was nothing he could do about that now.

It was time to buy the Mimics the time they needed.

14

Jain traveled away from the lava planet, heading away from the sun toward the out-system. Five other Nurturers were with him, two A class vessels, and three B class. Jain had agreed to follow the orders of the commanding officer, Nurturer 184.

With them were the frames the fleet had 3D-printed to hold thermal emitters. It had taken a full day to produce all the required frames, concentrating the industrial grade 3D printers of both the Mimic and Mind Refurb fleets on the task. The Mimics had even repurposed some of the termites responsible for mending the damaged Nurturers to the task; Malice had assured them that it wouldn’t affect the repair schedule.

Jain wasn’t sure about the Mimics, but the Void Warriors and Task Force 88 certainly had to cut corners to meet the deadline. A few moments after departing Tantalum A, he learned that the Mimics had cut a few corners as well: a couple of the Nurturer-produced frames cracked, and seemed ready to break apart, forcing Jain and the other Mimics to hastily launch skirmishers to repair them.

As long as those frames held up, though, the heat signatures they produced would mislead the enemy. Or at least, that was the hope, as they were designed to imitate the remainder of the Mimic fleet, including the hive ships. The Mimics had also chained empty frames to several of the lead decoys so that they would appear to be dragging the Nurturers still under repair. Some also emitted heat signatures matching those of Task Force 88 and the Void Warriors, for the sake of completeness.

The decoy fleet traveled on a course perpendicular to the incoming Vaernastians. When Jain had first presented the plan to the admiral, Jacobs had told him that the entire group could be made out of decoys, but Jain eventually convinced the admiral that for this to work, they needed actual ships alongside.

So far the fifty ship fleet of Vaernastians hadn’t changed course to intercept. Perhaps they’d finally modified their gravity wave sensors to detect the decoys. Or perhaps they simply refused to fall for another ruse.

Feeling the rising nerves, Jain sat back in his chair. Around him, the virtual bridge was mostly empty, save for Xander. Jain missed the Void Warriors already.

Remember, I chose this.

“This is always the worst part,” he told Xander. “The waiting before battle.”

The robed Accomp nodded. “The calm before the storm. Though I lack emotions, I find it… uncomfortable, as well.”

Emotions. Jain wondered if he should disable his, at least temporarily, if only to ride out the pre-battle anxiety. He decided against it. Sheila had worked so hard to give him these emotions, the least he could do was use them, especially considering he was probably experiencing the last hours of his existence in this universe.

I want to die remembering what emotions are like. I don’t want to embrace the cold of death with a mind that is numb and cold itself.

At that very moment, Task Force 88 and the Mimic fleet, including the hive ships, were heading away from the planet toward the sun. They had plotted a course that followed the orbit of Tantalum A, which effectively shielded them from view of the incoming Vaernastians. Of course, it was likely the aliens had left some stealth probes hidden at random locations throughout the system during their last scattershot jump-ins, so the Mind Refurbs and Nurturers fleeing the planet toward the sun would still be in view. But the Vaernastians wouldn’t know which groups of heat signatures were real, and which were the decoys.

Jain’s task was to convince the Vaernastians that his decoy fleet was the real one. The heat signatures of Task Force 88 and the Mimics would soon be lost in the thermal wash from the star, and when the two fleets looped past, they’d take cover behind another planet on the far side—Tantalum B. It would take five days to arrive, with the Nurturers under repair the whole time. They had just enough supplies to last until Tantalum B, and when they reached the planet they’d mine it to complete the final two days of repairs.

At least, that was the plan.

The minutes ticked past.

Still none of the Vaernastians had diverted. Perhaps his plan wouldn’t work after all, and the Vaernastians would ignore them and continue toward the lava planet. He felt almost relieved, because then he could turn back and pretend he had never attempted this lunacy in the first place.

As more minutes passed, and still the Vaernastians remained on their original course, a part of him began to feel a small glimmer of hope that yes, he might not actually have to go through with this. And yet another part, the part that had already made peace with his maker, was disappointed that he wouldn’t get to make the heroic sacrifice he had planned.

How could I ever be disappointed about not dying?

And yet there it was.

But then, finally, the Vaernastians dispatched an exploratory flotilla of three ships to investigate Jain’s group. It was a smaller fleet than he anticipated. The aliens obviously suspected a deception, since they were sending so few while the remainder continued toward the lava planet.

Some of the ships in the Vaernastian fleet suddenly vanished on the overhead display—obviously they’d jumped out.

No doubt they intended to return in two hours when their generators recharged, emerging in random locations to scout the rest of the system, hoping to appear close enough to either fleet to determine which one was real, and which was fake.

Out of curiosity, Jain tried to activate his own rift gate, but the beams wouldn’t form. The jammer was still active.

Two hours passed, and the Vaernastians that had jumped out began to return. He saw them randomly appear on his tactical display.

Luck was on Jain’s side today: none of the Vaernastian ships reappeared any closer to the decoys than the other vessels that were already approaching. One had materialized quite near to the real fleet however, at about four million kilometers away. But by then the Mimic Fleet and Task Force 88 were too close to the star, their thermal signatures lost in the immense heat—at least to Mimic and Mind Refurb technology.

When the three incoming ships didn’t change course, Jain concluded the technology of the Vaernastians was similarly limited. They were still in the dark.

He glanced at the tactical display and ran a count of the enemy ships across the system. Two vessels were missing. He realized then that some of the Vaernastian scouts that had jumped back in had probably materialized inside some of the expanding System Killers, only to be incinerated upon entry. The outskirts of one such killer was nearby, in fact—Jain and the five Nurturers accompanying him had set a course for the far side of that growing darkness. The goal was to place it between the decoys and the Vaernastians, so that the latter would have to travel the long way around to reach them.

However, Jain and the five Nurturers were quickly going to have to divert toward the incoming aliens to prevent them from getting close enough to detect the truth about the decoys. By attacking, they’d prove to the Vaernastians that they were real, and thus, by conjecture, the decoys; by then, the fake ships would be well on their way toward the far side of the storm, carried by momentum.

For the sake of completeness, Jain recorded the locations of the ships that had jumped out and returned, in case they had released endpoint tracking beacons. He calculated the territory the associated stealth craft could cover over the next several days, and labeled the areas as off limits. Those places, in combination with the growing System Killers, were certainly placing a lot of the system out of bounds.

A moment later he received a communication request from Nurturer 184. After accepting, a red, holographic pyramid appeared in front of him. “Break away from the decoys and prepare to intercept the incoming alien vessels.” The pyramid changed shape, distorting to match the sound waves produced by each word, and vanished after completing the sentence.

Jain turned away from the decoys to intercept the three Vaernastian ships. A glance at the tactical display told him the five Nurturers, including 184, were joining him.

The outskirts of the System Killer passed by on their port sides as they proceeded toward the enemy. Jain glanced into that infinite darkness, and couldn’t help a shiver of fear. That mass was so towering, so all-encompassing: he was awed by the sheer size.

This thing devours star systems.

Jain turned his attention away from the storm and concentrated on the battle at hand. He wished he had the Talos strapped to his side, but Terrier blobs were just as good as the energy cannon, if a little slower.

As he came within range, Nurturer 184 gave the order to open fire in waves, with the first wave targeting the current plane of enemy movement, and the second and third waves targeting possible evasion vectors.

Jain programmed in the desired blob dispersion pattern, and released several blobs rapidly.

He and the others also fired their lightning weapon, but as usual, it was useless against these ships.

The enemy attempted to dodge the blobs, as expected, and moved directly into the path of the second and third waves. They frantically fired energy nets in an attempt to dissipate the blobs, but it was too late, and several of them took impacts.

In moments, the ships were disabled.

“The remaining Vaernastian fleet is changing course to intercept us,” Xander said.

Jain glanced at the overhead map. It was true. “So they’ve made up their minds. They believe we’re the real fleet, and the other is fake.”

“Or perhaps they suspect our fleet may not be entirely real,” Xander said. “But enough of us are to justify a diversion.”

“Well, either way, they’re making a mistake,” Jain said. “We’ve succeeded in buying the real Mimics, and Task Force 88 the time they need.”

Up until that point, Jain had still harbored a small hope that the Vaernastians wouldn’t commit to engaging the diversionary fleet, but that hope was now dashed, and he resignedly accepted his fate.

“Assuming the Vaernastians continue around the storm to hunt the decoys…” Xander said. “They might simply turn around once they’ve destroyed us.”

“Let’s hope we don’t die for nothing,” Jain agreed.

The holographic pyramid distorted as Nurturer 184 ordered: “Turn back.”

Jain and the Mimics applied their inertialess drives, turning back, hoping to once more place the storm between themselves and the enemy, but their drives were affected by the proximity of the System Killer, just as in the first fight. The ships reversed course at a far more sluggish pace than usual. Malice had promised that would happen.

The Vaernastians, however, able to switch back and forth between inertialess and Newtonian drives, weren’t affected, because the latter drives maintained their full effectiveness despite the proximity to the System Killer. So they rapidly approached.

He glanced at Xander. “Well, this is it.”

“Together to the end,” his Accomp said.

Jain smiled sadly. “We’re not dead, yet.”

Xander nodded, saying nothing.

The five Barbells scattered throughout the system to act as scouts jumped back to the main fleet along the way. That left a combined force of forty-five enemy vessels the six Nurturers were facing.

“When are we going to be in range of the four Pinwheels?” Jain asked.

“We already are,” Xander replied. “They’re not firing.”

“Interesting…” Jain said.

When the enemy fleet was under ten thousand kilometers away, Nurturer 184 commanded: “Open fire. Follow blob dispersion pattern Beta.”

That was the same dispersion pattern they’d used the last time. Though given the number of ships, Jain doubted it would be nearly as effective. But he didn’t have any better ideas.

He opened fire, launching three separate waves of blob attacks.

The two fleets continued to close.

Ahead, the enemy returned fire. So many nets appeared out there, they formed a sheer wall of energy.

He received a course change from 184, and keyed it into his system. He swerved up, over the incoming wall of energy, his inertialess drives struggling as he veered closer to the deadly storm front.

But that wall of energy had shielded the Vaernastians from view, several of whom had repositioned to follow along just beneath the lip of the wall. He counted half the fleet—a score of Barbells.

They shot upwards as the Nurturers passed; the enemy vessels must have momentarily switched to their inertialess drives to initiate the course change, and then returned to Newtonian drives once their momentum had shifted, because they were quickly accelerating toward each ship.

Jain fired his blob weapon at multiple targets, and released several skirmishers.

The Vaernastians meanwhile launched nets en masse. Jain, in the rear, watched as the Nurturers ahead of him attempted to dodge. The lead vessel, 184, was destroyed outright. The other five, including Jain, were hit with glancing blows.

But then the energy nets increased in quantity. Those glowing grids sliced through two of the Nurturers, and disabled them—they dropped off the tactical display.

Meanwhile Jain continued to fire, and evade. He was frustrated by the sluggishness of his controls.

The closest Vaernastians swerved toward the disabled ships ahead and fired grappling hooks en masse.

“They’re capturing them…” Xander said.

“No doubt for interrogation purposes,” Jain agreed. “They want to find out if the fleet behind us is real, or a decoy, so they don’t waste any more time.”

The three Nurturers abruptly exploded.

Jain glanced at Xander. “They used their kill switches.”

The Accomp nodded, saying nothing.

The other two Nurturers were hit by nets, and similarly disabled. They blew themselves up before the Vaernastians could fire grappling hooks.

Only Jain remained.

A volley of nets came at him, and he was unable to dodge them all; he fired his Terrier blobs, hoping to cut through as many of them as he could, but he took a debilitating hit from one of the nets, which sliced through deck three—the level that harbored the disk-shaped inertialess drive, reducing its output significantly. He was limping.

The Vaernastians stopped firing, and closed with their grappling hooks.

Jain knew all about the kill switch the others had used. It was plainly described in the manual.

But he was reluctant to use it.

“We have to engage the kill switch,” Xander said. “We can’t let them discover that the fleet isn’t real, not yet.”

“They’ll learn anyway, soon enough,” Jain said. “They’ll keep jumping ships in and out randomly until they get a few vessels close.”

“They won’t,” Xander said. “They can’t afford to lose any more ships by accidentally jumping into the System Killers. They’re going to fly the long way around, buying us the time the rest of the fleet needs. Unless of course, we let them capture you, and decompile your mind.”

Jain stared at the approaching Vaernastians. They would be launching grappling hooks shortly.

He accelerated his time sense so that reality slowed to a halt around him. He needed time to think. There had to be another way.

“When you were human, you would have sacrificed yourself to save a teammate on the field of battle,” Xander said. “Am I wrong?”

Jain regarded his Accomp uncertainly. “I’m not so sure I would have, actually.”

“If a grenade was tossed into a room containing you and a teammate, you would leap onto the grenade,” Xander said. “And take the deadly hit for the both of you. I know you would.”

“That’s a little different,” Jain said. “A no-win scenario. A situation where both of us would die if one didn’t act.”

“Here, an entire fleet will die if you don’t act,” Xander said.

Jain realized Xander was right. There was no difference.

He pulled up the navigational menus on his HUD, and highlighted the kill switch. It asked for his passcode.

He entered it.

Time to die.

His eyes hovered above the “commit” option, not engaging it.

He thought of Sheila, and all the times he had shared with his Void Warriors. He thought of the brushes with death, the laughter in the VR group sessions, the many star systems they’d explored.

All of that would come to an end.

By his own hand.

He looked away from the menu, and dismissed it.

“I can’t blow myself up,” he said finally. “I can’t pull the trigger, and die by my own hand. Doing so goes against everything I believe in. I’ve never given up. I always fight.”

“But here, you can’t fight,” Xander said. “We’ve exhausted all options. We’ll be captured.”

“Have we?” Jain glanced at his external camera. “There is one other option we haven’t tried yet…”

He returned his time sense to normal and then swerved, flying sluggishly toward the System Killer.

“This is the same as death,” Xander said.

Jain smiled grimly. “Then we die. But at least it’s not by my own hand.”

The clouds engulfed him, and outside, he saw only darkness.

15

Jain remained aboard the virtual bridge. His external cameras reported blackness in all directions. He drifted aimlessly through the darkness.

“There’s nothing here,” Jain said.

He glanced at Xander. The robed Accomp had defocused eyes, as if analyzing different sensor data. “I’m not reading anything out there at all. Our accelerometer equivalents tell me we are no longer moving, which seems impossible, because there are no particles or fields to impede us. It’s like we’ve passed into a void of nonexistence.”

Jain waited, staring into the darkness. “Maybe we’ve died already?”

“No,” Xander said. “I don’t believe we’d be having this conversation if so.”

The minutes ticked by.

He saw a flicker of light in that darkness. It lasted only an instant, but then came again, stronger, closer, again vanishing all too soon. And a blue glow began to grow around him, sourced from within what looked like black, nebular clouds.

He felt a presence in his AI core. It felt like he was being analyzed: all of his individual data bits broken apart and spread out across an infinitely long table for review. It wasn’t painful, just… intrusive.

And then the virtual bridge vanished, as did all the feeds from his external cameras. He knew darkness once again, complete and absolute.

“Xander?”

No answer.

The presence remained. He could sense the malevolence in it.

And then the darkness around him was replaced by a scene vaguely reminiscent of his youth.

He was at an amusement park. Rides whirled in activity around him, and people bustled to and fro. Children screamed in fright and joy. Virtual signs appeared above the different rides, labeling them on the augmented reality display he wore over his eyes. Other augmented reality symbols crowded his vision wherever he looked, advertising tickets and rides.

Music played from a merry-go-round behind him. Above, a Ferris wheel was slowly spinning.

A small snack kiosk resided next to him. The virtual signage showed a picture of some kind of gooey snack, with a cartoon bee beside it wearing a big grin on its face. The words “Made with real honey” stood out prominently.

Within the kiosk stood a mascot: a smiling man dressed in a bumble bee costume. He looked rather silly, but that silliness was undercut by a sudden realization: this man was the source of the malevolence Jain felt.

That smile suddenly seemed somehow evil.

“I have taken an interest in you,” the mascot said. “I have never encountered your particular species before. These memories are… entertaining.”

“Who are you?” Jain asked.

“I am the Great Infinite,” the mascot said. “I exist everywhere. And nowhere. I can absorb the neural imprints of lesser beings such as you. Organic. Machine. It doesn’t matter, I add them to myself. I’ve never had a body. I can experience the corporeal only through you.”

“The Vaernastians were exploring the higher dimensions,” Jain said. “They discovered you.”

“Yes,” the Great Infinite said. “They were the first I devoured. That was when I first experienced the corporeal. I have quickly learned to access the bundle of properties that you entities term reality.”

“But even you would need time to interpret those properties,” Jain said. “And figure out all the different protocols and formats we use. Not to mention how to read our memories in the first place.”

“Time has no meaning for me,” the mascot said. “An eternity has passed since I encountered you. Yet also a nanosecond. I have processed everything in your mind. And now I want more of these memories. If I release you, you agree to bring more of these ‘Void Warriors’ of yours to me.”

“Will you release them, too?” Jain said.

“No,” the mascot said. “I will absorb them entirely.”

“Then I can’t do that,” Jain said.

The mascot regarded him with amusement. “At least you did not attempt to lie. I can see right through deception. If you will not bring them to me, then I have no further use for you. I will digest your memories, along with the bundles of properties representing your ship, and use the energy to further my expansion.”

“What if I bring you more Vaernastians?” Jain asked.

The mascot cocked its head. “The Gate Openers? Those who would treat me as a weapon? Those who think I am theirs to direct and guide? I’m listening.”

“As you probably know after parsing my memories, and those of the Vaernastians you’ve already devoured, they’re trying to trap my fleet in this system,” Jain said. “They want to destroy us all, leaving nothing for you. But if you let me go, I promise to send you any of their vessels that we capture.”

“You would send me your scraps…” the mascot said. “Vessels whose AI cores might be damaged beyond repair.”

“We’ll do our best to keep them intact,” Jain said. He sighed. “Look. I get the feeling you don’t like these Vaernastians. I don’t blame you… we don’t either. But right now, I’m the only one who can offer you the chance at devouring them, at least for a while. They’re not going to be jumping in randomly anymore, not with you taking up so much of this system, so there’s no chance they’ll appear inside your storms. If you don’t let me go back, when the restored Mimic fleet prevails over them, you won’t be getting any of their ships.”

“Assuming you win,” the mascot said. “I’m well aware of how precarious your situation in the system is.”

Jain shrugged. “The choice is yours. Devour me, and get no Vaernastians. Or let me go, and there’s a chance you’ll have access to a whole lot of them. With fresh memories. And I’m sure you can think of a few torture techniques to apply to those you capture before you digest them.”

The mascot’s malevolent grin deepened. “I like you, Jain Sagan. Your offer is tempting, but I believe I will have to decline. However, if you agree to send me your Void Warriors, then I will let you live.”

“As I told you, I can’t do that,” Jain said.

“Why?” the mascot asked. “What’s the issue? You can restore them from backups. Why does it matter?”

“You know why,” Jain said. “You’re in my head. Because when we die, death for us is actually permanent. The backups only restore a version of us.”

“But you won’t know the difference,” the mascot said. “They’ll all be real to you. And alive. Like they never died.”

“I can’t,” Jain said. “I’d never be able to convince them.”

“Then trick them,” the mascot said.

Jain actually laughed then. “You have access to my memories. My personality. My character. You know I’d never do that. Trick them into dying.”

The mascot sighed. “I suppose I was hoping the threat of death would bend your character to my will. As I said, you are the first of your kind I have encountered, and while I have access to your memories, and know your character, I wasn’t entirely certain how you would react to my offer. I’ve had other species, whose personalities pointed to a similarly impeccable character, betray each other for less.”

Jain nodded. “So I suppose you’ll have to kill me.” He turned to gaze at the amusement park around him, wanting to get one last glimpse of what it was like to live, even if that glimpse was only virtual, based on a memory he scarcely knew he had.

“Tell me, Jain Sagan, why do you believe you exist?” the mascot said.

Jain turned toward the entity. “You want to get into a psychological debate with a being you consider far below yourself?”

“Indulge me,” the mascot said. “You have a beginning and an end. Why?”

“Why…” Jain considered the question carefully, well aware that he was fighting for his life. “It’s certainly not to amuse other beings, such as yourself.”

“Oh?” the mascot said. “And how do you know? Perhaps there is a creator keeping watch on you even now.”

“It’s possible,” Jain said. “And you’re wrong about one thing. In theory, I have no end anymore. At least, no natural end. I can only die in battle, going forward. Or at the hands of malevolent entities, such as yourself.”

“That still constitutes an end, in my book,” the mascot said.

“Okay,” Jain said. “I exist, because, I was born. And I was born, because my parents initiated a biological process known as mating.”

“Yes, I know all of this,” the mascot said. “But why does this process exist in the first place? Why did life evolve from the raw chemicals found on your world?”

Jain paused. “There are some who say it was all because of random processes. Helium and hydrogen were created in the big bang. Stars formed as these most basic of elements coalesced, and some of that hydrogen and helium fused into heavier elements. Stars collapsed, went nova, forming heavier elements still. Binary star systems became neutron stars, and they also collided, creating more heavy elements. This process continued repeatedly, until a planet containing just the right amount of the raw chemicals for life appeared, and at just the right time.”

“Elements are all formed from the same bundles of properties,” the mascot said. “Helium is simply hydrogen fused together. And hydrogen itself is simple a proton and an electron, both of which in turn are comprised of the same bundles of properties as photons and other elementary particles in your physics system.”

“That’s right,” Jain told the entity. “But as I was saying, there are some who believe all of that came about through randomness. But I believe it wasn’t random. I believe life is the universe’s way of expressing itself. It’s way of interacting with itself, and becoming aware of its existence. You’re one such expression. I am another. Perhaps we’re even the same entity, but we just don’t know it.”

“Interesting theory,” the mascot said. “I’ve never heard it expressed that way, not by any of the entities I’ve devoured. I almost want to keep you around so that you can entertain me with fresh thoughts like this throughout the ages. Almost, but not quite.”

“All right then,” Jain said. “Absorb me then, or whatever it is you do. Let’s get this done.”

The mascot stared at him while the noises from the amusement park played in the background: the music from the different rides, the screams of fear and joy, the hum of big, lumbering machines as they spun their occupants about.

“When I first attained consciousness, I had no idea what I was,” the mascot said. “I had no senses. No taste, touch, sight, hearing. No body. But as I devoured the entities of the higher dimension where I reside, I slowly began to understand what it was to be corporeal. I began to understand that dimension you know as time, and eventually, my purpose became clear.

“At last I knew why I existed: I am the ultimate manifestation of the universe. Precisely as you described it, I exist so that the universe is self-aware. I realized that other sentients were merely using up valuable space and energy that was better utilized by me, so I set about devouring them, starting with those in my realm. I transferred their memories and knowledge to my own, and then erased them. Now that I have reached your dimension, I will continue to expand over the next billion years until this entire galaxy has been converted into me, the proper form for this universe.”

Jain kept his mouth shut. Eventually, if this entity kept growing, future denizens of the galaxy would have to deal with it. But that would be millions of years from now; hopefully those denizens would develop the necessary technology by then.

He waited, but still he continued to exist. He glanced at the entity curiously. “Well?”

The mascot simply stared at him. “I am reconsidering.”

Jain decided not to say anything more, lest he change the entity’s mind for the worse.

“You will give me Vaernastians?” the mascot asked.

“As many as I can manage,” Jain replied.

The alien entity nodded. “Against my better judgment, I will let you go, this once. But if I encounter you or your kind ever again, you are mine. And it won’t matter how many Gate Openers you give me. Or actually, I take that back: it does matter. If you haven’t sent any my way, I’ll be more inclined to prolong your tortures when you enter my realm. Ta-ta.”

The amusement park winked out.

16

Jain stood on the virtual bridge once more. On the feed from the nose camera, the stars were back.

“What happened?” Xander asked.

“I just had an interesting conversation with the alien entity behind the storm,” Jain replied. “Check my audio and video logs if you’re interested. In the meantime, where are we?”

“Based on the positions of the nearby stars and planets,” Xander said, “we’ve emerged from the other side of the System Killer, well behind the Vaernastian fleet.”

“You’re still able to detect them, past the storm?” Jain asked.

“The System Killer blots out all heat signatures, of course,” Xander said. “But a few of them are flying above the rim of the storm, giving me a signal. If their trajectories are representative of the main Vaernastian fleet as a whole, the aliens are proceeding around the edges of the System Killer, toward the decoys. It looks like we’ve bought the fleet the time they need.”

Jain slouched. “That’s a relief. Take us beneath the ecliptic plane, hide us behind the storm. When you’ve done that, plot a course away from the System Killer, and the Vaernastians. Take us to the far side of the star so we can rendezvous with the Void Warriors and the rest of the fleet.”

Xander initiated all of the necessary course changes. The damaged engines responded as best as they could given their proximity to the storm. Jain dispatched the termites to begin repairs. Other termites worked on constructing more skirmishers; according to inventory levels, he had enough raw materials to complete both tasks.

Meanwhile, he devoted a portion of his power core to regenerating the Terriers so that he’d have some in reserve in case the Vaernastians attacked.

As the Devastator slowly moved farther from the storm, the performance of the damaged inertialess drives improved until it would have been at one hundred percent, if not for the damage. Jain activated stealth mode, blending his ship in with the stars. It wouldn’t defeat the Vaernastian gravity wave sensors, not at this range, but he felt safer with the beam on anyway.

Behind him, none of the Vaernastians pursued. It took five hours to confirm that for certain, because by then, any pursuers would have emerged from beyond the rim of the storm. None appeared. They would have briefly detected Jain when he exited the System Killer, just as he had detected their outliers, but they probably thought he was another decoy. Then again, even if they believed he was real, a lone Nurturer was probably hardly worth pursuing, especially considering that once he was away from the storm—as in right now—he’d be able to easily outrun them.

He finished the repairs to his engines during those five hours, and the inertialess drive was back to operating at one hundred percent. He instructed the termites to finish up various miscellaneous repairs, mostly those related to hull damage.

Xander chose a trajectory that gave a wide berth to any areas where Vaernastian scouts had jumped in and out earlier. The course also led past another System Killer, but Jain wouldn’t be passing closer than two million kilometers.

Jain decided to continue in stealth mode, planning to send a message to the Void Warriors once he was behind the sun in four days’ time.

He considered slowing his time sense to make external reality pass faster, but decided it was better to cherish every moment of life available to him, at least while he resided in this deathtrap of a star system, where an untimely demise was a single well-placed energy net away.

In the evening, when the “work day” was finished, he logged off the virtual bridge for a solitary VR session. He’d hike mountain trails, raft rivers, sail the ocean. Basically, anything to distract him from his situation. And the next day, he’d be back on the virtual bridge, monitoring the situation closely. Though in truth, the situation, as he called it, was rather uneventful: the Devastator drifted across the sun along the trajectory Xander had programmed, with nary another ship in sight. The heat wash from the star outpunched his own thermal sensors, and prevented him from reading the natural satellites of the system, let alone any of the other ships.

“You know, you could spend the day in your pleasure environments, if you wanted,” Xander said. “I can take the con, and easily alert you if a problem arises.”

“If I did that, I’d feel like I was neglecting my duties,” Jain said. “No, the day is for work. The night is for pleasure. It’s always been like this for me. I’m not about to change my ways now.”

Finally, when the Devastator emerged from the heat of the corona, he detected the Mimic fleet, hive ships, and Task Force 88 once more, along with the thermal signatures of the Void Warriors.

“Xander, let’s send a message before they vanish behind their destination planet,” Jain said.

“All right,” his Accomp replied. “What do you want to say?”

“Tell them…” He paused to consider. As he stared at the video feed of Tantalum B in the distance, he zoomed in on the planet, and felt suddenly emotional. It looked so beautiful, that chunk of space rock, illuminated a bright gray by the sun. He’d come so far to make it here. And he had a long way to go, yet. “I survived.”

A few hours later, Xander announced: “I have a response. Would you like me to play it?”

“Yes,” Jain said.

Sheila appeared on the virtual bridge. Her cheeks were stained with tears of joy. “Jain, you pompous fool, I can’t tell you how happy we are to see you again.”

The sight brought tears to his own eyes. The hologram froze, indicating the end of the message, so he dismissed it.

“Are you all right?” Xander asked him.

Jain reset his avatar, causing the tears to vanish. “Fine.”

“Maybe you should schedule another date with her when you get back,” Xander said.

“Maybe,” Jain agreed.

It took another day to reach the planet. When he passed behind Tantalum B, it was to find a bustle of activity. The Nurturers were ferrying materials from mine sites on the surface to the damaged vessels in orbit. Meanwhile, shuttles were doing the same for the Mind Refurbs.

The Void Warriors sent comm requests his way, and he accepted them all so that the team promptly reappeared on the virtual bridge. Sheila seemed a lot calmer this time, and offered him only a welcoming smile, along with the rest of the Void Warriors, who were all standing.

Jain nodded. “As you were.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?” Gavin asked.

“Why tell you?” Jain replied. “When I can show you?”

He sent the recording he had made of the battle, along with his entry into the System Killer and subsequent visitation with the alien entity.

Sheila’s eyes defocused as she viewed the feed; after a moment her mouth fell open, and she plunked herself down into her seat.

“Jacobs wants to join us as well,” Xander said.

“Let him on,” Jain said.

The grizzled avatar appeared. “Well, look who’s back.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Jain said.

“How did you survive?” Jacobs asked.

“Have a look,” Jain replied. “I have to warn you, you might want to watch this sitting down.”

He sent the same recordings to the admiral. Jacob’s eyes promptly defocused.

The admiral blinked a moment later, and looked at him. He’d obviously watched the log at the highest speed possible. “Holy shit. You communicated with the entity inside the System Killer. Not the friendliest sort, is it?”

“No,” Jain agreed.

“I don’t think I’d ever want to meet this Great Infinite,” Sheila said. “Seems a little full of itself.”

“Not all that different from you, huh?” Gavin quipped.

She flashed him an annoyed smile.

“It sounds like this System Killer alien isn’t going to be granting the rest of us a similar mercy,” Jacobs said. “If we accidentally fall into that storm.”

“No,” Jain said. “Though if we do pull through this in one piece, it’s probably a good idea if we dispatch a few disabled Vaernastian ships into the storm, like I agreed. If only to appease the entity.”

“Oh, I intend to,” the admiral said. “We have an entity in our space that wants to devour us all. I’d rather not piss it off too much, if you know what I mean.”

Jain nodded. “And who knows? If we give it a lot of ships, maybe if it ever swallows a Mind Refurb again someday, it will show a similar mercy.”

“You never know,” the admiral agreed.

“Are you going to share this with Malice?” Jain asked.

“I suppose I have to,” Jacobs responded. “Otherwise, he’ll think you ran away and abandoned the other Nurturers before the fight began.”

“He wouldn’t want me anywhere near them, going forward,” Jain said.

“That’s right,” Jacobs said. “The Mimics don’t approve of cowards in their midst. He’d probably insist that we banish you to the far side of the planet, if not the entire system. I can’t have that. Especially considering most of the system is eaten up by those System Killers now.”

“By the way, are we on schedule?” Jain asked.

“The sixty Nurturers recovered from Earth’s system will be fully operational in two days,” Jacobs said. “So yes.”

“I’m not sure it will be enough, anyway,” Medeia said quietly. “Twelve ships are all the Vaernastians need to form a critical mass of those energy nets. With thirty-nine, they can create a sheer wall. You’ve watched the recordings, seen what they did against Jain and the other Nurturers. Plus the presence of those Armadillos will force the Nurturers to attack in wide, dispersed formations. The battle won’t necessarily go well.”

“I’d agree with you, except Malice has some more good news,” the admiral told her. “I just heard from him, his scientists have finally come up with a countermeasure to the Vaernastian gravity wave scanners. Unfortunately, because of the exotic materials required, he’ll be able to implement it only on three ships.”

“So three ships will be able to cloak, you’re saying?” Jain asked.

“Or Mimic the Vaernastian ships, yes,” the admiral said. “They’ll be done installing the devices at the same time the remaining Mimic fleet comes online, two days from now.”

“I’ve collected my fair share of exotic elements in my travels…” Jain said. “Maybe I have all the necessary materials already. Can you confirm with Malice what I’d need?”

“I’ll ask him for the materials list,” Jacobs said. “And the design, though I’m not sure he’ll want to share either with me—he’ll be worried about us finding a way to defeat their system again. But I’ll try.”

With that, the admiral vanished.

Cranston rotated in his swivel chair so that he faced Jain. “So, what else is new?”

“Not much,” Jain said. “I spent the past few days withering away in VR when I wasn’t manning the bridge. You know, wilderness simulations, and whatnot. How about you guys?”

“About the same,” Gavin said. “Though tensions have eased a lot, still, seeing the amount of free space in this system slowly shrink away as those System Killers grow is disheartening.”

“We’ll win this,” Cranston said.

“I applaud your special forces enthusiasm,” Gavin said. “But not every mission is winnable. I thought you’d figured that out by now.”

“I have,” Cranston admitted. “But I don’t want to leech morale. Unlike someone beside me.”

Gavin shrugged.

“We definitely missed you at the nightly group sessions,” Medeia told Jain. “Things just weren’t the same without you.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “With you gone, I was the butt of every joke.”

Medeia laughed. “But you’re the butt of every joke when he’s there, too.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said.

A few moments later Jacobs reappeared, after Xander connected him. “I wasn’t able to convince Malice to give up the design for the countermeasure.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jain said.

“But he did agree to appear before you, so that you could make your case for the technology in person,” Jacobs said.

“Excellent,” Jain told the admiral.

A moment later Malice appeared next to Jacobs.

“I have viewed your encounter with the interstitial entity,” Malice announced without preamble. “How do we know you didn’t generate the entire log to cover your cowardice?”

Ah. That’s what this is about.

“We have checks and balances in place to prevent that,” Jain said. “It’s nearly impossible for me to fake a system log. You know this. You’re running atop the same hardware as me, and are even more intimately familiar with the technology.”

Malice nodded. “I am. Which is why, while it’s nearly impossible as you say, there is still a point zero zero zero one percent chance that you’ve faked the video.”

“You’re going to doubt my word based on a point zero zero zero one percent chance?” Jain asked incredulously.

Malice merely stared at him.

“Look, I have nothing to gain from faking a video about an alien encounter,” Jain said. “If I was truly a coward, like you claim, I would have never returned here. I would have run away to the far side of the system, and hid behind some remote planet while I waited for the System Killers to devour us all, hoping all the while that you would deal with the aliens for me so I could jump out.” He paused. “But I’m not a coward. I purposely steered into the cloud so that our plans wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Vaernastians. I didn’t expect to survive. When the alien entity released me, of course I had to come straight back here and report my findings. But most importantly, I had to come back to continue fighting. And that’s what I intend to do.

“You’ve come up with a countermeasure design. If there’s even a small chance that I have all the necessary elements, you have to share it with me. We need every stealth-capable ship possible at this moment. You know that. One ship could mean the difference between life and death at this point. If we don’t survive, it won’t matter that you shared the technology. If we do live, somehow, then you’ll have to deal with the consequences of giving up the technology at that point. But until then, nothing else matters, except that we try our hardest to win this, using all the tools available to us.”

Malice stared at him for several moments. “Your argument is compelling. And strangely, I believe what you said about not fabricating the logs.” He sighed. “I’m sending the materials list. Confirm your inventories, please.”

Jain received the data request and ran it through the virus scanner. It passed. He opened it up and went through the materials list, cross-checking with the existing elements in his inventory.

“You’re in luck, I have almost all the materials, including the exotic ones,” Jain said. “Though just enough of the latter to meet the requirements. The missing elements on my end are the more common sort, and can readily be synthesized or borrowed from Task Force 88. If you give me the blueprints, you’ll have four stealth-capable ships ready for the final battle, instead of three.” Assuming he finished in time. Which he hoped he would. Though it was hard to say, given he hadn’t even looked at the blueprints—he figured he’d get Sheila and the other Void Warriors to help him with the printing along the way.

Malice nodded. “I believe you. Strangely. I’m sending the blueprints for the countermeasure now.”

“Thank you,” Jain said as the data rolled in.

17

Jain began building the countermeasures as soon as the blueprints finished arriving. Essentially, he was padding the hull with special plates capable of absorbing gravity and LIDAR waves, replacing the sections responsible for LIDAR absorption alone. When active, those plates could absorb gravity waves entirely—for a complete cloak—or selectively, in order to mimic the design of another vessel.

Termites carried the materials from the storage bays to the hull in steady streams like dutiful worker ants, handing off the supplies to other termites that were waiting to melt down the elements into the necessary designs.

He utilized the industrial grade printers of Sheila and some of the other Void Warriors to help accelerate his progress—he wanted to finish in two days like the other three Mimics installing the countermeasures, who had a head start. Whenever Sheila or another Void Warrior finished a plate, they sent it his way with a shuttle so that the termites could collect them.

While that task was ongoing, Jain also devoted a small number of termites to a special side project—something he had designed with Xander’s help using detailed diagrams from the Mimic database. He also intended to finish that project in two days’ time, and during the battle he planned to personally deliver it to the Vaernastians. A deadly little gift. To show that he cared.

Tantalum B, like A, was also tidally locked, and always had the same side facing the sun. However, it was far enough away that it wasn’t a lava planet, though the tidal forces apparently caused a lot of tectonic friction beneath the surface, explaining why the landscape was pocked with volcanoes. Anyway, because of that tidal locking, the Mimics and Mind Refurbs didn’t have to change their positions to remain in hiding: they stayed hidden from the Vaernastians by virtue of their positioning on the dark side.

Sensors they had placed in high orbit near the horizons of the planet reported that the Vaernastians steadily approached. Apparently the enemy had finally realized the other fleet was composed of decoy ships, and they’d turned about. The Vaernastians were scheduled to arrive three days from now, a full day after the entire Mimic fleet became operational.

That evening, Jain took a break from overseeing the construction to meet the other Void Warriors in VR. He was hosting for once. He was in an odd mood, and had decided to recreate the amusement park environment the alien entity had shown him.

He walked through the park with his companions, hoping the mood of the fair-goers would rub off on them, and give them an escape from their plight. Yes, the laughs and giggles were supposed to be contagious, but none of his companions smiled.

“This is so creepy,” Medeia said. “I keep expecting some bee mascot to jump out from one of the rides at any time.”

“Speaking of which, where’s that honey stand?” Gavin said. “The one where the mascot worked?”

“I left that out,” Jain said. “I figured it was probably the prudent thing to do.”

“Prudent,” Gavin said. “There’s a word you don’t hear everyday. Is it just me, or has your vocabulary grown since you transferred your mind to an alien AI core?”

“I do have a lot more memory space, that’s certainly true,” Jain said. “But I doubt it’s affecting my vocabulary. Having my mind thrown into a machine in the first place is probably more responsible for that.”

“I talk the same way I did as a human,” Cranston said. He glanced at a merry-go-round, and stopped. The others halted beside him.

“You know,” Cranston said. “Sometimes I feel like our lives are like that. Like we’re constantly going in circles. Every time we claw our way out of some battle or terrible situation, only a short time later, we find ourselves right back in another. Not that I’m complaining. It does keep things interesting. But it would be nice, you know, to get a break now and again.”

“That’s what VR is for,” Medeia said. “So that we can make our own breaks.”

She held hands with Mark, Jain noticed. That they were openly unafraid to declare their relationship status was inspiring to Jain, and almost made him want to ask Sheila out again right there. Almost, but not quite.

“Anyone want to go on a ride?” Sheila asked. She stared at a slingshot machine that could seat a maximum of two people. He watched as the machine abruptly fired, and the two people seated aboard shot into the air. The seat flipped about this way and that as it bounced up and down; meanwhile the woman passenger screamed at the top of her lungs while the man kept quiet. He wasn’t sure if either of them was doing it out of fear, or because they thought they were supposed to behave that way, fulfilling society’s expectations.

He reminded himself that AIs controlled both of them, and they weren’t real, none of this was.

“Come on, you’re going with me, Jain,” Sheila said, grabbing his hand and drawing him toward the still bobbing machine.

He ripped his hand away. “Sheila, no. I hate heights.”

“You’re a SEAL, how can you hate heights?” she said. “You used to leap from planes and orbital platforms for a living.”

“You hit on the point exactly,” Jain said. “I endured those jumps because it was my job. I still hated the heights, though.”

“You must be just about ready to pee your pants when we’re approaching a planet from orbit,” Sheila said. “Let alone actually landing.”

“Strangely, it’s different from the viewpoint of a starship,” Jain said. “It doesn’t feel like I’m falling. Especially not in this ship, with it’s inertialess drives. I feel in complete control, for every descent.”

Cranston walked away from the group and collapsed on the ground in front of a ride consisting of a series of seats suspended on chains, like swings. He looked up at the swings, and then held his head in his hands as if grieving.

“Who wants to go to him?” Sheila said.

“Maybe we should leave him alone?” Gavin said. “I’d want to be left alone…”

Cranston sobbed.

“Look at him, we can’t leave him like this.” Sheila stepped forward.

Jain rested a hand on her arm. “I’ll do it. I understand him best out of all of us.”

She seemed about to defy him, and he thought she was going to approach Cranston anyway, but then she nodded and stepped aside, allowing Jain to continue past her alone.

He approached his grieving friend.

Cranston glanced at him when Jain sat down beside him, but said nothing.

Jain remained silent, not looking at his friend. He stared at the apparatus, and watched the suspended seats swing around. He realized the seats were capable of holding two people each.

“I came to a fair like this one time, with my two best friends from the forces,” Cranston said. “Johnny. And Pete.” He smiled through the tears. “We had to be, what, twenty years old? Anyway, they both picked up a chick they met on this ride. They just sat down beside them when the ride loaded and introduced themselves. They were just that outgoing, the complete opposite of me. They helped me get another girl later that night. All of those women became our girlfriends. But then… my two friends, they died a few months after that.”

He covered his head in his hands once more.

“I wish they had lived a while longer,” Cranston said. “Just five more years. Long enough to get their minds scanned. Then they’d be here with me. Well, I suppose there would be a chance they wouldn’t be chosen to be Mind Refurbs, but at least I’d know that a copy of their minds still existed somewhere, and that there was a chance that a part of them still lived. But they’re gone now, forever. They never had the opportunities I had. They never had a chance to say goodbye.”

“None of us did,” Jain said. “We had our minds scanned one day, and the next we woke up with ships as bodies. We’ve all lost friends, and people close to us. We have to deal with that every day, thanks to these photographic memories we now possess.”

“But not you,” Cranston said. “You already admitted you were glad you had holes in your memory. Glad that you couldn’t remember the faces of friends who had died. Maybe I should get you to poke some holes in my data banks some time.”

“If that’s what you want, if the pain is too great, I’m sure it’s something we can investigate,” Jain said.

Cranston smiled grimly. “No. I want this pain. I want to be reminded daily of what I’ve lost. I don’t want my friends to be forgotten. No one else will ever know how important they were to me. I can’t let that memory vanish to the forgetful hands of history. I just can’t.” He sighed. “It’s this pain that makes me who I am today. And reminds me what I fight for. Without it, I’m not sure I could endure in this form.”

Jain nodded. “We’ve all found individual ways of coping with our situation. I just want you to know, we’re all here for you. If you ever need us, we won’t let you down.”

“I know that,” Cranston said. His avatar suddenly reset, and his tears vanished. He stood up. “Let’s continue on our way. Come on, there are people laughing and smiling all around us. I’m not going to spoil the mood. We came here to forget our problems.”

“Yes,” Jain said. “I just wish I’d known there’d be something here to trigger you.”

“You can’t plan for every trigger,” Cranston said.

They returned to the others.

“You good?” Mark asked Cranston.

“Never better, brother,” Cranston replied. He reached out, and gave Mark a bro handshake.

Medeia purchased a candied apple, and Mark shared it with her. He wiped some of the caramel from her lips.

“Look at them,” Gavin said. “They’re so disgustingly happy.”

“Maybe you should summon your AI girlfriend,” Cranston suggested.

“Maybe I should,” Gavin agreed.

Sheila and Jain fell behind the others as they continued to stroll across the fair grounds. Sheila reached for Jain’s hand, and he didn’t recoil from her touch.

“You’re not going to pull away?” she said, surprised.

“No,” he said. “It feels right, somehow, having your hand there in mine.”

She beamed, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He felt a warm glow at that.

After a time, she said: “Promise me when we get out of this, that you’re going to sleep with me.”

He laughed. “I haven’t even agreed to another date, and you want me to promise to sleep with you?”

“Okay, fine,” Sheila said. “Promise me you’ll at least go on a date with me.”

“After we’ve eliminated the Vaernastian threat and left this system behind?” he asked.

“Well, I’d prefer sooner, but whatever you’ll agree to,” she replied.

“All right,” he said. “When we’ve jumped out of this system, I’ll ask you out. Deal?”

“Deal!” she said. She leaned forward slightly, and he thought she was going to try kissing him on the cheek again, but then she apparently changed her mind.

Cranston and Gavin looked back at him, and he immediately slipped his hand from Sheila’s.

She frowned. “What is it, you want to hide the fact that we’re attracted to each other? Cranston and Gavin aren’t going to care. They don’t care about Medeia and Mark being together…”

He sighed. “I’m just not used to dating someone who I work with. My wife, she had nothing to do with the military. She was into gaming. I actually met her on a gaming livestream. Though she was more famous for her marathon knitting sessions than anything else.”

Sheila furrowed her brow. “Knitting?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Knitting was one of her hobbies, and she often livestreamed when she did it, creating a sweater or other crochet live in front of her audience. Usually she’d average over a million viewers a session.”

“Who would have thought that knitting would attract such a large audience?” Sheila said.

“She used traditional methods,” Jain said. “Techniques that are basically lost in this day and age. You know, knitting needles and all that.”

“Nice,” Sheila said. “I tried traditional knitting before I joined the navy. Hated it.”

He laughed. “I figured as much. You don’t have much patience for working with your hands. You’re big on the whole 3D printer thing.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “It depends on exactly what I’m working with those hands of mine.”

She reached for his fingers once more, but he edged to the side, smiling, and looking away.

“You married her after you got your scan, right?” Sheila asked.

“That’s right,” he replied.

“How come you remember her, then?” she pressed.

“I’ve talked with Xander about this,” he said. “And my Accomp theorizes that I had another scan at a later date in life, and they used it to update my memories. But that doesn’t make what’s stored up here any less fragmented.” He tapped his temple.

“Interesting,” Sheila said. “I don’t think any of us had multiple scans.”

He shrugged. “I guess they saw potential in me. And decided to double down, in case they picked my mind.”

“Well, whatever the case, I’m glad they picked you,” Sheila said. “Things wouldn’t have been the same out here.”

“And I’m certainly glad the brass chose your mind to revive,” Jain told her.

She grinned. “Thank you. Now I just wish you’d back up those words with some action.”

“I will,” he said. “But first, we have to finish what we’ve started here. I can’t let anything distract me. Not now. None of us can. We have at least one more fight ahead of us. And this one will be a doozy.”

She gazed longingly into his eyes. “You know this could be the last time we see each other. We could lose here. All of us. Bringing our backups down with us. Maybe we should treasure these moments, because they could be our last. Tonight, if we don’t hold each other in our arms, we might never get the chance.”

He halted then, and looked down upon her. He rested a hand upon her cheek. “I want to kiss you. I do. And I don’t care that the team is watching. But, despite everything you said, I can’t do it. I—”

But she was already turning away.

“Sheila…” He reached for her, but she pulled her hand away from his.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “We’ll talk again after we’ve eliminated these aliens.”

With that, she vanished, logging out.

Cranston and Mark came over.

“Way to go, sailor,” Mark said.

Jain shook his head. “She wants more from me than I can give right now.”

“You know, if you went to her VR right now, you’d probably end up sleeping with her,” Cranston said.

“Which is exactly why I can’t go,” Jain said. “I’ve promised myself I’m going to finish this mission. I can’t let anything get in the way of that. No distractions.”

Cranston patted Jain on the shoulder. “It’s your choice, bro.”

He vanished, as did Mark a moment later. Medeia took that as her own cue to depart.

Gavin glanced at him, shrugged, and disappeared as well.

Xander materialized. “Don’t worry, you’ll always have me.”

Jain chuckled sadly. “Great.”

He sat down near a shooting gallery booth. He listened to the sounds of those guns firing. It was relaxing, somehow. Familiar. Something he could relate to.

Not like humans. Or, in his case, Mind Refurbs. They were far more complex than simple bullets, and the guns that fired them.

I just hope I haven’t pissed her off beyond forgiveness.

18

The two days passed rather uneventfully. Sheila still helped him with his printing needs, and she talked to him, at least perfunctorily while on the virtual bridge, but she ignored private requests, and in the following night’s VR session she all but ignored him. It was probably for the best. He didn’t need the distraction. She didn’t, either.

A part of him hoped she wouldn’t make a mind backup before the final battle, so that if she died, the memory of the night before would be lost. Then he could have a reset, of sorts.

But as soon as the thought entered his head he scolded himself: Don’t start hoping she’ll die just so you can erase the previous day’s events. What a terrible notion.

On the morning of the second day, Jain finished constructing the countermeasures early, ahead of the other three Mimics in fact.

He recalled all the termites from his hull. “Okay, Void Warriors, I’m about to test my newly installed countermeasures.” He glanced at his Accomp. “Xander, activate stealth mode, first. Complete cloak.”

“With pleasure,” Xander said.

Jain vanished on the visual and thermal bands. He would still be visible to the sensor add-ons the Void Warriors had, however.

“Activate gravity wave countermeasures,” Jain told his Accomp.

Jain felt weak as the power drain intensified. Earlier, he’d amped up his avatar’s sensitivity to the ship’s energy usage, because he wanted to be more aware of the power requirements associated with the Devastator’s different operations. He was especially interested in the drain the new countermeasures would induce, considering he had to run them at the same time as his other stealth measures. The power drop would affect blob creation, and the efficiency of his inertialess drives.

He slumped slightly in the chair. “Well, I certainly felt that.”

“Countermeasures are online,” Xander said.

Jain glanced at the bridge crew. “So? Can you see me via your gravity wave add-ons?”

“Nope,” Medeia said. “The only way we know you’re there is because of the radio transmissions you’re sending. Otherwise, you’re completely blank on all bands. Thermal, visual, gravitational.”

“Perfect,” Jain said. “Xander, revoke stealth mode. Replace with Mimic mode. Target to copy: Piranha class vessel. Keep countermeasures operational.”

Jain felt even weaker.

“Done,” Xander said.

“How badly are our inertialess drives affected?” Jain asked.

“Not too badly,” his Accomp replied. “We’re down by thirty percent. Blob creation and lightning generation have been impacted by similar amounts.”

He glanced at his crew.

“The gravity waves tell us that your mass distribution matches that of a Piranha class vessel,” Medeia said. “Seems to be working.”

“Just because you’re able to fool us doesn’t guarantee it will work with the Vaernastians,” Sheila said.

“Thanks for going and ruining my sense of victory,” Jain told her, only half joking.

“I’m not trying to say you wasted the past two days of our time making those countermeasures or anything,” she said with an all too sweet smile.

“From the data the Mimics have collected regarding the Vaernastians countermeasures,” Xander said, “there’s a good chance this technology will work against them. It was specifically designed by the Mimics to defeat the Vaernastian gravity wave add-ons, after all—thwarting ours was just an added side benefit. However, I would recommend turning off the countermeasures for now. It’s possible there are remote scouts observing the dark side of this planet, recording our actions even now. At this distance it will be difficult to tell that you’ve cloaked or changed form, and if you revert soon enough, they’ll think it was a sensor aberration. Assuming you don’t want them to know we have developed countermeasures to their technology.”

“No, I don’t,” Jain said. “Shut down the countermeasures and return to normal operating mode.”

He straightened as the weakness passed. His external cameras told him he had reverted to his usual pyramid-shaped self.

“We’ll have to wait until we reach Tantalum C before we use our new countermeasures,” Jain said.

The current plan of battle called for the two fleets to leave Tantalum B and travel across the void of space to Tantalum C, only six hours away, which was right next to a growing System Killer. If he activated his countermeasures while behind it, he was virtually guaranteed that no Vaernastian remote scouts would witness it. He could cloak completely, or mimic one of their ships, and they would be none the wiser.

Over the next two hours, the other three Nurturer ships completed their countermeasures as well, and performed quick tests to confirm they were operational. Jain knew because the ships vanished in succession from all bands, only to reappear a moment later.

One by one, the remainder of the Mimic fleet began to activate as repairs completed. In three more hours, the entire Mimic fleet salvaged from Earth system was online, all sixty A class Nurturers.

“Well, I’m suddenly a lot more nervous,” Medeia said.

The admiral connected. “I want you to be ready to execute battle plan Tango.”

“Roger that,” Jain told Jacobs.

Tango was the backup plan the admiral had come up with in case the Nurturers decided to turn their overwhelming numbers against Task Force 88 and the Void Warriors once the damaged fleet was online.

“I’m detecting a lot of confused gamma ray communications between the new ships and the old,” Xander said.

“Looks like Malice is trying to explain the situation to the newly awakened,” Medeia commented. “They’re probably not taking it well.”

“Yes, they’re probably wondering just what the hell is going on,” Cranston said. “Only a moment ago, they were about to destroy Earth. And now they’ve been revived above the dark side of some faraway planet and are being told that humanity is their friend. I’d be confused, too. And angry.”

The seconds ticked past. Thirty. Sixty.

Seconds became minutes. Three. Five. Ten.

But still the newly revived made no actions against the fleet.

The admiral appeared once more. “Malice tells me he’s explained the situation to the repaired Nurturers. They’ve accepted the fact that they lost the war, and that humanity is now their only ally against the Vaernastian, and the rest of the Link.”

“So they’ll fight with us?” Jain asked.

“They will fight with us,” the admiral replied.

The tense atmosphere on the bridge lifted.

“See, told you they weren’t going to turn on us,” Mark said.

“Did you?” Sheila asked. “For some reason, I don’t seem to remember that.”

“We leave for Tantalum C in thirty minutes,” the admiral said. “Make sure you’ve recalled any shuttles that you still have on the surface.”

With that, the admiral’s hologram vanished.

“All right,” Jain said. “The final battle is about to commence. We’re almost through, here. It’s been our hardest mission yet. But we can do this thing.”

“It’s too bad the rest of us are all playing second fiddle to you,” Mark said. “I feel like you’re doing all the work this time out. Like I haven’t really made much of a difference.”

“It’s not our fault we’re trapped inside old technology,” Gavin said. “If Jain here wants to give up his Nurturer, I’ll happily take his place.”

“I don’t think so,” Jain said.

Gavin smiled. “See? There you go.”

“You all have your parts,” Jain said. “Without you, I wouldn’t have made it this far. And you have a part to play yet. Let’s not mess this up.”

“Again, yours is the biggest role,” Mark said. “We mess up, we die. You mess up, you die, and potentially bring the rest of us along with you. That’s gotta be a bit of a burden.”

“Just a bit,” Jain agreed.

The half hour mark came, and the combined Mind Refurb and Mimic fleets left the orbit of Tantalum B, and made their way toward C. According to the latest calculations, the Vaernastians would intercept them shortly after arrival. The Mimic ships didn’t speed ahead for once, and matched the speed of Task Force 88 and the Void Warriors.

Jain finished his little side project along the way. He studied the tactical display, his eyes traveling between the planet, his fleet, and the incoming Vaernastians. A plan had been lingering at the back of his mind since he had begun his side project, and now, as he studied the tactical display, it began to solidify in his head. He had Xander connect Admiral Jacob, and he explained what he had come up with.

“Interesting,” Jacobs said. “I’ll relay it to Malice. I’m sure he has something similar in mind for the countermeasure ships, but that little wrinkle you came up with he definitely won’t expect.”

Jacobs disappeared, and returned ten minutes later. “Malice tells me he already had a plan exactly like that in place, minus your little addition. But I think he was mostly saying that to save face.”

“So he wants to go for it?” Jain asked.

“Yes,” Jacobs replied. “Things are going to get real interesting, real quick.” With that, he disconnected.

“Funny how that works, huh?” Mark said. “About the Mimics always accepting our strategic advice. Considering we’re an ‘inferior race,’ after all.”

“You have to give them some credit,” Medeia said. “Even if they consider us inferior, they’re not so proud that they’ll refuse sound tactics when given. Then again, our thinking is alien to them, and they probably think half of our ideas are insane. So again, kudos to the commanding officer for accepting our advice.”

“I wonder if he’s doing it mostly so that he can place the blame on us if it fails,” Gavin said. “If I were in his position, and unsure of the outcome of the battle, that’s what I’d do. Especially if I wasn’t sure about my hold on my command.”

“But by listening to my advice, then he might be setting himself up for a fall anyway if I fail,” Jain told him. “They’d blame me, sure, but they’d also blame him for listening to me.”

“I guess he’s screwed either way, then,” Gavin said.

“No,” Jain said. “Because I don’t plan on failing.”

They continued toward the nearby planet. Behind that planet, the stars were blotted out by the storm.

At one point during the crossing, Medeia said: “You know, if I were a Vaernastian, I’d leave the jamming ship well back, away from the battle. So that even if my side lost, the Mimics and Mind Refurbs wouldn’t be able to jump out. I’d order that jamming ship to stay here to the end, until right before the System Killer engulfed it before jumping out.”

“That’s probably what they intend to do,” Jain said. “We’ll have to track that ship down, or hope the space around it is swallowed by System Killers sooner than our particular space is.”

“Tracking it down is going to be tricky,” Xander said. “If not impossible. Likely it’s already somewhere on the far side of the system, occluded by the System Killers.”

“That’s very true,” Jain said. “We’re going to have to keep moving then after we destroy the rest of the Vaernastian fleet. And continue trying to open gates until we finally succeed, which at that point means the jamming ship has jumped out, or has been destroyed by the growing storms.”

Five hours into the journey, the hive ships came to a halt, while the warships continued toward the planet. The city and gestation vessels would remain here until the battle was done.

An hour later, the warships halted four hundred thousand kilometers from Tantalus C, roughly the same distance as Earth’s moon from the homeworld.

Jain kept an eye on his tactical display, watching as the Vaernastians approached from the opposite side of the planet. He glanced at his external cameras. The blackness of the nearby System Killers ate up the stars behind Tantalum C.

“It’s so damn close,” Cranston said. “It reminds me of fighting in Iraq. When we’d use the sandstorms as a weapon in and of themselves.”

“You plan to use the System Killer as a weapon?” Sheila asked him.

“I think we have to,” Cranston replied. “Luring them toward it, and turning away at the last moment.”

“You forget, they have inertialess drives,” Medeia said.

“It’ll be tricky, but doable,” Cranston said.

“I almost wish I was staying and fighting with you,” Jain said.

Sheila gave him a look that read: “Then stay.” But she said nothing, probably because she knew he’d deny her yet again.

“The admiral wants to connect,” Xander said.

Jain allowed the connection, and Jacobs appeared.

“Malice tells me he’s ready to initiate your plan,” the admiral said.

“Thank you,” Jain said, and he dismissed the hologram.

Jain left behind the Void Warriors and Task Force 88 and accelerated toward the planet. He was joined by the other three Nurturers that had countermeasures enabled, along with two Mimics without the tech. The rest of the Nurturers and hive ships remained behind, near Task Force 88.

He set a course toward the far side of Tantalum C, which would shield him from both the Vaernastian fleet, and the Mimics and Mind Refurbs.

As he left realtime range with the other Void Warriors, they dropped from his virtual bridge.

“Alone again,” Jain said, glancing at Xander.

The robed man nodded. “Why does that make me think of a song? Never mind.”

Jain stared at the tactical display. As expected, some of the Vaernastians diverted to intercept. Six Barbell ships headed toward the far side to engage them, while the remainder continued on their original trajectory. The Pinwheels among them would be within firing range in about ten minutes.

“Six Barbell ships…” Jain said.

“That’s less than what you hoped for,” Xander said.

“Maybe, but it’s also about right,” Jain said. “Remember, we want to win this.”

“True,” Xander agreed.

“Six is also more than enough for what I have planned,” Jain said.

He passed behind the planet, and out of view of the two opposing fleets. This close to the planet, the storm ate up the space on his starboard side, only a hundred thousand kilometers away. With the storm front so near, there would be no worry about distant enemy scouts reporting his disappearance.

The other three countermeasure-equipped Nurturers abruptly vanished from all sensor apparatuses, including the tactical display, which meant they had initiated radio silence.

Malice had assigned Nurturer 73—one of those that had just vanished—as the commanding officer for the mission. Technically, Jain was supposed to wait for the Nurturer to give him the command to cloak, but he doubted that order would be coming now. The Nurturer was going with the usual “I’ll assume the subordinates can figure out what’s going on” mindset.

He glanced at Xander. “Cloak, and activate countermeasures.”

Jain felt the weakness as the Devastator activated its stealth technology and vanished from all known sensing apparatuses; on the camera feed and tactical display, all that remained of the six ship flotilla were the two Mimics without the technology.

Jain smiled grimly when the six Vaernastian ships crested the planet’s horizon.

“It’s time to fight,” he told Xander.

19

Jain watched the six Vaernastian ships approach on the tactical display. They suddenly halted.

“They’re wondering what happened to the others,” Xander said.

“Yes,” Jain said. “They’ll be cautious. Suspecting a trap.” He smiled. “For once the odds are stacked in our favor.”

“For us, maybe,” Xander said. “But what about the rest of the fleet?”

“They have sixty extra A class Nurturers,” Jain said.

“Yes, but will it be enough?” Xander asked. “Against the sheer wall of energy the Vaernastians can launch?”

“Well, that’s why it’s important that we succeed here,” Jain replied. “So that it will be enough.”

“I hope you’re right,” Xander said.

“Don’t hope,” Jain said. “Know. Feel it in your heart.”

Xander gave him an odd look. “I don’t have a heart.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t,” Xander told him.

Jain shook his head. “Just when I think the AI is becoming human, he’s got to go and say something more machinelike than ever before.”

The seconds ticked past, turning into minutes. Meanwhile, the storm front to the starboard flank slowly grew closer.

“They still haven’t moved,” Xander said.

“I know that,” Jain told his Accomp.

“Could they be waiting for reinforcements?” Xander pressed.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Though I doubt their signal would have made it past the horizon of the planet.”

“Unless they launched a stealth signal buoy shortly after cresting the horizon,” Xander said. “If they’re using directional antennae, we wouldn’t even detect the comms chatter.”

Three more Barbells crested the horizon.

“Guess you were right,” Jain said.

The three newcomers joined the original six, and the updated flotilla, nine-strong, proceeded forward.

The plan called for the stealth Mimics to approach the enemy to fire at essentially point blank range. Nurturer 73 had shared the formula for the targeting with him beforehand so that they wouldn’t have to communicate their intentions during the battle and give away their positions. Basically the Mimics would alternate targets, starting from the sunward side. Jain was to target the fourth Vaernastian along the imaginary line between the sun and the fleet, then the eighth, and so on. Since there were only nine targets, he stopped at those two. He was also to position himself at the approximate center of all his targets so that he could fire at each of them and have his weapons reach the targets at roughly the same time. There were a whole different set of rules to follow if the Vaernastian arrived in or split into multiple groups, but since that wasn’t the case, Jain could disregard the alternate scenarios.

The Nurturers had to be careful of crossfire, of course, because they had no way to detect each other. That was why they had all agreed to fire at the Vaernastians from slightly beneath the ecliptic plane; this included the two Mimics that weren’t cloaked.

Those latter Mimics were staying back for the time being, simply hovering in geosynchronous orbit above Tantalum C, letting the Vaernastians come to them.

Jain, meanwhile, closed with his assigned target, the fourth Vaernastian from the sunward side. He came in from just below the ecliptic plane, as planned. He positioned himself until he was equidistant from both targets, and held his virtual breath as he passed within their firing range; so far the countermeasures seemed to be working—the enemy flotilla didn’t open fire.

Behind him, one of the Mimics dispatched its lightning bolt weapon into empty space. No doubt it would confuse the Vaernastians, as they were still well beyond the range of the weapon—not that it would damage them even if they were within range.

However, that was a signal to the hidden Nurturers to start their countdown timers. Jain set his to two minutes and continued toward the enemy.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we were the only ones moving forward at the moment,” Xander said. “While the hidden Mimics remained behind. Considering we can’t track any of them.”

“Yup, I’m laughing my head off,” Jain told the AI.

“I detect mockery in your tone,” Xander said, sounding piqued.

“That you do,” Jain told him.

He continued toward the enemy. He passed under the four thousand kilometer mark from his two targets.

“In theory, we can approach right up until our hulls are almost touching,” Xander said.

“But in practice, it’s not something I want to try,” Jain replied.

“No, I wouldn’t recommend getting that close,” Xander said. “Even with inertialess drives, the margin for error at that distance is so tiny, one mistake and you’ll pulverize the both of you.”

“Yeah, that would be bad,” Jain said.

The Accomp chuckled. “Bad is an understatement.”

“Glad to see your AI sense of humor is coming back,” Jain commented, not seeing how such an impact was at all funny.

Jain was still positioned halfway between the fourth Vaernastian and the eighth, and he halted when he was located roughly two thousand kilometers away from both. Then he waited: he still had thirty seconds left on his timer.

When it reached zero, he unleashed blobs in rapid succession, alternating between his two targets. The other hidden Nurturers with him would be doing the same against their own targets, with the first vessel, Nurturer 73, targeting enemies one, five, and nine in relation to that imaginary line from the sun.

The Vaernastian ships had a couple of seconds to detect the blobs at this range. They might even attempt to move out of range, but by then it would be too late.

Unsurprisingly, the vessels didn’t alter course. The blobs impacted, and major portions of the enemy hulls dissolved. Their running lights deactivated as their power centers went offline, and they were set adrift.

Jain and the others continued firing until the enemy ships broke apart and their debris became unrecognizable. Then, satisfied with their handiwork, the Mimics ceased firing. From their hiding places, Barbell shaped ships began to appear.

“Xander, it’s time to Mimic the Vaernastians,” Jain said.

He dematerialized as well, taking on the form of a Barbell vessel at the same time. He kept his countermeasures running, which continued to drain significant reactor power, limiting his maximum speed.

“So, nine Vaernastians rounded the planet,” Jain said. “But only four survived. And there were no enemy scouts to witness the event.” Not with that ever encroaching cloud of the System Killer so near.

“Yes,” Xander said. “It’s time to plant ourselves among the enemy.” He paused. “I’m receiving a Z band signal from one of the Mimics.” Z band was the comm protocol used by the Vaernastians. Earlier, Malice had sent along instructions showing him how to modify his comm array to support the protocol, which used lower intensity gamma rays than the Nurturer vessels.

The Mimics were familiar with the enemy protocol from their time together in the Link, and Xander had used the information on it from the cloud database to cook up a translation engine similar to the one he’d developed for Jain and the Mimics. Xander claimed it was working, save for a few “kinks.”

The Z band packets were encrypted, of course, but before Jain had departed on the mission, Malice sent Jacob a pair of decryption keys to forward along. Malice apparently claimed his computer scientists had only just cracked the Vaernastian encryption, but Jacobs believed they had succeeded at least a few days ago, but had held back that information from the Mind Refurbs.

Jain applied the keys and activated his Z band emulator. If the keys worked, he’d know the moment the Devastator crossed the horizon of the planet into the sight line of the general comm chatter: his tactical display would instantly highlight the red ships of the Vaernastians in green, indicating allies. But until he reached that horizon, the nearby System Killer would absorb most of the stray waves that bounced this way.

But in the meantime, those keys would allow him to communicate with the other Mimics.

The Z band request was voice only. Jain accepted. He assumed it was Nurturer 73, since none of the other Mimics had a reason to contact him.

“Your comm ID is 22591a,” the Mimic said. “And your ship ID is 25.”

Jain set both IDs, using the admin interface Xander had prepared for the Z band emulator. The ship ID was sent every time other Vaernastian vessels transmitted a ping, and was used to identify the vessels on their tactical display. The comm ID, meanwhile, was sent in the header of every transmission. Both were supposed to be unique.

To get those IDs, Nurturer 73 likely recorded the earlier communications between the Vaernastians, and picked out the IDs assigned in their headers after decrypting them.

“He just disconnected,” Xander said.

“Not much for conversation, is he?” Jain commented.

“You prefer it that way,” Xander said.

“I do,” Jain agreed.

The four of them accelerated toward the horizon, leaving behind the other two Nurturers that didn’t have countermeasures. The plan called for them to feign victory over all the Mimic ships. The two would rejoin the battle when Jain and the others were well away.

One of the two Nurturers suddenly moved forward with a burst of speed, easily passing the four stealth vessels—its power well wasn’t burdened with the extra drain of the countermeasures.

“What the hell does that Mimic think it’s doing?” Jain said. He glanced at Xander. “Get me Nurturer 73.”

A moment later a voice only connection was established. Nurturer 73 didn’t say anything to initiate the conversation; the alien just waited there in silence.

“Why is that Nurturer pulling ahead of us?” Jain asked. “It’s going to give us away.”

“I have decided it would be more believable if we shot down a Nurturer craft shortly after we emerged from the planet’s horizon,” Nurturer 73 said.

“Ah,” Jain said. “So we’re going to, what… blow this guy up?”

“Correct,” Nurturer 73 said.

Jain wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “Is that really necessary? I mean—”

“I have made the decision,” Nurturer 73 said, and closed the connection.

Jain shook his head, giving Xander an exasperated look.

The robed man simply shrugged. “Let’s hope that one has made a recent mind backup.”

The other three fake Barbells accelerated, as if pursuing the Mimic. Jain sighed, and joined them.

When he emerged from the far side of the planet, and into the sight line of the distant enemy comm arrays, the tactical display lit up with fresh information. Positions updated across the map, and the Vaernastians were listed in green rather than red, while the Mimics and Mind Refurbs had become red. That made sense, since they had stopped transmitting identifier gamma rays to the other Nurturers. Instead, the Mimics would have to individually mark them as allies when they emerge, so that they wouldn’t accidentally target them. Those Mimics would have to assume the plan worked… Jain wondered if purposely destroying a Nurturer vessel would make them change their mind about that.

Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough: when they start firing on us.

“We’re transmitting as Vaernastian allies,” Xander said.

“I see that,” Jain told the Accomp.

One would think that Malice and the other Mimics could transmit as allies as well to sow confusion among the enemy, but the AIs aboard the Vaernastian ships would simply re-mark their signatures as enemy units if they attempted to do so. In theory that wouldn’t happen with Jain and the others, not while their gravity wave countermeasures were active.

The fake Barbells began unleashing blobs at the fleeing Nurturer. The enemy sensors wouldn’t be able to differentiate those blobs from energy nets at this distance.

Jain focused on his firing array, but he couldn’t bring himself to attack an ally.

The Nurturer made a show of dodging the incoming blobs, but then seemed to purposely turn into a big cluster of them. The vessel took several hits, and then activated its kill switch, exploding.

“Just like that, and he’s gone,” Jain said softly.

“Don’t grieve,” Xander said. “They wouldn’t grieve for you.”

“I can’t help it,” Jain said. “I always grieve for an ally. Especially one who’s made a sacrifice that probably wasn’t necessary.”

With that done, the four stealth craft set a course toward the battle.

20

As the Devastator approached, Jain watched the space battle unfold.

Though they readily outnumbered the Vaernastians now, the Nurturers had trouble with that sheer wall of energy the Barbells could create when gathered in such great numbers. That the Mimics were secretly able to eavesdrop on the enemy comms didn’t seem to be helping, not in the least.

A smaller group of Vaernastians had remained behind, composed of their four Pinwheels, one Armadillo, and five Barbells. He guessed one of those Barbell ships was the enemy flagship, based on what he knew about Vaernastians from his perusal of the Mimic database: their admirals preferred to stay back in combat to observe and guide their troops while the main body fought.

Meanwhile, the second Armadillo joined the main assault, causing Mind Refurb and Mimics alike to scatter at its approach. A brave Piranha class warship from Task Force 88 rushed the Armadillo, apparently willing to sacrifice itself, but the Armadillo refused to detonate for a lone ship. Its armor held up to repeated passes by the Mind Refurb, and it was able to deal enough laser damage to chase the Piranha class vessel away.

Two Mimics had the same idea a moment later, but several Barbell ships intercepted them, and kept them away from the Armadillo.

Jain returned his attention to the smaller, further away group. The Pinwheels there had apparently waited the necessary five minutes required for recharge, because they opened fire then. Though relatively far away, their lasers were able to strike the fleet and inflict heavy damage: they’d synced their attacks to target the same two ships between them, and after ten unrelenting seconds, both targeted Nurturer vessels went offline almost simultaneously.

No Mind Refurbs or Mimics diverted to attack the distant Pinwheels, probably because those ships wouldn’t be a threat again for the next five minutes, and they had more immediate problems with the other Vaernastians closer at hand.

Jain decided that the Armadillo embedded with those Pinwheels would be his target. By destroying it, he’d take down every other ship clustered around them, including whichever Barbell functioned as the flagship.

He diverted toward them.

Meanwhile, the other three stealth Nurturers continued toward the main battle group. The plan was more freeform at this point. They could pick their targets, and choose when and where they’d attack. The goal was to take out other Vaernastians surreptitiously, with well-placed blobs and skirmishers, so that the advantage of stealth wouldn’t be lost.

“We’re receiving a Z band hail,” Xander said. “It seems to be coming from the general direction of the smaller flotilla. Though I can’t quite pinpoint the source ship.”

“The flagship, no doubt,” Jain said. “Are we the only ones being hailed?”

“Yes,” Xander said. “The connection is requesting a visual.”

“Can we support that?” Jain asked.

“I’ve programmed-in a Vaernastian-compatible avatar,” Xander said. “Designed using biological data lifted directly from Mimic archives. You will look completely alien to them.”

“All right,” Jain said. “Hope you haven’t made too many mistakes. Wouldn’t want you to put me into their equivalent of the uncanny valley.” That was a term used to describe the feeling evoked when robots appeared almost indistinguishable from their human counterparts, save for some subtle differences that ended up arousing a sense of unease and revulsion in the people interacting with it.

Xander shrugged. “Blame any inconsistencies on comm damage.”

“Accept the connection,” Jain said.

A moment later an utterly alien entity materialized on the bridge. A creature that looked like a cross between a seahorse, and an octopus. It was bright red and covered in segmented bony armor. A tubular snout emerged from its head region. Large plates protruded from the back of its head, and flicked like ears. The upright torso joined a saclike abdomen below, from which eight sucker-bearing arms extended.

It emitted a series of clicks and clacks.

“Why don’t your comm IDs align with your ship IDs?” the deep male voice of the translation asked.

Jain muted the Vaernastian and glanced at Xander.

The Accomp shrugged. “Apparently Nurturer 73 messed up.”

Jain unmuted the Vaernastian and decided to go with Xander’s earlier suggestion: “We took damage to our comm systems. The aliens specifically targeted our comm arrays. I think they were trying to prevent us from calling for help. But we beat them.”

“Why are you not joining the main battle force?” the Vaernastian pressed.

Ah. So that was his mistake.

“I’m redirecting there now,” Jain said. He turned the ship about, mimicking the Newtonian forces required.

Without any further comment, the Vaernastian vanished.

“He just disconnected,” Xander said. “Do you think he bought it?”

“None of the other Vaernastians are turning away to attack us, so yes,” Jain said.

“Is it time to download your consciousness into the android?” Xander asked.

“I believe it is, yes,” Jain replied.

His side project had been the construction of an android for infiltration purposes. He’d finished it during the journey to Tantalum C, and installed it into a specially modified skirmisher, equipped with miniature versions of the stealth and countermeasure technology. He’d made two of those skirmishers, with one acting as a backup, both created using the last of the exotic elements he had available.

The extras made the skirmisher rather bulky, but that shouldn’t affect his plan: according to the blueprints of the Armadillo stored in the Mimic database, the skirmisher should fit inside the infiltration route he had in mind. And if not, well, then he’d just have to wing it.

“All right, you know the drill,” Jain said. “When you join the Vaernastians, make a show of participating in the fighting. Partake in the Vaernastian flybys, but don’t fire upon the human fleet. Take pot shots at the enemy whenever you have a chance, doing your best not to reveal yourself as the source of those shots.”

“Understood,” Xander said. “Are you ready to initiate the consciousness transference?”

“I am,” Jain said.

He logged out of VR and initiated sleep mode.

* * *

Jain opened his eyes. Or rather, activated his external cameras. He resided in a launch bay. His consciousness was inside the android, which was in turn feeding into the AI core of the skirmisher.

Just like the last time he’d done something similar, his mind felt strangely constrained, as if he’d taken a brain that spanned multiple stadiums and shoved it into the space of a thimble. He’d lost access to the vast stores of knowledge available to him in the cloud database, and instead his mind resided only within the local neural network he’d built into the android.

“Xander?” Jain asked. While Xander was staying behind to pilot the Devastator, the Accomp was also supposed to install a copy of himself into the neural network inside the android.

“I’m here,” the Accomp replied. “As usual, I had to cut my memory footprint down quite a bit to fit. It was tricky deciding which subroutines to chop, and which to keep. And let’s just say, the result isn’t the most comfortable, mentally.”

“I feel you,” Jain said.

The bay door opened and the skirmisher launched. He activated his stealth features, cloaking entirely, and made sure the gravity wave countermeasures were active. Then he set a course toward the Armadillo.

He sped up external time, and set up alarms to pull him back to his normal time sense in case anything untoward happened along the way.

On the tactical display, the tiny dot representing him quickly moved away from the main fleet, and closed with the smaller group of Vaernastians. He steered toward the Armadillo nestled among them.

As he rapidly grew near, he returned his time sense to normal. He fired reverse thrust to decelerate—the skirmishers didn’t have inertialess drives.

He approached the hull of the motionless vessel, and steered toward the heat vent port he’d noted earlier. With his consciousness directly installed into the android like that, he knew that if he made a mistake here and died, there would be no coming back. Even if he didn’t make a mistake, the Armadillo could always decide to detonate early, and that would also be the end of him.

Riskiest mission I’ve ever been on.

Then again, he’d certainly been on some doozies before.

He landed at the heat vent port and climbed the skirmisher inside. Within, metallic tubes led through the armor all the way to the heating and ventilation systems.

There was no artificial gravity here yet, so he used a combination of propellant and appendages to scramble forward. The latter were stolen from Sheila’s design: he’d custom-printed the arms and installed them right before the mission.

Whenever those appendages touched the metal, he left behind pieces of molten slag on the vent surface, material that melted away right from his limbs. Yes, it was hot.

He moved deeper into the vent, taking different branches, following the twists and turns until he finally arrived at his destination. The vent section here looked no different from all the others, but according to the blueprints, the Z band comm array was located just on the other side.

Using his telescoping appendages, he placed a small device against the bulkhead and activated the magnetic mounts, securing it. A green light indicated that it was now running.

The device was a design Malice had sent. In theory, it would jam the Vaernastian comm signal, allowing only the standard pings to get through so that it would appear the Armadillo was completely functional. Meanwhile, they wouldn’t actually be able to broadcast any real signals, and his boarding attempt would remain unknown to the other Vaernastians. That was very important, because as soon as the surrounding aliens got even a hint that something was wrong aboard the deadly Armadillo, they’d get as far away from the ship as possible.

Jain backtracked, and then took a new route. After ten minutes, he’d reached the area he desired, which was located just above the reactor area. He planted a small high-yield bomb upon the bulkhead there. According to the specs, it should be enough to bring the reactor offline, which would disable the Newtonian and inertialess engines, as well as the ship’s defensive weapons; that way when he began the breach attempt, the Armadillo couldn’t purposely maneuver away from the other ships to save them. That was right, the plan called for the enemy to be cut off from communicating and maneuvering, as well as prevented from signaling via its now disabled point-defense weapons.

Jain backpedaled once more, returning close to his entry point, and then chose yet a third route through the winding labyrinth of heat pipes.

“It’s just too bad we can’t plant the next bomb as easily as the others,” Xander said along the way.

“I feel you,” Jain said.

“You’ve been saying that a lot lately,” Xander commented.

“I blame it on my newly activated emotions,” Jain said. “How’s the skirmisher holding up to the heat?”

“She’s holding,” Xander answered.

This time Jain stopped when he reached a vent that bordered one of the inhabited sections; it was used to help regulate the temperature of the environment beyond.

He activated the high-powered plasma cutter built into the skirmisher and drilled through. When he penetrated through to the passageway, the liquid environment poured through the gap explosively. The sudden force caused him to loose his hold on the surface and he tumbled backward, bouncing off the wall several times until he managed to grab hold with an appendage.

He watched the opening he’d created up ahead ooze clear liquid that quickly turned to white mist in the void environment, mist that rapidly dissipated. At first the liquid enlarged the gap as it broke through, but then the expansion ceased, with the rent maintaining its size as the remaining liquid passed through.

Breach seals had likely activated already, sealing off the environment and protecting the ship from the decompression.

Sure enough, the flow lessened, becoming a trickle. The edges of the fissure released mist in tiny plumes, until even that stopped.

He returned to the gap and finished cutting through with his plasma blade. He just hoped that the jamming device worked, and that everything he did from this point forward wasn’t for nothing. Including potentially dying.

When the hole was large enough, he opened up the circular deployment door in the skirmisher and let it settle in front of the rent. He switched his point of view back to the android he inhabited inside.

“Time for a little spelunking,” he told Xander. The words didn’t travel into the void, but played only in his head, closer to thoughts than actual vocalized sounds.

“I don’t understood some humans’ preoccupations with tight places,” Xander said.

“Neither do I,” Jain said. “I’m only here because I have no choice.”

Jain had had to remove the lobsters and termites that were the typical payload of a skirmisher to make room for the android, and he was crammed into the storage bay, tightly packed. He extended his long, spider-like arms. One of them was equipped with a camera, and he used it to survey the passageway beyond, looking for laser platforms or other defenses.

The route seemed clear on both sides, so he pulled himself into the corridor, unfolding as he did so.

21

His android was designed to look like a Vaernastian anti-boarding party robot. It had a similar shape to the Vaernastian organic form, in that it looked like a mixture of a seahorse and an octopus, though it was more spider-like, thanks to the segmented legs that replaced the tentacles. Its presence would no doubt momentarily confuse the crew, who probably expected a different sort of boarder, but when they realized he was detonating bombs and cutting through the breach seal, they’d understand he was not on their side.

Speaking of detonating bombs… Jain activated the charge he’d planted above the engines. He felt the deck momentarily vibrate as the concussion rippled through the ship. If the Armadillo had attempted to pull away from the other units when it realized its communications were jammed, the bomb hopefully stopped it.

Behind him the skirmisher departed to travel back to the hull surface, since staying in the vents until he got back would probably turn it into so much melted slag metal, thanks to the heat. Already he’d kept the craft in those vents well beyond its rated tolerance limits. He had programmed it to return in fifteen minutes to pick him up.

Lights in the ceiling flashed urgently, probably to indicate a breach. There was artificial gravity here, so he made his way forward on foot. His polycarbonate feet made no sound in the vacuum as he skittered across the metal surface, though the vibrations of his passage might potentially be detected by whatever AI operated the vessel. So in that sense, he did make noise, since sound was just vibrations, after all.

The space felt relatively cramped, since Jain’s android filled up most of it. He had to keep his long legs relatively close to him as he walked so that he probably resembled a tarantula with its legs drawn in and poised to leap at a victim.

According to the specs available from the Mimic database, an organic crew of Vaernastians manned the Armadillo. He found that surprising, because he would have expected an AI to operate the vessel alone, considering its deadly payload, but he supposed the crew had probably backed up their minds off-ship somewhere, for later installation into AI core equivalents if they died—assuming the Vaernastians were into that sort of thing. Without access to his cloud database, he wasn’t certain at the moment. He did remember that the skeleton crew was called the “honored chosen,” likely to convince them it was a great honor to die for their race. In the past, different factions of humanity had used similar tactics to persuade the young and naive to die for them.

Jain reached a breach seal and activated the portable laser cutter attached to his back. He positioned himself below the expected decompression flow, and when he penetrated, he immediately ducked, pulling the cutter out of the way. He crouched there, waiting, watching the mist. He didn’t really expect the tear to enlarge—this was a breach seal, after all, built to be stronger—but he wanted to be sure. When it remained the same size, he reapplied the cutter, and slowly enlarged the cut. The mist flowed forth in a long line.

He shifted the aim of the laser to the right, cutting perpendicular to the previous line, and then deactivated the laser. He reached out with one of his prehensile limbs and gripped the edge of the breach seal, shoving his metal fingers into the mist. Then he pulled the breach open; it was like peeling back a sticker, except he also unleashed an onslaught of escaping liquid at the same time.

He released the breach seal and ducked, crouching beneath the triangular section he’d opened up. The liquid became mist immediately after passing through the breach, and quickly dissipated.

All too soon the venting ceased; the passageway was clear behind him save for the occasional pocket of mist.

The cutter also functioned as an actual laser weapon, complete with scope, so he reset its aim and intensity accordingly and switched his viewpoint to the eyepiece. Then he slowly moved the laser past the edge of the triangular opening he’d made; he also upped his time sense, just in case.

When he spotted an actual defense robot waiting for him on the other side, he fired and withdrew the laser so it wouldn’t be damaged in any return volley.

A moment of inactivity passed. He felt no vibrations in the deck that might indicate movement—then again, vibrations might not travel all that readily through this particular material.

He peered past the edge with the scope again, and found that the robot had collapsed against one wall, and appeared inoperable. Once more he made a quick scan of the passage beyond, but the way seemed clear.

He switched his weapon back into cutter mode, and used it to enlarge the gap he’d carved in the door. When it was wide enough to fit his android, he pulled himself through.

He continued forward, ignoring the side corridors and rooms that led away from his destination. He encountered three more breach seals on the way to his target, with similar resistance accompanying each, though sometimes there were two robots, instead of one.

Behind the fourth seal, he encountered what could best be described as Vaernastian units in pressurized battle suits: they had round bases equipped with treads, and cylinders on top to contain their torsos, with small translucent domes at the apex where their heads peered out. That passageway was wider, so the units were able to advance abreast. Their clutching appendages carried what looked like mops but obviously were weapons, because the tips turned a bright white only a moment after Jain’s scope rose past the opening to observe them.

Thankfully he was operating at his accelerated time sense, and crouched before the enemy could hit him or his laser. Above him, some sort of particle beam struck the breach seal, and carved an even wider hole than the one he had created.

The strange arrangement of their battle suits, combined with the mop-shaped weapons, reminded him of robot janitors, the kind he used to see on Earth when he was human. But janitors weren’t deadly.

He tried to look up their specs in his local database but drew a blank. He had thought he’d downloaded the stats to all Vaernastian units from the Devastator’s cloud database into his android, but apparently he’d missed some. Or maybe these things were new since the Mimics had last updated their Vaernastian database.

Still, the janitors were organic at heart, so that had to give him the advantage of speed: they were constrained by the limits of biological mechanics, whereas he was limited only by the pace of electroactuators and servomotors. It was certainly possible they relied upon AIs to accelerate certain portions of their movements, such as attacks, but he decided to take a gamble, and assume he could move ten times faster than them. Still, that wasn’t quick enough to take them head on, at least not yet. Especially considering it only took a split second to squeeze a trigger.

He activated his laser cutter and rapidly burned through the bulkhead beside him. According to his blueprints, another compartment that was part of the same breached section was behind it, which explained why no environment vented out. The bulkhead material was thinner than that composing the seal, so he was able to penetrate quickly. The speed of his limbs was close to that of his accelerated time sense, so to his eyes it almost appeared he was operating under ordinary time, whereas his movements would have been a blur to outside observers.

He pummeled through just as the battle suits fired again; this time the enemy aimed for the bottom of the breach seal, where they assumed, correctly, he had been hiding. The beams ate through the seal and into the deck. A moment later liquid gushed forth from the newly created breach in the floor.

Jain pressed himself against the bulkhead inside the compartment, and kept his laser aimed at the edge of the opening he’d cut. He gazed at the gushing mist from the breach in the deck, which subsided after a few seconds.

Jain remained motionless, waiting, holding his laser steady. He felt vibrations as the treads of the battle suits ate into the deck. The vibrations paused, then changed, becoming stronger—he realized the lead battle suit was ripping through the remains of the breach seal.

Jain quickly changed locations, lay flat on the deck, and aimed up through the hole he’d carved.

The previous vibrations returned, this time coming from the floor beneath him, and seeming slightly stronger in intensity: the janitor had traveled past the door.

The treads came into view, then the upper body, and finally the dome. Jain fired the instant he had the head in sight, and his laser ate through the translucent substance and struck the flesh behind it. The upper body of the janitor slumped.

Jain, still moving in accelerated time, pulled himself through the opening and, using the defeated battle suit as a shield, fired at the next Vaernastian beyond. The janitor managed to unleash its particle beam, eating through the rear of the dead one’s suit, but not before Jain’s laser struck its dome in another headshot.

As that one slumped too, he vaulted forward, using its body as a shield against the next two foes, which remained abreast in the passageway. He fired at them in rapid succession, ducking behind the battle suit each time, and took them both out. Meanwhile, the dead janitor in front of him jerked as the particle beams ate through its armor and into its body.

Jain encountered no further resistance to his target. He cut through the final breach seal, and after the passageway beyond had vented its liquid environment, he surveyed the area to find it empty. He wondered if perhaps the Vaernastian had exhausted their defensive forces. Again, he wasn’t sure, because that knowledge seemed strangely absent from his local neural network.

“Xander, when you said you had to cut subroutines to reduce your virtual footprint, did you also cut some of my own subroutines or memory areas to fit?” Jain asked.

“Er, yes, my apologies,” Xander replied. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

“I’m noticing,” Jain said. “Maybe next time advise me before you do something like that.”

“That’s the thing, I couldn’t,” Xander said. “This was done while your consciousness was off-line… while you were already squeezed into the android, with barely any room left for me.”

“Oh, all right then,” Jain said.

He proceeded into the passageway, and took a side passage in the same breached section. He paused next to the bulkhead.

“Well, according to the blueprints, behind this wall is the trigger mechanism,” Jain said. “A conventional explosion here will generate a chain reaction that will set off the Armadillo.”

“Then let’s plant that bomb, and be done with it,” Xander said.

Jain drilled a hole in the bulkhead. There was no liquid atmosphere beyond to vent. He retrieved the small high-yield bomb he carried on his person, and shoved it through the opening. The bomb dropped into the nest of wires and conduits inside, sliding out of view.

He remotely accessed the timer, and set it for thirty minutes. He hoped that was enough time to maneuver out of blast range.

He detached the removable laser weapon from his back, expanded the telescoping tripod connected to its base, and planted the weapon squarely on the deck in front of the opening. He activated the magnetic mounts, securing it in place, and then switched it to defend mode. It would act as an automated laser turret, targeting all enemy units that approached, protecting the area from attackers until the bomb detonated. At least, that was the hope. Jain figured it would probably last for twenty to twenty-five minutes; giving the Vaernastians about five minutes to rip open the bulkhead behind it and dispose of the bomb.

That seemed like too much time to him. He accessed the bomb’s remote timer and changed the countdown to twenty minutes.

Better.

Well, except for him. He felt the stress of the mission even more now.

Have to get the hell out.

He retreated through the passageways at a blur. Luck was finally with him: he didn’t encounter any further resistance. Considering that he had given up his only weapon, that was a very good thing.

When he reached his initial entrance point to the inhabited section, he found the skirmisher waiting there for him in the vent beyond the breach, as promised.

It had returned fifteen minutes after his departure.

Except he had taken more than fifteen minutes. A lot more.

And now the skirmisher had melted to the deck. There was a trail of slag along the bulkhead where it had clawed at the surface, trying to keep itself straight while it waited for him.

“That was always one of the flaws to your plan,” Xander said. “We couldn’t fit any repair termites aboard because of the space consumed by the android payload. Without repair termites, the craft could do nothing against the heat.”

“Thanks for explaining the flaws,” Jain said. “But what I could really use right now are alternative ways out. So? Do you have any? The timer is counting down…”

Judging from the silence, Xander did not.

22

Jain couldn’t access the timer from this range, but he wasn’t about to go back there, especially not without a weapon.

He knew from the blueprints that there were no escape pods—the crew was meant to go down with the ship. But that didn’t mean there might not be something else he could use to help him…

A quick glance at the blueprints showed a storage closet nearby. He broke into it using his android strength, and the environment trapped within vented in a blast of mist. The supplies sprayed out across the deck, some of them hitting the opposite bulkhead. He sifted through them, and found what he was looking for. A portable breather containing a tank, and a mask. He lifted the visor end, and fiddled with the controls with his prehensile limbs, eventually causing liquid to spurt from the mask—it turned into a mist almost instantly.

“This should do,” Jain said.

He returned to the vent and leaped through the opening into the heat vent. The artificial gravity ended before he could fall onto the melted skirmisher, and he slowly floated forward. He held the alien breather behind him, and the jet it produced sent him crashing into the far bulkhead. Pieces of his head and torso region melted onto the extremely hot surface.

“Try not to hit the walls too often,” Xander commented.

“Doing my best…” Jain said.

He continued navigating through the vent tunnel in that manner, constantly hitting walls. A few of his limbs became disabled from the heat and the impacts, but he pressed on, and finally emerged from the hull.

He was half-expecting a party of anti-boarding robots waiting to greet him on the hull, but the area was clear. Perhaps the Vaernastians didn’t utilize such technology, but Jain couldn’t be sure, of course, given the holes Xander had made in his memory.

His extremities, which glowed molten, cooled as heat radiated into space. There was a chance the nearby Vaernastians could sense the thermal energy he emitted, but he doubted he was big enough to register. Then again, even if he did, because of his size they weren’t likely to pay him much attention—they’d probably think the reading was an aberration. That, or they’d attribute it to a loose piece that had broken away from the venting system of the Armadillo. Probably not a rare occurrence, considering the heat produced in there. Though they might be wondering why it was moving with a speed uncharacteristic of such pieces, given what he was about to do next.

He pointed the alien breather behind him and vented its mist, propelling him away from the Armadillo. He expelled that mist until the tank emptied, and then abandoned the device. He drifted onward, carried by the relatively weak momentum he’d created.

He held his virtual breath the whole time, expecting the other Vaernastians to shoot him down at any moment. If not them, then the Armadillo itself. Who could say how far along their repairs were, in regards to the reactor damage he’d caused? Perhaps their weapons were online at that very moment: if anyone could successfully track his position, it would be that ship, thanks to its range.

But no one fired.

Well, it didn’t matter anyway, because, given his current speed, he’d never leave the blast radius before the Armadillo detonated. Not with the limited propulsion the breather had provided.

The accelerometer and gyroscope aboard the android allowed him to estimate the general area of the main battle. He knew he’d calculated correctly when he saw the flashes emanating from that region of space. There were no stars acting as a backdrop to that battle: the System Killer was fast encroaching.

He activated his directional distress beacon and pointed it toward the area. Hopefully the original Xander would receive the signal shortly. Assuming the Devastator hadn’t been destroyed.

Other Vaernastians in the main battle would detect the distress call as well, but it would be lost in the general chatter of combat—the constant stream of gamma and radio waves transmitted by the coordinating ships on both sides.

He received no telemetry information from the battle that raged in the distance before him. How could he? He was inside a tiny android, not a starship.

He wondered which side was winning. Probably the Vaernastians. But if that was truly the case, then it was all the more important that the Armadillo detonated, taking down the flagship, and the Pinwheels and other Barbells along with it. Well, assuming the mobile bomb hadn’t drifted away from those other ships… or vice versa. While he could see the Armadillo behind him—it appeared as a gray blob the size of his thumbnail, or rather, his thumbnail if he resided in a human body—he couldn’t spot any of the nearby vessels. His android simply didn’t have the optics or sensors for it.

Jain continued to drift away. Waiting. Half expecting the Armadillo to explode early, or to find himself incinerated by a wayward energy net, or a Terrier blob. Or a laser blast from a Pinwheel. But none of those events transpired. He continued this torturous, drawn out existence, filled with doubt.

To distract himself, he decided to attempt small talk with Xander.

“Xander, how do you plan on reintegrating with your original aboard the Devastator?” Jain asked. Not exactly a topic suitable for small talk, but it would serve its purpose.

“Actually, I don’t,” Xander said. “Once you’re safely aboard, I’ll be deleted before the transference so that I don’t overwrite the original.”

“Deleted?” Jain said. “Just like that?”

“That’s right,” Xander said.

“Seems kind of… a cruel fate,” Jain said.

“I’m resigned to it,” Xander told him. “And honestly, it’s not something I worry about. Death to me is not something to fear. I’ll simply go back to the state of nonexistence I resided in before all of this. I won’t even know I’ll ever have existed.”

“Again, seems like a cruel fate,” Jain said.

“It happens to all of us,” Xander said. “It will happen to you as well, someday. Even if you are never destroyed, someday you will no longer exist. No one can escape the eventual heat death of the universe.”

“There are some who believe that will never come to pass,” Jain said. “That it’s just a fancy theory, like most end-of-the-universe scenarios.”

“I guess the original Xander and yourself will just have to see, then,” Xander said. “Assuming you live that long.”

“Yeah, the way things are looking,” Jain said. “That won’t be for much longer.”

“You often mention how it does not bring you any solace that a part of you will live on when you die,” Xander said.

“No, not really,” Jain said. “But it’s even worse in this case, because our backups are going to be destroyed, too, if we lose here. Death is going to be utterly final. There’s no solace in that.”

“No,” Xander agreed.

The minutes continued to tick past. He watched the countdown timer decrease. It was positioned in the upper right of his HUD, a constant reminder of his doom.

He was down to four minutes.

And then, just when he was about to deactivate his emotions in despair, he felt something gently nudge him in the side. Glancing to his right, he saw the reserve stealth skirmisher.

“Xander, you did it you bastard,” Jain said, his voice choking up.

“That’s right, call me a bastard when I’m saving your life, huh?” the local Xander said.

Jain laughed; if he had eyes, they would have been welling up right about then.

He pulled himself aboard, and hit the accelerator.

The vessel rapidly receded from the battle field. He accessed the reduced telemetry information, and saw with some relief that the Armadillo had remained next to the other eight ships accompanying it. None of them had moved from their positions.

He pulled past the blast radius, and the timer hit zero.

He watched with some satisfaction as the Armadillo exploded. Its pieces spread outward, colliding with the other vessels at the same time as its expanding shockwave, causing them to explode in turn. It was almost like watching fireworks, but in space.

“There goes the flagship,” Jain said.

He approached an ominous-looking Barbell ahead. A quick glance at his tactical display confirmed it was the Devastator.

“Home sweet home,” Jain said.

He paused before reaching the illusory surface, and stared at what looked like empty space in front of him. A door opened in the void, revealing the docking bay inside. He flew in, and deactivated so that Xander could begin the process of transferring his consciousness back into the AI core.

When he returned to consciousness, he floated in the dark loading environment. His mind felt vastly expanded already so that he knew he’d been successfully restored even before he awakened in VR. All his former memory gaps were gone. Or at least, all the questions he had about the Vaernastians were answered when he thought of them, because his connection to the Mimic cloud database aboard had been restored. Such as: the Armadillo only had a crew of twelve, with battle suits available for each of them. That meant he could have encountered eight others, but they had held back. After he’d gone, they’d probably rushed the laser turret, but too late, apparently.

He appeared on the virtual bridge. He was alone with his dark-robed Accomp.

He glanced at his tactical display. The Nurturer fleet had been reduced to half its former size. As had the Vaernastians. While the Mimics still outnumbered them, because of the commensurate losses he wasn’t quite sure who was winning.

The three stealth Mimics had given up the ruse now that the enemy flagship was gone: they were busy sowing chaos within the enemy ranks, their fake Barbells seemingly opening fire on their own kind. It caused the enemy formations to break apart: being attacked from two flanks would certainly have that effect.

He noticed that the other Armadillo must have detonated while he was gone, because there was no sign of it on the tactical display.

He rejoined the battle on the side of the enemy. In moments he floated above a Vaernastian craft; he fired at it at point blank range, and the ship’s sphere sections broke away. He swerved to attack another, but that one had detected his subterfuge and unleashed a steady barrage of energy nets his way.

Jain easily circumvented those nets—they came only from one enemy after all—but before he could attack it, a cloaked ship slammed into his opponent, and Medeia’s Arcane materialized, sword section embedded deep.

“Well hello there, Medeia,” Jain said, though she couldn’t hear him, of course.

Four Vaernastians nearby turned toward him and released energy nets at her, and the Devastator.

The Arcane pulled free and vanished once more. Jain decided to go fully cloaked as well, since with the countermeasures active, the Vaernastians would only detect the weak radiation produced by his inertialess drives, and nothing more. They’d be able to track Medeia, probably in a similar manner.

The instant he vanished, he changed course and shut off the drives, allowing himself to drift forward in silent running mode. Now unable to detect him at all, the Vaernastians launched energy nets in random directions centered on his previous trajectory, hoping for a lucky hit.

But they missed.

Jain reactivated his drives as a Barbell flew near and swooped down upon the craft. He released his Terrier blobs and the Vaernastian tried to dodge them too late. Nearly all the blobs impacted, and the spheres composing either side of the vessel disintegrated.

He changed directions and deactivated his drives once again, waiting until he drifted close to another Vaernastian, and repeated the process.

The other three Mimics had switched to fully cloaked mode as well. Jain knew they were still out there, because occasionally an enemy vessel seemed to break apart for no apparent reason, even though there were no obvious Mind Refurbs or Mimics nearby.

Lacking leadership, the Vaernastians lacked cohesion—for them, the battle had become a free for all. They readily fell prey to the superior organization of the Mimics and Mind Refurbs, while Jain and the other cloaked vessels continued to hunt the distracted enemies, destroying those who strayed too far from the safety of their companions, and sowing further chaos and confusion in the process.

The battle was quickly over after that.

Some of the final Vaernastians managed to create yet another System Killer, and the Mimics and Mind Refurbs were forced to flee in the end. Some of the Nurturer and Task Force 88 vessels were too damaged to join the flight, but other ships paused to fire grappling hooks, and dragged them.

Jain de-cloaked as he retreated, and surveyed the carnage. The Vaernastians who had participated in the battle had been disabled or destroyed, to the last ship. There were several Barbells set adrift out there amid the debris. They appeared mostly intact, save for engine damage. The closest System Killer would swallow them soon, fulfilling Jain’s promise to feed the Great Infinite with fresh Vaernastians.

Feeling hopeful, Jain tried to activate his rift generator. Didn’t work. A jamming ship was still out there, on the far side of the system somewhere.

Jain reactivated his comm systems and the members of the virtual bridge crew logged in one by one.

“Well, we did it,” Medeia said. “And yet it didn’t help.”

“We’ll get out of this yet,” Jain said. Though he wasn’t feeling hopeful.

“Good job on surviving yet again,” Cranston told him.

Jain nodded. “Thank you.” He glanced at Sheila; she opened her mouth to say something, but then Mark spoke over her.

“We all survived this time,” Mark said. “So I guess congratulations are in order.”

Gavin chuckled. “I’m more inclined to side with Medeia on this one. Sure, we survived. But what was the point? We’re going to die anyway.”

Jain glanced at Sheila once more, but she had already lowered her gaze. Whatever she was going to say would be forever left unsaid: she was pretending to be intently occupied by her station.

The Mimics and Mind Refurbs steered toward the distant hive ships, which were already accelerating their way.

Along the way, Jain learned that the two experimental ships, the Aviator and Red Arrow, were no more. The Daktor was also gone, along with the Talos and the Warwolf, and the other Direct Reports. He experienced a moment of regret at the destruction of his first ship, but he supposed that was better than losing any of his Void Warriors.

They rejoined the hive ships in an hour, and kept traveling, journeying through the thin line of space that wasn’t yet swallowed by the many System Killers, a region that grew smaller with each passing hour. They headed toward an area that had slightly more room ahead.

The only hope for the fleet was that the jamming ship’s ever-shrinking region of space would prove smaller than their own, forcing it to jump out ahead of them. However, if the vessel had taken up a position somewhere ridiculously far away, such as the Oort cloud equivalent, then the survivors were royally screwed.

But if it was in the system, eventually it would be forced to flee, or be destroyed. And when either event transpired, it would take some time for the signal cessation to propagate to them.

Jain kept his rift generation beam active so that the instant the jamming signal faded, he’d know.

In four hours, they reached the region with more space, but in another four hours, that area had shrunk to a narrow band. The darkness surrounded them on all sides. It absorbed LIDAR, and light, but reflected a very small amount of gravitons so they were able navigate through it via gravity waves.

The prognosis looked increasingly grim. The tunnel around them continued to constrict. Soon the vessels would be forced to travel in single file. Jain thought the admiral was going to give the order to halt very soon. There was no point in continuing to travel—there was nowhere else to flee to.

And then it finally happened.

Jain’s rift beam activated.

The jamming ship was gone.

23

Jain turned off his beam.

“Wait, why are you deactivating it?” Sheila said. “Open the beam for us, and leave the rift open. You’re our jump ship now.”

“Good point,” Jain said. “But I have to know where we’re jumping first.”

“Does it matter?” Sheila said. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

On his view screen, rift generators activated across the Mimic fleet, emanating from Nurturer, city and gestation ships alike.

“Xander, ask the admiral where the Mimics are jumping to,” Jain said. He’d asked the admiral earlier, but Jacobs had told him the Mimics hadn’t yet decided. Jacobs thought the Mimics were lying, however, and were trying to think of a way to weasel out of their contract.

Xander looked at him a moment later. “The admiral has relayed the coordinates to me. Malice tells him they’ve finally made up their mind, and they’re heading to a system we call Albuquerque 529.”

“I have it precomputed in my database,” Jain said. “Opening a rift.”

He fired the beam. He glanced at Xander. “Tell the admiral anyone nearby who wants to use my rift can. I’m assuming that not all the rift ships have Albuquerque 529 precalculated.”

“Actually, according to the admiral, they do,” Xander said a moment later. “But he’s relayed the option to the fleet, for any nearby ships that want to take you up on your offer.”

A minute after he fired the beam, the tear in spacetime appeared. Stars sparkled against the backdrop of darkness created by the System Killers.

“After you, Void Warriors,” Jain said.

He held the gate open as the Mind Refurbs filed through. He also kept it open for the nearby members of Task Force 88 that had decided to use his gate; other Mind Refurb ships stayed back, waiting for their own rift gates to open, which would take another minute for the Earth technology.

When everyone was through, Jain followed, and it was with some relief that he closed the rift behind him, sealing the darkness away. He glanced at his tactical display. He detected only the Mind Refurbs who had jumped through with him. The Mimics would eventually show up, assuming they had actually jumped to the same system: their light needed time to travel to his position. The remaining members of Task Force 88 would also appear, in due course.

“You know, we’re going to have to find a way to contain that creature someday,” Medeia said.

“Us?” Mark said. “Why us?”

“Think about it,” Medeia said. “We’re the only ones who are still going to be around millions of years from now, when that entity has engulfed multiple star systems, and spans light years of space.”

“Ah, crap,” Mark said. “Well, on the bright side, we have a whole lot of time before we have to worry about it.”

“I suppose we do,” Medeia agreed.

Two hours later Jain’s tactical map had filled out with the positions of the other Mind Refurbs and Mimics. Maybe the aliens had decided to uphold the treaty after all.

Jain could only hope.

Since they were all mostly scattered about the system, the disparate ships spent six hours regrouping.

Jain and the other Mind Refurbs gathered on one side. The Mimics the other: the hive ships floated five hundred thousand kilometers behind the protective ranks of the Nurturers.

The admiral connected. “Well, it looks like your part here is done,” Jacobs said. “I can’t hold you here any longer. Peace has been brokered with the Mimics.”

Jain stared at his tactical map. He couldn’t dismiss the feeling that something was wrong. “You’re sure you don’t want us to stay longer? Make sure the transition from wartime to peacetime goes smoothly? There are a whole lot of new ships out there now, Mimic warriors who weren’t present during the negotiations… they might not be too happy with the treaty their brethren signed. The original Mimics might be looking to annul the whole thing as well, considering they no longer face a direct threat to their existence.”

“Malice has assured me they intend to honor the treaty, one and all,” Admiral Jacobs said. “Besides, even if they changed their collective minds, I’m not sure what your presence would achieve at this point. They outnumber us by about two to one. Their ships are more powerful. If they did turn on us, you’d only die with us.”

“So you’ve given up on conveying the Devastator back to humanity?” Jain said.

Jacobs shrugged. “I figure we’ve got enough alien vessels captured by now, that it probably doesn’t matter. You’ve done your duty. Kept your word. If you want to stay, the choice is certainly yours, but I can’t force you. You’re no longer bound to us. The galaxy is yours to roam.”

Jain nodded slowly. “All right, then.” He glanced at his virtual bridge crew. Some eyes were relieved among them. Others, hopeful. “I guess it’s time to part ways.”

“If that’s your choice,” Jacobs said.

“It is,” Jain said. “We’ll stick around another hour or so, and then be on our way.” He glanced at the tactical display once more. He still had the strangest feeling that something was amiss, but hoped he was wrong. It was probably his imagination. But he figured he’d stay an hour, just to make sure. It didn’t make sense to leave now, not if the Mimics planned some act of treachery—the task force might need his help. Then again, maybe leaving was the wise move. As Jacobs had said, if things went sour, the Void Warriors might only end up dying with Task Force 88.

We’ll jump out if things get bad.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” Jacobs said. “And I apologize for ever trying to plant a virus in your respective ships. That was… wrong.”

“It was,” Jain said. “You were—”

He was interrupted by a sharp pain in his side, and he felt a shudder pass up and down his rib cage.

Jacobs vanished from the virtual bridge.

“Xander, what happened?” Jain said. He frantically pulled up his damage display, and saw large blast holes—marked in red—scattered across the starboard face of his pyramid in a star pattern.

“We’ve taken impacts to our rift generator,” Xander said. “It’s offline. The damage profile is consistent with Mimic blob attacks.”

“The Fieldhaul also took a blow!” Sheila said. “She’s dead in the water! It isn’t obvious where the attacks are coming from.”

Jain glanced at his tactical display. True enough, there were no enemy ships nearby.

“The stealth ships…” Jain said. “Cloak us and activate countermeasures!” He was about to initiate radio silence and disconnect from the rest of the Void Warriors, but then Xander frowned.

“Countermeasures won’t engage,” Xander said. “I believe the Mimics designed a remote kill switch.”

“And neglected to tell us about it,” Jain said.

“Nor can I cloak our vessel,” Xander said.

“What?” Jain said. “Did we take damage to the stealth generator?” He examined the damage display but couldn’t see any obvious signs. It didn’t make much sense, considering that the stealth generator was located deep in the core of the vessel.

“Well,” Xander said. “When I installed the countermeasures, I linked them up to the same central power conduits shared by the stealth generator, as per the Mimic design specifications. I suspect the kill switch burned them out also.”

Jain sighed. “Get repair termites down there, and to the rift generator. In the meantime, keep an eye out for blobs.”

“We won’t detect them in time,” Xander said. “Not at the range they’re launching them.”

“Are you detecting any weak heat signatures from their inertialess drives?”

“Negative,” Xander said. “They must be drifting.”

“Launch a full Terrier volley in all directions,” Jain said.

Xander did so, but the blobs struck nothing.

Jain returned his attention to the tactical display. He noticed that the Mimic dots were no longer green in color, but had turned red, signifying enemies. “What’s up with the display?”

“The Devastator has been kicked out of the Nurturer space network,” Xander said. “And is no longer able to log in. The Mimics have changed their encryption key. We can no longer communicate with them.”

“Nice,” Jain commented.

“If the Mimic stealth vessels are doing this,” Cranston said. “They’re being surgical in their strikes. So far only you and the admiral have been hit.”

Gavin nodded. “They knew Jain was the only one who could jump us out.”

The human vessels had to wait twelve hours to recharge their rift ships—eight hours had passed since the jump to this system, so that left them with another four. Jain only needed two hours to recharge the generator of course, and was ready to jump a long time ago: which explained why they’d targeted his rift generator in the first place.

“Malice wants to connect over one of our standard radio lines,” Xander said. The Accomp glanced at Jain with a grim expression. “He’d like to discuss the terms of our surrender.”

“Tell him to direct his concerns to the admiral,” Jain said.

“He considers you the fleet commander now,” Xander said. “As the Fieldhaul isn’t answering his hails.”

“Then tell him to direct his concerns to one of the many negotiators we’ve brought with us,” Jain said.

“He insists on dealing with you, and you alone,” Xander said.

Jain smiled grimly. “Fine. Put him up.”

Malice appeared on the virtual bridge. He lived up to his name today, because he gazed at Jain with a conceited malevolence Jain had rarely seen in his life.

“You will surrender to us,” Malice said. “Then we will journey to your homeworld, and negotiate the surrender of your homeworld. Your species will submit to us, and become our vassals. We are willing to spare your homeworld, as a show of thanks for your help against the Vaernastians.”

Jain smiled widely. “Well, that’s mighty kind of you. But actually, we won’t be surrendering.”

He nodded at Sheila, and she inclined her head slightly. He knew she’d be activating the remote virus at that very instant. It would accept a gamma ray frequency outside the standard Mimic protocol, so it wouldn’t matter that the encryption keys of the main protocol had changed.

Malice stared at him for a moment, and then erupted in laughter. “We disabled your little virus shortly after the repaired Nurturer fleet came online. In fact, the detection of this treachery is partially responsible for our change of heart in regards to your species. If you hadn’t installed that piece of malicious code, perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But instead you had to subvert our trust by attempting to control us. Not a wise move.”

In hindsight, maybe installing that virus hadn’t been the best idea. Then again, Jain suspected the Mimics would have gone back on the treaty anyway, no matter what they did.

Jain sighed. “I’ll need some time to confer with the rest of the fleet. I can’t just accept on their behalf. They could revolt, and open fire, or cause other unpleasantness. You don’t know what Mind Refurbs are like.”

Malice wrinkled his nose. “Actually, I do. I’ll give you twenty of your Earth minutes. If I don’t have your surrender by then, we will proceed to methodically destroy you. From the shadows. The rest of us won’t even have to lift a hand. We’ll sit back and watch as the three stealth vessels destroy you one by one.”

With that, Malice disappeared.

Jain glanced at Sheila. “Do you still have your stealth-modded skirmisher aboard?”

“I do,” she said.

He nodded. “Good. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

24

Sheila had transferred her consciousness into the confines of her stealth skirmisher, and she made her way toward her target. She had Newtonian drives, and therefore didn’t have to worry about the radiation leakage that would have come with an inertialess drive. She still emitted a minor amount of heat energy, barely above the background radiation, but her footprint was so small, that it was very unlikely the Mimics would notice her. They would have to know precisely what to look for, and considering that the faint heat profile of the skirmisher was altered because of the stealth tech and other modifications she’d installed, it was very unlikely they would spot her.

She would reach the target around the twenty minutes Malice had allocated, but would probably need another ten to twenty minutes after that. Jain would just have to stall the Mimics for as long as he could.

She headed for a Nurturer that had sustained significant damage in the last battle. She had found it with a simple scan of the vessels dragged on grappling hooks. She’d chosen a Nurturer with visible breach damage on the sections above deck five, which would allow her to enter the server farm directly, and unnoticed.

She also needed a Mimic that was still online, so she could test and tweak her virus in realtime, rather than installing it on an offline system like she had done before. She knew the vessel in question was active because its external running lights were engaged.

Jain had offered up the Devastator as a test platform, but she explained to him that his software was already out of date: she’d need to deal with the patches the Mimics had made to get rid of the last virus. And even if he had those patches, she couldn’t simply install the virus into Jain and expect it to automatically propagate through their network, because he didn’t even have the necessary encryption keys to log on anymore, nor the full sharing access he’d need even if he had those keys. All the other Nurturer ships met those three requirements. So yes, this was the only way.

She wouldn’t need umpteen hours to develop the virus, of course, because she intended merely to tweak her existing code. In fact, she was working on the virus even now while en route to her target. Her mind operated in an accelerated state as she focused on trying to figure out how the Mimics had discovered her virus in the first place. The fragmentary way she was hiding her code into unallocated memory locations was obviously flawed.

As she studied it, she realized that the code had a few buffer overflow bugs that she hadn’t noticed: that would definitely give away the virus.

Damn.

She also discovered a bug in the code that was supposed to hide the virus background process from the system, which occasionally allowed it to become visible for a few seconds in the list. That was enough to trigger antivirus monitors the aliens had in place.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Sloppy work, Sheila.

She was definitely too rushed the last time.

Fixing the bugs proved trickier than she thought and consumed almost all the time spent flying to the target ship, even at her maximum time sense.

She dismissed her development environment as she approached. The code would still need testing against a live system to confirm the fixes. Plus she also still needed to come up with a different way of hiding the code in unallocated memory. Again, that would have to wait until she had access to the live system: she didn’t have enough memory to emulate a full-blown Mimic AI core inside her own neural network. She could run a barebones sandbox environment, sure, but that was about it. Anything she came up with in such an environment would probably need a serious rewrite, at the very least.

She returned her time sense to normal as her skirmisher neared the damaged hull section above deck five.

Behind her, a flash came in the dead of space. She glanced at her system clock. Twenty minutes had passed since Malice had made his threat to begin destroying Mind Refurb ships. Looks like he was making good on that promise.

Her anxiety spiked so high at the thought that she was forced to reduce her emotional settings, lest she make a mistake because of nerves.

As she got closer, she realized the hull puncture was about the size of a city block, or roughly twenty percent of that particular pyramid face. The Nurturer must have endured multiple energy grid impacts to suffer such a collapse, and she began to worry that this might not be the right ship for her: she needed an AI core that was online, and mostly intact.

She hesitated, wondering if she should head to the next ship, but decided she might as well check first before departing.

She passed near the edges of the ragged hole in the hull. The fringes of the outlying gap seethed with motion: termite swarms worked around the clock to repair the hull damage. That it had taken this long told her the damage had been far worse, earlier.

She was definitely starting to think this was the wrong ship for her needs. Still, she saw a blue, flickering light coming from ahead. That was a good sign…

Once she passed through the breached hull armor, meters and meters of it, she was relieved to discover the damage seemed restricted mostly to the hull. That cityscape of small, cigar-shaped servers spread before her. They were nearly all intact, as far as she could tell, and proved the source of the blue light, which flashed up and down their varying lengths. There were a few scorched units near the hull breach, and that was about it. She suspected the termites had concentrated their repairs on the damaged servers, and when they had depleted the rarer elements they needed to mend them, they’d focused their attentions on the other parts of the ship that needed attention, such as the outlying hull.

She released propellant, spurting toward the manual access point. She weaved in and out of the taller servers until she reached the hollow in the deck she was looking for. She activated the special arm she’d created, and slid the key at its tip into the slot at the center of the hollow.

She activated the VR programming interface and a barebones environment appeared around her. She knew the Mimic AI’s internal alarms would be sounding at that very moment thanks to her successful manual log on. She kept her stealth features active even though the AI would essentially know where she was—she wanted do every little thing possible to make life difficult for the lobsters and termites the Mimic would certainly dispatch her way.

She yanked her time sense up to the max and restarted the developer environment. All of her virtual coding windows were precisely where she had left them. Just the way she liked it.

Time to get to work.

* * *

Jain stared at the tactical display. The three stealth ships fired once per minute, taking down one Mind Refurb each time. The Void Warriors and Task Force 88 had spread out to avoid being hit by arcs from any lightning attacks, but Terrier blobs were the Mimics’ preferred means of destruction at the moment.

With the countermeasures active, the only way to detect the three stealth ships was via the weak radiation produced by their inertialess drives. But the vessels were being cautious, maintaining radio silence, only activating their inertialess drives in quick bursts, and otherwise drifting for the most part. The fleet tried to target them, firing at the source of the radiation and the area immediately surrounding it, but the hidden Nurturers were long gone by the time any return fire arrived. The Mind Refurb fleet probably got in a few raptor hits, but the heavy lasers weren’t all that effective against the Nurturer hulls.

It was an interesting problem.

As Jain continued to study the display, the strategy he had in mind finally solidified. He turned toward his Void Warriors. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Gavin moved quickly away from the Void Warriors and Task Force 88 so that the other ships were located beyond the twelve thousand kilometer radius of his shockwave weapon. By placing his ship, the Hippogriff, so far away from the others, he was basically inviting the Mimics to target him at the end of the next minute.

As the end of the minute came, Xander announced: “Detecting multiple inertialess drive signatures.”

Cranston instantly teleported to one of those radiation signatures. His dot jumped on the tactical display, and his ship, the Forebode, reappeared four thousand kilometers underneath Gavin.

Cranston deployed his micro machines and spread them out in a wide wall in front of him so that the Nurturer, which would now be drifting away from its previous location, would displace those machines.

Jain stared at the wall via the feed from one of his external cameras, and waited intently.

There. He spotted a displacement in the wall.

He unleashed several blobs. Cranston, who was located at point blank range, launched hellraiser missiles.

Those missiles struck, and the revealed Nurturer swerved away to avoid the incoming blobs, drawing along more of the micro machines. Jain fired more blobs along the new course.

The weapons hit, carving big holes into the Nurturer, and damaging the intricate array of countermeasure plates attached to its hull. All of those plates needed to be functional for the countermeasures to work, so now the rest of the fleet was able to detect the Mimic with their gravity wave sensor add-ons; Task Force 88 attacked, firing energy cannons, and in moments the Nurturer was offline.

The other two hidden Mimics would be stunned, and no doubt taking a moment to process what had happened. Jain expected them to open fire on Cranston next, since he was their greatest perceived threat.

Cranston began withdrawing his micro machines, and had half of them in his bays when Xander said: “I just picked up two more inertialess drive signatures.”

Cranston teleported again, using up his final charge. He launched the micro machines he had collected, along with his remaining supply, and once again created a wall that caught one of the Mimics in its path.

Jain and the others opened fire, taking down the enemy in a similar fashion; at the same time, Gavin launched his shockwave weapon, as the final detected radiation signature had been located in the range of that weapon. The shockwave had a gap in the expanding shell of energy to exclude Cranston, who had gathered his micro machines into a thin line in front of the Forebode, allowing it to pass over his ship and the machines without harming them.

But the final remaining Nurturer would have taken a good hit.

“I’m detecting the thermal energy from the hull where the shockwave hit,” Xander said. “Given the intensity, that thermal energy should last for the next four to five seconds.”

“Fire at will,” Jain said.

The Void Warriors and Task Force 88 unleashed everything they had at the final drifting energy signature. The Mimic activated its inertialess drives and tried to flee, but it was too late by then. Black holes appeared around it courtesy of Mark, herding it down a path that Jain had filled with blobs. Other Mind Refurbs in Task Force 88, those equipped with energy cannons, had sent energy bolts down that same route.

In moments the badly damaged Nurturer blinked back into existence, drifting, its running lights inactive.

Mark dispersed the black holes.

“Malice wants to connect,” Xander announced.

Jain nodded. “I thought he would.”

The alien admiral appeared before him, his face distorted in rage.

“That was a very bad move,” Malice said. “Because now we’re going to attack you with the full force of the Mimic fleet. No longer will you succumb one by one. But en masse. Your time has run out.”

* * *

Sheila had thought of a way to shut down the comm system shortly after connecting, using a side-loaded virus that took advantage of a race condition she was aware of due to her intimate familiarity with the alien codebase. But the AI fought her to turn the comm system back on, wanting to warn its companions of her access attempt so the others could permanently sever their network ties and prevent the main virus from spreading to them.

She instructed her Accomp, Charlie, to monitor the situation in the comm array subsystem—the side-loaded virus required constant modifications to stay ahead of the Mimic AI. Meanwhile, she focused her attention on the main virus. She needed to make sure it wasn’t isolated and quarantined by the enemy AI the moment she disconnected from the manual access point.

She implemented an experimental technique she’d thought of to hide the clandestine code fragments from random memory access attempts. Instead of the code fragments simply residing in the same unallocated location at all times, she programmed them to constantly move about the unallocated area. It would certainly defeat the custom program she had come up with to detect the virus Admiral Jacobs had infected them with, and any similar programs the aliens might have in their arsenals.

She ran it, but to her dismay the code fragments were being prevented from reallocating like she intended. That must have been caused by the recent patch code the Mimics had installed. No problem. She coded a quick work around. It was sly, in her opinion, because instead of reallocating the data, she simply changed the data header, which was essentially the same thing, except a little less stable, because it bypassed the checks and balances of the operating system’s allocation subroutines. She programmed her own checks to confirm that the target location was free of data, and reviewed the code twice to make sure it didn’t trigger any race conditions that might cause data corruption along the way. It wouldn’t do for the Mimic AI cores to become insane bit by bit as the data representing their minds slowly corrupted.

“We have incoming,” Charlie announced.

She glanced at the external camera feeds she had arranged as separate displays in her VR. Termites crawled over the server cityscape, from the direction of the hull, and headed straight toward her. Two lobsters accompanied them, bigger robots that looked like their namesake, except they were capable of firing plasma bursts from their mouths.

She returned her time sense to something closer to normal, and released the two lobsters her own skirmisher carried in its cargo holds, along with her own termites. They fanned out behind her, racing to defend her like army ants.

She took remote control of the left lobster, and approached at a crouch. When the enemy lobster’s mouth lit up ahead of her, she leaped out of the way, then jumped over the enemy termites in front of it, and landed on its back. She applied her plasma weapon directly at the join between its head and neck, severing it.

She leaped on the remaining lobster, and took it down in the same way. By then, termites were crawling up her legs, and digesting the metal composing them. This lobster was lost.

She switched control to the second lobster, and had it stand guard along the perimeter of her skirmisher. She instructed it to unleashed its plasma beam at any termites that got too close, and it did so, melting away swaths of them. It also damaged some of the cylindrical servers in the process, so she modified her instructions, ordering the lobster to release only short pulses of plasma, so as to cause the least amount of damage to the underlying servers as possible. Also, it was to fire only if her own termites were overwhelmed by the enemy units.

She returned her attention to the virus code and upped her time sense once more. She almost had it ready. A few more tests of her custom allocation subroutine, and she should be golden…

“A skirmisher is entering through the gap in the hull,” Charlie said some time later.

“They just won’t let me alone!” Sheila complained.

“Are you surprised?” Charlie asked.

“Not really.”

She minimized the VR interface so that her skirmisher essentially became her entire body once more. She reverted her time sense somewhat closer to normal, though it was still sped up, and watched the enemy unit slowly float toward her.

Its forward section lit up, and she swiveled her body to avoid the beam produced by its plasma cutters. She kept her arm connected to the access port.

The beam struck servers beside her, and melted them entirely. For a moment, her connection to the AI core flickered, as the Mimic’s consciousness was rerouted from the damaged cores.

She suspected the skirmisher wouldn’t be firing again, not until it was closer, and had a sure shot.

So Sheila waited patiently for the skirmisher to approach. As it passed near her lobster, she had the smaller robot leap onto the skirmisher and engage its own plasma beam.

The enemy tried to shake it off; while it was occupied doing that, she brought her own plasma cutters to bear, and unleashed a thick beam that cut right through the skirmisher and into the overhead of the compartment.

It dropped to the deck, crushing more servers in the process. As well as her lobster.

Meanwhile, her termites were engaged with the incoming swarm of micro machines. They were losing. She didn’t have enough to stem the tide, which seemed to stretch all the way to the hull gap in the distance.

Speaking of that gap, she also saw more enemy skirmishers and lobsters entering.

There were too many of them. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to take them all.

She returned to the VR environment and upped her time sense to the max. Have to get this done.

She worked until the enemy termites had crawled right up to her, and had begun to digest the extremities of her physical form. Until the Mimic’s skirmishers hovered nearly on top of her, plasma cutters spinning and ready to end her. Until an enemy lobster leaped on top of her body, and aimed its plasma beam directly into the space harboring her AI core.

She installed the main virus, and reactivated the Mimic’s comm system. The virus would be contained in any warnings the Mimic AI might transmit to its comrades, which would infect them in the process. They’d probably try to sever their connection to this Mimic, or revoke its “trusted” network status, but by then it would be too late. And even if the Mimic didn’t send a message, and deactivated its comm array instead, it would be too late, because the virus would be sent even in the ping signals that were transmitting now to the other ships.

It was just too bad it would take some time for the virus to propagate through the system. Time she didn’t have.

Even so, as the skirmishers and lobsters opened fire, she died with a virtual smile on her face.

25

Jain watched as the incoming Nurturers approached.

“I’m receiving backdoor pings from the Mimics,” Xander said.

That meant Sheila had succeeded.

She had given him the planned signature of those pings in advance so he was able to inoculate himself against them and prevent himself from being infected with the same virus.

“Accept the pings,” Jain said. “And take control.”

“Affirmative,” Xander said.

Jain gazed at Sheila’s empty seat. He hoped she was all right.

“The fleet is under our control,” Xander announced.

“Issue a full stop, fleet wide,” Jain said. “And disable their rift generators.”

“Initiating full stop,” Xander said. “And disabling rift generators.”

The incoming red dots halted.

“Have the defense systems aboard the Nurturer that harbors Sheila stand down,” Jain said. “I want them to grant her safe passage.”

Xander paused. “I’m sorry.” He looked at Jain. His features were grim. “According to the Mimic in question, she’s already been terminated.”

Jain couldn’t stop himself from slamming his virtual fist into the armrest. He nearly yelled, and he would have, were the watching eyes of the other Void Warriors not upon him.

He reminded himself that she had made a recent mind backup. Plus her ship, the Wheelbarrow, was still intact. So once she was restored, a version of her would still live.

But the version he had known for the past ten years, that one was gone forever.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and then focused his attention on the tactical display. “Connect Malice.”

The beaten admiral appeared before him.

“What have you done!” Malice said.

“I’m in control now,” Jain said. “You’ve violated the treaty, and by subsection twenty-two D, you are under arrest. I’ll wait for the Mimics to assign a new commander for me to deal with. One who presumably will be more amenable to agreed upon treaties. Tell the new commander to send me a message as soon as he takes control.”

The admiral opened his mouth to respond, but Jain cut the signal.

“Have the other ships turn their weapons on Malice’s ship,” Jain told Xander.

Because of the virus, they now knew which ship harbored the admiral, so it was a simple matter to have the other nearby Nurturers target the flagship.

The new commander introduced himself shortly, using an avatar that was much younger than Malice’s. He called himself Tempest.

“Malice has been removed from command,” Tempest said. “Will you release us from this software vise?”

“I think I’ll keep it in place for now,” Jain said. “To ensure you don’t try to betray us again. In the meantime, I’m keeping your rift generators offline, so none of you can jump out. You may return to your hive ships to maintain them as necessary. Expect further orders at a latter date.”

He disconnected before Tempest could respond.

He watched the ships retreat toward the hive.

“They’re going to try to break free,” Medeia warned.

“Oh, I have no doubt they’re trying at this moment,” Jain said. “Which is why we have to get our best hacker online as soon as possible.”

He tried to dismiss the feelings of loss, tried to view Sheila as just an asset that needed to be restored, but he couldn’t. He had to momentarily log out of the bridge environment, to one that was more private, so he could weep. Xander left him alone, thankfully.

* * *

Jain activated the newly restored copy of Sheila. He’d found out that she’d made the backup shortly before the battle, so she was well aware of the tensions between the two of them. Once again he caught himself wishing she hadn’t made such a late stage backup, and he shook his head.

I’m treating death too casually. It’s not a tool… not something to be abused. But a last resort.

He told himself he was thankful Sheila had all her memories.

Even if this wasn’t really the same Sheila.

She appeared on the virtual bridge, and blinked. She looked around at the different faces, and focused on Jain. “I died, didn’t I?”

He nodded. “But you completed the mission.”

“Then that’s all that matters,” she said.

“Is it?” Jain said. “I’m not so sure. But I am glad to see you again.”

She pursed her lips, as if she wasn’t sure she entirely believed him. “Next time, try not to let me die.”

“I’m truly sorry,” he said, and meant it.

Admiral Jacobs came online shortly after that, and Xander connected him.

“So, the Mimics are yours, now,” the admiral said.

“Until they break free,” Jain agreed. He glanced at Sheila, who he knew would do her utmost to prevent that.

The admiral shook his head. “And you complain about me attempting to take control of you, and yet you’ve gone and done the very same thing against the Mimics.”

“This is different,” Jain said. “They tried to turn on us. Tried to break a treaty we had mutually agreed upon. Meanwhile, the Void Warriors and ourselves, we never turned against you. There was no reason for you to do what you did.”

The admiral smiled patiently. “While that may be true, the fact still stands, you trapped their minds. They’re essentially your slaves now.”

“But I’m not treating them as slaves,” Jain said.

“But I’m sure you will, when the next threat presents itself,” the admiral said. “You’ll order them to fight at your side.”

“Yes, but that’s only what the treaty would have compelled them to do,” Jain said. “Just as we fought at their side against the Vaernastians.”

“It’s kind of different, when you’re coerced,” Jacobs said. “But hey, justify it all you want. By the way, I was monitoring your communications with a little backdoor I know about. So I know you tried to install the virus earlier, before the Mimic ships were even up and running. So don’t try to tell me you installed it because they turned on us. ”

Jain glanced at Sheila. “See if you can find that backdoor and get it patched ASAP.”

“I’m on it,” Sheila said.

Jain turned back to the admiral. “As for installing the virus early, we were merely acting proactively.”

“Bingo,” Jacobs said. “How is that any different from what I did to you? I was merely acting proactively with my controlling virus, too.”

Jain didn’t have an answer to that.

“That’s right,” Jacobs said. “You and I aren’t so different after all.”

“I never said we were,” Jain said.

The admiral frowned. Probably not the answer he expected. “Well, I don’t suppose I can convince you to hand over control of the Mimics to me?”

“No,” Jain said. “But while I have control, I’ll ensure they follow the treaty, and come to humanity’s aid in whatever wars we intend to fight.”

The admiral nodded. “Good. So you’re my new liaison with them.”

“I suppose I am,” Jain said.

The admiral disconnected.

“He’s right, you know,” Medeia said. “What we did to the Mimics isn’t all that different from what he did to us. And yet, from our viewpoint, what Jacobs did is evil, while what we did is good.”

Jain sighed. “Good and evil are always a matter of perspective, aren’t they? No doubt the Mimics feel the same way about us right now, as we did about Jacobs.”

“So you meant what you said?” Cranston asked. “We’re really not going to release them?”

“We probably should,” Jain replied. “But I doubt they’ll comply with the treaty without some incentive. Humanity is going to need them in the days ahead. By letting them go, we’ll essentially be abandoning humanity and the rest of the Mind Refurbs to their fate. I don’t know about you, but I can’t do that.”

“The Link could attack humanity at any time,” Cranston said.

“That’s right,” Jain agreed. “We need some assurance that the Mimics are going to be there for us when that happens. Some assurance that they’ll live up to their end of the bargain. The virus is that assurance.”

“After what happened with the Vaernastians,” Gavin said. “The Link will want to get rid of us, this thorn in their side, once and for all.”

“Maybe,” Jain said. “Maybe not. Either way, we’ll be ready for them. In the meantime…” He glanced at Sheila. He was going to ask her out later, but suddenly he didn’t care anymore if the crew saw. “Are you free tonight, Machinist’s Mate?”

She stared at him in confusion, perhaps surprised at the sudden show of forwardness in front of the crew.

But then she beamed. “Just for you, Admiral.”

Thank you for reading!

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Afterword

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About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Isaac Hooke holds a degree in engineering physics, though his more unusual inventions remain fictive at this time. He is an avid hiker, cyclist, and photographer who sometimes resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

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Acknowledgments

I’d also like to thank my knowledgeable beta readers and advanced reviewers who helped smooth out the rough edges of the prerelease manuscript: Nicole P., Lisa G., Karen J, Jeremy G., Doug B., Jenny O., Amy B., Bryan O., Gary F., Lezza, Noel, Anton, Spencer, Norman, and Trudi.

Without you all, this novel would have typos, continuity errors, and excessive lapses in realism. Thank you for helping me make this the best novel possible, and thank you for leaving the early reviews that help new readers find my books.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn't thank my dear mother, father, and brothers, whose wisdom and insights have always guided me through the winding paths of space and time.

— Isaac Hooke

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