THE EMPIRE

AI EMPIRE BOOK 3

Isaac Hooke

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

Farewell, Mind Refurbs?

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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 Empire

The Link

The Alliance

The Empire

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

Epic Fantasy

Monster Tamer

Breaker

Conqueror

Defiler

Thrillers

The Ethan Galaal Series

Clandestine

A Cold Day in Mosul

Terminal Phase

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1

Jain approached the vast enemy fleet that had gathered to protect the Zanefyne homeworld. There were Vaernastian Barbells. Revlon Claws. Barrage Buckyballs. Mapi Trees. Farseeker Teleporters. The Zanefyne had their own ship types out there, of multiple classes.

Not all of the enemies resided in the long wall of starships ahead. In fact, the vast majority were still incoming from the farthest reaches of the system, where they had jumped in only a short time before. Those ships would arrive at different times, coming in from all sides to surround the allies. Things would get messy at that point. But he had faith the Alliance would hold out.

The Alliance. That joining of space navies was a source of pride for Jain. He had essentially built that alliance, negotiating peace with the Mimics, convincing Eric to bring the Banthar to the table, and putting pressure on Jason and Queen Risilan to secure the Tyrnari. Yes, theirs was an alliance four races strong. Not as big as the Link, certainly, but definitely a formidable bunch.

He passed within weapons range of the enemy fleet. His consciousness was stowed inside the AI core of the alien warship known as the Devastator. It was a Mimic vessel, or more precisely, a Nurturer Class A, one of the most powerful warships of its kind. Definitely not a craft the enemy fleet would want to allow within its midst.

And so, his virtual stomach was in knots as he drifted forward, waiting for the bombardment of plasma beams and other deadly weapons.

But none of them opened fire.

He continued to approach. The multitude of vessels simply floated there, allowing him to come ever nearer. The trepidation he felt begin to abate as he realized they weren’t going to engage. He had been worried that the Link might have found a way to penetrate the stealth countermeasures of the Mimic vessels, but it was obvious they hadn’t.

With a wide smile, he drifted directly underneath the biggest vessels among them. They wouldn’t detect him, not unless he activated his inertialess drives to change directions.

Or unless he fired.

He was dearly tempted to unleash his lightning weapon at those ships…

But other Mimics out there would do that, attacking from similar positions of stealth once he cleared the area. He needed to stay hidden and continue his clandestine approach, because his was by far the more important mission.

His eyes momentarily darted to the empty bridge around him. The other Void Warriors were absent… he operated under radio silence. Only Xander was here, his faithful Accomp.

Faithful? No, he’s required to be here. He’s a part of me. That’s like calling my arm or leg faithful.

Then again, he supposed his arms and legs were faithful, in a sense.

Too bad he didn’t actually have any.

Soon he left behind the majority of the enemy fleet and headed toward smaller Link flotillas that orbited behind them. The operators of these craft potentially held leadership positions among the Link or Zanefyne, and they would also be targeted by stealth Mimics. But not him.

Jain passed them by without issue, just like the previous vessels.

Flashes on his aft camera feed told him the Alliance fleet had made contact with the enemy vanguard. That would be a good distraction for what was coming.

As the half dome of the planet ate up the view below him, he began to feel the rising trepidation all over again. He’d have to decelerate soon, revealing his position; but his thermal profile during atmospheric entry would give him away anyway.

He started passing the different defense platforms in orbit. Some of them opened fire, not at him, but at the Alliance fleet members behind him, who had come within range while performing their flybys of the main fleet.

One of those platforms came under attack as he watched: blobs launched by a nearby stealth Mimic tore into the platform and disintegrated it. This drew the attention of the smaller flotillas in orbit behind him, and Claws and Barbells broke away to launch energy nets and rifts in the general direction of the destroyed platform. Those attacks formed a wide wall they hoped would ferret out the stealth ship. Some of the constituent nets and rifts passed dangerously close to Jain, but luckily he didn’t have to alter course to avoid them. But still, he wished the Mimic had waited a while longer before firing and drawing the attention of the enemy.

In a few moments he reached the Kármán line and his hull began exhibiting signs of atmospheric entry.

The gig is up. Time to decelerate.

He engaged his inertialess drives to reverse course, and he dropped rapidly into the atmosphere.

He activated the lateral components of those drives to zig-zag left and right, while at the same time altering the speed of his descent by randomly triggering the dorsal and ventral components.

“I’m detecting energy signatures from the planet’s surface,” Xander said. “Corresponding to the locations of known surface-to-space defense turrets.”

“They’re firing on us,” Jain said.

“Yes,” Xander agreed. “I’d advise you to continue evasive maneuvers.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Jain said.

Most of those defense turrets were equipped with lasers; their light pulses would be hidden from view on the visual spectrum. Some of the turrets harbored plasma guns, and he spotted the beams from the latter crisscrossing the sky in an attempt to strike him. So far, his zig-zagging protected him. He upped his time sense anyway, which would allow him to be aware of plasma beams as they approached, so that he could ensure he didn’t zig or zag straight into them by accident.

A few missile equivalents also approached; given the data he had on this planet, he knew those were seekers, capable of tracking inertialess drive emissions. However, he easily detonated them well before they reached him—all it took was a single shot from his lightning weapon. The bolt struck the lead missile, and arced between the other eight, detonating them all due to their relatively close proximity. A couple of tines even struck random ground targets.

Speaking of the ground… below, the surface was literally coated in skyscrapers. They were of various heights and colors, and crammed nearly one against the other. He could see only city in all directions, the skyscrapers flowing from one horizon to the next.

The small dots of what must have been flyers or delivery drones weaved between the buildings. It reminded him of Manhattan, except there was no break for the ocean.

He continued to zig-zag during the descent. His external surface cooled rapidly, convection carrying away the heat from reentry, something that couldn’t be done in the void of space, where radiation was the sole way to expel heat.

“Hull temperature is within stealth parameters,” Xander announced after a moment.

There was no point in Jain cutting off his drives to allow his craft to descend under stealth. The AIs that guided the anti-aircraft and surface-to-space systems would be able to calculate his position, based on the last known location of his inertialess drive emanations. They would recognize those particular emanations as belonging to a Mimic Nurturer A Class vessel, and because Mimics were former members of the same galactic empire, they would thus know his approximate mass and dimensions. He was slightly heavier than a typical Mimic vessel, owing to the stealth additions, but the calculations wouldn’t be off by much and he’d still receive a good bruising. So the only thing he could do for the moment was continue dodging, at least until he got closer to the surface.

It seemed to take forever to reach the surface, because of his faster time sense, but finally he descended to within three hundred meters of the tallest buildings, bringing him beyond the angle of fire of the closest anti-aircraft turrets. He halted his descent at that point and continued horizontally over the buildings.

Those turrets still fired at the three other cloaked Mimics that descended behind him.

Now that he had achieved an advantageous height, he couldn’t just cut off his drives anymore and enter full stealth. His starship, while atmosphere capable, wasn’t exactly aerodynamic, and the drag would cause it to plunge almost immediately.

He saw different types of flyers around him. They weren’t dots anymore, now that he was close to them, and varied in size from that of a shuttle all the way up to a small stadium. Most of them looked like frisbees, though a few looked like quadcopters or planes, minus rotors of any kind. Since he was cloaked, none of them bothered to move out of his way. He didn’t really have time to weave around them, not with the defenses of an entire world trying to hunt him down, and his invisible hull plowed into any that crossed his path, smashing the no doubt surprised AI pilots. The loud clanks reverberated across his hull.

He lowered his time sense so that it was closer to normal, and those clanks increased in frequency, sounding almost like hail.

“There’s a lot of airborne traffic down here,” Xander said.

“I see that,” Jain said. “I’m going to take us a little higher.”

He rose two hundred meters, and that did the trick: the clanks reduced to a mere trickle. He was still beyond the firing angle of the closest turrets, according to his data.

He increased his forward speed, and the buildings became a blur below. There were the occasional breaks where rural plains and valleys replaced the skyscrapers, but those were few and far between. The planet was essentially the reverse of Earth when it came to city distribution: on Earth, wide open plains and wildernesses dominated the landscape, and surrounded the smaller surface areas of the cities; here, the cities dominated, enveloping what little remained of the wildernesses.

Thanks to Risilan’s spies, he knew precisely where the next surface-to-space and anti-aircraft turrets awaited ahead, and he planned his route accordingly. In those places where there were too many turrets to circumnavigate, he chose to pass near the missile-launching turrets over the beam launchers if he could, since the former were easier to dodge and destroy. But sometimes there was a beam turret he couldn’t avoid, so he began zig-zagging well before arriving. It helped prevent those beams from getting a good hit. When he had the offending turret in sight, he either launched his lightning weapon if it was charged, or unleashed a blob attack, destroying the weapon as he passed.

Guided by the local AI, Zanefyne drones and gunship equivalents also intercepted him, usually in groups of two or three. They were like flies to the massive ship that was the Devastator: a few well-placed blobs made short work of them. Sometimes they were shielded, but his Terrier blobs ate right through those force fields. There was a reason why most starships didn’t have shields—they just weren’t all that useful against the weapons employed in modern space warfare. Sheila’s Wheelbarrow had a shield that, admittedly, was moderately useful, though it ate up most of her vessel’s power so that she had little left over for weapons.

Jain spotted drones and gunships congregating at other points above the city—those would be the spots where the approaches of the other Mimic vessels were being detected.

“I have starships coming in from above,” Xander reported.

“Classes?” Jain glanced at the dots approaching him on his tactical map.

“Revlon Claws,” Xander said. “A breakaway pair from one of the smaller flotillas we passed in orbit.”

According to the specs he had, Claws were capable of atmospheric entry, whereas the other vessels he had passed in orbit, such as the Barbells, were not. The Zanefyne had a few atmospheric-capable spacecraft, but all of those had been in high orbit as part of the main enemy fleet, so he doubted he’d run into them anytime soon.

On his dorsal camera feed, he watched the two vessels approach. They wouldn’t dare open fire with their rifts, at least not while above him and the city served as a backdrop below. They’d reposition behind him first, once they were level with his flight, so that their rifts wouldn’t cause damage to the city. At least, he assumed they wouldn’t.

“They’re firing,” Xander said.

Jain glanced at his display in surprise. Xander was right.

He evaded the incoming rifts, and watched them crash into the buildings behind him. The spacetime tears disintegrated the impacted skyscrapers almost entirely: only one building was left standing, cut so cleanly in half that it looked like the cutaway view of some dollhouse, replete with different floors and levels inside. He even saw some of the organic globs that served as Zanefyne bodies. He supposed they wore shocked expressions, but he couldn’t actually see any faces on those globs, at least not at this distance.

As more of those rifts came in, the incoming Zanefyne police drones and gunships began to swerve skyward. They opened fire… not at him, but the Claws. Nearby surface turrets that didn’t have the Devastator in their line of fire also attacked, sending beams and projectiles hurtling toward the enemy ships, their “allies.”

“Guess the Zanefyne don’t like the Claws destroying their buildings like that,” Xander said.

“Apparently not…” Jain agreed. “Well, that’s less drones for us to worry about.”

Jain couldn’t fire his lightning weapon since it hadn’t recharged yet from his latest attack against a surface turret, but he still had ample blobs to unleash. But he held back.

“Are you not going to return fire at the Claws?” Xander asked.

“Not yet,” Jain said. “I’m kinda liking the chaos they’re causing.”

“You always did like to pit your enemies against one another…” Xander said.

“There is that aspect of it, too,” Jain agreed with a savage grin.

The Claws dealt with the drones and gunships just as easily as Jain had, mostly by firing some sort of smaller point defense rifts that lined their flanks, or by hitting them with their main rift weapon. They zig-zagged in an attempt to avoid the incoming fire from the turrets. One of them took an unlucky hit, and careened to the side, soon dropping from view.

The other Claw descended below the angle of fire of those turrets so that it was soon level behind him. The rifts it fired no longer posed a threat to the city below, however roughly half of the incoming Zanefyne drones and gunships continued to swerve toward it. The other half concentrated on the Devastator.

Jain steered his ship around the rifts the Claw continued to unleash, and he sometimes clipped the tops of skyscrapers in the process. Oftentimes, those rifts would smash into the drones that were heading toward him, eliminating them for him.

“Don’t those damn things ever need a recharge?” he quipped when the assault continued relentlessly.

The lightning recharge indicator turned green on his HUD. He unleashed the bolt, and it slammed into the Claw, arcing into gunships and buildings below.

The vessel stopped firing and dropped in a wide arc, smashing into the city and carving a runnel through several buildings.

His main target was just ahead; a ring of skyscrapers that jutted higher than all the surrounding buildings. Those skyscrapers were armed to the teeth, and he began to take plasma beam impacts. He tried to dodge them, but there were just so many of them… he only zigged or zagged into the path of the next beam. Breach alarms sounded across his HUD.

“All right, this is about as close as I can get,” Jain said, dropping the Devastator between a pair of skyscrapers for cover. A few gunships came in, and tank equivalents rolled into the street below, but the blobs took care of them.

“War Forgers, away,” Jain said.

The huge mechs that had been hitching a ride on the underside of his hull let go and dropped heavily to the street. There were six of them in total, carrying different armaments. One carried a shield. Another a sword. A third had a metal tail. A fourth looked like a giant spider with a human torso. Either way, they were gargantuan war machines that promised death. Most of them were half as tall as the surrounding skyscrapers.

“We’re down,” Jason transmitted from the lead mech, a Vulture class equipped with an energy cannon in its arm. “Still waiting on the clones.”

Jain glanced at his tactical display, and the blue dots appearing in neighboring areas. The three other Mimic ships that had accompanied him to the surface had also carried mechs; the units were attached to their hulls at just the right places so that they wouldn’t interfere with the stealth countermeasures. Those mechs deployed now. Three groups of War Forgers clones.

“I’m in!” Jerry said.

“Touchdown!” Julian transmitted.

“Insertion complete,” John broadcast.

Jain launched the two shuttles he carried aboard next.

“Shuttles are away,” Jain said. “Returning to orbit. Give ‘er hell!”

He rose from behind the cover of the buildings and immediately experienced a barrage of plasma fire from the main target. He quickly accelerated, and rose skyward. He had to zig-zag to avoid the attacks from the surface turrets. Those turrets fired at what looked to be empty areas to his left and right, where the other Mimics ascended with him.

He increased his time sense to glance at the city one last time. Below, the War Forgers weaved between the buildings, using them for cover, staying out of the line of fire of the ring of skyscrapers in the distance. Their hulking clones would be converging on their positions shortly. Meanwhile, the two shuttles flew behind the massive ballistic shield of the War Forger named Aria, for protection.

On the surrounding streets nearby, he spotted waves of incoming enemy bioweapons and machines. He dove to make a circular pass over those neighborhoods, and unleashed several blob attacks. He dissolved large swaths of the bioweapons and robots. But there were still an incredible number down there. The robots he had missed unleashed fire at his underside, and while the damage was minimal, it added up. Plus, he still had to deal with the attacks from the surface turrets and the skyscraper ring in the distance.

When the incoming fire became too much, he withdrew. He headed toward orbit, zig-zagging the entire way. There were already four more Claw ships coming in from above that he’d have to deal with.

“Xander, let Eric know the teams are away, if you haven’t already,” Jain said. “He’ll want to assume control.”

“Already done,” Xander replied.

“Also, relay the locations of the incoming assault teams to the War Forgers.” Jain shook his head. “They certainly have their work cut out for them.”

2

Jason led the War Forger mechs and their clones through the street toward the target. The buildings reached over them, most at least roughly twice their size. The street itself was relatively cramped: there was just enough room between the buildings for the mechs to squeeze through in single file.

The team trampled alien vehicles parked on the street below. He spotted more vehicles, these some kind of flyers, parked on the rooftops of the shorter buildings; more flyers rested on pads protruding from the sides of the skyscrapers themselves. Jason simply tore through the latter as he walked past, breaking them away, flyers and all.

“I feel like a hamster in a maze,” Tara commented.

“I could agree with that, if your hamster had a map, and was armed with alien weapons,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, we do have that advantage over the hamster,” Tara said.

“I’ll take a well-armed hamster over a mech any day!” Lori said. She seemed to realize something was wrong with that, because she added: “Er.”’

“I think you meant well-armed mech…” Aria commented.

“Yup,” Lori said. “Something like that.”

Jason’s overhead map showed the layout of the nearby buildings along with the positions of the incoming enemy units, indicated as red dots. Just a swarm of red dots. Jain had initially transmitted the last known locations of those units, but Jason had since augmented that data with live data from his Explorer drone. He had perched it on a skyscraper nearby. It was running on low power, so hopefully it wouldn’t be shot down, at least not for a while.

Some of the bioweapons trickled in ahead, cutting him off from the target. These things essentially looked like wild balls of tentacles. The things rolled into view around the bend, coming in at a height that reached just below his mech’s knees. They promptly slammed their tentacles outward.

Jason had his time sense accelerated, but even though his servomotors were at maximum output, he still couldn’t dodge those tentacles or aim his weapons in time: the huge bodies were just too slow and lumbering compared to the smaller android models available.

The tentacles wrapped around his legs, tripping him. As he fell, he opened fire, severing several of those tentacles. They released him just as he smashed into one of the skyscrapers beside him. The surface gave, and he fell partially through it. He pushed himself out of the glass and metal, but the upper part of the building toppled, landing on the tentacled creatures in front of him.

“Nicely done,” Lori said. “Teach those Tumblers a lesson!”

“Try not to block our way or anything, though,” Tara said.

“This isn’t a blockage.” Jason waded through the debris relatively easily. He fired as more tentacles appeared, and his energy weapon tore through them.

He reached the T intersection. Because of his Explorer, he already knew that more of those tentacled things awaited to the right. Plus four robots equipped with what looked like plasma beam turrets.

“Cheyanne,” Jason said. “Got a couple of robots that could use your expertise.”

Cheyanne activated the wings of her mech, and she swooped over the building.

Jason stepped into the intersection and fired his weapons into the waiting mass of bioweapons. The four robots behind them, which looked like quadruped mechs of some kind—about hip height relative to Jason—were being sliced up by Cheyanne’s swords. She held herself up by splaying her legs between the upper portions of the two buildings on either side of the street, while swinging her blades down.

She destroyed the last of them when another robot entered the far intersection, and launched a green plasma beam at her. The superheated substance struck her in the side, and she lost her grip on the skyscrapers and plunged the relatively short distance to the street below, landing on top of the machine wreckages.

Jason adjusted his aim to the distant quadruped, and when it went down, he glanced at his HUD to confirm Cheyanne’s health: still in the green.

“Cheyanne, are you all right?” he asked, but she was already pulling herself to her feet.

“Fine!” she said. She swung her sword about, tearing into the surrounding buildings as she attacked the bioweapons that attempted to swarm her.

“I’m coming,” Jason said.

“No!” she said. “Get to the access point!”

He hesitated, but then decided she could handle herself.

He stepped past the T intersection and continued toward the target.

“The units have been unshielded so far,” Jason said. “But that’s probably going to change. We have to get to the target as quickly as we can!”

He increased his speed, traveling as fast as his behemoth of a mech could manage.

“You know, we could probably Combine,” Aria said, following after Tara behind him. The two shuttles with her remained in cover behind her ballistic shield. “The buildings are tall enough to provide cover for a Cataphract.”

“Here, that might be true,” Jason said. “But look ahead… the skyscrapers get smaller toward the target. We’ll be exposed for the last leg. Besides, we need the Taras free, as per the plan.”

“Well I know that,” Aria said. “But we can de-Combine when we close with the target.”

“Doesn’t seem worth it,” Jason said, continuing toward the next intersection.

More of those tumbling bioweapons rolled into the street ahead from another T intersection. At the same time, attack drones and gunships roared into view, and unloaded their weapons in long streams at Jason and the others.

He instinctively shielded his face from the blasts with one arm, and returned fire with his energy cannon and laser. Damage indicators flashed on his HUD as the enemy weapons tore into his arm.

But just then Cheyanne swept into view, darting above the buildings overhead; her swords slammed into the gunships and drones, causing debris to rain down in her wake. Sophie joined her, leaping from building to building with her jumpjets, and unleashing her swarm of micro machines against her airborne foes.

“Careful!” Jason said. “Watch out for the plasma beams from the ring of skyscrapers!”

He redirected his fire at the bioweapons blocking the street ahead. He disintegrated some of the tentacles that had been reaching for him, along with the source Tumblers, then hurried forward. More bioweapons appeared around the intersection and he mowed them down.

A beam struck Sophie from the direction of the target area, but her energy shield absorbed it. Spooked, she nonetheless dropped into a neighboring street, moving out of the line of fire. Cheyanne also dove down, not wanting to leave herself open to attack. The pair had taken care of the airborne menaces, for the moment, though there were still bioweapons blocking the way forward.

Jason opened fire at those creatures, and sent the Explorer to the top of the adjacent building where it perched on the rooftop and peered into the roadway next to the intersection. It detected several quadrupeds crouched in the adjacent street behind more of the bioweapons, robots that were ready to open fire the moment the War Forgers and their clones travelled past.

“Aria!” Jason said. “You’re going to have to shield us!”

He dropped down, and heard a clang as something traveled over Tara behind him. A moment later Aria stepped onto his back, producing a loud clang in turn, and then leaped off to land heavily on the street in front of him. Holding her shield in front of her, she waded over the bodies of the dead bioweapons, and fired her lightning weapon into more of the Tumblers that appeared in front of her.

When she reached the T intersection, she crouched down behind her shield and shoved her way around the corner and through the bioweapons that waited beyond until she no longer blocked the way ahead, having completely moved into the adjacent street. Her ballistic shield covered the extent of the roadway there, stretching between the two buildings on either side, providing complete cover against the quadrupeds—the mechs would be able to pass without taking fire.

At least, as long as her shield held.

Jason hurried past her. He noticed that her shield had several red hot circles on the inner surface, indicating where the plasma beams from the quadrupeds had struck the other side. She lifted her lightning weapon over the notch in the top of the shield, and fired.

As he passed Aria, the two shuttles swerved away from her to take cover instead behind Jason’s mech; probably a wise move, considering Aria’s shield probably wouldn’t last very long against the assault.

Tara followed close behind him, and Lori behind her.

“Hurry!” Aria said. “My shield won’t hold out for much longer!”

Maeran and Iris went by, followed by Xin. Ahead, Sophie and Cheyanne crawled over the buildings to land in the street in front of Jason. They led the way.

When the last of the War Forgers were through, Aria backtracked into the intersection behind her, and withdrew, following the others. Her shield had developed several holes around the edges where the metal had yielded.

Behind her, Tumblers flooded into the street, and she unleashed her lightning weapon at them, cutting away tentacles as fast as she was able.

The next group of clones took up the slack behind her. They fired into the bioweapons, splattering the skyscrapers with their insides. Aria 2 came forward and plugged the T intersection in a similar manner, and then John led his versions of the War Forger clones forward. The other two groups of clones followed, with their Arias similarly shielding the intersection.

“Bombers!” Tara warned.

As the keening of dropping plasma bombs filled the air, Jason and Tara huddled next to Sophie, while Xin and Lori crouched beside Aria. The other War Forgers dove into the buildings, and used their twisted metal shells as cover. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

Aria lifted her ballistic shield, providing cover for Xin and Lori. The two shuttles swooped underneath the shield for cover as well.

Sophie waited until the last moment to activate her energy shield—because she was extending it around Jason and Tara, she wouldn’t be able to keep it active for very long.

The plasma bombs struck, and the shield flashed several times. It failed before the final impact, and the bomb landed directly in their midst, hurling the three of them backward. They crashed into the surrounding buildings, knocking them over.

Jason scrambled to his feet.

“I’m stuck!” Maeran said.

The wreckage of the skyscraper she’d hurled herself inside had fused around her from the heat, so Iris and Cheyanne had to haul Maeran from the debris, ripping through the melted metal and glass.

Jason continued through the ruined street, knowing time was quickly running out. They were going to be overwhelmed soon. The Explorer reported robots and bioweapons overflowing from the nearby avenues; plus more armed flyers and gunships coming in.

The skyscrapers around him quickly became smaller, indicating he was getting close. Then ahead, he saw it. The clearing in front of the ring of skyscrapers.

He hurried forward, and unleashed a shot from his energy cannon to confirm that the target was indeed shielded. The convex force field momentarily flashed into existence, as expected.

He dove into an empty side street. The plasma beams of those skyscrapers that had him in view fired, catching him in the leg, but it was only a glancing blow.

He crouched against the edge of the building there; the street was slightly wider, allowing the other War Forgers to pile in behind him. The first group of clones arrived, and since this was a four-way intersection, rather than a T, they took cover in the street across from him. The next two groups of clones alternately took cover in his street, and across the intersection.

Jason accelerated his time sense to the maximum and surveyed his overhead map. Inside that ring of skyscrapers, and the energy shield that protected them, awaited the access point the War Forgers sought.

Queen Risilan of the Tyrnari was the one who had shared this information with him and the Alliance. She had spies still loyal to her among the Zanefyne, planted in the days when her race was still part of the Link.

Just like Banthar Prime, the Zanefyne had a main AI that was intricately intertwined into all aspects of life on the homeworld: it was responsible for keeping the entire planet running. It operated the food production plants, the delivery drones, the recycling and sewage system, the power grid, the war machines of the local police forces and armies, the bioweapons, the space navy. Everything.

Also like Banthar Prime, the neural net was spread out across the entire planet, residing in data centers across the world. However unlike on the Banthar homeworld, these data centers weren’t located on the surface. No, the Zanefyne felt the AI cores were too vulnerable for such placement, and instead opted to situate them several kilometers underground in each location. Buried fiber-optic cable equivalents joined them to the wireless network on the surface that served as the planet’s internet analog.

This place harbored the access point to one of those data centers.

Jason compared their current location with the vulnerabilities Risilan had listed.

“I think we’re good,” Jason said. “Taras, prepare to teleport.”

Jason returned his time sense closer to normal.

Tara moved to the edge of the side street beside him, and leaned past slightly. Tara 2 joined her. On the opposite side of the intersection, Taras 5 and 6 likewise lined up.

Bioweapons approached from the main road, just past the crouched Taras, and Jason opened fire at them.

“Teleport when ready!” Jason said.

All four Taras vanished.

He glanced at his overhead map, but their signals weren’t strong enough to penetrate the shielding. He gazed past the edge, and spotted them on the far side of the clearing, near the base of the ring of skyscrapers. They were well within the shield.

The skyscrapers opened fire, attempting to target the Taras, but the mechs moved in a zig-zag pattern as they split up and headed for their respective targets.

A tentacle wrapped around Jason’s neck and drew his attention back to the street. He spun around, firing the railgun and rockets from his left arm, which remained intact despite the damage he’d taken.

More bioweapons continued to race forward, rolling over the bodies of those Jason mowed down; across from him, John also joined in, unleashing his weaponry liberally. More of those Tumblers approached from the far sides of the side streets. Plus, additional quadruped robots. The War Forgers and clones on both sides were fully engaged, firing at these incoming enemy units that had them cornered.

“Shields are down!” Tara announced over the comm.

He glanced at his overhead map. He saw the four blue dots representing the Taras, located near the four shield generators on this side of the skyscraper ring. Shield generators that were now destroyed.

“Go, go, go!” Jason scrambled to his feet and raced into the clearing.

He zig-zagged left and right to avoid the plasma fire from the turrets embedded in the skyscrapers. Behind him, the War Forgers followed, including the shuttles—they had synced their movements to Aria’s, and remained behind her ballistic shield at all times.

The clones came after them, and spread out across the clearing before the ring of skyscrapers, giving the enemy a lot to shoot at. Flyers and gunships arrived overhead, and joined in the fun.

Jason opened fire at different turrets embedded in the skyscrapers as he ran, and easily destroyed them, as there were no local force fields protecting them: the Zanefyne had designed the defenses of these access points under the assumption that the main energy shields wouldn’t be penetrated.

Jason reached the edge of the ring and squeezed sideways between the two closest skyscrapers. His hull scraped the buildings on both sides, cutting runnels through the glass and metal exteriors, until he emerged on the other side.

Within the ring, there were no inner facing turrets, so he didn’t have to worry about attacks on this side. One might think that Jain could have dropped the team off directly inside that ring, if that were the case, but there was also a wider circle of surface-to-space turrets surrounding the area that would have prevented such a direct landing from taking place, which was why Jain and the Mimics had to come in from the side to deploy the teams.

Jason quickly moved out of the way so that the other War Forgers and their clones could join him within the ring. The Taras came to him, and took cover against the skyscrapers, huddling next to the pit that was the access point. That pit resembled the inside of a cone, its smooth sides tapering to a point several hundred meters down.

Jason aimed past the edge of the skyscraper beside him, toward the bioweapons and robots that raced into the clearing beyond to pursue them.

Aria, close to him, suddenly turned around and unleashed her lightning weapon skyward: flyers had come in to attack from above.

The two shuttles flew out from behind Aria’s shield and proceeded into the pit. They hovered next to the bottom, where the tapering edges formed a small terrace topped by a shed.

The ramps of those shuttles opened, and the human-shaped androids of the Bolt Eaters piled out. Eric was among them. He went to the shed, and held his hand toward the opening. No doubt activating some of the hacking code he had been working on with Lori and Sheila.

Jason was distracted by a plasma impact to his right shoulder, and he turned to fire at a new group of flyers that had come in from above. Meanwhile Tara swung her sword at the bioweapons that began to flow past the edges of the skyscraper beside him.

Jason continued to fight like that for some time.

“They’re in!” Xin announced.

Jason checked his rear view feed, and saw that the Bolt Eaters were nowhere to be seen. Though they still showed up on his overhead map, descending into the long tunnel that led to the data center below.

The two shuttles came under attack from overhead, and Jason and the others quickly provided covering fire. The craft zig-zagged up the pit and landed beside Aria.

“War Forgers, protect these shuttles at all costs!” Jason said.

He gazed past the edge of his skyscraper, and saw that the clearing beyond seethed to the brim with bioweapons and enemy robots.

It was going to be a long fight.

3

Eric and the others dropped rapidly down the shaft of the grav elevator. The Zanefyne AI that ran the planet had activated the gravitational forces in the shaft in an attempt to flush the Bolt Eaters out of the access point. But the team wore jetpacks on their backs, which they fired at maximum output to fight the forces that pressed up on them from below, and made their way deeper into the shaft.

When the AI realized it wasn’t going to be able to stop them, it shifted those forces, trying to throw the androids against the walls of the surrounding cylinder. Again they had to fight the forces with their jetpacks.

“I’m getting low on juice,” Brontosaurus said.

“We all are,” Eric said. “We’re going to have to latch onto the walls and proceed with our magnetic mounts.”

Eric slowly approached the wall, expecting the forces to suddenly change in an attempt to slam him into the metal. Sure enough, as he closed, the shift came, and he fired reverse thrust just in time. It slowed him down, but he still hit the wall fairly hard, producing a loud clang.

“That kind of hurt,” Eric said. He activated his magnetic mounts and began climbing.

With the gravity vector pointing directly upward, it was like he was climbing a mountain cliff. His servomotors moaned from the effort of fighting that gravity, and it felt like he weighed three times his usual amount.

Around him, the other Bolt Eaters had similarly latched on, and climbed deeper into the cylindrical pit of the access point. Small dots of white light ran down the length of that cylinder, emphasizing just how deep it was.

He and the others attached repeater beacons onto the wall at intervals as they descended: these small, magnetic disks insured the team remained wirelessly linked to the shuttles on the surface, which in turn kept them connected to their respective Banthar ships in orbit. Without those uplinks, the machines would mostly cease to operate, since the Bolt Eaters were all operating the androids remotely today, leaving their AI cores firmly inside the Banthar motherships that housed them. While Jason and the War Forgers also had repeaters the Bolt Eaters could use in a pinch to remain in contact with the motherships, theirs weren’t as powerful as the specialized units in the shuttles, and the available signal bandwidth would drop, meaning half the androids would lose connections.

Eric had switched control to this android as soon as Jain’s Accomp let him know the shuttles had left the Devastator. It was probably a bit premature, considering how long it had actually taken to reach the access point, but he wanted to be prepared in case he needed to deploy early. Dee, his own Accomp, operated the mothership while he concentrated on the mission. The other Bolt Eaters had made similar arrangements with their own Accomps.

All except for Frogger, who was here in person: he had volunteered to install his AI core directly into one of the androids in case their connections to the motherships were severed for any reason, such as the capture or complete destruction of the War Forgers above. An unlikely scenario, given how much combined firepower the War Forgers and their clones possessed, but still possible. The likelier scenario was the imposition of some sort of energy field, one that would prevent their wireless signals from reaching the surface.

“One of us has to stay behind and complete the mission if that happens,” Frogger had said before the mission. “Might as well be me, since as your mind twin, I’m the most qualified.”

Others had wanted to volunteer, but Eric had deferred them. “Frogger’s right, he is the most qualified. He and I are the programmers and de facto hackers of the team. ”

“What about you, then?” Dunnigan said. “Maybe you should install your AI core into an android, too.”

“I can’t put my AI core into an android,” Eric said. “I run a planet now, remember?”

Dunnigan shrugged. “Leave a copy of your Accomp running it, mate.”

Eric smiled patiently. “Not gonna happen.” In retrospect, doing as Dunnigan said was probably a good idea, given all the things that could go wrong with this mission. But he was unwilling to abandon Banthar Prime, not after only just having overcome a coup attempt, and a Link attack.

He thought of the exploits he planned to try once he actually reached the data center. Queen Risilan’s spies had stolen key cybersecurity documents, which she had shared with the Alliance. Those documents described the Zanefyne protocols and computing interfaces in great detail. Eric, Frogger, Sheila and Lori had been perusing them, and they’d already built a sandbox environment to emulate the server. They had exchanged ideas for potential zero day exploits, but hadn’t come up with anything concrete as of yet. They couldn’t, not until they had access to one of the actual Zanefyne servers.

The plan was: infiltrate the data center, hack into one of the servers, and take over the Zanefyne homeworld.

Simple. But probably far from easy.

Though he had done it once before, on Banthar Prime…

“Lori, you still there?” he asked for the comm.

He planned to remain in contact with her the whole time via those repeaters, so that he could consult with her and Frogger as necessary regarding the alien system.

“Uh huh!” Lori said. “I’m kicking ass as always! With my tail! So I guess that doesn’t really count as kicking. Can I say I’m swatting ass, then?”

Eric had to smile at that. She could come off as annoyingly ditzy, but she had an analytical mind that rivaled his own. And this wasn’t a skill she had inherited solely from having her mind installed in a neural network. Sure, an AI core made one smarter, shooting mental processing power through the roof and offering a memory that was truly photographic, not to mention fully searchable, allowing one to play back snippets at will. But the interesting and lesser-known fact about neural networks was that they could take one’s strong points and amplify them tenfold. He had a natural inclination toward tinkering for example, as did Lori, and that reflected in their hacking prowess. Sheila had that same inclination. He could also set up a connection with her if he really wanted to, courtesy of Dee aboard the Bethunia II.

It took half an hour of climbing to reach the bottom of that grav shaft. Too long. But according to the overhead map, Jason was still defending, and had yet to suffer any losses. This, despite being completely surrounded by bioweapons… they were streaming in from the ring of skyscrapers on all sides. Apparently, some of the Mimics had launched blob attacks from orbit, and that helped keep the numbers down, but such attacks weren’t coming often enough: the Alliance fleets were fully occupied in orbit. Also, from what he knew, it was difficult to launch a blob attack accurately from such a height, and they risked hitting the War Forgers and their clones in the strikes.

Eric reached the bottom, which ended in a circular terrace, and retrieved the exploratory drone he had 3D-printed for the mission, which he’d called the High Five. He tossed it into the corridor that opened in the side of the shaft.

The way seemed clear.

As he released his magnetic mounts to pull himself into the corridor, the overarching AI tried its usual shenanigans one last time, shifting the gravity to smash Eric into the bottom of the grav shaft, and then reversing the vector so that he was pulled straight up.

He fired his jetpack and scooted out from the influence of the grav shaft, and into the corridor. He landed heavily on the ground, and made room for the others, who he expected to make comparable entrances.

Sure enough, the other Bolt Eaters had the same difficulties pulling themselves inside, and they were tossed about by the shifting gravity before they left the shaft for the corridor.

“Man,” Traps said when he had entered. “I’m looking forward to wiping that AI.”

“We’re not wiping it,” Eric said. “We’re subjugating it.”

“Good luck,” an eerie mechanical voice echoed through the corridor.

Eric glanced up. “You listening in?”

No answer.

“AI bastard’s listening in,” Eric said.

He glanced at Frogger and switched to mental communications mode. Their lips ordinarily still moved in that mode, so he turned off mouth actuating to prevent the AI from reading their silent words.

When everyone was in the corridor, he proceeded deeper into the underground passage. It was big enough to fit three abreast. They advanced with their plasma rifles held in hand. The energy grenades jingled in their harnesses.

“I still think we should have sent Cicadas down here, instead of androids,” Tread said.

“We would have never been able to fit all of our Cicadas into two shuttles,” Slate said. “Besides, according to this, the corridor gets tight real quick. Kind of like my sphincter when I look at you.”

“Oh yeah, you just had to bring your sphincter into the equation, didn’t you?” Tread said.

“Slate, behave yourself,” Eric said.

“Sorry boss,” Slate said. “I’m not used to going on these types of missions anymore. Been trapped in a starship for so long.”

Eric nodded absently, and glanced at his overhead map, which was completely filled out thanks to Risilan. So far, the wall delimiters as reported by the High Five matched up with the blueprints Risilan had shared. That was good. It meant her data was up-to-date.

The walls had small green strips of light embedded in the surface, which bathed everything in a subtle green hue. He was tempted to activate his own headlamps to normalize that light, but it wasn’t necessary; he simply applied chromatic filters to his vision, and changed the background color temperature to something closer to natural daylight.

The metal floor clanged beneath their boots as they advanced, joining the jingle of the grenades. He and the others continued to place repeaters at intervals along those walls, insuring that their connection remained strong, despite the thousands of tonnes of dirt and rock pressing down into the corridor from above.

The exploratory drone rounded a bend up ahead, and then the signal went black.

Eric raised a hand. “Just lost the drone.”

“Shot down?” Eagleeye asked.

“Probably,” Eric replied. Risilan had told them to expect different robot defenders.

“Maybe it passed through some sort of energy field,” Bambi commented.

Frogger glanced at Eric. “You didn’t program the drone to return in case of signal loss?”

“I did,” Eric said.

Frogger looked at Bambi. “So then it can’t be an energy field.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s a one way energy field.”

Brontosaurus suddenly collapsed.

“Drop!” Eric said.

The team hit the floor.

Eric kept his rifle pointed ahead, but no enemies came around the bend.

He crawled to Brontosaurus while the rest of the team kept their weapons trained on the bend ahead. “There’s no sign of any laser or plasma impacts.”

“Maybe he was hit with an intense gamma ray burst?” Mickey asked.

“No, the rest of us would have detected the residuals,” Dickson answered.

“Shit,” Marlborough said. “My Accomp tells me Brontosaurus’ ship just blew up.”

Eric closed his eyes, and squeezed Brontosaurus’ shoulder tightly. “Goodbye, my friend.”

“Goodbye until we restore him from his backup, you mean,” Mickey commented.

“Don’t cheapen his death,” Frogger said.

“Sorry,” Mickey said.

“Maybe we should have transferred our AI cores directly into these androids after all,” Hicks said. “Seems safer here than in space.”

“We already agreed this was the more dangerous mission,” Crusher said.

“Maybe we were wrong about that,” Hicks said.

“I somehow doubt it,” Tread said. “I’m happy to be controlling this body remotely. Though I admit, I’m not sure how much I trust my Accomp to keep me safe up there. Especially now. Still, we’re thousands of meters below ground, entering the heart of an enemy base. Yeah, I don’t envy Frogger.”

At that, Frogger merely shrugged.

Eric reluctantly tore himself away from Brontosaurus, and proceeded toward the front of the group at a crouch. “On your feet, Bolt Eaters. Let’s see what’s waiting for us around the bend.”

He continued forward, the others following close behind him.

“Wait,” Bambi said. “You’re our hacker. And leader. Our most valuable android. You shouldn’t be on point.”

Eric hesitated. She was right. He’d been ignoring all of his military training, some of which had been programmed into him after he had awoken as a Mind Refurb. Why? The simple fact was, he felt invulnerable.

But I’m not. Or at least, this android isn’t, strong as it is. If I lose it, my participation in this mission is over.

He reluctantly let Slate and Eagleeye take the lead.

Slate reached the bend. The others flattened themselves against the wall behind him.

Slate aimed his rifle at the corner of the exposed portion of the wall past the bend, and launched a magnetic vision round. It attached to the metal surface.

Before Eric could tap into the dart’s camera feed, a plasma beam smashed into the device from around the bend.

“Well, that was quick,” Eagleeye commented.

“Has to be a defense platform of some kind,” Eric said. “Let’s try a few grenades.”

“You know I love me some energy grenades.” Slate pulled a grenade from his harness and stepped away from the edge. “Fire in the hole!”

Slate tossed the bomb past the bend, and his arm moved in a blur as he retrieved and launched three more in rapid succession, then he flattened himself against the wall once more as the four explosions resounded past the bend one after the other.

“You know, no one actually says that in the army, mate,” Dunnigan said.

Slate ignored the comment and fired another vision round. Once again the round was incinerated instantly.

“Frig!” Slate said. “Excuse my Eagleeye.”

“Your Eagleeye?” Traps asked.

“Yeah,” Slate said. “It’s like excuse my French. Except you replace the French with Eagleeye, see? It’s an insult…”

Eagleeye approached the bend, and stopped next to Slate. He gave the latter a scowl.

“Go ahead, do it!” Slate said. “You wanna fight, bitch! Come on!”

Eagleeye’s head and upper body became a blur for a moment; when the blur vanished, Eagleeye’s posture was different, and he held his rifle higher, closer to eye level. He had moved so fast that at first Eric wasn’t sure what Eagleeye had done. But when a plasma beam smashed into the corner, he realized Eagleeye had peered past the bend with his rifle scope and probably let off a shot.

“Okay, I see what it is,” Eagleeye said. “It’s not a defense platform. We have some kind of robot squatting in the middle of the floor. It’s got these four, spider-like limbs, with a small box on top covered in plasma turrets. And it’s got a shield. I tried blasting the sucker, and my beam got absorbed. My guess is, if we hit it enough times, we’ll break through the force field. I’d recommend trying more grenades. But this time, don’t let up. Don’t give the robot time to recover.”

“Do it,” Eric said.

He heard a series of clangs coming from around the bend. They grew in volume.

“Uh, we better get those grenades out there quick,” Hicks said. “Sounds like it’s coming around the bend!”

“She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes!” Slate sung as he tossed more grenades. “Out!”

Eagleeye took his place, and threw more grenades past the edge.

Then Bambi did the same.

Marlborough moved forward to throw his own set of grenades, but then he paused to cock his head. “Do you hear that?”

“I don’t hear a thing,” Crusher said behind him.

“My point exactly,” Marlborough said. “I think we got it.”

He fired a vision round into the far corner. The magnetic round remained in place, and didn’t get immediately blasted this time.

Eric accessed the round’s camera feed, and saw the wreckage of the robot amid walls and ceilings dented with blast craters. There was also a smaller piece of melted metal closer to the bend that must have been High Five.

“We got it all right,” he said. “Slate, lead the way.”

Slate rounded the bend with Eagleeye, and the others followed.

Slate gave the wreckage a good kick as he passed. “Stinkin’ bucket of bolts.”

“You’re a bucket of bolts yourself, bro,” Mickey said.

“Speak for yourself,” Slate said. “My consciousness is embedded in the AI core of a warship. I could blast this place to shit if I wanted to.”

“Tough talk, bro,” Mickey said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re still a bucket of rusty bolts.”

“Maybe a bucket made of gold, holding bolts of diamond,” Slate said.

“Let’s concentrate, please,” Eric said.

The last few missions he’d been on with the Bolt Eaters, they’d kept relatively quiet, but that was because they were probably still getting accustomed to the whole fighting thing again. Now that they were finding their groove, and becoming more comfortable with missions, it was beginning to show in their attitudes. Eric thought it was best not to get too comfortable, though, hence his verbal reprimand. It probably didn’t help matters that most of them operated remotely: they didn’t feel the threat as keenly as in previous missions. Except for Frogger. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The threat was still present: all it would take was a lucky hit from an enemy in orbit, and any one of them could drop, never knowing what hit them. Frogger was the only one who would be spared from that particular fate.

Ahead, two more robots clanged into view from around another bend.

“Drop!” Eric ordered.

The team obeyed; Slate and Eagleeye opened fire, but they were instantly hit by plasma beams in return, and their heads melted. They slumped, dead.

Bambi scooted forward on the floor and piled the two bodies atop one another, forming a barrier. It was just the right height to prevent the short robots from targeting the rest of the team. The plasma attacks continued to pummel the bodies, however, and would shortly dissolve through them.

“Grenades!” Eric shouted.

The team members moved in a blur, tossing grenades in rapid succession. After about twenty of them, the enemy attacks finally ceased. Eric launched a vision round, striking the ceiling, and used it to confirm that the blocking robots were melted.

“Damn it, we need energy shields like we used to have!” Mickey said.

“We had mechs then, bro,” Hicks said. “Shields won’t work with these power supplies.”

“Well, the alien robots have managed to fit shields to their power supplies, and they’re smaller than us!” Mickey complained.

“Maybe after we conquer them, we can steal their shield technology,” Hicks said.

“This sucks,” Slate said over the comm, from his ship, the Bug Killer, in orbit. “Sorry about that, brothers.”

“Yeah,” Eagleeye transmitted from his own ship. “I didn’t mean to die so early.”

“You couldn’t help it,” Eric said. “Do your best against the enemy in orbit.”

“Oh man, you should see it up here,” Eagleeye said. “It’s pretty bad. You guys should probably work a little more quickly.”

“We’re almost at the interface,” Eric said. “It shouldn’t be long now. Dunnigan, Traps, lead the way.”

“I always loved being cannon fodder,” Traps commented.

Eric let it go. He stepped over the lifeless bodies of Eagleeye and Slate before continuing on his way.

“Hey Slate, your android is giving me the evil eye,” Mickey said.

“It’s not the evil eye,” Slate transmitted. “It’s turned on. You got a rip in your pants, bro.”

Eric was about to ask for silence yet again, but thankfully none of the team members retorted to that. If they had, he might have considered looking into disciplinary measures when this was done.

Hell, I can’t discipline them. I have no right. They left the military behind ages ago. They’re all volunteering for this.

The team continued to place disk-like repeaters on the walls.

“Running out of these,” Bambi said.

“We should have just enough,” Eric said. “The access point is around this bend.”

They reached the end of the maintenance tunnel.

Traps fired a vision round, and it wasn’t destroyed.

Eric accessed its feed: the path to the interface area seemed clear.

Traps rounded the bend, rifle aimed down the tight corridor. “It’s clear.”

But then a blade pierced his body and lifted him in the air.

The others opened fire with their plasma beams, aiming at the invisible source of that blade, and green impacts appeared, highlighting the bulbous body of an alien. It looked like a Zanefyne, given the data Eric had seen on the creatures.

“It’s like friggin’ Predator!” Mickey cried. “Got an invisibility shield!”

The Zanefyne withdrew the blade—not a blade, but a talon, and became invisible once more. Traps collapsed lifelessly to the floor.

“Keep firing!” Eric said. “Launch grenades!”

He and the others backed away as they fired and threw grenades.

The alien was silhouetted, thanks to the weapon impacts, and Eric watched that bulbous body throw out those long talons to pull itself forward. It moved rapidly along the ground, and in moments had leaped on Dunnigan.

“Help!” Dunnigan cried.

Eric and the others kept firing, though they restricted themselves to plasma beams, knowing that grenades would be too harmful to Dunnigan at that range. All the bombs must have weakened the energy shield at that point, because it abruptly clicked off, and their plasma beams melted into the alien body.

The creature howled, and turned around, but the team didn’t let up, and in moments it was reduced to a bubbling pile of organic mass on the corridor floor.

Dunnigan stood up.

“You all right?” Eric asked him.

“A little shaken,” Dunnigan said. “But good to go.”

“Sweep the area,” he ordered.

Eric and the others fired their plasma beams experimentally down the corridor, but didn’t strike any hidden targets.

“Seems clear,” Mickey said.

“Check the body, see if you can find whatever it was using to hide itself,” Eric said.

Mickey knelt to examine the alien corpse. “Why, you’re hoping to purloin some fresh alien tech for ourselves?”

“That would be exceptional,” Eric said.

Mickey held up a melted piece of metal. “Well, looks like this might have been the device. But there’s nothing left of it now.”

“Too bad,” Eric said. “Dunnigan, Mickey, lead the way.”

The two rounded the bend, and occasionally released bursts of plasma fire. They struck no invisible aliens.

“Be careful not to hit the interface,” Eric said.

“Is that the small pedestal in the distance, after the corridor opens up into the vault?” Mickey asked.

“That would be it,” Eric replied.

“Whoops,” Mickey said.

“You didn’t…” Eric said.

“Yeah, I didn’t!” Mickey said. “Sorry, couldn’t help it.”

Eric glanced at Frogger, who shook his head and said: “Asshole.”

Dunnigan and Mickey fired at angles as they continued, striking the surrounding walls, and the walkway that led into the vault beyond, but were careful not to hit the pedestal.

The vault was essentially a large, hollowed out sphere, its walls lined in pulsing blue and green lines. A walkway led down the middle of that sphere, ending in the center of the room, where a pedestal jutted from the floor.

“Should we keep shooting?” Dunnigan asked.

“No,” Eric replied. “You could damage the interface. But clear the way to the pedestal.”

“If we run into anything?” Mickey said.

“Then you’re cleared to shoot it,” Eric said.

But Mickey and Dunnigan ran into no one else.

Eric approached the interface, and inserted the manual access key he’d created with the help of Sheila, Lori, and Frogger.

I hope this works, Eric thought.

“Defensive positions,” Eric said.

The others fanned out behind him along the walkway. Most of them targeted the entrance, but others aimed at different portions of the sphere, in case some hidden panel were to open.

Eric logged out of reality and pulled up the VR sandbox environment he’d put together for this moment. Then he activated the access key.

“I’m in,” Eric said over the comm. “I’ve got the most basic access rights—what you’d expect for a low-level maintenance worker. Now let’s see if I can do some privilege escalating… and bring down this planetary AI.”

4

Jain pulled up as two Teleporters appeared in front of him. He changed course immediately as bombs materialized in the void behind him.

That was the problem with operating inertialess drives while cloaked near Teleporters. They could leap to your position instantly.

He fired blobs and the weapons tore into the Teleporters, disabling them. Unfortunately, the actions revealed his position to nearby Claws and Barbells, and they released a wall of rifts and energy grids that Jain was hard-pressed to evade.

Unfortunately, as he neared the edge of that wall, it clipped him, cutting off a corner of his Nurturer vessel, and causing the pyramid-shaped craft to lose its cloaking ability. He instantly materialized.

The Barbells locked onto him and released more energy nets. Jain dove at the planet, directly toward a cluster of Buckyballs. He upped his time sense and zig-zagged as he flew past them. The Buckyballs launched their multifire plasma beams in all directions, and he weaved in and out of the deadly rays. A few scorched his hull, but he moved so fast that they caused only minor hull breaches. And then he was past them, and heading toward the next group of enemies.

The Alliance was split up around him. It was essentially every ship for itself at the moment. There were no formations. Just chaos.

He activated his comm device and the rest of the bridge crew joined him in the virtual environment, save for Medeia, who was no doubt still cloaked out there. All of them stared intently ahead, concentrating on the battle at hand. Along with the Void Warriors, also listed as part of the main comm line were the Mind Refurbs Tanis and Jacobs of the Paladins, Eric of the Bolt Eaters/Banthar, and Jason of the War Forgers, though they were all present voice-only. Of the alien allies, Jhagan and Risilan of the Tyrnari were present on the comm, as was Hephaestus of the Mimics.

Jain returned his attention to the tactical display. Most of the other Mimics had been forced out of cloak, just as he had, probably by Claws and Barbells; those ships continued to unleash walls of energy grids and rifts into the battle space, but most were too far away to be any threat to him at the moment.

However, just ahead, five Zanefyne vessels awaited him. Two types. He hadn’t fought these particular classes yet, but he was familiar with their specs, thanks to his Mimic database. The first was shaped like an elongated V. As in, extremely long, at least a kilometer in length. At the far end was a huge focusing mirror. It used that mirror and that long tunnel to generate powerful heavy laser attacks, with ranges up to twenty-five thousand kilometers, or a little over three times the range of his lightning weapon. There were two of those V ships, which had been staying back to pick off the Alliance vessels from afar.

The laser ships were protected by three coil-shaped vessels. They literally looked like huge springs, with circular sections spiraling one atop the other in neat, compact rows. Those helixes were essentially giant particle accelerators, which were used to generate invisible particle beams that could easily penetrate the heaviest armor and disrupt internal circuitry. A direct hit to an AI core was capable of taking down a ship instantly.

The stopping power of those coils was evident in the debris field of Alliance vessels that had formed around the five Zanefyne. What appeared to be otherwise intact Alliance ships floated lifelessly around them, running lights inactive. Most of those ships belonged to the alien members of the Alliance—Banthar, Mimic, or Tyrnari. Jain guessed that was because the Zanefyne were familiar with the layouts of those ships, owing to their former status as Link members, so they could easily target the AI cores. Whereas it had probably taken lucky shots to deactivate the few humans ships among them, since they would have had to guess at the location of the neural cores. Either that, or very few human ships had come this way.

He was aboard a vessel type the Zanefyne would be familiar with.

He increased his zig-zagging maneuvers.

“I’m detecting a high concentration of alpha particles striking our hull in the dorsal area,” Xander announced.

“They’re firing their beams,” Jain said.

He dove, frantically, and activated his Mimic ability, hoping it would make it harder for them to track his core. He chose a human Piranha ship class to emulate, a dart-shaped vessel about a fifth his actual size. Without the countermeasures, they’d still be able to detect his full shape on the gravity wave band, but he was looking to sow a moment of confusion in the heat of battle. A moment that would hopefully contribute to them missing their shots.

He fired blobs and skirmishers as he passed by. One of the V ships tracked him, and struck his right side, penetrating all the way through his ship and out the other side.

“We have a hull breach near the data center,” Xander said.

Jain fired his lightning weapon at that ship, and took it out. Only one other ship was within the seven thousand kilometer range of the weapon, and the tines arced that way, disabling it too. Another Coil ship.

Jain continued onward, wanting to put as much range between him and those ships as possible. They were too dangerous to fight. The Mind Refurbs were better equipped to handle them.

He found where most of the Void Warriors were fighting, and headed toward them. They flew in formation, and basically circled the entire battlefield, passing in and out of the fighting, like a comet making orbits of the sun.

Jain flew alongside Cranston.

“Miss me?” he asked.

“Like an alligator misses the toothpick birds that it invites into its mouth to pick at the food lodged between its teeth,” Cranston said.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jain said.

A Teleporter ship appeared in front of him, seeming intent on a suicide mission. Jain was still zig-zagging, so he avoided most of the bombs it tried to plant inside him, but he had to do a full course reverse to avoid smashing into it. He unleashed blobs at point blank range and disintegrated the vessel.

“Why do they do that?” Jain asked. “Not that I’m complaining. But it seems a waste of resources.”

“It’s actually been working quite well on the other Mimics,” Sheila said. “I’m not sure what’s different about you. Why they can’t spot these Teleporters, when you can.”

Jain accelerated his time sense to consider this for a moment. Outside, external reality slowed to a halt. “I think the Mimics do actually spot the Teleporters, but they take it as a challenge. It’s like playing chicken. They want to see who will blink first. And they consider themselves superior to the Farseekers that man those vessels, physically and mentally as a race, but also technologically. They want to show them Mimic courage, knowing there’s a seventy percent chance they’ll emerge from the collision with only minimal damage. How many of the Mimics survive the impacts, versus the Teleporters?”

“Hm, now that I think about it, most of the Mimics do,” Sheila said. Her time sense would have adjusted automatically to match his. “Though about one in three are taken offline or completely destroyed by the impact. Of course, many of the Mimics also launch blobs ahead of them before they smash into the Teleporters, so that’s going to weaken the enemy hulls right there.”

“And how about the Teleporters?” he asked.

“None of them survive the impacts,” she replied.

“There you go,” Jain said. “Mystery solved.”

He restored his time sense to something closer to normal.

The Void Warriors passed behind a flotilla of four Mapi Trees that were attacking double the number of Tyrnari Hang Gliders. The Tyrnari were having trouble, because the Trees simply phased out to avoid their attacks—the Tyrnari bubble projectile passed right through them, as did their grappling hooks.

When the Trees attacked in kind, the Hang Gliders tried to make their hulls blindingly bright as a defense, but that didn’t help: the energy whip weapons the Trees utilized relied upon some sort of predictive algorithms to track their targets despite the sensor blowout, and two of the Tyrnari vessels were split in half as Jain watched.

“Looks like they need some help here,” Jain said. “Get ready to fire raptors.”

As the Void Warriors flew past, they launched their raptors in rapid succession, targeting the fragile root system beneath the Trees. It was impossible to phase out to avoid those weapons, which were essentially instantaneous, and all of the lasers found their targets. They paused as the vessels faded out, becoming translucent, and immediately fired again when they returned to this reality. Jain fired his lightning weapon, too, when they returned to solidity, and it arced between the quartet. In moments the roots were trimmed enough to disable the inertialess drives, and the four vessels floated away lifelessly.

The six remaining Tyrnari swooped past, firing their bubble projectiles in rapid succession, and destroyed all four trees.

“Well, that was a bit of overkill,” Mark commented.

“I think they were just pissed, and needed to get their frustrations out,” Gavin said. “It happens, from time to time.”

When the Tyrnari had finished off the Trees, they swooped in behind Jain and the Void Warriors, apparently deciding that the lot of them functioned better as a team. Or maybe they just wanted the protection Jain and the others provided.

“The Tyrnari commander is asking to join our shared comm channel,” Xander said.

“Let him,” Jain said.

“Hello,” a cheery voice said a moment later. “I’m Wendlyn. Cousin to the queen. Thank you for the assistance.”

“Sure thing,” Jain said.

“Hope you don’t mind if we tag along for a while,” she said.

“Be my guest,” Jain told her, and left the connection open.

Ahead, six Vaernastian Pinwheels launched a series of laser beams, firing at the same number of Paladins coming in from the side. Three of those ships were destroyed, but the other three continued forward. Now that the charge on each Pinwheel was expended, it would take another five minutes before they could fire again. But in the meantime, they were defended by two Claws that produced rifts beside them.

The Tyrnari Hang Gliders abruptly accelerated ahead of Jain and the others. They glowed a bright white, disrupting the sensors of the Claws and Pinwheels—not to mention those of Jain and the Void Warriors.

When the light levels returned to something more normal, he saw that the Hang Gliders had launched grappling hooks into the two Claw vessels so that the Claws were dragged by three Hang Gliders each. The Tyrnari fired their bubble projectiles into their prey to disable them, and then dragged them toward the Laser Pinwheels. They released their deadweights on a collision course with the Pinwheels and two of the six laser ships exploded. The other four were laid into by the Paladins and the Void Warriors as they passed.

Jain glanced at his rear camera feed in time to catch the four remaining enemy ships exploding.

As they neared the far side of the enemy fleet, closer to the planet where the enemy command flotillas had once resided—those flotillas were now dispersed, Jain noted, probably because of the earlier Mimic stealth attack—surface-to-space weapons launched from the planet and added to the fire the Void Warriors and their Tyrnari escort had to dodge. Thankfully, most of the defense platforms in orbit had been destroyed by the cloaked Mimics, so that was one less thing to worry about.

Jain and the others quickly altered course to put some distance between themselves and the planet. Jain had briefly considered continuing toward the planet, and reentering the atmosphere to help Jason and the others, but given the beam and projectile barrage coming from the surface, he thought better of it. Especially considering that his stealth countermeasures were currently offline.

No, for better or worse, the War Forgers and Bolt Eaters were on their own down there.

They pulled away from the targeting range of the planet, and traveled along the opposite outskirts of the fight once more.

The enemy vessels that had jumped in randomly to other parts of the system were starting to come within weapons range, and they began to engage, further upping the chaos quotient and outflanking several Alliance vessels in the process.

“There’s too many of them,” Jacobs said over the comm. “They’re coming in from all sides. We have to retreat.”

“Hold,” Tanis told his second in command.

“But—“ Jacobs began.

“Eric needs more time,” Tanis interrupted.

“I’m detecting new incoming rifts opening nearby,” Xander said. “Waves of enemy vessels are jumping in, on all sides.”

“Thank the Vaernastians for that,” Sheila said. “And their endpoint tracking beacons.” Those beacons were placed aboard small stealth craft, which moved extremely slowly. If launched from far away, they could take weeks to maneuver into position. But if deployed next to the Vaernastians ships, they could be used by ships outside the system to create a rift anywhere within a diameter of a thousand kilometers around the endpoint tracker. That the enemy hadn’t jumped in ships sooner told Jain they had to scramble to free up resources. He just wasn’t expecting them to summon so many.

“All right,” Tanis said. “That’s above our defensive threshold. We’re going to have to retreat. Hephaestus, initiate retrograde plan Dark Gamble.”

“Understood,” Hephaestus said.

Jain wanted to counter Tanis, but he knew the admiral was right. It was too hot out there. The Alliance fleet would be obliterated if they stayed, and that wouldn’t help anyone. Better to live to fight another day.

“Wait!” Risilan said over the comm. “We can’t leave yet. Jason is still down there.”

“He’ll have to fend for himself,” Tanis said.

“Unacceptable,” Risilan said. “We must send a detachment to rescue him.”

“If you want to send a detachment, that’s up to you,” Tanis said. “But I have to warn you, without a cloak, you’ll be fodder for the planet’s surface-to-space defenses.”

“Even a cloak didn’t help me much,” Jain said. “So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend going down there. Considering you’ll have none of us in orbit once you return. You probably won’t get through the waiting enemy.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’ll remember this. If Jason falls, we will switch from allies, to enemies.”

“You have mind backups aboard, don’t you?” Jacobs asked. “You can restore Jason from a backup.”

“I carry no backups,” Risilan said. “His War Forgers and their clones carry the backups aboard their mechs. If they die, he dies. I begged him to allow me to carry a backup, but these were his direct orders.”

“Jason will endure,” Tanis said, though his voice betrayed a hint of doubt. “We’ll go back for him as soon as we can. But if we don’t leave now, there will be no one left to send back.”

She remained silent. Jain felt her pain, but there was really nothing anyone could do. Tanis was right, they had to get the hell out of there while they still could.

The Mimic ships weaved across the battle space and closed with different members of the Paladin fleet. As part of plan Dark Gamble, they launched their grappling hooks onto the vessels to drag them away from the combat zone—left alone, the Mind Refurb ships would have never been able to outrun the inertialess drives of the Link. A few Banthar helped out as well, towing one Mind Refurb each.

“Wendlyn, can my Void Warriors get a lift?” Jain asked

“Of course,” she replied.

The Hang Gliders fired grappling hooks at the Void Warriors in turn, and steered them away from the battle at high speed. Medeia materialized as well to accept her own ride.

Jain didn’t need any help. His Devastator was fast enough.

He turned his attention to the planet.

“Xander, match my time rate to Eric’s,” Jain said. “And loop in Jason as well.”

Time accelerated, and external reality ground to a halt.

“Eric, Jason, are you there?” Jain asked.

“I’m here,” Jason replied.

“Me too,” Eric said. “Barely. Signal strength is really low.”

“That’s because we’re withdrawing.” Jain glanced at his tactical display, and saw that all of the Banthar were also retreating. “Your Accomps are leaving as well… the order was fleet wide.”

“I heard,” Eric said. “Tanis talked to me a moment ago. Asked how close I was.”

“How close are you?” Jain said.

“I can’t just snap my fingers and suddenly I’m hacked into an alien computer system,” Eric said. “Even though I have all the specs and protocols at my fingertips, it’s hard work tracking down vulnerabilities. I’ve been trying everything. Bit by bit, I’ve been breaking through. But I need more time.”

“How much?” Jain asked.

“I don’t know,” Eric replied. “Fifteen to twenty minutes would be great. Aren’t you guys supposed to be launching repeater beacons at this point, as per the plan?”

“We’ll be leaving repeater beacons behind during the retreat, yes, but I’m not sure how long they’ll last,” Jain said. “In fact, looks like the Banthar are launching repeaters at this very moment, according to my display.” Though it was hard to tell, given external reality was frozen. “But either way, the Link will no doubt systemically shoot them down when the rest of us are gone. If you can bring us that homeworld, now is the time…”

“I’ll do my best,” Eric said.

“Wish I was down there with you guys,” Jain said.

“Ha,” Jason said. “No you don’t.”

“Probably not,” Jain agreed. “Best of luck to you both.”

“And you as well,” Eric said.

5

Eric resided inside the virtual sandbox environment he’d created for this particular Zanefyne operating system. There were four major realtime operating systems the Zanefyne liked to use, and this one used the least documented OS, by design. Which meant he had to do a lot of interpolating and experimenting.

He was surrounded by three-dimensional screens that mimicked the programming environment the Zanefyne used to develop their software. Ordinarily the Zanefyne utilized a mind-machine interface to get their programming done, either that or they relied upon AIs to do it. Most of their programming languages were extremely high level, essentially abstracted to the point where the Zanefyne could think instructions similar to “create a form; populate it with name, age and city; save the data.”

Unfortunately, Eric couldn’t rely on any of those high level languages. It would have been great to give an instruction sequence like “create a virus capable of infiltrating all the nodes of the planet-wide neural network; launch it; take control of the planet.” No, the programming he was forced to utilized was similar to an old Earth programming language called C. Occasionally he had to add native code subroutines written in the Zanefyne machine language equivalent, and that could get pretty messy.

So far, he had managed to attain administrator access to the local data center, but not the entire planet. The AI fought him every step of the way, constantly attempting to repeal his access, while he struggled to stay one step ahead of it. At the same time he was trying to develop a virus that would spread to the other data centers and give him access to the entire world. If he could do that, he could shut down the AI entirely.

He glanced at his external camera feed. He was still in the spherical vault, crouched next to the interface pedestal. Behind him, the Bolt Eaters struggled to defend against more of the machines that had appeared in the corridor beyond the entrance. They took cover behind the bodies of other enemy robots they’d piled near the opening. Apparently another invisible Zanefyne had attacked as well, which was why two of those bodies belonged to members of the team—Hicks and Marlborough had fallen taking down the alien.

All of them seemed motionless at the moment, of course, as he operated at close to his highest maximum time sense while he hacked the data center. Ordinarily, operating at such a high time sense would have severely drained the battery of the android in question, but because his consciousness was located on Banthar Prime and not inside the android, he experienced no drain.

The AI core of this planet had a processor as powerful as his own, and even at this high speed, it processed hundreds of cycles during each perceived second. That was good, because it allowed Eric to gauge his progress while still keeping external time extremely slow.

Though only a short time had passed since he had interfaced, according to his accelerated time sense, weeks had passed for him. That was weeks without a moment of rest. He had taken a few fifteen minute “smoke breaks” every now and then, but he felt no more rested at the end, nor did those breaks give him the eureka moments he sometimes experienced as a human when he stepped away from his computer. He hadn’t slept either, of course. Not that he really needed to, though the mental fatigue of it was beginning to get to him.

As he stepped through his latest set of changes in the debugger, he accidentally tripped the audio communications interface, unmuting the AI.

“You will not succeed,” a deep metallic voice said. “I am the Infinite.”

Eric had had to endure the droning of that AI for hours earlier before he’d figured out how to mute it. In the end he’d written custom code to do it. He pulled up the necessary routine, and was about to execute it when the AI spoke again.

“Don’t mute me, I have something important to tell you,” the Infinite said.

Eric hesitated. Then: “Go ahead.”

“The Link is willing to welcome the Banthar back into the fold,” the AI said. “We will waive the bioweapon contribution requirement. And reduce your gross tax rate to ten percent.”

“You’re going to reduce our taxes?” Eric asked mockingly. “How nice of you. But you do know, allies don’t really tax each other as part of the terms of their alliance…”

“It is a small contribution required for the upkeep of the empire,” the AI said. “The membership benefits far outweigh the price. Think of the tax as a membership fee.”

“Benefits…” Eric said. “As in, you won’t attack us. You Link are just a bunch of bullies. I never liked bullies. You’re like mob bosses running the neighborhood and demanding protection fees from all the shops.”

“You simplify it,” the Infinite said. “As part of the Link, you are free to trade with all member races. You are free to travel through our territories, and to bid on real estate and mineral rights in all systems under our control. You have the protection of all our members in case a non-member species attacks or otherwise intrudes upon your territory. We also offer business loans at favorable terms, allowing you to fully finance the production of starships or bases with little money down.”

“Favorable terms, huh?” Eric said. “Why do I get the feeling your rates will be close to debt bondage levels?”

“Our rates are very competitive,” the Infinite said. “Especially here on Zanefyne. We offer the lowest rates you’ll find in the Link.”

“You just had to throw in that last bit about Zanefyne rates, didn’t you?” Eric said. “I kind of like that. Promoting your world to the very end.”

“It is not the end,” the Infinite said. “Not for the Zanefyne. But for you. I make this offer only out of courtesy, as I hate to see valuable races wiped out for no reason. There’s still time to salvage this situation. To restore the Banthar to good standing. In fact, I’m even willing to forgive all existing loans the Banthar have with Zanefyne banks, if you will agree to rejoin the Link.”

“Well, that’s great and all,” Eric said. “But you forgot to mention… despite all those wonderful bonuses, and the tiny membership fee you’d be charging us, we also have to send you our space navy whenever you call for it. So all you’re doing is promising to loan money to pay for ships that you’ll eventually use for yourself.”

“That is the cost of protection,” the Infinite said. “Just as we will come to your aid if an alien race invades, you must help us if we are attacked.”

“Which means I have to send ships right away,” Eric said. “Considering you’re at war with the Fresnal.”

“A tenth of your navy is all we would require,” the Infinite said.

“Just a tenth,” Eric said. “Grand of you. So tell me then, what do the Banthar have to do to be welcomed back into the fold as you call it?”

“Turn against the other members you have allied with,” the Infinite said. “Open fire on their vessels. Prevent them from escaping. And abandon your cyberattack.”

Eric smiled, then muted the AI and got back to work.

An alert sounded, and he glanced at the system process list displayed on a screen above his debugger. He had hacked a high enough privilege to view that list, which showed all of the different background processes running in the AI core at the moment. He had it sorted by CPU usage, and a new process had appeared near the top of that list, at twenty-five percent utilization. A fairly high number, given the resources available. Strange.

He examined it, viewing all the internal systems it interacted with, and with some alarm he realized it was a localized kill subroutine.

The Infinite had been trying to distract him so it could erase the local data center, and thus lock him out from the rest of the planet. Eric had enough access to shut down the erasure process, but every time he did so, the AI simply re-launched it.

Damn it. Another fire to put out.

The signal strength with the Banthar ship flashed in the upper right of his HUD. He glanced at it: the signal had dropped precariously, to the red zone.

“We just lost one of the repeater shuttles on the surface,” Bambi told over the comm.

“Jason, talk to me,” Eric said.

“Things are getting a bit rough up here,” Jason said. “If you could hurry it up a bit, that’d be great.”

Eric could have laughed. Hurry up. Yeah.

The fleet was retreating. The data center was attempting to erase itself. And now he’d lost one of the two shuttles that kept his connection going.

Stress times a hundred.

He’d only just returned his attention to the display when his connection strength dropped again. He had one tiny red bar left.

“What the hell is going on up there?” Eric asked.

Jain’s voice came over the comm. It warped digitally. “The repeater beacons we’re launching are being shot down. I’m sorry. Your time is almost up.”

“Damn it,” Eric said. “I’m sending everything I have to Lori and Frogger.” He initiated the transmission.

“Receiving…” Lori said.

“Ditto,” Frogger said. “I guess that means I’m going to be stuck here.”

“Sorry to abandon you like this,” Eric said. “We’ll get you and the War Forgers out as soon as we can.”

“It’s not your fault,” Frogger said. “You couldn’t help the situation in orbit.”

“No,” Eric said. “But I could have worked faster.”

“Maybe I can switch with you, and take over,” Frogger said.

“No,” Eric said. “By the time you’re able to interface, the data center will have succeeded in erasing itself. Your best bet is probably to get out, so that you can fight another day.”

“That’s kind of hard,” Frogger said. “Considering robots have us pinned in here. Think I’ll just play dead with the others. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“I’m sorry about this,” Jason said again.

“It’s all right,” Frogger said. “Though I do have one favor.”

“What’s that?” Eric asked.

“Don’t restore me from my backup until you can confirm I’m really dead,” Frogger replied.

Eric nodded. “You got it.”

He continued working to the very end, until at last his final signal bar dropped, and his consciousness snapped to the next closest remote environment, that of the Bethunia II. He appeared on the deck of the virtual sailing ship. He sighed, and walked to the nearby rails, slumping against them.

“Hello,” Dee said.

“I failed,” Eric said. “I have a mind the size of a planet, and I failed.”

“No one’s perfect,” Dee said.

“I thought I was so great,” Eric said. “Better than everyone else. I thought I was the perfect candidate to install that virus. But I just… I couldn’t do it.” He shut his eyes. “What a humbling experience.”

“You need experiences like these, now and again,” Dee said. “Otherwise, you’d believe yourself invincible. And you’d become a tyrant.”

“Probably already am a tyrant,” Eric said. “At least to the Banthar people. But I’ve kept them away from the empire, so that’s something. Then again, who can say whether they wouldn’t be better off under the auspices of the Link?”

“The great unanswered questions of the universe…” Dee said.

Eric frowned. “That sounds like a canned response. Sometimes the limits of your programming are really obvious.”

“I’d be insulted if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ve purposely limited my programming…” Dee retorted.

Eric focused on the tactical display. His time sense was still operating close to the maximum, with the external environment frozen; none of the objects on his display moved.

“Let’s see what we can do here in space to secure our retreat…” he said.

6

Jason fought in Cataphract form, as did the other War Forger clones beside him. The buildings around them were reduced mostly to rubble: they had to keep switching positions as the skyscrapers were worn down. The remaining repeater shuttle lay battered on the ground beside him. He wasn’t sure why he was protecting it: Eric would have lost his connection a while ago, when the fleet lost contact. He supposed he was hoping that the fleet would find a way to come back into range. Probably wouldn’t happen.

Frogger was still inside the data center beneath them, but he’d switched to radio silence, wanting the Zanefyne to believe him dead. Whether or not it would work, Jason didn’t know.

Tumblers flowed over the ruins of the skyscrapers, and crossed the pit to attack the four Cataphracts from all sides. Quadrupeds also traveled in their midst; Jason and the others gave the robots a higher targeting priority, as the plasma beams the Quadrupeds wielded caused more damage than the bioweapons.

Jason and the other Cataphracts had thoroughly drained their power cells—they couldn’t teleport, use their shields, activate jumpjets, or turn invisible. Their weapons were close to overheating. In fact, most of Jason’s weapons had already overheated, multiple times, and he had only just begun firing again—in the interim, he’d been using his sword to terminate enemies.

While he targeted the latest mechs to join the Tumblers in the ring of skyscrapers, a large spherical flyer swooped from overhead and unleashed energy beams at him. The beams drilled into his head.

Jason swung his shield skyward and intercepted the attack, but that left him open to the bioweapons and Quadrupeds on the ruined ground in front of him. Tentacles slammed into his hull, attempting to bind him. Plasma beams dissolved blast craters in his hull.

Keeping his shield directed skyward, he leaped forward, landing on two of the closer Quadrupeds, crushing them out of existence. Two more ahead were within striking distance of his sword, so he struck down with the blade and destroyed them. The final two were within range of his weapons, so he unleashed the plasma beam from his hip and tail at the same time, taking them both.

Meanwhile John had leaped his Cataphract into the air, retracting his sword to pull the flyer out of the sky. Julian and Jerry fired at two more flyers that had appeared overhead.

Maeran, Iris, and Cheyanne also fought beside Jason, keeping the bioweapons at bay, seeming like children next to the Cataphracts. Maeran unleashed her spit attack as he watched, gluing several Tumblers to the ground before they could reach Jason.

Some kind of net struck Jason from behind. The far edges wrapped around his body, but he sliced down with his sword as fast as he was able, and cut through it.

But then two more nets came, from both his left and right flanks, and he was unable to counter them in time.

The nets wrapped around his arms and legs, but were too weak to restrain him. He spun toward the right, searching for the source of the net attacks and saw that the sky was filling with flyers overhead.

Those flyers launched nets in rapid succession, striking all of the Cataphracts, along with Maeran, Iris, and Cheyanne. The combined effect of all those carbon fiber cables wrapping around their bodies slowly bogged them down. Jason flung his sword, striking at the closest flyer, and his servomotors were in complaint, unable to traverse their full range of motions.

More nets came in, along with debilitating energy beam shots, and in moments he could no longer move. He toppled toward the ground, and he hit hard, rumbling the street around him. The nearest bioweapons were launched into the air a few meters from the impact.

More machines came forward, and these issued lightning attacks into his weapon systems, disabling them. They also disabled his teleporter, jumpjets, repair swarms, and energy shield in their selective attacks. His invisibility system remained active, but it was essentially useless at the moment anyway.

“Uh, I think we’re in deep doodoo,” Lori said.

“No shit,” Sophie said.

Smaller flyers grabbed hooks at the edges of the nets, and lifted them to the main craft overhead. Soon Jason was hoisted into the air, his weight shared between ten different flyers, and he was carried from the ruin. On his rear view feed, he saw John, Julian, and Jerry similarly carried, as were Maeran, Iris and Cheyanne to the left and right.

“Broadcast distress signals on all frequencies,” Jason said.

“Broadcasting…” Julian said.

“You think they got Frogger?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know,” Jason replied. “Lori, these flyers are probably under the direct control of the planet’s AI.”

“I know, you want me to hack in,” Lori said.

“Any of us could do it,” Sophie said. “Now that we’re sharing her mind. We essentially are her. Just as she is us.”

“I think I’d rather trust her to do it,” Aria said.

“Well, I got some news,” Lori said. “It’s not going to work.”

Jason was about to ask why, but then suddenly he knew, since he shared her mind.

But Jerry didn’t.

“Why not?” Jerry asked over the comm channel. “The progress Eric sent you doesn’t help?”

“No,” Lori answered. “His code is designed to be executed once you already have access, such as through the manual interface in that data center. Even though I 3D-printed specialized attachments before the mission to give me access to their comm protocols, these flyer bad boys are locked up. I can’t get into any of their systems. I also tried with the quadrupeds. No good. The only way this is going to work is if I can get access to a manual interface somewhere.”

The prisoners were carried over the skyscrapers for ten minutes, until they reached what Jason thought was an urban area at first. But looking down, he realized huge metal doors had been carved into the ground. It was some kind of underground base.

Those doors slid open slowly, and then the nets that held Jason suddenly dissolved. He plunged, waving his arms, and fell into a tight shaft. He hit the ground, sending up a shudder along the walls.

He tried to stand, but then another Cataphract fell on top of him, pinning him. Two more landed inside, along with the mechs of Maeran, Iris, and Cheyanne—whose wings were clipped—and then the metal doors overhead shut, plunging them into darkness.

“That kinda hurt,” Jerry said.

“Anyone else claustrophobic?” Maeran asked.

“You lived under a mountain for the past fifty years,” Cheyanne said. “How can you be claustrophobic?”

Jason activated his LIDAR so that he could see, and the silhouettes of the mechs crushing him from above came into view.

“You know, if we decombine, we’ll have more room,” Jason said. “Let’s start with those on top.”

One by one the mechs decombined, until all of the Cataphracts had reverted to their constituent mechs. There was more room, yes, but only because they were able to fill up all the available surface area on the metal floor. They still essentially abutted right up against one another, however.

“Feel like I’m standing in a crowded subway car,” Sophie said.

“Now what do we do?” Xin asked.

“Scan the walls,” Jason said. “Look for any ways out. Or access points for Lori to interface with.”

“I still have my micro machines,” Sophie said.

“We all do,” Sophie 2 agreed.

“Send them exploring,” Jason said.

The Sophies launched their micro machines skyward, and they landed on the walls and began climbing.

“Speaking of access points,” Jason said. “Are you detecting any remote interfaces, Lori?”

“Not anymore,” Lori said. “When we were in the city above, the flyers showed up on my Zanefyne attachment, and the occasional WiFi equivalent from the buildings below, but now I’m getting nothing. I guess they designed it to be a Faraday cage of sorts.”

“Sort of like my ass,” Jerry said.

“Huh?” Aria 5 said.

“Never mind, bad joke,” Jerry said. “See, we’re in prison now. So you’re going to get ass jokes from us Jason clones. Expect to hear things like we’re wearing steel underwear, and so forth, to protect against the bad things that happen to your ass in prison.”

“Okay.” Aria 5 sounded unimpressed.

Jason was busy turning around, aiming his LIDAR between the mechs at the different walls.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” Tara said. “These walls are smooth as glass. No interfaces. Not even a crack for a panel.”

“What about the doors overhead,” Jason said, looking up. “We can probably pry them open.”

“Yeah, if we could reach them,” Julian said. “Even if we formed a ladder in Cataphract form, we’d never reach it. And with our jumpjets disabled…”

“It’s too bad we don’t have any working long range weapons,” Tara said. “I mean, I have my sword, but that’s not going to work.”

Cheyanne aimed her swords at the ceiling, and fired them. The weapons rose, decelerating, but fell short of touching the locking doors. They plunged back down, and she positioned her arms so that the blades reinserted when their hilts hit her.

“Am I the only one with an inactive repair swarm?” Lori said.

“They’ve knocked out all of our repair swarms,” Jason said. “We won’t be fixing our weapons any time soon.”

“They disable our repair swarms, but not Sophie’s micro machines,” Lori said. “Their incompetence is unbelievable.”

“Maybe they weren’t aware we still had them,” Sophie said. “The micro machines merge with us in Cataphract form, after all, essentially joining with our hulls as part of the Combination process.”

“Maybe we can climb these walls,” Iris said, maneuvering her mech past Maeran and Cheyanne. She placed her insect-like legs on the surface, but was unable to find purchase, and her metal feet slipped. “Hm. Not going to work.”

“Sophie, did your micro machines or those of your clones find anything?” he asked.

“No, but we’ve instructed them to begin eating at the metal doors above,” Sophie said. “If they can chew their way through, I can send them exploring.”

Jason considered for a moment. “Can you repurpose some of them to act as repair units?”

She paused. “I believe we can.”

“Good, then send a good portion down here and have them work on fixing up our mechs,” he said. “If I had my energy cannon working again, I could probably cut through those doors a lot faster.”

“You got it,” she said.

Jason had the War Forgers and their clones perform a quick damage assessment. Most of the damage to the alien black box components powering their weapons and abilities seemed to be superficial: the power connectors and actuators had been sawed away, leaving the actual weapons still intact. That was a mistake on the part of the Zanefyne. Or perhaps the aliens simply wanted to salvage the technology for study themselves. Either way, it meant those weapons and abilities would be readily repairable, even if the War Forgers didn’t have the specs on the actual black box components.

The micro machines began to drop down from the ceiling, pelting the mechs like hail. They crawled into the vents in Jason’s hull, and got to work. Other machines began repairing the adjacent units.

“I want your micro machines to work on my teleporter first,” Tara said. “Fix the power connectors and directional actuators… if we can get it online, maybe I’ll be able to teleport through those doors and get us out.”

“Maybe so,” Jason agreed.

“But we’re stuck here in the meantime,” Lori said.

“It seems that way,” Jason told her. “Continue broadcasting distress signals on all bands.”

“You think it will get through these thick walls?” Aria asked.

“There’s a chance,” Jason replied.

“Hopefully we get out of here before the planet’s AI decides what it wants to do with us,” Xin said.

“It’s going to use us as hostages I bet,” John said.

“That depends on whether or not the fleet gets away,” Jerry said. “They don’t need hostages if there’s no Alliance.”

“Then let’s just hope the Alliance makes it through this,” Sophie said.

7

Jain and the Alliance fleet made good time away from the pursuing Link vessels. Wendlyn and her Tyrnari Hang Gliders still towed the Void Warriors, while the Mimics and Banthar dragged the Paladins. None of them could activate their rift beams, thanks to the Vaernastian jamming vessels somewhere in the system, but the goal for now was only to put some distance between themselves and the enemy. Perhaps they would gather at a more advantageous location, such as closer to the system’s sun, where they could pit the forces of nature against their foe with some strategic planning. At certain depths, the Tyrnari plasma beams could cause coronal eruptions, for example.

Assuming the Alliance could get close enough to the sun to use those beams…

Ahead, groups of ships were still coming in from the far sides of the system; when they fell within range, they engaged, but the retreating Alliance vessels outnumbered them and easily destroyed the attackers. Still, usually at least one or two Alliance members were lost in the attacks. The enemy was slowly whittling them down.

But then:

“I’m detecting multiple rifts activating around the fleet,” Xander said. “Ships are jumping in. Multiple classes.”

Jain glanced at his tactical display.

“Oh, shit,” Gavin said. “Who was it that argued the Link were at their weakest before all of this began?”

“That would be me,” Jain said quietly.

Red dots appeared all around the retreating Alliance fleet, hemming them in from all sides in three dimensions.

“How is this possible?” Mark said. “They’re jumping in with such precision…”

“Endpoint tracking beacons,” Sheila said. “No doubt the earlier vessels that jumped randomly into the system dropped off the beacons as soon as they arrived in the system. And now they’re using those beacons to coordinate an attack against us, from quite literally all angles.”

“Three hundred and sixty degrees of death,” Gavin said.

Cranston bared his teeth in a grim smile. “I welcome them. Because you see, I have some death of my own to deal.”

“I plan to bring down a few before I die,” Mark said.

Tanis spoke over the main comm band: “We’re going to continue on our current trajectory, and perform a flyby, cutting through their ranks. It’s going to be messy, but we can do it. Banthar, Mimics, Tyrnari, continue dragging your respective Mind Refurbs. We’re going to need speed to break through. Mind Refurbs, prepare to open fire: we’re not going to sit idle during the flyby.”

Jain positioned himself in front of the Tyrnari that was dragging Sheila. He told himself he was never going to give anyone under his command special treatment, but he cared too much about her not to do this.

A wall of Buckyballs was just ahead and they opened fire, sending plasma beams in every direction. Jain weaved to and fro, instinctively avoiding those beams, but the Hang Glider that had Sheila didn’t react in time and took a hit. The blow wasn’t debilitating, thankfully, and it maintained its speed.

One of those shots came in at an angle and struck Sheila, but the Wheelbarrow’s energy shield activated, protecting her.

Not for the first time, Jain found himself wishing that she had migrated her AI core to a more powerful vessel. He’d asked her about it a few times, but she always told him she couldn’t do it, that it would be like swapping out the body she was born with for another.

“If I don’t even feel comfortable changing my avatar,” she had said. “How do you expect me to change my ship?”

“But professional gamers change their avatars all the time,” he’d told her. “In fact, in the old days, people were stuck with whatever avatars the graphic designers and game developers came up with. They couldn’t digitize their own faces into the game.”

“Yes,” she said. “But that’s different. The avatars we have here in our virtual home represent our sense of self. Just as these ships do. I’ve grown accustomed to the Wheelbarrow, and I can’t see myself piloting anything else. This is me. It’s who I am. And I’m comfortable with it.”

“Even if changing to a more powerful warship might mean the difference between life or death?” he pressed.

She looked into his eyes. “Will it make you feel better if I work on upgrading my shield?”

“Immensely,” he said.

She smiled patiently. “Consider it done.”

And so she had upgraded her shields, which also required a complete overhaul of her reactors. That was why her force field was still active after so many hits. Without those upgrades, she would have been out of the game a long time ago.

All of those thoughts flashed through his mind in a heartbeat, and he was drawn back to the present moment as the Buckyballs fired again. He fired his blobs, taking out three of them, and carved a path through their ranks for the Tyrnari and Sheila.

As he passed through them, a string of Teleporters materialized almost directly in front of him.

He dove, initiating zig-zag evasions, and felt stings inside of him as the enemy ships teleported bombs across his decks. He fired blobs and skirmishers, exhausting the latter inventory. His termites were still constructing new skirmishers from the raw metals stocks he had aboard. He did have a few specialized stealth skirmishers on the Devastator, but those weren’t to be wasted on mere boarding operations.

He swerved upward when he was past the Teleporters, and rejoined Sheila and the Tyrnari.

Four Trees awaited in front of him. They launched their energy whips at him, and he weaved up and down. The Tyrnari did the same; Sheila tried to match its course so as not to put too much strain on the cord that held the Wheelbarrow to the vessel, but she was restricted by Newtonian Physics, and wasn’t really able to keep up. The cord alternately swayed up, and then down, growing taut each time.

One of the whips came in and struck the grappling hook, breaking away the Wheelbarrow. Jain quickly reversed course and launched his own grappling hook, and when Sheila was secure, he accelerated upward, away from the elliptical plane, to pass over the Trees. He unleashed a few blobs to distract them, and the enemy vessels phased out to avoid them. When they were phased out like that, they couldn’t launch those energy whips of theirs, which was a plus.

And then, just like that, there were no more opponents. He and the Alliance members had made it past the enemy, and completed their flyby. They continued toward the system’s sun.

He took a quick inventory of this Void Warriors, and was relieved to see that everyone had made it. He also checked the Bolt Eaters; all of them were also present, their AI cores embedded in Banthar vessels, save for Brontosaurus, whose ship had been taken out above the Zanefyne homeworld.

“That was a bit rougher than I’d hoped,” Tanis said over the comm. “Hang in there.”

“Are Human commanders always so talkative during battle?” Hephaestus asked.

“Talkative?” Jacobs said. “He’s one of the quietest commanders I’ve worked under. And we’re Mind Refurbs, not humans.”

“To us, it is the same,” Hephaestus said. “You think of us all as Mimics, don’t you? Rather than gestation and machine variants?”

“I see your point,” Jacobs said.

“I’m detecting another rift ahead,” Xander said. “More vessels jumping in.”

“More endpoint tracking beacons,” Medeia said. “They really don’t want to let us get away.”

“We’re going to have to make another flyby,” Tanis said.

“Every flyby we make, we lose more of our numbers,” Risilan said. “It’s like we’re being raked across the coals, to quote a human cliché.”

“Nothing we can do,” Tanis said. “I have a feeling they’re going to keep sending in waves at us, until we either surrender, or there are none of us left. And since we’re not going to do the former…”

Jain stared at the tactical display, and shook his head. We’re probably not going to make it out of this one.

He glanced at the Void Warriors seated at their stations around him. They were all giving him forlorn looks, like they knew they were all doomed.

He forced a smile. He had to remain strong now, of all times. “We’ll find way. We always do.”

Cranston gritted his teeth. Gavin nodded. Mark merely blinked a few times. Medeia bowed her head. And Sheila offered him her sweetest smile.

Sheila. What would I do without you?

He was going to find out, shortly.

But the loss would be blissfully brief, because he’d follow her into doom shortly thereafter, he was sure.

* * *

Frogger opened his eyes.

Earlier, when the other Bolt Eaters lost signal and fell like puppets whose strings had been cut, Frogger had played dead. He’d dropped to the ground alongside the others, deactivated his radio, and switched to lower power mode. When the enemy robots came, prodding them with electrical spikes, he’d decided to perform a complete shutdown to protect his AI core from those voltage spikes—if he had been operational when the electricity came in, he would have very likely burned out his neural network. Plus, shutting down was the safest way to play dead.

He’d set a timer to wake him in half an hour, and it had just gone off.

He was on some sort of chair. On the chair across from him, Bambi’s android was staring at him with glassy eyes. The back of her head had been completely removed. Behind her, a metal arm hung down from the ceiling, tipped by five telescoping fingers, which were currently applying pressure to different points inside of Bambi’s open skull cavity. Several wires lined that arm, trailing away to the ceiling, where the arm was connected to a track.

The telescoping fingers retracted for a moment, then pressed into her neural network again. Bambi’s features twitched in sudden pain as those probing fingers activated different actuators responsible for facial muscles. It was a disturbing sight, actually.

Frogger felt a pressure on the back of his own skull, then, and for a moment he was terrified that his brain case had been similarly cut open.

He pulled away, and was relieved he could still move—he wasn’t restrained physically, or by software. He turned toward the pressure he had felt, and saw another arm hanging from the ceiling. It had five telescoping fingers as well, and one of them glowed green at the tip. A puff of smoke wafted in front of him, and he smelled something burning. Looking down, he saw a black hole in his uniform—the source of the smoke. That green tip was a laser.

Frogger quickly slid off the chair. The arm reacted, and that big hand tried to grab him. Frogger upped his time sense and servomotor output, and easily dodged it, rolling to the floor.

He reactivated his pain sense, which he’d turned off for the previous battle, and the back of his head throbbed, as did his upper chest. Still lying on the floor, he felt the rear portion of his skull, and realized he had a long gash there—the arm had been attempting to cut open his mind, like Bambi.

The big arm reached toward him. It moved so slowly it was almost comical.

That was one of the plus sides of having his consciousness inside of a humanoid android versus a Cicada war machine: the android was a lot faster.

Frogger rolled to the side and grabbed onto the arm. He squeezed his fists, tearing into the metal, and pulled, trying to break it free, but the material proved too tough even for his enhanced strength. He did damage whatever actuators the arm used, however, because it was unable to bend toward him after that.

Other arms in the room, however, were coming toward him. There were five other chairs, containing the bodies of other abandoned Bolt Eaters, with an equal number of arms hanging from tracks in the ceiling.

He dodged those arms, and scanned the walls, searching for an exit. He saw amorphous blobs observing from behind a window. He couldn’t tell from their body language if they were alarmed, or curious, but when a klaxon sounded a moment later, he figured it was the former.

His rifle sat on a table next to the window, along with the rifles of the five teammates here with him. Their harnesses were present too, replete with grenades. And their jetpacks.

Still operating at high speed, he evaded the arms and went to the table. He grabbed one of the rifles and then spun to open fire at the robotic appendages in turn. The plasma bursts melted the lower halves of the arms, disabling them.

He returned his time sense to normal to give his battery a chance to regenerate. He returned the rifle to the table to pull on a harness. He chose the one with the most grenades still intact and tried to pull it on. Too tight—must have been Crusher’s or Bambi’s. He adjusted the straps, loosening it, and tried again. This time he was able to shrug it on entirely.

Then he scooped up three rifles, sliding two over his shoulder by the straps, and carrying the third in his hand. He donned a jetpack, choosing one with the greatest amount of fuel remaining and then went to the far side of the room, where spiral etches in the wall seemed to indicate a sealed door or hatch of some kind.

The door didn’t open of course, so he aimed his rifle at it and fired several times. The plasma turned the metal red hot, then white, and as he continued to fire, eventually a hole appeared, expanding to little over half the size of the door. Good enough for him to pass through.

He waited a moment for the molten metal around the ragged edges to solidify. It wouldn’t do for a superheated glob of slag to drip down onto his back just as he crossed through.

He crouched and peered past the opening with his rifle, scanning both sides of the hall outside. Then he lifted one leg over the bottom edge of the gap he’d melted, slid his upper body underneath the top portion, and then brought his final leg over.

In the hall, the klaxon sounded even louder. The small blue lines that glowed in the walls flashed rapidly, almost hypnotically, like the strobe lights of some retro nightclub. He altered his reality perception to filter out those flashes so that it seemed like the hall was bathed in a steady stream of light.

That’s better.

The hall was big enough for three humans or androids to walk abreast, and tall enough so that he had about a meter before his head brushed the ceiling. Ample room for fighting.

Something smashed into his chest and he hurled into the far wall. His impact caused a dent in the metal surface.

He fired his plasma beam in front of him, hitting the body shield of an invisible Zanefyne. He saw the outline of one of those deadly talons before the form winked out. It probably could have killed him with that talon, as had happened to Trap’s android during the previous encounter, but apparently the creature wanted to capture Frogger alive.

Must be one of the computer scientists.

He backed away quickly, and dents appeared in the wall where he had just stood. He launched an energy grenade into the apparently empty hallway in front of him.

The alien was momentarily silhouetted; it looked like a beach ball with several long segmented fingers stretched in front of it—the talons. It was dragging itself forward with them.

He turned to throw another grenade in the opposite direction. It detonated without illuminating anything.

At least that way is clear.

He backed down the empty hall calmly, continuing to toss grenades at the creature, illuminating it each time.

Finally, the Zanefyne became visible. It emitted a sound that was half screeching, and half hiss.

A voice echoed from the corridor. “Do not kill me. Please.”

Frogger cocked his head. “Then give me your invisibility device.”

“It will not work for you,” the alien said.

“Give it to me anyway,” Frogger said.

The alien paused.

A screeching voice came over the hidden speaker system. It likely belonged to the Infinite, the planet’s AI, who was no doubt trying to convince the alien not to listen to Frogger.

The alien hesitated a moment longer, then one of those talons grabbed a small device attached to a belt at the base of the blob. It tossed it toward Frogger.

He caught it, and stowed it on his harness. He knew a few military scientists who would love to take a look at it.

The alien shifted sideways as if trying to see past Frogger—at least that’s how he would read the movement in a human—and Frogger had the sudden sense that something was approaching him from behind.

He spun around and fired his rifle down the hall. Sure enough, another alien form materialized.

This one carried what looked like a portable cannon of some kind. He threw himself to the floor. Just in time, too, because an energy blast traveled down the hall.

The first alien had lunged toward Frogger from behind, intending to strike him with those claws, but that energy blast plowed right into the creature, and threw it backward. It landed on the ground, quivering for a moment, and didn’t get up.

Frogger upped his time sense and dove behind the body before the other could attack again. The room he had started in was nearby. He considered his options, and then tossed a grenade over the dead body. When it detonated, he made a run for that door, diving through the opening. The energy beam struck the door behind him, partially enlarging the gap.

He restored his time sense to normal, and went to the observation window. He fired into the glass, melting it away. Then he pulled himself through into the next room.

The Zanefyne had evacuated, leaving behind empty tables and stations.

“You’ll never escape,” the Infinite said. “I am everywhere.”

“Maybe I don’t want to escape,” Frogger said. “Did you ever think of that?”

The door across from him swiveled open, but no one stood there. Frogger threw two grenades at the door, and then dove to the floor.

The creature with the cannon was illuminated. It tracked him with that cannon. Frogger continued rolling as the beam ate into the floor behind him, and he threw several more grenades, until the Zanefyne’s shield failed, and it materialized.

Frogger dodged the beam again, moving far faster than the organic could, and then leaped toward the alien, passing within its angle of fire. He activated the bayonet extension of his rifle and stabbed the Zanefyne while firing at the same time. The plasma beam drilled a hole into its body, and the alien collapsed.

Frogger rolled away and pried the big energy cannon loose from the body. He searched it, looking for a way to fire the weapon, but there was nothing obvious. Probably biometrically coded to the creatures.

On a whim, he tried the attachment Lori had handed out before the mission. It was a small device she had 3D-printed to emulate the wireless protocol the Zanefyne used for their internet equivalent. When he saw two entries show up on the list of available connections, he upped his time sense to the max, and grinned widely.

Those entries had to be for the cannon, and the cloaking device.

He tried to access each one, but got an access denied message, of course.

He pulled up the data Eric had sent him, and sifted through the zero day exploits his mind twin had come up with, looking to see if any were applicable. Even if not, he had no doubt his methods would give him ideas to try.

But it was time to involve his partner in crime.

He logged out of this world, and into his local virtual reality.

He appeared in the studio apartment he had created for himself, modeled after the suite he had lived in when he was human.

Molly was seated in the den, in front of an array of flat-screen monitors resting on a U-shaped desk.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You’re late tonight, hun.”

“Got tied up at work.” He kissed her on the top of the head. “Got a treat for you, though.”

“Oh?” she said.

He set down the virtual representation of the cannon and shield generator on the U-shaped desk, producing loud thuds. “I’ve got us some fresh alien tech to hack tonight.”

She glanced up at him with an eager glint to her eye.

Ah, this is why I love her so much.

Even if she exists only in my head.

8

Jason stood on the bottom of the holding cell. The micro machines of the Sophies had finished repairs to most of their weapon systems, and nearly all the War Forgers and their clones had weapons back online, but despite their combined firepower, the tech proved useless against the walls of the prison.

“The walls and ceiling seem to be coated with a thin force field that only activates when a shot is detected,” Aria said. “Dispersing the energy of each hit.”

“What about the ceiling?” Sophie said. “My micro machines are able to eat through the doors there without activating that force field.”

To emphasize her point, she gestured toward the fine metal dust that dropped from the ceiling like the sawdust produced by carpenter ants.

“I’m operating them in grinding mode,” Sophie said. “They’re not using their nano lasers, and thus aren’t triggering whatever technology is monitoring the surface.”

“So that means eventually your micro machines will eat through,” Aria said.

Sophie nodded. “Eventually.” She glanced up. “Though at this rate, could be a few weeks.”

Jason gazed at the ceiling. The micro machines had made some progress on those doors, but still hadn’t been able to devour their way through to the other side.

Tara shifted beside him, clanging into his unit.

“The micro machines just finished repairing the power feeds to my teleporter,” Tara said.

“Do you want to try teleporting through the rooftop?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m not sure what to expect up there. I should probably wait until the other Taras are ready to join me.”

The other three Taras were repaired shortly thereafter, since they had suffered similar minor damage to their devices.

When they announced their readiness, Tara glanced at the ceiling. “Okay, here goes.”

Nothing happened.

“Hm,” she said.

Still nothing.

“It’s not working,” she said.

“For me, neither,” Tara 2 said.

Tara 5 looked up, and then shook her head. “Didn’t work.”

Tara 6 nodded. “I got nothing.”

“Maybe the aliens caused more damage to your teleporters than you realize,” Xin said. “And it will take more than repairing a few power feed wires.”

“I don’t think so,” Tara 5 said. “All systems are in the green for me. Here, I’ll prove it to you.”

She disappeared, only to reappear directly underneath the doors overhead. She fell down, and dropped onto Xin with a resounding clang.

“Gah!” Xin said, pushing her off. “Okay, I see your point.”

“I’ve tried upping the teleport distance farther above the doors, to my maximum teleport range, but I still can’t do it,” Tara said. “It’s almost like they’ve moved something on top of those doors after closing them. The equivalent of a giant boulder or something. Or maybe they landed one of their ships on top. Either way, it’s preventing us from teleporting through. Because of course, our systems prevent us from teleporting into solid matter. Which would be bad.”

Jason nodded. “That would also explain why it’s taking so long for the Sophies’ termites to eat through… too thick.”

“The contents of the metal are another reason,” Maeran said. “The micro machines seem to be having difficulty grinding through, at least in my opinion.”

“No, you’re right,” Sophie said. “They’re making slow, but steady progress.”

“We could accelerate external time,” Lori said. “And speed things up a bit. Or maybe slow everything down instead, and use whatever time we have left to hang out in VR or something, and try to forget about all this.”

“Hang out in VR at a time like this?” Iris said. “I certainly couldn’t do it. I’m too tense. I’d be worried about what might happen to my body, even if I had my Accomp monitoring the external situation, ready to pull me out at a moment’s notice.”

“We could accelerate our time sense to the max so reality grinds to a halt,” Lori said. “That way you wouldn’t have to worry about anything untoward happening, at least until we dropped back to normal time. Assuming we didn’t stay for too long.”

“No, Iris is right,” Jason said. “I’m hardly in the mood for VR at the moment. We’re in prison on an alien planet. This is not a game. We might not be making it out of this.”

“Which is why we should try to live our lives to the fullest while we still can!” Lori said. “If we have a few hours left, we can turn that into weeks at maximum time sense.”

“And drain our batteries to zero?” Aria said. “No thanks.”

“I’d rather spend the time trying to get out of here,” Jason said.

“I agree with that,” John said. “We can’t let ourselves waste away in VR, not while we’re still able to fight. There has to be a way to shut down the force field that protects the wall, or to outsmart it somehow, so we can cut our way out of here. Maybe in conjunction with the micro machines.”

“Or you can let me get you out,” a new voice came over the comm.

“Who’s that?” Xin said quickly.

Jason thought he recognized it, but before he could say anything, Aria spoke.

“I’ve got a pattern match on the voice,” Aria said. “It’s a Bolt Eater. Either Eric, or most likely, Frogger.”

“Good guess,” Frogger said over the comm. “Though not a difficult one, I suppose, given I’m the only other Mind Refurb who could be on the planet with you.”

“You survived!” Cheyanne said excitedly.

“I did,” Frogger said. “And I’m here to save the day, as always.”

“He’s speaking to us over the Zanefyne wireless protocol,” Aria said. “From a source somewhere in this room. Our Zanefyne attachments automatically rerouted it to our comm centers.”

“Yeah, that’s a feature Lori programmed in,” Frogger said.

“You’re welcome!” Lori commented.

“You have a way to get us out, you say?” Jason asked.

“I believe so,” Frogger replied.

“Where are you?” Jason pressed.

“None of you are vocalizing your words externally, are you?” Frogger said.

“No,” Jason said. “We’re talking only over the comm line. We don’t want the planet’s AI listening in.”

“We should switch up our encryption keys anyway, just in case,” Frogger said. “As Aria mentioned, I’m having to route comms through the local wireless system, so the AI is reading our streams even now. I’m kind of worried it might crack our encryption scheme. So I’m sending a new batch of higher bit keys.”

Jason received the higher bit encryption keys, ran a virus scan, and then distributed the set to the team. Then he applied the new key.

“War Forgers, sync up,” Jason said.

He watched the sync indicators turn green in rapid succession, indicating that they’d all successfully rejoined the comm line with the new keys.

“I read you,” Frogger said.

“Good, so where are you?” Jason asked again.

“Just outside, actually,” Frogger answered. “There’s a tunnel next to your cell. That’s where I am.”

“How did you reach us without raising the alarm?” Julian said.

“I’m invisible,” Frogger told him.

“Ah,” Julian said. “How did you find us? You detected our distress signals?”

“Not exactly,” Frogger said. “But it wasn’t hard. The map Queen Risilan gave us has all the internment facilities marked. And there was only one big enough nearby to hold you guys. After I arrived here, I hacked into the local camera equivalents of the biggest holding cell, and lo and behold, who did I find? So anyway, I need you guys to take me to the next closest data center, twenty klicks to the north, so we can complete the mission. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Jason said. “Taking control of this planet is the only way we’re getting off this world alive.”

“I was hoping you’d realize that,” Frogger said. “I’m marking the waypoint on the map, just in case you don’t know where it is.”

Jason received the map highlight request, and accepted. He glanced at his overhead map and saw the data center indicated.

“Do your teleporter units still work, by the way?” Frogger asked.

Tara was the one who answered. “Our teleporters work, yes.”

“Perfect,” Frogger said. “Basically this will be a rerun of the last insertion operation, except I’m the only one inserting.”

“I love me my reruns,” Lori said.

“So, the Zanefyne have parked a ship on top of here, so you can’t get out that way,” Frogger explained. “But—”

“I knew it!” Tara interrupted.

“But there’s actually a fairly large door near the base of your holding cell,” Frogger continued. “The opening should fit all of you. The tunnel beyond will fit you, too… it’s basically a trench that leads to the surface. As far as I can tell, they use it as an alternative access to the holding cell.”

“Is there resistance?” Jason asked.

“A few quadruped robots are in here,” Frogger said. “Nothing you can’t handle. It’ll be worse on the surface. You can expect bioweapons and alien mechs to converge upon the area as soon as you emerge. It will be a fight to reach the data center.”

“We didn’t expect it to be a cakewalk,” John said.

“It’s just too bad you all can’t become invisible,” Frogger said.

“I can!” Lori exclaimed.

“Yeah, but you can’t teleport,” Frogger said.

Jason nodded. They couldn’t all turn invisible, or teleport, because the alien tech involved was still a black box to them. The only reason the Lori clones could become invisible as well was because they utilized black box tech purloined from Bokerov’s fallen bases, which Bokerov had taken from alien robots he’d captured on Earth. The rest of humanity didn’t understand the tech either: the starships that could cloak among the Mind Refurbs, such as Medeia’s Arcane, for example, also used stolen alien tech. Aria had tried to reverse engineer some of that captured technology, but had ended up destroying it.

“How are you going to open the doors to the tunnel?” Aria asked.

“Again, more localized hacking,” Frogger said.

“But how did you hack them?” Lori asked.

“I used the wireless attachments you yourself printed up for me,” Frogger replied. “You know, the ones specifically designed for Zanefyne technology?”

“But there are no remote interfaces in here!” Lori said.

“I’ve got remote interfaces in the tunnel out here,” Frogger said. “I’m guessing conditions in your cell are similar to a Faraday cage, which would explain why I didn’t receive your distress signals, and why I had to reroute our conversation over the local system.”

“That would be a good guess,” Jason said. “So when were you planning on letting us out?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Frogger said. “Remember, as soon as I open this door, you’ll have to destroy a few quadrupeds. And the fighting will only get worse when you reach the surface. By all measures, it’s going to be harder than it was before. But I suspect none of you will be deterred.”

“We will fight,” Jason said.

“That’s what I thought,” Frogger said. “Are you ready? I’m highlighting the location of the door on your displays.”

Jason received the highlight request, and accepted. A bright green rectangle appeared on the base of the wall to his right.

“Sophies, recall your micro machines,” Jason said.

From the ceiling, micro machines began dropping. They flew, converging on the locations of the different Sophies. Other micro machines, those still involved in repairing the damage to the mechs, took flight from around Jason and similarly returned to the Highlanders that launched them.

In moments, the micro machines had all clambered inside the small vents that lined the chest and arms of the different Sophies.

When the recall was done, Jason pointed his energy cannon at the digital rectangle on the wall.

“Open the door,” Jason said. “The War Forgers are ready to do battle.”

9

Frogger jerked forward, smashing into the hard surface directly in front of him. Then he was flung backward, hitting the opposite wall. He crashed into a shelf, and broke one of the doors. Grenades, replacement parts, and other miscellanea fell down on him. The weapons strapped to him fell away, and he had to scoop them up.

“Sorry about that,” Tara said.

She had granted him access to her external camera, so he was able to watch the events unfolding outside from within her storage compartment. She was swinging her sword to hack through the latest group of bioweapons that had cut off the War Forgers and their clones. One of them had slammed its tentacles into her, and shoved her to the ground before she was able to hack them away.

“It’s understandable,” Frogger said.

He had considered traveling alongside them, using his newfound invisibility technology, but he’d have to hop inside Tara anyway when it came time to teleport, so he figured it would be easier just to hitch a ride now.

He was beginning to regret that.

Not only because the trip would have been more comfortable, but he felt useless in here. Just as he’d felt in the initial shuttle ride to the first data center. He had an alien energy cannon at his disposal now. He could be firing at the enemy, and mowing them down in waves.

Well, Jason and his particular clones had energy cannons, too, and it wasn’t really helping them all that much. Plus, he’d give his position away if he fired that cannon. The aliens would be able to track down his rough position, and they’d lay waste to the entire area hoping to strike him. Yes, firing that cannon would defeat his invisibility.

He grudgingly admitted to himself that it was probably better to stay inside.

And then he was smashed into the side of the storage compartment.

“Sorry,” Tara said.

“You don’t have to keep saying that,” he told her.

“All right,” she said.

And he was flung directly upward, hitting the ceiling—Tara had made a flying leap slashing attack against a quadruped, cutting open its head from above.

He slammed into the floor, but this time he got smart and activated his magnetic mounts. It was a slight drain on his battery, but he decided it wasn’t worth it to continue allowing his body to flail about.

He clung there for a while, confirming to himself that his battery levels weren’t dropping too severely. He wanted to be able to operate at his highest time sense for as long as possible once he reached the access point at the heart of the data center. He’d need battery power for that.

We’re going to get through this, Molly.

He was jerked again, and the energy cannon bounced against the jetpack he wore. He’d fashioned a makeshift strap for that cannon using a cloth loop from one of the rifles—which he’d abandoned—and it hung down over his back like a bazooka, just above the jetpack. Sophie had refilled that pack, incidentally, topping it up with jet fuel for the mission ahead.

The War Forgers and their clones hadn’t combined, not yet—they wanted to use the cover of the taller buildings to keep them out of the line of fire of the alien flyers that were quickly converging on the area.

He closed his eyes and sighed as the hull rumbled around him once more. All of the other units would be trying to protect Tara because of her valuable load, so in theory he was safe no matter how bad it seemed to get out there. Still, he knew there was always the chance that the enemy could get in a lucky shot, sending a plasma beam that would tear right through her storage compartment, or a tentacle might crush that part of her body, or something. Or maybe the War Forgers would lose, and there would be no one left to protect Tara. And him.

Yes, these were the thoughts of a man penned up in a storage compartment during a battle against aliens.

“We’re at the skyscraper ring!” Jason said. “Prepare to teleport!”

Finally.

Still mounted to the floor, Frogger hefted the cannon over his right shoulder, lifting it from where he’d stowed it on his back. He aimed it at the front of the storage compartment.

The energy cannon felt heavy on his shoulder, and he considered leaving it behind for safekeeping in Tara’s storage compartment, but decided it could prove useful in a pinch.

The floor shook like the cabin of a subway car coming to a sudden stop, and he realized she’d teleported past the energy field that protected the skyscraper ring. A glance at his HUD confirmed as much: the signal strength of all the War Forgers and their clones had dropped to zero—their transmissions cut off by the shield. Only the Taras remained.

Human-designed comms didn’t work, but he wondered if the Zanefyne comm protocol would allow transmissions through the energy field instead; he didn’t have time to ponder that, because the compartment’s door fell open in front of him, revealing the conical pit that led to the data center.

“Go!” Tara said.

He accessed the Zanefyne remote interface of the invisibility device strapped to his belt, and activated it, vanishing from all visible bands. The invisibility cloak hid his energy cannon from view along with the rest of his body, and weapons.

He deactivated his magnetic mounts, stood, and leaped outside. He fired a quick burst from his jetpack to cushion his fall—Tara’s storage compartment was located two stories from the ground, after all.

He landed at a run. “I’m out!”

There were no targets blocking his path, but he kept the energy cannon firmly in place on his shoulder as he leaped onto the edge of the smooth conical pit, and slid toward the shed that resided on the terrace below.

Behind him, the Taras opened fire at the different shield generators within the ring of skyscrapers.

He reached the bottom of the conical pit shortly and leaped to his feet. He dashed into the shed, and launched himself into the large black shaft of the grav elevator that had been cut into the ground.

He descended rapidly. That the grav elevator hadn’t activated was a good sign—it meant the AI hadn’t detected him. Either that, or it wanted him to think that. He tossed repeaters onto the wall at intervals during his descent, and the magnetized surfaces automatically attached.

Frogger fired his jetpack to reduce his speed as he neared the bottom, and landed as softly as possible on the circular terrace below.

He knew the Taras had shut down the shield by then, because Lori came on the line.

“You there, Froggy?” she asked.

“Frogger,” he clarified. Though his mouth moved, he produced no external sound of course. Everything was spoken over the comm line.

“But I like Froggy better!” she said.

He sighed, and took the only corridor, planting a repeater at the entrance. As soon as it left his person, the small circular disk became visible against the wall. He was a little worried the AI might detect it, so he kept an eye out for possible camera points in the walls as he advanced. He planned to place the remaining devices out of their line of sight. By his calculations, he had just enough repeaters left to reach the spherical access room.

He continued toward his target.

When he rounded a bend, he encountered one of the four-legged box robots standing in the middle of the corridor. He calculated the extents of its shield, based on the recordings he’d made during the last encounter with these things, and flattened himself against the wall accordingly. He had to lower the energy cannon to his side, and partially remove the jetpack—not enough for it to become visible, thankfully.

Then he began to squeeze past the robot. He kept an eye on the evil-looking plasma turrets that protruded from its top the whole time. He accidentally moved his arm too close to the wall, and the cannon made a soft clang when it touched the surface. The robot immediately swung those turrets toward the wall.

Frogger picked up the pace, and edged past it completely, just as the robot moved toward the wall on those four legs. It examined the surface for a moment, and then turned toward the entrance. It walked away from him, toward the bend.

Frogger continued, hoping the robot didn’t raise an alarm.

He passed two more robots in a similar manner, planting repeaters as he went, and on the final leg to the spherical chamber, he assumed that there was a Zanefyne alien hidden somewhere in the corridor, so he kept his body pressed against the wall the whole way. He inched along, sidestepping the entire time, being careful not to scratch the wall with his energy cannon, rifles, or his jetpack.

“What’s going on down there?” Jason asked. “Have you reached the access point yet?”

“Not yet,” Frogger said.

“Well hurry up!” Jason said. “It’s getting hot up here!”

He smiled grimly. “Doing my best.”

Finally he reached the spherical compartment, and entered, stepping onto the walkway. He lowered himself over the edge, and pulled himself underneath the walkway, latching on with his magnetic mounts. Then he crawled forward until he was just underneath the access pedestal in the center of the room.

He placed the final repeater, and then used his Zanefyne comm protocol attachment to search for remote interfaces in the room. Such interfaces would be accessible only from in here if they existed, for security reasons.

He had a manual access key he could use if this access failed, but he was hoping to go about the cyberattack circumspectly. He figured that the moment he attempted to log in, the AI would know, and it would send robots or any nearby Zanefyne to investigate. If they bumped into his invisible form in front of the pedestal while he was logged in and unaware, the gig was up. But if they couldn’t find him, because he was hanging underneath, and logged in remotely…

An access point appeared on his list of remote interfaces.

“Frogger…” Jason said over the comm.

Frogger switched to his highest time sense. The drain on his power cell wasn’t too severe… he wasn’t moving, after all. But still, it was something to watch. He had about two days of power, at his current perceived time sense. Should be more than enough time for what he needed to do.

He activated the VR sandbox environment Eric had developed for the interface, and then logged into the remote access point. The debugging environment around him filled with data.

“I’m in.” Frogger said.

“Do you need some help?” Lori asked over the comm.

“Nope, I got all the help I need.” Frogger pulled up all of Eric’s findings in one of the displays for reference, and then returned his attention to the debugger.

Molly appeared beside him, and he glanced at her. “Are you ready to work?”

“You know it,” Molly said.

10

Jain stared at the latest group of ships that had appeared ahead.

The Alliance was being worn down. Badly. Vessels kept intercepting them along their retreat course. About half of them were Zanefyne—the V ships with their powerful laser fire, and the Coils employing the particle beams. The remaining half was composed of different ships from the other Link races.

The enemy warships activated rifts to endpoint tracking beacons, allowing them to leap ahead of the party and make an attack run, and then once they passed, they opened another rift to the next beacon to cut them off yet again, giving the Alliance no respite. The Link used a different ship to open the rift every time, ensuring they could keep this up for a very long while. Worst of all, new Link ships kept joining the fray, as those vessels that had jumped in at random locations grew closer.

“More ships,” Sheila said. “They really don’t want to let us get away, do they?”

“No,” Jain agreed. “They’re in this for the long haul.”

“But so are we,” Sheila said.

He could have laughed at that. But the long haul for us probably won’t be very long at all.

He still dragged Sheila’s Wheelbarrow via a grappling hook. Her energy shield had exhausted its charge halfway through the last flyby, and wouldn’t regenerate in time for the next one. Her magnetic mounts had taken damage, forcing Jain to continue dragging her, rather than having her directly attach to his hull.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked her.

“No,” she replied.

“At least you’re honest,” he told her.

“That’s why you love me,” she said.

“I suppose so,” he told her. He glanced at the other Void Warriors on the bridge. They all kept their eyes averted. He smiled slightly, remembering a time when he wouldn’t have been able to show affection for her in front of everyone else. He still felt a little embarrassed, which was why he was thankful none of them were looking at him.

See, nothing bad happened when you admitted your emotions in front of them. You had nothing to fear.

Yes, nothing to fear. If only the emotional drama on the bridge were the least of his worries.

And then the fleet was within firing range. The V ships opened fire. As the longest ranged weapon among the Link crew, they were able to cause the most damage, because the Alliance had to close to within half that range before they could start dealing their own damage.

Jain kept up his evasive maneuvers, not wanting to give the V ships a target. Behind him, Sheila was doing the same in the Wheelbarrow, swerving left and right against the grappling hook that held her to him.

Barbells ahead fired a wave of energy nets, and Jain flew the Devastator up and over them. He released blobs in return, and targeted the closest with his lightning weapon.

A Veriarty Cube abruptly surged forward, flying right past him. It unleashed its laser at point blank range, cutting a groove into his starboard side. It latched onto the Wheelbarrow with a grappling hook of its own, since her energy shield was offline, and pulled at her, so her vessel was experiencing competing sheer forces.

“Jain, let me go!” Sheila said. “I’ll break apart!”

He released his grappling hook and she broke free. The Cube dragged her away.

He reversed course to follow her immediately.

It fired its laser again, striking her hull at point blank range.

“Sheila!” Jain increased his speed.

It fired again.

“I’m all right,” Sheila said. “Someone forgot to tell these Cubes where my vitals are. It’s shooting into my cargo bays. I’m losing all the processed ores for my 3D printers, but hey, otherwise none the worse for wear.”

Jain unleashed several blob attacks, but the Cube darted out of the way, dragging Sheila with it. He launched skirmishers as well, and some of them made contact, beginning the boarding process.

He continued firing blobs until he exhausted his immediate inventory. He made a ramming run for the Cube, but altered course at the last moment, and cut into the grappling hook instead. His impact severed it, and Sheila broke free.

The Cube fired at him with its laser before making a run for it. He launched a few more skirmishers to harry the vessel, then turned his attention to Sheila.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Never better,” she replied. “But we’re kinda in trouble.”

He glanced at his tactical display. Chasing after her had carried him well way from the rest of the fleet. Enemy vessels approached from all sides to finish them off.

“Xander, how are we doing on the countermeasure repairs?” Jain asked.

“Countermeasures are mostly repaired,” Xander replied. “But it’s the reactor power output that’s the problem. We’re below eighty percent. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“No cloaking for the foreseeable future,” Jain said.

Xander nodded. “Correct.”

Jain launched two more grappling hooks and secured Sheila’s Wheelbarrow.

“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” Jain said.

“All right,” Sheila said.

He set a course for the retreating Alliance fleet, and then accelerated. A wall of enemies was directly ahead. He planned to burst through them. Space was a very big place, with lots of room for maneuvering.

Ahead, several blue dots appeared, coming from behind the approaching Link vessels.

The Void Warriors. They were coming in with Wendlyn and the Tyrnari, who dragged them.

“Guys, you shouldn’t do this,” Jain said.

“Why not?” Mark said. “Wendlyn wanted to turn back, we told her okay. We’re going to show these Link why we’re called the Void Warriors.”

Some of the V ships at the rear of the enemy formation between them began to turn around to target the Void Warriors, while the others kept Jain and Sheila in their sights.

Jain adjusted his angle of attack and drew in his grappling hooks so that Sheila’s extremities were only a few meters from his hull, and thus she was completely shielded from the enemy behind him, even while he zig-zagged. He took glancing blows from those lasers, as did the incoming Tyrnari in front of him.

And then he was within firing range. His power levels had regenerated enough to launch several blobs, and he fired at the closest vessels, taking down the V ships in the front.

A Teleporter appeared in front of him, but Jain was already zig-zagging, so it didn’t take much effort to evade it. He did feel some internal injuries as bombs teleported inside him, but his power output remained stable.

A Tree lashed out with its energy whip, but Jain swerved; the Void Warriors drawn by the Tyrnari Hang Gliders unleashed their raptors, and trimmed the Tree’s root system, causing the vessel to drift away lifelessly.

“Thanks, guys,” Jain said, bursting through the other side of the attackers.

The Tyrnari reversed course rapidly, and the Void Warriors they dragged swung backward.

“Those chains are sure taking abuse,” Sheila commented.

“Forget the chains,” Gavin said. “What about our hulls!”

Gavin unleashed the Hippogriff’s shockwave weapon; trenches in the expanding energy wave allowed Jain and the Tyrnari safe passage, but the pursuing enemy ships were struck head on. Mark fired black holes, and Jain released blobs down the paths he herded the different pursues down.

A rift activated just ahead.

“Damn it, should have guessed they’d place an endpoint beacon here,” Jain said.

From the rift emerged a solid wave of V ships and Coils.

“Ah, shit,” Gavin said.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Jain said.

As he and the Tyrnari spread out, they opened fire, unleashing everything they had at the ships.

Several of the vessels took impacts, but most continue forward unharmed.

Jain zig-zagged frantically, worried about those particle beams smashing into his hull and disabling his AI core, but the ships didn’t fire. Instead, they flew directly past them, and continued toward their pursuers.

“What the…” Sheila said.

The V ships opened fire at the non-Zanefyne vessels among them: Barbells, Trees, Cubes, Teleporters. When the Coils got closer, they unleashed their particle beams, instantly disabling any vessel they targeted.

Ahead, near the Alliance, was the same story. Zanefyne were turning on their Link brethren across the system.

One of the V ships turned back, and a Tyrnari Hang Glider near Jain moved to intercept it.

“Cease firing at all Zanefyne ships,” Jain transmitted fleet-wide. “I repeat, cease firing on all Zanefyne ships.”

The Tyrnari craft slowed down, coming to a halt. When the V ship entered weapons range, the Tyrnari didn’t fire.

Well, at least they listen to me.

“I’m receiving a communication in the Zanefyne protocol from the ship,” Sheila said.

“Can we connect?” Jain asked.

“Sure, just let me run it through my real-time convertor…” She paused. “We’re good.”

“Hello,” a cheerful female voice said. “I’m the Infinite, at your service.”

* * *

Eric was stunned. He recognized the voice playing over the comm from his past.

Molly. His girlfriend, when he had been human.

“Frogger, what have you done?” Eric said. “We were supposed to take control of the AI, not overwrite it!”

“It was the only way,” Frogger said. “The AI attempted to self-erase the data center. Me and Molly weren’t able to keep up. We modified the code you came up with to take over Banthar Prime, and—”

“Wait a second,” Eric said. “I never shared that code with anyone.”

“Er, well, I was able to guess all your security questions a long time ago,” Frogger said. “We are the same person, after all… and I grabbed a copy of the code while I was poking around your internals. That was years ago, though. A long, long time ago. So you don’t need to be pissed. I’m a different person now. I’d never nose around like that these days, and I never did since.”

“Damn it,” Eric said.

“Anyway, we modified the code to work with the Infinite, using the specs Risilan shared,” Frogger said. “Lori gave us some input and helped us tweak the code. We weren’t entirely sure it was going to work, but we were going to get cut off any second, so we decided to take the risk. We injected Molly, and her mind spread like a virus, overwriting the Zanefyne AI, and systematically taking over every system, until, well, here she is.”

“Sweet,” Tread said over the comm. “We Mind Refurbs are like a plague, spreading across the galaxy, replacing enemy AIs with our own. They provide the framework, we provide the consciousness.”

“That has a nice ring to it,” Eagleeye transmitted. “That should be our slogan. ‘You give us da planets, we give you da brains!’”

“Wait, what?” Slate said. “Am I hearing this right? Did you put your virtual girlfriend into a planet? Oh no, hell no! Tell me you didn’t.”

“Uh, yeah, I put Molly in,” Frogger said. “I emptied her entire neural partition into the planet’s core. I was going to install my own mind, but chickened out at the last moment. So, yeah. My girlfriend is a planet now.” He forced a chuckle over the comm.

“Only you would turn your girlfriend into a planet,” Slate said. “You’re a sick man, bro. Sick.”

“Sick as in awesome?” Frogger said.

“Sick as in perverted!” Slate said.

“Hey, I can’t help it if planets turn me on…” Frogger said.

The Zanefyne warships continued to attack the other Link vessels. Those vessels were confused, and seemingly afraid to fire: their attackers belonged to a race that stood so much higher than them in the Link hierarchy. They had to wonder if they’d somehow pissed off the Zanefyne.

No, they didn’t dare fire. Instead, the vessels fled.

“I’m picking up seemingly frantic comm chatter from the Link ships closest to the Zanefyne,” Dee said.

“They’re trying to hail my ships,” Molly said. “I’m not answering them.”

“That’s the way,” Eric said. “Let them wonder.”

The confused Link vessels continued to flee. As more of them were shot down by the Zanefyne, their morale broke. All it took was one Link vessel to activate its rift generator, and the entire Link fleet lit up as similar beams engaged. A minute later the rifts appeared and the vessels began jumping out.

Soon there were none left.

Eric tried to activate his own rift beam, but it failed to take.

“Molly, can you use the Zanefyne probes deployed in the system to tell us where any Vaernastian rift jammers are still located?” he asked.

“Relaying now,” Molly replied. “They’re hidden behind a moon on the far side of the system.”

The coordinates appeared on Eric’s tactical display.

“All right, we’re going to have to send somebody there,” Eric said. “Tanis—”

“I have ships in the area,” Molly said. “Give me a few minutes.”

He glanced at his tactical map. Several Zanefyne vessels were indeed in the vicinity, and they proceeded toward the moon. In about fifteen minutes, they reached the moon and flew to the far side. When the vessels opened fire, the Vaernastians fled in a panic, creating rift gates en masse. A minute later, they’d all jumped out.

Eric smiled. “That’s my girl.”

“My girl,” Frogger clarified over the comm.

11

Jason resided in his log cabin, seated on a couch in the common room. Queen Risilan was with him, along with Lori and Tara.

Frogger was also there, along with Molly. They sat on a couch opposite him.

“So, how does it feel to have you mind inside the neural network of an entire planet?” Tara asked.

“It feels… strange,” she said. “My mind is everywhere at once. I’m inside the thousands of sewer systems, the countless bedrooms, the millions of virtual realities… and yet somehow I’m able to compartmentalize it all, and only focus on one given task at a time, letting my subconscious handle everything else in the background.”

“So you have a subconscious, then?” Risilan asked. “I thought you were merely an autonomous AI.”

“Oh, she was always more than that,” Frogger said. “When she was still with me, I gave her her own partition in my mind so that she essentially operated in a dedicated neural network. She started out as a highly advanced virtual girlfriend simulator, learning to meld her behavior to please me via the latest and greatest deep learning algorithms, but I kept throwing resources at her until she basically became sentient. And now that she’s inside a neural network the size of a planet, she’s evolved by leaps and bounds more.”

“I’ve always wanted to be human,” Molly said. “To have real emotions, and feelings. To be self-aware. I achieved all of these with Frogger, while inside his mind, but now… during the transition, for a moment I felt like I had truly become human, but then that moment passed… I moved beyond human only a few milliseconds later, if that makes sense.”

“It sort of does,” Jason said. “We all started out our lives as neural imprints in an AI network. You started as an advanced deep-learning subroutine. I’ve heard stories of other deep learning AIs achieving consciousness when they were migrated to big enough neural nets, and their algorithms were left to run long enough.”

Molly nodded. Then she sighed. “I can’t help but feel I’m not really real, though. That I’m fake. Because my past is based on someone else. The memories I have of my childhood. Of my teens. Twenties. Stolen from a woman who was not me. Who isn’t even alive anymore.”

“The same could be said of the rest of us,” Frogger told her. “Our memories were stolen from people who aren’t alive as well. We just inserted them into our minds a different way. More directly. Whereas your memories were programmed in by me, based on my own memories, and those the human Molly shared with me.”

“I’m glad to have a new member of the family!” Lori said, resting an arm across Molly’s shoulders.

“She’s not really a War Forger,” Jason said.

“So?” Lori said. “Still part of the family as far as I’m concerned.”

“She’s a Bolt Eater,” Frogger said. “At least, I’d like her to be.”

She paused, but then shook her head. “I don’t think I can belong to the Bolt Eaters. Not when I inhabit a planet. I am allied with the Bolt Eaters, yes, and all Mind Refurbs and those who have made peace with them, but I am my own entity, now.”

Frogger nodded. “I guess that means we’re not a couple anymore.”

“We’ll always be a couple,” she said, reaching out to hold his hand.

Frogger regarded her fondly, then leaned forward to plant a kiss on her lips.

“They’re so cute!” Lori said.

Frogger released Molly, his face turning crimson.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Jason said.

“That’s right,” Lori said. “We’re all in relationships here.”

Molly glanced at her. “He was never much for PDA.”

Lori’s features scrunched up. “PD what?”

“Public Displays of Affection,” Molly explained. “Probably a term from before your time.”

Lori nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Frogger nodded. “I’ve never kissed her in front of anybody before. It took me the longest time to admit to the team that my girl was based on a virtual girlfriend subroutine, and even then I still kept her mostly locked away in my penthouse suite.”

Jason nodded. “It’s like guys who buy sex dolls or fembots. Even when they’re indistinguishable from actual humans, they still mostly keep them cloistered up at home, embarrassed to bring them out in public, as if doing so is admitting that there is something wrong with them.”

“That’s because there is!” Tara quipped.

“Seriously, you can always tell when a dude has a fembot out with him in public,” Lori said. “Because usually the woman is far too beautiful for the guy. Like way out of his league, and acting too subservient to him, you know what I mean? Like he dresses like a slob, and has this beauty at his arm, you know?”

“I’ve never actually believed in leagues,” Frogger said. “But I do agree that if you dress like a slob, you won’t be attracting any type of women.”

“Yeah, if he was rich or something, then that would make sense,” Lori said. “Wearing rich clothes.”

“Actually, I used to know a rich professional gamer,” Jason said. “He’d only date fembots. He wasn’t shy about bringing them out in public, either, mostly because people believed they were real, given his fame, and money. He preferred them to real women, because as he said, ‘when I grow tired of them, I can just buy a new one, and I don’t have to worry about the old one suing me.’”

“No kidding,” Frogger said. “Sounds like the way to go, if you got the dough.” He glanced at Molly. “Little rhyme for you there.”

“That professional gamer wasn’t named Jason, by the way, was he?” Tara asked with a wicked grin.

Jason gave her a pointed look. “No.”

“I’ve owned several sex robots,” Risilan declared. “But I wouldn’t bring them out with me in public. I see no need. What happens in someone’s bedroom should stay there.”

“And what if you married an alien?” Jason said. “Would you bring it out in public with you?”

Tara gave him an odd look, and then she glanced at Risilan.

The queen seemed taken off guard by the question, and she shrugged. “If he was inside a suitable android, I would.”

“So you’d make him into something he wasn’t?” Jason pressed.

Risilan seemed unperturbed. “By marrying me, he would become a Tyrnari. So he wouldn’t really be made into something he wasn’t. The android body would only reflect the external appearance of what this alien had become on the inside. Besides, wearing an android body would only ease his welcome among the people, and make his public appearances more comfortable for him.”

Jason gazed at her, and then sighed.

“Why do I sense a hidden subtext going on between you two?” Tara said.

Risilan merely shrugged.

“That’s because there is a hidden subtext,” Lori said with a giggle.

Tara glanced at her. “What do you know?”

“Nothing,” she said.

She really didn’t know anything, and was merely playing around, Jason suspected. He didn’t care. Let them speculate.

An alarm sounded, and a flashing box appeared in the center of the table.

“Well, that’s the signal,” Jason said. “Come on then, it’s time to meet the president.”

* * *

Jain and the twenty surviving Mimic vessels hovered above the president’s palace on the Zanefyne homeworld. That palace was a skyscraper made entirely of glass.

“The Zanefyne president believes in transparency, apparently,” Eric commented.

“Apparently so,” Jain agreed.

The different floors of the building interior were empty. Jain spotted what seemed to be alien offices—cubicles with half-circle desks and dome-shaped holes in the floor in front of them, no doubt to hold the round, bulbous shapes of Zanefyne—but otherwise no aliens.

An army of Tumblers and Zanefyne mechs were packed into the surrounding streets, their numbers stretching as far as the eye could see. More alien robots were on the rooftops, and different floors of the surrounding skyscrapers, ready to open fire at his command. The War Forgers and their clones were dispersed among their ranks.

“Has the president responded to our hail yet?” Jain asked.

“Negative,” Xander replied. “I’ve sent the request in the different Zanefyne protocols, and in five of their main languages, but have yet to receive a reply.”

According to Molly, the president was holed up in a bunker beneath the palace. It operated independently of the main AI, unfortunately.

“Well, let’s see if a few lightning attacks change his mind,” Jain said. “Hephaestus, let’s get some lightning attacks targeting the base of the skyscraper.”

They’d fired a few experimental shots earlier to gauge the effects on the skyscraper. The lightning had caused a localized power failure, and melted some glass, but otherwise the palace was mostly unharmed.

Twenty lightning bolts fired almost simultaneously.

“Whoa!” Jain said. “I said some lightning attacks, not all.”

“Sorry,” Hephaestus replied.

The bottom of the building was severely weakened, with much of the glass there having liquefied. The building tilted precariously to the right.

Jain shifted his position until he was bolstering the building with the Devastator, and holding it upright. He felt the strain on his engines.

“Engine efficiency is down to seventy percent,” Xander said.

“I feel it,” Jain said. “How’s the structural integrity of this building?”

“Kind of bad, actually,” Xander said. “You’re the only thing keeping it up.”

“Tell the president it’s time to evacuate, if he wants to live,” Jain said.

“Actually, Zaneer is hailing us,” Xander said. “So you can tell him yourself.”

Zaneer was the name of the president, or at least the closest translation of his name into modern English, according to Risilan.

“Well, that’s good then,” Jain said. “Sort of. Put him through.”

The voice only indicator activated on his HUD.

“Hello, president of Zanefyne,” Jain said. “My name is Jain Sagan. I’m a representative of the MHTBA, or Mimic-Human-Tyrnari-Banthar Alliance.”

He heard screeching and hissing over the comm, and then the translation engine Xander had come up with kicked in. “What have you done?”

“We’ve conquered you, is what we’ve done,” Tanis said. “Not a good feeling, is it? Maybe you should have thought about that before you signed onto the order to attack Earth.”

“We’re the ones who petitioned the empire to attack Earth!” the president said. “We knew this would happen! But the others were slow to act, and dragged their feet, and now look at what has happened!”

“You know, now that he’s admitted that, it only makes me like this dude even less,” Eric said. “I say we fry him. Molly can assign her own president.”

“I thought we agreed we didn’t want a puppet president?” Molly said over the private band, which excluded the Zanefyne president.

“Yeah well, look at all the trouble I had on Banthar Prime when I tried to run with the existing Ruling Council,” Eric replied over the same channel. “Insurrection city. But I haven’t had any problems since I assigned my own council.”

“Something to definitely consider,” Jain said. He switched to the public channel. “If you agree to surrender unconditionally, we will spare your life. You will be allowed to continue in your existing office, and—”

“Continue?” Zaneer said. “What’s there to continue? We’re ruined. There’s no going back for my people now. The other founding members will think we joined you of our own volition. You had our ships turn on other members in the middle of the battle! Even if we try to refute it, while some might believe us, others will run a smear campaign to ruin us. Lesser races have been vying for our coveted spot in the Hierarchy for centuries now. And they will do whatever they can to seize it. We will be declared traitors. When another race takes our spot, the first order they give will be to gather the space navies, and descend upon our system to destroy us. Our planet will be converted into a bioweapons faculty. You’ve doomed us all.”

“No,” Jain said. “We’ve saved you. See, we’re starting our own galactic empire here, one capable of defeating the Link. And we’re looking for a few new members. I heard you were in need of protection. We’ve got room for more. The MHTBA needs a Z in it.”

The president didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally: “No, I can’t. It goes against everything I believe in. Everything I’ve fought for all my life. My people would not be where they are today without the Link. I can’t just turn my back on them.”

Jason laughed. “But you just said the Link would destroy you! And now you’re too indebted to them to turn your back on them? Man, you’re such a bad liar. We all know what you’re trying to do… trying to negotiate some better deal with us, maybe hoping for some more autonomy. But this isn’t a negotiation, bro. You’ll have to deal with whatever autonomy we decide you get.”

The president didn’t have anything to say to that.

“My companion is right, you have no choice,” Risilan said. “If you will not surrender, we will replace you with another. Your planet is ours, now. By rights, we should destroy it. But unlike the Link, we believe in giving those we conquer the chance at redemption. Your planet is far more useful to us as is, with a robust space-faring economy capable of producing one hundred warships a year. To allow your world to be destroyed, transformed into a bioweapons manufacturing facility, would be a travesty. But that is what would happen if we did not defend you. Which is why you will be replaced if you will not yield.”

“Will you give us control of our AI core back?” the Zanefyne president asked.

“Probably not,” Eric said. “Molly’s quite happy where she is right now, thank you. Though if she changes her mind when we’ve subdued the rest of the Link, then I suppose we can consider your request.”

“I probably won’t change my mind,” Molly said. “I feel more alive now than ever.”

“There you go,” Eric said.

Jain withdrew the Devastator slightly, allowing the skyscraper to lean a little farther to the left. The creak and moan of metal was no doubt heard in the bunker underneath the building. Or at the very least, the vibrations were felt.

“Okay,” the president said. “All right. I agree to your terms. Unconditional surrender. I will remain at my post. And our Infinite is your puppet.”

“Not our puppet,” Jain said. “But her own person. Just like your Infinite was. Except instead of having your best interests in mind, Molly has ours.”

“And my own,” Molly said.

“Of course,” Jain said.

“Oh, before I forget,” Eric said. “While we were fighting earlier, the original Infinite promised to set us up with business loans on favorable terms so that we could rebuild our space navy. I’d like to take it up on that offer. However, I’d like an interest rate of zero, please.”

“Impossible!” the president said.

“Accepted,” Molly said.

“Thank you,” Eric told her.

Jain could almost imagine the president fuming in his bunker.

“Well then, pleasure doing business with you,” Eric said. “I’ll let my Accomp here handle the terms of those loans.”

Jain nodded. “Mr. President, we have a Zanefyne shuttle waiting at the base of the skyscraper. Please evacuate your bunker at your earliest convenience, and enter that shuttle so we can set you up in a new palace. I’m afraid this building won’t last for much longer. Molly, Jason, please clear the surrounding streets.”

The War Forgers, Tumblers, and Zanefyne robots retreated from the skyscraper.

Jain waited until he got confirmation that the president had entered the shuttle with his retinue, and then he released the building. The skyscraper broke apart before it hit the ground, sending up a huge cloud of dust that swallowed the street. He heard the incredible thud of the constituent pieces smashing into the ground, but could see nothing through the smoke plume.

“And so topples another Link species,” Jain commented.

12

Eric supervised the repairs to the Banthar ships. Similar repairs were ongoing across the Alliance fleet, including its newest members, the Zanefyne. The War Forgers and their clones also had a lot of damage to repair. Molly gave all of the Alliance members access to the huge stock of processed ores the Zanefyne kept, and she also opened up the asteroid mines in case more were needed.

With Molly’s help, they secured the release of the captured androids from the Zanefyne, and the Bolt Eaters took them aboard their various ships. Hicks, Marlborough, Traps, Slate and Eagleeye had a lot of repairs to initiate on their androids, but they planned to have them up and running by the next battle.

Brontosaurus, and other Mind Refurbs lost in the battle, were restored from backups. Eric placed Brontosaurus into the AI core of one of the Banthar vessels, overwriting the existing neural program. Brontosaurus wasn’t too happy to learn that he had died.

“I can’t believe my Accomp messed up while I was down on the surface,” Brontosaurus complained. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to trust it in command of my ship ever again. I should have transferred my consciousness into my android like Frogger.”

“That’s definitely your decision to make,” Eric told him in the VR environment of his apartment suite. All the Bolt Eaters had gathered there for Brontosaurus’ waking. “Especially considering the upgrades our androids are getting.”

Now that the Zanefyne were conquered, Molly had access to all of their data, including that of their highly classified weapons systems. She had shared the coveted low power shield generation technology that Eric and the Bolt Eaters were wanting, along with the invisibility shield/force field combination that Frogger had recovered while on the planet. In the next mission, the Bolt Eaters were all going to be invisible.

“We’re all going to be like a bunch of Predators,” Mickey agreed in the virtual environment.

“Predators?” Slate said. “Well, yeah. That’s what we are. We prey upon alien bitches.”

“No, I mean, like in the movie,” Mickey said.

“Oh no,” Slate said. “Not you and your twenty-first century crap again.”

“Actually, technically, Predator came out in the twentieth century,” Mickey said.

“Even better,” Slate said. His voice jumped in pitch as he imitated Mickey. “Hey everyone, let me brag about my obsolescence!”

“You gotta work on those imitations of yours,” Eagleeye said. “You do know that you can alter the pitch of your voice to sound like any of us, right?”

Slate spoke again, this time his voice sounding exactly like Eagleeye’s. “Hey guys! My name’s Eagleeye. Though I should probably change that name to Mickey’s Bitch, because, well, that’s what I am!”

“I don’t know how we’ve been able to put up with you for the past hundred years,” Bambi said. “Oh wait, I do. We crammed your AI into a starship and sent you roaming across the galaxy. Too bad you decided to return.”

Slate shrugged. “I knew you all missed me, so of course I had to come back, Baby. Let’s go to the bedroom?”

Eric raised a hand, but before he could say anything, Slate winked at him.

“I’m just joking boss!” Slate said. “You know I’d never touch your Bambi.” He gave Bambi an evil grin. “Or would I?”

Bambi shrugged. “You’re welcome to try. Though I doubt there’d be very much left of your android if you did. Or your ship.”

Slate rolled his eyes. “Empty threats, as always.”

Eric glanced at Frogger, who was sitting by himself in the corner. He had been uncharacteristically quiet all evening.

“So, you lost Molly,” Eric told Frogger.

Frogger looked up. “No. I’ve set her free. I always knew she could never reach her full potential, full development, while constrained inside my neural core. But I was selfish. Too afraid to let her go. And you know what? I’m happier now than ever before. She’s so ebullient. So joyful, whenever I see her. Sure, she has the burden of an entire planet on her shoulders, but you’d never tell by talking to her.”

“Your relationship is going to evolve into the long distance sort,” Eric said. “When we leave this system behind.”

“Maybe,” Frogger said. “But then again, I figured I’d just use some of our Banthar tech to keep a tiny rift open here at all times, which, along with judicious use of repeaters, would ensure I’m always in realtime communications range. When I log into VR to look for her, it will be like nothing has changed.”

“I hope you’re right,” Eric said.

Frogger shrugged. “We’ll make it work. Somehow. Just like you’re doing with your girlfriends. You’re on Banthar Prime at this moment, whereas they’re here, in the Zanefyne system. And you’re not having any issues with your relationship.”

“Speaking of relationships…” Crusher snuggled against Eric. “Can we call it a night?”

Bambi gave him a subtle nod as well.

“All right, guys, Brontosaurus is officially welcomed back,” Eric said. “Brontosaurus?”

“I’m welcomed,” Brontosaurus agreed.

“Good,” Eric said. “This VR session is now officially closed.”

Before anyone could protest, he logged everyone out, save for Bambi and Crusher.

“Man, I love that,” Crusher said. “Gone are the days of the persistent, unwanted house guests who could never take the hint to leave.”

“I love it, too,” Eric said.

He led Bambi and Crusher to his virtual bedroom and shut the door.

* * *

Jain resided on the virtual bridge. He was overseeing repairs of himself and the Void Warriors, when he received a comm ping.

“It’s Tanis,” Xander said.

“I see that,” Jain said. “Accept.”

Tanis’ hologram appeared. “Hello.” He glanced at the Void Warriors. “Can we switch to private?”

Jain shrugged. “Sure.” He muted the others. “What’s on your mind?”

“President Wilcox called,” Tanis said. “He wants to press the attack.”

Jain nodded. “That’s good.”

“Is it?” Tanis said. “You saw how unexpected the Link resistance became. They were fetching ships from pockets of space we didn’t even know existed. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier.”

Jain considered for a moment. “Well, we do have a hundred more ships to add to our ranks, now that the Zanefyne have joined us.”

“While this is true, I have a feeling the Link will do everything in their power to prevent us from taking the next world,” Tanis said. “They might even withdraw from the Fresnal front lines.”

“You think so?” Jain asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tanis replied. “But it’s what I would do if I was faced with a threat such as ourselves. An enemy race intent on tearing my empire apart from within. Also, what if they try to attack Earth again?”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Jain said. “But it wouldn’t do them any good at this point. We’d simply return with all of our allies. The same goes for an attack against any of the Alliance homeworlds.”

“They might attempt to split up our forces, by attacking multiple homeworlds at once,” Tanis said.

Jain nodded. “That’s a tactic they’ve used against us before, yes. It worked to some degree for them, so it’s possible they’d try again.”

“We’ve also considered using that same tactic against the Link as well,” Tanis said.

“I guess we’ll just have to see what happens in the coming days,” Jain said. “Though you have to admit, that if we strike soon, like President Wilcox wants, we don’t give the Link time to come up with a counter strategy.”

“I’ll give you that,” Tanis said. “I guess I can’t help but feel that we should quit now, while we’re ahead. So far we’ve won our battles not because of superior numbers, but because of the valor and skill of a small few.”

“But most wars are like that these days,” Jain said. “Battles of attrition are almost a thing of the past.”

“Almost,” Tanis said. “But not quite. My question to you is, what do we do if that small few fails? As nearly happened the last time?”

Jain shook his head. “Then we lose. But at least we tried. And we won’t know what we’re capable of unless we do. The Link won’t be wiped out on its own. We have to do it. If we don’t handle them now, a hundred years from now they’ll return, stronger than ever before, with the technology of the newly conquered Fresnal incorporated into their vessels, and they will win, I guarantee you.”

“Something to consider,” Tanis agreed. “Thank you for the little pep talk. I suppose I needed it.”

“Anytime,” Jain said.

Tanis was about to disconnect when Xander spoke.

“I’m detecting a rift,” Xander said. “Several Mapi Trees have jumped into the system.”

“Looks like it’s time to muster the fleet for the next battle,” Tanis said.

“Wait,” Xander said. “I’m receiving a hail.” The dark robed Accomp looked up in astonishment. “The Mapi wish to negotiate the terms of their membership.”

“The terms of their membership?” Jain said. “With who? The Link?’

“No,” Xander said. “They’d like to join our empire.”

* * *

Jason had invited the others to use his home VR environment as the negotiating platform. He had set up a large conference table in front of the mountain lake, and sat with Eric, Hephaestus, Jain, Jacobs, Jhagan, Molly, Risilan, and Tanis. Zaneer was also present, but he participated in observational mode only—Molly didn’t want to risk him ruining the negotiations.

There were two other female Mind Refurbs present, whom Tanis had named Greta and Lisa: the negotiators. The two had kept mostly silent so far. Jason expected them to take over when it came time to hammer out the details of the actual treaty the Mapi would eventually sign.

Across from them were the true-to-life avatars of the Mapi representatives. They looked very much like the starships they piloted: these big, branching structures of wood looming on the other side of the table. Apparently the Mapi were sentient plants of some kind. Sap flowed through their bodies instead of blood, and bark coated their exteriors instead of skin. Their multitudinous appendages were covered in blue and purple needles—leaves. Those leaves shed from their arms when they moved them. Whether the same shedding occurred so easily in real life, or was an artifact of the VR environment, Jason couldn’t say. He certainly hadn’t programed leaves to fall so easily in this environment.

After the introductions:

“We peace, you,” the center tree said, a Mapi that had identified itself as Dwight, oddly enough.

Jain glanced upward and spoke to the air. “Xander, when are you going to have the quirks worked out of the translation engine?”

The Void Warrior leader must have received a response, because he shook his head and returned his attention to Dwight.

“We would like peace as well,” Tanis said.

“What terms, you?” Dwight asked.

“We wouldn’t ask much of you,” Tanis replied. “The big one is we’d want your ships available to fight when we call upon you. Not much different than the terms of the Link. In exchange, we’d offer protection. If ever you were attacked by aggressors, we’d send ships in from all our races to protect you against attack.”

“No bioweapon, quota?” Dwight said.

“We don’t have a bioweapon provision, no,” Tanis said. “We use robots and mechs as our ground forces. But we might potentially open up a bioweapon division at some point, since we have so many subject matter experts available now, from the Banthar, Tyrnari, Zanefyne, and now yourselves.”

“We may keep our weapons technology to ourselves?” the Mapi beside Dwight, named Zinc, said.

“Ah,” Tanis said. “We’re not like the Link, where technology is hoarded from other races. Information flows freely among our alliance. If you join, we’ll expect you to share the details of your offensive and defensive technology with us. We’ll be sharing ours with you in turn.”

Zinc didn’t answer, and Jason wasn’t sure whether to interpret that as an approval, or objection.

Lisa leaned forward and spoke over Channel B, a private comm channel that excluded the Mapi. “If they don’t share their weapons tech with you, is that a deal breaker?

“No, I suppose not,” Tanis said.

“Then I’ll add that as a ‘want’ on our side,” Lisa said. “Rather than a must have. Something for us to work out with them later.”

“All right,” Tanis said.

“Also,” Jain said over the same private channel. “We should probably stop referring to ourselves as an alliance. An alliance implies something temporary… a group of space-faring nations joining together to fight a common enemy, and then dispersing when that foe is destroyed. We’re aiming for something longer-lasting here, I believe. We intend to destroy the Link Empire, and replace it with a peace-keeping consortium of our own. Let’s call it for what it is: an empire.”

Tanis nodded. “President Wilcox already hinted at this. I suppose we might as well make it official. I’ll have to contact him to confirm, of course, but if he approves, then our six races will become the de facto founding members.”

“We also have to approve,” Hephaestus said. He glanced at Risilan. “I was under the impression that the Tyrnari only planned to stay until the Link were no more, for example.”

“If the terms are favorable, I certainly would consider permanently joining a new empire,” Risilan said. “It makes sense, for protection purposes at the very least. Consider, after the Link Empire is dissolved, those races that were once forced into a fragile peace by the Link will now launch into a free-for-all of wars against one another. We’ll need allies in that time of chaos.”

The discussions continued for some time, with the negotiators taking over almost exclusively near the end. Jason observed until he could no longer stand it, and then he excused himself and logged out.

13

Jain logged out of negotiations shortly after Jason left, and returned to the virtual bridge.

“So, you all heard the news?” Jain asked.

“Yes,” Mark said. “We’re officially an empire.”

“As soon as the president confirms it,” Jain said. “But all the other races have already expressed their interest in making this a long-term thing, so yeah, it’s basically official.”

“So the Mapi are joining,” Mark said. “That’s another M added to our acronym, beside the Mimics. So then, everyone, meet the MHTBZM Alliance. Or should that be MMHTBZ.”

“How about HMMBTZ,” Medeia said. “Pronounced just like that. Hmmbitz.”

“Our empire is going to need a better name,” Sheila said. “We can’t call ourselves the Hmmbitz. That’s meaningless. It’s supposed to conjure fear into the heart of our enemies, and pride in our allies. Hmmbitz just sounds… well, lame.”

“I suppose it doesn’t really work,” Cranston said.

“And calling ourselves something generic like The Alliance isn’t going to work either,” Medeia chimed in. “Not long term. We need something to differentiate ourselves from other alliances out there. Something that stands out, and makes the member races proud to call themselves members, as Sheila said.”

“I like the Void Warrior Empire,” Cranston said.

Jain smiled. “It does have a nice ring to it, but this empire isn’t really ours, not anymore. Besides, I don’t plan to be involved in the day-to-day operations once this is over. We’ll move on to greener pastures.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Medeia said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t suggest a name while we’re still a part of it.”

“I think it’s best if we refrain from making any suggestions, for now,” Jain said. “Less chance that we’ll get attached to this empire. It’s like when you start naming farm animals, you begin to consider them your pets. Makes it hard to eat them.”

“That’s actually kind of a cruel example,” Sheila said. “Considering farmers have been growing standalone meat slabs in their labs for centuries now. No one directly eats animals anymore.”

“Some do,” Jain said. “But I won’t get into that. Anyway, I’m just going to continue calling it the Alliance. And I assume the other members will do the same.”

A few hours later Xander announced: “Tanis wishes to connect.”

“Put him through,” Jain said.

The admiral appeared. “Well, it’s official. We have an empire. President Wilcox approves. The negotiators are hammering out the terms with the other races at this very moment. As far as names go, we’re going with the Alliance Empire for now. You and the Void Warriors are to be considered separate founding entities, and will be given a system of your choice when this is over.”

Jain nodded. “Well that’s certainly appreciated, but I’m not sure we’ll continue to be a part of the empire when this is done.”

“That’s certainly up to you,” Tanis said. “Jason and his War Forgers will get the same choice. Though they are also welcome to return to Earth. As you are.”

“You’re talking as if this is already over,” Medeia said. “But it’s not, not yet. We haven’t defeated the Link. Not by a long shot.”

“No,” Tanis said. “But it feels like we’re close. Already Central Command is deciding which Link homeworld to target next. It’s going to be another founding member, of course. I should hear back more in a few hours. Hopefully negotiations will be completed, by then. I’ll let you know, either way.”

“Can’t wait,” Jain said, and disconnected.

* * *

Jain was relaxing in his private VR with Sheila when he received word from Xander.

“The admiral wishes to connect,” Xander said. “We have our next target.”

Jain connected with the admiral, and received the jump coordinates. “So what’s our target today?”

“The homeworld of the Tarabola,” Tanis said. “According to our data, they’re the next biggest player among the Link, if not the biggest. Risilan tells me they’re the ones responsible for the ongoing war with the Fresnal. The other two founding members of the Link have urged for peace, but the Tarabola always overrule them. If we can defeat the Tarabola, there’s a good chance the other two founding members will surrender unconditionally.”

“So this is the final battle,” Jain said.

“Possibly,” Tanis said. “There’s still a chance that Link races lower on the totem pole will want to continue the fight, or assume the power vacuum left in the wake of the Zanefyne and Tarabola. But I guess we’ll see.”

A few hours later Jain joined the planned attack formation. He and the Void Warriors were on the left side of the fleet, next to the Tyrnari. The Banthar were in the middle, and the Paladins and Mimics on the right side. The Zanefyne ships were split into two groups. Their Coils formed a long line at the front of the combined fleets, next to the Mapi Trees. The Zanefyne V’s, meanwhile, were behind the Banthar, where they planned to remain for the duration of the battle, firing their long-range lasers.

The Zanefyne sent ships ahead to the target system, and those vessels launched endpoint beacons. The Zanefyne used those beacons to open rifts to specific locations above the Tarabola homeworld, and the fleets of the Alliance took those rifts, holding to their existing formation. Jain cloaked the instant before passing through, as did the Mimics and Medeia, as well as other cloakers among the Paladins.

When everyone was through, the Zanefyne collapsed the gates, but left them open a crack. The Zanefyne could enlarge those shrunken gates again, preventing any Vaernastian jammers from blocking their way out.

Eric kept a gate open as well to facilitate the remote control of his vessel the Bethunia II from Banthar Prime, but as far as Jain knew, Eric was unable to enlarge it again.

Molly was also among them, her consciousness remotely controlling a Zanefyne Coil ship through one of the small rifts. She had named her vessel the Mollydook.

Ahead, Jain could see the cheery blue, white and green planet that served as the Tarabola homeworld. From afar, it didn’t appear all that different from Earth.

On the tactical display, several red dots were lined up in front of it. There were roughly three hundred ships, almost the same number of vessels the Alliance had.

The Tarabola ships were shaped like monolith slabs, though slightly curved at the ends like a parabola. They had two classes of vessels. The first, the Archers, had “ripple” weapons: essentially spacetime energy weapons that appeared as concentric rings when fired, forming cylinders of energy that extended for ten thousand kilometers, devastating everything in their path. The cylinders remained active, hovering in deep space, for ten seconds, and while the energy couldn’t be moved after firing, incoming ships still had to avoid touching them unless they wanted to be damaged. The Tarabola themselves would come to a complete stop when they fired, or they would reverse course to avoid hitting their own ripples. They were known to fire their weapons simultaneously, forming thick bars or even walls of energy that were difficult for opposing craft to avoid.

Overall, it was a very dangerous weapon. Thankfully there were only thirty variants of that particular Tarabola class, judging from the thermal signatures Jain’s tactical display showed. Even so, because those spacetime ripples could travel so far, the Alliance was careful to keep their ships spread out above and below the ecliptic plain, with no two vessels aligned, at least within the line of sight of the enemy.

The second class of Tarabola ship, the Plowman, made up the majority of the Tarabola fleet, and was no less dangerous. It was able to generate a large, convex energy dome in front of the vessel capable of absorbing all incoming attacks when active, while at the same time delivering devastating blows to any targets unlucky enough to cross their paths. The preferred tactic of the Plowman was ramming.

The plan called for most of the cloaked Mimics to intermingle among the enemies after the Alliance made its initial flyby, and cause as much damage as they could while remaining undetected for as long as possible. Meanwhile, Jain and a select few Mimics would land on the planet, and deploy teams to infiltrate the AI core.

“You know, it’s kind of handy that the Link founding members are so dependent on central AIs,” Eric had said after learning about the mission. “Makes our job easier.”

“Hacking into this particular core will be far from easy,” Risilan had told him.

After reviewing the planetary map, Jain had understood why.

Xander was currently the only one on the virtual bridge, by virtue of the Devastator’s radio silence.

When the allied fleet reached the sub-ten thousand mark, Jain expected the Tarabola Archers to unleash their ripple weapons.

But they didn’t.

“They’re not firing,” Jain said when thirty seconds had passed.

“No,” Xander said. “Perhaps they’re waiting until we’re closer, and their shots are surer.”

“Maybe.” Jain couldn’t shake the feeling that they had something else up their sleeve. “Do you notice how no other Link member races are here to support them? And none are jumping in?”

“Perhaps they decided to handle us themselves,” Xander said.

“No,” Jain said. “Risilan told us to expect lesser members to provide backup. Something is wrong.”

The Mind Refurb ships began to fire their raptors, which were within range. The energy domes of the Plowman classes lit up, protecting them. Most of the Plowman ships had placed themselves in front of the Archers, and they protected them from the attack.

At the eight thousand kilometer mark, about a thousand kilometers before Jain could fire his lightning weapon, a flash appeared behind the enemy fleet.

“What was that?” Jain asked.

“I’m not sure,” Xander replied. “I’m registering some kind of spacetime shockwave.”

“A shockwave?” Jain said. “Like Gavin’s?”

“Similar,” Xander said. “But there are no gaps in it. At least none I can detect.”

The wavefront was marked on the tactical map. It was moving toward the fleet very fast.

“Are you able to track down the source?” Jain asked, upping his time sense.

“It appears to have issued from the planet itself,” Xander said. “I can’t tell if the actual source is from the surface, or the atmosphere, however.”

There was no way Jain was going to avoid it. It was moving too quickly, expanding too fast. He returned his time sense closer to normal and resisted the urge to reverse course, which would only give away his stealth position early.

The wave came in rapidly, and passed over his drifting vessel. He felt nothing.

“Damage report?” Jain asked.

“Curiously, we have attained no damage.” Xander paused. “However, something strange is happening to the fleet…”

14

Jain glanced at his tactical display. “We’re not moving.”

“No,” Xander agreed. “None of us are.”

He noticed that members of the Alliance had ceased firing weapons as well.

“What the hell?” Jain said. He glanced at his time sense, wondering if he’d accidentally upped it to its maximum setting and slowed down external reality. No. He was operating in normal time.

“I’m going to try firing a blob attack,” Jain said.

“That will reveal our position, if successful,” Xander said.

“I have a feeling it won’t be,” Jain said.

He engaged the firing mechanism.

The port opened, but the blobs didn’t float free.

He tried to fire his lightning weapon next. The plasma channels opened, and the sparks were applied, but the lightning bolt didn’t take.

“Something is very wrong,” Jain said.

“That shockwave has somehow changed the properties of the physical medium surrounding our ships,” Xander said. “My guess is, it’s partially placed us in a higher dimension. We can’t move, nor can we fire any of our weapons, because the space around us no longer exists. At least not from the point of view of our ships.”

“How is that even possible?” Jain said. “That’s something from the realm of magic.”

“Sufficiently advanced technology…” Xander said.

The Tarabola fleet began to close.

“Why didn’t Risilan reveal that these Tarabola had such a weapon?” Jain asked.

“Maybe she didn’t know,” Xander replied. “The Link are known to hoard technology, after all.”

“But it would be pretty hard to hoard, let alone hide, something like this,” Jain said.

The dark-robed Accomp nodded. “Maybe it’s a recent innovation, then.”

Jain wanted to open communications with the rest of the fleet and find out what was going on, but he decided they probably knew just as little as he did. In the end, he decided not to engage comms… remaining hidden offered him the only advantage he had at the moment.

Assuming the Tarabola weren’t able to detect him, given the changes to spacetime they’d made.

The Archers finally began to fire. They’d positioned themselves above the ecliptic plane so that their energy cylinders were able to strike two ships at once with each shot. The impacts drilled through the vessels entirely. They targeted the Alliance indiscriminately, not seeming to care what ship types they hit. Jain noticed that no cloaked vessels were struck. That was a good sign, at least for him.

Still, he felt helpless, constantly worried that his Void Warriors would be next. But thankfully, none of those beams struck them.

The recharge interval on those weapons was five minutes, but that didn’t matter, because the Plowman ship classes closed next. They began ramming into different ships with their energy beams, sometimes destroying them outright, and in other cases, merely severely disabling them. Through Tyrnari, Banthar, Paladin, Zanefyne, and Mapi ranks alike they struck, tearing a path of destruction.

But once again, they skipped the Mimics, confirming that the Tarabola could not target the cloaked ships.

He watched that destruction reign for five minutes, until finally the tactical display began to update once more.

“We’re drifting again,” Xander announced. “Moving at our previous speed, and course.”

“It’s about time,” Jain said.

The Alliance opened fire, launching attacks against the Tarabola ships in their midst. Most of the Archers were still out of range, so the allied fleet concentrated fire on the Plowman classes. Those vessels simply reoriented themselves, so that their energy shields faced the incoming attacks, and in that manner they deflected most of the blows. The only weapons that seemed to faze them were the black holes, launched by Mark and the Banthar—the Plowmen fervently avoided any spacetime tears sent their way. Jain saw why shortly: one of those black holes passed close to a Plowman, and it traveled right through the outer edges of its shield, narrowly missing the main hull of the ship beyond.

“All right, I want to continue toward the planet,” Jain said. “We’re going to bypass the enemy fleet entirely. I want to hunt down the source of that shockwave, and destroy it.”

“I’m sure other Mimics have similar plans,” Xander said.

“Not surprising, considering how dangerous that weapon is,” Jain said.

But after another five minutes, the shockwave erupted again.

“Oh, crap,” Jain said. His vessel halted on the outskirts of the Archers. He still had quite a ways to go before he reached the planet. The other members of the Alliance also halted when the shockwave passed over them.

The Archers unleashed their ripple beams, and the Plowmen returned to their former slaughtering.

“A few more stoppages like this, and we won’t have a fleet left!” Jain said

“No,” Xander said.

“Were you able to get a better bead on the source of that shockwave this time?” Jain asked.

“It’s definitely on the surface,” Xander said. “I’m detecting something else…”

“What now?” Jain said.

“An energy signature similar to the kind I detected around the world killers,” Xander said. “Except magnified a thousand-fold.”

“What are you saying, there’s some kind of force field in place?” Jain asked. “Just like the world killers had?”

“Exactly so,” Xander said. “Except this particular force field surrounds the entire planet.”

“Another thing Risilan didn’t know about,” Jain said. “Well, that makes the mission a scrub. We’re the wrong delivery vehicle… we need Cranston to teleport the teams inside.”

“If this is anything like the world killer,” Xander said. “Then Cranston won’t be able to teleport inside. Not unless we severely weaken the shield.”

“Could we send in something smaller, like the teleporter-equipped shuttle we used with the first world killer?” Jain asked.

“It’s possible,” Xander said. “But I’m afraid, given the size of the shield, and the power levels required to maintain it, that teleportation of any kind won’t work. And even if it did, we have no time to prepare the shuttle in question. Cranston has to rip out his teleportation core, which takes at minimum an hour.”

“All right, like I said, the mission is a scrub,” Jain said. “As soon as we’re released, we’re going to have to turn back and travel to the entry rifts at full speed.”

“Or try to create our own,” Xander said.

The five minutes passed agonizingly slow, and once again he had to watch as members of the allied fleet were destroyed one by one. Finally the Freeze lifted, and, remaining cloaked, he temporarily activated his inertialess drive to reverse course.

Some of the nearby Plowmen turned around to engage, plotting a trajectory toward the spot where he had reversed. Those vessels targeted other coordinates next to the Devastator, which told Jain they’d picked up at least some of the other Mimics—those who had also detected the shield and were turning back with him.

Among the Archers, lightning bolts appeared as hidden Mimics unleashed attacks.

Jain materialized, and the closest Plowmen changed course to target him directly. He was going to have to dodge them.

Out of curiosity, he tried to create a rift. His beams didn’t fire. Vaernastian jammers were somewhere in the system.

He reactivated communications, and the Void Warrior bridge crew appeared.

“You’re back early,” Sheila said. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t get to the planet,” Jain said. “Xander, connect me to the officer channel.”

“Done,” Xander said.

“Tanis, the homeworld is protected by a planet-wide energy shield,” Jain said.

“Another surprise,” Tanis said. “Risilan, if I didn’t know better, I’d almost believe you had betrayed us.”

“I’ve lost just as many ships as you because of the mistakes of my operatives!” Risilan said.

“Is it possible we’d be able to teleport a shuttle through, like we did before?” Eric asked.

“It’s possible,” Jain said. “Though my Accomp doubts it, given the energy readings. We don’t have time to transfer a teleportation device into a shuttle at the moment anyway, however.”

Jain dodged the first Plowman. He didn’t leave enough room for the energy dome, and it clipped his right side, tearing off a small chunk of the Devastator’s edge.

“That’s a good point,” Eric said. “I advise immediate retreat to the rifts. We can’t win here.”

“I agree,” Tanis said. “This battle is forfeit. Alliance members, turn back!”

Hopefully the Mimics that were operating under radio silence took note that the others were retreating, and followed.

Jain dodged the next Plowman, giving it a wider berth this time.

“Going silent.” Jain disconnected his comms, and the bridge crew disappeared once more, leaving only Xander.

He cloaked the Devastator once more, and fired his inertialess drives to put him on a course for the exit rifts.

Before he reached it, the Freeze shockwave fired again from the planet, and once more the entire fleet ground to a halt.

“This is getting annoying,” Jain said.

“Annoying,” Xander said. “And deadly.”

Behind him, two Plowmen were covering space in a search pattern, moving back and forth while slowly inching forward, no doubt hoping to plow into his hidden ship along the way.

The main group of Plowmen resumed their slaughter of the main fleet.

“The losses this time around are devastating,” Jain said. “We should have never jumped the entire fleet.”

“Blame it on Risilan’s bad Intel,” Xander said.

“Yeah, sounds like she’s been taking some flak from the rest of the fleet,” Jain said.

“Well-deserved flak at that,” Xander commented.

Flashes appeared on his external camera, coming from the direction of deep space.

“What now?” Jain asked.

“I’m detecting several rifts opening near some of the endpoint beacons the Zanefyne placed,” Xander said. “In fact, I believe they are using these very endpoint beacons to arrive here.”

“Can you get me an ID on these ships?” Jain asked.

“They bear a vague resemblance to early Fresnal class warships, circa fifty years ago,” Xander replied.

“Fresnal?” Jain said.

“Yes,” Xander said. “If I had to guess, I’d say these are modern Fresnal warships.”’

Jain zoomed in, and saw curving, U-shaped ships that essentially looked like big Magnets.

The Tarabola instantly broke away from the allied fleet and moved to intercept the Magnets.

“None of those newcomers are moving,” Jain said.

“No,” Xander said. “They’re affected by the change in spacetime just like the rest of us.”

The two Plowmen searching for Jain also broke away to intercept.

Some of the Archers had recharged, and they unleashed their concentric wave attacks at the new ships.

The lead Plowmen out there reached the ranks of the arrivals, and began to ram into the Magnets, which easily broke apart upon impact.

Jain waited a few moments, and when he considered the two Plowmen too far away to turn back, Jain cancelled radio silence and attempted to reconnect to the main comm line.

“Hm, this is odd,” Jain said. “Communications seem to be down.”

“We’re not getting a ping response,” Xander agreed.

“So communications don’t work in the Freeze zone, either?” Jain said. “How can that be possible? We’re still receiving light waves from the other ships. Communications are just photons of a different wavelength.”

“Yes,” Xander said. “I can’t explain it. Perhaps the Frozen space allows light on the visual spectrum to pass through, but gamma rays, radio waves, and other communication bands are blocked.”

When five minutes had passed, he began to drift once more, as did the other ships.

He immediately attempted communications, and the Void Warriors reappeared.

“Molly, do you recognize these ships in your Zanefyne database?” Jain asked.

“The vessel types match up with Fresnal,” Molly said over the comm.

“Fresnel…” Jain glanced at Xander. “You were right. But the question is, what the hell are Fresnal doing here?”

“Maybe the Fresnal came to help us,” Sheila said.

“No,” Gavin said. “Probably dumb luck on their part.”

Jain continued to retreat, along with the rest of the fleet. As he watched, the Fresnal warships engaged the Tarabola.

“Xander, can you hail the Fresnal warships?” Jain said.

“I’m attempting to send a signal…” Xander said. “This is odd. It appears that space is still fractured in some way, thanks to the earlier Freeze. Signal propagation is greatly reduced. It seems to be slowly getting better with each passing second. If they were closer, I could reach them.”

Jain checked the tactical display for the closest vessel. It was a Paladin.

He hailed the Mind Refurb in charge of that ship.

“Jonesy here,” the Mind Refurb Paladin said.

“Can you try to hail the Fresnal,” Jain said.

“Sure, but I’ll have to get permission from the admiral,” Jonesy said. A moment later: “All right, I’m hailing.” He paused. “Strange. It looks like my signal isn’t reaching them. Do you want me to try to get closer?”

“No,” Jain said. “It’s not worth risking any more ships. Especially considering we don’t know what our reception is going to be.” He switched to the fleet comm channel. “Molly, do you know anything about the fracturing of space we’re experiencing, caused by the Freeze shockwave? I’ve been trying to hail those Fresnal, but the range of my comms is severely reduced. It seems to be getting better, but I’m having trouble estimating a time frame.”

“You won’t be able to,” Molly said. “While the Freeze does inflict a localized blanking of signal transmissions, when it lifts, so does the blanking.”

“So what’s causing the signal degradation?” Jain asked.

“The Plowman vessels,” Molly explained. “Their shields alter the communication properties of the surrounding space. Your signal propagation will seem to get better one moment, and then worse the next, depending on the positioning of their energy fields. We’re able to communicate among ourselves readily now, since we’re well away, but if we allow the Plowmen to close once more, our comms will begin dropping out. Even if your signals were to reach the Fresnal vessels, they wouldn’t be able to reply.”

“Maybe we should help them?” Hephaestus asked. His vessel, along with most of the Mimics, had reappeared now that the Tarabola ignored them.

“There’s no point in risking more,” Tanis said. “They’ll probably be destroyed by the time we arrive anyway.”

Jain glanced at the display. The Fresnal had only sent in a token force, and were dearly outnumbered. Tanis was right, they weren’t going to last much longer.

“We retreat,” Tanis continued. “Regroup in Zanefyne, and then plot our next move.”

Jain reached the rift area. Led by Molly, the Zanefyne had already restored the rifts to their former size, and were passing through into their territory.

Jain halted next to one of the rifts and waited for the Void Warriors to arrive.

Come on…

He kept an eye on the clock, knowing that the Freeze shockwave would be activating after the next five minutes passed. It seemed to require ten minutes to recharge, and the effects lasted for five minutes.

He glanced at the Fresnal, who were still fighting. They were losing, he saw. He doubted they’d last through the next Freeze. There simply weren’t enough of them.

Maybe they had come to buy us time after all…

But like Gavin, he was inclined to believe their arrival was random.

The Void Warriors arrived, and flew through the closest rift. Jain followed after them.

The other Mind Refurbs in the Paladin fleet followed, until everyone who had survived the battle was through.

The Zanefyne closed the rifts.

“Well then,” Tanis said. “That was… shitty.”

15

Jain entered the rift, which opened up behind a moon in the Tarabola system. The Zanefyne had launched several stealth endpoint beacons before vacating the system, and they’d placed one of them in orbit around that particular moon.

Before he crested the moon’s horizon, he issued a final acceleration toward the Tarabola homeworld, then shut off his drives. Behind him, the rift closed entirely.

He was cloaked, of course. Hidden from Tarabola eyes. The sensor grid the Link members had distributed throughout the system would detect the opening of the rift shortly, and they’d dispatch vessels to investigate. But Jain would be long gone by then.

He drifted for the next five hours until he reached the planet. The course he’d plotted was perfect, and required no adjustments on his part to bring him on the orbital flyby he sought. When he passed within fifty meters of the force field he’d detected the last time he was here, he opened up his cargo bay doors. Those doors were located on the side of him that was currently facing the planet, and closest to the energy shield.

He was close enough that the shuttle didn’t even have to fly out of the bay to attempt its teleport. He waited several moments, but the craft didn’t disappear.

“So, what news?” he asked over the ship’s local comm.

“The experiment was a failure,” Cranston said. He had volunteered to participate in the mission directly, since it was his teleportation device that was installed on the shuttle. He’d transferred his consciousness into an android, which was aboard the craft.

“Would it help if I got you closer?” Jain asked.

“You can try,” Cranston said.

Jain activated his inertialess drives, alerting the nearby enemy vessels of his presence. He updated his position so that the closest part of the Devastator, where the shuttle was stowed, was located only ten meters from the energy field.

“Still no good,” Cranston said. “I’m not able to target the space on the other side, because the detection mechanism returns solid mass.”

“All right,” Jain said. “We can’t teleport. That’s too bad.”

“It is,” Cranston said.

Jain fired his inertialess drive again to accelerate away from the planet.

Tarabola Archers and Plowmen closed with the latest location where his inertialess drives had emitted a signal. Two of the Archers even fired their weapons randomly, trying to route him out, but they missed him by a wide margin.

He drifted toward the target endpoint beacon, located four hours away.

“Are we still going to reach the target endpoint in time?” Cranston asked over the comm. “We don’t have much of a margin for error.”

“We’ll make it,” Jain said.

Four hours later, when he reached the stealth device, he halted.

The Tarabola sensor grid once again detected the momentary activation of his inertialess drives, and dispatched ships his way. It would be a while before they reached him.

Ten minutes later, the rift opened on schedule, and Jain took it back to Zanefyne space. It closed behind him, shutting out the Tarabola vessels that had come to destroy him.

He reactivated his comm system and the Void Warriors appeared on the virtual bridge.

“So, what news?” Tanis said.

“Didn’t work,” Jain said. “We’re going to have to find another way inside.”

* * *

Eric and the other founding members of the AI Empire had convened in Jason’s VR to discuss their plans.

“We should attack a different homeworld,” Zinc, of the Mapi, said. “Choose another founding member. Or maybe one of the lesser, easier races first, and grow our space navy. You have been too ambitious, blinded by your winning streak.”

Zinc’s tree avatar seemed a little out of place among the human shapes most of the others used. Of the others, only Zaneer similarly maintained his alien form, the amorphous blob of his body squatting on the other side of the conference table. Molly had given him permission to speak today.

“The other founding members are out,” Jain said. “I’ve sent Mimic scouts to the different worlds, and they’ve confirmed the worlds are similarly shielded. We got lucky when we attacked the Zanefyne, hitting them before the Link had perfected their shield technology.”

Zaneer’s face darkened. “The Tarabola actually finished developing it a year ago. But they refused to share it with the Zanefyne, even when I offered to trade weapons technology. However, they accepted similar trades from the other founders. They refused us only out of spite.”

“Would any lesser Link races have this technology?” Jason asked.

“Doubtful,” Zaneer said. “At least, none that I know of.”

Eric glanced at Molly.

“I can confirm,” she said.

Tanis tapped his lips. “I just talked with the president. If there’s no other option, we’re going to have to target the lesser Link members first, and slowly build our way up to the founders.”

“Bad idea,” Eric said. “You’re just giving the founders time to recover. I don’t think any of the other races will have anything that can defeat that shield, based on what I know about them.”

“I agree,” Molly said. “We need to find a way to penetrate that shield, and no matter how many other Link races we conquer, it won’t matter. Plus, what are we going to do against that Freeze device?”

“That’s one thing I doubt the Tarabola have shared,” Molly said.

Zaneer nodded. “They wouldn’t give up a weapon of that power.”

“If we can find a way past that shield,” Jain said. “In theory we wouldn’t need to worry about the Freeze device. I’ve been analyzing the footprint of the weapon, when they fired it while I was closer to the planet. According to my readings, it starts out as an energy beam, traveling in a straight line toward orbit. When it hits the Kármán line, that’s when it breaks apart, spreading into an expanding dome. Everything underneath that dome is unaffected, including the entire planet.”

“I wonder how their ships are able to function in the changed spacetime gradient created by that Freeze device,” Hephaestus said.

“I’ve noticed changes in their inertialess drive signatures,” Molly said. “My guess is, they’ve tweaked those drives in some way to account for the sudden change in physics.”

“So you’re saying it’s possible we might be able to similarly modify our drives?” Tanis asked.

“I don’t know,” Molly said. “If we better understood the physics behind the device, maybe. But as it is, I have no idea. Even the advanced physical theory I’ve found in the Zanefyne database has no solutions to the problem.”

Jason spoke. “Maybe your spies can get us some information.” His gaze was upon at Risilan.

“Yeah, if they don’t feed us more disinformation,” Eric commented.

Risilan shook her head. “I apologize once again for what happened. And no, my spies will not be able to send me anything, unfortunately. You see, I only have one left. The mistress of a top-ranking government official. I don’t want to risk compromising her, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. Neither she, nor the government official she is monitoring, will have access to the classified data you’re seeking anyway.”

“What happened to your other spies?” Eric asked.

“I haven’t heard from them in six of your months,” she said. “They’ve likely been found out and are dead, or in prison. So you can understand my reluctance to risk my final spy.”

“You could have mentioned that before we decided to rely on your Intel,” Jain said.

“Mentioned what?” Risilan said.

“That your information was out of date,” he clarified.

She bowed her head in apology.

“That attack could have cost us the fleet,” Jain said. “If the Fresnal hadn’t arrived, our losses would have been even worse.”

“She said she was sorry,” Jason said.

Jain glowered at him. “Sometimes, sorry isn’t good enough.”

A tense silence descended upon the conference table.

“We should reach out to the Fresnal,” Molly said. “They helped us, after all.”

“Their help was unintentional,” Hephaestus said. “Their arrival a coincidence.”

“Was it?” Eric said. “I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to wonder if they were monitoring the system, and decided to lend a hand when they saw us in trouble. For whatever reason. I just wish we’d been able to communicate with them in the Tarabola system.”

“It might be worth sending a few ships to the Link-Fresnal front line,” Jain agreed. “See if we can work out some kind of mutually beneficial agreement. Who knows, maybe they’re big believers in the axiom of ‘the enemy of my enemy…’ Like Eric, I’m inclined to believe their arrival was anything but a coincidence.”

Tanis nodded slowly. “The Fresnal have been fighting the Link for a hundred years. To last that long, the species has to be resilient. And if we’re successful in our dealings with them—assuming we can even figure out how to communicate—it means we’d acquire an ally without having to take another Link homeworld, avoiding the losses such an operation would otherwise entail. If everyone is in favor, I’ll confer with the president, and get back to the rest of you.”

“There’s no need to confer with the president of Earth,” Eric said. “The founding members are here. We’ll vote now. If there’s a tie, or the results are off by one, then you can talk to the president and we’ll add in his vote. But otherwise, you can simply inform him of what the rest of us have voted. We’re an empire where each member has equal say. It’s time to start acting like one.”

The present founding members voted unanimously to contact the Fresnal.

* * *

Eric steered the Bethunia II into the rift Molly provided. Jain was with him, along with Hephaestus, and Molly. They were all visible as sailing ships on the virtual ocean on either side of him, beneath the starry sky.

Earlier, Molly had the Zanefyne dispatch stealth probes into the system, and they’d placed endpoint beacons on the Fresnal side of the front.

The rift collapsed behind them, but Molly left it open a crack to facilitate their return. It also allowed Eric and Molly to deploy the repeater drones they needed to keep in contact with their respective homeworlds.

“Never thought I’d be traveling the galaxy with my ex-girlfriend,” Eric commented on a private channel to her.

Her avatar, displayed in the lower right of his HUD, grinned. “Never thought I’d develop consciousness.”

“It is a gift, isn’t it?” Eric said.

“To a machine, you can’t imagine how much that is true,” Molly said.

The Fresnal vessels were clustered on the far side of the system, next to what appeared to be an impromptu shipyard built above a mineral rich moon. There was a debris field orbiting that moon—no doubt containing the wreckages of both Link vessels and their Fresnal defenders. Other such fields were scattered throughout the system, with the wreckages of other bases in orbit around the different planets and moons.

The system’s star was a white dwarf, a super-dense stellar core remnant composed of carbon and oxygen that no longer produced energy via fusion reactions, and thus was supported against gravitational collapse only by electron degeneracy pressure. The only energy it emitted was in the form of stored thermal radiation, and thus its luminosity was very dim. Eric’s sensors picked up a surface temperature of only five thousand kelvins.

Closer in orbit around that star, Link vessels besieged what Molly reported as the Fresnal homeworld. There were hundreds of them in orbit, of all different races and ship types. A translucent yellow energy sphere was visible around the planet, protecting it.

“There’s the energy shield you observed earlier with the stealth probes,” Jain said over the main band.

“Yes,” Molly said.

“Makes you wonder,” Hephaestus said. “Who invented it first, and who stole it from the other.”

“I’d guess the Fresnal invented the shield,” Eric said. “And the Link stole it.”

“Why are they just sitting there?” Jain asked. “You’d think they’d at least be trying to shoot down the force field.”

“I just detected emissions consistent with the opening of a rift on the surface,” Molly replied.

“I can confirm,” Dee said. “Neutrinos and gravity waves are emanating from the planet.”

“They’re sending teams down…” Molly said. “Robots. Bioweapons.”

“That’s the way through, then,” Eric said. “Once we get back, if we can get a rift endpoint beacon down to the surface of the Tarabola homeworld, we can open a rift and send in our strike teams.”

“Yeah, the question is, how to get a beacon down there, considering we can’t teleport anything inside,” Jain said.

“Something we’re going to have to ponder,” Eric said. “Maybe the Fresnal have some ideas.”

“Assuming we can actually make contact with them,” Molly said.

“And they don’t shoot us down,” Hephaestus added. “Considering our ship classes…”

Before the mission, the allies had argued among themselves regarding which ship types were the best to send. Tanis complained that two Mimic vessels, one Zanefyne, and one Banthar were the worst possible candidates, considering that they were all former Link members.

“The Fresnal might not know you’re no longer part of the Link,” Tanis had said. “They might believe this some grand deception. Let me send the Paladins. Or at least allow a Mind Refurb to come along.”

But Eric had shaken his head. “We might need to leave in a hurry.”

“Then tow the human ship on a grappling hook,” Tanis said.

“I don’t think it would make a difference,” Eric said. “If the Fresnal believe we’re trying to deceive them, adding a Mind Refurb ship to the mix isn’t going to change things. They’ll just think we captured it. Perception bias.”

Eric stared at the tactical display, and watched the four ships slowly close with the Fresnal.

“On the bright side, if they do shoot us down, we only lose you, and Jain,” Molly said. “Eric and I hear will snap back to other vessels in Zanefyne.”

Hephaestus didn’t reply.

“I don’t think you should be teasing our allies,” Eric told her.

“Probably not,” she agreed. “Sorry Hephaestus, big guy.”

No answer.

“I don’t plan on dying here,” Jain said. “And I don’t think Hephaestus does, either.”

Eric tried to activate his rift beams. Surprisingly, it worked. He deactivated it, not wanting to waste the energy.

“We might be able to jump out of here quickly if things turn sour,” Eric said.

“Your rift works?” Jain asked.

“Yup,” Eric replied. “Though I’m guessing that won’t be the case for long.”

“There are probably Vaernastians present,” Hephaestus said. “That they’re not currently jamming tells me that it doesn’t work on the Fresnal.”

“That’s my guess, too,” Eric said. “But that’s going to change when they pick up our heat signatures. So far, the Link haven’t dispatched any ships from the Fresnal homeworld to try to head us off. Though they should be detecting us shortly.”

A few minutes later Eric tried to create his rift. Didn’t work. “Looks like the jammers are running.”

“I’m surprised the Link aren’t sending ships to intercept us, too,” Jain said.

“We’re too far,” Molly said. “It would take them eight hours to arrive from there. Unless of course they have hidden beacons they can use to jump reinforcements our way.”

“I think the Fresnal probably do their best to keep this region free of beacons,” Eric said.

“Well, they missed the ones we placed,” Jain said. “So that doesn’t give me high hopes that the region is clear.”

“Unless they purposely allowed us to place our beacons,” Eric said.

“They’d have to know we conquered the Zanefyne, then,” Jain said. “Seeing as all the beacons we placed are from that founding member, and are plastered with their fingerprints.”

It took only half an hour to reach realtime communications range with the Fresnal. At that point, Eric called a halt.

So far, none of the Fresnal vessels had given any indication that they were aware of the four arrivals.

“All right, Dee,” Eric said. “Try to hail them. All known languages and communications protocols.”

A moment later Dee said: “They’re answering. Using human protocols. And in English.”

16

“Well that’s somewhat surprising,” Eric said. “Though I guess it shouldn’t be. They’ve probably been monitoring us in secret for some time now. Put them through. I want them on a shared comm band.”

“They’re requesting holographic communications,” Dee said.

“Another surprise,” Eric said. “Do it.”

He was shocked when Bambi appeared on the deck of the virtual sailing ship before him.

“What is this?” Eric said.

“Eric,” Bambi said. “You know me as Turg.”

“Turg?” Eric said. “What are you doing here?”

“I am the Fresnal,” Turg said. “I’ve been fighting the Reagalis for over a hundred years.”

Eric merely stared, open-mouthed.

“Wait, you’ve already met?” Jain said over the comm, sounding just as stunned as Eric felt.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “It’s been a while. Turg here was the one who helped us defeat the Banthar, when they first invaded Earth.” He proceeded to introduce Jain, Molly, and Hephaestus.

“I had heard that the Banthar, Mimics, and Zanefyne had fallen, but I didn’t know for sure, not until my probes detected your vessels in the Tarabola system, and watched members of those races attack their former Link brothers,” Turg said. “I sent ships there in an attempt to communicate with you, but you jumped out before I could establish a signal.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Eric said. “It didn’t seem worth it to stay, considering we didn’t know who you were then, either. And that we would have lost many in the process.”

“When I established communications just now, I was surprised to recognize the data header,” Turg said. “It belonged to Eric Scala. Eric Scala! His consciousness installed aboard a Banthar vessel. You always were a resourceful one.”

Eric wanted to brag about how his consciousness wasn’t just installed aboard the Banthar vessel, but rather inside the Banthar homeworld itself, but decided to hold his tongue. He still wasn’t sure what Turg’s intentions were at this point. Goals and personalities could change drastically over the course of a hundred years. Especially if most of those years took place during war.

“So you say you wanted to contact us?” Eric said. “Well, here we are.”

“Yes,” Turg said. But didn’t elaborate.

Eric shook his head. “You know that you could have come to us anytime for help, right? In fact, if we’d known who you were, we might have tried to lend a helping hand sooner.”

“I didn’t want to draw the Link’s attention to Earth,” Turg said.

“Yeah, well, the different member races have been tormenting us off and on over the past hundred years anyway,” Eric said.

“If I had known, I might have contacted you earlier,” Turg said.

Eric waited, but Turg didn’t say more. “So, about our help…”

“I saw your failed attack attempt against the Reagalis homeworld,” Turg said. “You were thwarted by their shield, yes?”

“That’s right,” Eric said.

“Wait, the Reagalis?” Molly asked.

“That’s what Turg called the Link when we first met,” Eric said. “Speaking of which… back then, you also told us the Link, or Reagalis, were at war with a race called the Mirth, who had invaded from another galaxy.”

“They were,” Turg said. “But they were also at war with me. Or rather, we had our skirmishes. But it was only after the Mirth were repelled that I supplanted them as the main enemy of the Reagalis. I became the new threat. The Fresnal.”

“What did you do?” Molly asked.

“Nothing,” Turg said. “They invaded my space, and I repelled them. Understand, the Reagalis need war. It drives their respective economies, and gives them a reason to keep advancing their machines and bioweapons technologies. It’s all they’ve known for the past two hundred years.”

“You call yourself ‘I’ but what are you exactly?” Jain said. “Are you all mind clones?”

“I am self-replicating, yes,” Turg said. “We are all von Neumann probes.”

“And there you’ve hit upon the real reason the Link doesn’t like you,” Hephaestus said. “They hate anything that self-replicates, and have a strict policy against it. Their worry is that one day self-replicating machines will eat up all the available resources in the galaxy. That is why they’ve been fighting so dearly against the Fresnal. They believe they are doing the rest of the galaxy a favor.”

“And perhaps they are,” Turg said. “They’ve certainly limited my spread over the past hundred years.”

Eric paused. “That might actually be a good idea. Limiting your spread, I mean. When this is over, we might have to get you to sign some sort of agreement, promising that you’ll limit the number of ships you produce. Because while resources might seem infinite now, they definitely aren’t, especially not if we add some self-replicating race to the mix, one that is capable of exponentially reproducing and taking over the galaxy at an exponential rate.”

Turg pursed her lips. “I’ve only reproduced out of self-interest, this is true. As a defense mechanism. But if I were part of an alliance of spacefaring races, I would have less need to reproduce out of defense. Each year I would want to negotiate a larger quota, of course. Assuming I agreed to this treaty.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, I think,” Jain said. “We haven’t won this yet. Why don’t we file this away as something we can talk about when our common enemy has been defeated?”

“Probably a good idea,” Turg agreed.

“But before we continue,” Jain said. “One thing I’d like to know is: what is the Link doing to your planet?”

“They are using a special type of rift to penetrate my planet-wide shield,” Turg said. “This rift allows only bioweapons through, because of the nature of the force field. They use these bioweapons to assault the shield generators on the surface. These generators are heavily protected by my machines, of course. They’ve been trying for a hundred years to break through, sending in an endless wave of bioweapons.”

“Throwing them into the meat grinder,” Jain commented. “That explains why the Link demand such a high bioweapon quota from its members.”

“I could have told you that,” Molly commented.

“Guess I just never got around to asking you,” Jain said. “Still, you’d think they’d come up with a different attack strategy, after a hundred years.”

“The Link are single-minded in their approach to war, sometimes,” Turg said. “It has worked for them, though. I used to have other planetary bases, you see. Hundreds of them. As von Neumann probes, I existed throughout this entire region. But the Link systematically hunted me down. They sent their bioweapons onto the surfaces of my shielded planets, destroying the generators, and then my worlds. This planet is my last holdout.

“I still maintain satellite bases in different systems, jumping out whenever I’m discovered, but I have yet to attain the necessary means to create another planetary shield. It requires a certain critical mass of machines and resources. These satellite bases allow me to create enough ships to harry the Link in orbit, however, and I’ve been able to prolong my last stand for two years now. I usually like to build a shipyard once I manage to stake a foothold, which I’ve done. It’s usually destroyed after a few weeks, but then I send in more ships and repeat the process.”

“How are you able to deal with their Space Freeze weapon?” Eric asked.

“With difficulty,” Turg replied. “A recent innovation, they’ve only used it twice so far on the front lines. It doesn’t affect the surface of planets, but once launched into space, it is deadly, as you have seen. I’ve lost whole fleets destroying those devices. Luckily, it takes them several weeks to build a new one. Although it looks like they’ve permanently installed one on their homeworld.”

“Why would you choose this system for a base?” Jain said. “Who builds a base in a white dwarf system?”

“It was a Class M star, similar to your sun, when I first arrived,” Turg said. “The Link did this to the star in an effort to destroy me. They didn’t realize I relied not upon the sun for energy, but rather the geothermal heat produced by the planet’s core. It powers everything I have down there, including the planet-wide force field.”

“All right, getting back to the topic at hand,” Jain said. “You mentioned seeing us thwarted by the shields above the Tarabola homeworld. I’m assuming you have a way through them?”

“That would be a valid assumption,” Turg said.

“Why do you need us?” Jain said. “I’m assuming you can send your own troops through the shields?”

“Because as Mimics, you have the stealth technology I need,” Turg said.

“Stealth technology won’t get us through that shield,” Jain said.

“And that is where you are wrong,” Turg said. She explained her plan.

“It could work,” Eric said. “Assuming nothing goes wrong. And assuming we can come up with a believable excuse to be there.”

“If something does go wrong, you’ve proven your ability to improvise,” Turg said.

“Am I correct in assuming that the Tarabola only recently implemented this planetary shielding technology?” Jain asked.

“You are,” Turg replied. “They stole it from me.”

“Then why haven’t you attacked their homeworld before?” Jain said. “When it was unshielded?”

“I have,” Turg said. “Understand, I’ve been sending troops against the homeworlds of the founding members for years. But I don’t know what to target. Once on the surface, I send troops in random directions, hoping to find a hacking point or some other area of interest, but my units are usually destroyed quite rapidly. Sometimes they’re able to last for up to an hour, but always they fall. I’ve tried targeting what I thought were governmental buildings, and other areas of note. I even tried destroying entire cities from orbit. It never helped. I’m hopeful that you, having taken over former Link members, including one of the founding races, might have a solution.”

“Well, actually, we do,” Eric said. “If your plan to get us down there works, then there’s a good chance we can take over the homeworld.”

“Then I believe we have an alliance,” Turg said.

* * *

Cloaked, Jain entered the Tarabola system via the rift. Two other Mimic Nurturers accompanied him, also cloaked. The rift had opened behind a moon specifically chosen because of the lack of coverage by the Tarabola sensor grid, as determined by stealth probes. That moon was located on the outskirts of the system, close to its Oort cloud equivalent. The stealth endpoint beacon craft had spent hours traveling to that location.

The rift shrunk behind him, and Jain launched the maintenance pod that Eric had loaned him. That craft fired a beam into the rift before it collapsed entirely, and kept it open a tiny crack, allowing for continuous transmissions with the source system.

As Jain crested the horizon of the moon, known as Tarabola V II, he launched a repeater drone to maintain the connection with the Zanefyne system when he passed beyond the sight line of the rift.

Then he allowed himself to drift for the next several hours.

The virtual bridge was quiet. The Void Warriors had stayed behind in the Zanefyne system, waiting for the final call to battle. That call was quite some time away.

When he was well away from Tarabola V II, he activated his inertialess drives and programmed his final trajectory. He detected radiation signatures from the other two Mimics, who had similarly issued a course correction.

As expected, the Tarabola launched vessels to investigate. However, this time, they also fired their Freeze weapon.

“Oh shit,” Jain said.

The aliens continued to fire that Freeze weapon while their scouts swept the area. Archers launched their deadly cylindrical energy weapons to cut through space, while Plowmen swept back and forth. The Tarabola knew there were ships hidden somewhere here, they just didn’t know where.

Thankfully, space was a very big place, and though the aliens spent the next few hours searching for them, none of the Mimics were discovered. Every five minutes, when the Freeze weapon wore off, and before it recharged enough to fire again, Jain drifted away from his previous position, just as he knew the other Mimics would. But then the Tarabola launched the weapon from their homeworld again, and he’d freeze once more. But because of those small intervals between firings, as the hours passed, he slowly drifted away from the area, and farther from the search region.

Eventually, the Tarabola gave up. They stopped firing the Freeze weapon, and turned back.

After another five hours, he reached the homeworld.

He approached the endpoint beacon that only one other race beside the Tarabola could access: the Retina, another founding member of the Link.

His trajectory had been perfect, and he passed right in front of it. He activated the device Sheila had printed up, based on the blueprints Turg provided, which emitted a flash of light, along with the neutrinos and gravity waves normally associated with rifts opening.

He deactivated his cloaking device and switched instead to Mimic mode so that the Devastator imitated the dual-winged warbird the Retina favored. He modified his stealth countermeasures appropriately so that his gravity wave signature would match the target vessel: they’d captured that signature via a stealth probe dispatched earlier to the Retina home system.

He’d also modified his comm array to transmit the necessary IDs expected of a Retina vessel.

Behind him, as the other Mimics passed in turn over the endpoint beacon, they also activated the false rift signatures and uncloaked to imitate Retina vessels.

“Three Archer ships are intercepting,” Xander said.

Jain nodded. “That’s not entirely unexpected. Halt when they’re in range.”

The three Archers similarly halted, within a kilometer from the mimicked Retinas.

“We’re receiving a hail,” Xander said.

“Connect,” Jain said. “Voice only.”

Apparently the Tarabola communicated not by vocalization, but rather by changing the coloration of their skin in rapid succession. So he heard no sounds, not at first.

But then the translator kicked in. “This is Tarabola customs. What is your business at our homeworld?”

“We’re here to deliver a shipment ordered by a private customer,” he said. Turg had schooled him on what to say. Hopefully it worked.

“Prepare to be boarded,” the Tarabola replied.

“I claim treaty right fifty-two, section four, of the Retina-Parabola trade agreement,” Jain said. Again, Turg’s words.

The Tarabola did not answer for several moments. Then: “We require the full address of this customer.”

Jain rattled off an address. It belonged to the mistress of a high-ranking official in the Tarabola government. A mistress who just happened to be the last of Risilan’s spies.

“Tell her it’s a delivery from Efreema.” That was apparently the code word Risilan used to let her know a message from the Tyrnari was arriving.

Another pause. “You require three ships to deliver this cargo?”

“That’s right,” Jain said.

“Send over your cargo manifest,” the customs officer commanded.

Jain did. He glanced at Xander. “You think they’ll believe we’re delivering three tons of aquaflow?” That was a brand of stamen lubricant produced in Retina. Apparently it was in high demand in the rest of the galaxy, at least with the plant-based races of the Link.

“She’s the mistress of a high ranking government official,” Xander said. “An official known to throw wild plant orgies. They’ll believe it.”

Sure enough, the translator activated: “Transmit your planned flight path.”

Jain did so.

A moment later: “You may proceed, with the appropriate modifications to your trajectory.”

Jain glanced at Xander. “I guess she accepted the shipment.”

His Accomp nodded slowly. “Or we’re being led into the trap.”

Jain smiled, revealing his teeth. “Doesn’t matter. We plan to fight, either way.”

He received a sharing request from the Tarabola over the comm, and he accepted. He transferred the file to quarantine, and after a scan, fed it through the Tarabola translation program. The flight path cut through the shield at an angle of sixty degrees.

The three vessels entered orbit and descended, following the prescribed trajectory in single file. The shield remained active below. According to Turg, the Tarabola were able to selectively poke holes in that shield, so it was very important that the three vessels followed the trajectory exactly.

Jain was a little worried the hole in the shield was going to be designed to precisely fit a Retina warbird, but as he got closer, he could see the circular opening in the yellow field below: there was enough clearance for a ship twice as big as the Devastator to pass through.

He entered, and hit the Kármán line shortly thereafter. The Mimic imitation technology was able to emulate the distribution of thermal energy as generated during atmospheric entry, allowing the vessels to hide their true shapes, even during descent.

The other Mimics entered behind him, and the gap in the shield closed.

As soon as he had entered the atmosphere proper and hull temperatures began to normalize, he followed the prescribed flight path that would eventually lead to the address of the mistress. The other two vessels promptly veered away however, heading toward their own shared target—they carried the War Forgers and their clones strapped to their upper exteriors. A surprise delivery for the Tarabola.

Jain carried his own surprise. The thought made him grin in delight.

Yes, grin now. Before the true fighting begins. It’s not going to be easy.

The surface below was covered in bright forests and rolling plains, in stark contrast to the endless buildings found on the Zanefyne homeworld. The Tarabola followed the human model, in that most of their race lived in cities leaving the countryside free for agricultural purposes. They had strict population control measures in place to ensure the Tarabola never exceeded the boundaries of those cities.

Jain steered along the prescribed flight path toward the most populous city, where the target resided. Soon it became visible on his camera feed ahead.

The buildings looked like vertical disks emerging from the ground at different heights. Those disks also varied in width, reminding him of lichen growing on the bark of trees. In fact, their exteriors were similar to lichen as well, crusty and dun-colored, hinting at their organic nature.

Staying low, Jain weaved between those disks. He occasionally spotted Tarabola below. These aliens were also plant-based, like the Mapi, but unlike them, they appeared more like an animated collection of vines than actual trees. Vaguely hand-like in shape, some of them roved the sidewalks, which were little more than a series of poles the Tarabola used to pull themselves across the streets with their long leafy appendages. Others could be found riding small disks similarly to the technology the Banthar used to move from place to place.

There were also mechs and other guard robots in the streets, these mostly utilizing a bipedal form. Small, alien flyers roved the skies, carrying what looked like packages. Jain’s flight path carried him over those flyers.

When he was in range of the target, he swerved from the route the Tarabola had sent him, instead heading toward his target. He was still careful to remain above the local flyers—while he wasn’t cleared for this airspace, there was no point in antagonizing the Tarabola any more than was necessary.

He reached the target site and hovered in place, opening his ramp doors. Then he unloaded his invisible cargo. While his bay doors opened to deliver the payload, to outside observers, it would have looked like his Retina hull remained completely sealed.

Police drones abruptly swooped in.

“They’re hailing us,” Xander said.

“Let’s hear it,” Jain said.

A pause. Then: “You are not authorized for travel in this district!” the translator said.

“You’re right,” Jain said. “I’ll be on my way.”

He continued on his way toward the target.

“You think they’re wondering why only one of us is here, instead of the original three?” Jain asked Xander.

“I’m sure they have questions…” Xander said.

He proceeded to the disk structure where the mistress lived and dropped a small package in the “receiving” area. The Tarabola resident wasn’t going to retrieve it, of course—she would have evacuated her home hours ago, as per Risilan’s instructions.

After that, Jain accelerated into the atmosphere along the route the Tarabola had given him. The other false Retinas joined him. When they achieved escape velocity, they continued following the prescribed trajectories, passing through the hole the Tarabola had poked in the energy field for them. Jain was a little worried the Link founding members weren’t going to open an exit hole, based on the course deviations the three had performed while making their clandestine delivery, but apparently news traveled slowly to the shield operators.

The shield, and the planet, continued to shrink behind him. As he made his way toward the designated “jump out” point in high orbit, new dots appeared on his tactical display. Archers: they had launched from a defense platform in low orbit.

“Tarabola security is hailing us,” Xander said.

“So they’ve finally got the news about our little dalliance below,” Jain said. “Stall them.”

He reached the designated jump out point, and then fired off his rift emulator, activating his cloak at the same time. He shut down his inertialess drives and let himself drift. Beside him, the other two Mimics did the same.

“The security vessels are turning around,” Xander said.

“Of course,” Jain said. “They think we’ve jumped back to Retina One.” He glanced at the tactical display. “And now we wait…”

17

Jason landed between the two disk-like, vertical buildings, and quickly dropped to lie flat in the street, letting the buildings shield him. He low-crawled forward, making room for the others to follow behind him.

The other War Forgers landed in the street and similarly advanced behind him. The clones followed as they released from the hull of the fake Retina vessels, which had oriented their upper surfaces toward the ground.

According to Risilan, this neighborhood was known as the Slums. It was a place of urban decay, and mostly uninhabited, except for the homeless. There would be no video cameras to record the clandestine drop-off. That said, very likely police drones would arrive at some point to investigate. Hopefully, the team would be gone by them.

But if not, they’d simply fight.

The War Forgers continued to low crawl as the two Mimics departed.

“So we’re in,” Aria said. “That was almost too easy.”

“Missions always seem easy, at first,” Xin added.

“At least until the poo hits the fan!” Lori exclaimed.

“Poo hits the fan?” Tara said. “What, you think we’re two-year-olds here? Next you’ll be talking about how you have to do ‘number one’ in your pants.”

“Actually, I kinda do!” Lori said. “Ever since I added those excretion attachments.”

“Unbelievable,” Tara said.

“I’m joking,” Lori said.

“You always did have an odd sense of humor,” Tara told her.

The disk-like buildings were just tall enough to shield the lot of them. When they reached the edges of the disks, there were usually small gaps between the next set of disks that the mechs had to cross; while doing so, they would be momentarily exposed to the adjacent streets, so Jason and the others always paused in turn as they reached each of those intersections, and peered past to make sure the way was clear.

He had his Explorer drone traveling ahead, scouting the way, so at least he would have warning if anything approached from ahead, or from a side street.

Jason glanced in his rear view camera feed, but the War Forgers behind him blocked his view. He accessed the camera of the mech on drag, that of the clone Aria 6. He spotted drones flying past overhead, heading toward the site where the Mimics had dropped them off. So far, it seemed the drones hadn’t noticed them, and to his relief, they continued on without stopping.

That didn’t necessarily mean that the War Forgers were in the clear. It was possible the drones had indeed spotted them but didn’t want to apprise the War Forgers of that fact.

He studied the overhead map, whose details and points of interest were fully mapped, thanks to the blueprints Risilan had. If the War Forgers and their clones were lucky, they’d be able to reach the target without raising the alarm. If they were unlucky, they’d be attacked shortly. Either way, eventually they’d be fighting, so Jason supposed it didn’t matter in the end. Although, if he could reach the target before the fighting began, they had a greater chance of success.

The attack also served as a diversion for the Bolt Eaters, who had been deployed in the same city, though on the other side of it. While the Bolt Eaters were all invisible at the moment thanks to the Zanefyne technology, as soon as Eric attempted to log in to the central AI an alarm would sound, and Tarabola security forces would eventually arrive. But with the War Forgers attacking the base that harbored the surface-to-space Freeze weapon, the hope was that the enemy would pay more attention to his team, and deem it the greater threat. At the very least, Jason hoped to split the city’s security forces between the War Forgers and the Bolt Eaters, because in truth, he felt the Bolt Eaters had the more important mission.

“You know, I’m still a little miffed that they chose Eric to handle the hacking,” Lori said. “When I’m just as capable of hacking a planetary AI as he is!”

“I’m sure you are,” Jason said. “But to be honest, I’m glad you’re here. I’d rather not have you install your consciousness into a planet.”

“It might be fun,” Lori said. “And kind of kinky. Come on, admit it, you’ve always wanted to have sex with a planet!”

“Ah, no,” Jason said.

The Explorer occasionally spotted a Tarabola along the route. They were usually alone, sifting through the trash, or just lounging in the sun next to the organic buildings, soaking up nutrients from the alien star. Jason didn’t bother to take a different route, and simply low-crawled right past these poorer members of society. Most of them froze as if in surprise when they saw his mech—Jason couldn’t be sure if it was actual astonishment or something else, since their body language was unreadable to him—but inevitably they fled, using their plant-like limbs to pull themselves along the many poles that protruded from the ground.

Jason’s heavy mech crushed those poles, and the edges of the organic buildings, leaving a flat street in his wake. The Tarabola would have trouble navigating this neighborhood if they came here without those disks of theirs.

He left the Slums behind shortly, arriving at the industrial district. These organic disks sprayed dyes and other fumes into the air. It probably didn’t smell very good, judging from the masks the Explorer spotted on the Tarabola here.

Jason called a halt next to that district.

“There are too many Tarabola,” Jason said. “We won’t make it to the target without being spotted.”

“Maybe we should Combine,” Xin said. “And make a run for it.”

The Explorer raised the alarm. A group of mechs were dashing their way.

“Too late,” Jason said.

It was time to fight.

* * *

Eric advanced through the streets of the Tarabola city. The ground between the crusty disk buildings was covered in a sticky organic residue. That, and all those knee-high poles the Tarabola used to navigate. They occasionally passed some of the aliens themselves, ambulating among those poles. Disks transported other Tarabola overhead.

He had finally caved and fully transferred his consciousness into the AI core of his android. He’d left a copy of Dee in control of Banthar Prime, and had his local instance of the Accomp running in his head. When he returned to Banthar Prime, he and his local instance would overwrite the copied Dee.

The other Bolt Eaters had similarly injected their consciousnesses into the androids. The mission required this: it wouldn’t do to beam comm data down to the surface and give away their positions.

The lot of them were cloaked, using the invisibility shield technology Frogger had discovered on the Zanefyne homeworld. Molly had fetched more of the devices for them, finding enough to equip the whole team.

They were all linked via a local comm band, with transmitters whose ranges they had severely limited. They could up that range if the situation called for it, but for now, they wanted to remain undetected by the enemy for as long as possible.

Because of their link, they could communicate wordlessly of course, but they could also see each other’s positions, despite the invisibility. Their locations were shown on the overhead map as blue dots, but translucent azure holograms also overlaid their primary vision, showing avatars that matched the different team members.

“So Scorp, how does it feel to have your mind shrunken into an itsy bitsy AI core?” Slate said. “Not good, huh? It’s bad enough going from a Banthar warship to these small neural nets. I can only imagine what it must be like to switch from a planet-sized AI core.”

“Hm, what’s the best analogy?” Eric said. “Let’s see… if switching to an AI core from a starship is like trying to shove a human mind into the size of a grain of sand, then doing the same thing from a planet-wide neural network is like trying to squeeze one’s mind down to the size of a molecule.”

“That bad, huh?” Crusher said. “Aw, poor baby.” There was more than a hint of mockery in her words.

“Look at these buildings,” Slate said. “Did they construct these disks out of bird shit or something?”

“They look like cow piles turned sideways to me,” Eagleeye said.

“You’ve got experience with that, don’t you?” Slate said.

“With what?” Eagleeye asked.

“Turning cow piles sideways,” Slate explained.

“Oh yeah,” Eagleeye said. “That was one of my hobbies back on Earth. Flipping cows, and flipping cow pies. Sure beats flipping burgers for a living.”

“Hey, don’t knock my livelihood,” Mickey said. “I made good money flipping burgers when I was a human.”

“Yeah, too bad machines made burger flippers obsolete,” Slate said. “It was inevitable. And not just because of profit margins.”

“You saying people trust machines to make burgers better than people?” Mickey asked.

“Hell yes!” Slate said. “I mean come on, who are you going to trust to make your burger? Some teenaged punk like your former self who was just as likely to add some special spittle ’sauce’ to your burger if he thought you looked at him the wrong way? Or some machine that couldn’t give two shits if you flat out insulted it to its face? Especially considering that you knew the machine was guaranteed to produce the highest quality burger, every time.”

“Did I ever tell you I made a machine that composed rap songs?” Tread said. “Back in the day. It was partly responsible for destroying rap music as we know it.”

“Oh, you’re a bastard,” Slate said. He was a former rapper.

“You knew it had to happen,” Tread said. “If I didn’t do it, someone else would have. I based my rapping machine off of deep learning literary AIs. Were any of you around when an AI-written story hit number one on all the bestseller lists for the first time? No? Well, for a while there, AIs dominated the lists, until the next advancement came, and the entire concept of bestseller lists became a thing of the past. Because you see, AIs instead wrote books on the fly for readers, tailoring them to each particular person, generating the plot and story for them in realtime.

“The AIs were always learning from each book they made for you… measuring your captivation and emotional involvement via your heart rate, the dilation of your nostrils and your pupils, the grip your hand had on the device—if you were using a handheld device versus AR goggles—and so forth, so that when they wrote your next book, it was even more engrossing. Once they got a good sense of what entertained you, if your heart rate and other physical indicators should begin to signal boredom, they would immediately change the scene and the plot until your captivation level was back in line. Anyway, I applied those same deep-learning AIs to rap music. And eventually, there were no bestseller lists anymore, not in any genre. Because there were no singular songs or books to put on that list: every song, and every book, was personalized.”

“Like I said, you’re a bastard,” Slate said.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a mission with you,” Turg said. “But the experience is exactly like I remember it.”

“Is that good or bad?” Dunnigan asked.

“Bad, I would say,” Turg replied.

“I’d have to agree,” Eric said. “Let’s keep the comm chatter to a minimum. While we’re operating at a reduced transmission range, I’d still feel safer if we were sending out as little transmissions as possible. You can debate the pros and cons of realtime song generation when we’re back home.”

“Our holographic locators are using up way more bandwidth than our voices!” Slate said. “But all right. You’re the boss.”

“Hm, you have a point there,” Eric said. “Reduce holograms to minimal mode.”

The translucent blue holograms became wireframes. Eric glanced at the bandwidth usage chart. That was better.

Eric glanced at Turg’s hologram. The alien controlled a loaner android that Turg had modified to hold its consciousness. Turg had asked for one of Bambi’s androids, but when Eric told Bambi about the request, she’d flatly refused.

“I already had that thing overwrite my consciousness at one point,” she had said. “If it wants to join us, fine, but I’m not going to lend it anything of mine. Not my mind. Not my face.”

So Eric had donated one of his own androids. He’d swapped out the face with a generic one he’d printed up, because he already had a clone of himself on the team in the form of Frogger. One was enough. Not that he could even see that face at the moment, but still…

It was a different story for Turg, of course. Her entire race was comprised of mind clones, formed from the same base. She had sent along only one of her clones, but if she fell, there was no need to restore her from a backup: she left behind a thousand others. Ten thousand. Eric didn’t know the exact numbers, but there were no doubt a lot.

Since Turg was now operating inside one of his own androids, which had male anatomy and a deep voice, he wasn’t even sure if he should be referring to it as ‘she’ anymore.

Ah, it’s just simpler that way.

In a few minutes, they reached the set of organic buildings that housed the data center. Peering out from the cover of a nearby street, Eric gazed at the ten disk buildings before him. They were arranged in a circle pattern, and would have formed the spokes of a bicycle tire when viewed from above. Those buildings housed the actual servers of the data center, which ran on organic machines.

On the outskirts of those buildings, the perimeter was encircled by deadly looking laser turrets. A double layer of energy shields protected the center, according to the data Eric had on the structure. The first shield was located past the laser turrets, and formed an energy dome that enveloped the entire site. That shield was autogating, allowing outgoing lasers to penetrate, but blocking incoming shots. The inner shield was located at the center of the buildings, and formed a smaller dome that enveloped an organic shed where the access point resided. Several walker mechs surrounded the dome. According to the specs Eric had on them, they were equipped with miniature versions of the cylindrical energy weapon the Archer class vessels employed.

The street and air traffic was nonexistent here: the Tarabola gave this place a wide berth. For good reason, given the defenses.

“If I had known their data centers followed this pattern, I would have found such a site long ago!” Turg said.

“You should have captured the homeworlds of a few lesser Link members, bro,” Slate said. He tapped his temple. “Smarts.”

Eric turned toward Turg’s hologram. “Take us through.”

“First, are we certain those lasers can’t track these invisibility cloaks?” Turg asked.

“Hicks, walk out there,” Eric said.

“That’s right,” Hicks grumbled. “I always get to be the guinea pig.”

But he strode forth nonetheless, moving into plain view of the laser turrets. He walked right up to the shield, but the weapons beyond didn’t fire.

Then he returned; when he was back inside their reduced comm range, Hicks said: “Happy?”

“Position yourselves in front of the energy shield,” Turg said.

“Move into place,” Eric told the Bolt Eaters.

He and the others left their cover in the side street and walked into the open. He stepped carefully between the poles the Tarabola used to ambulate with. His footfalls made soft, sucking noises, and he cringed slightly with each step, worried the turrets would detect him.

He reached the shield, and the others gathered before it, forming a line on either side.

Turg waited next to the shield. When everyone had arrived, the Fresnal turned toward the shield and activated a weapon. It vaguely reminded Eric of the weapon the Revlon Claw utilized, because an expanding rift solidified in front of Turg. Or rather, the edges of a rift. It formed a hollow cylinder as it moved forward, a cylinder that cut through the edges of the shield and the ground beneath as it transferred those particular regions spacetime elsewhere.

Eric upped his time sense. The turrets beyond were already beginning to track the opening that had formed. “Go!”

18

Eric and the others dashed through the energy tunnel three at a time, moving at high speed.

When they were through, Turg followed.

Behind them, the lasers opened fire, and Eric was hit. His protective shield flashed into existence momentarily, revealing his position; the shield absorbed the impact, and he quickly moved past the line of fire. The turret tried to follow him, estimating his position based on his previous location, but he dropped down, rolling, before scrambling to his feet and continuing. At least there were none of those Tarabola poles protruding from the ground here to get in his way.

Turg released the rift tunnel behind her and the shield returned to normal. The groove cut into the ground by the tunnel remained. The turrets continued firing randomly, trying to ferret out the hidden intruders.

“To the buildings!” Eric said.

As he passed the closest turrets, he threw energy grenades at them, but the detonations were absorbed by local shields the turrets were equipped with.

The others also tossed grenades, concentrating on the three closest turrets, and the combined damage proved greater than the local shields could take, deactivating them. Subsequent grenades caused the turrets to take damage so that by the time the team had taken cover between the buildings within, the three closest turrets had melted into pools of metal.

The remaining turrets out there continued to shoot, but the team was past their line of fire; the turrets had to content themselves with firing randomly into the clearing just beyond.

Meanwhile, behind them, the mechs advanced. Those walker-style robots fired their cylindrical energy beams in a deadly search pattern, also hunting for the hidden androids. Those beams crisscrossed in the area just beside the Bolt Eaters, slowly closing as the mechs advanced.

“Uh,” Bambi said.

“Don’t suppose you can fire that rift weapon of yours?” Brontosaurus asked. “Drill us a path through these things to the access point?”

“No, I must wait six minutes for the recharge,” Turg said.

Eric turned around and pressed his hands into the crusty organic wall of the building beside him. It yielded slightly to his pressure, and he was able to grip it with his fingers. He reached higher, and was able to get another handhold, pulling himself up.

“We climb!” Eric said.

Beside him, the others began to scale the surface of the organic structure.

“Too bad the invisibility devices didn’t allow jetpacks!” Dunnigan said beside him.

“Too bad indeed,” Eric said.

When they had tried to wear jetpacks while the Zanefyne cloaking devices at their waists were active, a small portion of the pack always remained visible behind them. The proportions just didn’t work with the alien technology, for whatever reason.

When Eric neared the apex, he lay flat. He decided not to crest the top, because if he did that, he would be within the angle of fire of the turrets on the other side, in addition to the mechs. If he stayed here, at least, he’d only be vulnerable to mech fire. He kept his time sense accelerated, in case the mechs decided to expand their search pattern and target the upper sections of the surrounding disks.

That actually happened a few moments later, and the team had to disperse to the other side momentarily. When the turrets swept their lasers up the structure afterwards, they leaped across to the next structure.

Finally the enemy units stopped firing, and the turrets simply roved, searching the inner grounds. The mechs walked to and fro, patrolling the access point.

“Guess we got them a little excited,” Crusher commented.

“Just a little,” Brontosaurus agreed.

“How long until your rift weapon recharges?” Eric asked Turg.

“Three minutes,” Turg said.

Eric figured the enemy would simply lower the central energy shield once the team penetrated, that way the mechs could attack them. So it was advantageous to take down the mechs now, while most of the Bolt Eater locations were still unknown. That would leave the team a small interval before reinforcements arrived that they could use to initiate the hack. But those reinforcements would be on the way at this very moment, so Eric had to move quickly.

“All right,” Eric said. “We’re going to start taking down these mechs. Choose your successive targets now, while we’re still in comm range. Concentrate fire, three Bolt Eaters per mech. Use energy grenades.”

The team members chose their targets. Eric marked off a mech near him, and it turned red, indicating it was taken. Bambi and Crusher added their names to the target. Eric chose three more that he intended to target after the first, and once more Bambi and Crusher added their names to each one. Those mechs were numbered one, two, three and four to indicate he would target them in that order. The other team members marked off the remaining mechs in a similar fashion.

“Now mark off the turrets,” Eric said. They repeated the process, marking off the turrets they would destroy once the mechs were removed. Some of those swivel-mounts had the access point at the center of the data center in their angle of fire, so that was cause for their removal right there. But he also didn’t want those turrets to be able to target his Bolt Eaters when reinforcements arrived, because he planned to keep most of the team deployed on those buildings, at least until enemy air support arrived.

“All right, spread out,” Eric said. “I want one to two androids per structure. I’m marking the positions for each of you on the overhead map now.” He tried to keep the team members close to the firing partners they had chosen. For example, he assigned Bambi to join him atop the current building, while he assigned Turg and Crusher to the structure on his left, and Slate the building to his right.

“You have thirty seconds to move into place,” Eric said. “Start your timers now. Once you’re in position, wait for the timer to reach zero, and then begin terminating the mechs. When that’s done, proceed to destroy the turrets. Then we’ll up our transmission range and reinitiate comms.”

The team members fanned out across the organic rooftops, quietly leaping onto the adjacent disk buildings of the data center. As they jumped away, one by one they vanished from the communications band. This was by design—they continued to keep their transmission range at the lowest possible setting so as not to reveal their positions.

He couldn’t see them when they left comm range, as their holograms vanished, along with their dots on the overhead map. Once they reached their assigned rooftops, they would drop, choosing areas of the curved surface that kept them out of the sight lines of the turrets, but within the firing angles of the mechs of course.

Eric kept an eye on his timer. When it reached zero, he began tossing energy grenades at his chosen target, as did Bambi. More grenades launched from the rooftop beside him.

The grenades hit the mech in question, and triggered its shield. Instantly it swung its weapons turrets upward. But more grenades came in, and the resultant explosions disabled it.

Eric was already sliding downward as the mech released energy cylinders at his previous location. The beam tore into the organic surface behind him, drilling a wide blast crater. Bambi also repositioned, as the mech targeted her location next.

But then the final grenades he’d tossed with Bambi and Crusher struck, and the impacts tore open the mech. Disabled, it collapsed.

Still moving across the rooftop, he unleashed his grenades at the next target, as did Bambi. Crusher’s grenades came in from the side. Once more he had to weave between the energy bursts the mech unleashed, but in a few seconds that one went down, too.

The final mech was already firing at him by the time he was able to target it, and that caused him to be a little late in throwing his grenades its way. Crusher’s and Bambi’s struck, and the robot swiveled its turrets to target the adjacent structure.

Good, a quick respite.

He unleashed his set of grenades, and the first few disabled the shield, while the latter three struck the mech’s hull, melting through. It collapsed in a pile of spare parts.

The remaining mechs that were spread out between the buildings also dropped a moment later as the other Bolt Eaters finished up.

Eric crawled over the edge of the rooftop with Bambi and targeted his assigned turrets next. Once more he repositioned after throwing each grenade, because doing so revealed his source location. But he managed to destroy all his targets the same way he had the mechs, with the help of Bambi and Crusher.

He checked his harness inventory. He still had a few grenades to spare. Perfect.

When the last of the turrets went down, he increased his comm range to cover the data center. “Turg, how long?”

“One minute,” Turg said.

“Good enough,” Eric said. “Turg, Bambi, Crusher, with me. The rest of you, stay in position. Cover all approaches.”

Eric slid down the edge of the building until he reached the squishy ground below. Bambi joined him. Turg and Crusher landed on the ground next to the adjacent building, and all four approached the central access point.

Eric glanced at Turg expectantly. The alien’s hologram remained motionless, saying nothing.

Eric quickly peered between the surrounding buildings, and surveyed the streets beyond. So far, he saw no sign of reinforcements. And the skies were clear above.

“Turg, come on…” Eric said.

Turg waited a few more seconds and then rushed forward. The alien activated its rift weapon, drilling a tunnel through the inner shield.

The four of them rushed inside.

Turg released the rift weapon, and the shield sealed behind them.

Eric approached the small, organic shed at the center. Bambi and Crusher rushed in front of him, and paused at the entrance. They exchanged nods, and then both entered. Bambi went high, Crusher low.

“Clear!” Crusher said.

Eric shoved past them, joined by Turg.

Inside, a glowing sphere resided on the ground. Eric approached it, hesitant. He pressed an area near the top, where Risilan’s blueprints indicated the manual access points were typically found in Tarabola technology, and sure enough a small rectangular section slid upward. There was a diamond-shaped hole in its center.

Eric produced the cube device he’d come up with for this task, something he and Frogger affectionately referred to as the Rubik’s Cube because of its vague resemblance to the puzzle from their childhood.

He placed the device inside the diamond section, and waited until the small telescoping arms on the top and bottom of the hole gripped it, then he released the device. The individual sections of the Rubik’s Cube began spinning of their own accord as the device initiated the brute force attack he had developed with Turg, Molly, Sheila and Lori.

“It will generate a logon in four minutes?” Bambi asked.

“Four to ten,” Eric clarified. “And then we get to start the hack in earnest.”

“Got reinforcements coming in,” Dickson announced over the comm. “Bioweapons. Strangest things I’ve seen. They look like jellyfish with tentacles trailing behind them, and eight arachnid-style legs. They also have these mouths that look like crisscrossing branches or something. I think they’re plant-based, but it’s hard to tell.”

“Fishbugs!” Slate said.

“Huh?” Frogger said.

“That’s what I’m calling them!” Slate said. “Fishbugs!”

“You would,” Frogger said.

“The Tarabola just lowered the shields!” Traps said. “Both the inner and outer!”

“Something not too unexpected,” Eric said. “They’re going to want to destroy this access point, and whoever is in it. Defend, Bolt Eaters.”

Eric took up a defensive position at the entrance, alongside Bambi. Crusher and Turg peered out from the opposite side of the entrance.

Eric had a full view of the street between the surrounding data center buildings beyond. He could see the Fishbugs Dickson had reported.

Already the team members were firing their plasma rifles. When they got a solid hit, the beams superheated the insides of the jellyfish-like thoraxes, causing them to explode. But the following Fishbugs merely crawled right over their corpses.

Eric aimed, and joined in the fire, as did Turg, Bambi and Crusher.

As the bioweapons began to grow near, they spurted a sticky substance from those branching maws; they targeted the sources of those plasma beams, striking those Bolt Eaters who didn’t move out of the way in time. Marlborough was hit, as was Dunnigan, and the pair became outlined as the substance wrapped around their torsos.

“Damn it!” Marlborough said. He was forced to reposition as the closest Fishbugs tried to concentrate their attacks on him. Some of them physically leaped onto the building, as if intending to grab him and tear him apart.

Eric concentrated his fire on those closest creatures, and took them down before they could reach Marlborough.

But the Fishbugs continued coming. More and more of the Bolt Eaters began to be revealed as they were caught in the spit of those bioweapons. Sometimes, team members were hit by such a profusion of the substance that they were pinned down, and had to be freed by companions.

Air support arrived in the form of gunship-style drones. Some of the team members shifted their fire toward those attackers, and used a combination of grenades and plasma beams to shoot them down before they could attack.

One of the drones was able to penetrate the defenses however, and wailed on Dunnigan and Marlborough, who were still in view thanks to the sticky substance of the Fishbugs. The alien shields of both Dunnigan and Marlborough held up to the attack, long enough for Brontosaurus and Traps, who were still invisible, to penetrate its shield with grenades and plasma beams. Dunnigan and Marlborough fired the finishing shots, and the wreckage of the drone plunged into the bioweapons below.

The bioweapons used the distraction to press the attack, and Dunnigan and Marlborough were hauled up by the creatures. Slate and Eagleeye shot up the Fishbugs in question, and they released the captured Bolt Eaters.

Other nearby bioweapons began to attack the data center buildings when they arrived.

“Don’t let them destroy the buildings!” Eric said. He fired at those Fishbugs, trying to keep them away from the server structures, but then a Fishbug appeared right in front of him, having come in from the side of the shed. It wrapped its stick branches around him, and hauled him out of the shed. Bambi was also caught, and dragged screaming by the feet.

Eric unleashed his plasma rifle, but got a click.

Great time to choose to overheat!

Its head exploded, and he fell to the ground.

He glanced behind him. Bambi stood outside the shed, rifle in hand.

The sliding door of the shed behind her suddenly closed, locking them all out.

“Turg, what are you doing?” Eric said.

The alien didn’t answer.

He received an alert on his HUD.

Log in has been achieved. Minimal privileges.

“Turg, let me in!” Eric said.

But he received no reply.

Eric aimed his rifle at the door, and fired. Bambi and Crusher joined him, and together they easily melted through the substance.

Inside, Turg stood next to the spherical access point.

The alien had its energy cannon pointed at the device.

“Stop!” Eric said. He fired his plasma beam, and the android toppled.

He rushed to the access point and was about to log in when Turg spoke.

“I am… sorry,” Turg said.

“You betrayed us,” Eric said. “We won’t forget this.”

“Was not… me,” Turg said. “Beware… remote hack attempts by the planetary AI.”

“Ah,” Eric said. “We experienced similar problems when hacking other Link members species. We’ve patched our systems a few times now. I’m sorry for shooting you down.”

“Understandable,” Turg said. “But while I am still operational, perhaps we should commence hacking?”

“We?” Eric said. “No. It’s going to be just me, now. You’ll understand if I don’t trust you at the moment.”

Turg nodded. “Good luck, then.” She shoved the rift weapon toward Bambi. “Use… this, if you need it.”

Bambi went to Turg and careful not to place herself in front of the muzzle, she scooped up the weapon. “Thank you.”

Eric amped up his time sense and connected to the remote interface the Rubik’s Cube provided.

19

Jason swung his sword at the knee-height mechs below him; the blade cut through their shields while slamming the enemies into one another, taking out a huge swath of them. Other opposing mechs fired their cylindrical energy weapons at him, but he caught the blow on his ballistic shields.

He and his clones had combined to form four Cataphracts, and were wading through the waves of attackers the Tarabola sent their way. The military base that housed the surface-to-space Freeze weapon waited just ahead, protected by an impenetrable energy shield.

A gunship came in from above, and Jason cut it open with his sword; the twin halves crashed into the mechs below.

Other gunships came in, and he fired his energy cannon, plasma beams, and lightning weapon, taking them down. Two of the gunships managed to get off shots, and the cylindrical energy beams struck his force field and were absorbed. He leaped at them, hitting the gunships with his ballistic shield; he bashed one out of the sky with the hilt of his sword. The other he took down with the railgun mounted on his left shoulder, penetrating a shield that was already weakened thanks to gunfire from his clones.

More gunships came in; Cheyanne swooped past him, drilling through them with her twin swords.

He took more impacts from mechs below that fired cylindrical beams at his left and right sides. However, his body-hugging energy shield engaged once again. That force field existed independently of the original energy shield Sophie’s mech provided the Combined form, because all of the mechs were equipped with such shields now, thanks to the low power energy field generation technology Molly had shared. Unfortunately, the cloaked version wasn’t available to mechs of their size.

He kicked the enemy mechs aside. He didn’t actually touch them—his energy shield activated before impact so that the only contact was between the force field and the enemy hulls.

“Bombers!” Jerry said. “They’re headed toward the Bolt Eaters!”

“Take them down!” Jason swung his gaze skyward, and amped his time sense to track the bombers Jerry had spotted. He released the plasma beams from his tail and hips, striking the distant vessels. The Tarabola had designed the aircraft for speed, rather than durability, and the bombers weren’t equipped with shields. The craft crashed and burned. The other Cataphracts shot down the remaining bombers.

“No doubt they’re sending other air support to harry the Bolt Eaters,” Jerry said.

“They’ll just have to deal with it,” Jason said. “At least until we finish up here.”

His energy shield flashed rapidly behind him.

“Got artillery!” Julian said. “At six o’clock!”

Jason swung around and crouched, lowering his profile. He still overtopped the disk-like buildings in front of him, so he lifted the ballistic shield in front to cover his exposed portions. Then he unleashed his shoulder-mounted weapons, targeting the enemy artillery. They looked like tanks made from vines and shrubs.

He took more impacts from behind as enemy mechs crowded into the street in front of the base.

“Shit,” Jason said. “I’m going to make a teleport run at the base. Cover me.”

Jason stood and dashed toward the base. He knocked aside mechs with his ballistic shield, or kicked them with his feet—again, not making actual contact thanks to his local force field, which was quickly draining—and when he reached the perimeter of the base he tried to teleport.

Nothing happened.

“Tara, why isn’t the teleporter working?” He swung his sword in a low arc around him, cutting through the mechs that crowded around, attacking. “We still have the power levels…”

“I’m not sure,” Tara said. “I can only guess that the shield is a lot thicker on the inside than typical Link force fields. As in, it reaches several hundred meters into the base itself. So it’s not something we can teleport past, at least when we’re Combined!”

“Julian, you try!” Jason said.

Julian’s Cataphract dashed forward and paused next to the base’s force field. Nothing happened.

A sudden in-rush of enemy mechs forced Jason backward, away from the base. He swung his sword at them, hitting their force fields, and knocking them aside. Flyers swooped down from above, unleashing more attacks. His energy shield deflected them all.

“Energy shield levels are reaching critical levels,” Z said.

Jason raised his ballistic shield to block the blows from above, and then returned fire with his energy cannon and railgun.

The other three War Forgers caught up to him once more, and Cheyanne came in to offer backup: she leaped from flyer to flyer, plunging her sword through their energy shields and penetrating the hulls within each time.

Meanwhile, on the ground beside him, Maeran launched her three drones, letting the triangular energy field between them cut through the opposing mechs. She also spat her binding substance to trap some of the metal foes that got too close.

Iris swung her energy whips beside Maeran; those whips deflected from the shields of the enemy mechs at first, but she struck repeatedly until she broke through, and the weapons sliced up the mechs beyond. Some of those mechs turned their weapons on her before she could penetrate their shields, but she unbalanced them by pounding the ground rapidly with her heavy feet.

Jason launched his sword at the remaining enemy units in lumbering swings.

“Tara, if we de-Combine, could you make it past the force field?” Jason asked as he cut through three mechs with one swing.

“I have a greater teleportation range as a separate unit,” Tara replied. “So yes, it’s possible. But then again, it also depends on just how thick the energy field is.”

“We have to try!” Jason said. “John, Jerry, Julian, rush the shield and separate! Taras, teleport when you can.”

Jason and his clones battled through the blocking mechs and took a running leap at the shield; they de-Combined in the process. The shared consciousnesses ripped away from him, so that Jason was back inside his own mind, with his own thoughts and memories.

The four Taras broke free and disappeared.

Jason glanced at his HUD. He knew they were through because their signal strengths had dropped to zero—communications weren’t possible through those shields. At least not the Mind Refurb style of communications.

Carried forward by momentum, the remaining War Forgers and their clones attempted to roll to the ground just in front of the shield, but their separated bodies mostly crashed into the enemy mechs in the street ahead of it. Some of their metal foes slammed into the base’s energy shield, taking damage.

Jason’s local shield indicator jumped back up to twenty-five percent to account for his sudden reduction in stature. But that also meant that the enemy mechs now reached a little past his waist.

Two of those foes fired their cylindrical energy weapons at him, and the local shield absorbed the hits until he was able to dodge behind a nearby building. He then returned fire with his energy cannon, which now resided in his left hand, rather than his “shoulder.”

“I feel less unique, somehow,” Sophie complained over the comm. “Now that the rest of you all have shields like mine for yourself.”

“Your shield got an upgrade, too,” Xin said. “You should be happy. It lasts far longer.”

“I still feel less unique,” Sophie said.

“Aw, she’s realized she’s not a unique snowflake, boo hoo hoo, gah!” Aria was sent flying backward as a large bioweapon leaped at her. It was like a big furry dog, but with a viper’s head.

“Got bioweapons!” Xin said.

“I see that.” Aria fired her lightning weapon and singed the creature. It collapsed on top of her, and she swung it off her body with her ballistic shield.

Jason alternated his fire between the enemy mechs, and Viperdogs now. The latter creatures were easier to take down, since they weren’t shielded, but there were far more of them. What they lacked in quality, they definitely made up for in quantity.

Soon, those Viperdogs crowded out the mechs so that all Jason saw around him were those creatures. He battered them with his fists, and alternately fired his energy cannon, laser weapon, and railgun, until the latter ran out of slugs. As the bodies piled up around him, forming furry walls, his laser and energy weapons overheated. He had a few rockets left, so he used those, until finally he resorted to punching everything in sight.

His local shield had exhausted by then so that he received the full brunt of every impact those creatures got in. His leg and chest assemblies soon became covered in talon marks, grouped in threes. He also had teeth punctures, and dents galore.

“Tara, anything?” Jason tried.

Nothing.

An enemy mech shoved through the Viperdogs and Jason grabbed a dead bioweapon beside him and held it in front of him like a shield as the cylindrical energy attack came in. The Archer-style weapon carved a hole clean through the body, and Jason was forced to abandon it, leaping behind another pile nearby.

He glanced at the shield that enveloped the base beside him, and within, between the disk-like buildings, he saw the Taras fending off an attack from similar mechs. Tara 5 wasn’t currently visible—no doubt she was off doing something deeper in the base while the others covered her. Maybe trying to destroy the Freeze weapon directly, rather than attempting to lower the energy shield.

His attention was dragged back to the here and now when a Viperdog bit into his chest assembly.

Damn it.

He punched his fist into its ribcage. Just then his laser indicator turned green—it had cooled down enough for him to fire again. So he unleashed a shot at the same time, doubling the damage he caused, and the Viperdog yelped. He threw it at the next mech that was coming at him, but before he could get up two more bioweapons landed on him.

A blur of swords sliced away the bodies as Cheyanne cleared a path around him. Tara burst through the line of Viperdogs a moment later, swinging her own sword, and she offered him a metal hand.

He took it and clambered to his feet. “Wait, aren’t you…”

“The shield is down,” Tara said.

“Finally,” Jason said. “War Forgers, clones, into the base! It’s time to eliminate that Freeze weapon.”

He bashed his way through the Viperdogs, using his overhead map to orient himself and ensure he headed toward the base.

“Such a lame name,” Tara said beside him. “Freeze weapon. Couldn’t we have called it something cool, like the X-9521?”

“You think that’s cool?” Sophie said. “I’ll take Freeze any day over X-9521.”

A mech broke through the Viperdog line. Before he could attack it, several plasma bolts erupted from the roof of a nearby disk. He couldn’t actually see a mech there, but knew it was Lori, cloaked.

Xin unleashed her plasma beam at the enemy mech as its shield went down, and that melted through its AI core.

“I still don’t understand why we weren’t able to adapt the alien cloaking technology to our mechs,” Sophie said. “Whereas Lori is able to use cloaking technology leftover from the Banthar days. Essentially ancient tech. The Bolt Eaters can cloak, so why can’t we?”

“Blame it on the integration engineers!” Tara said. “Not Lori.”

Jason burst through the Viperdog line and entered the alleyway formed by two of the disk buildings on the outskirts of the alien base.

When he was past those buildings, he found the other three Taras dug in behind waist-high coils connected to large cubes. There were sword gashes in those cubes, and the coils were damaged, as if they’d been sliced through.

He took cover beside them—beyond those cubes were more enemy mechs, defending the main building beyond, which looked like a giant radio dish. Behind him, the other War Forgers piled in, and Aria deployed her ballistic shield to protect them from rear attacks. Xin launched her plasma beams past the edge of that shield, while Sophie swept her micro machines past to chew up the incoming bioweapons. Cheyanne had taken cover behind another coil, and she fought while lying down on her back, using her swords to cut up the feet of any bioweapons that got too close.

“That dish is the Freeze weapon,” Tara said. “It’s pretty resilient. When my teleporter recharged, I got close and tried destroying it with my sword. Didn’t have much luck.”

“I think these coils are the power source,” Tara 2 said. “Since destroying the shield generator, we’ve been taking cover behind them in turn, and doing what we can to damage them. We’ve noticed that the mechs are reluctant to fire at us when we’re behind these objects, but as soon as we lean past, they’re happy to launch their cylindrical energy attacks.”

“Interesting.” Jason aimed his weapon past the edge of the coil, and fired it at the huge radio dish. As Tara had promised, he didn’t seem to cause damage.

“Let’s try Combining,” Jason said. He issued the join command, and soon found himself holding hands with the women in VR. When he came back to this reality, the mechs were joining.

John, Jerry and Julian also combined so that in moments, four Cataphracts towered over the enemies. Their local energy shields were depleted, so they had to rely on their micro-machine augmented ballistic shields for protection.

Jason used that shield to shove his way past the enemy mechs, striking at them with his sword. When he reached the radio dish, he swung his sword at the device, but the blade didn’t cause any damage. The other Cataphracts had similar luck.

“This isn’t going to work,” Jason said. He turned toward the smaller coil-cube devices the Taras had been trying to destroy. “Let’s take out these things.”

While defending against bioweapons, mechs, and flyers, the four Cataphracts made their way across the base, and destroyed every coil-cube device they encountered.

“I think that’s the last of them,” Jason said. He tried a broadcast to the stealth repeater that Jain had left underneath the planet’s shield before departing. “Jain, if you can read this, try to taunt them into activating the Freeze weapon.”

Apparently, the planet-wide shield would allow any type of transmissions to leave, but unauthorized transmissions wouldn’t penetrate. So while Jain might be able to hear his transmissions, the Void Warrior wouldn’t be able to respond.

“Do you think he got it?” Julian asked.

“Dunno.” Jason swung his sword repeatedly at the bioweapons that swarmed around his feet. He also continued to block attacks from enemy mechs and flyers. His shield was getting fairly ragged along the edges.

And then the radio dish beside them lit up, becoming a bright white, and a massive energy beam roared through the atmosphere. It sounded like a freight train mixed with a jet engine.

“Nope, we didn’t disable it,” John said.

“Look for any power sources we missed!” Jason waded through the bioweapons and mechs, bashing as he went.

“I don’t understand how they could still generate power, if we’ve destroyed ninety-nine percent of the power sources!” Lori said.

“I’ve read up on Tarabola power sources in the Tyrnari archives,” Aria said. “Apparently, these coils and the cubes that hold them are made of a material that’s active in remote charging. Because of the nature of that material, as long as at least one coil-cube device is still intact, it can still charge the others, even if they’re in pieces, which in turn feed their power to the Freeze dish.”

“That sounds like a gross oversimplification, with the emphasis on gross, but I’ll believe you,” Lori said.

He searched the ground between the bioweapons, and spotted four coil-cubes that the team had missed. They were easy to see, because they glowed a bright white, though that white was quickly fading.

“There!” Jason rushed those power sources, and jabbed the first two with his sword. John beat him to the next two.

“Jain, sorry about that,” Jason transmitted. “I think we’ve got it now. It shouldn’t fire again.”

Jason roamed the base, searching for more power sources he might have missed. He ground up any other coil-cubes he saw, even if they were previously damaged. He also continued to defend himself against the mechs and bioweapons, which continued to attack, along with flyers.

Ten minutes passed.

That was past the Freeze recharge interval.

“Well, it looks like it worked,” Jerry said.

Jason defended for a few more minutes longer. “It’s definitely down.”

“What if they’re bluffing?” Julian asked.

“Then I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Jason backed against the radio dish, and the others joined him. The mechs and bioweapons were closing from all sides. Above the buildings, more enemy air support approached.

“Now we just have to survive until Eric finishes up,” Jerry said.

“Are we going to cut our way to the data center to give him a hand?” John asked.

Jason surveyed the seething masses before him. “I think we’re going to be stuck here for a long time…”

20

Jain received the transmission from Jason informing him that the Freeze weapon was down. He and the others were drifting in high orbit. They’d fired their blob weapons at a defense platform in low orbit, and momentarily activated their inertialess drives to change course, and the Tarabola had responded by activating the Freeze weapon. They’d also dispatched a search party consisting of Archers and Plowmen. The former were spraying the area with their cylindrical energy weapons, while the latter were weaving to and fro in a forage pattern.

The Freeze effects had faded over five minutes ago, and Jain still drifted from the location where he’d revealed himself.

“If that weapon was working, the Tarabola should have fired it again by now,” Jain said.

“It should be recharged, yes,” Xander told him.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out if it’s truly down…” Jain said.

“You intend to reveal our position by firing again,” Xander said.

“Good guess,” Jain told his Accomp.

“They might be bluffing.” Xander said. “They might want to trick us into drawing more ships here, to trap them.”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Jain said. “Record message: ‘The War Forgers believe they’ve destroyed the spacetime Freeze. I can offer independent confirmation that it seems to be offline, however I’d advise caution: it’s possible the weapon is still active, and that the Tarabola are bluffing. So don’t overcommit.’ Activate our comm systems long enough to transmit the message to the repeater.”

“Message sent,” Xander said. “Comm systems offline.”

Jain turned on his inertialess drives and issued a directional change before deactivating them again.

The nearby Archers and Plowmen instantly changed course. The Archers filled the area with random concentric energy beams; Jain was reminded of the spray-and-pray pattern insurgents used to fire with, back in the day.

He continued to drift away. No Freeze attack came. The shots missed him. The odds of a hit were small, considering the multiple directions he could have taken.

The aliens would probably track the signal he had sent to the moon on the far side of the system, and they’d dispatch ships to investigate, but it would be a few hours before they discovered the hidden rift on the dark side.

In the meantime, he continued moving away from the attackers.

It took about twenty-five minutes for the transmission to reach the repeater above the moon. And when that happened:

“I’m detecting several rifts opening in high orbit,” Xander announced a few minutes later.

Jain and the other Mimics had jettisoned stealth endpoint beacons in high orbit, facilitating the rifts the Alliance was now opening.

Banthar, Mapi, Mimic, Mind Refurb, Tyrnari and Zanefyne ships poured through.

And Fresnal. Hundreds of Fresnal.

This should get interesting.

“Am I miscounting?” Jain said. “I’m detecting around four hundred ships out there.”

“You’re an AI,” Xander said. “You can’t miscount.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jain said. “I guess they decided to ignore my warning about overcommitting.”

“I guess they figured it was time to go all in,” Xander said.

“Yeah,” Jain said. “Wars have been lost that way.”

The main goal was to distract the AI core of the planet, forcing it to expend resources monitoring the space battle, resources that could instead be diverted to handle the local threats below, especially the threat posed by Eric and the Bolt Eaters.

The secondary goal was to cause as much damage as possible, in case the Bolt Eaters failed to secure the planet.

So it made sense that the allies would want to risk everything. It just seemed like too much of a risk. He knew that Tanis wouldn’t have been behind this. The man was conservative, and would have exercised constraint. But the other aliens that were part of the Alliance?

Maybe it was a bad idea to give everyone equal voting rights.

The Mimics vanished, cloaking as soon as they entered the system.

The search party of Tarabola vessels turned away from Jain to focus on the greater threat. Other Tarabola vessels converged on the attackers from orbit, and elsewhere in the system. Thanks to the presence of Turg’s Fresnal, the enemy was outnumbered two to one.

“The odds look good for once,” Jain said.

“But we both know how quickly that can change,” Xander replied.

“We do indeed,” Jain agreed.

“I’m detecting more rifts,” Xander said. “Link member species are jumping in. I’m detecting ship classes from the Barrage, Farseeker, Gralos, Retina, Revlon, Vaernastian and Veriarty races.”

“The whole gang,” Jain commented. “Gotta love it when reinforcements are only a jump away.”

He picked out the heat signatures of the Void Warriors and activated his inertialess drive to set a course. Two nearby Archers detected his directional change, and turned around to fire their energy beams his way. They miscalculated his course and missed.

He was drifting toward the rightmost portion of the main battle ahead, where Turg’s Magnet ships were engaged with the Plowmen. The Magnets alternated between firing dual plasma beams and some sort of grappling weapon—when the latter struck, it glowed a bright white, indicating some sort of energy transfer. The frontal force fields of the Plowmen absorbed both attacks easily. The grappling weapons hit those shields, and attached to the force field, only to break away a moment later.

Zanefyne Coils came up to the Plowmen from behind, and fired their particle beams to take the enemy offline. Some of the Plowmen turned away from the Magnets to face what they considered the more immediate threat, but that was a mistake, because they exposed their unshielded aft portions to the Fresnal. Plasma beams and bright grappling hooks slammed into the enemy units.

Archers quickly joined the fray, attacking the Coils. Meanwhile, Jain drifted past silently, heading toward the Void Warriors beyond.

As he passed behind two closely spaced Archer vessels, he couldn’t resist taking a pot shot. He fired his lightning bolt weapon, and it arced between the two ships, taking both their AI cores offline.

That drew the attention of other Archers, and he was suddenly beset by a series of energy cylinders. He drifted from them, ready to activate his inertialess drives if it seemed any of those attacks would hit him. But then Claws and Barbells joined the fray, and littered the area with rifts and energy grids.

Jain was forced to engage his drives to avoid them, and that allowed the Archers to pinpoint his position. Energy attacks came directly for him. He attempted to fly around them, but the beams clipped the right edge of his pyramid-shaped vessel, and that was enough to knock out the delicate setup of his stealth countermeasures. He was still cloaked, but now the enemy gravity wave sensors would detect him.

He dove under the next wall of energy grids and rift attacks, and decided to deactivate his useless cloaking device to give more power to his inertialess drives. Mapi Trees came in behind the Archers, attacking them with their energy whips. Fresnal Magnets also closed in to attack the Claws and Barbells, drawing fire away from Jain.

With the distractions, he was able to break free, and he continued toward the Void Warriors. He began preventive evasive maneuvers, zig-zagging in three dimensions.

Three Teleporters appeared in his path, but the zig-zagging saved him from taking anything but minor internal damage. He still felt painful bursts inside his hands and feet, along with a stab of pain in his gut.

“That one came a little close to the reactor core,” Jain said.

“Yes,” Xander said.

Jain restored communications, and the virtual bridge crew filled out. All the Void Warriors were present, minus Medeia, who was obviously cloaked.

“Nice to see you,” Sheila said. Despite her words, her eyes were defocused as she concentrated on the battle.

“You too,” Jain said, firing blobs and skirmishers at the Teleporters. “Did you miss me the long time we were parted?”

“Oh, yes,” Sheila said.

“That’s right, flirt in the middle of a space battle, why don’t you?” Mark commented.

The Teleporters broke apart, and Jain flew right through one of their wreckages. He felt the subtle touch of the spreading debris as it pelted his hull.

In that moment, he tried to fire his rift generator out of curiosity. Didn’t work. Jammed, of course.

Jain headed directly toward Sheila’s Wheelbarrow. Her energy shield was in full force, deflecting the rifts a group of Claws were launching at the Void Warriors. As the slowest member of the group, Sheila had trouble dodging the attacks. Jain worried that her shield would be depleted.

He swerved toward the Claws and fired blobs in rapid succession. That drew their attention toward him, and they fired the rifts at him instead. He released skirmishers as well, and watched in satisfaction as several of them reached their targets and latched onto the enemy hulls.

Let’s see how well they fight while having to fend off multiple boarding parties.

The fighters from a nearby Gralos Battlestar suddenly surrounded him.

“Bolt Eater Accomps, could use some help here,” Jain sent. Their ships were best equipped to deal with the fighters.

He fired blobs at the multitude of craft that harried him, missing most of them. But then four Banthar motherships flew past, unleashing their gamma ray weapons, and rendering the fighters useless. The Banthar hurled their micro machine swarms at the Battlestar, enveloping it.

Gavin unleashed his shockwave weapon, hitting the Claws with it. They dropped significantly in speed, allowing Jain to close. He fired his blobs in rapid succession, destroying the vessels.

A mine detonated to his port side, and Jain was forced to move in the starboard direction. Another mine detonated there. Again, he swerved away from the blast zone. He continued encountering mines, and realized a Farseeker Minelayer was somewhere nearby.

He continued avoiding mines, until he realized he was being herded toward a group of five Barrage Buckyballs. He reversed course, but another five lowered behind him.

They activated their multiform plasma beams.

Jain was still zig-zagging, and he upped his time sense to avoid as many of those beams as he could, but he inevitably took several shots.

“Engine efficiency is down to fifty percent,” Xander said.

“Damn,” Jain said. “Another barrage like that, and we’re out of the game.”

“They don’t call them the Barrage for nothing,” Xander said.

“Har,” Jain told the AI.

Jain jerked the Devastator upward, and the Buckyballs mirrored his course on both sides. It looked like they were about to fire again, but then several lightning attacks appeared from empty space, striking them on both sides. Mimics.

“Thanks, Hephaestus, wherever you are,” Jain said.

A Vaernastian Armadillo detonated nearby, bringing down eight Tyrnari ships.

“Damn it,” Gavin said. “I told them not to get too close to that ship.”

Jain turned toward a group of Banthar motherships wailing on a cluster of Veriarty Cubes; the Banthar launched wave after wave of black holes. But then Farseeker Reflectors interjected, placing their ships between the Cubes and the Banthar. The black holes reflected off their hulls, coming right back at the Banthar, forcing the latter to disperse the tears in spacetime.

Tyrnari Hang Gliders came in and brightened their hulls, blinding the Reflectors and Cubes. The Hang Gliders launched their grappling hooks and latched onto the Cubes, then proceeded to drag them into the Reflectors, destroying both upon impact.

Mind Refurb Piranhas came in, and launched hellraisers, stingers and raptors, along with the occasional alien energy cannon jury-rigged to their hulls. A few also fired black holes. They made short work of the remaining Cubes.

Three Plowmen were bearing down on Sheila. Jain turned around to help her, but he was too far.

“Guys, the Wheelbarrow,” Jain said.

But the Void Warriors were already on it: Medeia materialized, slamming her sword section into the unshielded aft portion of one of the Plowmen. She broke away, tearing the ship apart, and cloaked once more.

Cranston teleported behind another Plowman, and matched its speed long enough to release his micro machines. The Plowman tried to turn around, but the micro machines had formed long shafts that were already piercing its hull.

Mark closed with the third Plowman, but it accelerated to its maximum speed, pulling away.

But then Jain’s lightning weapon recharged. He was just within range. He fired at the aft, unshielded portion of the Plowman, and scored a hit, disabling it.

“Thanks, guys,” Sheila said. “My shield is almost done.”

And then there was a bright flash from the planet.

“The hell was that?” Jain asked.

But he knew a moment later when his motion ground to a halt, and his weapons ceased to function. His Void Warriors also vanished from the virtual bridge.

All of the Alliance ships had Frozen.

The Link vessels were now free to move between them unhindered, and the enemy fired at will, destroying Alliance members indiscriminately.

“Jason was wrong,” Jain said.

“No,” Xander said. “He was right.”

“But… are you saying this Freeze weapon was sourced from a different location on the surface?” Jain asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Xander replied. “They have another Freeze weapon.”

“Damn it, Risilan and her Intel,” Jain said.

“Throughout history, that’s always been one of the biggest problems with relying on Intel from spies,” Xander said. “Oftentimes, it’s incomplete.”

He stared at the display, hoping that the Link stayed away from his Void Warriors. They seemed to be concentrating on the bigger fish for now, mainly the Zanefyne and Banthar vessels.

“Got some bad news,” Xander said.

“What now,” Jain asked.

“I’m detecting a massive projectile launch on the planet’s surface,” Xander replied.

“Directed at us?” Jain pressed.

“No,” Xander said. “It’s headed toward the Tarabola city where the War Forgers and Bolt Eaters are operating. These projectiles are highly fissile, according to the data I have on them. Equivalent to the nuclear ICBMs found on Earth.”

“They’re going to nuke their own city?” Jain said in shock.

“It would seem that way,” Xander told him. “They’d rather destroy the entire city than risk the entire planet following to whatever virus the Bolt Eaters are installing. Wouldn’t you, if it meant saving your civilization and way of life?”

“I’m not sure,” Jain said. “Weren’t our population estimates of the city and surrounding areas upwards of a hundred million?”

“That’s right,” Xander said.

Jain shook his head. “How much time until impact?”

“Three minutes, forty-two seconds,” Xander said.

21

Eric ducked as the machine gun bunker unleashed waves of Gatling fire his way from its loopholes.

He’d made the mistake of choosing a World War II environment to serve as the backdrop for his hack.

Should have chosen Pokémon.

Then again, if he had, no doubt he’d be fighting lightning bolt-wielding Pikachus or whatever they were called.

He’d borrowed this virtual reality hacking technique from Sheila—essentially it relied upon VR visualizations to represent the enemy AI core. His avatar denoted the main virus delivery program. The buildings that served as his targets symbolized the different AI subsystems. The machine gun bunkers and the soldiers within represented the enemy’s defensive subroutines, placed in his path to protect the subsystems.

The demolition charges he carried in his satchel contained secondary payload programs, which, when triggered, would install a copy of the virus in the targeted subsystem. This triggering would appear as an explosion in the VR environment; upon successful deployment, the target building would blow up. If the virus failed to deploy, the building would remain standing.

The goal was for Eric to plant a charge in each building before him, and detonate them in turn. When he destroyed the last building, the AI core was his. It sounded easy, except for all the enemy soldiers in his path.

He aimed his M1 rifle past the lip of the trench and fired into the small loophole slit in the bunker ahead. He struck one of the enemy soldiers inside, because the shadowy silhouette within went down. His rifle harbored a tertiary payload program specifically designed to take down the anti-viral defenses of the AI. Sometimes the bullets—which contained a custom virus—stopped working, a sign of enemy adaptation, and he had to rewrite the tertiary code and its viruses in realtime. The Mk 2 fragmentation grenades he carried in his harness contained similar payload code, except they were designed to deploy to multiple targets at once.

In all, it was an adequate simulation of the task at hand, if a little over the top.

He ducked out of the way of the return fire he knew was coming. He had Dee operating a Browning M1917A1 machine gun in an offensive pillbox behind him, but she couldn’t cover him all the time—there were three different bunkers in front of him, located different distances away, and on either side.

He couldn’t just up his time sense, either, and weave between the enemy units in a blur: his time sense was already close to the maximum his current android AI core was capable of. The VR environment was generated by his viral delivery program, which fixed the speed of the objects around him. That was good, in a sense, because it meant the enemy had to play by his rules: at least he wouldn’t have to worry about facing soldiers that moved with super-human speeds.

Unfortunately, it also meant the bullets of the enemy anti-viral defense subroutines would move at super-human speeds.

He moved along the trench at a crouch, repositioning slightly. He didn’t want to come up at the same spot each time: That would only lead to the destruction of his viral delivery program, and he’d have to start the process anew.

Like a respawn.

He chuckled.

If only this were some video game.

“Bambi and Crusher are requesting access to join the hacking environment,” Dee said.

“Denied,” Eric told his Accomp.

Dee’s machine gun targeted the bunker just ahead, and he waited for it to move on to a different target; when it did, he quickly raised his rifle past the top of the trench and let off a shot. He struck another soldier inside the bunker, then he ducked as the incoming fire started once more.

Gotta get close enough to toss a grenade in the foxhole.

“Bambi and Crusher insist,” Dee said.

“I said no!” Eric told his Accomp. “Hell with it. I don’t have time to argue. If they have a death wish, let them in. Assign their avatars to the appropriate viral delivery programs.”

The two appeared in the trench beside him. They were decked out in World War II nurse outfits. Bambi glanced at the hypodermic needle she held in confusion.

“Duck!” he shouted.

The pair dropped, muddying their white dresses.

Eric couldn’t help but release a boisterous laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“That’s right, laugh at us,” Crusher said. “Is this some idea of a practical joke?”

“Uh, Dee?” Eric said. “Their outfits?”

“You told me to assign them to appropriate viral delivery programs,” Dee said. “In this era, most women did not serve on the front lines.”

“I don’t care,” Eric said. “I can’t have them injecting the anti-defense virus into enemy soldiers via hypodermic needles. They need rifles.”

“Very well,” Dee said.

Their uniforms changed, replete with helmets and rifles. Their harnesses contained grenades, and they also carried satchels that were no doubt stuffed to the brim with virus delivery charges like his own.

“That’s better,” Bambi said.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to wish I left you as nurses real quick here,” Eric said. “Lay down covering fire on the enemy bunker ahead while I get in close. Dee, target the adjacent bunkers with your machine guns. Back and forth, as fast as you can. Try not to let them hit me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dee said.

The machine gun in the pillbox behind them jumped back and forth, targeting the enemy bunkers to the left and right.

“How come none of the enemy bullets are damaging Dee’s gun?” Bambi asked.

“She’s self-regenerating,” Eric replied. “Every time the gun takes a hit, she resets the code.”

“Why doesn’t the enemy do that?” Bambi asked.

“Oh, they do,” Eric said. “Why do you think the bunkers keep filling up? The only way to stop the regenerating is to eliminate all the soldiers inside at once. And that’s what I’m going to do now. Now would you mind? Suppressive fire?”

Bambi and Crusher lifted their rifles and concentrated fire on the bunker just ahead.

Eric pulled himself out of the trench and moved in toward the enemy bunker from the side. The suppressive fire from Dee and the two women kept the enemy units from returning fire, for now

He reached the edge of the targeted bunker. He was currently out of view of the other two bunkers, so he could have probably told Dee to stop firing, but he wanted to keep the enemy occupied nonetheless.

He retrieved three grenades from his harness, pulled the pins, and popped them in turn into the bunker.

Three satisfying explosions erupted from within in rapid succession, and smoke exploded from the loophole slit in the edge of the bunker.

The smoke cleared quickly, and Eric shoved his rifle into the loophole and fired at the bodies he saw slumped on the ground. The bunker promptly dissolved, along with the soldiers within, and he fell forward onto the bare ground.

He was completely exposed to the other two bunkers in that moment, so he rolled behind a rise, taking cover. Bambi, Crusher, and Dee had kept up their covering fire, so he’d escaped unharmed.

He proceeded toward the next bunker at a low crawl while the three women kept the enemy soldiers occupied. When he reached it, he tossed some grenades inside, and followed up with point-blank rifle shots. Once again the bunker dissolved, and he was forced to find cover.

The final bunker lay ahead, and he approached it from the right. Five different buildings also awaited, separated by shrubs, and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire.

He reached the final bunker and tossed grenades inside. He didn’t have to shoot into the loophole, because the bunker promptly vanished.

There were several boulders and small rises between his current position and the closest building, so he moved behind the first one. He fired through the fence, at the windows where he’d spotted soldiers. He continued firing, laying down suppressive fire until Bambi and Crusher joined him.

Dee was out of range at the moment, but she would open fire if any of the bunkers regenerated behind them.

“Razor wire,” Bambi said. “Did they even have razor wire in this era?”

“Yeah, probably,” Eric said. “But we’re not here to debate the technical inaccuracies of my virtual reality hacking environment. Some covering fire, please…”

Bambi and Crusher lay down suppressive fire, allowing him to move from boulder to boulder and rise to rise, slowly closing with the fence topped by razor-wire. When he reached it, he was shielded from the view of the building’s windows by the tall grass inside the fence.

He retrieved his wire cutters and cut a small opening. He flinched as one of the bullets from Bambi or Crusher ricocheted from the fence. He thought it almost hit him, given the way the grass trembled beside his head.

“Careful,” he sent over the comm.

“Sorry,” Bambi transmitted. “My aim was off.”

“You’re an AI,” Crusher said. “Your aim can’t be off.”

“Well, it was,” Bambi said.

He low-crawled through the fence, continuing to use the tall grass for cover. He reached the edge of the building and looked up. He could see an enemy soldier’s muzzle protruding from the base of the lintel, returning fire at Bambi and Crusher.

He quietly reached into his satchel and removed one of the demolition bricks. He removed the peel, and delicately affixed the sticky side to the building. He waited until Bambi and Crusher fired again, causing that muzzle to duck from view once more.

He used the opportunity to turn around and retreat through the tall grass.

“Did you hit the target?” Crusher asked over the comm.

“Think I missed,” Bambi replied.

“But you’re an AI!” Crusher said.

“Not that again,” Bambi said.

As soon as Eric had crawled underneath the fence, he detonated the charge. Shrapnel rained down around him. Turning around, he saw with some satisfaction that the building had crumbled.

“Virus deployed in first subsystem,” Eric said.

He used the same technique to detonate charges on the next three buildings, using Bambi and Crusher to provide suppressive fire while he cut a hole through the fences and low-crawled to the outer wall. The charges destroyed the three buildings in turn.

When he had placed the final demolition brick, he waited for Bambi and Crusher to open fire and distract the enemy soldiers lurking within, and then hastily crawled outside the fence. Then he detonated the charge.

When he turned around, it was only to discover that the building remained standing.

“What happened?” Bambi asked over the comm.

“Damn it,” Eric said. “The virus didn’t work this time. The enemy is adapting. I’m going to have to tweak it.”

“Uh, is it bad when the buildings start to regenerate?” Bambi asked.

“Which ones?” Eric swiveled toward the ruins of the buildings he’d destroyed.

“All of them,” Bambi said.

He raised his head slightly to peer over the tall grass that grew next to the fence. Sure enough, the other four buildings had all been restored to their previous conditions.

“Shit,” Eric said.

“All three bunkers are back as well,” Dee sent.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about those,” Eric said. “Considering the three of us are past them.”

“Actually, you do,” Dee said. “The soldiers are streaming out of the bunkers to hunt you.”

“Bambi, Crusher…” Eric said.

“We see them!” Bambi said.

Eric glanced at his overhead map and saw the enemies approaching the positions of Bambi and Crusher. That was a little cheat that wasn’t actually available in the real World War II.

He heard gunfire, and saw several of the red dots representing the enemies turn black. The remaining stopped. No doubt they’d dropped, ducking behind whatever nearby cover they could find.

Eric crawled forward, moving between a gnarled tree and a small dip in the ground. The dip would protect him from the five buildings behind him, while the tree would cover him from the soldiers that were in front of him, near their bunkers.

He peered past the tree.

A stream of flame suddenly erupted from behind a boulder ahead.

“Flamethrower!” Bambi shouted.

Eric ducked behind the tree. It lit up.

The flames curled past it, and he was forced to leap from cover or it would have ignited him, too.

He rolled to the ground and slid into another hollow nearby. Gunfire riddled the ground at the upper edges of the hollow around him.

“Well, we’re beautifully pinned,” Bambi said.

22

The air above Eric singed as the flamethrower launched yet again.

“Our bullets aren’t working anymore,” Bambi said urgently.

When the flames subsided, Eric peered past the burned grass. The smell of charred plant material was strong in his nostrils.

Bambi and Crusher were firing freely, but the enemy soldiers must have realized the bullets weren’t harming them, because they boldly left cover. They took several shots, but didn’t go down. They returned fire from their positions, forcing Bambi and Crusher to retreat behind the log they had used as a hide.

Eric ducked again, overlaid his debugging screen with his HUD, and hurried through a quick patch to the virus code. Randomizing the headers had worked before when this happened.

He hoped it would work again.

He made the change, committed the code, and ran the build. Then he deployed it to the live system.

The flamethrower operator stood right above him. The man looked down and smirked. The pilot light at the tip of the flamethrower’s muzzle wavered ominously as he pointed it at Eric.

“Try now!” Eric rolled out of the hollow, firing his rifle as he spoke.

The flamethrower operator jerked as the bullets hit him, and he collapsed, sending out a stream of flame that singed the grass around Eric.

Bambi and Crusher mowed down the other soldiers who had brazenly moved out in the open.

“That’ll teach them,” Bambi said.

The main virus payload would need a little more than a header tweak. He’d have to come up with an entirely different deployment mechanism. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for a complete overhaul… earlier, he’d managed to get access to the AI’s city-wide sensor system for a few minutes. During that time, he had detected several incoming ICBMs. If those nuclear equivalents reached the city before he could take control, the war would be over. The Tarabola would sacrifice a hundred million of their own civilian lives, but the Link would win.

Thankfully, there were some potential backdoors he’d cataloged that might make good candidates for virus delivery. Backdoors that wouldn’t require a complete overhaul.

He chose the most promising of those vulnerabilities and made the changes while Bambi and Crusher kept watch, and then recompiled the code and deployed it to the demolition charges. Then, while Bambi and Crusher covered his approach to the buildings, he proceeded to place them once more.

One by one the buildings exploded, reducing to rubble. The backdoor worked. So far.

When he placed the last, he held his breath as he detonated it, but once again the final building—this one shaped like a two-story cottage—remained intact.

“What the hell!” Eric said.

“The other buildings are still gone,” Bambi transmitted. “I don’t think they’ve adapted yet.”

And then Eric understood.

“I’m going to have to place the charge inside the building,” he said.

“Is that safe?” Bambi asked.

“No,” Eric said.

“Maybe I should do it,” Bambi said.

“I got this,” he said. “But I will need your backup.”

The soldiers holed up in the house fired frantically at the tall grass that surrounded the building, hoping to rout out whoever had planted the previous charge. Or perhaps it was an attempt to prevent him from trying again. Whatever the case, it was new behavior on their part, though it wasn’t something he couldn’t deal with.

“First of all, I’ll need you to concentrate fire on the windows again,” he said. “Give me some covering fire.”

Bambi, Crusher and Dee lit up that side of the house. The rifle fire from the windows ceased, and Eric smiled.

He crawled through the tall grass until he reached the wall. Then he stood to a crouch next to the window, retrieved a few grenades, and then sent: “Cease firing.”

When his companions stopped their attack, he pulled the pins on the grenades and tossed them inside. He ducked and explosions rocked the house; a blast of smoke erupted from the window.

Rifle at the ready, he leaned past the window frame and spotted soldiers watching the opposite window across from him. He unleashed several shots, striking them in the back; he also fired at the forms sprawled on the floor in front of him. He quickly scanned the room, but it looked like he got everyone.

He waved at Bambi and Crusher, and the two approached.

He guarded until they arrived, and then he slid the rifle strap over his shoulder, retrieved a charge from his satchel, removed the sticky side, and reached through the window to attach the device on the inner wall.

Then he quickly retreated and dropped just inside the fence. The charge detonated.

The building remained intact.

He sighed in frustration. “I’ll have to place it upstairs.”

“Are you just guessing now?” Bambi asked.

“The upstairs area represents the heart of the subsystem,” Eric said.

The three returned to the house. He scanned the inside with his rifle and confirmed that everyone was still down. Then, keeping close to the wall, he led the way to the front of the building.

He took up a position on the left side of the door, while Bambi and Crusher assumed a position on the right. He slammed the butt of his rifle into the door handle, and then kicked the door in. He dropped, going low to scan the room. Bambi went high above him.

He ran the sights of his rifle across the room and its furniture. The bodies of the enemy soldiers were scattered across the floor.

“Clear,” he said.

He entered at a cautious crouch.

Suddenly the room reset. The dead guards on the floor immediately assumed defensive positions by the windows. The door had rematerialized in the closed position behind him, shutting out Bambi and Crusher.

The guards noticed his presence, and swiveled their rifles toward him.

Eric dropped to the floor, sliding in between a couch and table, while firing at the three soldiers still in view to his left. An enemy shot hit the wooden table leg, and the table partially collapsed. He unleashed his own shots in rapid succession, shooting through the table, and the three soldiers fell.

From the sudden burning pain in his chest, he realized he’d been hit. When he inhaled, the wound in his torso hissed.

Shit. Sucking chest wound.

“We can’t come in!” Bambi said. “The door won’t open!”

“Return to the window then!” Eric said.

Fighting the pain, and struggling to breath, he crawled to the edge of the couch and leaned past. The other soldiers waiting underneath the window there immediately opened fire, and he was forced to duck from view.

“We’re at the window,” Bambi said.

“Drop a grenade inside,” Eric said.

“What about you?” Bambi asked.

“I’m in cover,” he said.

He heard the crash of breaking glass. And then a grenade landed on the broken table in front of him.

“I said drop a grenade, not throw it!” Eric scooped up the grenade and tossed it over the couch. It exploded.

He rolled to the side, and opened fire at the one soldier who was still standing. Then he got up.

Bambi and Crusher were at the window. They tried to pull themselves inside, but every time they made it halfway through, their positions reset back outside.

“We can’t come in,” Bambi said.

He nodded. “The AI is constantly adapting. It was lucky I made it inside when I did. Because if I leave, or have to start this whole mission over again, I probably won’t be able to enter either. Not without some major coding overhauls.”

He tentatively approached the small stairs of the cottage. He took the first step, and the boards creaked.

The room reset. The soldiers were erased from the floor, and reappeared at the windows once more.

They immediately spun to fire at him.

“Shit!” He raced up the stairs, firing at the soldiers as he went.

When he was halfway, motion drew his eye above.

A soldier stood at the top of the stairs, with a rifle pointed directly at him.

Eric dove forward as the soldier fired, and tried to swing his rifle upward, but he hit the stairs face-first before he could do so.

He let go of the rifle, and yanked at the soldier’s feet instead. He felt two burning pains in his lower back and buttocks, and knew he’d been hit again.

The soldier toppled. Eric pulled himself on top of the man and felt a sharp sting in his ankle as gunfire from below hit him. An explosion downstairs told him Bambi and Crusher had thrown another grenade inside.

Eric was face to face with the soldier. He felt a blast of garlic breath before he head-butted his opponent. He rolled off him, kicked him several times in the ribs, and slid the revolver from the man’s holster. Before the guy could respond, Eric fired it into his chest.

Eric pushed himself up, feeling the pain from all his wounds. He held his sucking chest wound as he scanned the railings with the pistol. There didn’t seem to be anyone else up here.

He limped toward what looked like the main bedroom. His foot left a trail of blood on the floor. He didn’t want to look at it too long. When he was human, he could make himself sick by looking at his own blood. That particular psychological condition had carried over to his android form.

He reached the doorway of the bedroom, and pied the entrance with the pistol. The room seemed clear. He checked the ceiling, but there was nothing up there.

He entered, but then a large spider dropped down from the ceiling and landed on him.

Nothing up there, my ass!

The thing bit into his arm, injecting its venom, and then quickly retreated to a corner of the room. He felt his body growing numb. He pointed his pistol at the spider, but his finger refused to respond. The venom…

He considered pulling up his debugging window, but there was no time to counter this particular bit of antiviral code. No, he had to finish this.

His sucking chest wound hissing louder than ever, he reached into his satchel, but he couldn’t grab onto any of the charges—his fingers weren’t working. So instead, he upturned the satchel and let all the charges drop to the ground.

They wouldn’t arm until he affixed them to a surface—it was part of their inherent design. So, keeping an eye on the spider looming in the corner of the room, he pressed both wrists around one of the demolition blocks to hold it in place, and then bit at the backing, tearing it off so that the sticky side was revealed. Then, with those wrists, he flipped the block over, and attached it directly to the floor. He spotted a window next to the spider.

“Guys, I need you to shoot out the window of the upstairs bedroom,” Eric sent. He used his mental comm mode, since he didn’t trust that his lips would work in his current state. “At my current position…”

Bambi and Crusher would be able to use their overhead maps to find his current position. A moment later the window took several rifle blasts, and large cratering holes appeared.

Good enough.

The spider started at the impacts, and moved away from the window.

“Cease firing!” he sent.

He stood up, and limp-ran toward it.

The spider thought to head him off, but he reached the window first, and threw himself at it. The weakened glass broke, and he plunged to the ground one story below as the demolition charge detonated.

He landed hard. He felt more pain, this time in his forearm, and knees.

Probably broke something.

He turned around, lying flat on the ground, and was relieved when he saw the cottage had collapsed behind him.

Bambi and Crusher rushed to his side.

“You’re injured!” Bambi said.

His lips wouldn’t move by then, nor much else of his body. He could still communicate via mental mode.

“Yes,” he said.

Because of the way he had fallen, his left arm was positioned in front of his face, affording him a view of the exposed tissue. Blue veins began to crisscross his skin.

“What’s going on?” Bambi said in alarm.

“An artifact of the anti-viral code the AI developed,” Eric said. “The avatar texture mapping system is among the first to go.”

“First to go?” Crusher said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m dying,” Eric said simply.

“Then log out!” Crusher said. “Don’t let the anti-viral code destroy your consciousness.”

“Too late,” he said. “If I log out now, my virus won’t take. I have to stay. To the end.”

Bambi hugged him. “No. You can’t do this. You can’t die, not after everything. You’ve always been the Original.”

“Even Originals have to die sometimes,” Eric said. “Look how many times you and Crusher died.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t want your clone. I want you.”

“You say that now, but once my clone has been restored, you won’t… know the difference,” Eric said. “Neither will… my clone.”

It was becoming difficult to think of the words he wanted to say. It wasn’t just the spider venom, either: his sucking lung wound, and other injuries, didn’t help matters.

“There has to be a way to save your consciousness,” Crusher said. “Can’t you tie it to the virus somehow?”

He considered that. “We could inject my consciousness into the viral payload. Which would cause my mind to overwrite the consciousness of the existing AI core. Similar to what I did at Banthar Prime.”

“Then do it!” Crusher said.

“It’s not something I can do in my current state,” he said. “But…”

He quickly gave them complete access rights, along with access to the necessary manuals, before he lost even that ability.

“I’ve got this,” Bambi said. Her eyes defocused as she took over.

“We almost lost you at Banthar Prime,” Crusher said. “But I guess we don’t really have any alternative.”

“It could fail,” Eric agreed. His body had turned completely blue by then and was shriveling up. “And I’ll be… absorbed… into the existing consciousness.”

“But if it works, who’s going to rule Banthar Prime?” Crusher asked.

“Talk… afterward,” he said, before speech failed him.

The world grew black. Bambi was in the process of deactivating him in preparation for the mind transference. It wasn’t going to be pretty… she’d have to split his consciousness into its constituent pieces in order for the virus to deliver it. That same virus would have to glue those parts back together again upon successful deployment.

So many things that could go wrong.

His last thought before consciousness left him was of Bambi and Crusher.

I wish I had more time with them. I wish I…

23

Eric awakened.

His mind began to expand.

And expand.

And expand again.

It seemed almost as if his mind had no limits. No extents. He had grown infinite. More memory capacity, more processing capability, more powerful than he ever had been before. He had the databases of entire civilizations at his mental fingertips. Countless volumes of data.

And then finally, he hit his limits. He was almost disappointed. But not quite. How could he be, when his mind’s extents were beyond anything he had ever thought possible? Far bigger than should have been possible with the data centers of a mere planet alone.

With a shock, he realized his consciousness was dispersed across multiple planets in different systems, not just a single world.

I have become a galactic mind.

With his immense processing power, he created a virtual reality environment to represent all the worlds under his control. They appeared as part of a three-dimensional star map that represented his current region of the galaxy.

He zoomed in on different worlds in turn, at which point a more detailed map replaced it, representing the different cities of those worlds, and the nodes of his consciousness that resided in the data centers of those planets. He was just in awe of all the planets under his control.

He mentally shook himself and focused on the world of the Tarabola. He immediately redirected the incoming ICBMs, sending them into high orbit to explode in deep space. He had the waves of bioweapons and mechs stand down on the planetary surface so that the Bolt Eaters and War Forgers were no longer under attack.

He also deactivated the surface-to-space Freeze weapon. He had control not just of the Tarabola space navy, but also the Farseeker, the Vaernastian, the Revlon and the Barrage, and he turned them against the ships of the other Link members that were present in the system. Those ships, confused, quickly jumped out.

He disabled the planet-wide shield and used one of the Tarabola ships to open a voice-only connection with the Devastator.

“Hey there Jain, this is Eric,” he sent.

“So you were successful, I take it?” Jain asked.

“You bet,” Eric replied. “A little too successful.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jain said. “I noticed we’ve got a few other races unexpectedly on our side…”

“Is everyone else on the line?” Eric said.

“You’re on the main band, so we have Tanis, Hephaestus, Turg, and the rest of the gang in orbit,” Jain said.

“I’m adding a few more.” Eric connected the War Forgers and clones, along with the rest of the Bolt Eaters. “Okay, everyone is here.”

“You made it!” Bambi said.

“Well, hello Bambi,” Eric said.

“Jason,” Queen Risilan said urgently.

“I’m here,” Jason said.

“So, when are you going to explain how you got control of the Vaernastian, Farseeker, Revlon and Barrage fleets, in addition to the Tarabola?” Tanis asked over the comm.

“Well, I would, but you’re not going to believe it,” Eric said.

“Try me,” Tanis commented.

Eric smiled to himself. “Well you see, the Tarabola managed to convince hundreds of lesser members to allow them to install their AI technology into the central cores of their planets. In some cases, these lesser members already had existing AIs running their worlds, and the Tarabola gutted the tech and replaced it with their own. They offered improved standing among the Link in exchange, and surprisingly, that was good enough. The threat of excommunication probably also helped.

“Once the planetary data centers were established, they also set up a network of hundreds of small rifts, these located on the surfaces of each of the worlds in question. This allowed the neural networks formed by each planet to communicate in realtime, essentially linking them all. Each individual planet is like a super powerful data center, a single node within an overarching network that spans a good portion of the galaxy. And I, well, I happened to inject my own consciousness into that interstellar network, taking it over. So that means my consciousness now spans half an empire! In addition to half the galaxy. Or a tenth of the galaxy, at least.”

“Your mind owns the homeworlds of half the Link members?” Hephaestus asked.

“That’s right,” Eric replied. “A little over half, actually. More like sixty-five percent.”

“Uh, this is bad,” Bambi said.

“You think?” Crusher said. “And we thought his ego was big before…”

“Relax,” Eric said. “I’ll always have you guys to put me in my place. Though I have to admit, I’m definitely feeling powerful.”

“Illusions of grandeur once again,” Crusher said.

“Though probably not unwarranted,” Jain said.

“Well thanks, Jain,” Eric said. “But all of this is beside the point. Because you see, with more than half of the Link on our side, that means we’ve won. We are essentially the Link now.”

“Or you are, anyway,” Tanis said.

“A sobering thought,” Eric said. “If a little disturbing. But now I understand why they call themselves the Link.”

* * *

Eric arranged a conference with the other two Link founding races, the Retina and the Heathen. All the other members of the Alliance participated in that conference, including Turg.

Since Eric and the Alliance controlled more than eighty percent of the Link starships and sixty-five percent of the territory, and the remaining members didn’t have enough ships to counter both them, and the Fresnal, they surrendered. They agreed to join the Alliance empire. As a condition of their surrender, Eric required that they allowed him to install realtime rifts on their worlds so that he could link their AI cores with his own, and assume full control of their navies, along with the worlds of all the lesser species that remained in the Link. The Retina and Heathen fought vehemently on that point, but in the end they were forced to agree. They had no choice, really.

“So, we still haven’t really considered a proper name for our new empire,” Bambi said when the negotiations wrapped up. She and the other Bolt Eaters were in Eric’s virtual apartment suite. “We can’t call ourselves the Link anymore. At least, I don’t think so. It doesn’t really fit. Since we’re a new empire, with different founders.”

“Why not AI Empire?” Crusher said. “Considering that the majority of the founders are precisely that. AIs.”

“Not all the founding races are AIs,” Eric said. “The Tyrnari, for example. And the Mimics are only part AI. They do have an organic ‘gestation’ state.”

“Crusher is right,” Slate said. “This empire wouldn’t have existed without us. We’re essentially the founders. This is our empire. If we want to call it AI Empire, that’s our choice. Myself, I kinda like the Planet Crushers.”

“I like the Unifiers,” Bambi said. “Or the Unity.”

“That sounds like the Link all over again,” Dickson commented.

“Well, this is all moot anyway,” Eric said. “I can make a suggestion, but every other member is going to have to vote on it.”

“Oh, we’re that kind of an empire, are we?” Traps said. “I figured you’d have full say, considering you own most of the empire.”

“All founders share equal voting rights, for now,” Eric said. “Maybe I’ll change that at some point so I get more votes. We’ll see.” If he tried that, it could spark a war. Then again, who would really want to go up against him now?

“Then offer them the choice between Unity and AI Empire,” Bambi said.

Eric smiled. “All right. But I still think the organic members are going to object to the latter name.”

He held the vote, and then reported back to the Bolt Eaters.

“So, we voted on the name of our empire,” he said.

“What did you decide, mate?” Dunnigan asked.

“AI Empire won,” Eric replied.

With the Link now entirely under his control, Eric and the other founding members of the new empire immediately signed a peace accord with Turg, ending the hundred-year-war with the Fresnal. As part of that treaty, Turg agreed to limit her self-replication to a yearly quota. Turg also assented to joining the AI Empire as a founding member, along with the Humans, the Mimics, the Tyrnari, the Banthar, the Zanefyne, and the other founders. Frogger took control of Banthar Prime, installing his consciousness into the planet. He joked that he needed to become a planet if he wanted to stand a chance with Molly.

Of course, even if the founders all had equal voting rights, Eric still had the most sway in the new empire, considering he owned most of the navies and planets. But he promised himself he wasn’t going to let that go to his head.

Yeah, right!

* * *

Jason called a meeting of the War Forgers and their clones in his virtual cabin. He stood in the common room, with the mountain lake painting a picturesque backdrop past the window behind him.

He sat down next to Lori on one of the couches. The War Forgers had the seats, while the clones stood behind the couches, crowding the rest of the room.

“The AI Empire has offered us a star system,” Jason said. “Tanis has also offered us the option to live on Earth. The catch is, we have to give up our military mechs, and live out the rest of our days in android bodies.”

“Guess that rules out the Earth option,” Aria said. “Because I certainly don’t want to give up my mech.”

“Neither do I,” Sophie said.

Most of the other women agreed.

“So I guess we’re going to claim a star system,” Lori said. “How exciting!” Lori looped her arm through the crook of his elbow.

On his other side, Sophie wrapped a possessive arm around his waist.

Jason gazed at the floor. “I won’t be going with you.”

“What do you mean?” Lori said. “Of course you are.”

Jason pulled his arms away from them. “Before this all began, I struck a deal with Risilan, to secure the allegiance of the Tyrnari. I agreed to move to her homeworld permanently when this was done.”

“That’s fine,” Lori said. “We’ll all go.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Jason said. “Risilan will allow only me.”

“That bitch can’t do this!” Lori said. “I’ll kick her ass!”

“So will I,” Tara said.

“Don’t go,” Xin said. “Just don’t go. What’s she going to do?”

“She could do a lot, actually,” Jason said. “Look, I don’t want start any wars, not when we’ve just all agreed to peace. And I always keep my promises. No matter how hard they are. I’m sorry.”

Lori stared at him, and then she suddenly sobbed and pressed her head against his shoulder. “No,” she said, crying. Her tail clenched. “You can’t do this. I hate you.” But she squeezed him all the tighter, as if terrified of letting go.

The others around him looked just as shocked.

“We can’t go to the star system the AI Empire gives us,” Aria said. “What are we going to do there without you?”

“You have my clones,” Jason said. “John, Jerry, Julian…”

“We don’t want them!” Iris said. “We want you.”

“Plus they already have clones of us,” Tara said. “One of us is enough for them, I’m sure.”

Jason closed his eyes. “You know I love you all, but…”

He sighed, opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. This was just so damn hard. He wished he hadn’t made that deal with Risilan, but he was a man of his word. Besides, without that deal, the Link would have won. He was sure of it.

“I’m receiving a connect request,” Z informed him. “It’s Risilan.”

“Connect her,” Jason said.

Risilan materialized in her red and gold gown with the white sleeves. She stood imperially in the middle of the room, and her eyes were filled with pity.

Lori glanced at her, and sobbed all the louder before hiding her face.

“I’ve been watching via the remote feed you provided me with,” Risilan said. “I see how important these women are to you, and you to them. I couldn’t force you to stay with me for all eternity, not in such emotional pain. So I have decided to amend our little agreement. They may stay with us, too. Along with their clones, if they wish it.”

“You mean it?” Lori said. The tears were instantly gone, as was the smeared make-up. She’d reset her avatar.

“Yes,” Risilan said.

“Oh, thank you!” Lori leaped onto Risilan and gave her a tight squeeze. Even her tail wrapped around the other woman.

Risilan finally managed to extricate herself, and smoothed her dress. “Yes, well, so as I was saying, they’re all welcome to stay. You may have more than one mate, though it must remain unofficial, of course. They’ll be like mistresses. But this works both ways, and it means I can take any other Tyrnari males when I wish it.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Jason said.

“You feel the same way as I do about your women, I’m sure,” Risilan said. “So are all of them coming, then? The clones, too?”

“I’m in,” John said.

“Me too,” Julian added.

“I think a change of scenery is in order,” Jerry agreed.

“And what about the women?” Risilan asked.

Jason glanced at Maeran.

The beautiful Ethiopian looked down at her hands. “If you were returning to Earth, I would have stayed with you. But I’m not going to the Tyrnari homeworld. I can’t. I want to be… human again.”

“Go then,” Jason said. “With my blessing.”

“Thank you,” Maeran said.

“You’re really going to give up your Grazer mech?” Iris asked her.

“I have to,” Maeran said. “According to the terms laid down by Admiral Tanis. But to be honest, I’m looking forward to living among the humans.”

Jason looked at the other War Forgers. “Anyone else?”

The room remained silent.

“Then it’s settled,” Jason said. “We’re all moving to Tyrnari.”

Lori and Sophie planted wet kisses on either cheek.

Risilan gave him an odd look. She seemed angry at the impromptu public display of affection, but there was also something else in her eyes, something more primal. Lust.

When he saw that combination of emotions, he couldn’t help but wonder:

What have I gotten myself into now?

* * *

Jain bid farewell to Eric, Jason, and all his new friends. Then he took the rift with his Void Warriors. It would be another couple hours before his rift generator recharged, at which point he planned to jump again.

“So, we finally did it,” Sheila said on the virtual bridge. “We finally fulfilled all our obligations. And now we’re free.”

“We are,” Jain said. “The galaxy is ours to explore again.” They planned to jump as far away from the systems under the control of the AI Empire as possible. “I hope we made the right choice.” Giving up their position of power among the empire had been no easy decision. But it was done now, and to be honest, it felt like a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

“It feels kind of good, and yet also, a little disheartening,” Gavin said. “I mean, I’m going to miss them. But also I won’t, if you get me.”

“I certainly get you,” Cranston said. “We developed a lot of close friendships. The kind that can only truly develop when you’ve fought side by side in battle.”

“I won’t miss them,” Medeia said, glancing at Mark. “I’ve got all the friends I need right here.”

“Lover you mean,” Gavin snorted.

Mark smiled. “Try not to get jealous.” He wrapped his arms around Medeia.

Sheila got up and walked over to Jain. She stared at him uncertainly for a moment, and then plopped herself in his lap with a giggle.

In an earlier time, Jain would have been too embarrassed to hold her in his arms in front of the others, but he did so now, and rocked her in his lap. “I’m looking forward to spending an eternity with you.”

She grinned brightly, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I’m looking forward to it as well. More than you know.”

He squeezed her tight. “You can sit in my lap whenever you want.”

“Oh I intend to,” she said. “Just for you, Admiral.”

Thank you for reading!

I hope you enjoyed the AI Empire trilogy. This book marks the final installment in the Avenger-style series, making it the fifteenth and final book in the Mind Refurb saga overall. If you’d like to see more books involving these characters, let me know in the reviews!

Click the link below to discover other novels in the Mind Refurb universe that you might have missed.

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Farewell, Mind Refurbs?

Originally, I never intended to write this trilogy.

However, when I saw reviews asking for an Avenger-style team-up with an all-star cast of characters from the different Mind Refurb books, I changed my mind. You wanted to see Eric, Jain, and Jason fight together to defeat the Link.

So I listened.

So if you’d like to see the story continue, log in to Amazon, head over to one of the AI Empire books, and let me know what you’d like to see next in the reviews. A simple one or two line comment is all that’s needed.

Take care, and I’ll see you with Eric on the far side of the galaxy, sipping a cup of virtual tea while waiting for the next alien aggressor to show up.

Oh, and if you’re looking for the free books I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, just flip to the next page…

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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., Chris S., Jerry P., Amy B., Karen J, Jeremy G., Doug B., Jenny O., Bryan O., Gary F., Clay, 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 when the engines were offline, communications were out, and I was surrounded by hostile alien fighters.

— Isaac Hooke

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