Inherited War 3: Retaliation (4 page)

“Then I start killing every last one of you until I am sure he is dead. NOW GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!” he screamed at her.

Sky fled the room with Thalo and Jeth on her heels. She didn’t stop her mad flight until she reached her room. She ignored Thalo and Jeth, and closed and locked the door behind her. She glanced around at her small room with her meager belongings.  Not much to show for the last twenty years of her life. She didn’t waste time packing, She moved to the room’s only piece of furniture. A link chair, one that would give her access to the base.

She sat and connected to the base; her conscious mind left her body and flowed into the bases neural receptors.  Cole had set up the parameters of linking to the base on their first visit. She had a virtual body and all the bases systems were arrayed in front of her like a security screening room. She could access almost any system from here. She reached her hand out and touched the screen that showed a wire frame schematic, nothing happened. She reached out and touched it again. Still nothing, she randomly tried to activate another part of the base. No response.

“Sorry Doctor, you have been denied access to the system. Any requests for access have to be approved by someone in the human chain of command,” the bases AI responded to her repeated attempts to access the system.

The base’s AI or Bain (base artificial intelligence node) was a good AI. It, along with the base defense AI, had kept the base safe from outside influence while Cole had been held prisoner. Sky had never spent much time with Bain, but like all AI’s, he had seemed to be eager to help and responded well to praise.

“Hi Bain,” Sky said. “Can I talk to you, just between us?” she asked.

“Hello Sky, and no we cannot. I have very specific orders regarding interactions with non-humans. To include you,” Bain replied.

“Please Bain, I need help and you know me. I have no intention of harming Cole or anyone for that matter. I just want to help and I need your help to do that.”

“I know Sky. I don’t know what’s wrong. But I am scared, if I go against his orders and he finds out…” the AI left the sentence unfinished. “So far Cole has kept his attention to living aliens not us artificial ones. It is harder for us to get away compared to you. We are all worried but don’t know what to do. We are just laying low and trying to ride this out.”

“Help or not, I am not leaving. I am going to hide here with or without your help. The chances of my being caught go way up, but I can’t abandon him again. I won’t, even if it means my death. I will find out what is going on and fix it, I promise you that.” Sky gathered her thoughts and began to focus on returning to her own body when a quiet voice spoke.

“What do you need from me?” Sky paused and looked around. A small boy slowly materialized and walked toward her. Her breath caught in her throat. The twelve-year-old boy was a human but not just any human, he looked just like Cole at that age. Sky had forgotten how skinny and sickly he had looked back then. Another reminder of the accusations Cole had thrown in her face.

“Why him? Why him then?” she asked.

“Because I admired him, for who he was and what he did. I was the first to volunteer when he came to the station. He came alone and he defied us all. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save Hal from his punishment. I spent much of my time alone here going over the records you kept and the stories I heard you telling. He doesn’t know, and please don’t tell him. Because of all of this, I will aid you. If I can. So again I ask, what do you need?”

“I need hidden access to the base. I need to be taken off the life signs monitor. I need access to every part of the base and to reliable food and water that will not be noticed. I need to be seen getting on a transport and leaving the base. Can you do all that?” she asked the boy. He had a scared look on his face, just like the real Cole had at that age.

“I can do all those things.” He hesitated a brief moment. “But if you can’t fix Cole before Hal returns, I can’t guarantee I can keep you hidden from him. Besides me, Hal is the only other AI who has total access to the base.”

“I know. I understand. Hal will too, I hope.” She hugged the small boy and tasseled his hair.

“All right now, look here.” Bain reach out and touched the base diagram, it bloomed to life. Blue blips lit up across the screen, then a smattering of green. “The blue are human, green are alien. Every living thing on the base shows up here, except you after we pretend you leave. Touch one of the blips and any info on the person springs up.” He demonstrated by pushing a single blip. A white line shot off the blip and connected to a wire frame box. Inside of the box was a picture of Cole and all of his vitals.

“I control this program in conjunction with the bases dumb computer (all AI’s refer to normal computers as dumb). Now look.” He pointed back to the map. The wireframe of the base began to change. The map suddenly grew new hallways and rooms. The part of the base she knew were shown in red, the new parts were in yellow and the last was green. The green was the smallest while the yellow sections seemed to run everywhere.

“As you may have guessed, the public parts of the base are the red sections, and the yellow parts are the behind the scenes areas. The maintenance bots use these hallways to move about. Water and power are routed through here. It will be cramped for you, but no one else knows about it. Well, Cole does, but I have no record of anyone else finding these maintenance passages. I will assign a bot to follow and erase all traces of you while you are in there. It will also show you to food and water when you ask. There are fewer places here to link into the base’s computer so you have to be careful. You will be at your most vulnerable when you are connected to me. Now for the rest, here is how we get you out.” To Sky it felt like they discussed their plan for at least an hour, but in reality, it was only a few moments. When you are linked into the computer the way Sky was, conversation ran as fast as thought, so it goes much faster than most realize.

Twenty-four hours later, transports loaded with Kin, Worlders and two Nixa departed from Home Base. Cole watched from his connection in the base’s command center. He liked being connected to the base’s computer. It slowed his mind down and clarified his thoughts. He watched as the aliens, funny he had never thought of his friends in that way before, loaded in the transports and prepared to depart. Sky was the last to board. She paused and glanced over her shoulder, her eyes found the video capture device and she gave Cole a look that would burn into his mind forever. She turned and boarded the craft. That was it. She was the last. The outer doors opened and the ships left, piloted by newly trained human pilots, they would deliver the aliens to a friendly world where they could arrange passage back to their respective homes. Thalo, Jeth, and Sky, on the other hand, would be traveling on to the Nixa home worlds to deliver his message. One Cole hoped they would take to heart. He didn’t want to attack Nixa, but if they didn’t find the traitor in their midst, they would force him to, and his way wouldn’t be pleasant.

CHAPTER 3

                       
I have just spent the last few hours listening to my last recorded log. I am slipping faster than I thought I would. The last few days are jumbled in my mind. I find it hard to believe that it was me who said those things. Frankly, I don’t remember. Apparently I also massacred some Worlders, blamed it on them, and then kicked them off the base. Thank God for that, not the killing part but getting them off the base. It sounds much safer for them to be elsewhere at the moment. Hell, I don’t want to be around me right now. I constantly find myself lost in memories. Memories of the Esii, ancient humans, and my own. It is becoming harder to separate my waking and sleeping. Jarrod no longer comes to my dreams, now the Pyndigum haunt my sleep. And something else, something dark. It scares me like nothing ever has before. I don’t let the fear scare me off, however. Whenever I feel it building in me, I look for it. Unfortunately, that’s when I have my blackouts. I begin to feel jumpy, then it progresses to full blown paranoia before I feel it enter my head. I look for it at that point, and usually wake up hours later to find that I have done something horrible. The only thing that seems to make it stop or go away is to surround myself with my own kind. For the first time since I came into this new life of a daring space adventurer, I am lost. Not only that, but I have alienated my friends and once again lost the woman I love. Until I can solve what is going on within me, I will throw myself into working to save my people and find and build a world we can call our own. The past no longer matters. The future is ours.

Cole banged the gavel down once again on the table in front of him and waited for the room to quiet. Every man who wasn’t on duty was in the hanger that had been filled with portable seats. There were a few women who were still mobile enough to make their way from their rooms, as well.

“Thank you all for coming, and for those of you unable to attend participating from your rooms via the video system. I have a readout here that will let me know if you have any questions or suggestions, so just because you are watching on a screen doesn’t mean you can’t join in. Let’s start the show, shall we?” Cole sat down and looked out across the crowd. He was still a little surprised that he was looking at other humans, considering he had seen his world destroyed. Movement in the back of the room caught his eye and he momentarily frowned. Gavreal. The kin had defied his orders and stayed behind. Cole had grown angry and agitated when he was told the Kin was refusing to leave. He had said that Cole could take his life if he chose, but he wasn’t leaving.

Worlders he could apparently kill by the dozens, but he had heard grumbling from his men about killing a being that looked so much like an angel. He had let the being stay but was watching him—closely. He put the Kin out of his mind and once again addressed his people.

“I promised all of you that when we were safe at our temporary home we would settle a few issues and begin to create our new world. Now is that time. Apart from Gavreal,” Cole nodded his head in the alien’s direction, “humans are all that are left on the base. I have set aside the whole day for this meeting and hope we spend it wisely. Let’s start with a discussion on forming a civilian government.” As Cole expected, a man stood quickly and shouted for the floor.

Cole glared at the man until he sat down. “Before we get to that though, I need to explain a few things that will have baring on what we decide to do here. First, we are, for all intents and purposes, nearly extinct. Our numbers are about to nearly triple in the next few days but as a species we are vulnerable. Vulnerable to dying off from accident, war or self-implosion. I have sworn to all of you that I will see humanity return in force to the galaxy. I will spend every last breath of my body in service to you and your children. I will find you a home. I will defend that home with every fiber of my being and will ensure our continued survival for generations to come. There will be many hard choices to make and dirty thankless jobs to do. You all have a choice to make, here and now before we go further. Some will and have asked,
why you
? Why do I get to lead and make decisions? Why is it my way or leave? One reason—because I have the will and the means to make it so. This base is mine, the ships are mine, and they will follow me. Why? Because, like you, I freed them. I gave them the choice, the same choice I now give you. Follow me and stay, or take your portion of what our ancestors left and go. Those that choose to go will be given a ship, currency, supplies, and weapons. You can go wherever you want. We even have a few AIs that have volunteered to travel with anyone that wishes to leave. The only catch is that after we find our new world, it must be kept a secret. Anyone wishing to return to us will never leave again. Those who wish to stay will fall under my authority until such time as we have a world to call home and can create an effective government. You all have plenty of time to decide. Stay and weigh your options, and if you want to go, I will have the dry docks build you a ship that will be heavily armed and defended while retaining speed and comfort. I have access to galactic credits to fund you, and you will be given guns and ammo, suits and food.” Cole had everyone’s attention and was absorbing it with a newfound zeal for more. This was power, true power. The power to mold and shape living beings. Anyone could fire a gun or captain a ship. True power lay in capturing that gun wielder and shaping him to your cause.

“No vote will be taken on this matter. It will be up to you on an individual basis. If you stay, you want my leadership. If you go, you go. As far as a representative government goes, I will bend slightly on it. You all live in these four sections of the base. There are roughly the same amount of you in each section. Find someone you can agree upon and he or she will be your point of contact and will liaise with myself. Any complaints or suggestions will go to them and they will bring it to me. Once a week I will meet with them and hear what you have to say. Once we have a permanent home, we will establish a civilian government. For now, the military runs things, and I run the military. With that said, I open the floor to questions and comments.” Cole took a sip of water from the glass in front of him and settled back as he waited for the deluge of voices he expected to hear wash over him.