Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two (24 page)

Listen. You need to leave. Go visit your family on Demeter.

What? Why? Is something wrong?

I can’t go into the details. Please, for your safety, get off Romane for a while. Go west—the farther west the better. And maybe take your girlfriend along.

Mia…but what about the gallery? You can’t—

It’s not a problem. You have paid vacation time remaining. Take it, Jonathan. For me.

I…okay. I don’t understand, but okay.

Next she went upstairs and packed an emergency bag. She needed to be prepared for anything. Then she changed from the yoga pants and tank into a charcoal pantsuit and wound her hair back into a sleek ponytail at the nape of her neck. Lastly she went to the safe in her office and removed the disk Caleb had left her.

“Meno, I’m heading out for a few hours. Message me if you discover new data matching the parameters.”

She couldn’t exactly wear the interface out in public and it was too warm for a turtleneck, so she’d lack a mental connection with the Artificial. But she had granted it the ability to send and receive messages from and to her. It would have to do for now.

Certainly, Mia. I will exercise discretion.

She waited fifteen minutes to be seen, which was far less time than expected. When shown into what was an objectively spectacular office she shook the governor’s hand warmly. “Governor Ledesme, thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. I realize your time is extremely valuable as well as limited.”

“It came with the job description, I believe. What can I do for you, Ms. Requelme?”

“I’m afraid I’m here to make your life far more complicated, ma’am.”

Madison Ledesme regarded her with detached curiosity. They weren’t friends, of course. The governor knew her because of her service on several business councils, and because the spaceport was a significant enough interest for the typically hands-off government to ensure it ran smoothly and cleanly. They had spoken half a dozen times but never in private.

“Given my planet is caught between two warring superpowers while its economy is being crushed beneath the weight of a blockade, I find it somewhat difficult to believe you can accomplish such a feat.”

“As would I. Nevertheless. There’s something you need to know: the colonies of Gaiae, Zetian, Andromeda, Gaelach, New Riga, Lycaon, Karelia, New Orient, Edero…and now Messium have gone dark.”

“What does that mean? What are you telling me?”

“It means no transmissions from those locations are registering on the exanet. It means any communications to persons or places on or in the space above those locations are undeliverable.”

“How do you know?”

Mia almost cringed, but years of experience enabled her to squelch it. “I can’t reveal my sources. I’m sorry.”

Ledesme considered the response. “I’ll overlook that for the moment. A widespread exanet disruption of such magnitude in eastern space? The scientists tell us it’s impossible.”

“And it should be. Regardless, I also know the cause and you are not going to like it.”

The governor chuckled. It pealed surprisingly warmly given the stress she must be feeling. Mia had always found her naturally personable, if always professional. “Don’t drag this out, Ms. Requelme. I have a meeting with the Utility Director and a lunch with several of your unhappy business colleagues half an hour later, both of which are bound to be unpleasant.”

Mia’s eyes dipped to contemplate the onyx and pearl marbled floor. It was going to sound ridiculous coming out of her mouth, so it was a good thing she had proof. “Aliens. An invading alien armada of mammoth size and power, in fact.”

A politician’s mask descended over the woman’s face. “I don’t have to time to entertain irrational ramblings or—”

Mia opened her hand, palm up. The disk rested upon it. It had been provided to her in confidence, but Caleb was gone and humanity was under attack. “Governor, please take one minute to examine the contents of this disk. You will see I am in no way crazy or irrational.”

The look in the governor’s eyes suggested the line between Mia getting thrown out of the office and the woman reviewing the data was a thin one indeed. Mia couldn’t say what finally tipped the scales. The instincts of a skilled politician, perhaps.

The governor took the disk from her and went to her desk to drop it in a reader. Mia stood too far away to read the information displaying on a small screen at the desk, but she didn’t need to read it. She had reviewed the contents countless times, to the point she now enjoyed nightmares starring the images. Instead she waited.

Three minutes later Ledesme tapped the control panel on her desk. “Hannah, cancel my appointments for the rest of the day. I realize that. Cancel them.” She stood, leaving a stark visual of an alien superdreadnought on the screen.

“Who else has seen this? If we were to get this information to the Alliance and Federation governments, they would end this absurd war and—”

“They are already aware of the threat. They have been for more than two weeks.”

“And yet they continue to shoot at one another? Imbeciles!” Her composure broke for only a breath, revealing a person appalled at the failings of her fellow humans and frustrated at how those failings made her job so very difficult.

Then the brief reveal vanished behind a stoic countenance. “How exactly is it you have come by such information when no one in my government has discovered it?”

“I know the people who recorded the data. They entrusted me with the disk, in case—well, in case the other governments didn’t get their act together in time.”

“These people would be…?”

No sense hiding it now. The names were sure to be familiar to her, because they were now familiar to the entire galaxy. “Caleb Marano and Alexis Solovy. I helped them elude the authorities and escape after the accusations against them surfaced, because they are innocent of the bombing and their lives were in danger.”

Ledesme pondered her silently for several seconds, her thoughts her own behind shuttered eyes. “You are a most interesting woman, Ms. Requelme. I think I’d like to discover more about what lies beneath your public façade. But that’s for another time.” She stared out the window, and Mia chose not to respond to the remark or otherwise interrupt her reverie.

“So the Alliance and the Federation continue to fight a war despite being aware of an imminent alien invasion and try to imprison the people who warned them of it. Yet people wonder why Romane is so fiercely independent.” She turned back to Mia, her face now animated by resolve. “How long ago did Messium go offline?”

“Approximately six hours ago.”

“I no longer want to know how you’re obtaining your information. The other colonies are tiny but an attack on Messium will upend the entire galaxy. Still, we can’t wait for that to happen. I don’t suppose your friends or whatever other mysterious sources you enjoy have any ideas on how to defend against these aliens?”

“My sources are working on it. But no, not as of yet. I was thinking about the problem, however. Romane has some exceedingly brilliant scientific and engineering minds as citizens, as well as some exceedingly wealthy ones—arguably the largest concentration of both outside of Earth. Bring them in. Give them this data and lock them in a room. Figuratively speaking.

“If there are ideas to be generated, our engineers are the mostly likely to do it. Use the ideas from the engineers and the money from the entrepreneurs to strengthen our defenses as much as practicable and put the arrays on alert. Plus you might want to begin considering an evacuation.”

“Tell the public? It will cause a panic that will cause loss of life.”

Mia nodded. “Probably so. But you’re right. Messium
will
change everything. The Alliance won’t be able to keep whatever is happening there a secret, so I suspect we’ll be facing a panic within the next eight hours in any event. Wouldn’t it be better to break the news ourselves and take advantage of the opportunity to assert authority and lead?”

“You’d make a decent politician, Ms. Requelme. I concur.” The governor took a deep breath. “I need to get the aforementioned geniuses and business magnates in here first, lest
they
bolt at the news. I’ll also alert our security force and give them time to prepare. Then I’ll contact the media.”

The woman circled back behind her desk and began typing on her control panel. “You should get downstairs to the main conference room. I’ll send two assistants to help you pull together whatever you require.”

“I’m not sure I follow. Why do I need assistants?”

“Because you’re leading the strategy session.”

24

PORTAL PRIME

U
NCHARTED
S
PACE

T
HE TRANSITION FROM STANDING AMONG STARS
to standing in a tech lab was a jarring one for Alex. Also claustrophobia-inducing; though the room was by most standards cavernous, the walls pressed in on her from what felt like centimeters away.

So tiny, so miniscule were the spaces where people spent the days and nights of their lives.

The long walls of the lab contained large server racks and dozens of fiber cables running among them. The hardware architecture appeared archaic, even ancient.

This was not happening now. This had not happened in her lifetime.

Two men and a woman sat at a rectangular table at one end of the room.

“I assure you, Administrator, the Synthetic Neural Net—we’re calling it a ‘Synnet’ for convenience—is more than capable of taking over day-to-day operations of the University’s facilities. It has internalized all the rules and regulations and historical records and has analyzed the functioning of numerous other campuses. We’ve run tens of thousands of scenarios. The result is an efficiency increase of 22-35% in not only power usage but also ancillary costs, as well as an anticipated 12-16% improvement in student satisfaction.”

The older man nodded thoughtfully. “What about security operations?”

“All operational decisions will remain with the Security Department. If given access to the procedural mechanisms, however, the Synnet will be able to execute on those decisions with far greater speed than our current disparate computer systems. The faster reaction time can help save lives in a crisis.”

The younger of the two men had been silent up to this point, but now he leaned forward in an assertive pose, a confident smile adorning his face…

…and she realized she knew who he was.

She looked up at the ceiling.
“You don’t have to show me this—I know what this is. I already know what happens next.”

The scene shifted in a blur so disorienting she fought back nausea.

When the world regained clarity, she was on a lawn, the sort of quad-style park universities had included for thousands of years. The grass was a perfect emerald green, so vivid in color she felt as though she should be able to smell it as well. If she could, she thought it would smell of mint and clover.

She sighed in resignation. With no body, trapped inside an alien funhouse tour of human history, she was free to be careened from scene to scene according to their whims.

Clusters of students strolled in every direction, many bearing distinctive Asian features which had faded from the gene pool over the last two centuries.

A group of four men in their early twenties walked past her. “So I explained to the secretary how I
absolutely
had permission to access the files and….” The young man’s voice trailed off as his gaze drifted to the left; hers followed.

The plasma ripple of a crude force field rose in a wave out of the neighboring street and arced to meet the shield rising on the opposite side of the campus, some four kilometers away. They met at the apex to create an impenetrable barrier.

A disembodied, placid void echoed throughout the quad. “As a result of a threatened outbreak of acute viral metahemorrhagic fever, a Level V quarantine protocol is now in effect. For your own safety, please remain calm and return to your residences.”

She groaned, irritation and a faint undertone of panic bleeding into her voice.
“I
told
you, I know what happens next. Let me out of here.”

Silence met her, as it always did. Around her students shifted direction and hurried on, by and large obeying the directive. She saw expressions of confusion and concern on those passing near her. They were so young, little more than babies.

“You sadistic
fucks
, do not make me watch these kids starve to death!”