The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3) Read online

  “Focus all fire on the human female. I want her dead.”

  The earthling was projecting some kind of force-field weapon, cutting through the outer walls of the wormhole transport center. And if they did not stop her soon, she might succeed in damaging or destroying the gateway itself.

  Shalegha’s cortical nanobot array provided her with an important update. The closest of the robotic fast-attack ships would arrive on station, directly over the city, within the next few moments, bringing its weaponry to bear on the woman and the stolen world ship. Then Shalegha would find out just how long these rogues could survive the battering her craft would deliver.

  The sensors delivered the bad news to Raul, and he issued a mental command to VJ. “Get back in the ship. We’ve got incoming trouble.”

  When VJ materialized beside him, Raul jumped. Because she looked so real, he sometimes forgot that her body was merely the manipulation of the stasis field that gave physical form to a very impressive hologram.

  “I see it,” said VJ. “Dropping cloak to divert all power to stasis shielding.”

  Just then, the neural net pumped the image of one of the small Kasari attack ships sliding into position ten thousand feet above.

  “They’ve locked weapons,” he said.

  When the particle cannons and lasers opened up, the Meridian made no sound. It did not rock or sway. But through the SRT crystals embedded in his brain, Raul felt the stasis shield generator draw more power from the primary matter disrupter, an electric current that ran up his spine to stand his hair on end.

  “How long can we withstand this?” Raul asked.

  “Four minutes, thirteen seconds,” said VJ.

  “Jennifer, status?”

  “I haven’t found the router yet.” Jennifer’s calm voice whispered in his mind. “One more rack to go through.”

  Raul started to tell her to hurry but resisted the impulse. She was well aware of the situational urgency.

  “Dgarra, how are you holding up in there?” Raul asked.

  “I have dealt with the Kasari and Eadric staff inside this room. The show you are putting on out there seems to be keeping everyone else occupied.”

  “Not for much longer,” said Raul. “VJ, the attack ship is just sitting up there. Can we return fire?”

  “If we drop the shielding long enough to engage, it will carve us into pieces.”

  Raul hissed a curse. “Damn it. I need a viable option. Give me something.”

  VJ paused, and Raul felt her draw more heavily on the neural network’s processing power. Crap. What the hell was she doing?

  “There is a possibility, but it could end up killing us all,” said VJ.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can launch one of our subspace torpedoes.”

  Raul’s disappointment at this suggestion cramped his stomach. “How? We can’t maneuver this ship to create the right momentum vector before releasing the torpedo into subspace.”

  “True,” said VJ, “but if I divert part of the stasis shielding, I can use that to sling the torpedo at the enemy ship. I’ll have to create a small hole in our outer shielding for just a moment to release it. Then the projectile will shift into subspace, popping out again after just enough time to allow its original velocity vector to have intersected with its target. If everything goes perfect, the torpedo will transition back out of subspace right beside the attack craft. Boom.”

  “I don’t want the explosion to damage this city,” said Raul. “We need the gateway and the communications center to remain fully operational.”

  “I’ve already made those adjustments to the torpedo payload. The attack ship’s shielding will focus all the energy inward before it fails. But I can’t determine where it will crash.”

  “How much damage will we take while the hole in our shielding is open?”

  “Inconclusive. Our chances for success are not encouraging.”

  Raul tried to swallow but only managed to tighten his throat. “Upload the calculations to the torpedo, and move it into launch position just outside the ship.”

  As he watched VJ manipulate the stasis field to move the weapon, Raul became increasingly worried about the increased power demands being placed on the ship’s primary matter disrupter. If the Meridian’s instruments would have included a gauge with a red line, he was quite sure that its needle would be pegged on the wrong side of that line.

  “Torpedo ready,” VJ said. “I would advise closing the hatch before releasing it.”

  “Do it.”

  When Raul felt the ramp withdraw and the hatch close, he gave the order that might end them all: “Fire.”

  VJ knew that she didn’t have real human emotions. She had simulated emotional states. It was something she was always working to improve, along with the rest of the source code that made her what she was. If she would have had real emotions, she was certain that she would have felt what Raul described as being scared shitless.

  But she dutifully launched the subspace torpedo toward the attack craft that hovered almost two miles above them, creating a hole in the Meridian’s outer shielding for just the instant it took to allow the torpedo to exit. Too bad she couldn’t accelerate the weapon to the required velocity within the space between the ship and its outer shielding. If that had been possible, VJ wouldn’t have needed to create the aperture. The torpedo could have just shifted into subspace after achieving required velocity.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. So she opened the hole and used the extra energy to slingshot the torpedo through. Even as she observed the projectile shift into subspace, the energy of the attacking particle and laser beams heated the air inside the Meridian’s stasis shielding to a white-hot plasma. The warnings that cascaded through the ship’s neural net showed a hull breach in the central bay in the vicinity of the outer hatch even as VJ resealed the torpedo hole in the outer shielding.

  Shifting her focus, the AI draped the egg-sized breach in the ship’s hull with another stasis field. Then the Meridian’s sensors showed the sky ten thousand feet above them flashing white.

  Finally!

  Jennifer had resisted the physical urge to yell as the neural net delivered confirmation that she had found the router for which she had been so desperately searching. Without hesitation, she attached the tiny SRT module to the back of the device and issued her mental warning to Dgarra.

  “I’m done. Let’s get back to the ship and get the hell out of here.”

  When she met him at the opening that VJ had carved into the building, she paused just long enough to switch her stasis field backpack into full-body-shield mode to match that of Dgarra. Together, they sprinted across the open space toward the Meridian. A glance upward revealed a long smoke trail that the attack ship had traced across the sky to its crash site on the western side of the city of Orthei.

  The laser that swept across Jennifer’s body brought her focus back to the task at hand. Although her personal stasis field generator had deflected the beam, it didn’t have sufficient power to perform the same trick another time. But since VJ had opened a portal in the ship’s stasis shielding to allow her and Dgarra to pass through, she no longer needed the backpack’s protection.

  She leaped onto the descending ramp and sprinted upward, with Dgarra only a step behind. Entering the ship, she turned right into the hallway that led to the command bay, slipping the backpack and the sheathed war-blade from her shoulders as she stepped inside.

  “Progress?” she asked.

  She settled into her stasis chair as Raul spun his to face her.

  “Stasis shielding is down to seventeen percent. We’ve taken some hull damage, but VJ has acquired a subspace lock on the Kasari router.”

  “How long until she can upload the free will virus?”

  “Bypassing security protocols now,” said VJ. “Upload will commence in thirteen seconds.”

  “How long until the upload is complete and virus dissemination gets under way?” Jennifer asked.

&
nbsp; “Estimating thirty-seven seconds,” said VJ. “After that, dissemination to all linked cortical arrays within the brains of the assimilated on Scion should take less than five minutes.”

  “And how long until it spreads through the wormhole gateway to infect the router on the linked Kasari staging planet?”

  “I won’t know until I can analyze the security protecting that communication system. That second cyber-attack can’t begin until I’ve finished with this router.”

  Dgarra’s deep voice interrupted the conversation. “Long-range sensors have detected three more attack ships inbound.”

  “How long until they get here?” asked Raul.

  “Seven minutes.”

  Jennifer felt her knuckles crack and forced herself to relax.

  “VJ,” said Raul, “we need to be gone before those ships get here.”

  “Well aware.”

  Although Jennifer could detect no variance in tone, the terse nature of the AI’s words told her that VJ was feeling the same stress that gripped the rest of the crew. That knowledge did nothing to ease Jennifer’s mind.

  Commander Shalegha had watched the crash of her attack ship in consternation. How had the rogue ship’s weapon penetrated its shielding?

  She replayed the scene in her mind, rewinding the video feed to the moment just before the weapon launch. The stolen world ship sat unmoving in the destroyed park, having just pushed a torpedo out through its open hatch. The scenario unfolded in ultraslow motion. The weapon accelerated upward, passing out through a small temporary hole in the stasis shield that draped the enemy craft.

  Moments later, the sensor data feed from the Kasari attack ship showed the torpedo reappear inside that craft’s protective shielding and detonate. The attack vessel’s own shielding had contained and focused the explosive force on the hull, splitting the ship into three large chunks. The smoking pieces and other smoldering shards had rained down on the west side of Orthei, knocking down skyscrapers and setting part of the city ablaze.

  Again she replayed the attack, and the hive-mind confirmed the dread certainty that had been growing within her own. The humans had used an Altreian subspace torpedo. Because of such weapons’ inability to track normal-space targets while in subspace, they were ineffective in combat against the maneuverable Kasari attack ships. But because Shalegha had not known that the humans possessed such a weapon, her attack ship had not been maneuvering.

  Shalegha clenched her upper two fists as she watched the telemetry from the closest of the three inbound attack ships. Uploading her commands to the formation, a low snarl escaped her lips. She would not make the same mistake again.

  Suddenly Shalegha staggered as wave after wave of vertigo dropped her to her knees. Her throat clenched, and she felt her double heart spasm inside her chest. When she tried and failed to draw a breath, she rolled onto her back, her upper two hands clutching at her throat as if they could pry open her airway. Her snarl had changed to a high-pitched keening that hurt her ears.

  What was happening to her? A distant memory from before she had been assimilated filled her mind. She knew this feeling. Panic. Despite the knowledge that she was surrounded by hundreds of Kasari and assimilated humans, she felt horribly alone. Shalegha tried to touch the hive-mind, but that link was gone.

  The startled cries that filled her combat operations center told her worse news. This loss of link was not isolated to her. When she forced herself to open her eyes, Shalegha saw that her staff had succumbed to the same immobilizing terror. She gritted her teeth, concentrated on breathing, and climbed back to her feet. The knowledge of what had just happened told her what she had to do.

  Ignoring the panic of her Kasari and Eadric staff, Shalegha sprinted to the aircar that awaited her use on its pad on the south side of the tower. At her approach, the car’s sensors opened the side panel to allow her entry. As she slid into the seat, her hands flashed across the controls, launching the car outward and down off the high platform. For the first time, she found herself thankful for the archaic manual controls present in these Eadric vehicles. Given her current inability to access the hive, if this had been a Kasari vehicle, its mind-interface would have left her stranded.

  Shalegha now understood that she had been wrong about the target of the humans and their Koranthian stooge. They had not aimed for the wormhole gateway. They had done something to break the connection between the cortical arrays of the assimilated and the hive-mind. But the wormhole gate had remained open, so the connection should still be routed through it.

  A new and far more terrible idea formed in her brain. What if the humans had found a way to insert a worm into the hub that connected the cortical arrays within the brains of the assimilated masses to the hive-mind? If she did not act immediately, that infection could spread through the gateway to the Kasari staging world and beyond. It was beyond the bounds of irony that such a backward species as the humans could threaten the very existence of the collective.

  Glancing down, Shalegha was shocked to see the tremor that had crept into her hands as she brought the aircar in for a hard landing in front of the entrance to the wormhole gateway. Just beyond the broad doorway, chaos reigned. As pulsed-laser fire rippled through the crowd, winged Eadric took to the air in a frenzied attempt to escape the madness.

  Shalegha climbed out of the vehicle and ran through the entrance, hurling aside anyone who impeded her path toward the gateway. Already armed military suppression squads had come through from the staging world to reestablish order, but she could see at a glance that the infection was propagating to these new arrivals.

  Noting her insignia of rank, they stepped aside as she ran toward the gateway, yelling orders to keep everyone back. Then, with a mighty final leap, she sailed through the opening, feeling the nanobots within her blood adjust to the methane atmosphere on the far side. Without waiting for the response of a higher-ranking officer, Shalegha drew her disrupter pistol and fired directly into the cables that routed power to the gateway.

  Then, as the wormhole winked out of existence, she felt herself thrown facedown to the ground by the clawed paws of an eight-legged Graath commando.

  “VJ, we’re out of time!” Raul yelled, his heart hammering his chest. “Get us out of here!”

  Since she had access to the same sensors Raul was seeing, he wasn’t surprised that she didn’t take the time to answer. But as VJ diverted power to the subspace field generator, the lead attack ship opened fire.

  “Shield power at ten percent and falling,” Dgarra said.

  “VJ?”

  “Considering the damage it suffered during the plasma breach, the primary matter disrupter-synthesizer is at maximum output. If I pull more, it could blow.”

  “Do it!”

  It almost seemed that VJ was feeling the starship’s pain as she pulled the extra energy that the subspace generator required from the pegged matter disrupter. But with the transition into subspace, the drain on their shields came to an abrupt end. Unfortunately, the output from the primary MDS also dropped off precipitously.

  “Primary power failing,” VJ said.

  “Drop the shields,” Raul said.

  “Done. But we’re still drawing on the super-capacitors. At this rate of consumption, I won’t be able to maintain the subspace field for long.”

  Raul could feel the sweat bead on his brow. “Cut power to all nonessential systems.”

  When she executed this order, the interior lighting went out along with all onboard sensors. In the darkness, her voice seemed to have acquired greater volume, although Raul knew this was only because of how quiet the Meridian had suddenly become. The omnipresent low thrum from the aft engineering bay was now barely audible.

  “Reduce life support to minimal,” he said.

  “It’s going to get cold.”

  “Fine.”

  VJ made the adjustment.

  “We are still consuming slightly more power than the damaged MDS is producing,” she said. “I have to kee
p the small stasis shield hull-patch in place so that you can make manual repairs to the primary MDS in the aft bay.”

  “Somebody give me some options,” said Raul.

  Jennifer spoke up. “You have experience making manual repairs to this ship. If Dgarra and I enter one of the crew compartments amidships, you could reduce life-support levels to keep us unconscious. That would also lessen the amount of life support you would need for the remainder of the ship.”

  “That still won’t get our power consumption down to where we need it,” said VJ.

  “There is something else we could turn off,” said Dgarra, the muscles in his jaws tightening as if they were trying to prevent him from uttering his thought.

  VJ hesitated, also reluctant to state the obvious. “That would be me,” she said.

  “It would be like going to sleep,” said Raul, although he failed to make his voice sound confident. “Once I have the MDS repaired, I’ll wake you, Dgarra, and Jennifer.”

  For a moment, VJ’s image seemed to waver but then sharpened. “I’ll prepare the compartment for Dgarra and Jennifer. Once they are settled in, I will shut myself down.”

  With that pronouncement, all conversation ceased. Over the next several minutes, the temperature dropped to the point that Raul found himself shivering in the dark. His artificial eye allowed him to see, although everything was limned in different shades of reds and blues.

  Jennifer and Dgarra had retired to the compartment that VJ had prepared for them. Now Raul and VJ stood alone in the forward section of the command bay.

  As he looked at her, she turned to face him, her holographic image now that of a beautiful ghost. Ever so slowly, she reached out to stroke his face with her right hand. The beautiful feel of that caress raised gooseflesh on his neck and arms. She blinked twice, mouthed a silent goodbye, and was gone.

  Once more, Raul found himself alone on a broken starship, not knowing precisely where he was. Captain or not, one thing hadn’t changed since this had all started.