The Altreian Enigma (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 2) Read online

  Around the arc up ahead, he felt an Altreian senator and her personal guard enter the looping exterior hallway and turn in his direction. Despite knowing that he could force this group to turn aside or merely pass through them unnoticed, Khal Teth exited through a nanoparticle door into one of the Parthian’s inner hallways, along which the vast majority of the government staff remained under lockdown in their closed offices until the all-clear had been given.

  Khal Teth stumbled, barely managing to right himself. Despite his best efforts, he was now visibly limping. Worse, he felt as if he had reached the limit of his endurance, knowing he could not traverse the breadth of the Parthian to reach the hover port. Nor could he make his way down into the depths of the building to exit onto the island surface.

  Then a new realization dawned upon him. If he was going to have any chance of making good on his escape, he would have to return this body to the control of one who had spent a lifetime dealing with agony such as this. It would weaken his psychic abilities, but no more so than the distraction this physical misery was inflicting on him.

  Leaning against a wall for support, Khal Teth closed his eyes and initiated the transition that wiped away his pain.

  Jack straightened, taking a moment to allow the disorientation of his transition to pass. Ignoring the wave of weakness that assailed him, he shunted the pain aside and forced himself to focus on his surroundings. He pulled forth Khal Teth’s memory of the building, not just the levels where Altreia’s governance happened, but of the residential and recreational areas as well.

  He had to give the Altreians credit. Artistic beauty was a deeply ingrained part of their culture, something they incorporated into anything they bothered to build or create, and the Parthian represented the epitome of their art. Seen from above, the structure looked like a gigantic glass teardrop that had been laid on its side and sliced into multicolored layers. The topmost governmental layers shifted through deep shades of magenta that transitioned through purples and blues as they descended into spirals of orange laced with greens, before shifting back to dark blue at the bottom of the structure. The residences lined the right side of the teardrop, looking like tiny orange bubbles carved into its surface.

  The interior structures were no less impressive. As Jack studied the hallway ahead, he was reminded of a Chihuly blown-glass exhibition he’d attended in Santa Fe, New Mexico, except that this art seemed to have been extruded from the walls themselves. He realized that this interior art mirrored the beauty of the sky visible through the Parthian’s transparent outer walls and ceiling.

  Jack resumed walking, posture erect, his confident stride carrying him toward the interior of the Parthian, more specifically toward the maintenance hallways that would take him to a set of turbo-lifts used for moving equipment and supplies. Oddly enough, he could feel the minds of those huddled within their offices, could feel the fear that radiated out.

  Why wouldn’t they be frightened? The escape of one such as Khal Teth had never happened before.

  More importantly, Khal Teth’s mental shielding continued to hide his mind from others who would seek to stop him. Apparently, when not in complete control of his own body, Khal Teth was unable to directly access his psionic abilities, filtered as they were through the mask of Jack’s mind. So he was forced to guide Jack’s mind through a particular psionic task, a difficult, less efficient process.

  Right now all the elite government psionics were hurrying toward the cell where they believed Khal Teth’s unconscious body was being held. Jack wanted to be out of the building before that happened.

  His thoughts turned to the Circle of Twelve that had come close to recapturing Khal Teth. Khal Teth’s memories had merged with Jack’s own, giving him full knowledge of how that group had managed such a task. Technically speaking, there was no need to form a circle. Proximity between council members was all that was required. The name was merely a vestige of an ancient ritual where a dozen high-functioning psionics linked minds into a single entity, more powerful than the sum of the individuals.

  The ritual didn’t work with eleven, with thirteen, or with any number other than twelve. Only elite minds, such as those on the High Council, could form such a link. Considering that the group must also be completely united in purpose, only a rare set of circumstances allowed for its formation. Once formed, any divergence in intent would break the link. Jack’s physical attack had given Parsus a new primary objective—personal survival—and the link was thus shattered.

  As Jack approached the final turn that would take him to the maintenance lifts, he felt and then saw a half-dozen guards round the corner ahead and come to a stop.

  The thought he directed at Khal Teth shouldn’t have been necessary.

  “Make them move along.”

  An uncomfortable hesitation carried Jack several more steps toward the waiting guards before Khal Teth responded.

  “In my weakened condition, I cannot.”

  Jack felt his jaws tighten. Just freakin’ great!

  The commander of the group stepped forward to meet him. “Overlord. I apologize, but I have been sent to escort you to the council chamber.”

  Not good. He’d been counting on more time. Worse, he could feel the guard commander’s thoughts probe the edges of his own. Khal Teth’s strength was rapidly failing.

  Jack halted before the guards, smiled, and nodded. Then he drew his weapon and fired.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jennifer felt like the top of her head had been chiseled off and her brain scrambled. Due to the extensive neural augmentation she had received on the Second Ship, she could track what was happening. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stop it.

  As she stood alone in the tunnel, far beneath the surface of the northern Koranthian Mountains, the knowledge of what was being done to her pulled a scream from deep within her mind, a scream that echoed there but never found its way to the surface. The Kasari nanobots weren’t rewiring her synapses as the Altreian starship had done. Instead, they were embedding themselves in her brain, disconnecting her volition more effectively than any drug and turning that part of her over to the Kasari Collective.

  Except for the clarity she retained, the experience reminded her of how she had felt under the influence of the heroin administered by NSA personnel, with addiction being the end result. She still knew right from wrong, but the part of her mind that made the decisions just didn’t care anymore. Worse, the hive-mind saw whatever she saw, heard whatever she heard, and, unless she did something to limit their control, would soon be able to command her to do whatever the Kasari wanted. And she would do it willingly.

  Knowing that she had very little time, Jennifer recalled a favorite meditation and centered, feeling her breathing slow and her pulse drop as she became a single point of light in an endless expanse of blackness. Then she transferred a singular intent to her subconscious mind. She felt her neural pathways rewire themselves, walling off a core subset of memories related to the Second Ship, the Altreian technologies it contained, and the devices that she, Mark, Heather, and Raul had derived from them.

  Jennifer released the meditation, locking all that she had protected within the depths of her subconscious mind. Then, reorienting on her surroundings, Jennifer turned and strode rapidly back toward General Dgarra’s headquarters, feeling a great sense of urgency. After all, he needed her at his side as he prepared for the battles yet to come.

  Kasari group commander Shalegha monitored the assimilation of the human female, Jennifer Smythe, releasing a small flood of endorphins as a self-reward for the achievement. This represented the breakthrough Shalegha had been looking for. The Koranthian general, Magtal, had delivered precisely what he had promised. She knew he was merely an ally of convenience, using the Kasari to achieve his own ends just as they used him. It didn’t matter. Many others had tried to play that game.

  Shalegha strengthened her link to the nanobot cortical array distributed throughout Jennifer Smythe’s brain. Jennifer’s powerful
mind was still fighting to maintain free will, even though this was a fight she had no chance of winning. Shalegha dipped into Jennifer’s memories, letting them flow through her own mind in rapid sequence as they were absorbed by the hive-mind.

  She paused, rescanning. That was odd. The memories contained numerous gaps. Had Jennifer Smythe suffered some sort of severe brain trauma in the past?

  With a quick rescan, Shalegha observed Jennifer’s incarceration and torture at the hands of an Earth-based intelligence organization known as the National Security Agency. During that lengthy period of interrogation, she had been subjected to regular dosages of a powerful opiate drug, leading to an addiction that she’d only recently been able to master. That could account for some of the memory gaps Shalegha was observing. Some, but not all.

  Shalegha’s attention shifted forward to the events that occurred when Jennifer and her fellow human, Raul, had hijacked the world ship that had brought them to Scion. The resulting wormhole jump should have killed them both, but Jennifer had engineered a workaround that had broken the wormhole transit into a great number of smaller wormhole steps. The trip had battered and broken their bodies, but Jennifer had survived due to an infusion of Raul’s nanite-infested blood. This battering could have resulted in additional memory loss, but the periods of time when those memory holes occurred seemed suspicious.

  Somehow the world ship had been modified with subspace field capabilities indicative of Altreian technology. Had that been done on Earth? If so, where had the Altreian assistance come from? If the Altreians were helping the humans, why had they allowed them to build the wormhole gateway?

  Thoughts of the Altreians curled the commander’s lips, baring her teeth. As Shalegha prepared to withdraw from her study of Jennifer’s mind, another of the human’s memories caught her attention. There had been an additional presence on the world ship besides that of Raul or Jennifer, a simulation they had named VJ. Clearly a primitive artificial intelligence, but the problem with AIs was that they didn’t stay primitive.

  Many ages ago, experimentation with AI technology and autonomous robots had almost destroyed the Kasari Collective, an experience that had led to a permanent ban on artificial intelligence. But the Altreians, so smug in their conviction that they understood how to contain such a force, dabbled with AI. Now humans were also apparently engaged in this dangerous tinkering with that which could not be reliably controlled or contained.

  Shalegha clenched her upper two hands into fists, cracking her knuckles as she strode out onto her command center’s open balcony. Standing here in the cool evening breeze, a hundred and fifty stories above ground level, her view of the capital city of Orthei was magnificent. Far below, white-winged Eadric soared back and forth between structures painted scarlet by the setting sun. In this way, the Eadric were like the Altreians, wasting tremendous time and resources on the creation of beautiful tableaus.

  In short order, that would all change. Once their assimilation was complete, the Eadric people would no longer care about such things. The collective good and its efficient implementation would take precedence over such trivialities as art.

  Now that Jennifer Smythe had joined the fold, the intelligence that she could provide would topple the Koranthian Empire and help make this new vision of Scion a reality.

  General Dgarra looked up to see Smythe’s slender body glide into his headquarters, her movements making those of his warriors seem clumsy by comparison. As he watched her approach, the warmth that spread through his body surprised him. Whenever she entered his presence, he felt stronger, regaining some of the self-assurance that recent battles had beaten out of him. Perhaps they would yet see this war through to a favorable end.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  A sad smile tweaked the corners of her lips. “I stepped outside to watch the stars.”

  Dgarra studied her. Her brown hair had grown out so that it almost reached the collar of her black uniform, framing her face in a way that was simultaneously alien and beautiful. Understanding awoke within him.

  “Raul?”

  “Somewhere out there, he’s still alive.”

  “You know this?”

  “I feel it.”

  Dgarra turned back toward the tactical displays on the far wall. He had no time for discussions of wishful thinking. A storm was building to the northeast of his position, a storm of soldiers, Eadric and Kasari—a storm fed by a new infusion of Kasari heavy artillery, the likes of which he had not previously seen. By the dark gods, what would they bring through that hellish gateway next?

  So far he’d been lucky, guessing where to deploy the limited supply of stasis shield generators so that they blunted the enemy’s main thrust. Smythe stepped up beside him, and he glanced at her as she stared up at those same view-screens, a look of intense concentration on her face. In truth she had been his good-luck charm.

  Turning his attention back to the big board, Dgarra allowed himself a grim smile. He now had to make the decisions that would position his forces for tomorrow’s battle. With her by his side radiating so much positive energy, perhaps he could not lose.

  Jennifer’s scream of frustration hammered at the bonds that imprisoned it deep within her mind. She wanted to walk away from Dgarra, to deny the hive-mind the knowledge of the battle plans that he was revealing to her, but she was unable to give the smallest hint that something was wrong. Her will was now subject to the commands provided through the nanobot cortical array, forcing her to take actions that she would rather kill herself than perform. She had become two people, the unseen ghost of Jennifer Smythe and the pod person who had stolen her body.

  To her horror, she found herself actively engaged in the conversation with Dgarra, even offering suggestions that carried tactical insights provided by the Kasari group commander in charge of Scion’s assimilation. And Dgarra welcomed her input, taking the time to explain why he was rejecting her suggestions. Dear Lord, he was training her on his thought process—training the Kasari.

  Aware that her frustration was getting her nowhere, Jennifer abandoned her attempts to fight her link to the hive-mind. The memory of how she had exploited her Altreian headset’s link to the Second Ship’s neural network replayed itself within the firewalled part of her mind. Maybe she could make use of this linkage to learn something that could help her escape this new mental prison.

  Jennifer focused on the link, using the Kasari cortical array instead of her psychic abilities to identify other minds that were directly monitoring what her body was seeing and hearing. At first nothing happened. Then she realized her mistake. She was trying too hard, with no better results than trying to force herself into deep meditation. She relaxed her mind, allowing herself to become a passive observer of this link to the hive-mind. And as she did, she began to identify other observers. Much like medical students watching a surgeon from the operating-theater balcony, the handful of Kasari who watched Jennifer and Dgarra’s interactions paid no attention to each other.

  She shifted her attention to the Kasari group commander. A name formed in Jennifer’s mind. Shalegha. As she focused on that identity, Jennifer felt her connection to that particular node within the hive-mind strengthen. Like turning up the volume on her phone, it wasn’t something that the person on the other end would notice—not so long as she merely observed and did nothing to draw attention to herself.

  Allowing herself to drift along the link, Jennifer found herself sitting inside a room buzzing with activity. Uniformed Eadric soldiers manned most of what appeared to be tactical workstations, although some were operated by Kasari. The sensation wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the way Jennifer could touch the minds of others, although she didn’t dare attempt to influence Shalegha’s mind. This was a technological link, not a telepathic one, and she had a strong feeling that drawing attention to her ghostly self would be a very bad idea.

  Jennifer withdrew from the link to Shalegha, determined to explore the limits of her brain’s connection to
the hive-mind. Unfortunately, she found herself unable to directly access any other connections. Why could she access Shalegha’s link but no others? Was it because Shalegha had established an active connection to Jennifer’s cortical array in order to pass along specific instructions?

  When Shalegha abruptly terminated their connection, Jennifer was startled. She could still feel the hive-mind, knew that it was recording everything her body saw and heard, but she had lost the ability to access data from Shalegha or any other member of the collective. The scenario was as if the router for her connection had blocked external traffic and she lacked the administrative privileges to override its security settings.

  Jennifer knew the analogy was imperfect, but it raised questions about how the cortical arrays communicated with the hive-mind. Not through subspace—that was an Altreian technology. Such communication wasn’t likely to happen via quantum entanglement either, as the method could not feasibly interconnect the entire population of the Kasari Collective.

  Then it hit her. The wormhole gateways must be acting as communication portals. That would mean that communications within a star system could be limited to light speed but, with the wormhole gateways eliminating the intervening distance between star systems, interstellar communication would be nearly instantaneous.

  Damn it all. Why did any of this matter? Here she was, stuck in the part of her brain she herself had shielded from the Kasari nanobots, impotent to do anything but observe what was happening. And what had she learned? That she could observe Shalegha when that particular Kasari chose to open a direct link to Jennifer’s cortical array?

  Jennifer wished she could cry, but this ghostly version of herself couldn’t even provide that level of release. As she returned her attention to Dgarra, she imagined how he would react once her betrayal was discovered. If only she could do the honorable thing and fall upon her own war-blade, but even the solace of suicide was denied her.