Rebellion (Rebel Wars Book 1) Page 14

  “Her planned route appears to be heading back to J914.” Robert said

  “Don’t lie to me Robert.”

  “Demon, I am not a liar. I am many things, but I’d sooner shoot you down now than deal with the consequences of lying to a Corporation Commander.”

  “Smart man.” Demon clicked the communication channel off and ordered his war-band to withdraw. Something seemed wrong about all of this but with limited options he had no real choice but to obey the Councilman and back off from the Tower.

  His war-band had finally managed to pull itself out of Tower space and begin acceleration when something strange happened. The Demon was never really outside of the digital space of the Library and a nagging feeling of invasion plunged itself into his head. With rapid speed he was plugged back into his Library with the goggles and pouring through his system’s logs. What the hell he thought to himself as bits and pieces of data were coming up corrupted or changed. There was someone else in the system! He screamed with so much rage the rest of the control center froze in place, unsure what they had done wrong.

  The Demon threw himself deeper into the library and caught the trail of a rogue A.I. in his system. The A.I.’s signature was Corporation yet it was twisted, mutated into something else. He found the A.I. digging through his files about the Calamity and was about to confront it when he noticed that the A.I. had been copying and uploading all of the data from his precious treasury of knowledge.

  “STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW” He roared through the digital space. The A.I. didn’t seem to hear him, vanishing from sight with all of his carefully curated data. The A.I. hadn’t wiped his system, but it had copied everything he had wanted to keep safe. Tremendous rage and sadness welled up in the Demon as the one thing he’d ever truly been proud of crumbled at his digital feet. He slammed his digital fist into the digital ground and looked to where the A.I. had been. He found himself reading through the Calamity files, trying to find something to tell him what had just happened.

  “The Demon cried.

  “The Library died.

  “In the depths of insanity.

  “Alice was the Calamity.”

  What? How could this be? The Demon had never come across this phrase before and the rest of the Calamity files were not written in rhyme and never mentioned any names. It wasn’t like some mythological prophecy, it was true facts broadcast from a future society. He re-read the passage and his heart went cold. It was Alice. She was at his home! He had come to hers, and she had gone to his!

  “What did I do to her?” The Demon sobbed as he exited the digital world. He was just going to kill her, she had done something far worse than killed him. It just wasn’t fair to the Demon as tears formed in his aging eyes.

  “Sir, we’re receiving a broadcast from the Dungeon. Sub-space communication was blocked by rebellion forces. Seems a rogue A.I. got into the system. Sir…it’s…not good. Four inquisitors have been killed, a plethora of law enforcement agents and vehicles have been neutralized and…well…it appears the Library was hacked and…I’m just relaying the messages sir, but the castle..it…didn’t make it.” The man held his breath waiting for the Demon to send his vile butterflies his direction. The Demon stood up, his face pale and sorrowful like the widowed bride of a man killed in cold blood. He shook his head.

  “Kill them. Intercept them. Send orders to the other ships. Declare a blood hunt.” The Demon’s voice was shaky and quiet. It wasn’t often that a blood hunt was necessary, but in this case, he felt more than justified in delivering those orders. A blood hunt was nothing more than a near-holy war (if they believed in that kind of thing) brought down upon the head of an individual. Every Corporation soldier or commander seeking a boost in personal glory would want to participate in the blood hunt, and only a true commander like the Demon could call one. It would begin as a simple broadcast to the Meteor and to The Triad and before long it would have reached every local Corporation leader and spread like small pox in an unvaccinated population. Alice would not be having a good day anytime in the near future.

  “In the depths of Insanity

  Alice was the Calamity”

  Hmm. The Demon scoffed, plotting the course back to the Dungeon. He’ll show her calamity that was for certain.

  “Send the capital ship after them, he’s gotta know by now what was done.” Councilman stated, watching the Corporation warships on radar alter course. He couldn’t risk sending the capital ship directly behind them, so he gave the order with a delay. Alice would just have to hold her own until the backup arrived or their capital ship would near unfathomable amounts of money shot to shit and down the drain. He picked up the whisky on his desk and took a sip, regretting the taste immediately.

  “Send a message to Alice, let her know to expect trouble.” Tate said through the com, dropping down into his seat and placing a weary hand on an even wearier forehead. What the hell had he been thinking sending her there? What if she hadn’t managed to get the Library, what then? What if he had sent her and her entire team to the slaughter? That was the risk of being in charge, wasn’t it? He needed to know more about the situation, not that it would help him gain any more control over it.

  “Project, have you synced?” He said into a new channel. Project had never left the Tower, but had divvied up a piece of himself –a partition he called it- to go with Alice. The two Projects had been unable to communicate with each other before, so his hope was slim that they could now.

  “No sir, optimal range has not been achieved yet. I sent a partition with the Heartseeker. That is the capital ship you’ve attached to Alice, correct?” Project stated.

  “Yes. Another partition?”

  “Of course. I can bounce data along the pathways of the different ships this way and get it back to the Tower before it is compromised. I will tell you though, warning Alice is pointless.”

  “And why is that?”

  “She’s dead.” Project said

  “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “Of course I can. I am the one who will be killing her. I was looking for the right time to tell you…”

  “Tell me what? That you just killed one of the best officers I have?” Robert yelled.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Her statistics aren’t much better than Michael Beard, the pilot I sent with Hero’s squad. He’s there to make sure she’s killed if I failed. You see, I’ve analyzed the data and took the emotional aspect out of it. Without the human societal bonds you have towards her, the data points to her death on Dungeon as being the most efficient choice. If she dies there, we are absolved from all blame and yet have obtained the Library. She is not alive to act out her assassination of the Demon on galaxy-wide broadcast, and thus open war is not initiated.”

  “I have considered all of this. But you don’t understand. We failed that woman’s husband, we cannot fail her. If we do, we have done nothing but become like our enemies. They have no regard for anything but control and death. They want to stop some universe altering even on their terms, nothing more and wind up with the lion’s share of the spoils after they do so. They’re not saving anyone, they’re only creating an empire for themselves. If we sacrifice Alice like a pawn, it won’t make us kings.” Robert said.

  “Well, I guess that’s just up to me now isn’t it?”

  Tate swore. Project was right. If he couldn’t get Project to see it his way, the messages would never get to the other ships in time to prevent it. He downed the whisky in a single burning swallow and stood up. Project had been a huge asset in a lot of ways, but he needed to speak with Master Tillman about a failsafe. They couldn’t let some half-cocked artificial intelligence make all the of the command decisions. Poor Alice he thought, the girl was starting to grow on him.

  Chapter 16

  Like a rising sun, the castle’s center burned bright and stretched towards the sky. The nuclear bomb was small, but even one of its side was deadly destructive. Louis smiled as he observed his handiwork through
the remaining video drones they’d left on the station. They had wanted to watch the castle fall into ruin, and thus it had. Louis had proven himself only slightly useful, never once getting a full target on the inquisitors that had attacked them. Alice hung her head as they broke away from the Dungeon. She hadn’t known Mayberry well, but it never pleased her to watch a man erased in such a fashion. All she had left was the weapon he had carried with him into battle, it was a shame. She’d inquired on his file and found that he had a wife and several kids back on the Tower. In the future, she couldn’t afford to bring family men with her. He had not been soft, but she couldn’t handle the guilt in addition to the weight she already carried. She longed to rip the heart out of her chest and never feel the emotional pain she felt again, but that wasn’t really possible.

  Stormbreaker fled from the system at full speed, knowing that if the capital ships were unable to reach them they couldn’t stand and wait. The Demon had not been present, and with the logs showing three warships having been there earlier it could only mean he had gone with them. If they were caught by those warships now, the odds were not in Alice’s favor. The new weapons and upgraded maneuvering systems wouldn’t be able to save them against the onslaught of three Corporation warships. Steven would be out-piloted and Alice would be outgunned, she prayed that it wouldn’t come down to that.

  Alice grabbed a few hours of sleep in her chambers, rising up and staring blankly at herself in the mirror of her tight quarters. Her eyes were showing the bags of age and stress, even her hair felt like it was about to fall out. She spit a glob into the sink and ran a little water to wash it down. Things were not as she’d ever wanted them to be. She should be getting older, but in the comfort of her colony world and in the arms of her husband. They changed this by wanting control! The Corporation was to blame, they had no right to take away their freedoms. To outlaw their religions, to take away their weapons and replace their elected officials with Corporation ones. Control wasn’t important to someone like Alice, until she’d lost all of it.

  Her stomach turned as she stepped into the kitchen and requested a quick, high-energy snack and some of the sludge. Memories were a harsh thing. Every time her eyes closed she could see Cal’s smiling face being torn off by cruel, heated light. If she shook that memory off, then it was replaced by the scarred face of Mayberry being reduced to ash. Sometimes the soldiers she’d killed crept into her memories and reminded her that she too was a murderer. She drank the sludge and bit into the protein snack she’d requested. No matter how hard she swallowed or how much she drank, the memories were going to be there.

  “Alice, I’m reading something unusual. It seems like…a partition of mine?” Project said, sounding quite confused.

  “Partition?”

  “Yes, another piece of myself like what’s back on the Tower. You didn’t think the full me actually came with you, did you?”

  “I don’t care.” Alice said.

  “Well, anyways. I see something ahead of us, moving at the same speeds that seems to contain a piece of me. It is broadcasting on the secret channels only I know, but it appears to be a Corporation warship.”

  Alice broke out into full run from a sitting position, throwing her snacks on the ground as she rushed to the bridge. She didn’t apologize as she knocked Hero down in the hallway and bumped into Michael, the pilot she’d sent with him. She rushed through the carpeted floors and onto the steel-tiles of the bridge, looking towards Milly.

  “Mill, did Project…”

  “Yes Alice. It seems that the message is stating that they just came from the Tower, and we have orders to intercept the Demon’s warship.” Milly said as if in a dream.

  “Steven, prepare for intercept. Everyone else, guns up and get ready to lay down some fire.” Alice threw herself down into the chair and donned her signature goggles, her thoughts were weighed down with concern. She was never one to blindly follow orders, but if she was to engage the Demon here then so be it. There was something important going on if they’d put a Project aboard the ship and she would have to figure out what it was. She wanted to test the arms, but they were going too fast to risk unfolding them. The goggles fed all of the basic information of the ship directly into her view so she could analyze the best way to approach this problem. Project’s data showed that the Demon’s warship was called The Lost Hope, and was currently in the company of two other warships.

  “Project, get me a formation sketch. I have an idea.”

  Alice’s view lit up with a blue-lined digital drawing of what the formation should look like, the Demon was hovering in the middle while the other ships were flanking him from above and below. In space the movement was never straight and always three-dimensional, so this would give her a little room for miscalculation, but not much.

  “Milly, you have the stop sign?” Alice said

  “Yes, what do you want me to do with it?”

  “Load it into cannon four and give it a drone. Project, can you sync controls to the drone to my visor?” Alice said.

  “Of course. But I’m not certain what you’re planning will work.” Project replied.

  “We’ve got to try it. Steven, prepare the ship to slow down. Project punch in some open-space co-ordinates and get us there.”

  Project funneled the view on her visors to reveal a location in space where he assumed the plan would best be executed. If this worked, Alice would definitely have a new chapter written about her in the textbook for space combat. She hated space combat, she just wanted to stick her boot up some soldier’s ass and blast them with a few well-timed shots. She missed the adrenaline rush of the death dance, and nothing within the cockpit of a ship could give her the same thrill and rush. She felt the ship slowly deaccelerate, paying attention to the broadcast distance of the other Project. She wondered what they were talking about, the data upload was huge. Probably just dumping the Library to that Project, who would send it back to another ship and so on so forth until they got the full data onto the Tower’s computers.

  “We have a capital ship incoming an hour or so behind the warships. So pick your plan to accommodate for that.” Project stated, even though it made no sense in Alice’s mind. The battle she was planning would have to be over much quicker than that for her to stand a chance and it wasn’t common for battles to last that long anyways. Even with re-sealable bulk heads and other defenses, ripping through a hull wasn’t too difficult. She now had weapons that could guide themselves and powerful cannons that puncture even the most durable of plates. She remembered the warships the Corporation employed looked a lot like aged swords, cutting through space. She remembered that every available portion of the ships were covered in guns, cannons, or armor plating. She would have to be careful about engaging the ship if it left her vulnerable. If the Demon saw through her plan, he would be able to execute her on sight. Alice poured through the available intel- the Demon had found out what they had done and was furious. The reason they had to engage now was to collect the other Project and to destroy the Demon here. If they didn’t manage to stop him, he would attack the Tower with a much bigger fleet than he currently had and that wasn’t a battle they’d be able to win graciously.

  Alice collected her thoughts and turned her focus to the map ahead of her, showing the relative times and distances between her and the Demon’s ships. She switched the controls over to manual and slid her hands into the control gloves, gripping the levers and paying close attention to her breathing. She couldn’t screw this up, not if she wanted herself and everyone else aboard Stormbreaker to live. She slid down on the brakes and careened the ship to the side, aiming the cannon and squeezing the trigger while still moving faster than light. The drone ricocheted through the tunnel their speeds and left open through real-space and plummeted much faster than it ever should have been going. The drone’s signals were caught by Project who continued to aim the poor drone the best he could.

  “Let’s do this, Demon.”

  The Demon’s guilt an
d fear and rage welled up into him as he observed the bluish lights pouring straight at him! How dare someone shoot at him while at these speeds! Physics was not reliable at this portion of time and anyone insane enough to try and shoot him down was certainly not going to be a fight he was in the mood to deal with. The bluish light exploded and the ship lurched, careening forward and knocking the Demon to his feet. The built in gravity and such within the ship should have prevented that from happening, but not matter what systems were in place stopping at that speed was always incredibly dangerous. The other two warships continued to speed past the Demon who recovered his chair as he yelled orders.

  “Get me the other ships, bring them here now!”

  “I’m afraid not.” Project said through the communication channels, causing the Demon to snarl place on his own goggles. He could clearly see Project now in the digital space, and it enraged him further. Only this time the rage was cold and uplifting, the kind of rage someone with an advantage over their foe felt.

  “So you’re the bastard that stole my Library?” Demon said

  “No. That would be a partition of myself. I’m just the bastard that helped them land that shot. Truth be told, I don’t like it here.” Project replied

  The Demon mustered up his programming abilities and constructed a sturdy chain in his digital hands, planning to wrap it around Project’s neck when the rogue A.I. vanished from the system. The Demon flung his goggles to the ground in frustration and anger as the ship began to shake violently. Something had snagged them out of light-speed, and that same something was beginning to tear holes in his ships. Engines and sensors being the first targets.