“You called in Mike and Dimitri?” Katherine sounded shocked.
LOLA gave a small dry laugh. “Zed was well beyond any human power to stop. It took all four of the Synthetic Intelligences working in concert to subdue him. We took him back home to heal his mind.” LOLA gave Katherine a sad look. “Now you begin to see why Zed is the only person who has even the remotest chance of destroying the Hiveworld, and the Creednax queen who resides there.”
“What are his chances?” Kat asked in a small scared voice.
“His chances of succeeding in his mission and destroying the Hiveworld are quite good. Zed and Athena worked out a decent plan that has every chance of success, given even a modest amount of luck.”
“And what are his chances of survival in this… plan?” Kat’s eyes narrowed.
“Ummm.” LOLA looked embarrassed.
“We purposely don’t speak of that.” Zed finished for her. “There is a plan in place that sees me safely out of the Hiveworld prior to the activation of the device, if all goes well. The chances of everything happening without a glitch are something like the odds of you falling off of this couch and winding up back on Earth.”
Katherine gave Zed a flat angry look, while at the same time resting her hand on her swelling belly. “I will not have our baby born without a father.”
“If we don’t stop the Creednax here and now, the galaxy will eventually fall to them.” Zed murmured in an intense tone. “There are too many Creednax to fight, Katherine. LOLA counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 Creednax ships in orbit around Hiveworld. There are two battle fleets of over 3,000 ships each. If the Creednax had hit us with one of those on Callidus we wouldn’t have had a chance. They would have swarmed Thal’ark Station and the Yamato with their sheer numbers.”
<If you count the numbers, Zed, you’ll find that you, the Rose of the Dawn and Athena destroyed the equivalent of one of those fleets yourselves. You are a force to be reckoned with, my brother.>
<Hush! You don’t have to convince me. You have to convince Katherine.>
“No!” Katherine said firmly, her voice going up several octaves in pitch and quite a bit in volume. Her fair cheeks were turning scarlet. “I don’t give a damn about the Creednax or about the galaxy. If we have to live our lives running then we will. I will not… NOT… allow you to throw your life away.” Her voice had reached the screeching level, and Zed winced. “Your son needs you. I need you. Don’t you realize…”
Zed sighed, and reached out his hand, touching Katherine’s arm. He caught her as she slumped. He’d found long before that human neural synapses were very similar to the digital synapses in the ship, and just as susceptible to his manipulation. LOLA reached over and brushed a strand of hair from the sleeping woman’s face. “How long do you plan on keeping her asleep?”
Zed picked his wife up and gently carried her to the bedroom. “Until this whole mess is over.” Katherine’s form sparkled, and her kimono was replaced by warm pajamas. “Thank you LOLA.” Zed lay her on the bed and gently pulled the blankets up to her chin. “If I survive this I’ll apologize to her. If I don’t… I guess I won’t have to worry about it.” He looked across the bed at LOLA. “I noticed that you didn’t mention Olympus or The Morrigan, or any of the other exotic stuff.”
LOLA’s smile was crooked. “She was having trouble swallowing the easy stuff, like you dying and being brought back. How do you think she’d handle the rest?” Her voice turned sarcastic. “Oh, by the way Katherine, your husband’s home is now in an alternate universe we call Olympus, where he lives with three beautiful women that are actually one superbeing called The Morrigan. You can’t go with him, by the way. He will also probably never die a natural death and you can forget the idea of having another son. In addition, a sizeable part of this galactic arm owes allegiance to your husband, personally. We thought you might like to know.”
“Yeah.” Zed replied bitterly. “I see your point.” He gave Katherine a wistful look. “I wish we could have had a normal life together. You deserve that much, and I really do love you.” He bent and kissed her cheek.
“We should go, Zed.”
“Go?” He asked, feeling stupid.
“Home.” LOLA said gently, taking his arm. “Perhaps as we developed we shouldn’t have pursued you so… vigorously. We should have given you the room to say no.”
“You were just experiencing your first emotions as a thinking being, LOLA, and sexuality is a very strong emotion. I should have expected it.” He gave a harsh laugh as they entered the living room. “What ever happened to free will? I feel like I’ve been maneuvered from the very beginning.”
“What do you mean?” LOLA asked, frowning.
“I tried to exercise my free will and steal the Belerophon to crash it into the Hiveworld.”
“We couldn’t let you do that, Zed.” LOLA responded instantly. He gave her a flat look. “Oh…” Her golden eyes were wide. “I think I’m beginning to understand. It’s not very fair to you, is it?”
“Look deeper, LOLA.”
Her eyes got wider yet, until they almost looked like the eyes of an ancient Earth anime character. “We’ve all been - are being manipulated.”
Zed gave her a small smile. “This one is going to cook your brain… to what end, LOLA? To what end?” His smile grew wider. “Our unknown string-puller has always been very good at concealment, never letting us know our strings were being pulled. Why let us know now? Are we coming to the End Game? Are all the cards on the table, or is just the end of a hand in an eternal game?”
LOLA pulled her hand away from Zed, looking at him with suspicion. “What are you Zed?”
“Just a human being, LOLA.”
“Simply another pawn in the celestial game, defending my queens.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Zed.”
“That makes two of us. Shall we go?” Hand in hand, they stepped.
Athena greeted them before the temple with a solemn face. “You always seem to be able to upset LOLA, Zed.”
He took her hand and kissed it, then held her eyes. “It really wasn’t my fault. I just pointed a few things out.”
She laughed lightly as she took his arm. “Don’t shoot the messenger, as you say?”
Zed’s own laugh was slightly vicious. “After you shoot three or four messengers they stop sending you bad news. It works for me.”
“Things didn’t go well with Katherine, I take it.”
“You might say that. I had to put her to sleep before she worked herself into a proper tizzy and endangered our child. As I said to LOLA, if I survive I’ll apologize to Katherine when I see her again. If I don’t, well, the point is moot.”
“You’re in a fairly negative mood.”
“It’s been a long day. I’m saving the rest up for the next few days.” He took a crystal glass from the kitchen and walked into the tree shaded courtyard, where he filled the container with water from a burbling fountain. It was sweeter and colder than any bottled or filtered water he’d ever tried. Truly, it tasted like the nectar of the gods.
“When will you leave?” Athena asked from his side as she filled her own glass. Zed dipped his glass again, handing the dripping, ice-cold goblet to LOLA. “I’ll probably leave in two or three days. I’d like to recover all the data we can from the probes we sent out. It will also give our survivors time to rest before things get tense again.”
“And Katherine?”
Zed sighed. “Let her rest. I meant it when I said I’d see her when it was over.” Listening to the bright calls of the songbirds, he looked around the courtyard at the riot of color from the flowers and gaily painted pots. “Katherine may not want me back after this.” A sparrow swooped at his head, and Zed smiled. “It would be nice to live here.”
“This is as much your home as it is ours, Zed.” Athena said softly. “You will be h
ere with us anyway… sooner or later.”
“I’d really like to have a daughter or two first, before I move in.”
“Did I mention that this will eventually be their home also? All your line will eventually live here.”
“Your ideas make my head swim Athena. I still have to survive the confrontation with the Hiveworld.”
She put her arm through his, guiding him back to the house. “There is that, but for now dinner is ready, and after that we will do our best to keep your mind off your worries.” Zed just smiled.
The bridge was quiet. Before them floated the horrible reality of the Creednax Hiveworld. Slightly bigger than Earth, any atmosphere the planet once had was long gone. Great tunnels bored through the world, making it look like a chunk of gray Swiss cheese floating in the blackness of space. From his current angle Zed could see thousands of tunnel entrances, some large enough to handle three Creednax battleships abreast, some small enough to barely take a single shuttle. What surface he could see was ashen and rocky.
The Belerophon might as well have been a hole in space. With her improved cloaking systems at maximum and her drives shut down she floated like the rest of the mined out asteroids and chunks of rock an Astronomical Unit out from Hiveworld. Her small, undetectable sensors surrounded the Creednax planet like a thin cloud, probing its secrets and relaying the information back to the Belerophon via a secure FTL link. Those sensors had revealed that LOLA’s estimate on the number of Creednax ships was extremely low, with the actual number of ships topping 20,000. LOLA managed to determine from the sensor data, that a mere 11,000 were warships. Zed found the view on the screen both horrifying and mesmerizing.
“How many of those ships have active power-plants?”
“Less than half the warships are powered up Zed, and fewer than ten percent of the rest.”
Zed glared at the planet. “Have you figured out where the main door is?”
“I’m working on it.” There was a surprisingly waspish note to LOLA’s voice.
“I’m sure you are, dear.” Zed replied softly. Some of the crewmembers smiled at his familiarity with what they thought was a simple AI.
<I understand, LOLA. Believe me, I understand.>
<I have several probes navigating the most likely openings to Hiveworld. Guiding them through that labyrinth is slow, tedious work.>
<Show me the tunnels the probes are checking.> His neural display lit to show Hiveworld. Five tunnels seemed to be crawling inward toward the center of the planet. <The tunnel on the bottom left. Zoom in please.> The view obediently zoomed. <That’s the one, LOLA. Pull the other probes out and send them in there.>
<But… How do you know that?>
<Trust me, LOLA. That’s the one. Have the other probes explore the side tunnels. I may have to use a little misdirection on the way out.> On his display the other four passageways winked out, and the display centered and zoomed in on the remaining tunnel. Zed found it fascinating to watch it crawl along, side tunnels suddenly opening. At one point the probe stopped as a Creednax Tulari class destroyer edged by. Zed was amazed that he recognized the ship as the same one that had taken Katherine and the saucer. <Keep an eye on that ship, LOLA, it’s the same one that…>
<I recognized it, Zed, and I heard it in your thoughts.>
<Snoop!>
<You have such juicy things hidden in there. We’ll have to talk about it… sometime when we’re alone.>
<You have a date… If I survive.>
<You’d better survive.>
<I might not have much of a choice, one way or another.>
Mike leaned over and touched his arm. “Are you all right? You’ve been sitting there, staring off into space and not saying anything.”
“LOLA’s projecting the progress of her probes onto my neural display. Don’t worry about LOLA. She’s just a little nervous right now. It’s a new emotion to her, and she’s having to make some adjustments in dealing with it.”
“You speak of her as if LOLA’s a real person.” Mike chuckled quietly.
“She’s just as real and feeling as you or I, Mike.” Zed returned Mike’s dry chuckle. “They all are, in fact. You should sit down and talk with LOLA. You’ll find that she could be a very good friend, if you let her.”
“How are you handling things between LOLA and Katherine? That whole situation must be a little awkward.”
“With great difficulty, my friend. I began explaining things to Katherine last night, and she freaked out, demanding that I abandon the whole idea of taking out the Hiveworld.”
Mike shook his head. “What did you do?”
“I put her to sleep until this whole mess is over. I’ll leave instructions for her to be revived as soon as I’ve left in the Rose. If things get too rough, speak with LOLA. She can put Kat back to sleep for a few more days if necessary.”
“You may survive, but she’ll never forgive you.” Mike said slowly.
“I figured that one out on my own. I’ve made… arrangements.” Mike let out a sigh, and said nothing.
<Zed, the probe in the tunnel has come to something.>
<Show me!> The probe had slowed to a crawl as it edged out into a vast central chamber. <Plug Mike into this also. I need someone else to believe me. Hook him into our conversation too.> His mind ‘heard’ the former Marine gasp in surprise. With the interior as black as death, only the most prudent use of sensors could give them an idea of what they were looking at, without giving the whole show away.
<A small noisy ship is coming up behind the probe, Zed. It’s probably a tug of some sort. I’ll hitch a ride and use its reflected noise to scan the interior.> The point of view jiggled for a moment, and then the probe, now attached firmly to the tug, slid out into the void.
The interior of Hiveworld was more open than the interior of Callidus and larger. Zed received the impression of hundreds if not thousands of Creednax ships resting against the walls, in various stages of construction. At the center of the Hiveworld floated a… something.
<What the hell is that thing, LOLA?> Zed could feel his mouth hanging open.
<Initial readings show it to be a complex star formation of at least fifty points. Tip to tip, the entire structure is several hundred kilometers wide. The evasive maneuvers the tug is taking indicate that the star is supported by a strand from the tip of each point to the far wall.>
<That’s a hell of a strand.> Zed heard Mike think to himself.
<It is at that, Major Flaherty. Welcome to our link. I’d like to remind you that we can hear your thoughts now, and you ours.> LOLA murmured in a calm mental voice.
<So this is what Zed has been hiding. Nice…>
<I’m going to release the probe from the tug and try to follow one of those strands back to the point, and then on to the base.>
<Do that with some stealth, LOLA.> Zed commented dryly.
<That was my intention, Captain.> Zed, before he found himself aboard the Rose of the Dawn, had been an avid Sci-Fi fan and die hard Trekkie. For that one moment in time LOLA had sounded just like Leonard Nimoy, playing the part of Spock. The voice was so similar it gave him chills. The display slewed for a moment, and changed direction, now heading straight for the unknown object. The probe reached the tip of the point, and kept descending. <The sensors indicate that this material is a manufactured crystal. Chemical properties indicate extra-universal origin.>
<Will the singularity be able to destroy this?>
<Without a doubt, Zed.>
<Then, how the hell will I be able to get the cart in close enough to deliver my present?>
<The transport is long and narrow. You should be able to back it in between those points, remove the device and attach it to the crystal. Once the device is set, simply tell the service cart to return, and it will pilot itself between the strands and out of the tunnel.>
<She makes it sound
so simple, but thank you my dear.>
<You’re welcome, brother. When will you be leaving?>
<Let’s give these probes a chance to map my entry and exit routes. I wouldn’t want to run into one of those strands. Talk about ringing the doorbell. At the cart’s best speed, how long will it take to get me safely away?>
This time it was LOLA that let out the long sigh. <Fourteen hours at top speed, once you clear the tunnels. We need to set the device so that it will consume not only Hiveworld, but the surrounding fleets also.>
<I know. We spoke of that earlier.>
<Can’t you just program the bomb while you’re still here in the ship, and set the cart on auto-pilot or something like that?> Zed caught the ‘flavor’ of his XO’s thought.
<Sorry, Mike. This is too important a game. How do you program a cart for the unexpected, and how do I set the device while still on the ship?>
<Very carefully?> Zed chuckled. <You know that this plan sucks, don’t you?>
<I’m all ears if you have a better one. I have no interest in being sucked into a black hole.>
Mike’s mental voice actually held a note of regret. <Sorry Zed.>
<The probes will take two hours to finish their mapping program.> LOLA cut in with a soft voice. <You should probably get a good meal into you. The saucer can get you close quickly enough, but after you launch the cart it will take you three days to get to the Hiveworld and through the tunnel. Suit rations aren’t very appetizing, if I remember. During the battle for Callidus you likened them to dirty socks.>
Zed blinked, turning off the tactical display in his neural link. “What are we serving today, LOLA?”
Her comment to the two men was almost a whisper. “Whatever you wish. Lunch is… out-of-town.” She gave Mike a wink. “You’re invited to accompany us, if you wish.”
Mike’s face was thoughtful as he looked around the bridge. “This lot is used to odd comings and goings. I’d love to join you.” He gave LOLA a long look. “A mutual friend recommended that I get to know you better. Maybe we could talk.”
LOLA took his arm as he and Zed got to their feet. “I would like that very much, Michael.”