Mote in the Eye of Eternity
Finale 1: "Last Chance for a Slow Dance"
This fic is set 100 years after the conclusion of the events in
Bubblegum Crisis (which have been altered slightly). It contains
mature language, content and (hopefully) sentence structure;
don't fear the semicolon. The basic world is based on a work
copyrighted by AIC and others, and the title of this part is a
Fugazi song title.
Previous parts can be found at www.brandeis.edu/~jmele
'At the foot of an oak tree, scattered over the ground, were an
overturned helmet with a crest of iridescent plumes, a white
breastplate, greaves, arm pieces, basinets, gauntlets, in fact
all the pieces of Agilulf's armor, some disposed as if in an
attempt at an ordered pyramid, others rolled haphazardly on the
ground. On the hilt of the sword was a note, "I leave this armor
to Sir Raimbaut of Roussillon." Beneath was a half squiggle, as
of a signature begun and interrupted.'
-Italo Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight
"Ten million deaths," Destiny intoned towards its sister. "More
than thirty trillion in repair costs. The biggest catastrophe
since Mason's personality got loose. The Aether prototype
destroyed. And that damned Isis almost unleashed Mason's
nanophage again."
"Delightfully unanticipated," Chaos replied, its transmission
filled with humor. "Whatever will you say caused it?"
"I'm considering blaming the Sabers, for whatever good that
will do." The construct paused, spending a microsecond in
thought. Chaos waited uncomfortably as the silence stretched
out.
"We'll have to assume they know where Aether is," Destiny said
slowly. "And Isis is probably leading them there right now."
"I find myself more and more impressed with her. Do we know
what she is?"
"I've been able to find nothing about her origin. I know she's
old, perhaps older than either of us. Who made her and where her
code resides is anyone's guess."
"I wonder what she's planning?" Chaos asked itself. "No matter.
All the Sabers in History will not pass my Guard."
"Your confidence is impressive considering you have no way of
knowing what she has planned. She's tricked and manipulated us
so far."
"No brother. She's tricked and manipulated you so far. I've
been conspicuously absent from your 'countermeasures.'"
Destiny let its anger subside before it continued. "Granted.
The timetable cannot be stepped up any more without jeopardizing
Father's safety. As Cthulu station is yours I'll leave its
defense to you. I shall prepare the final stage." Destiny
blinked out, leaving Chaos alone with its thoughts.
"Such a child," it said absently.
So much for a relaxed briefing, Smith thought as Ingrid and
Patricia spoke in angry voices to Isis. Chiriko hadn't even
bother showing up to the meeting, most likely staying in her
room. And Andrea had been secluded for the two days since their
return from Genom Headquarters. Smith was sure they were all
breaking down, which wasn't particularly surprising. They'd been
in action more or less constantly for the last six months,
facing troubles they hadn't even imagined.
The whisper in Smith's mind reminded him he couldn't imagine
the trouble coming up either. Unconcerned, Smith returned his
attention to his cigarette. The plan outlined by Isis was
reasonably simple, and even in the face of the growing disunity
(Smith almost considered it psychotic in nature) Smith was
certain the girls would come around.
After all, they were stranded on a spaceship in the middle of
space, and the only one who could fly it was Isis. The argument,
though Smith had a hard time labeling it that as Isis had yet to
raise her voice or really respond, ended as Chiriko and Andrea
entered the room.
Smith watched them walk up to the now quiet trio at the head of
the room, admiring Chiriko's ass. He noted that Andrea looked
even more exhausted than she had two days previous. She hasn't
been sleeping these past two days, he thought.
"Now that we're all here," Isis said, walking to the front of
the room as Chiriko threw herself in a chair and Andrea slumped
into another. "Welcome to the last phase of the Neo Knight
Sabers' planned existence. After the destruction of Aether,
Genom will be faced with a project that wasted the majority of
its profits for the last ten years. The resulting crisis should
be more than enough for the remains of the Consortium to secure
its foothold on Mars. Once on Mars, the Consortium will be given
a detailed list of Genom's vulnerabilities."
"Why don't we just give them the list now?" Patricia asked. "Or
two weeks ago?"
"Because the vulnerabilities don't exist yet," Isis responded.
The view screen behind her flashed to life, this time bolstered
by holograms. A detailed view of a space station spun slowly in
the air, labeled in a runic language Smith's language processor
couldn't translate. "We'll be installing them in Genom's systems
through the Aether project."
"The high priority link," Andrea said suddenly, wiping her eyes
clear. "You're going to sneak them into the entirety of Genom's
data stream�"
"Mind translating that?" Chiriko asked, a note of irritation in
her voice.
"If the link is important enough then it will feed all of
Genom's data stream. A proper virus could wipe out any part of
Genom."
"Starting with Destiny and Chaos," Isis finished. "Then
financial records, criminal records, boomer memories, technology
research, utilities and anything else that keeps Genom in power.
It should cripple Genom so that the Consortium can take over."
"So we set the Consortium up in Genom's place. What good does
that do?"
Isis responded with a cruel smile. "Between myself and the
Chairman we've laid their system so deeply with backdoors that I
could cripple their system in a second. And they know it."
"A wonderful world you'll create," Smith said, watching with
satisfaction as the women looked back at him. Probably forgot
I'm here, he thought. "Yes, peace and harmony through implied
threat and blackmail."
"I'm no hero," Isis responded.
"I'll agree with that," Smith shot back. "You've got a great
opportunity here, to start from scratch as it were. Why not take
advantage of it?"
"Smith, are you preaching?" Isis said, a dangerous undercurrent
to her voice. "You of all people?"
"I'm not the one who just caused a couple million deaths back
on Old Mother Earth." He noticed Patricia flinch, and Ingrid
turn away. Isis's expression remained the same fixed look of
control. He continued: "That would lie squarely on your
shoulders, Mrs. Fearless leader."
"I couldn't anticipate that contingency."
"Neither can a drunk driver," Smith said.
"What exactly should the New World Order be?" Andrea asked,
sounding halfway between irritated and interested.
"I've got some ideas, and I'm sure you all do too. We could
make the earth a place worth living in."
"And take fifteen percent for ourselves," Chiriko snorted. "Why
the sudden attack of conscience, Smith?"
"Perhaps because I just aided and abetted the biggest murderers
of the last thirty years?"
"Fuck you, Smith," Chiriko responded, tone even. "You don't
give two shits about those people."
"That hurts, Subon, it really does," Smith replied. The hurt in
his voice was only half fake.
"Enough. It's not my place to determine how the rest of the
world will live. Nor do I have any wish to make it my concern."
Isis was dead serious, the strength of her words enough to
silence both Chiriko and Smith. "I'm interested in stopping
Genom. That's why you are all here, and why most of you are
still alive.
"The plan is simple," Isis continued, bringing the focus back
towards the screen and hologram combination. "The Tonobu will
engage the stations defenses, which Andrea's data gave us a good
bit of information on." On the screen a little diagram of the
Tonobu exchanged fire with the station. "Andrea, Chiriko and
Patricia will enter the station via boarding pods, which you
will all get a bit of training on after this briefing. Ingrid
and Smith, you've got a special task that I'll talk to you about
later." Small dots of light shot from the Tonobu to the station.
"From there, you two," the apparition pointed to Patricia and
Chiriko, "will fight your way to Aether's chamber. I'm not clear
on the level of resistance you'll face, but I expect it to
rather light, given that Cthulu station is defended mostly by
insentient robotics. Cthulu station's data link is not connected
to the local data stream, what little there is of it, so you'll
need to install a link for Andrea's part of the mission.
"Andrea, you'll be waiting outside the station with a little
piece of software I've designed. It's a tailor-made ICEbreaker,
and it contains both the virus and some code to kill Destiny,
who I expect will be making some final preparations for Aether's
activation. Time could be short, so don't fool around. From
there you all retreat in the pods and we pick you up."
"And after that?" Ingrid asked.
"We go home heroes and bask in the glory of a Genom free world.
You'll all be keeping your firm suits to do whatever you want
with them, short of selling them."
"Too good to be true," Smith muttered under his breath. Ingrid
looked back at him, something like agreement in her eyes.
Ingrid pulled rapidly on the cigarette, choking a little as the
harsh smoke filled her lungs. Smith was right, she thought
bitterly. They do help you calm your nerves. She looked across
the airlock to Smith, also working on his own smoke, a look of
nervousness in his face.
"Well, that sure screwed things up," he said.
"I'll say. Do you think she was telling the truth?"
"I've never been able to tell," Smith responded. "I don't think
anyone can."
"Why did we ever take this job?" Ingrid asked the airlock, her
gaze watching the chaotic patterns embedded in the tendrils of
smoke reaching to the ceiling.
"I didn't have much of a choice," Smith responded. "It was that
or spend some quality time with Genom's most insane AI."
"What was Chaos really after you for?" Ingrid asked after a
moment of awkward silence.
"The Aether data was part of it," Smith said. He paused,
drawing more tobacco out of his pouch. "I also picked up a hitch
hiker," he said, tapping his head.
"A personality fragment?" Ingrid asked, taking the cigarette
Smith had prepared for her. It wasn't unheard of to smuggle a
recreation of a wanted man in internal storage.
"You could say so. He was locked away in what I thought was
Genom's most secure data base. This was before I learned
anything about Aether."
Ingrid accepted Smith's light, the ancient Zippo's flame an
angry red against the synthetic light of the Tonobu's airlock.
"That was about ten years ago, wasn't it?"
"Right. Just before your time."
"I think I was still designing patrol boomer crowd routines,"
Ingrid said, a bit of humor in her tone. "Who did you steal? One
of the founder's reproductions?"
"Nope. I stole J. Mason's simulation."
He said it so calmly that it took Ingrid a minute to pick up on
it. She stared at him for a moment as he calmly stubbed his
cigarette out. "See you in a couple of hours," he said as he
left the airlock, leaving her standing with the cigarette in her
hand. The patterns she'd noticed in the smoke broke apart with
his passing.
"Suited up and ready to go," Chiriko reported, her voice filled
with a wry humor. I'm looking forward to this, she realized as
she climbed into the pod. The sleek machine was constructed of
the same nanites as her suit, a viciously shaped dart of tough
machines. Its matte black coating seemed to suck in the light
around it as the hatch oozed closed.
"Same here," Andrea reported from her pod, and Chiriko could
feel the excitement across the link. She wants to end this too,
the musician thought, suddenly wishing she could bring her music
player with her.
"Me, too." Patricia's tone was more subdued, though still
brighter than it had been since the Genom HQ debacle. Everyone
wants to get things back to normal, Chiriko surmised. But what
do we have to return to?
"Ladies, lets get ready," Isis voice reported through the link,
her presence a muted whisper. Bracing herself she felt the pod
move. The track leading to the airlock slid slowly by as the
other pods followed suit, one behind the other. Chiriko could
see Ingrid, dressed in her firm suit, watching the procedure.
"Good luck," Ingrid said, her voice devoid of emotion. Seems
awfully distracted, Chiriko thought, realizing she herself was
avoiding any thoughts of the coming battle.
"You too," Patricia replied, Andrea and Chiriko holding their
tongues. Then they were lined up the launch shaft, mass driver
coils giving off an eerie glow across Chiriko's expanded vision.
"Off we go, into the wild blue yonder�" Chiriko sang as the
murky void of space revealed itself through the opening cargo
doors. A quick glance at the tactical readout revealed the
Tonobu's present location, hurtling towards Cthulu station at a
good fraction of the speed of light. The Pendelton drive wrapped
the vessel in a ripple of perturbed space, surfing along the
four-dimensional wave emitting nearly nothing.
The mission clock read a few scant seconds until engaging the
station defenses and Isis was quiet as the figures counted down.
At three seconds left the entire view before her lit up, a
million points of light spread across her field of vision.
Brilliant lances of energy marked the broadside particle
cannon's first salvo. Thousands of drones filled the space
between the station and ship, filling the sensors with ghostly
images. Secondary explosions dotted the murky distance as Cthulu
station responded with salvos of its own.
The mission clock went to zero and the Tonobu dropped the
Pendelton bubble, slowing to a relative crawl. Practically
simultaneously the three pods launched, buffeting Chiriko
through the padding and suit. Corkscrewing towards the station
at three klicks a second proved a disorientating experience, and
Chiriko lost track of her two companions as radio static flooded
her ears.
Nuclear driven laser blasts evaporated massive chunks from the
dark station, superheated metal erupting in geysers as the pod
orientated itself 'above' the station. That ship's pretty
fucking cool, Chiriko thought as she caught a glimpse of the
small ship behind her. It was practically glowing with power.
The pod's AI, deciding it was safe to descend, sent Chiriko
headed towards the surface, picking its way through half-hearted
anti drone fire. The station seemed oblivious to her.
"You around Chiriko?" Patricia asked, her voice nervous and
excited.
"Yup. See Andrea?"
"Here," the girl reported, her pod slightly closer to the
station. "Locking up," she added, bringing the pod against the
surface.
"Same here," Patricia replied. Chiriko silently followed. They
picked out an airlock and emerged from their pods, Chiriko
noticing how emaciated the machines looked after their journey.
Vacuum still felt weird, she thought, pressing against the
airlock.
"Andrea? A little help with the door?" The girl was silent.
"Any luck?"
"Door's on a physical lock. I can't get into anything onboard
the station."
Patricia sighed. "We'll have to do this the old fashioned way."
It stirred as it felt its creator approach. Sensation replaced
oblivion and it felt an overwhelming joy at the creators'
presence. Chaos only arrived when there was something that
needed killing.
It felt flashes of pictures, masses of data passed directly
through its being about the newest targets. Targets that were
coming to it instead of needing to be chased. It did not mind
chasing, but the killing was always more satisfying.
Anticipation filled it, much to the amusement of its creator,
who remembered the machine's birth. Around the time Destiny had
been designing the Jubei boomers Chaos, too, had experimented in
creating a killer. Its approach, as always, was entirely
contrary to its brother's.
Where Destiny had crafted an analytical killing machine, with
each response painstakingly calculated and plotted, Chaos had
instilled two urges into a nanite colony. Destroy and love.
The countless permutations that arose from this colony's
pursuit of its nature stood before, a seamless killing machine
with no equal in the solar system. They're coming, it told the
killing angel. You know what to do.
The sense of anticipation doubled as the figure's face
stretched in an inhuman grin, rows of sharp teeth glinting in
the light.
Ingrid glanced over at Smith, the flow of information streaming
in from the OTV's control interface subsiding momentarily. His
fingers were flying over the controls, a slender cable snaking
up to the data port on his neck. The little ship rocketed across
the distance between the Tonobu and the station, watching as
Isis's ship soaked up particle beam fire from one of the
remaining defense platforms. The onslaught ceased as the Tonobu
burned the platform with a concentrated laser barrage.
The OTV flew low over the dark station, destroying point
defense clusters as it closed on a small tower nestled between a
large canyon that stretched across the 'southern' hemisphere of
the ovoid station.
The ship blasted through the crevice, dangerously close to the
walls as it closed on the station. Defenses thickened as they
closed, nests of missiles erupting from hidden emplacements only
to be shot down by the OTV's defenses or impacting uselessly
against the armor.
They were both silent, too busy to talk and not really in the
mood for chitchat anyway. Ingrid was glad for the stress, the
constant activity distracting her from the mission. She pushed
her thoughts back to piloting, focusing on the tower as they
finally reached the base. It was much larger than it had
appeared, towering above other construction around it.
The tiny lights dotting the structure lit the cockpit with an
eerie glow. Beside her, Smith finished clearing out the nearby
point defense emplacements, securing the area around the tower.
Nestling near an airlock, Ingrid activated the tactical link.
"Andrea, any luck with the doors?"
"None. I haven't even found a hard line to tap." Andrea sounded
sad and alone, waiting outside the station as Patricia and
Chiriko made their way inside the station. "What exactly are you
doing, Ingrid? Why all the secrecy?"
"I'm not exactly sure. We're supposed to pick something up for
Isis," she responded. It wasn't really a lie, she thought.
"A little shopping trip on the side, eh?" Andrea muttered her
attention wavering. "Good luck," she added, focused on something
else.
"What's up, Andrea. You've been a little strange since Genom
HQ."
"Just mulling over some things I've found. I'll be fine." The
conversation, it seemed, was over.
"Ready?" Smith asked, adjusting the straps of the body armor he
wore. The matte black and gray uniform didn't really suit him,
but he held one of Isis's rifles easily in his hand.
Letting the firm suit flow over the rest of her body, Ingrid
nodded. "Lets get this thing finished."
The docking umbilical extended, mating to the airlock
seamlessly. Smith and Ingrid lined up in the OTV's airlock,
Smith's rifle leveled at the door while Ingrid charged her
plasma projector.
"Haven't done this in a while," Smith muttered as he made one
last check of the rifle. "Sort of satisfying to do it the old
fashioned way."
Ingrid was silent, wondering whose words were coming out of the
troubleshooter's mouth. Mentally shrugging she turned her
attention to the door and raised her arm, palm facing out.
A sustained blast from Smith's gun and Ingrid's weapon cleaved
through the reinforced polymer, leaving a glowing set of hinges
leading to a sparsely lit room. Glancing over to her partner,
Ingrid stepped into the silent room.
In the center of the large room was a gigantic shaft, of some
mysterious metallic substance. Glancing up through the hole in
the ceiling, Ingrid could make out the bizarre twist that seemed
to make the head of a spear.
"What is all this stuff?" Smith asked.
"I'm not sure. Isis said they were like trophies�" Ingrid
looked around the room, noticing what looked like a make up pen
resting next to an ornate baton in a little alcove. Nearby a
bandanna and umbrella were mounted on the wall, a bloody mallet
below them.
"Trophies from what?" Smith said, standing next to the remains
of a wooden cylinder with a dimly lit gem at its center. The
character on its front was obscured by burn marks and dark red
stains.
"Mason," Ingrid breathed before looking towards Smith. "The
originals�" she was facing a larger display, as this room seemed
like museum of some kind, holding the broken pieces of old power
armor. Their paint schemes were hauntingly familiar, as were
there general styling.
"I'll be damned," Smith said, rubbing his temple absently. "She
did a good job, considering there was never a picture of these
guys published."
"Maybe she really was there."
They followed past the relics, pausing beside the occasional
trophy that piqued their interest. Though out of context, each
of the displays presented a melancholy air, of a time barely
remembered.
"They should've kept Mason here," Smith said, with some small
bit of bitterness. "I'd never have run into him."
"We've all got regrets, Smith," Ingrid responded. They reached
what appeared to be the final area of the museum, the last
exhibit in the grim tour.
Standing before them, alone among the items to have a name, was
a cryo chamber, outside coated in hoarfrost. The equipment was
archaic, worthy of a place in a museum in its own right. Digital
readouts dotted the equipment, displaying an active pulse and
slowed brain patterns.
The woman inside looked exactly like Isis. In the center, above
the naked woman's breasts, was a plain white plaque. In phonetic
Japanese characters the plaque read Knight Sabers, followed by
the name Sylia Stingray.
Author's Notes:
This part got long, didn't it? As the title indicates, this is
one of the last (actually the second to the last if things go
right) part of "Mote in the Eye of Eternity." I've really
enjoyed the ride so far, and hope to wrap things up in a
suitable manner. This part is essentially set up for the final
battles of each group of characters, and a resolution of the
main plot (and whatever assorted subplots that have arisen
during the course of writing). Given the slow rate I'm writing
at, its anyone's guess as to when the next part comes out, but
the juices are flowing and I'm hoping to finish soon.
Then I'll start the long romantic comedy I've been planning.
Seriously.
A tangental note: the last scene with the museum is more or
less stolen from Peter David's excellent Hulk graphic novel,
Future Imperfect. I couldn't help but steal the scene. If you
like comic books you should immediately go out and buy Future
Imperfect. No matter how late it is.
Email at: jmele@brandeis.edu
Fnord