Log 1 Matter | Antimatter (11 page)

Simon had told him that this position was
messy. The fundamental nature of warfare usually had, at its core,
a set paradigm. However, the characteristics of war changed. For
example, the way war was waged depended on when and where it was
waged and who waged it. Semantics maybe, but violence was generally
used as furtherance of national aims. It wasn’t hard to determine
what Ara, as the Mobile Unit, linked with genocide might trigger
but in what direction it shifted was trickier. And Jamie hadn’t
forgotten her “Vanguard” status. Korbet still refused to explain
and Simon finally told Jamie to drop the issue.

Marc had checked on Ara, as was his habit,
and gone to the garage to work on his motorbike. Jamie leaned over,
studying his charge. Ara’s hair was light, honey colored, her eyes
bright blue when awake, her face narrow, losing baby fat over the
years. Her laugh filled the homestead and Jamie’s heart. He rarely
had to find replacements as Ara kept them on their toes, and “Ara’s
antics” became a daily part of their morning or afternoon tea
sessions. The tapestry of her life made Jamie feel something was
worthwhile.

“
Jamie?”

He stood upright and pressed on his temple
once to activate his comms, letting Diane know he was receiving but
wouldn’t transmit.

She relayed the message.
“There’s a ranger
approaching Perza Space Station. Your orders are to attend and to
monitor. ETA sixteen hours.”

Jamie double tapped his temple, deactivating
the comms. Ara stirred and he walked to the back of her room,
triggering a sliding door to enter the tunnel behind the homestead
dug into the hill. After some more digging, it now led all the way
to his headquarters. His cortical node buzzed telling him Ara was
on the move. He made a mental note to notify Marc to keep Ara
close. Jamie nodded to the guard on duty and left via a shared
four-wheeled drive for the atmospheric lift. The order hadn’t been
coded as an emergency so using his ranger from planet-side wasn’t
an option. Planetary laws kept ranger arrivals to and departures
from the planet to a minimum for safety and environmental measures.
He had a small ranger docked at one of the orbital stations. Diane
sent him a message explaining that his trip had been booked on the
shuttle lift and the ranger was being prepped by the security team
rostered on station.

Jamie drove east towards Saratoga City taking
the back roads through wooded lands and arrived after twenty
minutes at the spaceport. It was more of a lift-port but no one
liked that name. Diane sent him a more detailed message that a
ranger had dropped out of HaV and connected with Perza Space
Station to begin docking procedures. He drove down the hill
reaching the end of the woods to a large, cleared region, fenced
for safety rather than security measures. So accustomed to the
massive cabling system rising into the atmosphere and that had been
deeply embedded in the earth, Jamie paid it little attention after
the first few times.

He flashed his pass at the security gate’s
scanning monitor impatiently and drove forward before the gates
finished opening. He parked the vehicle in one of the many parks
and ran to the smaller installation reserved for royalty and
special guests. A harassed looking attendant waved him to hurry. He
ran through the security gate, hearing the unit scan him and beep
the “all clear” sounds. He moved through the glass doors, being
held open by a lift host, and walked more sedately across the
tarmac to the large, shuttle-shaped lift. At the click, click
behind him he knew the lift host was hurrying to catch up. He sped
up a little and nodded to another lift host with a strained smile
plastered on her face.

Jamie grinned as he knew orders had been
issued to delay the ride to the orbital station. No doubt, Queen
Silvia would see a complaint about the delayed trip. It was clear
in Jamie’s mind now that this was important enough to create what
he could only think of as unwanted attention, but not clear as to
why it wasn’t important enough to warrant him taking up a ranger or
transportal. He entered a small cabin, ignored the exasperated or
bored gazes from the travelers, and sat on an empty seat. Without
the HaV intercept, it would take eight days to climb to
geosynchronous orbit but it took only eleven hours all up. It was
an hour on either side of the intercept and then nine hours within
the dimensions to travel up or down. But even with his team
preparing the way it would be several more hours to get to the
space station. Three males were cycling through Perza Station’s
external traps but Aven was trying to delay them.

Perza Space Station

Jamie was cursing by the time he arrived and
docked. He reached his small office set up by Diane and began to
activate all the monitors while licking his dry lips. While he
listened he found a cupboard with bottled water and cracked open a
seal to drink. He found strong coffee too, in one of the cupboards,
and read the instructions. “Turn upside down … blah blah …
exothermic reaction … right.” In under a minute he had hot, strong
coffee and sipped it. He leaned forward because, unlike the boring
Ballus meeting, which had little to do with Ara’s security at the
moment, this was too close for Jamie’s comfort.

An hour later, Jamie waited until the
“Snakes” had cycled out and were clear. What had they downloaded?
He had to report to Simon, but he also wanted to mull over what he
had learned. But Simon must have known to some extent what was
going to be discussed between the Snakes, otherwise why not send up
another operative? Jamie always knew Ara was different and now he
had confirmation as to why but whether she was especially made for
the Lacuna or had been an adult and put into a baby biosuit he
didn’t know. Silvia, Cyrus, and Max had shown him the CU log that
revealed someone had messed with the biosuit, and he now knew the
three Snakes were responsible: Cobra, Krait, and Viper. How could
it be possible they were once all one person? Jamie had never heard
of a person being split before, cloned yes. Where’d they get the
bodies? Was it just three biosuits?

He checked the station’s systems but the
three Snakes had wiped the data and their visit. Even Jamie’s
independent systems were wiped. He pulled out his nanite pen and
pad—he called it NaPP—and wrote a list:

1. Consociation of Eight

2. Natal

3. Monad

4. Amatal

5. kroTan

6. Chaos

7. Function Tests – necklace?

Next, he considered where to transfer the
nanites. He pulled down his pants and laid the paper over his thigh
wondering if his hair … no, apparently hair made no difference. The
words sunk into his skin.

It was clear from studying body language,
micro expressions, and vocal tones that they loved Nyx and/or Ara.
Krait AKA Tarus was one who particularly appeared to be struggling.
Jamie had also learned that a male named “Trickster” might have
access to Ara via Aryan Dreams and that would make security
complicated. The Snakes confirmed that they were in some kind of
test site and they considered the Vakar a control group. His
stomach cramped thinking about it and he cracked his knuckles. He
had to feed this up through the proper channels. Both “proper”
channels. He’d leave it up to Simon if and what they’d tell the
Aether.

When both command channels sent the same
reply, Jamie knew it was too late to leave the mission.

“Imperative: Compartmentalize and
isolate.”

“Priority Top: Trigger Cell and Exit
Protocols.”

Jamie’s independent systems were wiped as
well as the systems. Aven or the AM techs might be able to recover
any traces of what the Snakes took. If he had arrived sooner he
might have found out, but, then again, maybe they would have picked
up a transportal energy signature. So much for all his
preparations, the Snakes were something entirely unplanned for and
he had to try to incorporate them into his plans from now. He just
hoped it wasn’t too late. The most disturbing thing was how casual
they had been discussing Ara’s possible demise. Why drive someone
to their death when killing them would be faster? What did they get
out of making someone kill themselves? Why did they consider it
difficult? But he could hardly experiment on Ara. He certainly
didn’t want her dead but, while it was easy to protect someone from
being killed, to protect against psychological warfare was much
harder.

His instinct was to remove himself from the
mission.

Psychology was his weakness, the thing he
avoided so that he didn’t have to face his own demons.

They had mentioned something else too.

What was the Safeguard?

Iota

Station: Perza

Galactic System: Sarato (Spiral Galaxy)

Planetary System: Saratoga

Homestead

Ara touched her face, feeling the warmth.

It was a glorious, sunny day and getting
warmer. Dad was busy checking his fields of tall things, and moving
the cattle to another paddock. Ara liked the cows but not the tall
things because she got lost in them one day and Marc had to save
her. She had to use her “big girl’s voice” to tell him of her
impending death and how sad he’d be, but Marc told her Maya had
sent him an emergency log. When they returned to the homestead, Mum
was waiting at the foot of the steps, and her expression was one of
annoyance. “Ara, you aren’t supposed to use Maya as your personal
communications device.”

“But Mum—”

“Ara.” Pen’s voice came hard.

“I almost died in there.”

“Stop exaggerating.”

She mumbled, “Nuts.”

“To your room, young lady.”

“I’m not a lady!” She stomped her foot trying
to make Mum understand that.

“Now!” Mum pointed up the stairs. “Or no
playground.”

Ara glanced up at Marc to save her but he
held out his hands. She grumbled and stomped up the stairs,
emphasizing with each step that she wasn’t a lady.

Marc turned to Pen. “We need to talk about
that log.”

She nodded. “Ara seems to be able to tell the
Cardinal Unit and Maya what to do. It’s unprecedented.”

Marc sighed. Technically, he shouldn’t be
getting logs from the CU anyway, but he reported it to Jamie who
told him that Ara had been sending her guards logs via the CU,
ordering them around. Marc groaned aloud over that bit of news.
Jamie didn’t answer to him but had given him that news for a
reason, probably to remind him that Jamie was “The Sentinel”, not
the Aether. He passed along the message to his parents as they sat
discussing Ara in their little office near the lounge.

He linked with Ara’s bright mind, sensing
something odd. She was grumbling over being confined to her room
when a malign presence tried to connect to her but she brushed it
away. Marc jerked upright, and began to run up the stairs, hearing
laughter echoing in Ara’s mind.
“You’re a strong little thing,
aren’t you?”
She poked her tongue at it, mentally, and then
imaged the flipping of her fingers at it. Marc missed a step
landing heavily on his knees laughing at himself and at Ara’s
actions.

Iota

Station: Estancia

Galactic System: Milky Way (Spiral Galaxy)

Planetary System: Earth

England

“Cheeky brat.” Viper watched two raggedly
dressed characters leave the café by climbing the rail. He hated
his current body. It was too thin for his tastes. He also noticed
when he was close to Cobra they began to sync in a sense of what
they felt and thought. Only Krait seemed to be able to maintain his
individuality.

“Who?” Cobra glanced at the retreating
figures.

“Ara.”

“Ah. Listen, I’ll be on Sparta Prime most of
the time, building up some mischief there.”

Viper sipped his drink. “Does this coffee
taste alright to you?”

“It’s not coffee.”

“That explains it. What is it with these
ridiculous clothes?”

Cobra, as usual, looked at ease, handsome,
and his blue eyes were amused. Cobra shrugged. “It’s the 1500s.
These are high-class clothes and, besides, I like the leather
jerkins.”

“Well, I consider this body too thin so it’s
making me look a little manlier.” He rapped at his codpiece.

Cobra smiled but returned to the topic. “This
is just one part of the plan, I have my finger in the Avatara pie,
here on Earth, Sparta Prime, the Three Empires and Grands”—Viper
was surprised—“and more.”

“And I have the Establishment and sub-Maya
and Cardinal Units. Together we’ll keep everyone focused here. Ara
will be too busy being philanthropic to really do any good.”

“Ara’s not the problem. While the notion of
her being the Vanguard is ridiculous, her worth is in being the
Mobile Unit. The Natal are the problem and as long as we keep them
out or busy with the Nine Iotan Function Tests we’ll be fine. As
fine as we can be.”

Tarus AKA Krait, was recording their
activities after he noted their corruption levels fluctuated.

“She’s made three connections that we know of
to the Cardinal Unit. There were three logs when I went to
check.”

Cobra raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“One was a check on the Saringtons, one was
about healing her brother, and another was about being lost in a
corn field. She activated an emergency beacon where Marc was sent a
log via the Cardinal Unit from the sub-Maya to rescue her.”

Cobra stared at Viper and then burst out
laughing. After he calmed down, they both watched the humans being
“human”. Most looked tired, ragged and worn, but a few were dressed
in gorgeous clothes, chatting about whatever humans chatted
about.

“I know it’s funny but there are encrypted
logs from her as well and we don’t know where they are going other
than down to Saratoga.”