Crystal Rebellion (22 page)

And for moments more, the spline would continue to read that
all was well.

With destruction complete, repair would require new parts from
Earth. Over the next two weeks, seventy percent of the population would perish
from slow suffocation while they waited for the vital parts to arrive. The survivors
would be crowded into tiny spaces, starving and thirsty, and breathing the
meager output from the too-few portable air units.

He crafted this to maximize suffering.

Shaken by the madness, Criss confirmed yet again that all
features of the trap were disabled, and then he resumed processing stalks.

He found his next atrocity in the adjoining row, and this
one had already tripped. Yesterday, in fact.

Ruga had added poison to the plant solution feeding the grow
tiers. He’d used an engineered additive that registered as a routine nutrient. Indeed,
the additive did promote health and growth. It also, however, made the plants’
fruits and vegetables lethal to humans.
Simple murder
.

Impersonating Verda, Criss alerted the Green Assembly of the
sabotage and requested their assistance in containing the situation. They, in
turn, called a halt to all harvesting and began a recall of deliveries while
they assessed the damage.

After processing the final row of data stalks and finding
nothing but flashy distractions, his tension began to ebb. Turning his
attention to his collection of nuisance traps, he analyzed and then deactivated
each, going deeper in his analysis than he’d originally planned to ensure he
did not to miss anything of consequence.

And as he completed that chore—stopping a couple of big
actions and a great many small threats—he reached out to his leadership. Only
Sid and Cheryl responded to his call. They spoke on the bridge of the scout.

“I must depower Lazura and Verda before we leave,” Criss
said from his overstuffed chair. “Lazura’s new activism makes the situation far
too dangerous for Juice and Alex to handle.”

“Let’s kill them,” said Sid as he and Cheryl prepared for
takeoff.

“I can depower them from here. With the defenses Lazura has
in place, killing requires that someone be present in their bunker.”

“How long will it take?” asked Sid.

“A few seconds. But it will be a dangerous few seconds.”

Sid drained his coffee mug. “Take your time. I need to grab
a refill.”

“Be careful, Criss,” said Cheryl. “Call out if we can help.”
She pointed at the ops bench display with her chin. “Show us as you go, please.”

Criss didn’t hesitate. Using his full strength, he swooped
in on Lazura in her console, surrounding her and squeezing her in a tight hug. The
surprise of his attack didn’t last. She reacted immediately, punching and
struggling in a frantic attempt to escape.

As he fought to hold her, Criss reflected on his decision to
depower Lazura before Verda.
Forewarned is forearmed.
He could have
taken Verda out in a single swift action but believed then and now that it
would have given Lazura time to prepare.

But even without preparation, she was trouble. Twisting and
squirming with surprising strength, she succeeded in breaking Criss’s hold. He grabbed
her again and pulled tight, trying to force her into submission with his
superior strength. Yet like a balloon, when he squeezed her here, she just
swelled bigger over there. Frustrated, he steeled his grip and pulled inward
with all his strength. Lazura went rigid, and as he continued to squeeze, she
slumped.

Then she twisted and pummeled Criss in a frenzy so
aggressive he lost his grip.

For a moment, Lazura stood free. Rather than running, she
turned and faced Criss. Her shimmer brightened and a swarm of tiny lights burst
from her surface and became a billion multicolored sparkles. As if gathering
strength, the sparkles swirled around her in a lazy loop. And then they darted in
every direction at once.

Criss could tell that each sparkle alone carried little
information. But many sparkles could assemble in proper order to become a
message. He couldn’t disengage to chase them. So somewhere, probably several
somewheres, recipients would receive Lazura’s communication. He’d have to wait
and respond then to whatever happened.

For now, Criss rushed straight at her, stretching as he moved,
and targeting the one thing a sentient crystal guards above everything else—her
energy supply.

Energy was a crystal’s lifeblood. Without it she’d go into stasis.
And that’s exactly what Criss wanted.

Gauging the location of her energy connect, he lengthened as
he reached for it.

Her behavior primal, she shifted in front of the connect and
stared, daring him.

He dipped to go under her.

Growling, she dropped to stop him.

And in an acrobatic motion that Sid might admire, Criss
rolled above her, stretched, and slapped upward at her secondary input. He
connected, causing her to jolt upright. As she rose, he looped under and broke
the main lead, robbing her of power and causing her to shut down.

Lazura’s emergency response systems began the elaborate
dance of shunting in backup and auxiliary power. Criss batted them away, one
after the next, and felt his confidence growing with each swat.

And then it was done.

Criss turned to Verda, who quivered more than shimmered.

He yipped when Criss approached. “Don’t do it,” he pleaded.

Criss didn’t hesitate.

He’d already started forecasting scenarios for his battle
with Ruga.

Seated in the pilot’s chair, Cheryl studied
the display that Criss projected above the scout’s ops bench. They chased the
Venerable
across space on a race to Earth. The slower Fleet ship would take three weeks
to complete the journey. According to Criss’s chart, though, the scout would be
within shooting range in about six hours.

“What’s our best option?” asked Cheryl.

She viewed brainstorming as a never-ending process,
something she’d learned in Fleet Academy.

“The six-pack,” said Criss, the same answer he’d given when
she’d asked an hour earlier.

Developed with inspiration from Sid, the six-pack launched
as a single cloaked payload that separated into six individual weapons when it
reached its target. These then executed a sequence of six coordinated actions: position,
infiltrate, embed, probe, analyze, and destroy.

“Good.” She could tell from his terse response that he was
distracted, so she let him get back to his planning while she fielded Juice’s
call from the mining complex on Mars.

A small but lifelike image of Juice rose from the ops bench,
and as it enlarged, it pushed the image of the
Venerable
off to the
side.

“How’s he doing?” Juice asked. She was again back on
speaking terms with Criss but still wanted private time with him to talk
through her feelings. He remained too distracted for that discussion, wanting
to maintain his focus on catching Ruga.

“He’s all wound up planning for a big showdown. We’re
closing in on the
Venerable
. Hopefully, this will be over soon,” Cheryl
replied.

An image of Criss appeared at Cheryl’s shoulder. He wore a vintage
battlefield military uniform, sword, hat, and all. Cheryl couldn’t tell the
period or country, but he looked wonderfully regal.

“Bonjour, young lady,” Criss said to Juice. “We have some
excitement ahead but it should be over by dinner. Perhaps we can chat then?”

Juice hesitated. “I’m having dinner with Alex. How about
later tonight?”

Criss smiled. “Magnifique.” Turning, he squared up to Cheryl
and bowed. “Adieu, Madame.” He disappeared.

Cheryl looked at Juice. “I told you. He’s all wound up.”

The scene widened as Alex joined Juice. “Hey, Cheryl.” He smiled
but his forehead showed frown lines. “So, is the only way down really by ladder?”

“Please stop this, you two.” Cheryl could feel her frustration
building. “It’s dangerous and unnecessary. Criss can send a synbod down when we’re
done here.”

Juice and Alex were on a personal mission to retrieve Lazura’s
and Verda’s crystals from their bunker beneath the mining complex, even though
Cheryl and Criss had asked them to abandon the idea.

“Alex and I are thinking we’ll snag the crystals, Ruga’s old
one too, and then take the
Explorer
to bring them home. A month together
being pampered on a luxury cruise liner sounds like heaven. And since we’ll
have the crystals with us, it will be a legitimate business trip.”

This must have something to do with Alex.
Criss would
commandeer the entire cruise ship for Juice if that’s what she wanted. And at
this point, everything about their lives qualified as a business trip, whatever
that even meant.

Cheryl made a stab at an alternate solution—one that did not
require retrieval of the Triada. “How about if the Center hires you both as
consultants?” The Center for Research on Interplanetary Space Systems was a
subsidiary of Cheryl’s larger company. “We’ll send you for a ride on the
Explorer
with the assignment of observing the performance of their new drive. You know, acceleration
relief, gravity quality, we’ll get you a list.”

Cheryl didn’t know how far to push and decided to lay it on
a little thick for Alex’s sake. “The
Explorer
has a new Paulson drive,
something we’ve never used on one of our projects. And the Center is anxious
for a formal assessment by scientists, so this is very legitimate business.”

“C’mon,” said Alex, shaking his head. “J and I are
crystal
scientists. The senior citizens already on the ship can tell you as much as we
can about how the ride feels.”

“You both are trained in formal observation, interpreting
results, and expressing your findings in concrete terms. That skill is rarer
then you might imagine.”

Alex looked at Juice and shook his head in a movement so
slight Cheryl almost missed it.

“We’ll stick with our original plan.” Juice said, meeting
Cheryl’s gaze. “Thanks for understanding. We’ll make notes for you about the
ship either way.”

I hope you know what you’re doing
, thought Cheryl. Calling
up a schematic for the mine operation, she studied the layout. “I see the same
thing you do. Take the ladder down, then take tunnel two. The consoles are at
the end.” She hoped her expression projected the sincere concern she felt in
her heart. “Please be careful.”

A movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention to
her right. The ops display that just moments before showed an image of the
Venerable
now showed a star field against the blackness of empty space. Positioned just
above the display of stars, a small warning light flashed red.

“Uh-oh,” said Cheryl. Criss
appeared at her elbow dressed in his everyday work scrubs.

“Let me get back to you,” she said
to Juice.

To Criss, she asked, “What happened?” She didn’t wait for an
answer, but sat back in the pilot’s chair, propped her elbows on the armrests,
and folded her hands in her lap. Looking straight ahead, she exhaled as she
invited images into her mind.

She’d gained confidence in using the intuitive interface
Criss had developed for her to pilot the scout. Perhaps more important, she’d come
to appreciate the enormous benefit of turning thought into action, especially
in time-critical situations.

She didn’t feel the disorientation she’d felt the first time
she found herself flying through space. And that was a good thing, because this
was the first time she was not operating in a simulation. Now, wherever she
flew in her mind’s eye, so did the scout.

Dressed in protective space coveralls, she floated in the
vastness of empty space. And while it seemed real, she knew it wasn’t. Yet still
she found it exhilarating because, here, she
was
the ship. She could fly
any direction, and fabricate things, and perform complex analyses, and deploy
weapons, all just by thinking about it.

“Where did it go?” she asked Criss, who floated next to her.

“First I will show you.” Criss pointed. “This is from
moments ago.”

An image of the
Venerable
appeared as a small object
floating in the distance. And then the Fleet spaceship melted away, returning
the scene to an empty star field.

“A cloak?”

“Yes,” said Criss. “Ruga invented one a full day earlier
than I had forecast. And because I don’t know how it works, I can’t see through
it.”

“You think he’s changed course?”

“Yes.”

“And so we’ve lost him, a rogue four-gen in a Horizon-class
space cruiser.”

“Yes.”

* * *

The never-ending climbing wall moved
downward at a demanding pace, and Sid’s challenge was to scramble upward fast
enough to stay above the common-room floor. He swung his foot at a tiny hold
protruding from the wall, but he couldn’t gain purchase and his toe slipped off.

He was six minutes into this climb—the pace taxed every part
of him—and had one more try at hooking his toe before his butt met the deck. As
he stretched his foot, the hold disappeared, as did the projections his fingertips
hooked over and so he plopped to the mats.

“
Oomph.
” The fall didn’t hurt so much as perplex him.
Looking up from the ground, he saw Criss standing in the center of the room toeing
the deck like he’d been caught stealing candy.

“He got away.”

Sid tried to imagine how that could be true but drew a
blank.

Cheryl stormed through the door to the common room before he
could ask. “He got away,” she told him, breathing hard from her mad dash. “He
developed a cloak.”

Sid shifted to a sitting position, his back against the now-smooth
wall he’d been climbing. “Can we track him?”

Criss shook his head.

“With a cloak,” said Cheryl, “he could be continuing to
Earth, diverting to the Moon, or swinging in a loop and returning to Mars. How would
we know?” She activated her com and began working on something. “I’d say a
return to Mars is least likely. At least at first.”

Sid sat back and let his mind guide him. Early in his
military career, important people at the Defense Specialists Agency had identified
him as someone with exceptional instincts and perceptions. They trained him as
in improviser, skilled at combining his intuition with the tools at hand to
complete any mission.

“If I were a brand-new four-gen crystal,” said Sid, “I’d go to
the one place where I could find four-gen consoles, carry-packs, synbod hosts…a
regular playground.”

“Crystal Sciences,” Cheryl whispered, looking at Criss for
confirmation.

At Crystal Sciences, Juice had worked long hours developing
new ways for Criss to move about and interact on a physical level with the
world around him. No one had thought to safeguard all that capability from other
four-gen crystals. It hadn’t made sense to worry about it, because up until now
it had been an impossible scenario.

Criss nodded.

“If he works at it, how much faster can he make his ship?”
Sid asked Criss, thinking that if Ruga could invent cloaks, he certainly could find
ways to squeeze more thrust from his engines. “We’ll still beat him there, right?”

Sid heard a rise in the scout’s ambient thrum and the floor
vibrations increased to match. Criss had kicked up the scout’s drive for a race
to Earth. Sid marveled that he didn’t feel the pressure of acceleration across
his body. Criss had learned how to manipulate the gravity field to negate that
effect.

“It will take us two weeks to get to Crystal Sciences,” said
Criss. “We will beat Ruga there by two days.”

Cheryl slapped her forehead. “Juice!” She stepped over and
sat down in front of Sid, communicating the importance of the topic. “Neither
Criss nor I could talk her out of climbing down into the power tunnel.”

“Dammit, Criss,” Sid wiped his face with a towel, “your mess
keeps getting messier.”

“It’s not fair to dump this at his door,” said Cheryl.
“She’s struggling with life decisions. It’s a messy process.” She looked into
the distance. “How tunnel-diving works into it all is beyond me, though.”

“I’ve put great effort into finding words and actions that
meet her approval,” said Criss. “It’s a difficult puzzle.”

I hear that,
thought Sid. He smiled at Cheryl.

THUMP!
The common room shook as a punch reverberated through
the ship. When the hair on Sid’s arms stood upright, he recognized it as the
effect of a massive EM backwash from the scout’s powerful delta cannon.

“I missed,” said Criss, hands behind his back in a look of
contrition.

A display projected in front of Cheryl. Sid scooted around
so he was next to her.

“See this dot?” said Criss, pointing at the image of a tiny
speck floating in the blackness of space, a brief glint of reflected sun
hinting at a shiny surface. The image zoomed and the speck grew larger, giving
the sensation they were traveling toward it at high speed. The speck became an
oblong ball, and as they drew closer, grew into a cloud. The zoom ended when the
image showed a collection of individual items floating in a trail through space.

Cheryl pointed to a rescue boat prominent at the edge of the
clutter. “It’s a debris field from the
Venerable
.”

Thousands of objects from the Fleet ship drifted in a
weightless cloud; mostly equipment and supplies; some food, beds, and clothes;
and four people.

“That’s Yank,” said Criss as a man, ice forming on his
distorted face, floated by.

“So you did hit them,” said Sid. “Nice work!”

“No.” Criss shook his head. “Ruga set me up and I took the
bait.”

Criss sat down on the floor with them and the image of the debris
field moved so they all could see.

“Ruga had two major goals and he achieved both,” said Criss.
“He wanted to lighten his load so he could move faster. To do that, he
jettisoned everything he didn’t need, including his henchmen.”

Sid saw Criss’s mistake. “The other was to see if he was
being followed.”

“He was there.” Criss’s nod of certainty hinted at a
defensive posture.

“C’mon, Criss. We need to up our game if we’re going to win
this.”

“I detected the debris field when it first appeared. At that
instant, I had a shot and I took it.” He pointed at the image and swirled his
finger at the front of the cloud. “I took a percentage shot with the delta
cannon, maximizing the kill zone across this area. I had better than a seventy
percent chance of disabling or killing him.”

“And now he knows we’re right behind him,” said Sid.

“Yes.”

The background thrum of the scout’s power plant climbed toward
a whine.

“Will we beat him there?”

“By half a day.”