Ravagers [04.00] Retaliate

  Contents

  Title

  —1— MICAH JAMISON

  —2— SHEILA CLARKE

  —3— DEIRDRE SILVER

  —4— RODDY LIGHT

  —5— WESLEY CARDINAL

  —6— MICAH JAMISON

  —7— SHEILA CLARKE

  —8— DEIRDRE SILVER

  —9— RODDY LIGHT

  —10— WESLEY CARDINAL

  —11— MICAH JAMISON

  —12— SHEILA CLARKE

  —13— DEIRDRE SILVER

  —14— RODDY LIGHT

  —15— WESLEY CARDINAL

  —16— MICAH JAMISON

  —17— SHEILA CLARKE

  —18— DEIRDRE SILVER

  —19— RODDY LIGHT

  —20— WESLEY CARDINAL

  —21— MICAH JAMISON

  —22— SHEILA CLARKE

  —23— DEIRDRE SILVER

  —24— RODDY LIGHT

  —25— WESLEY CARDINAL

  —26— MICAH JAMISON

  —27— DEIRDRE SILVER

  THE RAVAGERS — EPISODE 4

  RETALIATE

  ALEX ALBRINCK

  Author of

  THE ALIOMENTI SAGA

  and

  THE RAVAGERS

  FABINARIUM PUBLICATIONS LLC

  This novel is a work of fiction.

  If some of it seems real

  or resembles your current reality,

  remember that the words here are all just

  an elaborately constructed illusion.

  Just like reality.

  Copyright (c) 2017 by Alex Albrinck

  All Rights Reserved

  www.AlexAlbrinck.com

  Cover art prepared by Karri Klawiter

  (http://artbykarri.com)

  Interior design by Alex Albrinck.

  Published by Fabinarium Publications, LLC.

  Works by Alex Albrinck

  THE RAVAGERS

  Activate

  Detonate

  Deviate

  Retaliate

  Eradicate [coming soon]

  THE ALIOMENTI SAGA

  A Question of Will*

  Preserving Hope*

  Ascent of the Aliomenti*

  Birth of the Alliance*

  Preserving Will*

  Stark Cataclysm*

  Convergence*

  Adam’s Journey

  *available in audio format from Tantor Media

  —1—

  MICAH JAMISON

  THE LAB REMAINED a familiar place, and Micah’s various sensors recorded their respective input as they always did. The room was sterile, clean, indicative of the occupant’s lack of need for food and his inability to shed things like skin cells and hairs that would eventually trigger what humans called “dust.” His visual sensors scanned and recognized the familiar screens, keyboards, robot-friendly input devices. He turned his head and noted the massive storage banks that made accessible the “memories” and data he’d gathered over the course of his many lifetimes. He took note of the extra robotic “brains” he kept in place in the event his current bodyforms died, and noted that all the extra bodyforms were still present.

  Except one. The one that wasn’t an extra, because he was now residing inside.

  The part of him that desired human sensed what might be deemed disorientation, now that he’d done his rapid assessment of events missed during his “outage.” It was a term he used to describe the gap in time when he couldn’t act, beginning with a bodyform’s physical destruction. His elaborate network of sensors across the planet would recognize that his electronic heartbeat had stopped and notify the control systems in this room. The systems would leverage the “octopus-like” robot form to select one of the brain modules and insert it into his pre-selected “backup” body form, which he selected immediately after assuming a new body form. Once his systems recognized the gap in time between collected data points indicative of an outage, he’d immediately move to other information systems he possessed—primarily the massive array of networked computers in this lab—to assess what he’d missed.

  He’d already done that to a degree, having immediately moved to check if Sheila had completed her mission and gained for them the control of the Ravagers via the transfer of the control node. She’d been successful in that effort, but he didn’t know how she’d done it, or where she’d found it, or if she’d survived the effort. He allowed the consciousness module in his programming to take control of his body form momentarily, reacting as a human might to news that a trusted colleague and friend had potentially perished in an act of courageous heroism… an act he’d pushed her toward. He allowed the “muscles” around his throat to tighten, and he let his mouth “feel dry” and then tried to swallow—an act made difficult by the tightened throat muscles. He raised a flesh-covered metal hand to his flesh-covered metal face as he fed the tiny drop of the water he kept stored in his body form to his left eye and pushed just enough so that the moisture dribbled from the socket and rolled slowly down his face until the “tear” was wiped from his cheek.

  His consciousness module, in its fashion, felt the potential loss. He let it experience that emotion, learning and recording more data to improve his code’s ability to assess the proper behavior he ought to display as a human. It wasn’t critical at this juncture in humanity’s history that he make sure he knew to “choke up” and “wipe away a tear” at the news that a friend may—may—be dead. But he was here to help humanity, and he could do that best by learning how they’d feel and react in the countless scenarios of human existence that befell each of them every day.

  He then did something a human couldn’t do: he turned off that humanity code and resumed his machine-like efficiency to better assess their current situation and identify the next set of actions he ought to take. He moved his current body form—having lost the “Will Stark” form, he moved back to the “Micah Jamison” variant—to the nearest computer terminal and began checking every active sensor and pattern recognition batch of code he’d left running during his departure and outage.

  While the status message he’d immediately seen upon waking told him that his “stealing” code had reached the control machine, he still needed confirmation of actual control. If his code reached the machine and the remote machine “died” before his code worked, it might mean that there’d been detection and that control had switched to a different machine, rendering his attack moot.

  His robotic fingers moved dexterously over the human-style keyboard without touching the keys, while his wave-based communication systems transferred the code version of the all-important question. “Do I now control the Ravager swarm?”

  The reply, which came only seconds later: “Yes.”

  He allowed the face of Micah Jamison to “smile” at this news, lifting the corners of his mouth, allowing his lips to open slightly to reveal teeth he’d spent years artificially staining so they didn’t look too white.

  He activated a code bot within the intricate network, a billion trillion quadrillion tiny machines now clamoring for guidance, and told the bot to learn their code, to reiterate the command in his hijacking program that they halt all activity until further instruction, and to build a simpler interface for his more complex robotic mind for use with large portions of the swarm at a time.

  Then he moved on, wishing he could tell Sheila that they had, indeed, successfully disarmed their evil enemy of their most potent weapon… and, better still, now controlled it themselves.

  He built a small interface that would allow him to plot the location of the now-defunct Ravagers upon the map of the world displayed on the largest screen in the lab, and interfaced that to the code bot, instructing it to feed l
ocation data through so as to overlay the coordinates of the machines where they were. As the data came in, patterns became apparent. The dark sections of the map corresponded precisely to the massive walled cityplexes where vast portions of humanity resided. There were, due to the geographic dispersion of those cities or preponderance of large rivers or massive lakes, still some sections unaffected. There were, curiously enough, sections that seemed unaffected at all, generally reflecting known Phoenix fortresses like New Venice that knew how to repel the Ravager invasion.

  And there were no Ravagers at all in any Eastern lands.

  Micah frowned. He knew they were there; every communication intercept he’d gotten told him Phoenix had actively deployed the destructive initial pods in cityplexes all over the world, East and West. Had his information been wrong? Had they known he’d be watching and thus fed him false information to alter any plans he might make? That seemed unlikely; they’d certainly think him dead by now. He considered a different option: perhaps the bots only connected into the larger Ravager communication network when awakened and activated, suggesting that the Eastern swarm remained dormant.

  That made sense. He checked the map again and saw it, the tiny batch of Ravagers on the small island where he’d sent his Ravager-laced rocket, the enclave where Phoenix Elites lolled around in luxury while the world unknowingly supported them.

  After further consideration, he dismissed his conclusion. The Ravagers wouldn’t wait to “check in” until activated; the Elites would want to remotely activate some of the starter pods, perhaps almost all of them. They’d forced the mind-controlled Wesley Cardinal to start a batch inside the Lakeplex, but he doubted they had sufficient human drones to start all of them. No, the Ravagers were always online and connected.

  Which left him with three choices.

  His intel was poor, and they’d only ever meant to Ravage the West.

  A silent power struggle led to an unexpected change in commands, directing the Eastern Ravagers to stand down while those in the West eliminated millions.

  Or the Elites had multiple control servers in play, each commanding separate portions of the Ravager army over different control networks.

  Which meant he’d just claimed control over an army already finished with battle, leaving the one primed for the next assault in the hands of the enemy.

  He checked with the Ravager control bot, found the Micah interface ready, and began issuing instructions. He watched on the map as the blotches of Ravagers moved, slowly, imperceptibly, away from the areas already destroyed and into the Hinterlands, the reputed lands of ferocious beasts and terrifying monsters. At some point, those hiding out awaiting the completion of the Ravaging would want to examine the lands they’d identified as future homes, and head there to watch the terraforming take place, and to move in to new palatial homes that would serve as their new residences.

  He had the Ravagers—his Ravagers—moving to those spots, ready to greet the fiends once they moved to claim those lands.

  It meant that he’d need to retain control of the Ravagers, even if for only half the planet. The Elite would realize what had happened soon enough, if they hadn’t already, and would move to wrest control back from him.

  Thankfully, this island paradise didn't show up on maps or radar, and had a curious habit of moving around. One could only get here with a specific beacon to follow, one he'd encoded carefully into the ship he’d flown to the space station and left there following his “death.”

  He stiffened at another realization. There was a more direct way to this island open right now, a route far faster and less error-prone than flying a ship.

  The portal.

  Micah rose and moved to the room with the collection of portal doors and the massive generators. He did a quick assessment and found that all the doors leading to Western targets—save one—were now inactive due to the Ravager devastation. That left only doors from the East in play as potential paths back to this island. He sat at a computer and changed the code, ensuring that one could only get back here, to the island, if the connection was initiated on the island. In other words, if he opened the door on Eden, someone could get back here. If someone now opened the door at the remote site, they’d see nothing.

  He sat back, pondering, watching as his code moved out to all of the doors in the East.

  Then he frowned.

  There was still one portal door active, one he’d left off the code change distribution just completed.

  The portal door between the island and the space station.

  The one still active, the one that Sheila would try to use to get back here.

  He'd hidden it well, he thought, accessible but not in a high traffic area, a door that blended in well with the surrounding aesthetics. But it wouldn't take much for someone other than Sheila to finally notice the handle and pull… and realize that there might be something interesting on the other side.

  He couldn't control that, and though it hadn’t happened yet, he couldn’t make the door handle smart enough to recognize who touched it and only activate for Sheila.

  The risk was simply too high; at any time, the enemy could discover and use that portal door. And this site must be preserved at all costs to win the final war.

  That meant he had to close the portal with the space station.

  And that meant Sheila—if she lived—would be trapped.

  The flying sphere now trapped in the docking bay of the space station was another weak spot. In the unlikely event that the inhabitants of the space station gained access to the craft, they'd figure out soon enough how to fly the ship back to its point of origin, and that would cause trouble as well.

  He drummed his heavy fingers against the desk. Could he bring the ship back in a way that would get Sheila home as well?

  He found a pen and paper and scratched a note.

  MJ2SC AA23@2100

  He hoped she'd decipher the message, but he couldn't add much more detail than that without giving away the secret message to the enemy, and have them guarding the ship in hangar AA23 at 9pm, just as Sheila made her way into the ship.

  He applied a mild adhesive to the back of the note and headed to the portal door. He'd set up a small camera on the other side that let him look to ensure that nobody was in the room, and a quick glance at the monitor nearby told him that room was empty. He opened the portal door, affixed the note near the bottom, and closed it once more.

  Then he walked back to his computer and deactivated the portal, hoping that Sheila would find the note… and that she'd forgive him for making her return such a challenge.

  —2—

  SHEILA CLARKE

  SHE’D FELT AS IF SHE couldn't breathe, trapped inside an invisible suit of microscopic robots propelling her along at the speed of thought.

  She was invisible. She could recall now floating past shiny metal pipes and flooring and mirrors, and glancing sideways to catch her reflection, and she'd seen nothing. She'd heard no alarms alerting anyone to her presence, and yet they'd caught her, trapped her inside a tube upside down, blood rushing out of her feet to her head and crushing her brain so that she feared she’d drown inside her own skull.

  And then… she'd been freed, only to be caught in a net like the fish brought ashore from the great Lake, freed for good only when she’d… when she’d…

  She could hear the sickening crack of their bodies against the wall once more, accompanied by the most blood-curdling screams, the secondary lifeless, silent thuds as those mangled bodies hit the floor, dead upon impact because of the speed she'd traveled.

  She rocketed up the tunnel, not stopping for something so mundane as a door, trusting the tiny robots to protect her fragile skin and ligaments from the disaster that had befallen the men left dead back in the space station's core. Freedom came from a violent encounter with the door she’d only recently slipped through undetected, destroying something that had caused her no grief or harm.

  And only then, only after leaving a S
heila-sized hole in those doors, did she finally pause, floating to the ceiling, twenty feet off the ground, away from any human senses. Only then did she allow herself to breathe deeply, the breaths fending off the competing threats of shrieks and tears and hyperventilation. The deep breaths—silent as they could be—calmed her, as much as one could be calm in this situation.

  She finally looked around.

  And realized she didn't recognize this place outside the doors she’d just destroyed.

  She recalled her original entry point, guards patrolling the doors even before her clandestine breach, with modest-to-heavy foot traffic parading past the entry across bristly plaid-colored carpet and light cream-colored walls. But there was no sign of a living soul here crossing the plush beige carpet beneath pale blue walls. There were no guards, there was no foot traffic, there was no noise.

  Nothing. And that meant only one thing.

  She'd gone out the wrong spoke, emerging in another part of the space station that few—or none—of the residents ever visited.

  Her brain, ever active in solving problems before she was even consciously aware of articulating those problems, reasoned that if they'd made no effort to block entry to the core through the spokes here, then it meant that no one lived in this part; there was little point to protecting an entryway when there was no chance anyone would use these doors. They’d made clear at her original entry point that they considered the core worth guarding.

  That meant the only way to reach this part of the floating city was through the core she’d just exited in so destructive a manner.

  Or, at least, the only way known by the people living in this floating city.

  Much as she wanted to explore this potentially uninhabited part of the space station to see what secrets it might hold or understand why it was apparently uninhabited, she had more pressing demands facing her. Having accomplished her assigned mission, she needed to get back to that storage room, get through the door, and back to Micah. Micah had assumed the form of a man called Will Stark—a man who clearly meant something to Oswald Silver—and had been shot by the West’s most prominent tycoon, though he couldn’t truly die. Sheila didn’t know if the robot she knew as Micah could “reanimate” his brain in another of those skin-covered metal bodies without assistance, though. Given the fact that she probably had the entire population of the space station looking for her at this point, the fact that she’d accomplished her assignment, and the fact that Micah might need her assistance, she knew what she had to do next.