Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (19 page)

Each navigational beacon, resurrection point or wormhole exit you create raises your status in the Colonizers Council.

Warning! If a planet you’ve discovered already hosts sentient or pre-sentient life forms, proceed with caution. You will need to consider any potential consequences of your every action and their possible effect on the indigenous civilization. The Colonizers Council may hold you accountable for any fragrant interference affecting the evolution of endemic species or any other acts inconsistent with the Council Code.

Please note:

If you would like to open a planet for free unlimited visitation, at least 90% of its surface has to include nanite deposits. This would guarantee complete interactivity, allowing any traveler or even his or her identity matrix to engage with the new environment.

* * *

I like discovering things. Even in my past gaming life, I loved solving complex non-linear quests, enjoying the challenge of unraveling their riddles one step at a time. But this ray of truth glimmering at the edge of understanding was akin to a shattering informational blow.

I could finally stop wondering how we’d managed to interact with physical objects back on Darg or how we explored space stations, confronting alien invaders.

Nanites were the answer! We’d had no idea of their main and primary function!

Nanites were the mediator between an identity matrix and the real world. This was how the Founders made the entire Universe interactive!

The Founders’ AI-controlled avant-garde fleets had visited star systems which they then impregnated with nanites. Scattered in space, nanites automatically sought the elements necessary for their self-replication, after which their masses landed on planets and switched to energy saving mode, patiently awaiting their activation for millions of years.

A “traveler’s” arrival would activate them. The fact that the network’s creators had been long gone was irrelevant. The nanobots can’t tell the difference between identity matrices: a Founder, a Haash, a Dargian or a human being are all the same to them. And that includes in-game monsters infected with original neurograms.

A shiver ran down my spine. Nanites didn’t care. They would support any identity matrix at all. They had no idea of the millions of years that had elapsed; of new civilizations flourishing on once virgin planets — civilizations which had already evolved and invented their own cyberspace and neurocomputers, having learned to build and digitize their own
fantasies
.

I cast a look around. The harpies were still circling the sky.

Our dreams, our myths — the Founders’ technologies had inadvertently brought them into being, allowing them to flood the real world.

Too late to try to change it back. I couldn’t even imagine the number of star systems visited by the ancient AI-controlled fleets delivering cargonite to places which would have never had it otherwise.

Did that mean that the disaster that was engulfing Earth had been predetermined long before our ancestors had learned to control fire?

My fingers touched the navigator, lighting up a few icons of the outer ring.

Navigation beacon: not detected

Arrival point: not detected

Wormhole exit: not detected

Would you like to colonize the planet with nanites?

I snatched my hand away. The symbols of the ancient language faded obediently.

* * *

The corner of the nearest building had collapsed. A few of the structural beams listed, reaching across the abyss toward the opposite tower. A perfect shortcut.

Trying not to look down, I ran the whole length of the shaky walkway and jumped down into the collapsed room.

Its floor was littered with broken plastoglass and concrete debris. All furniture had been swept into the opposite corner. Nothing of interest.

I walked out into the deserted corridor. A damaged light switch sparked in the silence. The walls and ceiling bore occasional traces of fire damage. Puddles of water on the floor were framed with the recognizable white crust of chemicals from the automatic fire extinguishing system.

The office next door was virtually undamaged. Its ex-owner had lived in a world far removed from our cramped capsule flats. You could probably billet a hundred people in the enormous — by city’s standards — space he’d had all for himself.

Water cascaded down an installation of terracotta terraces at its center, pouring into a small artificial pond inhabited by fearful bug-eyed little fishes. The pond was surrounded by real potted plants.

The room’s molecular replicator — one of today’s must-haves — didn’t work. Its casing was deformed and had been ripped off in places. The room’s walls looked gray and bare compared to its lush décor. No wonder: normally they’d be covered with holograms but now that power was down, their meticulous design was gone too.

What was there on the floor?

I crouched. Fresh drops of blood led from the broken window to the door. So that’s where the lone sniper had fired his second shot, then. That’s where he’d been wounded.

I followed the trail to the spot where the mysterious sniper must have stood for a while, holding onto the wall. His wound was serious. He'd lost a lot of blood.

The door was open, its lock shot out.

The familiar rustle of a pulse gun being cocked came from inside the room.

“Hey! I’m a friend!” I stepped away from the door just in case. His weapon was extremely dangerous in my state.

“Name yourself,” his gargling throat wheezed.

“My name won’t tell you anything.”

“Piss off, then. I know all my friends. And my enemies won’t get me here.”

“All right. I’m Zander.”

“What’s your nickname?” I heard the sound of metal against plastic. He had the doorway in his crosshairs. “Give me your squad number or leave now. You’ve got nothing to gain here. I have no nanites.”

All right. He must have taken me for a Reaper. Why wasn’t he shooting, then? Was he waiting for me to appear in the doorway for a positive kill?

The sounds behind the door ceased. I didn’t trust this silence. Still, nothing seemed to happen. I waited for a while but couldn’t hear a thing from inside.

I had to chance it. I had no desire to waste my time hovering in the corridor.

I sacrificed a group of nanites to create a copy of myself. It was low-resolution but it’d have to suffice.

My nanite twin stepped into the open door. No shooting followed. The nanites forwarded me information and returned, forming an extra protective layer over me.

I entered. The room was small, barricaded with piled-up computer terminals. A man was slumped behind them. He wore the uniform of a space forces Major. His helmet lay on the floor nearby. His face was gaunt and pasty, his chapped lips pursed together. He looked about forty or forty-five. Blood caked in his prematurely gray hair. His eyes were closed.

I crouched to study his wounds. They didn’t look good. Two bullets had breached his armored suit. One was stuck in his right upper arm, the other in his chest where the multilayered fabric of his suit had already been damaged.

I ran a quick scan. The Major was still alive. I had to remove the bullets, stop the bleeding and dress his wounds but I had nothing to do it with. No surgical tools, no dressings. All I had was nanites.

But what if I used his own gear resources?

His life support module proved to be completely dead. All cartridges empty. Same with the automatic first-aid kit. He had no metabolites. A more thorough search revealed three more holes in his suit. The wounds below them had already healed. The guy had had it rough in the last few days. Hadn’t we all.

He was dying. My medical skills were rather symbolic but I had to do something!

Supporting his head with one hand, I ran the other over his wounds. Nanites flooded in, streaming 3D pictures of the wound canals. I acted on a hunch, sending direct mnemonic commands to patch up damaged blood vessels. Luckily, all I needed to perform these minute surgeries was a clear-cut mental image and a mental command. I focused on microscopic ruptures on the 3D model, marking them, then activating the Restore From Sample command.

The bleeding seemed to have stopped. Now the bullets. On my orders, the nanites began to utilize the deformed slugs. Did it sound like I was
repairing
him? Well, what else could I do? I wasn’t a surgeon!

It was a good job he was unconscious. I don’t think he’d have appreciated my first aid techniques.

Whew. The bullets were gone. What next? He was still too sick. For all my help, he might die without regaining consciousness.

Should I use exo?

Well, what other options did I have? I thought I’d seen a molecular replication machine in one of the offices but I wasn’t sure it still worked.

I activated Piercing Vision.

There it was! Its casing was ripped off — a mob’s work, judging by claw marks. Let’s have a look what’s inside.

The cartridges were there. The machine was out of power, a few of the connectors broken, but its core was undamaged. I might try and repair it, seeing as I had its scheme in my Technologists Clan database.

I reached for the Major’s gun and removed the power unit. The nanites picked it up and transported it to the replicator.

Excellent. Now I had to repair the broken connections. Then I’d try to upload Novitsky’s formulas to the machine’s memory. They just might work.

A dry click made me flinch.

The gun’s muzzle touched my temple. The Major’s hands shook with the effort.

“Put it down,” I said. “It’s not gonna work. Don’t exert yourself. Better tell me your name.”

Slowly he lowered the gun and crawled back to the wall. His eyes couldn’t focus. “Fuck you...”

Exhausted and frustrated, he had taken me for an enemy.

“I’m not a mob,” I said. “I didn’t escape one of your test labs. All right?” suddenly I felt angry. Why is it that two human beings can find it so hard to come to an agreement? It had been so much easier with the Haash!

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

“Surprise me,” the Major croaked.

“I’ll try. Just let me do my work,” I focused back on the nanites. “What’s your name, tell me.”

“Dominic,” he struggled to stay alert.

* * *

I kept nothing back from him. The brief story of my life seemed to have perturbed him. He definitely knew of the events I’d mentioned.

“So how do you like my side of the story?” I finally asked.

He didn’t reply, just glared at me with suspicion. His standard-issue holographic sleeve patch sported an additional small icon. I knew what it stood for: Deep Space Communications.

Could he have been the one who’d been monitoring our progress in Phantom Server?

“You don’t have a clue,” he croaked.

I didn’t take offence. “Maybe I don’t. But I do have lots of questions. I just hope that you have the answers.”

By then, the molecular replicator had rebooted itself. One little thing left to do. I had to make it synthesize an alien metabolite using a formula from the Exobiologists Clan’s database.

“We were forced to choose the lesser of two evils,” the Major wheezed.

Oh no. He wasn’t going to get away with empty rhetoric. “Creating the hybrid, breeding the Reapers, killing billions of people — is that a lesser evil? What was your objective, may I ask?”

“Expansion into the Universe,” he answered self-righteously. “As well as the survival of humanity.”

His last words drove me mad. “Some survival!”

“You don’t know,” he repeated.

“Okay, tell me, then! Your turn to surprise me! Where did you get the neuroimplant prototype from? Where did you find cargonite?”

“By accident,” he struggled to speak. “On one of Jupiter’s moons... deep in one of its subglacial oceans. An alien spaceship... wrecked...” blood boiled on his lips.

“Okay, don’t! Keep quiet. I’ll fix you up in a moment. Then we can have a talk.”

“I won’t live.”

With a startle, he stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost. Red spots covered his cheeks. He blinked. Had he recognized me?

“Don’t worry, Major. I’ll patch you up like you won’t know yourself.”

He gulped, then glanced at his gear indicators flashing red. The sight must have discouraged him a bit. He mustered up his last strength to wheeze,

“Zander, you tell me what you would do had you laid your hands on the information about a hundred and eight alien races compared to whom we’re still living in caves? What would you have done knowing that space is teeming with creatures whose technologies are far superior to ours? Would you have shelved the whole thing in some classified vault?” he croaked and burst out coughing, spitting blood.