3.
Ordo ab chao
The Kid took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He felt older. Fear had conquered his youth and driven it under, but on the surface he was the same and knew that it was all others would see. They wouldn't see how the battle on the docks had changed him, crouched behind Mifune's APU as Sentinels broke over them in a nightmare wave of machine and blood, made him different.
But then he forgot himself, and forgot the way he was supposed to be more mature as he ran towards the altar they'd started building for Neo. It had been his idea. For Neo and Trinity. To remember them, but already it had grown past the original concept. Artists had been working for days on the statue, almost immediately after Zion was saved and just now were the forms starting to emerge from the heavy piece of black marble that had been brought up from the depths of the Temple.
The figure of a man and woman gazing into each other's faces was still blocky. Detail would come in time but Kid could already see Neo and Trinity in the rough work. Despite the fact that the artists would have to clear the space when they began again, worshippers had brought gifts and supplications to lay at the feet of the statue. It was a sea of offering that amazed him.
"They've already elevated him to godhood." The voice of Counselor Hanaam startled him but the older man had been there all along, seated on a stone step to the rear of the chamber.
"Wasn't he?" The Kid asked.
"No," Hanaam shook his head as he rose to his feet. "He was just a man but they've already forgotten that."
"Most people didn't know him." The Kid counted himself lucky. Not only had he known Neo, but he'd been the only person in Zion saved by him. If that meant he'd been saved by a god, he wasn't sure how he'd ever live up to the honor. He wasn't entirely sure if he believed in the offerings or what Counselor Hanaam was saying. It was hard to reconcile his hero worship with humanity. "He wasn't here very often. Morpheus made him special long before they found him."
"Very true." Hanaam said and gazed at the statue with a knowing smile. "And maybe it's just an old man being cantankerous. People need their beliefs, their faith, it's what gives us hope."
"What do you think happened to them?" The Kid had asked himself the question many times. Especially after he'd heard that Niobe hadn't been able to find out the truth from inside the Matrix. The theories were rampant and each more unbelievable than the next.
"It depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you believe that he was a god or a man." Hanaam patted him on the shoulder gently.
"You think he died." It broke the Kid's heart a little to admit it.
Hanaam too looked grieved by the admission and shook his head slowly. "Don't listen to me. I'm just an old man who has seen his world shaken around him. Neo saved us, and questions as to what he really was won't change the truth. Above all else he loved her."
"Trinity." The Kid said.
The statue stood in mute concession to their discussion. A man and a woman. Forever together. Touching and yet not touching. More permanent than flesh. A moment of peace in a time of war.
"Yes," Hanaam said. "Yes, he did."
Morpheus sat at a table heavily burdened with paper reports on the destruction the Machines had wrought. It was a far cry from his life before, but the sole remaining survivor from the Nebuchadnezzar found himself voted onto the Council through little choice of his own. After years of fighting for the belief and trust of those around him, it was a strange feeling not only to have it freely given, but thrust upon him without choice.
"Now that is an image I wouldn't have expected to see." Niobe's voice was full of humor as she came around the corner. "You, doing paperwork."
"You are not the only one surprised." He pushed aside the latest readout and focused all of his attention on her. Their recently rekindled relationship was still in the process of fitting back together. As he'd once said, many things had stayed the same while many had changed. "Hanaam didn't even protest when they voted me into the head of the council. He only said that it would give him more time for other pursuits. I think I now understand why he let me take this burden. Onerous puts this amount of work lightly."
"I spoke to Jason."
He tensed slightly. Jason Lock's antagonism toward him because of Niobe and the prophecy hadn't subsided when Morpheus ascended to the head of the council. To Lock's credit he was never anything but respectful in public, but the tension was there between the two men. Morpheus knew that it would never be gone. Not as long as the woman in front of him came to his bed instead of his rival's.
"About?" The word was carefully modulated.
"About the Fleet." Niobe said. "We have four ships operable. He's got teams out trying to strip what's left of the wrecks in the tunnels and if we're lucky we'll be able to refit one maybe two more. I thought Roland was going to cry when they announced that the Hammer would be rebuilt."
"Roland is not the type of man to cry."
"Every man has a trigger." She smiled. If they could rebuild the Nebuchadnezzar she didn't doubt that Morpheus' eyes would tear up just as quickly. "But that still leaves us with only six ships."
"I have no answer to that problem." He answered. The report detailing Lock's work on the Fleet was somewhere on the left side of the desk but he remembered the facts enough to leave it lay. "It will be difficult enough to maintain those six with the supplies we have left. The parts hangar was destroyed when the digger tunneled through the main dock. Teams are trying to shore up the wreckage enough to get inside, but I doubt that they will find anything useful, it's rubble."
"Six ships." Niobe said. "Isn't enough to do what we're going to have to do."
"And what is that?"
She pulled up a chair so that she could look him in the eye. It gave them a distance that he understood she needed. There were times when they had to remain professional, the Counselor and the Captain, it was obvious that this was one of those times.
"Something the Oracle told you?"
She nodded.
"What is it?"
"The truce has not been broken, but there are loopholes. Places that we will have to fight the Matrix tooth and nail to maintain an equal footing. Minds will be freed from the Matrix, at least two already have."
"Self-substantiation." It didn't take Morpheus long to catch on.
"But not initiated by us." Niobe's eyes darkened with the memory of the bodies they'd found. "The Oracle has said that they will die unless we find a woman. One who will somehow know that they've disconnected."
"So find her." The answer seemed obvious.
"Something is hiding her from us." Niobe remembered the strange way they hadn't been able to track the woman. As though another program had stepped into the way to obscure the trail. It meant that someone inside the Matrix also knew that she was special, and was trying to keep them away from her. Even Ghost could catch no more than shadows and glimpses and without a name or anything but a fuzzy picture, they could not save her, and without her, they couldn't save anyone.
"What about the Oracle?"
Niobe had dreaded this moment more than anything else. "I think something is wrong with her."
"Impossible."
"Not impossible." She countered. "Unlikely, but not impossible. Who knows how much damage was done when she had to change shells. Right now, her information is good but flawed, and she couldn't get us any closer."
"Then we will have to do it ourselves." Morpheus intoned solemnly. "I cannot make ships appear out of thin air, but I will not stand by and let a woman that we need die. We are still too fragile a community for that. As soon as the ships are recharged I want you to take them to broadcast level and get every man that can fit into a jack into the Matrix. Find her and bring her out."
"Jason won't like that. If the other two ships remain in dry dock, there won't be anyone to protect Zion."
"I'll deal with Lock." Morpheus said. It was a strange experience to be ordering other Captains into the Matrix when for so long it had been him. He watched as the petite woman stood and started for the door. "Niobe, wait."
"Yes?"
"Thirty-six hours to recharge is a long time."
"So it seems." Her figure relaxed a little bit and Morpheus was surprised to see how tense she had been. "I guess I'll see you when you're done here."
"I will look forward to that."
"I will too."
The four remaining ships stood solitary in the dock, hooked up to the massive umbilicals that recharged their engines and gave them the life to fly. Powered down and silent they gave no sign of the grace and beauty they had in flight. Each ship was of a different size, built for different purposes.
The Defiant was a scout ship, fast and sleek like the Logos had been but this one was built more for stealth. Her profile seemed diminutive on the dock as though she was a toy compared to the others around her.
The Aurora was a workhorse of a beast. Although her name implied beauty, the hulking ship had lost any semblance of it in the years that had passed since her commissioning. She was the oldest of the fleet and it showed in the battle scars along her flanks and gun turrets. It was a long standing joke for the dock crews that she was as reliable as the sun and that nothing, not even ramming a digger in the tunnels which she had done under her captain's command, could keep her down.
The Olympus was their second biggest ship. She'd once been the main competitor with the Hammer for sheer firepower. Now most of those turrets were gone or in the process of being replaced. A swarm of Sentinels had disarmed her in the midst of battle and a last ditch EMP burst had saved what was left, but the ship had been too crippled to return to Zion. Field repairs had brought her limping home just after the peace had been established and then grudgingly brought her back to full duty.
The last ship was the newest of the Fleet and had been reserved as an escape ship for a very special crew if things had come to that. TheAve Maria had been a fail safe. Now unused, she was returned to active service.
But the four whole ships served as mocking counterpoint to the two wrecks that had just been levered off of their final crash sites and towed into dry dock. Both ships were damaged so badly that it would take months if not years to return them to their original function.
It was a depressing line-up of all that stood between Zion and the machines if the truce should fail.
Latin translation: Out of chaos, comes order