«No!»
Datapads flew across the room as Sonia Krakowski's temper snapped. In an instant, Portia was beside her, holding her by both wrists.
«Sonia, stop it! Stop it right now!»
Sonia struggled for a couple of seconds, but Portia's grip was like cold steel, and she eventually gave up. She stood there looking sullen, her expression slowly changing to one of contrition as she saw the damage that she had wrought.
«Sorry, Porch...I don't know what came over me. When I heard the Cyborgs were heading this way...I guess I snapped...»
She bent, and started retrieving datapads, but at that second sirens began to wail. The pads dropped from Sonia nerveless fingers as the two sisters turned to face each other. Their faces were stark white, their eyes wide with fear.
Portia leapt to Yang's desk and slapped a control, and the entire wall of the office became translucent, then transparent. When the last of the opacity cleared, they could see the reason for the blaring sirens.
All along the subterranean walkways, and throughout the massive main cavern in which they lived, explosions thundered and flames roared.
«They're here...»
Portia punched another control, and a 3-D holographic representation of the base shimmered to life in front of them. Defending units were shown as blue dots, attackers as red.
A veritable red sandstorm greeted their astonished eyes. The Cyborgs were everywhere - they had penetrated the base at every entrance, and were now working their way inwards.
Sonia, moving like an automaton, tapped in a query to the computer, asking it how long it would take the Cyborgs to reach their current position.
There was a pause whilst the computer calculated and verified the answer, and then it flashed up in foot-high holographic numbers.
Twenty-four minutes, seventeen seconds.
For a second there was total silence in the room, and then they both exploded into action.
* * * * *
Uplink complete. Commencing algorithm...
Light flooded her vision, and she blinked. Then there was a sudden rushing sensation, like icy mountain streams cascading through her mind...
Incredible...
The few rumours that filtered through said that it was like sharing your consciousness with another being, but it wasn't in the slightest. It was like sharing your consciousness with yourself...
And it was. All the algorithm did was enhance your abilities. In exchange for its existence, implanted in the left side of her cerebral cortex, it worked wonders on the right side, improving such functions as logic and rationality to previously undreamed- of levels.
She had come to lying on a blindingly white biobed in the Infirmary of Alpha Prime. She blinked again, and then her uplink node activated, and she could hear... it ...
In all the stories that her Aunt had told her, it had been described as 'a thousand voices, speaking as one', but she had been wrong.
It was like one voice speaking through a thousand mouths...
And in the midst of it all sat Aki Zeta-5, co-ordinator of the entire Consciousness, silvery uplink tendrils extending from her in a pulsing, coruscating web, linking every member of the Consciousness together.
She closed her eyes and let her mind achieve uplink, and slipped into the world of the Consciousness...
It was like dancing in the blue skies of Planet, like plunging into the heart of Hercules, like bathing in the icy tail of a comet.
All these comparisons and more could never describe what she felt as her mind flowed from node to node, feeling the living, breathing Consciousness surrounding her on all sides. She let its currents take her, pull her gently along, enveloped in their cool waters.
Suddenly, she could feel discord and strife. She had reached the part of the network which included those shells who were fighting at this very moment in The Hive.
Even as she watched, another shell's death cry echoed throughout the network, and another strand in the great net vanished. This part of the Consciousness was in disorder and disarray, the shells isolated from each other and unable to communicate.
Reaching out with all her strength, Rachelle desperately tried to smooth the raging waters. She felt a flash of gratitude from the shells, and decided to help them further.
Melding her mind and its implanted algorithm closer into one whole, she began to gather the strands of consciousness and weave them together.
In the tunnels of The Hive, shells began to fight together, working towards a common goal instead of firing blindly...
Wherever there were gaps in the iridescent tapestry, Rachelle took threads and wove them together to form new patterns of strength and unity.
The Hive defenders started to fall back in fear from this new onslaught. The Cyborgs were fighting as one, like a massive entity with a thousand arms and a thousand weapons...
She could feel the strength, now. Though the repairs were only temporary, they would at least hold until she had put her latest idea into practice...
Modulating her carrier wave, she managed to slip past the Hive's defences and into their datalinks. From there it was a simple system hop into the comm network, and from there...
A console beeped in Yang's office, and Sonia pressed a control. Instantly, the holographic screen activated, and the words 'Message Incoming...' flashed for a second before dissolving into...
It looked human, but somehow they both got the impression that in some way it wasn't...
The face was that of a young woman, looking about twenty to twenty-five, but it pulsed in and out of focus, as though she was trying to project a face...
Rachelle reached out with everything she had - algorithmic ability, empathic talents, everything - and funnelled it all down into a few words.
« Look into my eyes... »
Automatically, Sonia and Portia glanced at the eyes of this holographic image. Then, chilled to the bone, they tried desperately to drag their eyes away...but found themselves held in place.
The eyes were incredible. They seemed to burn from the inside with an incandescent white flame, searing into the depths of the souls of the two women...
In an instant, everything was stripped away, and they both saw their lives as never before. Aimless, pathetic, despicable, dedicated to serving an insane, grasping despot...
Rachelle played on secret fears, unease, anger, paranoia, everything - and she could tell it was paying off. The two sisters were shrivelling under the onslaught like mind worms before a flame gun.
Sonia was screaming in emotional agony. Portia was simply crying hysterically. Both were on the brink of insanity. It just needed one more good push...
Just one more good push... thought Rachelle. Gathering all her resources, she formed one last attack and flung it with all her strength...
And so it was that, when Chairman Yang finally regained consciousness and managed to stumble to his office, he found his two chief aides curled up on the floor, whimpering in pain.
In the subterranean tunnels of The Hive, the Consciousness had reached the Headquarters building and was already flooding it with troops. Yang's office was on the top floor, but it would not take them long to get there.
Rachelle was still surfing the waves of knowledge, exulting in her success. These tides are breaking on a new shore, and the waters are rising fast. Against supreme knowledge, who would dare to stand? An enemy will fall today, and the waters will close over his colossus...
Yang prodded frantically at the controls set into his desk. His self-control was gone, washed out to sea by the fear which now assailed him. Portia and Sonia had left the holographic globe active, and he could see the severity of his predicament.
The number of blue dots had decreased dramatically. Besides the four guards outside his door, only seven armed personnel remained in his Headquarters, and beyond that only about twenty survived, scattered uselessly throughout the base.
Not long now...
Red dots were swarming all over the Headquarters. The seven sentries were defending the main lifts, but it would not take long for the Cyborgs to overwhelm them and sweep them aside. Even his four faithful guards could not hope to defend the corridor for more than a few seconds.
He was trapped.
Deanna Nu-Eight crept silently along the corridor leading to Yang's office. She and two other operatives had found the service lifts, and now the other two were making their way towards Yang's office from the other direction. Inwardly, she blessed the architect who had designed this building for making it circular and having the corridors follow suit. Now they could attack the guards from both directions.
Although the half of her that answered to the designation Nu-Eight was calm and composed, the half of her that was still Deanna Iriana was overflowing with mixed excitement and anxiety. Adrenaline was surging through her body in quantities she had not felt since her Initiation.
Suddenly, from up ahead there came the unmistakable sharp crack! of a shredder pistol, and a cry of pain. Deanna drew her own weapon, a slim, silver laser pistol, tensed her body, and leapt...
Shredder darts hissed past her as she soared through the air; then she hit the floor, rolled, and came up firing.
Her first burst of laser fire caught a guard in the shoulder. He dropped his pistol and clutched at the neat round mark on his shoulder, his eyes wide with pain, his mouth opening and closing in shock.
Deanna froze in shock herself, stunned at what she had done to this man. The Consciousness preached peace above all things, and she had just done this...
A shredder dart tore through the leg of her long white shift, sending pain lancing up her leg and bringing her back to life. She spun, and scythed the guard's legs out from under her with a kick. The woman landed heavily, dropping her shredder pistol in the process.
As Deanna glanced up, she saw that there was only one guard left standing, crouching behind a turn in the corridor, obviously firing at her two companions. She snapped off a shot, and was rewarded by seeing him crumple soundlessly to the ground.
The woman whom she had just knocked down lunged for her pistol, but Deanna was faster. Her algorithmically enhanced reflexes took over, her leg shot out in a kick, and the shredder pistol went spinning out of the woman's reach along the corridor.
The guard growled, deep in her throat, and launched herself at Deanna, a knife appearing in her hand...
...and she met, halfway, a bolt of pure energy from Deanna's laser pistol.
The woman dropped to the floor, dead, a smoking hole where one eye had been.
That was the last of them.
Quickly, Deanna leapt at the door to Sheng-ji Yang's office, bruising her hand as she slammed it on the 'open' button.
Surprisingly, all security procedures had been overridden. Deanna blessed Rachelle's forethought - she must have done it whilst still in the Hive's computer matrix.
Even as the door began to open, there was the all-too-familiar whine of a shredder pistol charging to overload.
Deanna sprang back from the door, her laser pistol instantly in her hand. A strange sight met her eyes.
Sheng-ji Yang stood there, his arms flung towards the ceiling, his head thrown back. As she entered cautiously, he looked down towards her, a beatific smile painted across his face.
«Enter, my child. Come, you shall be the last to look upon the face of Planet's greatest martyr...»
The shredder pistol burst completely obliterated his head and sent deadly darts scything towards Deanna. She ducked instinctively, and heard a series of soft thunk noises which marked the darts ending their trajectory in the office wall.
There was a quiet thump as the body of the late Sheng-ji Yang hit the floor limply.
Deanna looked out gingerly from beneath a shielding arm at the body of the Consciousness' greatest enemy. Her body was spattered with Yang's blood, and her own blood was dripping from the slice on her leg. Surprise, shock and sorrow coursed through her veins and her heart hammered as though it would burst from her chest, but she felt a sense of incredible elation. The great war is finally over...
She half turned, intending to congratulate whoever had loosed the final shot, but there was no-one there.
Picking her way carefully out into the corridor, she found the corpses of the four guards, and then a little further away, the bodies of David Gamma-Nine and Rayini Eta-Seven.
She knelt beside them, but there was no sign of life. The shredder darts had done their deadly work too well, and both were gone.
Her face remained impassive, but tears began to stream from her eyes. She made no attempt to wipe them away, and they dripped onto the bodies of her fallen comrades.
She went back into Yang's office one last time, carefully avoiding his body and the blood which pooled around it, and found what she had been seeking.
It had only been after finding the bodies of her dead comrades that she realised that the shots had come, not from behind her, but from in front .
She finally found the shredder pistol, propped up on a stack of datapads. Carefully, she disarmed it, then flung it across the room, where it lay, a harmless lump of metal and plastic.
They eventually found her, crouched over her two fallen companions, tears still falling from her eyes.
* * * * *
There were celebrations all over Planet that night. The Hive had finally been eliminated!
Fireworks lit the night over Gaia's High Garden. Cheers resounded in the vaulted halls of Virgin Soil. Acolytes clapped and stamped as the victory procession wound its way through the Gaians' new base, placed on the exact site of Gaia's Landing and given the same name.
Lady Deirdre led the Gaian celebrations, and when she judged the time was right she called for quiet.
« My dear, dear friends, we have survived a war which threatened to wipe us from the face of Planet. Along the way we lost many friends and family members, and our hearts go with them and with those whom they leave behind.
However, we must not let their loss blind us to Planet's gain. A great blight has been removed from Planet's bright countenance, and we, her servants, endure to tend and care for her anew.
And to symbolise our hope for a new dawn, for harmony and peace with Planet, I plant the beginning of a new stand of white pine, to flourish forever in the commons of Gaia's Landing. »
With that, she knelt, and pressed the seedling which she herself had saved into the moist soil of Planet.
The celebrations even broke the hushed silence of Alpha Prime. Shells who had not shown strong emotion for years wept openly with happiness. Others shouted their delight to the heavens.
In the midst of it all sat Aki Zeta-5, with Rachelle Alpha-4 on her right, and Deanna Nu-8 on her left. Both were to receive commendations for their part in winning the war against the Hive.
But for this one moment, they sat alone, an island of silence amidst so much noise. They had, by mutual agreement, moved their interlink frequencies up several cycles, and now were linked together, two shells and the Consciousness' main operative.
As one, they closed their eyes, and slid into the cool waters of the Consciousness. For this one precious moment they let their minds soar along the pathways of the living, pulsing Consciousness, revelling in the pure thought which surrounded them and beat like a massive heart.
Three minds leapt and danced, just for this one moment, rejoicing in their freedom and their unity...
Unity...