Fugue
Chronicles of Xanctu
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Fewer than a handful in the Galaxy noted the quantum signal from the weapon. It wasn’t something easily sensed. Phae-Nem did not have the time to suppress the input; it flared like an echo departing into its core. The shard knew, but not much else. Sciannus would remain silent. The Other?
“What was that flare? Have we failed? It’s been a pleasure knowing you,” said Kaen.
“We are still awaiting success or failure,” responded Quano, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Logical time to tell me what we just saw, don’t you think?”
“Xanctu,” said Quano softly.
The sim froze in a kaleidoscope-burst. He was Quano, twelve thousand solars ago. Inside the vast chamber of the blue ship, Twinne Yashtoor’s binary flared through the giant port behind the mist-shrouded, featureless apparition.
“There are three such Peace Compacts. The crystals inside them are of extra-galactic origin and cannot be duplicated. All your data banks will receive a copy, and also the terms for coexisting in peace. One will be given to the Confederation for safe-keeping, another to the Alliance. The Third Peace Compact has been hidden, its location entrusted to an Artificial Intelligence. Its coordinates will only become known if necessary, but we continue to hope that this will never be the case. Knowledge and sentience has also been granted to several Artificial Intelligences as they possess the required lifespan.
The Promise must be kept!
“Xanctu,” he responded to the updraft of air on his frozen, shivering body. He had been released, or ejected from the meld. Heart laboring, vision blurred, he bit through his lip seeking an anchor in reality. The Nepagelli Mountains slowly came into focus. It was the projection associated with Phae-Nem, not Quano, who spoke.
“Your vital signs are failing. More Mantration will kill you. And you have much to think about while we wait to see if the sky falls. You are now the only biological entity, as far as I am aware, to know that there were once three of us. Now, with the shard, Chron, four. It is a big responsibility to bear. If we survive.”
With an effort, Kaen brushed a sliver of ice from his beard.
“D... dead p... planets... t-tell no... no... tales,” he managed, teeth chattering.
“The viewing platform is a dangerous place to be, but then so is anywhere in Archalem right now. Our efforts proceed while we wait. No future is yet told.”
“That... that’s... en... cou... ra... g-g... ing. T-turn up the... the heat. I... I don’t know how I...”
The warm air hit him like an oasis in an icefield.
“Not even theirs,” Phae-Nem added, as if glad to unburden itself.
Chron deliberated. The quantum signal had confused it, but the interface held, even if it showed a countdown that had already completed. The weapon was not an explosive device. It was a hammer of resonance, a sequence of cadence, a device originally designed to have exactly the opposite effect to what it was now being tasked with. Reaching into it, he mirrored its code, restructuring it to revert to its primary instructions. Slowly, it began to sing a slightly different song.
“What the hell are you doing, Chron?”
Voices. Her eyelids fluttered. Blood in her mouth. The head restraint was gone. Instinctively, she reached for the spigot. Chron was hooked into the primary neural link. But he’d been offline... in the cabin. Thought stuttered. The ship shook like a wild thing. Blood still soaked the couch.
“And you? Still around? If I’d brought the blaster, I’d have used your bot for target practice, again.”
“Get fucked,” she croaked, then blacked out.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” he said, pushing off toward her, arms outstretched, face contorted. “Now I’ll have to strangle the life out of you — like I wanted to last time I fucked you.”
The shard, barely fused with Chron, read the log, felt her pain — and sensed the naked human’s intent. Locked into mirroring the weapon’s core, it responded instinctively by utilizing the navbot’s core directive: Protect Captain Xelexnia Rubek.
It was a simple task to drill a small hole with its field projector through Dir’s head as any standard combat navbot would do, except it did so knowingly.
Dir’s naked body, frozen in death inertia, drifted until it collided slowly with the wall above the slide. It hung there, a single drop of blood floating in front of his rage-frozen face and dead eyes.
Phae-Nem registered the pulse. Milliseconds too late.
Its real-time projection flickered.
“What did you see?” Kaen asked it. Warmer, but still frozen deep inside, a cold that seemed unreachable.
“Chron has just neutralized, terminated, one of the lifeforms. That was not... an intended solution.”
“You gave it a choice?”
“It was the only way to get a clear shot, as you would put it. I needed a pinhole, not a wave. You survived the quantum tunnel. Your biometrics are worse than you sound.”
There was no answer from Kaen, slumped to the stone floor, unconscious. Phae-Nem hurriedly summoned a medic and unlocked the platform access. Lifting Kaen carefully, it carried him into the central tube and descended to level five.
The shard shimmered within Chron — unsure of what had driven it to terminate a sentient in such an arbitrary way. It could attribute it to being detached, or being attached to Chron. But it had remembered — and acted.
Sinking deeper into Chron’s core, it cancelled all non-essential subroutines, and continued using the weapon.
➡️ Next Chapter: Coming soon…
⬅️ Previous Chapter: Chapter 21 👉 IGNITION
📘 Start from Chapter One: Chronicles of Xanctu 👉 Galactic History
📘 New to the story? Index here 👉 Chronicles of Xanctu – Chapter Index
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© Return of The White Lady (1994) by Mike Kawitzky
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© Chronicles of Xanctu by Mike Kawitzky 2023