Chapter 22: The Weapon

Guardian, how are you?

"Um, I don't know," Tristan replied. He opened his eyes and groaned as a thousand hammers were beating a throbbing rhythm inside his head. Squinting against the light, he sat up. He blinked as his vision cleared, and a young woman sat on a chair opposite him. She smiled.

"I found you unconscious outside my core building. I feared I might have been too late." She stood and held out an arm to help him up. He wobbled for few moments before his balance returned. She stood back and smiled again. "My name is Cassiopeia, what's yours, Guardian?"

"Tristan."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Tristan," she continued.

Tristan smiled back. "Not half as pleased as I am to meet you, Cassiopeia. I thought my time had run out."

Cassiopeia nodded, "What's your mission Guardian?"

"Have you contacted the other AIs yet?" Tristan asked.

"No, I was waiting for you to wake. I didn't want to do anything until I knew what you were doing here."

"Please contact them; they will update you quicker than I can."

Cassiopeia nodded. Some moments later she turned back to Tristan. "You really took a chance coming here, I might not have been recoverable and you would have died."

"You were recoverable, so all is well." Tristan smiled at her, and thought of the secret in the core. She was an attractive young girl who would have had her whole life in front of her if she had not been trapped in this machine. Had she volunteered or been coerced? He would never know. The barrier set in her mind to prevent access to who she had been was too strong. As soon as the memory of the core crossed his mind, he blocked it off. He could never take the chance of the AIs sensing what he knew.

"Aesia and Tristain are on their way; I will prepare for them." The room shimmered, and within a heartbeat was identical to the lounge in Dionysia's bunker. "It will be at least an hour before they arrive." Cassiopeia continued, "Dionysia did not want to put too much strain on a small child, so they were having a stopover for a few minutes on each leg to allow her to recover."

While they waited, Cassiopeia told him she shut herself down sometime after the last Guardian had visited her. Some of her sisters had shut themselves down before her, because without Guardians they could do little or nothing to maintain stability on their planets. She had watched the start of the decline as different species got into petty wars with one another. She had hoped it would get no worse and that overall peace would prevail. She paused and looked sideways at Tristan. "My sisters seem different somehow."

"What do you mean, different?" Tristan asked.

"Well, except for Dionysia, they seem wooden; almost empty. They had no idea about the welfare of the child, for instance. It's strange, I don't remember noticing that before." She paused for a moment. "I'm also using inflections in my speech much the same as Dionysia. My other sisters do not ... Don't." She giggled then put her hand over her mouth, surprise in her eyes.

A worried frown flashed across Tristan's brow, but he just replied, "Hmm ... maybe the length of time you were shut down took a toll on your memory."

"Well, I ran a diagnostic and couldn't find anything. Still, I suppose it doesn't matter."

Aesia suddenly appeared with Tristain in her arms. She put Tristain down, and the child ran to Tristan to be picked up. "Daddy, that was really exciting, there were so many ladies."

Aesia glanced around the room, nodded to Cassiopeia, and turned to Tristan. "I feared I would never see you again."

Tristan took her hand and squeezed it. "Well, it was touch and go for a while, but Cassiopeia is now functioning."

Cassiopeia stood. "Do you want to rest and have something to eat before you start? I have found the fleet with my long-range sensors. They are in normal space and moving slowly in an effort to prevent detection. They would not be detectable by normal sensors, but they were obviously unprepared for me," she smiled. "At the rate they are travelling, they will not be any threat to Mylia for at least another 24 hours."

"Yes we should rest," Aesia replied. "And I need Tristain to have a few hours sleep before we go." Cassiopeia produced a table of food for them, and they sat and ate together.

Cassiopeia sat with them. She looked at Aesia. "You are a Sicceian. How did you find a Guardian, especially when they have supposedly been extinct for aeons?"

"God, that makes me feel like a dinosaur," Tristan laughed. Both women looked at him. "A what?"

"Oh nothing," Tristan replied. "It doesn't matter."

Aesia turned to Cassiopeia. "I will tell you later when Tristain is asleep."

The two women exchanged a knowing look. Tristan rolled his eyes "OK. I know it's not every day an extinct creature is brought back from the dead!"

Tristain yawned. Aesia stroked her cheek and turned to Tristan. "You can put her to bed and tell her a story while I chat with Cassiopeia."

Before he had finished the story, Tristain was asleep. He kissed her forehead and walked back to the lounge to find Aesia telling Cassiopeia how they met.

When she had finished, Cassiopeia sighed. "It is a pity you don't have the coordinates of Tristan's planet. It would be advantageous to us all to reinstate the Guardians."

"We will have to see what happens after this war is over," Tristan remarked.

Cassiopeia shrugged. "Well it's getting late, so I will leave you in peace to rest or whatever." She giggled and winked at Aesia.

"Goodnight." With that, she disappeared. Aesia snuggled into Tristan's arms. With her head resting on his shoulder, Tristan idly stroked her fine silky hair. Without warning she sat up and turned to him.

"Tristan, Cassiopeia is the same as Dionysia. She is not like the other number crunchers, is she?"

"No," Tristan replied.

Aesia's eyes bored into his. "Tristan, you did something, didn't you?" Tristan shrugged. He felt the soft questioning touch of her mind. She felt the barrier he had placed over the memory of what he had seen. She sensed the horror of what was there, something that had shaken him. She squeezed him hard. "I'm sorry. Let's go to bed. It has been a long day, and we may have a longer one tomorrow."

They were woken by their bed being bounced on. Tristan pulled the sheets over his head. "Come on, Daddy, time to go!" The bouncing got faster.

Tristan groaned. "Pest." He heard Aesia laugh at his remark.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Tristain sung in time with her bounces.

"OK, I'm getting up." Tristan stood up, walked to the bathroom. Once they were dressed, Cassiopeia led them down to the hangar into the nearest of the black ships. The controls were the same as modern Sicceian ships, with only minor differences.

"Are you OK with flying this Aesia?" Cassiopeia asked

"Yes there should be no problem."

"The one important thing to remember is you have to start the engines in free fall, so there is no room for error," Cassiopeia continued. Once you are in position, it requires only one ship to activate the weapon field. Any living thing that moves through the field is instantly destroyed. The field is the area within the triangle made up of the planet and the two ships. Normally, the planet is the only fixed point. But in this case, there will be two fixed points." Cassiopeia glanced at Aesia and Tristain. "Tristan's ship will have to manoeuvre to ensure the field touches the whole fleet. Because of the power required by the field generators, these ships have no conventional weapons, so you have to stay out of range of the enemy and not get caught, as they are not particularly fast either."

Tristan turned to Aesia. "There is an asteroid belt that cuts through the orbit of the fourth planet in this solar system. If you hide on the edge of it and keep power to a minimum, you should be safe from detection."

Tristan had noticed when they entered the craft that the main console lit up. "I'm going to walk over to the other ship. We need to see whether Tristain's presence is sufficient to keep this ship activated." Aesia nodded.

As Tristan left the craft, Aesia watched the console. The ship remained active. "Tristain, go and find your daddy," she asked. The child jumped up from where she was sitting on the deck and ran out of the craft after her father. When she left through the door, the console deactivated.