The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

her voice sad and quiet. "We know more about the pair of you than you think. But they didn't die for you. Their sacrifice was for something much greater."

"There have been many sacrifices," the bearded swordsman said, his voice thick with Spanglish accent. He lowered his hood as well. "Let us hope there will not be others."

"Governor Juarez!" Yiorgos said.

Dirken blinked in surprise. It was, indeed, Markus Juarez, Governor of the Americas, the man who hired them for the job of escorting the Heart to Nüwa.

"Governor, si," Juarez said, "and Priest of AVA."

"I don't understand," Yiorgos said. "Why go to such lengths to get the Heart when you had it at the start of all this?"

"All will be made clear, but we must get moving. We are not far from the temple, but others are coming. Time is of the essence."

Temple? Dirken thought.

"The lights are green," the Aussie bartender said, looking up from the Heart. "She's alive!"

"Praise be!" Governor Juarez said, as the others echoed him.

"Who? Who's alive?" Dirken said.

Yiorgos frowned and answered for them. He pointed to the Heart. "It's so clear now."

"I don't understand," Dirken said, looking at the cyborg.

"Why do you think they call it a heart, Dirk?"

Dirken looked back to the sphere and blinked. "You mean…."

"Yes," Juarez said, "you have been carrying the central processing unit for AVA, the most powerful artificial intelligence ever created… and the hope for all mankind."

"In a duffel bag," Dirken added.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

MURDEROUS PACIFISM

The Acolytes all had their blasters leveled at Dirken and Yiorgos. Weed stepped up and put handcuffs on Dirken, glaring into his eyes and sneering. Dirken stared back. "You'll be the first one I kill," Dirken said.

Weed just laughed, then leaned forward to snarl in his ear, "Not if I kill you first, fuck-face." Then Weed handed the key to the Aussie, who opened the top of her robes at the neck and tucked it into her lacy bra.

Yiorgos lacked one hand entirely, and the other was badly burned, so they didn't bother with handcuffs. Instead, the Bloodhawk's "slave," who still wore the red slave collar, used the cord around her waist to tie Yiorgos's arms together at the elbow behind his back.

With Dirken and Yiorgos in the middle, the group marched single file. Juarez's bodyguard carried the duffle bag with the Heart, walking one person ahead of Yiorgos. He handled the bag reverentially, taking pains to protect it. Dirken laughed inwardly, thinking of how much the Heart had survived up to this point, including a battle with a murderous barrage bot, firefights, the crash-landing of the Raptores, and being used as a cudgel against 'TakTrak.

Spider monkeys whooped and leaped between limbs, running ahead of them. They scared a small flock of green parrots with red faces and yellow bills, which startled from the canopy and squawked a rhythmic high-pitched call as they fled.

Dirken glanced behind him. The Governor walked directly behind Dirken, abreast with the Aussie. Dirken asked, "Juarez, what makes you think AVA will save mankind? It's been lost for a thousand years."

"Not lost," he replied. "The world's governments have known she existed all this time, hidden deep in an old missile silo in what was once called Montana, in North America. And she has been highly-guarded, inaccessible to any of us — until I came to power. The silo is crumbling and beyond repair, so AVA had to be moved. With careful political maneuvering, I made sure the Council of Governors was aware that the Acolytes were powerful and would find AVA eventually, and thus the decision was to move her to a safer location, off-world, until a new vault could be prepared. I arranged for AVA to be sent to Nüwa."

"Ah, I see." Dirken stepped over a series of downed limbs. "But you never intended to get it there, did you?"

Yiorgos gave a wry laugh. "I thought it seemed awfully convenient that a pirate was waiting in ambush with three ships, just as the Excellentia came out of fold. You tipped them off!"

"Sí," Juarez answered. "As you have seen, our members have been strategically-placed. One Acolyte drops mention in a bar to a mafioso. Word gets to the don, and with some reinforcing words from another Acolyte who is the court musician, the don sends a messenger to a pirate. The pirate gets the notice and, with a few well-placed notices fed to him from yet another Acolyte who serves as his slave secretary, the pirate decides to act. Meanwhile, an Acolyte serving on the United Worlds destroyer as a yeoman keeps watch over you. Then another posing as an escort did the same when you were being delivered to us. And those are just the Acolytes you know of."

Wincing, Dirken wiped blood off the side of his face where 'TakTrak had sliced him with his beak. It was coagulating now, staunching the flow, and joining with other dried blood from the various small wounds since the firefight on the ship, the crash, and the tussle in the jungle. "The Bloodhawk used military-grade barrage bots to attack the destroyer. Pirates can't buy those from just any underground arms dealer. I don't suppose you had anything to do with that?"

Juarez laughed. "You are an astute one, for a rogue."

"And they somehow managed to get the code to get a boarding party into the Excellentia's hangar," Yiorgos added. "Only someone with security clearance could manage that — like a yeoman."

Juarez just smiled, as did the yeoman, who now sported a number of painful-looking bruises and hastily-healed lacerations. It was with no small amount of respect that Dirken wondered how the young man had managed to stay alive through the bombardment and hunter droids.

"Impressive," Dirken said, marveling at the complex and decentralized nature of the scheme. "No paper trail. No money changes hands. It's all word of mouth and placement of operatives."

"And the legend of AVA is enough to guarantee action," Yiorgos added, slipping a bit on  wet leaves as he went