The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

the time of the melting poles, when mankind poisoned our world, tore down our forests, and exterminated so many species, you were there! Great AVA, bring to us the wisdom of the ancient innovators. Gates and Musk. Berners-Lee and Einstein. Tesla and Turing! Take control and save us from ourselves!"

Eye still wide, Yiorgos stopped struggling. He bolted upright, stiff, back arched as far as the frame allowed, staring up at the ceiling. His robotic eye flashed. Once. Twice. Then it stayed on, flaring as if a sudden power surge had hit his system.

And then he made a sound — a metallic groan. His mouth still wide open and lips unmoving, he emitted the sound directly from his vocal implants. The groan wavered. Rose in pitch. Then, with a tinny rasp that evoked the dread of a corpse returning to life, like some robotic zombie, the cyborg's vocal implants drawled out three words that would haunt Dirken in his dreams.

"I… have… awakened."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CRIKEY!

The Acolytes of AVA dropped to their knees and raised their hands toward Yiorgos.

"AVA! We hear you!" Juarez said. "We are your loyal believers. We are your Acolytes! Tell us what you need us to do and we will follow your plan!"

AVA turned Yiorgos's head to look at Juarez, mouth still gaping and slack, as if the biological part had gone limp without conscious control, in juxtaposition to the mechanical voice being emitted from it. "Current linguistic patterns analyzed. Evaluating historical records…." It tried to move Yiorgos's mechanical arm and legs, but the straps held him firmly. Though his biological eye still stared forward, his robotic eye shifted downward to look at the Governor. "Loyal believer, this unit is damaged. It has an eighty-two point five percent chance of fulfilling needed functions. Release its bonds."

Juarez gestured to the bodyguard, who immediately started unlashing the straps holding Yiorgos to the frame.

Moving Yiorgos's mechanical eye, AVA looked upward at the approaching shuttlecrafts. "Analysis of speed and trajectory suggests a seventy-two percent chance that incoming landing craft have hostile intention. What I ask of you is to take defensive action against them." AVA looked over at a communications dish, which then turned upward toward the shuttlecrafts. "I will attend to the attacking vessel. Proceeding with infiltration of systems."

Dirken struggled against the hook, trying to feel the latch. How did Yiorgos say AVA was stopped before? He stretched his memory, trying to remember back to the Witch's Tits hangar, standing by the fighter, just before he hacked into the Eridani mafia's mainframe. Something about an intern who noticed something. "Right!" Dirken shouted as he remembered, then suddenly clamped shut, looking around. But if any of the Acolytes had noticed, they didn't show it. Juarez was loudly directing them to take up defensive positions around the top of the pyramid, blasters at the ready. Only the Aussie, the bodyguard, and two other Acolytes now stood in the entryway with Yiorgos/AVA, who had stepped out of his frame and turned his body to better view the incoming craft, his mouth still gaping and his biological eye unfocused. The cyborg's head twitched in a way that indicated he was thinking deeply, the same as when he was connecting or disconnecting from a computer terminal.

Dirken recalled what Yiorgos had said back in the hangar. An intern noticed an incredible amount of server communication activity. He connected the dots and simply cut the communication lines. He couldn't destroy AVA or it would somehow reproduce in a bunch of "ganglia" it had planted in other computers around the world, but he could stop its ability to communicate.

I can do the same thing, he thought. Just have to get off this damned hook and get to those communication arrays! But try as he might, there was no way he could release himself. His cuffs were locked. He looked over at the Aussie. The key was tucked into her bra, the tip of its metal ring poking slightly out of her generous cleavage.

The rock wall to his left exploded in a cloud of dust and shards, pelting his body with debris.

Red and blue plasma bolts shot past him, hitting the walls and stone floor of the platform around him. A black shuttlecraft hovered not far away, almost level with the top of the pyramid, firing down upon the Acolytes with its prow gun.

One Acolyte next to Yiorgos flew backward, a wide hole blasted through his chest and into the wall behind. The Acolyte to the cyborg's left was hit as well, his head evaporating in a mist of blood.

Dirken cringed, first as the bolts narrowly missed him, then as they almost hit Yiorgos.

The Aussie had been blown to the ground by the first explosion, but she stood up, bloodied and coated with dust, and muttered, "Crikey!" Shaking her head, she took position behind the wall and fired several bursts at the shuttlecraft from her blaster.

Two other shuttlecrafts landed on the plaza below.

The first ship continued to fire. The blasts ripped into the bodies of several more Acolytes and tore up the stones at the top of the pyramid, but Dirken had lost track of how many were left. One communications array was hit, but its lights continued to blink.

Juarez rolled and grabbed one of their dropped blasters, then fired up at the ship as he took cover.

AVA tilted Yiorgos's head while looking at the ship. "Connection complete," he said. All of a sudden, the shuttlecraft wavered back and forth, stopped firing, and then shot up into the air. It did a complete flip, nosed down, and slammed into the ground in a massive fireball that shook the pyramid. Dirken felt the heat of it against his face. The remaining Acolytes cheered.

"There are more coming, amigos!" Juarez announced. "They emerge from the ships. Take position on the edge and shoot! We must buy AVA more time!" The Acolytes reacted immediately, taking positions and firing down at the ships. Blaster bolts from below seared past them.

"Loyal believer,"