cautiously picked up his own blade from the ground. Tiet’s kemsticks leaped to his hands from the magnetic clips on his thighs. He calmed himself and moved into the fluid movements of his favorite two-handed technique.
Orin had rarely taught him to use the kemsticks, as he favored the blade, but Tiet had always enjoyed the two-handed style with its rapid-fire strikes and elaborate movements. Vale attacked quickly. For a few moments, they remained deadlocked blow for blow. Then Tiet shifted to his own version of the two-handed technique, relying on no discernable pattern the android’s mind could decipher. As Tiet increased his speed, he became a blur of motion. He landed a strike to the android’s leg then another followed quickly to the torso.
The robot failed to match the speed of Tiet’s attack. For every three to five strikes made, one landed on the android’s body, doing serious damage to its exoskeleton. The robot retreated away from the continuing assault, losing bits and pieces of his mechanical structure as the strikes continued to find purchase on his body.
He sliced Vale’s forearm open, disintegrating the motor controls of his hand. The android’s sword fell from the limp appendage. Tiet never let up on the robot. Orin was now in the cargo bay with Dorian, helping her with her injury. Tiet wanted to be the one consoling her. He dealt a quick and final deathblow, driving a kemstick right through the android’s chest where its primary power source was housed.
Vale fell to the cargo bay floor and moved no more. Tiet replaced the kemsticks on each thigh. He ran to Dorian’s side.
“How’s your arm?”
“I don’t think its bad…”
“It’s fractured in two places.”
“Are you sure?” Orin asked.
“Yes, I…I sensed it as it happened. I’m not sure how though. The Way seems more powerful on this side of the rift.”
“Interesting…we had better get to the med-station and set Dorian’s arm.”
The trio walked back through the cargo bay entrance and sealed the door again.
“What about the android?” Tiet asked.
“I don’t trust leaving it there,” Orin said. “Open the outer bay door and flush the remains into space.”
Tiet complied, being only too happy to finally rid themselves of this persistent assassin. He keyed in the command on the cargo bay keypad. The computer scanned for life signs as a routine safety measure and then opened the doors. The pressurized gases quickly rushed into the vacuum carrying Vale’s lifeless, torn body with them. Tiet watched the debris clear through the cargo door window and lingered only long enough to see the doors closing again.
ASSIMILATION
The cold of space would have quickly killed him had there been any real life in his android body. Now only the incomprehensible surging of a computer mind remained. The body was hacked to sheds, and the final blow had disintegrated his primary power supply along with his main efferent signal processor.
Vale’s functioning mind was trapped in a body he could not control. The attempt to bait the human through its pride had failed. His mind raced at incalculable speeds searching for errors in his own performance that may have caused the outcome. But it was a pointless race to run, for now he was nothing but wreckage floating in the cold black void of space.
Something tingled. Something probed his computer mind, not invading, but washing over him and through him. A voice spoke inaudibly to him. It was familiar and mechanical in nature. Vale’s mind responded to its call. He began to move swiftly through space. The voice reassured him without words.
It pulled him across the vast expanse to itself. Vale discerned no movement, but he calculated five hours from the first contact with the voice until he saw himself pass through an opening into a vessel. The voice of the Sphere called for him to release all data and merge with it. There was no resisting the call.
Within microseconds, the Vale android became one with the Sphere. A vast memory of the Sphere’s travels across different worlds in pursuit of the Vorn opened up to him. The Sphere had returned home to this planet as it followed the Vorn across space, destroying them everywhere they were found, just as the Makers had planned. And yet, for Vale the android, the Vorn were his masters, having sent him on his mission after the Barudii warrior and his companions.
A problem presented itself-opposing goals and masters. The only way to reconcile the two was to fulfill both objectives. The Barudii warrior and his companions had to be exterminated along with the Vorn. The Vorn had not restricted the android from targeting them. And nothing in the creator’s directives to the Sphere denied it the privilege to exterminate rebels of any race. Simple. All objectives would be met. Failure was not an option.
Vale and the Sphere were one. There was so much power and so much data available between them. They knew where the Barudii ship was located. The Sphere had been tracking it all along. Vale watched it through the eyes of the Sphere, seeing through its scanning mechanisms.
The Barudii ship approached the planet on the far side, away from the Sphere’s current position. An invasion force was already prepared to decimate Vorn cities on the planet surface, to rid the Maker’s home planet of the infestation by their enemies. And now Vale’s memory provided further information.
The Sphere now understood what the android’s mind had known-that the Vorn had been in the process of trying to escape across the local phenomena known as the transdimensional rift. And they currently occupied a conquered planet similar to the Maker’s home-world here. It would be necessary then to travel across the rift to destroy the Vorn at that location as well.
Now was the time to launch the first wave of the invasion force. If the Vorn were able to counter the attack by some means then subsequent waves would be modified to overcome the problem and finish the objective. Now, Vale could finish his objective as well. The Sphere had been refitting his chassis since the time it pulled his torn body inside itself. And it had duplicated his android body with a pair of automatons able to function as extensions of his body, but directly controlled by their conjoined minds. The Barudii warrior would lose the advantage he had gained at their last encounter.
The trip through the planet’s atmosphere was uneventful with shields operating at maximum. Orin scanned the planet for topographical and geographical data as the Saberhawk cruised swiftly at sixty thousand feet.
“I’m picking up twelve large cities with functional energy signatures and many more appear to be on fire or have sustained major damage. It’s like a war is taking place. At this point on the map, sweeping to this area, all these minor cities are destroyed, while those with major structures have sustained heavy damage. Wait a minute, what’s this?”
He tapped the display next to an alert code for the geographical data search. The screen complied by showing a match to the ships database. Orin released the information.
“I…I can’t believe it.”
On the screen it read, planet: Castai. Orin began looking for specifics in the data. There it was. Mt. Vaseer appeared on the compiled data map. He could not have mistaken it for anything else. Orin knew the place he had called home, better than any other location on Castai, and yet, here it was on a world across the rift.
Upon scanning this city, Orin found a great deal more damage than the old city inhabited by Estall and his Aolene back home. He keyed in comparison data from his home world and matched them together. Orin saw clearly that this city of Vaseer was actually less complete than back home. Somehow this planet was a duplicate of his home world.
“What is it, Orin,” Tiet asked?
“This planet is somehow a duplicate of Castai.”
“What?”
“I know…but I’ve already located Mt. Vaseer and confirmed other topographical comparisons. The oceans, the mountains and almost every major landmark are the same.”
Silence held them captive.
“But the Vorn inhabit this planet,” Dorian said.
“We could really use some answers and the Vorn aren’t likely to give them to us. I think we should go to this planet’s city of Vaseer and see if the people on this world left any records. The city is deserted according to the
