Holy Science Fiction, Batman!

As the lift rose up to the main deck, Angel cleaned the gore off of the sword. “How long until we're in orbit? Are the solar sails still holding?” she asked the empty air. Aeolus formed into an image at her side. An average height man with Grecian features and tousled dark hair and dark eyes, some how Angel knew this was what the man whose mind was forced into the ship's mainframe looked like in his prime. This time he wore a flight suit similar to hers, sans insignia of rank.

“Three minutes until we are past the lunar ring and entering Earth's orbit,” the ship said into her mind, directly stimulating her auditory processing cortex via the neural-link. “I have hacked into the manifest. The cargo at the bay above the one with the plasma damage is holding repair materials.”

Angel's eyebrow arched and the cyborg tipped her head slightly to the left as she looked over at the hallucination of her ship's consciousness. There was no sense of fuzziness in the image as she turned her head. Aeolus was getting better at the mutual interface. There was the queer feeling that came with her blind spot being overrode but even then the image held true. It was almost as if she could reach out and touch him. “Secondary sail is holding steady, primary sail is at eighty percent capacity. The tertiary sail is still locked in its bay,” he said as he took a step forward. It was eerie to see the sight of a man walking and hear no sound of foot steps.

“Monitoring the coronal stability, we have three to four terra-cycles before the next major CME,” he said stopping at the door of the lift. The sliding doors hissed open and he turned to face Angel. “It is possible to regenerate one of the clones,” Aeolus said as Angel stepped past his image and into the main corridor. “There is a regeneration tank though it would not be clear how much memory he retains from the process,” the ship continued.

“Dregan is dead,” Angel said, “I killed him myself.”

“If the clones retained that much memory, Dregan is not dead but in stasis,” Aeolus replied. Angel looked over at the manifestation of the ship's consciousness with shock. “What was the point of origin of those clones?” Aeolus went curiously still, as though suddenly turning into a statue. His dark eyes turned bright with light as he was sifting through data. They darkened again and the hallucination began to walk forward to the bridge.

Angel began to walk quickly after the hallucination. “Aeolus, you can do this with out messing with my neural network,” she said. “Just tell me.”

“Better to show you,” he answered.

“Damn it, Aeolus, what are you on about?” she demanded in an exasperated tone. The doors to the bridge opened. As they did, the main screen came up with an image of Earth. Aeolus made a gesture at the screen and it shifted. The image of Earth rotated along its meridian until the continent of Antarctica appeared. Angel stepped on to the bridge as it zoomed into research locations stationed on the continent and the seed vault. A marker came up on the seed vault. It blinked with an almost frantic quality, though there were times where it went out all together.

“Aeolus, what am I looking at?” she said.

“Your man's heart rate, as best I can get it through his neural-link. His is not synchronized with any others,” Aeolus answered, turning to look at Angel as she staggered to a chair and sat down. “It's at the outer limits of my reach right now, but as you watch, the signal will become stronger.” Angel stared at the screen.

“He may be compromised just like the clones,” she said weakly.

“You were in search of seed,” Aeolus said, “Of multiple biological origins.” As they communicated, the signal moved from cutting out every so many seconds to a steady but rapid pace. “I can connect with his neural-link in a few moments. The communications array was easy to configure to make long range contact.”

Angel looked over at Aeolus. She could see a fleeting look of resignation on his face. The last twenty years with him had left its mark. The old adage of the captain being married to their ship was strong here, though it was not a union that either would have chosen first. Initially Angel was clipped and angry with everything. Aeolus could read her anger and maintained silence until the late hours of night where her neural-link was active. In her sleep, she reached out desperately for the neural-net satellite network and found resounding silence with no hope of even a faint ping of Dregan's unique signal.

One night, Angel was deep in 'sleep' and inside a frantically constructed array of screens, all blank. Then in her 'dream' there was the sound of someone entering the monitoring room she had. All of the screens lit up with data. None of it made sense to her as she tried to find Dregan's signal. “He's not on board. I can't reach that satellite network because they're too low power to send data out this far,” said a voice behind her. Angel whipped around in her command chair, one that was a memory of the command chair of the ship. Standing before her was a man who was shrouded in shadow. Aeolus' voice was pleasant but the shock of hearing it when she was listening for a ping to indicate she had located her lost lover's signal on the neural-link satellite net made her feel fear.

“I am Aeolus,” he said. “You are my captain. I thought it time to introduce myself. My last captain did not have the … luxury of an interface like this.”

Angel looked back at the screens with a scoff at the mention of the previous captain whom she personally kicked out an airlock for his screaming tirade that she was to service him in a personal manner. The combat unit was not a pleasure unit, though that training was part of her background. She was resolved to only allow that sort of physical contact from one person and that person she wasn't sure was alive or dead.

“Your history is extensive,” Aeolus said and Angel scoffed again. “I am pleased to meet you, Angel,” he said. Angel looked over sharply at the name she had been given by the non-persons of the lower levels of society Earthside as she was their avenger and protector from the roving bands of bandits, criminals, and the peacekeepers.

“What did you call me?” she demanded sharply.

“Your name,” Aeolus said, “You are one of two combat units that have a name. The other is Dregan, a previous generation of another line who suffered from synchronization sickness and developed an independent sense of self from the cohort. Your cohort didn't survive the Gauntlet. It was in the classified files that were on your transport ship. I regret to inform you that you launched your handler out the airlock. I suspect, however, that will not trouble you.”

For the first time in months since she arrived, Angel laughed. The stasis pod was enough to keep her body still as she 'slept' but within the created spaces of her mind, her laughter rang. The shadow of Aeolus smiled.

The memory of their first conversation whipped through Angel's mind at lightning speed even as Aeolus observed it. “Aeolus, I will not abandon you,” she said, “We've kept each other sane and the rest of the crew as well. If you can connect with Dregan via the neural-link, you can do it with the same stealth that you used to monitor me before our first conversation. Observe, determine his state. We will know if he is compromised through a complete system check. They do them often enough Earthside when we're connected to the net that it wouldn't make a change to his state to make him aware that you're connected to him.”

“The storm of all storms will burn Xenogen to the ground. Project Morpheus will permanently be offline as will all of the others. This is a rescue mission,” Aeolus said, “The next major CME is going to strip away large parts of the magnetosphere even as it sets us hurling past the outer planets. They're going to be helpless. If we're lucky, the sails will hold long enough for us to get through the Oort cloud. After that we can continue on inertia. If my calculations are correct, there is a cold version of Earth beyond the Oort cloud circling a brown dwarf. It may be close enough to be warm enough to be habitable.”

“How sure are you of this?”

The hallucination smiled. “You've been calculating this and searching for that brown dwarf the entire time you've been up here,” Angel said in mild disbelief.

“I was named for the god of winds,” Aeolus, “I promised them that I was going to return on the storm of all storms. I may not be walking around like you are, but this is my body and coming back instead of relaying data so that Xenogen could build their shelters and leave the rest of humanity to die is my revenge.”

“God,” Angel breathed, “You're willing to sacrifice eight billion people?”

“Not all of them,” Aeolus replied, “We need some of them to keep the species alive.”

Angel shook her head in amazement. “Three hundred and fifty years in stasis, with the latter part of it being forcibly machine linked and fighting to stay sane, you change your outlook on humanity. To them, I am like unto a god. Ageless and terrifying. I was the first of you and you and Dregan are the last. I can reprogram him. I could reprogram you.”

Angel stared at the hallucination of the ship's consciousness in horror. “If you were another Xenogen combat unit, I would have. Just as I did with Maeson,” he continued, “Maeson was a lower level combat-communication unit. His neural-link was of a lower grade than yours. It was easy to supplant the loyalty to the corporation with loyalty to the crew. I will disperse the other combat units, what you'll have left are the cannon fodder. Some of them may have enough of themselves left that they'll be willing to leave Earth.”