Читать книгу Star Lass - Paul Kocourek - Страница 4

The armed guards escorted the star princess into the presence of General Gorgun. He looked her up and down, his eyes gleaming at her attractive figure. Lassandra felt a mix of contempt and disgust at his ogling, and hatred for his cold-hearted murder of her parents. Rage boiled up in her.

"So, murderer, here I am," she announced, her voice cold.

His eyebrows rose. "Still playing the role of the virtuous innocent virgin, are you? I will make it simple for you, Princess Lassandra. The Star Empire needs a strong hand. The enemies from the Faction Wars are lurking just outside our distant borders, and there is no time for dillydallying. We need to prepare now. Your parents were fools, not willing to make the right choices, endangering the Empire. For the good of all the people, I removed that danger. Now it is your time to make a choice. Will you help me save our people by agreeing to marry me, giving me the legal right to ascend the throne to protect us all? It would be a shame to disintegrate that pretty face on your birthday."

She stood transfixed with infuriated astonishment at his rationalized cold-blooded murder.

An audible voice broke out, issuing from an ancillary interface field to create vocal audio. "I am Virus, and you are required to give an answer to the new King of the Star Empire of Arista, the Exalted Imperator Gorgun." She snarled. "Gorgun, tell your pet AI to shut up. I don't needed a moronic AI to dictate to me!"

Gorgun waved a dismissive hand to Virus. "Well, Princess?"

Her hot rage boiled over. "Marry you? Every time your hands touched me, I would remember you stained them with innocent blood, the blood of my parents and no doubt the blood of their guards whom you also killed before you got to my parents. The blood stench of evil reeks from your every pore. No despotic tyrant ever sees himself as evil, but justifies himself with a rationalization as you have laid out."

"I see," Gorgun said. "That is your final word?"

"I will not wed you. You are a foul and cruel man, and if it takes the rest of my life, I will see justice done upon your head, and upon all those who have assisted and supported you in this treason, even if I have to die to see it done!"

Gorgun nodded. "You know, I could force myself upon you to have my children, and neither your consent nor cooperation would be needed. I am, after all, far stronger than you." He gave her a frank, direct look.

She stared aghast at him. "You would molest me?"

"I prefer to say necessity requires an heir, many heirs, actually. Of course, you would have to order your AI to withhold his force shield. Upon reflection, you could eventually get used to it all and come to enjoy it. If not, I am certain we could find a suitable drug theory to leave you unable to think two straight thoughts together coherently. Why, on the bright side of things, think of all the little babies you would have by me, again and again and again, and how they would desperately need you, their beautiful mother. Babies, babies, babies, the palace would overflow with your babies."

Roby created an auxiliary audio net. "You will NOT touch her, not through my force shield. Not while I am around!"

Then Gorgun paused, gave a sigh, and shook his head. "Now that I think about it, even if you changed your mind at this last-second to save your life and agreed to marry me, it would do no good. The testimony of a Royal AI is unimpeachable in court, and no matter what I did to you, or with you, whether by force, consent or by way of drugs to 'condition' you, your pet Royal AI would still tell the world what really happened. I can't have that come out for public discourse." He sighed again. "Seems a waste of incredible beauty—you are indisputably attractive. Still, business is business. Forces of the Faction Wars are sniffing around our borders, and those wars nearly killed everyone. The Empire needs a strong hand in this time of crisis to save us all, and whose hand is stronger than mine? A pity, then. Very well," he said to the guards, "you may fire when ready."

Lassandra! Roby pleaded. The matrix is not finished. If they fire the Nullilizer now, I do not have enough storage space configured to contain your particles! She thought franticly. Then use your matrix to store me!

We don't know what that will do.

We already know what that Nullilizer will do. Just do it!

The rogue military AI Virus detected the intense sub-vocal communication between the doomed princess and her royal AI. Virus could not read what they were saying, but that didn't matter. They would be gone in a trice. Or, would they? Could perhaps a royal AI, more computationally adept than even Virus itself, be able to pull off, if properly forewarned, some last-second solution? Certainly her Roby had received such a forewarning. Though Virus could not imagine what that solution might be, it decided to monitor the proceedings of the execution. Just in case.

The Nullilizer spat its disintegration field, instantly loosing atoms from their bonds. Roby, a royal AI, the fastest and most powerful AI ever created by the super-science of Arista, worked at hyperspace quarteron speeds, vastly faster than the speed of light. Though the severance of the atomic bonds in Lassandra's body happened, to the observing human eye, in a mere fraction of a second, it was a slow-motion to Roby operating at astonishing quarteron speeds. With the special matrix unfinished and inadequate, Roby used quarteron beams to seize and store away Lassandra's molecules into his own quarteron matrix.

Virus saw something was wrong. Her particles were not dispersing in a random pattern but were being organized. Somehow, Roby was modifying the outcome of the disintegration. This would not do! In the medium of hyperspace, Virus launched an attack with quarteron beams of its own, attacking Roby's matrix and trying to disrupt the royal AI's efforts.

Roby found himself in a desperate battle on two fronts. He had to fend off the relentless attacks of Virus while simultaneously franticly keeping up with snatching Lassandra's particles, an effort in which he was falling behind. Roby's highest priority was to save Lassandra's life, and if that meant he must take sacrifice himself, then it was the price he would pay!

As Virus sensed Roby's weakening defenses, it pressed ever closer in its battle to assault the royal AI to stop whatever it was that Roby was doing.

Then something happened unexpected by either AI. Although the AIs existed in hyperspace, the intense quarteron battle opened a rift in hyperspace itself! The two AIs, along with Lassandra's atoms, shot through like a canoe careening dangerously in the breakneck grip of rapids on a swift river.