Chapter 8.0:
Allies
Amy looked at her reflection in the mirror while the timer on the sonic shower ran. She could hear it beep intermittently as the dirt and grime of the day was rinsed off with intense sound waves. Briefly, Amy wondered what could possibly be the purpose of getting clear when she might very well die in battle.
Amazon quarters were spartan to say the least, since most living quarters on Amazon were highly mobile, a defence against the planet’s creatures, storms, and falling comets. Real estate in safe zones was always at a premium, and only essential structures were permanent fixtures on Amazon.
Sure, Amy had the ability to sense what others were thinking, and to use this advantage to help others, but she was a warrior after all--not just any warrior, either--an Amazon warrior, and practically a princess at that. Her mother Riva was the chair of the council.
Almost nothing about the council’s recent decisions made sense to Amy. Why would the Amazon council want Speed, an offworlder untested in battle, to participate in an enormous space engagement that would decide the fate of Amazons everywhere. Why were the Amazons trusting their future to a weakling human boy? An even greater mystery: why was the council suddenly all buddy-buddy with the Vampires?
“We’re coming with you,” Fiero had said to Speed as though it had already happened, years ago, and they were just now getting around to telling Speed about it. Amy had tried to comfort Speed before he met with the council, but she wasn’t really sure how to go about it, or that he deserved any comfort. If they lost the coming battle, it might very well be Speed’s fault.
Amy wished she could have just jumped inside the head of one of the council members to discover what had been said in that secret meeting. Unfortunately, Amy was not the only Amazon with fierce mental powers, and the council meetings were always shielded by a warrior with the most advanced psychic discipline.
Amy envisioned herself in the black and red tunic of a council member, with the emblem of the gold arrow emblazoned across her chest. One day…
Just as Amy imagined herself on the council, images of Speed and Fiero in the future flitted into her thought, like red sand blown into the room by a storm. Amy’s visions almost never came to pass exactly in the way that she predicted, but they always did mean something.
Amy saw Speed and Fiero opposed to each other, across huge distances of the universe. She saw Fiero enthroned on the flagship of the vampires, Speed perched atop an enormous moon covered with turrets, spikes, lasers, and surrounded by smaller fighting vessels. Then, impossibly, Amy saw herself seated not on the council, but next to that weasle Fiero. The images were too blurry for her to see what she was doing there.
Then it occurred to Amy that Fiero would have reached maturity while she and Speed had been training on Amazon. He was now a full-fledged Vampire. She wondered if he would look different, or if a year was just another tick of the clock.
“Speak child, I do not have all day. I cannot project my thoughts into your head, so you will have to speak eventually,” a voice declared through the speakers of the com unit.
The voice belonged to her mother.
Amy realized that her mirror had transformed into a com unit, and her sonic shower had ended, along with her visions of Speed and Fiero.
“You are due on the primary battle cruiser in one hour. Don’t be late,” Riva chided.
“On my honor, I wouldn’t miss this chance to fight for our people in the world,” Amy said.
“I know, young one, but life is full of battles. You will not lack for opportunities to gain renown. Try to enjoy your youth, while it lasts,” Riva said in her most motherly tone.
This tack was uncharacteristic of Amy’s mother, the most ambitious woman she knew. Amy wondered if something was bothering her mother. Perhaps the council did not expect the battle to go in their favor. Riva’s mother saw Amy’s worries written on her face.
“Worrying won’t help anything, child. You will not be in danger aboard our ships, since they can jump to another system before being destroyed.”
“Only if they are not being prevented from doing so by some alien technology.”
“Prudent thinking, but your worries do us no good at this point. We are committed to battle, on the rising of the Amazon sun.”
“Very well mother, I will see you on the hour.”
Amy saluted her mother as the com screen became a plain mirror once again. Amy caught a glimpse of herself saluting before she returned to her bed, where she laid her black uniform the night before. As Amy looked at the uniform, she knew that it would be used in battle. There was no longer any question.
The future did not seem to bear down on Amy. Rather, it seemed like a door through which she had the opportunity to walk. It was a good feeling, and she was ready for battle.
Then, Amy’s hands rushed up to her temples to meet a blinding headache. She could feel a vein in her forehead pulse rapidly as blood rushed around her pounding skull. Amy screamed.
She had just seen the most horrifying vision she could ever recall. Amy saw herself, older, in a uniform similar to the one that lay on her bed, but she was beaten bloody, and covered with bruises. Amy saw herself in more pain than she had ever experienced, but she could tell that this was one of the visions that would certainly come to pass.
Amy was too old in the vision for it to be the upcoming battle with the Machines. That battle was too close at hand to become a vision. This dream was terrifying. Amy saw herself surrounded by horrifying creatures which looked as though they might once have been Amazon… or perhaps human like Speed. The creatures themselves were surrounded by enormous, grinding machines which produced grisly weapons of tearing and burning.
Amy heard the creatures shouting a word she had never known:
Rolang!
Rolang!
Rolang!
Amy had never seen such perversions of nature. They didn’t appear to have wills of their own, but each moved in big crowds with the others. In the vision, the crowd was gathering around Amy, forcing her into a corner. Then, all at once, they lunged at her shouting “Rolang!” at the tops of their gurgling voices, and the vision went silent.
As Amy’s alarm sounded, she awoke, and realized that she had been dreaming. But, from the conversation with her mother, to her visions about Speed, Fiero, and the horrible human-like creatures, she remembered every detail. Even though Amy’s visions did not always come to pass, these were of a sort that she would never forget.
Amy felt that if such things would happen, that it would be her job to guide future events along the path of good. She would have to watch over those two useless boys somehow, or at least warn them that the future might not be as rosy as the Amazons and Vampires planned. She hoped with all her heart that the battle ahead could be won.
The Launching
It was the largest gathering of Amazon ships that Amy had ever seen. Apparently her mother and the council had called in the fleets of the outlying colonies as well. There were nearly six hundred ships in all, with three large battlecruisers. Amy’s shuttle was flying from the planet below to one of these battlecruisers as Amy tried to predict what would happen in the battle ahead.
Just as Amy’s shuttle was cleared for docking at one of the sleek, silver battlecruisers, which looked like enormous versions of her small, personal craft, the Vampire asteroids began jumping into the system.
Green whirlpools formed in space where the Vampire asteroids emerged. Amy knew that such trips required enormous amounts of vapor, and for this trip, the Vampires would be donating that vapor in order to transport the combined fleet to the Machine central nebula.
In fact, her mother Riva had been frustrated at the arrogance of the Vampires in assuming that they would command the Amazon vessels. Apparently Nero felt that he should be in charge of the battle, since his vapor-jump technology was making the combined fleet possible.
Amy had heard that this dispute was resolved when the Amazons threatened to withdraw their p
articipation. Amy doubted that the solution was that simple, but, however it happened, the Vampires were cooperating.
Neither the Amazons nor the Vampires could afford to transport all of the outlying Amazon vessels, so the fleet was obliged to wait a full three Amazon years, or one Human year, for the fleet to be assembled at the Amazon homeworld, the closest major planet to the Machine nebula.
Miraculously, the Machines had not attacked Amazon as the fleet gathered. Riva had confided in Amy that she believed them to be flying into a trap, that the Machines would surely have some secret weapon waiting in the central nebula.
Amy couldn’t be sure, since her powers were useless against the minds of the machines. She often tried to project her mind into the nebula in order to get some idea of what they were planning, but Amy had only met with failure. How could she hope to penetrate the minds of machines which were not minds at all, and indeed seemed to be more dead than alive? The Machines were a mystery to Amy, a frightening mystery that could very well mean the end of her life as she knew it.
Strangely, Amy had some luck occasionally contacting the drone battle moons, which were run by the robots Speed called GoodBots. Amy found contact with these robots uncomfortable, even painful, but it had yielded some useful information. For one thing, the robots did have independent minds, but they made big decisions as one group. Amy’s knowledge of this structure might prove useful in the battle, but she wasn’t sure how.