The car finally came to a stop after a long journey to the Centre for Administration, High Procurator’s office. Blue Dawn was waiting inside. This avatar was wearing a different set of clothing to the one that we had left behind in the docks. It was styled like a long dress but this time as white as snow. Along the surface of the dress were sequins of jasper that seemed to fall like teardrops onto the floor.
‘I see your numbers are less than when you left. Am I to assume that they have been killed?’ Blue Dawn seemed in no mood for pleasantries.
Aeniah just scowled and so I replied, ‘one went mad, the other two were lost on the way here.’
‘Then they will be destroyed along with the rest of the Commercial District.’
‘What!’ Aeniah and I shouted in unison.
Blue Dawn smiled, a thick killer's smile. ‘The Commercial District has been a dangerous place over the course of these many years. I needed to keep it alive until my design was completed, but could not allow it to continue beyond that point. I needed it to remain operational so as to connect the docks to where you are now. If I hadn’t done so you wouldn’t have arrived here. Thus the Commercial District has acted as a reliable bridge for that purpose. Now I believe it too dangerous for the facility to continue to exist.’
Aeniah screamed at Blue Dawn, ‘for God’s sake Dawn, these people might be able to be cured. We might find the solution on Hercula. Don’t do this!’
Dawn smiled a smile that had no emotion. ‘It is rather too late for your sentiments. The Commercial District, rather accidentally, had a built in failsafe. The suns are basically fusion bombs. You might have noticed that they were quite a lot darker than they should have been. This is because I have used Ascension’s environmental systems to drain them of enough fuel to continue to sustain fusion. The bombs went nuclear fourteen minutes after I had confirmed your arrival into the Ascension Centre for Administration.’
‘You bitch, you bitch,’ Aeniah screamed at the top of her voice. ‘You killed them all! For the love of God you murdered eight million people.’
Blue Dawn looked at Aeniah curiously and smiled again, this time the smile was wicked. ‘Oh don’t be so dramatic. After over a century with very few resources about half of that population would have died. Infinite Longevity is a pain, but even that would have been overwhelmed by the effects of the Eye of Orion. Or had you not figured that into your equation Corinthia.’
Aeniah no longer seemed the strong figure she had before. She backed away from Blue Dawn with pure terror in her eyes. ‘You mean you know.’ She pulled out her gun and aim it squarely at Blue Dawn. But then her eyes widened. I saw what she was looking at. There were now twenty Blue Dawns entering the room, all dressed identically, except for the fact that these Blue Dawn’s had the very fashionable accessory of a lancer point right at us.
‘Yes, I figured that one out a little while ago. Actually it was when I finally managed to hack Sean. He rather unwittingly supplied me with a copy of your conversation with George.’ Blue Dawn waved her hand across the desk that she was now casually leaning on and a holo recording of our conversation appeared and began to resolve.
‘You think me such a demon Aeniah, but you fail to see the bigger picture. I remember when you were much younger, you understood Ascension. You understood the need for Ascension.
‘Without Ascension the world tore itself apart. It started when your two great nations began to resent the bilateral nature of the colonies. “Owned by all and for the people” they said. But you mighty giants could not understand this. Their greed drew them to war and the weapons they built to ensure their own protection ensured their very destruction. Ascension would have changed all of that. Ascension knows no borders, no divides, it is the very manifestation of equality. Angels and gods working in perfect symbiosis. We were going to make the perfect world.’
‘Your world went wrong Dawn, you fucked up,’ Aeniah roared.
‘I have to say Cornithia that I very much dislike this new attitude of yours. You used to be so polite, so courteous, the youngest general in the world, all green and fresh faced. And yes you are right of course, Ascension went very wrong. But you cannot blame me for that. The Equinox project was the perfect delivery system, we could always have engineered new angels. There was no limit to their production once we gained the capability to clone them. But Carvelle made a mistake. He took the easy option and so did you. If you really wanted a cure you would have let me continue my work. I could have taken back control of everything on Ascension and with the angels at my disposal I could have rebuilt our society. We could have found a way of shutting down the Eye of Orion network years ago. We could have finished our society.’
Aeniah was a ball of fury. ‘I shut you down Dawn because you went mad. Your ambition and your ruthlessness meant that Ascension’s citizens turned to the Eye of Orion more and more to sustain them. You were a poor ruler and so when it was all about to come crashing down, and I feared for what remained of the rest of the world, I shut you down. I had to contain the infection. I planned to return, to right the wrongs that we made. But it took so long for them to regain FTL capable technology. When they finally took their first steps into the stars their world had already ended and so few of the colonies were left. The Eye of Orion is killing them and I will take George to shut them down.
‘I won’t interfere with you again. I wash my hands of Ascension. But if I take George to shut it down, you must promise me that if you continue your goal of the perfect world, you leave the colonies out of it. And Dawn, you need to tell him everything, no more lies.’
The Dawns looked towards one another. They seemed to be communicating in some way. I wanted to know how but they finished before I could ask them and all turned back towards us.
‘Very well. As we understand it, you are the only remaining competent and immunised member of the crew remaining. Therefore it appears that we have no choice.
‘And now for the truth George. The truth is that we found a way of immunising the population of Ascension from the effects of the Eye of Orion a long time ago. Aeniah for example is one of the very few people who chose to take the vaccine which is why, rather ironically, she remains sane. I needed the additional time, and your DNA, in order to fashion a subject capable of interfacing with the alien technology.
‘You see I have been deliberately divulging false information to ensure the completion of my plan. The reason that you are needed is not for some fantastical show of godlike force to the alien technology. Instead your DNA is now sufficiently similar to that found in the artefacts that you will be able to interface with them and so shut them down, and good riddance to them. Now that we are done would you kindly take the command unit from the desk and get over to Hercula to rid me of this pest.’
I waited for her to say more. She seemed the sort of person that needed to gloat about her successes. But I was in no mood for it and so I said, ‘No! I know that you are going to continue with project Ascenion, but there are no people left to experiment on. The angels were freed by dissidents and I want to know why. I also want to know where you are getting new subjects from before I do anything that you want me to.’
All of the Blue Dawns smiled again. ‘Well now, that sounds perfectly reasonable. The Equinox subjects were freed by a group of people who renounced the Promethan Layer and its bad effects. They used a genetic modification contained within a syringe in order to shut down our command and control over the subjects. Their reasoning was that if they disrupted the flow of the Promethean Layer through the citizens by neutralising their supply chain, then the population would undergo a forceful detox. Carvelle of course had them all killed.’
Blue Dawn’s smile grew even more dangerous now. ‘And in response to your question as to where I am going to get more subjects for a second wave of Project Ascension, the answer is quite simple. I have already got them and I got them the same way that we got all of our other citizens: promise them Ascension. Two thousand Xenith class vessels are
en route from the colonies. They will not be permitted to board Ascension until you have taken out the Eye of Orion network. You might consider my destruction of the Commercial District spring cleaning. The infected have now been ninety eight percent disposed of and I am already beginning reconstruction.
‘Oh and one more thing. You might remember your little friend Adrian. Well according to my present security feeds the remainder of the crew has gone insane and he doesn’t have much time left. I am keeping him secure but my avatar has already taken fatal damage. I would run if I were you.’
That was about all the convincing I needed. Blue Dawn had seemed to anticipate my moves and had already produced a command module from the desk. She handed it to me and with an unusual level of mirth stated ‘and since there are so few of you left I can mass transport you to the Xenith vessels interior. Mass transport in three, two, one.’
15