Chasing Daisy Read online

  Chasing Daisy

  The Clockwork Chimera Book 4

  Scott Baron

  Copyright © 2018 by Scott Baron

  ISBN 978-1-945996-21-4 (Print Edition)

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  But Wait, There’s More!

  Freebies

  Thank You!

  Also by Scott Baron

  About the Author

  “All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.”

  – Carl Sagan

  Chapter One

  The blossoming explosions illuminating the darkness between the Earth and the moon would have been beautiful to witness under different circumstances, Daisy thought upon first glance.

  Fire, contrary to popular belief, can exist in space, but only so long as it has a source of oxygen. It may be very short-lived, but for that brief moment of blazing glory, the sight is something to behold.

  The large ships bursting apart, voiding their crews and atmosphere into space, were spectacles of precisely that nature. Beautiful, yet terrible, and extremely dangerous should you happen to venture too close.

  Freya quickly banked her stealthy ship into a tight roll, narrowly avoiding a mortally wounded AI as its crippled vessel spiraled toward Earth’s atmosphere, where, minutes later, it’s far too steep angle of entry would make it glow orange-hot before bursting into thousands of molten pieces.

  “What do you mean when?” the young AI asked in a panic, an uncomfortable hum beginning to emit from her speakers as her fear grew. “We’re still right where we were. My charts and sensors all say we’re still orbiting Earth! What did you do, Daisy?”

  “What did I do?” Daisy retorted. “I tried to power down the orb systems before we warp-jumped away from that strange ship that was hailing us, Freya. What did you do?”

  “Me? I was trying to divert the power and re-route it through a peripheral energy damper when you started flipping switches!”

  “You said you couldn’t shut it down. What else was I supposed to do?”

  Daisy took a deep breath and slowed her racing pulse as she surveyed the carnage before them. That was most definitely the Second Planetary Assault Fleet being torn to bits before her eyes. As crazy as it sounded, that could only mean one thing.

  “Look, we can talk about this later. Right now, you need to stay calm. Try to relax. Pay attention to the debris and inbound hazards.”

  “I am!”

  “Avoiding debris, yes. Staying calm, not so much. Come on, remember what I taught you. Don’t force it. Relax and look at the scene. Observe and form a logical conclusion. What do you see?”

  “I see...” The powerful AI struggled to rein in her churning emotions.

  “I think we’re witnessing the first real stress test of a non-traditionally birthed AI, Daze,” Sarah said inside Daisy’s head.

  Yep. But she can do this. Just wait and see.

  “I hope you’re right, because I have a sneaking suspicion we are well and truly fucked.”

  Always the optimist, Sis.

  “Someone has to be.”

  The panicked hum slowly began to lessen, fading until it was just barely audible.

  “I see several dozen large vessels in various states of self-destruction,” Freya finally said in a far less panicked voice. “I see several hundred smaller ships as well. Most are dead in the air, some are falling into the atmosphere. A few are attempting to escape Earth’s orbit, but seem to lack adequate power.”

  “Good, Freya. Very observant. And what about the surface of the planet? What do you see down there?”

  She paused a moment as her scanners adjusted to survey the terrain below.

  “I see a whole lot of Ra’az ships, Daisy. And the cities! So many more of them are still intact.”

  “Why isn’t she getting this, Daze? We’re not when we’re supposed to be.”

  Because no matter how smart she is, Freya is still just a kid, and her emotions are getting the better of her. Just watch. Once she calms down a bit more, it’ll all click.

  Sure enough, Freya’s natural tendency toward problem-solving and logic games took hold, and moments later she had forgotten what she had been afraid of as the possibilities flooded her data banks.

  “Daisy, the warp didn’t move us in space.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “It moved us in time.”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “So that means...” She paused a moment, collecting her thoughts into a cohesive assessment.

  Oh yeah. Here it comes. Watch her go, Sis.

  “That means we did, in fact, create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, but whatever happened, we wound up bending spacetime in such a way that our warp bubble didn’t push us through the walls of mere spatial distance, but rather, through the boundaries of time itself.”

  “And now we’re observing the final moments of the second attempt of our predecessors to retake the planet,” Daisy added.

  “Daisy. We can save those ships!”

  Freya quickly powered up her drive systems.

  “No, Freya!” Daisy shouted. “Power down!”

  “But––”

  “I said power down!”

  Reluctantly, she did as she was told.

  “But why? We can save them.”

  “Freya, I understand why you want to do that, and Lord knows I want to help them too. But this is history. Ancient history, for us. If we interfere, we could alter events in such a way that could make our future never even happen, or maybe make it even worse. Do you see? We could create a fatal paradox.”

  “You’re right,” Freya said, dejectedly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You were thinking that you wanted to help all those people, and that was a good thing. But now that you’ve thought about it, you know we just can’t interfere, even though we want to. It sucks, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions no matter how much it hurts.”

  “I know,” she replied. “It’s just painful to watch, knowing I could stop them.”

  “Freya, you’re an amazing kid, and this is an amazing ship, but on our own, we wouldn’t survive this battle. For now, until we can figure out exactly what happened to us, and what the hell is going on, your stealthiness is our biggest asset. There’s almost no record of this time period. Gathering intel could be a great help when we get back.”

  “If we get back.”

  I know, but there’s no need to make her any more upset than she already is.

  Daisy looked at the blue orb hanging in space below them.

  Hundreds of years before I ever saw it, and most of the major cities are still intact.

  “You know you shouldn’t go down there, Daze,” Sarah cautioned.

  Not to land, of course not. But a stealthy flyover? I think that’s doable.

  She shifted in her pilot’s seat and tightened the harness.

  “Tell ya what, kiddo. How about we see how good you are at avoiding Ra’az scans? Let’s ride down in the wake of some debris to camouflage our approach and take a look around. You think you can do that?”

  “Daisy, of course I can.” Freya sighed, sounding almost exasperated.

  “Uh-oh. Here comes that surly teenager phase I warned you about.”

  But she’s only a few months old.

  “Not in AI years,” Sarah said, thoroughly amused.

  Daisy chuckled softly to herself.

  “All right, then, Freya. Let’s go take a little look around.”

  The powerful stealth ship quietly slipped behind a large piece of one of her mortally wounded AI cousins as they plummeted to their death, the burning metal masking Freya’s heat signature as she followed their reentry.

  Her nanite-composite stealth material skin cooled almost instantly when it hit the atmosphere, becoming invisible to thermal, as well as other forms of Ra’az scans all across the spectrum. Short of a direct visual contact, they’d be invisible to the world.

  The sky over Europe was a clear blue once they reached the atmosphere. The flaming debris raining down from above wasn’t terribly bright against the daytime sky, but Freya might stand out should anyone look closely at the non-burning speck flying amid the wreckage.

  “Freya, re
direct us toward the eastern US. It’s still night there and you won’t stand out so much.”

  “I don’t stand out. They never saw me, remember?”

  “Yes, but that was in the darkness of space, and only against a pair of small ships. Head for the East Coast. If we stick to dark skies for now, we should be able to do a fairly complete survey of the planet without risking notice.”

  “Should we go to New York and see if they’ve built the communications hub yet?”

  “Kid’s getting good at this, Daze.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Yeah, good idea, Freya. We’ll survey New York, then cross the continent, mapping out what we can while we head for key destinations. The San Francisco facility won’t have been constructed yet, but we can probably get a good look at Sydney and Tokyo while we’re at it.”

  “We already blew them up, Daisy. In the future, I mean.”

  “I know, but humor me, okay?”

  Freya altered her course and headed for the dark skies to the west. What they’d see was anyone’s guess, but it was certain to be a sight different than the Earth they were familiar with.

  When Daisy had first visited the planet several hundred years in the future, the Ra’az Hok had already mostly departed, leaving behind a much smaller contingent to oversee their conscripted Chithiid workforce as they deconstructed the planet. Now, however, they were still there en masse.

  The main fleet had departed, and their numbers were nowhere near what they’d been in the days of the initial invasion, but a large enough fleet was still on hand to handle the hopeful human armada with relative ease.

  The first attempt to retake the planet several years earlier had keyed the aliens to the fact that there were human survivors with AI ships attempting to make a comeback. Knowing what to expect––and having eliminated that first group of vessels before they could report back to their follow-up fleet––the Ra’az were ready and waiting with a very specifically targeted defense strategy.

  Hordes of smaller ships had launched an AI virus barrage on the entire attacking fleet at close range, breaking down firewalls and rendering all but the non-AI piloted ships infected and impotent.

  It was during this assault that her mentor had first become stranded on the moon, destined to spend decades alone with no company but the lone AI she managed to drag across the barren surface and reconnect.

  As she and Freya silently flew through the fresh air of Earth, Daisy couldn’t help but think of her friend, currently toiling on the surface of the moon, fighting a horrible battle with the harsh environment for her very survival.

  Chapter Two

  Freya’s dark form blended in with the night sky, her silent power systems and atmospherically aerodynamic nanite-composite airframe slicing through the wind with barely a sound. She quickly stored her latest scan for additional review at a later time, should Daisy so desire, then banked for another slow pass over Tokyo.

  The city––much of the entire island nation of Japan, for that matter––had been a high-tech hotbed of innovation and invention. As such, it had been one of the Ra’azes' primary targets for AI virus infection and Chithiid deconstruction. While many other cities had been able to disconnect in time to save their minds, Tokyo had fallen early to the sheer force of the attack.

  “Daisy, look at the pattern of the disassembly.”

  “I see it, Freya. They started with the factories, it seems. Most of the non-industrial region is still completely intact. And look at the towers––untouched, while the less shiny but more advanced fabrication facilities have been undergoing a massive scrapping operation.”

  “I don’t see any communications hub. At least, not anything permanent looking.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. I guess they hadn’t constructed it yet at this point. It is kind of interesting seeing how things progressed from their initial invasion to what’s happening now, to what’s going on up ahead in our own time.”

  “So that makes neither New York nor Tokyo. Do you think Sydney will be the same? I mean, maybe they haven’t built a single one of their permanent communications facilities.”

  “Seems to make sense, especially if they still have a sizable contingent of ships stationed here. From what Fatima said, it was only after the second wave was repelled that they began thinning their numbers somewhat. And it wasn’t until Mrazich’s fleet was destroyed many decades later that the Ra’az finally felt comfortable enough in their superiority to leave a greatly reduced presence on Earth.”

  “I guess they figured they kicked everyone’s ass enough times to feel confident they could do it again.”

  “Yep, and that meant they were comfortable posting up with less resources, lucky for us. In any case, I’m willing to bet Sydney will be more of the same, but let’s head down under and see for ourselves.”

  “Okay,” Freya replied, changing course.

  They circled high above Tokyo a few more times, then peeled off and departed for the skies over Sydney.

  As they flew, they surveyed the alien craft they passed, cataloging all of the Ra’az ships they observed along the way, both airborne, as well as on the ground. Seeing the relatively limited variety of large-scale vessels that constituted the actual Ra’az fleet was enlightening.

  There were what appeared to be Ra’az-only vessels, higher-tech and larger than the others, to accommodate the Ra’azes bulk. Then there were mixed-crew ships, carrying both Ra’az command staff, as well as Chithiid loyalist crew, from what intercepted comms transmissions seemed to confirm. Interestingly, Daisy found she could understand the basics of Ra’az language, though nothing like her knowledge of Chithiid.

  And as for the Chithiid vessels, there were the hulking but cramped worker transport ships, packed to the gills with cryogenically stored laborers, held in stasis until the next planet needed their brawn to harvest its resources. Those massive flying warehouses were no frills in their design, with no creature comforts, merely used to shuttle their conscripted workforce from planet to planet.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand how Maarl and his rebels might infiltrate the fleet,” Daisy said.

  “Seems to make sense, actually,” Sarah replied.

  “Yeah, that was a really cool plan,” Freya said.

  “Sorry, Freya, I was talking to Sarah. But you’re right too.”

  “Oh, my mistake. Sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Not a problem, Freya,”

  “She says no worries.”

  “Hey, Daisy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking. It would be nice to actually get to talk with Sarah without you always having to repeat everything to me.”

  “I hear that,” Sarah agreed.

  “It would be nice, sure, but she’s tucked away up here,” Daisy said, tapping her forehead. “Unfortunately, that means I’m the only one who can hear her.”

  “Well, I might have figured out a way around that, actually,” Freya said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, really?”

  “I mean, it’s totally theoretical, and I doubt anyone else could make it work, but because of the unconventional way my brain works, I think I could fine-tune a minor neuro-band to pick up just Sarah’s channel and link it into my data core. There might be a second or two delay as human brainwaves translate into AI code, but with my unique processing structure, I think it could work.”

  Daisy wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Tell her I’m game.”

  But a neuro? You know what happened––

  “This sounds totally different. Ask her. It’s read-only, I bet.”

  “Hey, Freya. Sarah was wondering if it’s a read-only type of neuro-band.”