The Final Wars Begin (Final Wars Trilogy Book 1) by S. A. Asthana

Author:S. A. Asthana [Asthana, S. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12: CUBE

> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}

> EMOTION = ecstacy.dat

The symphony was much deserved. The music file hadn’t been played for the past two days. Cube usually listened to those notes on the hour, every hour. The delay had been unfortunate.

Cube’s right fingers danced across the 1.V4’s cockpit’s console as if playing piano keys.

“E d# e d# e b d c a,

c e a b, e a b c;

e d# e d# e b d c a,

c e a b, e c b a.

b c d e, g f e d, e e d c, e d c e;

e d# e d# e e d c a,

c e a b, e a b c;

e d# e d# e b d c a,

c e a b, e c b a.”

The notes were strung together brilliantly. It was one of cellular entities’ few accomplishments, although the composer had written the song for a love interest. That was unfortunate. Humans had always tried to win one another’s affection through inventiveness. A strange phenomenon, this concept of love. Beyond artificial intelligence’s comprehension. Ones and zeros didn’t allow room for matters of that organ, the heart. It was for the best. Love, like religion and symbolism, was a distraction. An impediment to rational thought and productivity.

As the composition streamed along, lights lit up one by one across the white console. The spacecraft’s engine hummed to life. A computerized voice blared over Beethoven’s keys, “Vehicle 1.V4 operational. Please chart course.” A screen on the control panel displayed two coordinates, and a highlighter toggled between them several times before blinking over one. “Destination, Port Sydney. Estimated time of arrival, three hours.”

The craft vibrated and within seconds it was lifting off the sand with thrust. As the landscape shrank slowly outside the cockpit window, Cube tethered its feet to clamps in the floor to remain in place. If it could breathe a sigh of relief, it would. The week had undoubtedly been a long one, but the target was finally in custody. Bastien sat tied in a chair just outside the cockpit’s doorway in the storage bay. A woman sat secured alongside. Both remained unconscious. Cube wirelessly linked to a hundred lunar and Martian databases, and in a split second ran several match queries for the female prisoner. Information instantly returned to its cache:

>NAME: Belle Dubois

>AGE: 32

>CURRENT OCCUPATION(S): 1) Hacker 2) Anarchist

>PREVIOUS OCCUPATION(S): 1) Heir to New Paris

“Very interesting,” Cube noted. Heir to New Paris. Could be useful. General Crone would be much appreciative. A communication ping interrupted, its marker denoting a royal source. Queen Marie.

A difficult conversation lay ahead.

Three seconds later, her face pixelated into a hologram within Cube’s line of sight. The sharp features were crunched together making Marie appear a caricature of herself. Her eyes were bloodshot and trails of mascara ran down her cheeks, their ends blending in with dark lipstick. It was as if she wore a twisted mask.

“How dare you?” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You came into my kingdom and killed my most trusted man.

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