Abysm, page 32
Caleb’s sister Isabela is taken in for questioning. In order to gain her trust, Graham reveals to her that her father was an investigator for Intelligence and was killed 20 years earlier by a resistance group planning to overthrow the Federation government. Her father’s apparent abandonment of his family was a feint to protect them. After he was killed, the government covered up the incident.
On Messium, Kennedy is headed to a meeting when the aliens attack and is trapped under falling debris. She is rescued by a passing stranger—who turns out to be Noah Terrage—and they seek shelter. While her injuries heal they study the aliens’ interference with comms and find a way to circumvent it. Kennedy sends a message to Miriam.
The Alliance launches an offensive to retake Desna. While the battle rages in space, Malcolm Jenner and a special forces team rescue the Desnan governor and his family. The Alliance fails to retake the colony. Meanwhile, an explosion takes the life of EA Prime Minister Barrera. In the wake of his death Marcus Aguirre—who arranged Barrera’s murder—is named Prime Minister.
Devon Reynolds uncovers alterations to the records used to frame Caleb and Alex for the HQ bombing. At Richard’s request he and a group of hackers leak the evidence to media outlets.
Upon seeing the news, Graham Delavasi refocuses his efforts to uncover the conspiracy. Suspecting his deputy, Liz Oberti, he uses Isabela to set a trap. Oberti is arrested but refuses to provide any intel.
The EASC Board meets about the Messium attack, where Miriam shares Kennedy’s method to thwart the comm interference. Admiral Rychen readies a mission to drive the aliens off Messium.
While Richard and Miriam discuss Alex’s name being cleared, Richard’s husband, Will Sutton, arrives. In an effort to help expose the conspiracy and end the 2nd Crux War, he confesses he is an undercover Senecan Intelligence agent and puts Richard in touch with Graham.
Following a heated confrontation with Will, Richard departs to meet Graham on Pandora. Together they interrogate a man suspected of smuggling explosives into Vancouver. The agent gives up Olivia Montegreu, and they formulate a plan to ensnare her.
Miriam confronts Liam over his mismanagement of the war and alien invasion. Enraged, he strikes her, but she refuses to be intimidated. Marcus reaches out to his alien contact, entreating that he now has the power to cease human expansion and pleading with it to end the offensive, but the alien does not respond.
Olivia visits a subordinate on Krysk, but finds Richard and Graham waiting for her. In exchange for her freedom, she gives up Marcus and the details of their conspiracy. Before they part ways Graham gives Richard Will’s intelligence file.
Malcolm is sent to assist Admiral Rychen in the Messium offensive. As the battle commences, Kennedy and Noah flee their hideout in an attempt to reach a small military station across the city. They witness horrific devastation and death while crossing the city, but successfully reach the station and repair several shuttles to escape.
The Alliance ships struggle to hold their own against a powerful enemy. Malcolm retrieves the fleeing shuttles and learns the details of the situation on the ground. Faced with the reality that Alliance forces will eventually be defeated, the fleet retreats to save the remaining ships for future battles.
Graham returns to Seneca to inform Federation Chairman Vranas of the conspiracy and the false pretenses upon which hostilities were instigated. Vranas begins the process of reaching out to the Alliance to end the war. Isabela is released from protective custody and returns home to Krysk to reunite with her daughter.
Based on the information Olivia provided, Miriam goes to arrest Liam, only to find he has fled. Richard similarly accompanies a team to detain Marcus, but on their arrival Marcus declares everything he did was for the good of humanity, then commits suicide.
After studying Will’s Intelligence file and realizing his husband had acted honorably—other than lying to him—Richard pays Will a visit. Following a contentious and emotional scene, they appear to reconcile.
The EA Assembly reinstates Steven Brennon as Prime Minister. His first act is to promote Miriam to EASC Board Chairman and Fleet Admiral of the Armed Forces. On her advice he signs a peace treaty with the Federation.
Olivia approaches Aiden Trieneri, head of the rival Triene cartel and her occasional lover, and suggests they work together to aid the fight against the invaders. On Atlantis, Matei Uttara’s alien contact tells him Alex and Caleb are returning and instructs him to kill them.
Kennedy and Noah reach Earth. Kennedy’s easy rapport with the military leadership spooks Noah, and he tries to slip away. She chases after him, ultimately persuading him to stay with a passionate kiss.
Liam arrives at the NW Regional base on Fionava. He injects a virus into the communications network and hijacks several ships by convincing their captains he is on a secret mission approved by EA leadership to launch clandestine raids on Federation colonies.
Alliance and Federation leadership are meeting to finalize war plans when an alien contacts them to offer terms for their surrender. It involves humanity forever retreating west behind a demarcation line, cutting off 28 colonies and 150 million people.
The leaders don’t want to surrender but recognize their odds of victory are quite low. Then Miriam receives word that Alex is alive and the aliens’ ability to send reinforcements has been destroyed. They decide to reject the terms of surrender and fight. On Miriam’s order their ships open fire on the alien forces.
TRANSCENDENCE
The Metigen War is in full swing as Alex and Caleb approach Seneca. Caleb initiates an Intelligence Division protection protocol, and he and Alex join Director Delavasi at a safe house as several actions are set in motion.
Alex contacts Dr. Canivon to discuss the feasibility of enriching human/Artificial connections, only to discover Sagan is already under attack by the Metigens. The Alliance is defending the independent colony, and Alex asks her mother to ensure Canivon and her Artificial, Valkyrie, are rescued and brought to Earth. Caleb reaches out to Isabela, who divulges the truth about their father’s profession and his death. Caleb confronts Graham about it, and a heated argument ensues.
On Earth, Kennedy works with the Alliance to manufacture the material the Siyane’s hull transformed into, now called ‘adiamene.’ She implores Noah to seek the help of his estranged father, a metals expert. Noah agrees, but the request introduces tension into their relationship. Devon tries to restore communications to Fionava and NW Command, while elsewhere at EASC Devon’s boss, Brigadier Hervé, is contacted by Hyperion, the same alien Marcus Aguirre was in league with.
Alex, Caleb, Miriam, Richard and Graham converge on a secluded, private estate on Pandora, and Alex and Miriam reunite in a more tender encounter than either were expecting. Alex reveals the full extent of her plan to the others, including that she intends to spearhead it by being the first to neurally link to an Artificial. Even as they meet, agents of the Metigens seek to stop them—the safe house on Seneca is blown up, and the assassin Matei Uttara pursues them to Pandora.
When Miriam breaks the news to Alex that her former lover, Ethan Tollis, died in an explosion, she flees to grieve in private. Caleb goes after her, but it intercepted by Uttara. A bloody fight ensues, during which both men are gravely injured. Alex arrives on the scene and shoots Uttara in the head, killing him. Caleb collapses from his injuries.
Noah meets with his father, Lionel, in a combative encounter. Despite the tension between them, Lionel agrees to help with the adiamene production, and they travel to Berlin to meet Kennedy at the manufacturing facility. Once Lionel begins work, Noah confronts Kennedy about her motives for forcing a reunion with his father, but the matter isn’t resolved.
Caleb regains consciousness, and he and Alex share an emotional moment in which they both come to realizations about each other and the strength of their relationship. Miriam learns Liam has attacked the Federation colonies of New Cairo and Ogham with nuclear weapons, and she is forced to travel to Seneca to smooth things over with Federation leadership. Once Caleb is healed enough to travel, he and Alex depart for Earth. On the way, he contacts Mia and asks her to come to Earth, though he can’t yet tell her why.
Miriam meets with Field Marshal Gianno and Chairman Vranas, and in a surprising move tells them she won’t take any active steps to stop Liam until after the Metigens are defeated, as they must concentrate all their efforts on the alien invasion. She then tells Gianno about Alex’s plan. Gianno selects the fighter pilot, Morgan Lekkas, for participation, and recalls her from Elathan, where Morgan was helping to defend against a Metigen attack.
Alex and Caleb reach EASC Headquarters, where they are reunited with Kennedy and Noah. Alex meets with Dr. Canivon, who was safely evacuated off Sagan, and informs the woman she wants to use Valkyrie as her Artificial partner in the project they’ve dubbed ‘Noetica.’ While monitoring the war effort, EASC’s Artificial, Annie, discovers her programming has been corrupted and suspects Hervé of tampering.
Miriam returns to Earth and meets with Prime Minister Brennon. She tells him they are losing the war—they and the Federation are suffering too many losses and will run out of ships and soldiers long before the Metigens do—then pitches Noetica to him.
Mia arrives in Vancouver. Alex and Caleb ask her to be a part of Noetica, together with her Artificial, Meno, and she agrees. With time running out and the Metigens advancing, Noetica is approved and Devon Reynolds and Annie are selected as the last participants.
Alex is the first to undergo the procedure Dr. Canivon has devised to allow a linking between an Artificial’s quantum processes and a human mind at a neural level. Caleb and Miriam each contend with fear and worry about her well-being, and Miriam comes to recognize how much Caleb cares for Alex.
Alex awakens to her and Valkyrie’s thoughts clashing and overrunning one another. She struggles to regain control of her mind and deal with the flood of information, and with Caleb’s help is able to do so. She informs her mother the Metigens are deviating from their pattern and heading for Seneca and Romane in massive force.
While the others undergo the procedure, Alex and Miriam meet with Brennon, Gianno and Vranas. Alex makes the case that the Metigens are coming for Seneca and Romane, and Miriam and Brennon decide to send the EA fleet to defend the two worlds.
On Liam’s cruiser, the Akagi, Captain Brooklyn Harper begins a mutinous campaign to stop Liam. She enlists one of her teammates, Kone, and a comm officer, who slips a message out to Col. Malcolm Jenner saying Liam’s next target is Krysk and asking for intervention. Then she and Kone sabotage the remaining nukes on the Akagi.
Malcolm is defending Scythia from the Metigens when he receives Harper’s message. He passes it on to Miriam, who informs Gianno. Gianno claims she can’t spare the ships to defend the colony if the Metigens are almost at Seneca.
Caleb is furious the military won’t defend Krysk, where his sister and niece live, and makes the gut-wrenching decision to try to rescue them. Alex gives him the Siyane, saying it’s his only chance to reach Krysk in time. After a tearful parting, Caleb leaves, but not before recruiting Noah to go with him.
Alex, Devon, Mia and Morgan, and their Artificial counterparts, Valkyrie, Annie, Meno and Stanley, gather to strategize. They name themselves “Prevos,” taken from the Russian word for “The Transcended,” and begin to realize the extent of their new capabilities. Alex shares a touching goodbye with her mother before leaving with the fleet for Seneca.
Devon remains at EASC, where he and Annie will oversee all fronts of the war, and comes to terms with the fact Hervé is working for the Metigens. At the same time, Hyperion confronts Hervé about Noetica. Because she wants the Metigens defeated, Hervé does not reveal to Hyperion that she has secretly placed a ‘Kill Switch’ in the Prevos’ firmware, which when used will sever their connections to the Artificials—and also likely kill them.
Graham, Vranas and Gianno discuss the coming attack and express concerns over Noetica. When Graham returns to his office, Will Sutton—Richard’s husband and a Senecan intelligence agent—is waiting on him and bears mysterious news.
Liam arrives at Krysk and attempts to use his nukes to disable the orbital defense array. They fail to detonate, and he has Kone brought before him to answer allegations of sabotage. When Kone refuses to confess, Liam executes him. Harper witnesses the execution via a surveillance camera; devastated, she prepares to try to blow up the ship. On the colony below, Isabela and Marlee are downtown as the attack begins. They seek refuge in the basement of an office building, but become trapped when the building collapses.
Alex reaches Seneca and Admiral Rychen’s flagship dreadnought, the Churchill, and she and Rychen discuss strategy. Meanwhile, the Noetica Artificials discuss using neural imprints of notable military officers to supplement their and the Prevos tactical capabilities.
Caleb and Noah get to Krysk to discover the capital city under attack. The ongoing assault makes it too dangerous to land and find Isabela and Marlee, so Caleb comes up with a new plan. He draws Liam’s ships away from the city, then, trusting the adiamene hull is strong enough to hold the Siyane together, crashes it through the frigates and into the belly of the Akagi.
They fight their way through the ship to the bridge, where they encounter Harper, who agrees to help them. She distracts Liam, then when Caleb and Noah open fire, disables his personal shield. Caleb kills Liam. Caleb, Noah and Harper rush back to the Siyane and escape just before the cruiser crashes.
Noah and Harper help Caleb dig a tunnel to where Isabela and Marlee are trapped, freeing them and several other people. Harper elects to remain in the city to aid with rescue efforts. Noah decides to find transportation back to Earth, eager to return to Kennedy, and Caleb heads for Seneca, and Alex.
The Metigens arrive at Seneca in overwhelming force. Alex, on the Churchill with Rychen, and Morgan, on the SF flagship with Gianno, take charge of the battle, employing a number of surprise weapons and tactics to gain an early advantage over the Metigen armada.
Several hours into the battle, Alex argues as it stands now they will not achieve complete victory. She convinces Miriam and Rychen to allow her to break into one of the Metigen superdreadnoughts, where she and Valkyrie believe they can hack the core operating code. She hitches a ride atop a recon craft, experiencing a thrilling and terrifying journey through the heart of the battle.
Inside, Alex finds a cavernous space, with power conduits and signals running in every direction, and goes in search of the engineering core. When she hears her father in her head during the search, Valkyrie confesses that the Artificials’ search of military neural imprints turned up one for Alex’s father, taken before his death. Not surprisingly, it was compatible with Alex’s brainwave patterns, so Valkyrie loaded it into her processes to increase their knowledge of military tactics. Valkyrie then enriched the imprint, creating a more fulsome representation of David Solovy’s mind and leading to the unexpected result of his personality manifesting.
When they locate the engineering core Alex immerses herself in it to access the ship’s programming. Valkyrie inserts a subtle logic error into one of the base routines, and they quickly depart the ship.
A major battle also ensues on and above Romane. Malcolm takes a special forces squad groundside, where he meets up with Mia in the governor’s emergency bunker. Mia believes she and Meno have developed a signal beam to nullify an alien vessel’s shields. He agrees to help her test it out on one of the smaller alien ships wreaking havoc in the city. They depart the bunker with part of Malcom’s squad, while the rest of the squad conducts rescue operations. The test is successful, and Mia/Meno transfer the code for the signal to Devon, who deploys it to all the fleets.
They are returning to the bunker when Malcolm receives an order to arrest one of his Marines who was part of the rescue team on suspicion of working for the Metigens. When arrested, the suspect detonates a bomb he’d placed at Mia’s home. The explosion badly damages Meno’s hardware, abruptly severing his connection with Mia and causing her to stroke.
Caleb reaches the fleet at Seneca, and he and Alex enjoy a jubilant reunion. Suddenly Alex collapses to the floor as the trauma to Meno and Mia reverberates through the Prevos’ connection to one another. Once Alex recovers, she, Devon and Morgan decide it’s time to implement their secret plan to ensure victory.
Miriam is overseeing both battlefronts from the War Room when she’s informed Devon/Annie have taken control of both Earth’s and Seneca’s defense arrays. Panic erupts among the military and government leaders. At that moment Miriam receives a message from Alex asking Miriam to please trust in her, and trust Richard. Richard indicates he knows something but won’t divulge what it might be.
Hervé judges it’s necessary to use the Kill Switch, but Miriam shoots her with a stunner before she can do so. Miriam refuses to act against the Prevos, even as they turn the defense arrays inward.
Unbeknownst to Miriam, shortly after the Prevos were created, they uncovered the full Metigen network of spies and assassins. Before leaving Earth, Alex went with Devon to see Richard and gave him a list of enemy agents, and he contacted Graham and Will on Seneca. They formulated a strategy to arrest or kill the agents at the last possible moment, and enlisted Olivia Montegreu’s aid in the effort. Miriam was kept in the dark because revealing Hervé’s involvement ahead of time would’ve alerted the aliens to the fact the Prevos were onto them.
The defense arrays fire—on dozens of Metigen superdreadnoughts hiding cloaked above the major cities of Earth and Seneca. Armed with massive firepower as well as the disruptive signal beam Mia/Meno developed, the superdreadnoughts are destroyed. The Prevos had picked up the stealthed vessels hours earlier, but again, revealing them too early would have tipped their hand.
