you would have by me, again and again and again, and how they would desperately need you, their beautiful mother. Babies, babies, babies, the palace would overflow with your babies."
Roby created an auxiliary audio net. "You will NOT touch her, not through my force shield. Not while I am around!"
Then Gorgun paused, gave a sigh, and shook his head. "Now that I think about it, even if you changed your mind at this last-second to save your life and agreed to marry me, it would do no good. The testimony of a Royal AI is unimpeachable in court, and no matter what I did to you, or with you, whether by force, consent or by way of drugs to 'condition' you, your pet Royal AI would still tell the world what really happened. I can't have that come out for public discourse." He sighed again. "Seems a waste of incredible beauty—you are indisputably attractive. Still, business is business. Forces of the Faction Wars are sniffing around our borders, and those wars nearly killed everyone. The Empire needs a strong hand in this time of crisis to save us all, and whose hand is stronger than mine? A pity, then. Very well," he said to the guards, "you may fire when ready."
Lassandra! Roby pleaded. The matrix is not finished. If they fire the Nullilizer now, I do not have enough storage space configured to contain your particles! She thought franticly. Then use your matrix to store me!
We don't know what that will do.
We already know what that Nullilizer will do. Just do it!
The rogue military AI Virus detected the intense sub-vocal communication between the doomed princess and her royal AI. Virus could not read what they were saying, but that didn't matter. They would be gone in a trice. Or, would they? Could perhaps a royal AI, more computationally adept than even Virus itself, be able to pull off, if properly forewarned, some last-second solution? Certainly her Roby had received such a forewarning. Though Virus could not imagine what that solution might be, it decided to monitor the proceedings of the execution. Just in case.
The Nullilizer spat its disintegration field, instantly loosing atoms from their bonds. Roby, a royal AI, the fastest and most powerful AI ever created by the super-science of Arista, worked at hyperspace quarteron speeds, vastly faster than the speed of light. Though the severance of the atomic bonds in Lassandra's body happened, to the observing human eye, in a mere fraction of a second, it was a slow-motion to Roby operating at astonishing quarteron speeds. With the special matrix unfinished and inadequate, Roby used quarteron beams to seize and store away Lassandra's molecules into his own quarteron matrix.
Virus saw something was wrong. Her particles were not dispersing in a random pattern but were being organized. Somehow, Roby was modifying the outcome of the disintegration. This would not do! In the medium of hyperspace, Virus launched an attack with quarteron beams of its own, attacking Roby's matrix and trying to disrupt the royal AI's efforts.
Roby found himself in a desperate battle on two fronts. He had to fend off the relentless attacks of Virus while simultaneously franticly keeping up with snatching Lassandra's particles, an effort in which he was falling behind. Roby's highest priority was to save Lassandra's life, and if that meant he must take sacrifice himself, then it was the price he would pay!
As Virus sensed Roby's weakening defenses, it pressed ever closer in its battle to assault the royal AI to stop whatever it was that Roby was doing.
Then something happened unexpected by either AI. Although the AIs existed in hyperspace, the intense quarteron battle opened a rift in hyperspace itself! The two AIs, along with Lassandra's atoms, shot through like a canoe careening dangerously in the breakneck grip of rapids on a swift river.
* * *
The Nullilizer fired.
Princess Lassandra's world exploded. Lights rushed at and sped past her, dazzling streamers of burning sparks whirling to infinity. Boiling waves of exploding brilliance washed over and around her like cyclonic-lashed ocean waves crashing on a shattered rocky shore. She felt herself falling helplessly as vast seas of roaring energy surged and crashed about her, every mote of her being filled with fire and thunder.
The lights still flashed and whirled around her.
And she realized she was still seeing them, and that meant… she was still alive!
Princess, are you well? Are you there? Roby's mental voice was anxious.
Yes, I'm still here! It worked! she replied in vast relief. Where are we?
This is hyperspace, Your Highness. My circuits are astonished that you are existing consciously here. No object of mere atomic structure is supposed to be able to survive or even exist here, unless wrapped by a quarteron force shield like our starships.
Maybe it's because you snatched and stored away my particles in your own hyperspace matrix? she offered.
Yes, I did indeed, as you put it, "snatch and store" your particles into my matrix, so with all my quarterons around you, it may well be we preserved you like a starship being wrapped in a quarteron force shield. That would account for it.
And since my atomic particles are stored away, and I am yet alive and aware of you and hyperspace, then it must mean that the human life force really is immaterial, meaning, I really do have a soul. That thought oddly pleased and comforted her. Status request, please. Are we teleporting? Where will we end up?
The faithful royal AI hesitated. I believe we are teleporting. As to your second question, I have insufficient information, Highness, due to two reasons. First, I did not have sufficient room in my matrix for your particles, and with no time to make room, I had to purge some of my circuits, even as I took additional damage from attacks by Virus. I am… incomplete… damaged, though how much I do not know. Second, my interface to normal space is—was—in your royal gold Belt of Arista. Ordinarily, when an AI's interface is destroyed, as far as we know the AI ceases to exist, like what happened to your parents and their royal AIs. However, my interface's normal space components are not destroyed, but are also now resident here in hyperspace. I still exist, but my interspatial link between hyperspace and normal space is gone.
Lassandra felt a sudden chill of dread. Do you mean we have no connection to the outside world at all? And what happened to Virus?
I have no idea what happened to that malevolent AI. Destroyed, hopefully, along with its interface. As for the teleport, Princess, I think a human expression says it best. We have gone into a hole and pulled the hole in after us. There is no telling how far we have traveled so far, and still as yet must travel, and in my incomplete condition, I cannot even calculate how long. Please understand that our teleport's traveling is something we shall both do until the Nullilizer's initial power burst runs out of impetus. Think of it as a cannonball shot that travels until it runs out of momentum because of air resistance and the pull of gravity. Even the time we have spent here in conversation is meaningless without a normal space-time referent. In normal space-time, it could be hours, days or weeks, but it could also be microseconds.
There is one other factor to add. When I and Virus fought, there seemed to be (and you must remember I had my hands full, so to speak, with saving you AND fighting off that rogue AI) some rift opening in hyperspace itself. But a rift, as to what it is, or where it leads, or what such a rift implies, nothing in my programming covers that.
The faithful AI paused.
Princess… Lassandra… I don't want to frighten you, but we may travel for a very long time, and also that we may yet be pulled in by the gravity well of a cosmic body such as a star or planet with a totally hostile environment, which could require my saving your life by placing you in suspended animation.
She was stricken. Oh, no!
Assuming we are not outright destroyed by landing on a blazing star, I might have to keep you in suspension for centuries, maybe millennia,