The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Return to Avalon

Melanie frowned as she looked out of the observation deck's main window down into the large chamber Avalon used as a central meeting room, dominated by a large, circular table in its very center. Shining down from their settings high into the chamber's stone ceiling overhead, florescent lights filled the chamber with a warm, natural light.

That light spilled generously over the chamber itself, a modern looking conference room fitted in sleek black and brushed silver. It also possessed all the latest in psionic conferencing technology, including holographic displays, communication links to every part of Avalon's territory and networking connections to Avalon's central A.I., Merlin. Technology that was virtually ignored by the uneasy-looking individuals currently sitting around the table.

The leaders of the surviving independent psi nations of Calgary were, in turn, looking astonished at where they at found themselves, angry at the abrupt summons to this place and cautiously optimistic about what brought them here to begin with: the chance to utterly destroy the Brotherhood here, in Calgary. But, more importantly, they looked simply exhausted and battered, clothing tattered, faces shadowed with fatigue. 

They had, somehow, survived the Brotherhood's attempt to retake the city following the fall of Preacher and the subsequent rebellion that erupted in the prairie city's streets. There was haunted hope in their sunken eyes, hope that the end of the rebellion was at hand and that their lives would no longer be controlled by the Brotherhood!

And so they had come at Raven's summons, to this place: Camelot, home of the renegade Avalon nation.

"Merlin, have all the leaders on our lists arrived?" Melanie asked softly, her British accented voice barely raising an echo in the heavily insulated observation deck.

From deep in his home in Camelot's belly, armored by multiple hardcore and psionic shield layers, Merlin stirred as the lone gunman A.I. quickly scanned first the conference room then his own database.

"Only twelve of the original fourteen independent nations are represented, Melanie," Merlin's smooth, masculine voice replied from a hidden speaker somewhere in the observation deck's walls. "I don't detect Kenneth Martin of the Shady Lake nation, or Marie-Louise Goutier of les Habitant. This would confirm our data that those two nations were destroyed during the uprising."

"That it would," Melanie conceded, frowning as she scanned the nervous faces of the twelve remaining nation leaders. "Damn, they look scared."

"Wouldn't you be, all things considered?" Justine pointed out from her curled up position in a chair set close to a bank of instruments. The Italian softwire was ignoring the shifting displays to also observe the uneasily shifting leaders below them in the conference room.

"A war against the Brotherhood that they were losing badly and pushed up against the wall by encounters with Raven's renegade lone gunmen comrades, Katengaur and Sonja." Justine frowned. "The world was rapidly becoming a very unfriendly place!"

"Until Raven's summons to Avalon," Melanie finished, tapping her bottom lip thoughtfully as her thoughts raced. Why had Raven summoned the leaders? What was going on? The last they had heard Raven had been captured by Katengaur and her allies and all contact had been lost.

"That world has swiftly sprung past their level of comprehension!"

Justine nodded as she opened her mouth to add something to Melanie's observation. But, before the beautiful Italian psionic could say a word, Merlin suddenly spoke up.

"Be alert, Melanie, Justine," the A.I. said, a note of urgency in the artificial voice. "My external scans have revealed a Normal ground vehicle is approaching the Avalon perimeter, slowing as it approaches. I would suggest that, calculating its loss of speed and direction, it plans on stopping in front of the above ground complex!"