And there, suddenly visible amid the shoulders of the other Throne Marines, was a man in a much deeper black Throne Marine power suit, walking with a jaunty lightness to his step. The gold flashes and stars at the man’s shoulders and upper arms told Anders just what position the man held, and who he was.
Commander-General Cread.
13
The Black Rose
Sector 1, Imperial 1
>>Network Intrusion Denied!
“Dammit!” swore the woman with the threadwork of black veins running over her face and down her neck. They weren’t tattoos; they were the effects of the bio-sciences of the once-green garden worlds, and they had saved the clone assassin formerly known as the Black Rose.
Or Rose, as she now preferred to be called.
Not that anyone will ever remember my name. This very uncharacteristic thought rolled through the assassin’s mind, and she even felt a twinge of something. A feeling that she had not been trained to have. Sadness? Regret?
Whatever. The woman in the black-and-gray service suit, the same as any of the elite Throne Marine staffers who lived here on Imperial 1, shook her head. It didn’t matter now if no one remembered her. She had, after all, spent her whole life in the shadows as Commander-General Cread’s go-to weapon of choice.
Assassinations. Executions. Interrogations. She had done them all, and she had been good at it. She had been designed to do it, after all.
Currently, however, the most feared killer in all of the Reach of the Golden Throne was not feeling her status. Perhaps because she no longer enjoyed the alpha-bronze access she once had, ever since Cread had tried to kill her for failing him. It could also be due to the fact that she was standing in a dank, dark, rounded metal corridor, one of the accessways for refuse to come pouring through, by a control panel that should have allowed her to open the service hatch door in front.
But it was more the frustration that annoyed her than her tiredness, or the smell of this place. She might have been locked out of every throne mainframe, but Rose had been trained in how to break them all. At least one of her personal collection of code-breaker viruses should have been able to get through a simple service hatch.
>>Access Error! Network Intrusion Denied!
Once again, the flashing orange words appeared in her personal data-field, eliciting a toothy growl from the woman—also a sign that she was far removed from the ice-cold murderess she had once been. Back when she had been garroting the throats of bandit warlords and disrespectful politicians, she would never have allowed herself even a moment of anger, anxiety, or in some cases, satisfaction.
“What is going on!?” she demanded, rifling through her virtual data-wallet to find instead a much larger and more complex code-virus. “Dammit,” she swore again. She had been hoping to save this one for much later, and closer, to her target. She knew that with the likes of the Imperial 1 mainframe, with its dynamic processing and multiple planet-sized simulated intelligences, that she would only get one shot with each virus. As, within minutes, each one would be consumed into the code-library to form virtual antibodies against further attack.
The only thing in her favor, she reckoned, was that she was just one lone person using just one code-virus out of an entire galaxy. She was banking on the fact that the Imperial 1 mainframe would hopefully lose sight of her small intrusions against the gigantic domain and mainframe attacks that were probably being hurled at them by the Ilythians and the Mondrauks and the Proximians.
She hoped, anyway…
Whatever. No sense in waiting. She applied the chosen virus with a simple tap of the data-crystal on her cuff to the door panel.
>>Heartbreaker.exe Activated… Working…
“Something’s happened,” Rose realized suddenly. Was she thinking slower now that she had emotions?
But, as she watched the Heartbreaker virus near completion, she realized that what she had guessed must be true. There was no way that a simple service hatch down here in the bowels of Imperial 1 would be running high-level security unless the entirety of Imperial 1 was in lockdown.
They’ve found me out, was her first thought.
But no, she discarded it as soon as it arrived, because if the Throne Marines had found her, they would have already sent down a complement of warden drones or flooded the tunnels with noxious poisons or something.
They’ve found the Sul’Daar missile, was her next, more alarming thought. She quickly swiped through her data-field to get to her low-frequency link with the distant transmitter she had installed as a backup precaution in the belly of the envoy cargo ship.
>>Envoy-class Ship/Inventory/Main Hold/Ancillary Items…
>>Live Feed?
>>Y
Rose found the live footage from the small drone-transmitter, and it showed the long, sarcophagus shape under the hump of old canvas and webbing at the rear of the main hold, traditionally the place for smaller items that did not need to be directly hooked up to the ship’s main inventory.
Phew. It was still there. The proportions of the Ilythian planet-killer missile were still the same, and when she focused her scan settings a little, they read the same energetic frequencies they had before. It was still stable, and it hadn’t been deactivated.
She could still use it, in other words. A slow, wicked smile spread over her face.
>>Network Access Granted! Service Door Access!
There was a cheery ding in front of her as the Heartbreaker did what it set out to do and scrubbed itself from the temp memory of the local mainframe.
The service chute opened, revealing the metal ladder leading up to the section of the Imperial 1 known as the Inner Halls…
And the Inner Halls, Rose knew, were the last public space before the personal demesne of the Eternal Empress herself.
14
Rescue Mission
Sector 0, Sol
“Their projected course doesn’t take them back to Port Helena,” Moriarty confirmed in Anders’s personal field.
Anders, Dalia, and Patch were stepping as lightly and silently as they dared down one of Earth’s subterranean passageways after the Throne Marines that had stolen Jake from them. At their feet crunched bits of rubble and broken brick from where the Marines had broken into New Eden’s tunnel system, and Anders knew that were he to take his visor-suit helmet off, he would still smell the smoke.
But a lot of them got out. A lot of them got out, Anders told himself. Anders had to tell himself. It was, at least, a fact that he was sure of thanks to the furthest reach of Moriarty’s scanners, which had predicted that, of the thousand or so estimated residents of New Eden, at least seven or eight hundred had survived.
“Seven or eight hundred,” Anders muttered under his breath. That meant that almost a fifth had been shot down by the Throne Marines. One fifth, killed for absolutely no reason whatsoever, as the commander-general had called off the assault on New Eden as soon as he had recovered Jake.
“Boss?” It was Patch, his voice questioning as he looked back at Anders, who had forgotten to turn off his suit-to-suit communicator as he muttered.
“It’s nothing,” Anders whispered, nodding to the Void engineer that it was all okay, even if it really wasn’t, before passing him to crouch next to where the Ilythian knelt by the bits of rubble that looked out to the deep cutting beyond that ran through the trees.
Anders’s visor compensated for the sudden glare of sunlight, and then for the booming rasp of thrusters as another of the Throne Marine transports rose, slowly, into the air before turning in place to follow its predecessor.
“Heading in the opposite direction of Port Helena?” Anders frowned.
“Affirmative, sir,” Moriarty said.
“Can you get chatter?” Anders asked, knowing that Moriarty—even though he was only located in a singular data-node—was very proficient in hacking and tracking communications.
“Already working on it, sir,” Moriarty’s cultured, debonair voice returned, and there was
a small chime as a line of green code scrolled down one side of Anders’s holographic HUD inside his visor.
>>Outcast Power Suit...
>>>Communications Systems...
>>>Scanners and Telemetry…
>>>Command Override/Moriarty.exe…
Anders’s entire forward screen washed with green before isolating into several different electromagnetic signals, each one glowing stronger or weaker depending on the ‘noise’ of the chatter.
“We have our own hacked throne signatures, which makes it easier, but I will need to find a backdoor,” Moriarty said.
>>Scanning…
Luckily, however, whenever there was a force of a few hundred individuals like the current Throne Marine strike group, and with so many different sorts of logistics from armaments to transport to medical and orders flying around, there was always bound to be a weak link in the chain, and Moriarty found it in the form of one particular Marine, sending an unsecured message while no one was looking to his wife back in Port Helena.
>>Isolating Signal…
>>>Running Moriarty.exe…
“We’re in, sir,” the simulated intelligence said, sounding pleased with itself, even.
“All I want to know is how Jake is, and what they plan to do with him,” Anders growled as multiple lines of hacked communications started scrolling along at the bottom of his visor—everything from general flight controls to the banter that occurred between soldiers.
“Filtering, sir,” Moriarty said, before there was another dull chime as the information appeared.
THRONE MARINE STRIKE GROUP ALPHA
Commanding Officer: CREAD, Ld. Gen.
Mission Parameters:
Isolate and capture J-14.
Current status: Throne property held in isolation. Vital signs low but stable. Fluctuating neurological activity. Multiple minor physical traumas.
Disrupt and eliminate insurgents.
Return J-14 to the Gene Temple.
“They’re taking him to the Gene Temple,” Anders groaned. He had never seen it, of course, but he had heard of it. The cult-center and laboratory of this sect of the Gene Seers—the ones that allowed humanity to regrow limbs and stay forever young—was talked about in hushed terms by the Throne Marines that Anders had once been part of. Even though no one knew where it was—and none had guessed that the Eternal Empress had hidden it far, far away on Old Earth—it was still a place that was wondered about.
There, the Gene Seers perfected their science of the biologically possible. There, they tried out all sorts of things before they were sent anywhere.
All sorts of things, Anders thought. Like messing around with splicing human and alien DNA...
Like creating the LOHIU, the being that Anders, Dalia, Patch, and Jake had originally come to save.
“We got coordinates for it?” Anders growled.
“We do, sir, from Commander Malady of the Outcast Marines,” Moriarty confirmed. Anders shared his information over a grim look with Dalia beside him. The last Throne Marine transport was lifting off behind them as they spoke, and Commander Corsigon was aware of every second that passed being a second that brought Jake close to the same group of people who had experimented on him for decades.
“And I think I know a way to get there quickly,” Anders said, remembering something. “Or at least, someone who knows how to get there quickly.”
15
The New Commander-General of Earth
“I said, stand down, Architrex!”
Jake awoke to a pain in his head, and the sounds of an argument in his ears. For a moment, he couldn’t work out just who was talking, as he couldn’t see them. Instead, all he saw were strange washes of blue light everywhere he turned his head.
“Look, he’s waking up. We haven’t got time for this, Commander-General!” said a new voice, a deep, heavy sort of a voice that sneered and sounded slimy, somehow.
Blue. Jake blinked, remembering. It didn’t matter how much he blinked, the blue was there whenever he opened his eyes. Just as it had always been there before, too, when he…
“I will tell you what you have got time for, Architrex!” shouted the first speaker, whose voice was filled with murderous rage. “I am the commander-general. I am the second to the empress herself!”
Blue. Like when I was growing up, Jake thought bitterly. Not that he had done much ‘growing up’ given he had spent most of his formative years in and out of bio-containment tanks, which were filled with blue field energy or blue nutrient liquids…
No. I can’t be back here. I can’t…
“The second?” the smooth yet slimy voice of the Architrex countered. “Strange. I thought that there were two commander-generals. And that each of them was equal to the other, and equal to me, the Primarch of the Gene Seers?” Even in his panic, Jake could hear the heavy tread of the man’s footsteps as the leader of the genetic doctors paced whatever room was outside.
“And might I remind you that the Eternal Empress has given me my own orders. I have to equip the LOHIU and J-14 together!”
I am not J-14! I am Jake! The youth felt panic rip through him. This was all like it was before. Like it was before the LOHIU had managed to release him from his containment on a distant border world. He never had a name before Commander Corsigon had given him one. If his parents had ever given him his own name, it had been conditioned out of his memory by the Gene Seers. Jake had resigned himself to being a number for the rest of his life, to being woken by stimulant chemicals whenever his ‘doctors’ had wanted him to perform some trick for them, or for them to take his blood, before he was sedated back to sleep again.
Jake knew now that this had all been a part of the Eternal Empress’s program of genetic cloning—a science that was supposed to be outlawed. She had created, from a mixture of his DNA and others, the psychic clones that could act as transmitters for the Archon’s power, releasing enough energy to destroy entire cities, even worlds.
And I was a part of that, somehow. Shame and frustration welled up inside him as he opened his mouth to silently scream.
Jake felt a sudden reverberation through him and the field that contained him.
“Dear stars! I thought you sedated it!?” said Commander-General Cread.
It!? I am not an it! Jake once again howled, for there to be another sudden shake from the field and the tube that contained him.
“He has the PK-suppressive dose appropriate for his size and estimated powers!” the Architrex said.
“Well, give him double, for stars sake!” Cread sounded exasperated as Jake howled his anger, and the containment unit that he was trapped within started to shake, despite the powerful forcefields that supposedly held him, or the drugs that would have sent anyone else into a coma.
That’s right! You should be scared of me! Jake howled inside his confinement, just as there was a sudden punch of heavy tranquilizers into his system. Jake felt his thoughts starting to lose their angry edge, and for him to start feeling dull, heavy…
No. He fought to maintain his grip on his anger. He fought to keep it, as one of the few things that was even his anymore.
“More! Give it more!” Cread demanded, for there to be another wave of exhaustion reaching Jake’s mind.
I’m not an it… His thoughts started to feel fuzzy and distant. It was hard for Jake to keep them in the order they were supposed to be…
“You see? You can barely do your own job, Architrex!” the voice of Commander-General Cread crowed victoriously. “Do you really think that I am going to stand by while you almost allow one of the most prized tools of the Golden Throne to kill us all!?”
“Pfagh!” the Architrex snarled his own anger at the commander-general. Jake’s thoughts started to smooth into a tranquil blackness.
“Your opinions count for nothing here in this temple, Commander-General. I have my orders from the herald himself, which came from the Eternal Empress herself. I am to supervise the connection of the LOHIU and the J-14 subje
ct. You have played your part already, Cread, and you have played it badly.”
Jake felt the angered voices growing more and more distant as he dove into deep unconsciousness. Only fragments remained.
“Then let me remind you of something else, Architrex,” he finally heard the commander-general say, and his voice was polite, urbane, and cold. “Let me remind you that I now have a full brigade of Throne Marines inside your facility, and I have all the security codes for the offensive satellites of Earth. You are relieved of your duties, Architrex Vasad Aug’Osa, for incompetence.”
“What!? You cannot do this!”
“Seize him! Remove any weapons and data-nodes from the Architrex, orders of the new Commander-General of Earth!”
16
Cart
“You want to what!?” snarled Hazan, glaring at Anders and the others, still panting from their desperate run back through the ruined township of New Eden, following the mass of refugees as they made their way through the tunnels.
“Your man said that he had scouted out the Gene Temple, and that he got there via your carts,” Anders repeated, thumping the chest of his suit to try and get the oxygen filter to work a little better. The necro-robot Malady had done a lot to make sure that these power suits were fit for purpose, but they were still ancient. The orange warning light blipped to a comforting green again as the oxygen filter appeared to work.
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