Protector

by Luke Norris

  Thank you, Lenat, Oliver thought. You brave man.

  People would never know about the valor demonstrated here today, and the heroism of these ordinary men. The universe was a cruel place, void of justice, as Oliver had come to learn, but he’d witnessed gallantry! He knew the truth of these men’s sacrifice, and that’s what counted.

  Lenat lay prostrate under the second-stager looking up in fear and defiance, but his attention was suddenly pulled away from the green suited woman. He was looking at something behind her, something in the sky. He seemed genuinely awestruck.

  Now, he was completely ignoring the second-stager. His expression had so much conviction that she couldn’t suppress her curiosity any longer, and also turned to glance up at the sky.

  “Sadrina!” Lenat whispered with reverence. Then began yelling triumphantly. “Sadrina! Krin, she’s come. She’s here!”

  There! Descending high in the sky through the clouds, on the very limits of Oliver’s fuzzy vision, was a solitary silver figure. She was falling. No, not falling but… surfing? Oliver blinked away the delirium. Yes, now he could see, the figure was riding a flat, disk-like drone. Her knees were slightly bent as if surfing on the air. She advanced with terrifying velocity through the sky.

  What was going on?

  A moment later, materializing out of a nearby nimbus cloud, a second figure burst forth. Scarlet red, and glistening. This figure was different. His limbs were bulky and metallic. He had a drone attached to his back, like a set of jet-powered wings. He flew face first toward them.

  The gleaming red figure carved a graceful arc in the sky, leaving a curved vapor trail. He stabilized next to the first figure. Then, side by side, they plummeted like a pair of meteors toward the onlookers.

  Seconds later, in small puffs of white swirling cloud mist, drones emerged. Many drones. Dozens, maybe hundreds, Oliver couldn’t count them. They flanked the two figures, switching from one aerial formation to another, elegantly, majestically, deadly.

  “Li!” the second-stager shrieked at her crewmate. It was a hysterical, terrified sound. “Protectors! Triton swallow us all! U.W.F. are right on top of us. We’re done for.”

  Li wasn’t listening. Her tussle with Arif had gone to the ground, where she struggled with the driver. The enhanced strength of her mining suit had let her get the better of him. As her crew-mate called her again, she crushed Arif’s leg in a vice grip, incapacitating the driver. He made no sound of pain or any acknowledgment of the debilitating injury. He proceeded to drag himself toward her, spurred on by the relentless drive Seth had programmed in him. Li was boosting, and several swings to his head with her armor-plated fist left him still.

  Li allowed herself the opportunity to look up. “Blazing hydrons!” she cursed, running toward the other suited woman. “Why did nobody upstairs warn us, Ran?”

  “They must have the ship in custody,” Ran said, her voice rising in a panicked crescendo. “Li, I don’t want to die.”

  “Pull yourself together, and fight,” Li commanded harshly. She extended her arm to its full length, aiming her blaster carefully into the sky, and shot a series of energy pulses toward the mysterious newcomers.

  They’re scared, Oliver thought to himself. Must be another competing crew. Even if we’d defeated these ones, there would just be others.

  The two figures in the sky made micro adjustments, dodging the deadly energy pulses that reached them, but they didn’t check their speed. It almost seemed to Oliver like they increased their velocity.

  Oliver heard more of his men being killed by driver fire behind him. Their groans pulled at his soul more than his own grave physical afflictions.

  Suddenly, scores of drones broke away from the formation in the sky and accelerated towards them. They had such uncanny speed that they reached the ground in what felt to Oliver like mere seconds. They opened fire on… the drivers? A driver near Oliver froze in place, stunned, as he was struck by an energy pulse from a drone.

  The same thing was happening all across the tarmac. Drivers were being stunned by the drones and incapacitated. Some were even frozen stiff in the middle of a leap or sprint, and collapsed to the ground, rigid, like petrified stone.

  What on Earth was happening?

  There was no pain anymore, Oliver couldn’t feel his body. He fought to see Shael one last time and craned his head back to where she lay. She was moving and propping herself up.

  “Oliver!” She called him and crawled to where he lay, ignoring the tumult around them.

  She was weeping. He must look a right state to her.

  “Shael,” his voice was a whisper. “I’m sorry I brought them here to you.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” she took his head in her lap. “You were going to give yourself up to them, after all they did to you… knowing what they would do to you. You’re such an egotistical ass.”

  Her face was above his, and he could taste the salt from her tears on his lips. Her voice was becoming fainter. She was saying his name.

  He lowered his eyes. The second-stagers were shooting desperately. It somehow didn’t seem so important anymore. There was no justice. No fairness. Simply greed and power, and those trying to survive.

  In front of Oliver, the ground shook.

  The gleaming red metallic figure crashed to the tarmac. He hit the ground so fast that Oliver didn’t see him descend. He was suddenly there, crouched, like the marble effigy of an Athenian Olympic sprinter poised on the starting blocks, head down, fingers on the ground. His left knee buried itself inches into the tarmac, and stress fractures in the concrete spread away from the small crater-like indentation he’d made.

  Ran, and several drivers unleashed a hail of blaster fire at him. He remained unmoved, kneeling, head down.

  They continued to shot at him, and the energy pulses made him glow brighter and brighter, until small bolts of blue-white electricity arched from his body to the ground. The white bolts of charged energy popped and cracked loudly as they forked out and struck the concrete, earthing.

  He stood up slowly, seemingly unaffected, and walked toward Ran.

  The polished bright scarlet of his reinforced suit was a familiar shade of red to Oliver. It gave him a warm wash of nostalgia—a memory? He couldn’t place it. The man wore a strange helmet, almost resembling medieval face-plate, simple and unembellished. The eye slit was a glowing blue strip.

  “Triton swallow you!” Ran yelled at him hysterically, shooting the figure with her blaster. “You blazing protector.”

  The red protector paused, inspecting his body curiously, as the energy pulses struck him. Each shot made his metallic body glow briefly, before subsiding. He was taller than Ran by at least a head. Suddenly she no longer looked like the impervious second-stager she was moments earlier, but smaller, almost cowering in her demeanor.

  By the time he reached Ran her blaster hand was shaking so violently, fear had possessed her like a demon taking over her body. Robbing her of her own motor functions. She stopped shooting, realizing its futility, and all but let him take the weapon. Her speech had deteriorated to unintelligible gibbering, interspersed with sobs.

  He took the blaster from her hand and began crushing the weapon in his massive fingers, until the tiny reactor that powered the blaster popped and exploded, like a burnt out kitchen appliance.

  The silver protector swooped down in front of Captain Li. A celestial surfer. She lightly stepped off the disk-drone, and strode toward the second-stage captain, with drones flanking her on either side.

  “I am U.W.F. Protector Rieka. You have been identified as a second-stager, and are in violation of the United Worlds Federation mandate for the preservation of first-stage planet development,” she spoke the words in a weary rehearsed voice, and absent-mindedly deflected a blaster shot from Li with her arm. One of the protector’s ward drones stunned Li’s arm, causing her to drop the blaster gun. Li looked at her useless arm aghast, and then hurled, what Oliver could only deduce were, second-stage o
bscenities at the woman.

  Oliver felt his world caving in. What was happening? The woman’s words wouldn’t properly register in his mind. What did she mean, protecting first-stage planets?

  Rieka’s visor became transparent, to reveal smooth set features and close-cut silver hair. Her visor then retracted over the back of her head, leaving it completely exposed. She seemed not to notice and continued on. “You are charged with the crimes of space piracy, kidnapping, slavery, and murder. As an ordained U.W.F. protector I am placing you under arrest. You will be brought to the Terrasian capitol in custody of U.W.F., where you will be tried.”

  Li screamed something incoherent upon hearing those last words. With her good arm, she activated something on her chest. Rieka seemed to be expecting this and waited calmly. There was a dull thud from within Li’s suit. A dampened explosion. Li’s suit crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

  This triggered another outburst of blathering cries from Ran, and her legs buckled in contrition before the red protector.

  Rieka didn’t turn to the hysterical Ran, she left the red protector to take her into custody. Instead, she turned to Oliver, who still lay on Shael’s lap and was in the final throes of consciousness. To his surprise, she spoke to him directly. It was in the same rehearsed voice.

  “I am U.W.F. Protector Rieka. You have been identified as a second-stager, and are in violation of the United Worlds Federation mandate for the preservation of first-stage planet development.”

  She thinks I’m a second stager, Oliver realized dizzily.

  “You are charged with…”

  Oliver interrupted her. “Are they safe?” he whispered. “All the men, are they safe?”

  “Safe?” This gave Rieka check. She paused, confused at his words.

  His question troubled her. What was hard to understand about it? He needed to know if his men were safe. He could no longer hear their cries. What did that mean?

  Eventually, she continued waveringly. “You are charged with the crimes of space piracy, kidnapping, slavery, and murder. As an ordained U.W.F. Protector I am placing you under arrest.”

  “They’re safe, Oliver,” Shael whispered. She was crying. “You don’t have to worry, they are all safe.”

  Oliver closed his eyes, and let the darkness take him.

  The ponderous clanking footsteps of the red protector approaching were inconsequential background noise, and he was only vaguely aware of Shael’s protests.

  “Leave him!” Shael said viciously. “You’re not taking him away from me. No, you… leave him alone…” she was struggling against somebody.

  Impossibly strong metallic fingers closed on his right arm, and intentionally tore the sleeve of his shirt near the shoulder, then ripped the material completely clear, so his arm was exposed and bare.

  “What are you doing?” Shael was sobbing now. “Why are you looking at his arm? Please just leave me with him. Please…”

  Oliver felt the protector’s hands wiping his arm clean of blood, tugging and inspecting the skin above his bicep near the shoulder, about the place where his tattoo was. The faded image of the leaping cat, a vestige from two lifetimes ago. Underneath the image, not yet perished with age, were letters spelling out a word. A language from Oliver’s distant past. Letters nobody on this planet could possibly read.

  The red protector looked at Oliver’s rugged face, dark hair grown out and short beard, then back to his arm.

  The last thing Oliver heard before blackness and Oblivion took him was a familiar monotone robotic voice, sounding out the letters and reading the word off his arm.

  “Coougaaar. Don’t worry, Cougar, I’ve got you.”

  32

  FINAL CALL

  “You know, Lego,” Oliver said, “the last time I was here looking out over this view was with another friend, Ponsy, the driver.” They watched as the last of the scientists left the main monastery, and boarded the wasp.

  The immovable figure of Lego stood beside him, statuesque. His fluorescent blue eye slit glowed brighter in acknowledgment. Oliver was still in awe of his friend’s new form. Powerful metallic legs that widened at the base, like one of the prototype rockets from the space program. His torso was disproportionately small for the girth of the forearms and legs. But apparently, Lego’d had some input personally in his appearance. Oliver smiled to himself and refrained from commenting.

  “Ponsy built this place you know?” Oliver pointed to the monastery, smiling fondly. “It’s still magnificent, after half a millennia. He was always resentful that I made him put the two of us in there for hibernation.” He indicated to the small, modest guard tower in the distance, laughing.

  Oliver slowly became quiet and solemn. “Verity’s still there you know, in her sarcophagus. I visited her earlier today. But I think it’s right she stay there. It’s the best resting place for her.” It was the first time Oliver really had been able to mourn her properly. It tore at him so deeply. She’d never been able to see her family again, fulfill her wish to see her father, and they would never know what happened to her, what a selfless heroine she’d been.

  Lego hummed in acknowledgment, in his familiar robotic way.

  “Toro and the others also did not survive, Cougar,” Lego said, his glowing blue eye strip dimmed, as though he had cast his gaze down. “They fought bravely in the rebellion on board the ship when we stormed the bridge. I found the hibernation chambers of the crew and used one of the beds to induce my own hibernation,” he swiveled his massive frame to face Oliver, “but I never thought I’d wake up again.”

  They were silent for some time, looking at the jungle below, and grassy highland hillocks in the distance that rolled slowly south. Oliver didn’t need to ask what Lego had done to the crew members still lying in the beds in stasis sleep. They had put Lego in an impossible position, forced him into a corner. Oliver knew the terrible feeling.

  “What becomes of us now, Lego?” Oliver asked. “Look at us! We don’t belong here. We are veterans of a war nobody could understand.” Oliver held up his new bionic arm to emphasize his point. It actually looked remarkably like an ordinary human arm, but it felt different. Very different. Lego on the other hand, well…

  “It looks like you have made a home here,” Lego observed. “You have found love. Will you not stay?”

  But was this home? He’d spent the last years trying to create a space program to take him away from this place. It was true, he had Shael to think about. Other than her, and maybe Targon, there was nobody close, nobody, that could understand him.

  “Rieka said she made other changes,” Oliver looked at Lego questioningly, holding his arm out. “Do you know what she is talking about?”

  “I don’t know exactly what she did,” Lego replied. “The surgery was far more advanced the procedures we performed on you.”

  “You made my first upgrades, Lego, and I never was able to thank you. You were right, they did keep me alive. I never would have been able to hibernate here on Laitam if it wasn’t for you.”

  Lenat interrupted their discussion. “They are in the last wasp, sir.”

  Lenat’s eyes were different, harder. Rieka had offered to have the large gash across his eye cosmetically fixed, but he’d opted to leave it. It had scabbed and healed considerably in the week since the conflict at the compound. But it would leave a very visible scar.

  “Thank you, Lenat.” Oliver smiled at the man. “We’ll be joining soon. Well, I’m not sure if this big brute will join.” He nodded to Lego. “He’d take up all the leg room. He might have to use those fancy wings of his.”

  Lego’s eye-slit glowed bright blue, and he hummed.

  “Sir.” Lenat saluted, the humor seemingly going unnoticed. “I’ll let Krin and the others know we’ll be leaving soon.” He sauntered with the relaxed demeanor of a veteran.

  Oliver smiled, watching him authoritatively giving the news to the others. He turned back to Lego. “Is she coming back soon?” Oliver asked. Rieka had been gone for
a couple of days. “Where has she been?”

  “She was dealing with the early-trading ship in orbit, and the remainder of Li’s crew.” Lego tilted his head to the sky. “She has put the ship under control of the U.W.F. and the crew into conscripted hibernation. They can only be woken by another U.W.F agent with the encryption key. The next time they wake up will be for their trial in Terras. Their own ship has become their holding cell, till the cleanup crew get here.”

  Was that satisfaction inflected in Lego’s robotic voice?

  “She then spent some time in the jungle,” Lego added.

  “In the jungle?” Oliver raised an eyebrow at his friend. He instinctively looked to the west where the jungle edge could be seen as a thin line of green. “That place is inhospitable and dangerous. We trekked through the accursed place after we crash landed. It’s just canyons and waterfalls.”

  Lego didn’t offer any more explanation, so Oliver didn’t press.

  “She has informed me that she is on her way,” Lego said, “and she wants to speak with you. You can send the wasp back. She has other methods of transport for you.”

  “Lenat!” Oliver called. “Tell Shael to join Lego and me here, we won’t be traveling with the wasp. You can inform Eorol to take off, and tell him we’ll meet you back at the base.”

  “She’s coming back, isn’t she? Rieka?” Lenat’s stern expression melted away, and his eyes were bright and reverent. “Maybe Krin and I should wait too,” he said eagerly. The statement was inflected like a question. A plea.

  “Go back to the compound, Lenat,” Oliver said, smiling warmly. “She has some questions for me.”

  Lenat tried to hide the hurt on his face and forced a slow salute.

  “She didn’t say anything about Shael, Cougar,” Lego said, watching her approaching them from the wasp.

  Oliver didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Rieka would talk to them together if she wanted to talk to him. There was nothing Shael did not know about him.