Ghost of the Argus

by E. R. Torre

  “Yes,” B’taav said.

  Nox shook her head before addressing Inquisitor Cer.

  “Lady, you could do so much better.”

  “You were in touch with the Thanatos,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “Bright girl,” Nox said.

  “You’re with Spradlin? You know where he is?”

  “Better than anyone,” Nox replied. A weary smile worked its way onto her lips. “It’s a bit of a story. How about we get out of the sun before I tell it?”

  Cer and B’taav weren’t sure what to make of the women. Nonetheless, they lowered their weapons.

  “Lead the way,” the Inquisitor said.

  52

  The Earth spun on, ensnared in a metallic spider’s web…

  They walked through the increasingly rocky terrain, their bodies exposed to tremendous heat. They climbed higher and higher up the trail and into the mountains until they found themselves among the remains of ancient structures. They were no more than a series of rusted metal beams whose shape indicated they were once part of a building.

  They climbed on until the rocky ground leveled off. Becky Waters, the woman-machine hybrid, took point. Nox followed a few feet behind, her back to Inquisitor Cer and B’taav. This, they realized, was intended to build trust.

  The group moved into what looked less and less like part of the mountain and more like that ancient building. Finally, they reached an opening and, past it, a dark cave.

  “This way,” Nox said.

  The air within the cave was even more stagnant than that outside. B’taav and Cer hesitated before walking several feet into the darkness.

  “Hang on,” Becky Waters said.

  Inquisitor Cer and B’taav heard the sounds of tumbling switches. Lights came on and revealed the ruins of a metallic corridor. At its end was a large vault door.

  A red scanner activated. It bathed the group in its light before shutting off. Afterwards, a series of latches whirled and clicked. The vault door swung open.

  Becky Waters stepped through the door and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Nox motioned to Inquisitor Cer and B’taav.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “What’s in there?” B’taav asked.

  “Shangri La,” Nox said.

  “What?”

  “We’ll explain in a moment,” Nox said. She grinned. “Don’t worry, we won’t keep you past your time limit.”

  B’taav and Inquisitor Cer looked at each other.

  “Yeah, we know about that too,” Nox said.

  With that, she followed her companion into the darkness.

  They stepped past the vault door. It silently closed behind them and all was momentarily dark.

  A series of dim lights came on. They illuminated the sagging walls of another metal corridor.

  B’taav and Cer followed that corridor to its end before stopping in front of a metal door with even more armor plating than the vault door they just entered. There was evidence of corrosion on parts of it, a patina of extreme age that was unmistakable. A computer panel to the door’s side lit up and Becky Waters put her metallic right hand over it.

  The door noiselessly swung open.

  B’taav and Inquisitor Cer followed Nox and Becky Waters past this door. More lights came on and the duo found themselves on a circular balcony overlooking what appeared to be countless floors stretching down into the heart of the mountain.

  “A hidden base?” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “Pretty common way back when,” Becky Waters said. “Rich technocrats had dozens of places like these hidden away in the deserts and, as you see, mountains. It was how they kept their research secret.”

  “Who did this base belong to?” Cer asked.

  “Doesn’t matter all that much anymore,” Nox said. “The important thing was that it was closest to the city and Spradlin prepared it for us.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The group walked around the circular balcony and to an elevator. It took them down a couple of floors. When they exited, they found themselves in a medical observation room. Glass panels separated them from hundreds of rows of rectangular containers. The two closest to the glass divider were open.

  Recognition dawned on Inquisitor Cer.

  “Stasis chambers,” she said. “Though bulkier than the ones I’m familiar with.”

  “We call them Cryo-Med units,” Becky Waters said. “They were designed to heal while keeping one’s body suspended. Perfect for our long wait.”

  “You’ve been in them since the Exodus?”

  “That’s what you guys call it?” Nox said. “Nice name. Becky and I call it the day everyone took the fuck off and left us to fend for ourselves.”

  Becky Waters noisily cleared her throat.

  “To you, over five thousand years have passed,” Becky Waters said. “To us, it’s been little more than a year.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” Nox said.

  “That’s hardly proof,” B’taav said. “How do we know you’re human and not one of those things?”

  Nox approached the Independent and offered him her arm.

  “You want to take a sample of our blood?”

  “We’re wasting time,” Cer said. “And that isn’t something we have much of.”

  She pointed to the unopened chambers.

  “Are there more of you?”

  “We’re it,” Becky Waters said.

  Both Inquisitor Cer and B’taav were confused by her words.

  “What about Paul Spradlin?” Inquisitor Cer asked. “Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Nox said.

  “What?” Inquisitor Cer said. “The signal sent to the Thanatos… it was verified as coming from—”

  B’taav gripped Cer’s hand. He pulled her behind him.

  “When did he die?” B’taav demanded. “How did he die?”

  “When was a long time ago,” Nox said. “As for how, he was captured, tied down, and cut to pieces.”

  “Who did this?”

  “A group of his ex-soldiers,” Nox said. “I was among them.”

  B’taav reached for his fusion gun. He was about to pull it from the holster when another hand grasped his. It held him tight, preventing him from moving. The hand was Becky Waters’. Despite her bulky metallic parts, she moved like lightning.

  “Easy,” Becky Waters said. “You’ll have to forgive my partner’s blunt manners. They leave more than a little to be desired. Even when she is telling the truth.”

  Inquisitor Cer sidestepped B’taav and Becky. She drew her weapon and aimed it at Nox.

  “Let him go,” Cer said.

  Nox raised her hands.

  “Some bodyguard you are,” she told Becky Waters.

  “I took care of one of them,” Becky said. “You’re more than capable of taking care of the other.”

  “That’s going to be rather difficult,” Nox said. Cer’s finger tightened on her fusion gun’s trigger. “Now.”

  “Then I suggest you do something really outside your comfort zone,” Becky Waters said. “Be polite and reasonable.”

  “Enough,” Cer said. “What happened to Spradlin?”

  “He’s dead,” Nox repeated. “But you use that weapon on me and he’s gone forever.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “General Spradlin died an hour or two before the start of the… the Exodus, as you call it,” Nox said.

  Inquisitor Cer frowned and stole a glance at B’taav. He was just as confused –and curious– as she.

  “His remains are dust but there’s plenty of Spradlin left—” Nox pointed to her head. “—up here.”

  The frown on Inquisitor Cer’s face disappeared, replaced with a sudden awareness.

  “His nano-probes?”

  “Ask me the two questions,” Nox said. “You know the ones.”

  Inquisitor Cer held her gun steady. She again looked at B’taav
. The Independent nodded.

  “How old was Jessie when she died?”

  Nox was silent for several long seconds. And then, a transformation occurred. Her face grew darker, her body tensed. She spoke, but her voice was no longer her own. It was deeper, masculine.

  “Eighty five,” Nox said.

  “What is this?” B’taav said. “Some kind of—”

  “Ask the second question.”

  “Where is she buried?”

  “Outside the Blue Mountains, next to her mother.”

  The darkness on Nox’s face abruptly disappeared and she stumbled back. Becky Waters released B’taav and rushed to her companion’s side.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah,” Nox replied. Her voice was her own.

  “Were those the right answers?” Becky Waters said.

  Inquisitor Cer lowered her weapon.

  “Yeah, they were.”

  The group of four sat at a table, facing each other. They were in a conference room and before a window that looked out at the desert. In the far distance were the remains of the large city. Farther still was the growing sandstorm.

  “Spradlin comes to me, now and again, in visions and whispers,” Nox said.

  “He answered those questions?” Cer asked.

  “Of course,” Nox replied. “I have no idea who this Jessie was or where she was buried.”

  “You heard the questions?”

  “Spradlin was in control but I’m never completely out of the picture,” Nox said.

  “So he’s alive in you?”

  “Just enough to make a real asshole of himself.”

  “We know what Spradlin did,” B’taav said. “How he poisoned Earth and sent humanity away on the Displacers. Where do the two of you fit into this?”

  “I first met General Paul Spradlin nearly three hundred years before the Exodus,” Becky Waters said. “It was before the rise of the Corporations, when we still had nations. He was military, of course, but very much a free agent. Back then I was more… human. Spradlin knew of the coming invasion but at that point he still thought there was a way to defeat the Locust Plague without sacrificing Earth.”

  “What happened to you?”

  Becky flexed her machine and flesh arms.

  “Many years after we first met, we found ourselves on a mission in the forests of the Amazon,” Becky said. “Like most everything else on Earth, it’s a place that doesn’t exist anymore. I won’t bore you with the details, but we were attacked by alien agents and I was badly injured. Spradlin used his knowledge, and those damn nano-probes within him, to save me. Shortly afterwards, he came to the realization that we stood no chance against the invasion and my just completed treatment, it turned out, inspired him. I became a prototype for his next generation of soldiers. Using nano-probes in humans and programming them for battle allowed him to hide his real plans from the invaders.”

  “I was part of that next generation of soldiers,” Nox said. “Spradlin took a couple thousand babies and infected them –us– with nano-probes. When we reached our teen years, we were programmed war machines. We were shipped off to fight in a war Spradlin fabricated just for us. While in our minds we killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, in reality, Spradlin used the war and our manufactured memories to test his Displacer. Every person we thought we killed was actually sent away. The culmination of Spradlin’s experiment was to have nukes strapped to our backs. We were then marched into the enemy’s biggest cities and simultaneously detonated our payloads, killing ourselves and, the world and the Locust Plague thought, millions in the process. Like all the other supposed kills, those millions thought dead were in reality sent to the Arks just seconds before the nukes detonated.”

  “A couple thousand child soldiers died so that millions could live,” Becky said. “In Spradlin’s mind, quite a bargain.”

  They were quiet for several seconds.

  “The problem was that Spradlin’s programming never quite took in me and a group of child soldiers deemed –ironically enough– too dangerous to be sent to the war,” Nox said.

  “They were the failures,” Becky Waters said.

  “Those failures, the ones like me, were retired from the battlefield,” Nox continued. “Most were sent to asylums or prisons. I wasn’t quite on that level of dysfunction which is why I was on the battlefield when the nukes went off. I survived and Spradlin didn’t even know that was the case.”

  “How did you survive?”

  “I dropped my nuke and ran the hell away,” Nox said.

  “You were a deserter,” B’taav said.

  “I was fourteen years old and could barely think,” Nox shot back. “Between Spradlin’s programming and my attempts to kick it, I was a mess. But I was fortunate. An allied tank found me. Their crew cared for and hid me until I was well. They brought me to the Big City and I did my thing for twenty some odd years until the remaining soldiers awoke. They attacked. Their target was Spradlin. They sensed me through their nano-probes and tried to gain control. I held off as best I could but in the end they took me as well. Because of this, Spradlin had to alter his master plan. With the Exodus about to happen, he allowed himself to be caught by us and, as I said, we ripped his body to pieces. I awoke to find Spradlin’s blood all over me. Blood rich with his nano-probes. He programmed them to kill the other soldiers, but not me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he knew that I, more than the others, was capable of retaining my free will until… until I couldn’t anymore,” Nox said. Her voice rose as she spoke, the anger within threatening to burst. “Either that or the mother fucker wanted to make up for all the shit he put me through.”

  Becky laid her hand over Nox’s.

  “By the time Spradlin and his one-time soldiers were dead, the only two people left on this planet were Nox and I,” Becky Waters said. “We picked up as many weapons as we could and headed here, to sleep.”

  “What about all those other stasis chambers?”

  “They were there in case of emergency,” Becky Waters said. “If the Displacers didn’t work quite as well as was hoped, they were meant to hold as many people as we could bring to them.”

  “But the Displacers did work,” B’taav said. “On the Thanatos, Captain Desjardins told me Spradlin didn’t go on the Arks because he feared losing control of the nano-probes in his body. You have those same nano-probes in your bodies. Is that why Spradlin didn’t send you away?”

  “Yes,” Becky said. “Spradlin worried we might be susceptible to the aliens’ commands as well.”

  “If that’s the case, what’s changed?” B’taav asked.

  “You mean other than five thousand years’ worth of time?” Nox said.

  “We were sent here to bring back Spradlin,” B’taav said. “Instead, we find the two of you. We could bring our ship down right now and take you away from here, but why should we? Seems to me Spradlin had a damn good reason to leave you behind. Seems to me those reasons still apply.”

  “Still?” Nox sputtered. “We saved you, you son of a—”

  “Thanks for that,” B’taav shot back. “I assure you your actions are much appreciated. But it doesn’t change the fact that your blood is infected with alien devices.”

  “What are you saying? You going to leave without us? You’re going to leave us here to die?”

  B’taav didn’t reply. Nox’s face grew red.

  “What kind of fucking—”

  “The choice is theirs,” Becky Waters said.

  Nox was incredulous.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Becky Waters said.

  “Fuck this,” Nox hissed. “Fuck all of you.”

  “What do you propose we do, Nox?” Becky said. “Overpower our guests and bully our way onto their ship? What then? We can’t fly their craft so we’d have to force them to do it for us. Where do you think they’ll take us? How long before they figure a way to get rid of us? Even ignoring all that, where would we want t
o go? We don’t know the Empires. We barely know anything about the worlds and cultures out there.”

  “The least they can do is—”

  “The choice is theirs,” Becky repeated. She faced B’taav and Cer. “I’m sure they’ll choose wisely.”

  With that, Becky Waters leaned back in her chair and turned until she faced the window.

  “But before you do, there’s something you need to see,” she said. She pointed toward the city remains. “Look over there.”

  Cer and B’taav followed her instructions and stared out the window.

  “That’s what’s left of the Big City,” Becky said. “Our last home. Back when the ruins were a living, breathing place, Spradlin’s people numbered in the thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands. He had his own shadow army filled with soldiers, scientists, and politicians. They were sent away with everyone else in the Exodus and have been doing his bidding ever since. If you were to look closely at your Empires’ records, I’m sure you’ll find his agents were behind many key historical events. I know for certain they were behind the building of the solar system killers.”

  “What?” B’taav said.

  “I saw the blueprints of those ships long before the Exodus,” Becky Waters said. “For a while, General Spradlin thought building such a ship and using it against the Locust Plague was our only hope. Doing so, of course, was an impossibility. We were trapped on Earth and there would be no way to create such a vessel without massive amounts of material and personnel. When Spradlin decided to poison the Earth, he knew it would trap the Locust Plague here, but he wasn’t sure it would kill them. He ordered his army to manufacture the solar system killer and bring it to Earth so that we could finish the Locust Plague off once and for all.”

  “By the Gods,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “Paul Spradlin had his hands in everything,” Becky Waters said. “Everything. Spradlin’s people flew the solar system killer here without the use of a Displacer to ensure maximum secrecy. He had the two of you genetically modified over generations to resist the nano-probes, making you prime candidates to come here and see what the situation was without the risk of nano-probe infection.”

  “He probably named the Thanatos after his favorite fucking dog,” Nox injected.