The Owners

by Tara Basi

  “Annihilation, it’s the law. My Inquisitor colleagues would accept nothing less, unless,” Truculent said and then paused as if in thought.

  “Only pure Regulation purges completely,” Harder and his merry men chanted.

  “Mina, Tress, tell me what the hell’s going on up there. Are they really the Owners?” Battery Boy yelled.

  Mina didn’t know what to tell him. She was relieved when Tress answered, “We don’t know. You heard what they said. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Unless what?” Mina asked.

  “You give us the formula,” Truculent answered.

  The formula, always the damn formula. It detailed at a molecular level the concoction Sara had used to poison the blood sent through the gateway.

  “Why are you so interested in that formula?” Mina asked, deeply suspicious of her strange accusers.

  “It had certain properties of… interest. If we had the formula, we might consider alternatives to outright obliteration,” Truculent replied.

  “What does that mean, alternatives?” Mina asked. What were they hiding?

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Truculent offered without any great enthusiasm.

  “Let our people go, take your evil technology and never come back. When everyone is free you can have the formula.”

  Eva growled in obvious frustration. “Enough you stupid insect. We’ll suck what we need out of your primitive heads and leave your planet to freeze over when your sun goes out.”

  Harder almost smiled.

  “It’s true, you can’t go unpunished,” Truculent wearily responded.

  “You’ll get the formula when we’re free, not before,” Mina shouted back.

  Eva bared her teeth and looked like she was itching to attack Mina. Truculent raised both hands, open palms facing Mina, head tilted to one side, possibly indicating a pause for thought.

  “You’re slightly smarter than your technology and DNA suggests. Fine, we’re more than happy to do some sort of reasonable deal. We must have the formula. But Tress, the instigator, cannot escape punishment. That’s completely inviolate. So don’t waste your time trying to haggle. Remember, the alternative is the destruction of your entire star system. We don’t need your co-operation. Now we’re here we can reverse engineer the formula from factory samples. It will take more time than I’d like, but if needs must. And, when we’re finished, your star will still be extinguished.”

  “We told you what we want: our people out of the Blocks, you and your technology off our planet, never to come back. Then we’ll give you what you want,” Mina flatly replied.

  “This is madness. I don’t have time; I want that formula now. Let’s return to the factory,” Eva replied with a firm finality.

  “If Battery Boy triggers the missile, you won’t survive either,” Mina said to Eva. And she noticed Truculent flinch at the mention of the missile. It was the first sign of doubt he had shown. She turned to Truculent, “We’ll do it. Remember, we’re the violent barbarians.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure you will. It won’t even give us a headache. But, we’ll lose Tress and we can’t have that. We need someone to Regulate. If she’s dead, we’ll have to put your star out. It’s the law.”

  Harder smiled and spoke, “If I may, High Priest?”

  Truculent waved Harder to continue.

  “We had disabled your little weapon down there, but I’ve rearmed it. I think you would agree High Priest, this should be a moment of faith and fate. Please kill yourselves if you are so inclined… and the gods wish it.”

  Mina was utterly confused. Were any of them telling the truth? Truculent didn’t say anything but he looked decidedly unhappy at Harder’s intervention. Was he the only one interested in keeping their star alight?

  “You’ll save everyone if Tress dies? You’ll kill everyone if you don’t get the formula? How can we trust you?” Mina asked.

  “I have a practical proposal,” Truculent said. “It is the only offer I can make so please consider carefully before you decide. Reference will coordinate the release of your people. The factories will stay, for exactly two years. Get your people out before then. When the time is up the factories will depart and whoever is still trespassing will be ejected into space. After our last factory has departed the Travel-Way will seal. You will have no access to the Crimson factory, everyone and everything in it - along with Tress - leaves with us as soon as the new Travel-Way is operational, in precisely three days. We’ll take the formula now and Tress in two days. We won’t kill her but she will be punished. This is a take it or leave it offer, this discussion is ended.”

  “I’ll go,” Tress whispered.

  Mina didn’t want to hear Tress, she ignored her.

  Harder looked like he had bitten into something particularly unpleasant. “With all humility High Priest, how can the non-lethal punishment of this single terrorist, Tress, atone for their terrible crimes? Could I recommend that Rung One would seem to be the only appropriate solution?”

  “Rung One?” Truculent gasped, with a lemon sucking expression.

  “High Priest, I’m aware that Rung One is exclusively reserved for the fallen in the Priesthood. I have Inquisitor initiation facilities aboard the Cruel-to-Be-Cruel capable of administering a fully equivalent version of the punishment, if you will permit?”

  “Only pure Regulation purges completely,” Truculent intoned.

  “What is Rung One? What are you going to do to Tress? You said you wouldn’t kill her,” Battery Boy shouted from the pit.

  “I’ll go,” Tress said, a little louder this time.

  “Rung One does not kill but satisfies our need for Regulation. Now, for the last time, choose,” Truculent said with finality.

  “Why this fixation with Tress? Take me, I created the formula, I’ll go with you,” Mina pleaded, desperately wanting the Truculent creature to accept her offer. She couldn't live with any more guilt, it would be better to die and end this pantomime.

  “Oh, Commander Harder would be happy to take you as well,” Truculent said. “There’s always an empty Rung One globe for the deserving few. It matters not who invented the formula. Tress was the one who initiated the attacks. She lied to Tippese and she convinced him to doctor the Crimson. She’s indisputably guilty, and someone must pay. You have only ten more seconds in which to decide. After that we’ll decide for you.” Truculent gave them a cheesy smile.

  “We’ll take your offer. Just me, I’ll go,” Tress said quietly. Mina couldn’t ignore her this time and neither could Battery Boy.

  “No,” he screamed. Lost in grief Battery Boy started climbing up towards Tress, releasing the missile trigger. Mina saw him freeze halfway up as he realised what he’d done. Nothing happened.

  Harder looked disappointed. “Tress chose. The gods have spoken, so your firecracker was disarmed.”

  Battery Boy roared as if he was in terrible pain. Slowly he recovered and climbed out. He and Tress hugged and both started quietly crying.

  Mina couldn’t stand it. Something snapped inside and she slowly collapsed, legs buckling, dropping to her knees, her back bending gradually forward till her forehead softly touched the hard dirt floor. All the while her bloodless fingers were interlocked around the back of her neck. She screeched in misery, desolate, isolated and crushed, like the flattened remains of their metal army littering the plain under the Iowa Block.

  As she sobbed, she realised that if Tress’s sacrifice was going to mean anything then she didn’t have time for self-pity. She looked up. Truculent, Eva, Harder and his passive soldiers observed her with disinterest and a little disgust. After a moment a bubble descended from the roof and enveloped Mina, Tress and Battery Boy. It scooped them up and deposited them inside another cold white Block room where Truculent and the rest of his party awaited them.

  “Give us the formula, speak, now,” Truculent quietly insisted.

  There was no point delaying the inevitable. If Truculent was going to betray them there
was nothing she or anyone else could do about it.

  Mina wanted to be sure she knew what she’d be getting for the formula. “So you won’t attack us, the Blocks will go in two years, and you’ll let everyone out?”

  “Except the Crimson factory and everything in it. That will leave with us along with Tress. Look, if it’ll make it easier we’ll let Reference help you get your people out, and build things you’ll need. Don’t try my patience. The formula now,” Truculent demanded, with a smile that Mina thought might be sincere.

  “Tell him. You’ll need the Blocks’ co-operation. You’ll only have two years. There’s billions to save,” Tress quietly said to Mina.

  “I’ll come after you Tress, I’ll find you. I’ll find him,” Battery Boy yelled, glaring at Truculent, then turned away and smashed his fists against the wall.

  “Okay.” Mina regurgitated the formula, like a machine, drained of feelings, unable to think straight.

  “We’ll test it, wait here,” Truculent said. He and his party sank away into the floor.

  No one spoke. Battery Boy settled on the floor next to Tress and rocked her in his arms. Mina could only stare at the wall, she couldn’t even cry any more. Mina was in shock, and she wasn’t even startled when Truculent and Eva popped out of the floor.

  “You can go, stay in your New York,” Truculent said, smiling broadly. “In two days we’ll come for Tress, and in three we’ll be gone. Remember, after that you’ve got two years, that’s all.”

  Eva looked smug and, standing so close, even scarier than she had under the Block.

  Harder and a couple of his shiny soldiers took Mina, Battery Boy and Tress to a Block Van. The sight of the Van made Battery Boy and Tress visibly flinch. In moments it was setting down beside one of the transporters that had helped ferry the troop of Crushers only hours earlier, a lifetime ago. Before Mina stepped out of the Van to follow Tress and Battery Boy, a smiling Harder grabbed Mina’s arm.

  “If you don’t give me Tress when I come for her your star will go out. I’d prefer that option. That’s proper Regulation and all that terrorist scum like you deserve.”

  Battery Boy piloted them back towards New York where Jugger, Pinkie and Stuff would be waiting for them. Mina and Tress sat quietly in the cabin staring at their feet. It was beginning to dawn on Mina that countless numbers of people were still trapped in Block Seven, the Crimson factory as Truculent had called it. She had traded them and Tress away. Mina had no idea what would happen to them. Would the Yard keep operating? Would those inside still be bled? What about the innocents Truculent claimed that Grain, Sara and the other moonbuster bombers had slaughtered: was he telling the truth? She felt sick, she had to believe Truculent was lying.

  This was no victory. How could she explain all of this death to Jugger, Pinkie, Stuff and Anton?

  Chapter 13 – Goodbye and Thanks for the Three

  Whoosh. Clunk. Whoosh. Thump. Whoosh. Crash.

  Harder couldn’t keep up. The remarkable warrior was mowing down the cyber- weapons at speeds no Defender could possibly match. And her strikes were fantastically precise. Whoosh, and she had completely incapacitated her enemy with a single slice delivered with sublime subtlety. Each feather cut was a work of the most beautiful martial art. Clunk. Another dismemberment sending a body part wrapped in metal falling to the pen floor. There was none of the hacking and slashing Harder might have anticipated from her powerful frame. Instead, she danced and floated. She spun, leapt, and tumbled across the arena as if engaged in a ballet in which the enemy were incidental partners. It was wonderful to watch and Eva was only improving every time she fought. In a short while, she had progressed from combat sessions with a dozen of the monsters to larger pens filled with three times as many assailants. Remarkably, the time she took to dispatch the greater numbers had progressively lessened. It seemed hardly credible, and Harder would not have believed it possible if he hadn’t observed her first hand. Where had she acquired these skills and with such ancient weapons?

  It increasingly irritated Harder that she was so familiar to him though why was always out of reach. A search of the Empire’s vast knowledge base using her image had intriguingly ended in threats of excommunication. Whoever she was, her history resided in the forbidden areas of knowledge pertaining to the Empire’s earliest beginnings. What could this exceptional gladiator have to do with those times? Bypassing the firewalls and accessing the information would be relatively trivial but not while he was on active duty. The risk would be too great. His curiosity would have to be kept in check until he returned to base. It was obvious the High Priest didn’t share his enthusiasm for Eva’s talents. Truculent had left them alone with orders that Harder should keep her, “Entertained.” Apart from the mystery of her identity and history, an even more worrisome niggle was his inability to comprehend what possible set of circumstances could have brought Truculent and Eva together. Let alone the reason they were co-operating. The opportunity to spend some time alone with her might shed some light on the mystery. And besides, he was enthralled by Eva’s combat skills. He could watch her for spin after spin.

  The Defenders struggled to keep the pens ahead of Eva filled with foes as she leapt from one combat zone to the next. Abruptly she did not move forward to the next pen. Instead, she leapt to one side. Harder was taken by surprise. He had become accustomed to her indefatigability. Eva marched directly towards Harder, startling the Commander. Only the watching Defenders stopped him from taking a step back. Eva came to a halt only a short distance from him. Blood and minced flesh covered her largely naked body. She wore a simple black sleeveless leotard that was cut high on her tree-trunk thighs. In each hand she held long narrow blades dripping with blood. Eva eyed Harder as though assessing his combat worthiness. Deliberately she raised the two swords out to her sides and in one smooth flashing motion flicked away the blood and sheathed her swords behind her back. It took all of Harder’s willpower not to flinch.

  “My body is calm. I have questions.”

  Harder was startled. It had been sometime since Eva had said anything at all. “Of course my Lady.”

  “Where will you take the terrorist Tress?”

  “To the Rung One room aboard the Cruel-to-Be-Cruel.”

  “Show me.”

  Eva’s request was a surprise. He summoned transport. On the journey to the Regulator, Eva turned to sculpted stone and didn’t speak. There was little to see in the bare induction room. The terrifying Rung One globes hid in the ceiling, out of sight.

  “There are no guards?”

  “Unnecessary my Lady. Escape from Rung One is impossible without appropriate security keys.”

  “Who has those?”

  “Only myself, the Captain of this vessel, and of course the High Priest.”

  “She cannot escape her punishment then?”

  “No, my Lady.”

  “I would like to observe an aftermath of a punishment sequence.”

  “My Lady, you are authorised to visit at any time. It is exceedingly unlikely you will encounter anyone here. Very few have the desire to observe the outcome of a Rung One sequence.”

  Eva only nodded and surveyed the room. Harder was puzzled by her interest. Perhaps it was simply the desire to see with her own eyes the terrorist being Regulated. In a moment of weakness, he spoke without being invited. “May I ask a question?”

  Eva broke off studying the room and locked her sub-zero blue eyes on Harder. For a second he thought she might strike him. “No, though I will give you an answer.”

  Harder swallowed, disturbed by her unblinking gaze. What answer, to what question did Eva have in mind?

  “Emperor-Cardinal Truculent.”

  Harder struggled to hide his shock. He should strike her down dead. Eva had uttered a blasphemy and a treasonous threat to the Emperor’s line. Except that it was a comical assertion. She must be joking. Truculent was a nobody High Priest of a backwater Sector. The Empire would vanish into a black hole before Truculent would be
come Emperor-Cardinal.

  “Inquisitor Prime Harder.”

  At this assertion Harder could not hide his emotions. He gasped in horror and stepped back. It wasn’t funny. Merely uttering the words would be construed as a terrible treachery and he would be gifted a punishment nearly as dreadful as Rung One. He steadied himself. How absurd. Though he didn’t like admitting it, he was Truculent’s equal in obscurity. What was Eva trying to do?

  “Within twenty cycles.”

  Harder smiled. Was she a little mad?

  Eva wasn’t smiling, “And then.”

  He frowned in anticipation. What new blasphemy would she utter?

  “Emperor Harder.”

  In those two words she had defined the foulest of treacheries. A betrayal of state and church. An ambition that went against all societal norms, aeons of culture, the law and the march of history. Her words offered the possibility of a return to a secular state with him at its head. No Priests, HIQ or Channels. It was a wonderful idea. Harder couldn’t help smiling inside even if his expression was disapproving. “My Lady, are you testing me? These… prophesies are heretical.”

  Eva ignored his accusation. “They are facts, not prophesies. Take me back to Truculent.”

  It was obvious to Harder that Eva wasn’t going to say any more on the subject of her ‘facts’. He led her back to the transport and after a short flight they were back in the great glass-walled hall that ringed the Crimson Factory.

  After the exhilaration and shock of Eva’s company Harder was even more reluctant to spend any more time than was necessary with the scheming High Priest. Harder still had no idea why Truculent was so interested in this dull little world. He intended to make his excuses and leave.

  He was surprised to find Truculent in animated conversation with the factory manager. Why would the High Priest be wasting his time on the obsequious savage? Did he intend to adopt it as some bizarre kind of pet?

  “Good, you’re back. I’d like you to join me on the factory floor,” Truculent said, looking rather pleased with himself.