by G W Langdon
Teripeli reached into his jacket and pulled out a case with a hunting dog embossed on the front cover holding a pheasant in its mouth.
“Open it,” he said, presenting the case to Tom.
The dog was Dougal, right down to his floppy right ear torn when he bailed up a young boar in tight scrub. He flipped the case open. The spiceRolls had a blue river design and were a darker green.
“This prescription will stop your morning-after headaches,” Teripeli said. “There might have been a misunderstanding about dosage. I didn’t think you would become so dependent on them, so quickly. No harm done.”
“And you made the pill.”
“That is a completely different process and much better suited to my unique skills.” He pulled a dull black case from the other coat pocket, flipped it open, and poked a yellow Roll between the lips of the mask. “Might I recommend a Blue, for tonight? I sense you are a little nervous.” He lit up and leaned across the table and did the same for Queen Lillia. They both turned and waited for him.
“How many are safe to smoke each day?” he asked, slipping the Roll to his lips.
“Two, three maximum, but never right before bed. They’re most effective when you’re active, and your body can metabolize the chemicals quicker.”
Teripeli lit the Roll and pocketed the lighter.
Tom inhaled slowly and exhaled even slower. Apprehension vanished immediately and a lightness of mind wisped over him.
“It’s good to see you smile again,” she said.
The different colored smoke trails mingled above the table and drifted away on the wind, curling in around the castle from the east.
“Tell me, doctor, why do you wear the mask?”
“Thomas, this isn’t the time for such personal questions,” she admonished.
“I don’t mind. His curiosity is the sign of a healthy mind. I was the head of surgery at one of the big hospitals in Segeth. A fire broke out and I ended up trapped inside. I could have left my patients, but I stayed to help them to a safer zone. A beam fell and pinned me to the floor. The rescue droids pulled me free, but the burn damage to my hands meant I’d never operate again. I could’ve worked again, with the right medicines and given enough time, but they decided to end my career.”
“You wear the mask to cover up the scars?”
“Thomas, you’re being too personal,” the queen said, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“Lillia, you are too sensitive,” Teripeli said, without turning to her. “I wear the mask because I am vain.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who others might comment on. The independent sort.”
Teripeli half-smiled as he lent back and gently inhaled. “True,” he said, exhaling. “I’m not somebody to underestimate.”
“One last question. How did you end up here? In the castle.”
“The doctor…” Queen Lillia interrupted.
“I’ve nothing to hide.”
“Oh, but you do,” Tom said. “Everyone has a secret.”
Teripeli let his Roll smolder on the wooden table. “Luckily for me, Emperor Tilaxian needed a personal doctor. I am forever in his debt for giving me a second chance to practice my craft.”
“You worked for her majesty’s father?”
“And who would have thought I’d end up here doing his daughter’s work?”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but what exactly do you do?”
“I improve on Nature, as you will find out. You’re quite the persistent kind aren’t you? But I think we’ll save any further questions for a more neutral place. Tonight isn’t about me.”
Queen Lillia drew a golden shell from her carry bag.
“Hold out your hand.” She tipped a capsule onto his palm.
He held the pill between his thumb and forefinger. “That’s a thousand years of life?” The golden potion shone in the soft evening light like ambrosia from the gods.
Teripeli’s eyes darkened behind the openings in the mask. “Nature couldn’t copy that.”
She poured more water into his glass and squeezed his hand. “It’s time.”
He placed the pill on his tongue. His heart beat faster and the glass was cold in his clammy grip. He gulped the first mouthful and downed the Methuselah pill in one swallow. A sweet taste stayed on his tongue and his cheeks warmed. He drank the glass empty to wet his parched throat.
“All done,” Teripeli announced. “Now we let time work its magic.” He excused himself from the table and strolled to the balcony, lighting another Roll straight away, a red one this time.
“Come inside, Thomas,” she said, “and I’ll take you back to your residence. Have an early night, as a precaution, and get plenty of rest. I’ll cancel your appointments for the next few days.”
He got up from the table and slid the case into the front pocket of his robe. Teripeli tilted his head back in an extra deep draw and vigorously exhaled as if he meant to blow the plume of smoke across the crater to the Tower.
“Until next time, Thomas,” Teripeli called out.
Tom gathered up the staff and fingered the sword handle as the deformed plains animals of the Tilas again played on his mind.
Chapter 23
“Three down and one to go.”
Reuzk ejected the empty ammo pack and reloaded. Things didn’t add up. The Deceiver they were dealing with wasn’t acting as he’d expected, almost independently, and why did it have its own protection unit? The analyst—the real analyst they had locked up in solitary and isolated from the cyber realm, would know all sorts of tricks from working in counter-intelligence, but even so… his Deceiver was being extra clever.
He skirted the massive floor pillar for the mid-Chamber. “I’ve got your back, captain, if the Deceiver circles around.”
“Leave him to me.”
“Be careful, captain. The Deceiver isn’t acting as expected,” he warned. She was progressing above expectation but 2.0s had limited capability in the cyber realm.
Captain Sarra Chambers clambered over the ledge and pumped a Neonite slug into the pulse rifle. She clicked the safety catch off and beamed the infrared sight down the dim tunnel.
Reuzk banged the side of his helmet. “Amie, can’t you do better than this? My visuals are cutting in and out.”
“It’s the best I can do. You’re connected to the nearest 4i station but the traces of rare metals in the rock are playing havoc with the signal.”
“But we’re in Gi LaMon. Can’t you filter out the interference?”
“Wouldn’t that void the mission? You were insistent on having authentic world parameters.
A trickle of sweat ran down his cheek. “Dammit Amie, it’s humid down here. Is temp control or a better airflow asking too much?”
“Even though you are six hundred feet below Nu’hieté, it’s mid-summer above ground and with the heat from the planet’s core, this is what the deepest point of subStrata is actually like.”
“No wonder the lowlifes frequent the place.”
“It’s the last place I thought our strange-acting analyst would come after the comfort of the counter-intelligence floor.”
“He’s down here to counter our surveillance tech.”
The lightShafts stopped at the Middle Chamber. Ahead were five square miles of low-yielding solid rock kept intact for the foundations of the skyReachers. There were no shops or abodes, this far down, or anything familiar enough to pass as urban. He checked his visor display and eased into the alleyway. The analyst had reached a dead-end so why did the endgame of the mission feel like a trap?
Substrata was a quarter of the area of Nu’hieté, but twice the problem. The prospectors moved in the day after the machines left, having mined the best yielding seams of precious metals for the Armada starships on the other side of the planet. The vermin cut and chiseled their way deeper wherever the needle pointed on their counters until the ugly conditions forced them back up. What was it about the dark that turned loose the demons to
come out and play?
“I’ve got eyes on you, captain,” he said, “but it’s patchy and the audio’s thin.”
Sarra hugged the wall and nosed the rifle barrel around the corner. “He’s not here,” she said, scanning the stone walls. “He must have gone up and over.” She uncoiled the climbing rope and threw the grappling hook over the top ledge and pulled back slowly until it gripped.
“Maintain full silence until you’ve made the kill.”
She entered the tunnel and the bioluminescent wall strips cycled brighter then dimmed to almost out.
“I never realized it was so primitive down here,” Reuzk said to Amie on the Indigo-secure line. He shone the gun scope down a shoulder-width tunnel. A place where dreams came to die.
“Real deaths down there, too—on the outside.”
“Yeah, that’s what worries me. He’s been a step ahead the whole way down. Blast. I’ve lost video to the captain.”
A scream echoed from the tunnel above.
He thumped the Indigo override badge and jumped thirty feet up to the tunnel. Fully loaded and half-lit by his glowing Indigo battle suit, he stalked down the tunnel.
“I have your pet project,” the analyst called out. “Let me go and she lives.”
“No chance. There’s only one way you’re coming out, and that’s feet first.” Spectrals pinpointed the voice coming from inside the small storehouse, but… He raised his gun and focused on the indistinct shape pressed flat against the wall—almost invisible even under Indigo scrutiny. The analyst shouldn’t possess such powers and Amie would never disobey his orders and sabotage the live-training mission. “Out you come, slowly.”
The analyst slid into the tunnel’s ghostly green light. “This is your last chance, General Reuzk.”
“Captain? Are you stable?”
A low groan came from inside the storehouse. “Here, sir.”
“Drop your weapon.” He motioned the analyst through the doorway. “After you.”
The analyst held his hands high and casually walked inside. He whipped a pistol out of his belt, spun, and emptied a full clip of ammo into the doorway.
Small, impact spider webs appeared in the Indigo shield. Reuzk ducked to his right and charged. The analyst side-stepped and back-kicked him across the room. He threw the shield and rifle aside and squeezed his hands into tight fists. He crossed the room in three strides and crunched the analyst against the wall. A small flicker ran through the analyst’s eyes.
“Why did you do it?” His jaw tightened and he lifted the analyst closer and examined his drawn face. “What’s your game?”
“Do what?” he said, protesting his innocence.
Reuzk twisted the analyst’s shirt collar tighter, restricting the blood flow. “The dataBurst to Tilas.”
The analyst shook his head the best he could. “It’s of no use to Decay,” he wheezed. “Earth is one thousand light-years from here.”
He relaxed his grip to stop the analyst blacking out. “Decay already has the information.”
“How can you know that?”
“You expect me to tell you after what you’ve done?”
“I exposed a security breach to show Amie’s not foolproof.”
“You did highlight a security issue and Earth isn’t Heyre. However, your classified security rating gave you the means to cheat Amie’s protocols, which are specifically designed to protect us from outside threats.” He released his grip and let the analyst slide down the wall. “You are prepared to sacrifice a living planet to Decay so you can make your point. Who knows what you might do to save your skin when Decay actually calls upon Heyre? You can’t be trusted.”
He heaved the analyst against the wall and hit him with a single hammer-blow square in the face. Shattered bone shards speared into the analyst’s brain. “That’s for the both of you.”
He rubbed the blood off his knuckles and turned to Sarra, slumped against the wall with blood trickling from her mouth and holding her broken right arm below the elbow.
“He was too fast,” she said. “Too strong. I couldn’t stop him.”
“He took us all by surprise. We’ll get you back to Base and have you fixed up.”
Sarra tapped her lightBand and a small lightMatrix of her biometrics appeared. She glanced at her slowing heart rate and smiled. “Leave me here… to guard the site until the Medics arrive.”
“I’ll stay, too. I don’t trust him, dead or not.”
“He’s wearing a mask. He showed me—gloating about how he’d tricked us, just before…” She sagged lower and slid sideways down the wall.
He grabbed her and gently lowered her limp head to the floor. He aimed a taserHack at the analyst. “Let’s see who you really are.”
The feathered needle stuck in the analyst’s side and a small electrocution hacked the mask.
“What the hell? Amie, are you getting this?”
“I’ve only got audio.”
“Get a 4i down here, now. I’ll need a full scan.”
“What is it, general?”
“He is a ‘she’—a very beautiful she, and judging by the sub-armor, she’s a high-value Deceiver packing enough firepower to take down most above-ground systems. No wonder it had a protection unit.”
“It’s probably carrying a personal jamming array, but I won’t know until I examine the scene first-hand.”
A calling card, beginning with the letter ‘K’, protruded from the skin-tight leather suit. He set the shield to maximum blast and removed the card from the pocket. “Does ‘Karla’s Cleaning Services’ mean anything to you?” he asked, sealing the card in an evidence bag.
Thin white smoke rose from the Deceiver’s chest.
“Tell me later,” he said, leaping clear.
#
Reuzk climbed from the dataPod and slapped the sting in his legs.
“Amie, my room, now.”
He poured himself a drink and swigged a full mouthful. “What the hell was that?” he said, half-sitting on the edge of his desk.
“The 4i has arrived. Initial scans indicate very high-Color security clearance. I’ll have more answers soon.”
“Our analyst Deceiver had to be acting under the orders of a higher-up Infiltrator.”
The 4i readout scrolled down inside the desk lightMatrix.
“There’s a bigger problem,” Amie said. “The Deceiver’s signature didn’t have Federation genealogy, and it’s not Decay either—unless it’s evolved a new pattern.”
He swirled the Still around and stared into the bottom of the glass.
“What is it?”
“Let the analyst free,” Reuzk said. “He’s innocent.”
“He can’t be. It was his Deceiver.”
“He was framed. An Infiltrator hacked your counter-intelligence realm and re-configured the Deceiver by over-riding the analyst’s Indigo security clearance.”
“No. That’s impossible.”
“The Infiltrator, Karla, made it appear to us the Deceiver was highly autonomous—not unlikely given the analyst’s skills, and used this misdirection to pin the blame on the analyst.”
“If true, then it was an extremely sophisticated play. There aren’t many who would have the clearance to carry off such a hack.”
“I can only think of one.”
“I hope it was only to highlight a security failure, as the Deceiver—Infiltrator said.”
“Who is Karla?”
“I’m checking Gi LaMon, but it will take time for a deep scrub. Do you think the card was deliberately left as a clue for us, or another plant to lead us away from the truth?”
“All psychopaths want to get caught. There’s no vanity in anonymity.” He set the empty glass aside. “Until we know exactly what we’ve accidentally uncovered, it’s safest we keep a steady hand. Treat the security threat with the utmost caution. The Infiltrator possesses a deep knowledge of our security protocols, especially about how you operate. This level of sophistication could prove troublesome in
your cyber realm.”
“I will get to the bottom of what this is,” Amie said. “In some ways, it’ll give me a boost to have something as vexing as the Infiltrator to focus on.”
“And Jbir.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I’ll wash up and assess if we should progress Sarra beyond 2.0.”
“Isn’t her primary objective to be the bait for Thomas Ryder? I could make her ‘irresistible’—stronger, seductive, more alluring.”
He shook his head. “The closer she is to her natural condition the more valuable she is to me. We used Rulg’s dataStream of her swimming naked in the pond for that very reason.”
“You aren’t deviating, are you?”
“The human leads to the Négus,” he said, refilling the glass, “which leads to… ” He sat the glass on the desk. “There’s only one way to make her ‘irresistible.’”
“One last thing,” Amie said. “How do you know Decay already has the starMap?”
“Sixteen hundred years ago, Jbir skipped town for guaranteed treasure, and because his neck was on the chopping block. He possessed a genuine starMap to find Earth, which we did not have until you decoded the Orb. The map and the bioPods are from different sources and there’s only one suspect who has the power and charm to play both sides.”
“Nothing implicates the queen directly.”
“If I remember, she had a connection to Senator Telion when I started an investigation.”
“He didn’t just kill himself. He jumped into a lava pit.”
“But why?” Amie asked. “A gunshot to the head, as Jbir did, would foil a neuralHack.”
“If I had to guess, she poisoned Senator Telion with a Psychonium class drug to induce psychosis, leading to suicide.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Amie said. “With you, it’s hunches and suspicions. I cannot operate with that degree of bias. Stability demands adherence to Fundamental Laws.”
“You have another theory as to why he left no genetic trace or chance of ever being resurrected?”
“Psychonium is a restricted, high-Color class drug? She would not have that capability.”
“Maybe, but whoever was behind the Diffraction mask on her balcony two nights ago has that capability, and probably much more. Jbir knew something big. Whatever she’s hiding, it was worth going to all this trouble to get rid of him and anyone else that might lead to the truth of who she really is.”
