So this is what they look like, Sun li thought. All this time she had waited to see the face of her enemy, the ones who had destroyed her people, and this was not at all what she had expected to see. She had expected someone more like the Gray Man.
Do you know who I am? She wondered. Were you there when they slaughtered my people? Do you know the price we’ve paid? Was it you who gave the order? A hundred questions filled her mind, but even if she had been able to speak, she doubted she would have been able to ask them. This woman’s appearance was too shockingly normal. She had expected to see a monster, but this was only another person, just like herself.
The stranger stopped in front of the metallic man and sighed, regarding him with tender eyes. “Daz, look what you’ve done to yourself,” she said, covering her mouth with a trembling hand.
She knelt down and touched his face with her other hand and Sun li recognized in that touch that these two people knew each other. Perhaps they were family or at least old friends. At the same time she found it hard to imagine the Gray Man ever having either.
There was a shuffling sound off to Sun li’s right. The woman turned towards the sound.
“Math?” she said. “You brought these people here, didn’t you? They’re here for the rubricon. Do you see what you’ve done, what your little project has cost you? I’ll have to report this now. I won’t be able to protect you any more.”
“Math, are you all right?” came Constance’s voice from behind the door. “Jel, please don’t hurt him.”
“That won’t be for me to decide,” Jel replied. “Why? Why did you do it? I didn’t think Math would ever sell out to the Delegation like this.”
“They’re not from the Delegation,” Constance continued, “They’re from Deliverance.”
“Then you’ve been lied to,” Jel said, gazing at the body of the Gray Man. She rose to her feet, picking him up easily but tenderly, as if he were a child. “Daz was sent here by the Delegation, we intercepted the intelligence two days ago.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, who is Daz?” Constance asked.
“He’s my…” Jel faltered, her eyes clouding over. “I don’t really know anymore who he is, Constance. But it doesn’t matter who sent these people. Factor Ten will have you all terminated after extracting what you know. There’s nothing I can do—”
She stopped in mid sentence when someone stirred at the back of the room.
“He never meant for this to happen, Jel.”
Jel shook her head and turned towards the door, carrying the Gray Man with her.
“I’ll have the automatons come for you after I get Daz out of here. Good-by Constance. Tell Math it’s nothing personal. He could have done a lot of good if he had stayed loyal to Factor Ten.”
“Factor Ten was going to shut the project down and destroy the prototype,” Constance cried out. Jel paused in front of the door and cocked her head, listening. “Math had to find someone who would be able to use his invention. The world needs to learn how to communicate again, Jel. Maybe then we can stop all this killing. We don’t want our son to have to grow up in a world like this.”
“Math was a genius,” Jel replied, continuing on towards the door. “But even geniuses can’t change human nature.”
As she passed through the door, however, the Gray Man suddenly sprang to life. He twisted his body, trying to get out of grasp, but she clamped down with both hands and would not let go.
“What?” Jel screamed. “How did you—?”
Though still caught fast in her grip, Daz’s head shot up and collided with Jel’s, dazing her so that she pitched forward and lost her grip on him.
Daz broke free and was on his feet in an instant. He leaned down close and whispered something inaudible in her ear. Then, taking his hand, he placed it on the side of her head. Jel’s eyes fluttered open as white sparks shot out from his fingers.
Then, without warning, the familiar crackling blast of Brit’s weapon cut through the air. Sun li watched as the lower half of both the woman and the metallic warrior disintegrated into nothingness. Amazingly the woman’s eyes remained open for a moment longer. She stared, gaping, down at her missing legs in disbelief. Her eyes went from her own mangled body to that of the Gray Man and her expression turned to one of horror.
“Oh, Daz,” she whispered, “my son,” and then her body pitched forward, dying as her arms reached out to embrace him one last time.
“What’s happening?” Constance screamed. “Somebody, please help!”
Brit appeared standing over Sun li’s body. He reached down and rubbed some jaunt cream into her arm and she felt a tingling sensation spread across her body as if her limbs were waking up from sleep.
“Jel? Math? Are you there?” came Constance's voice again.
Sun li stirred, working her way to her feet. “He's all right,” she said, glancing back to where Brit was applying the same cream to Math.
The moment Math revived, he rose and stumbled his way over to the bodies of Daz and Jel. It was a bloodless scene, but Sun li found herself wanting to look away. Only she could not. Her eyes were fixed in that direction.
“I never meant for this to happen,” Math muttered.
“Math,” said Constance, “What's going on? Is Jel still there?”
“She's gone, Const,” Math informed her. His eyes turned on Brit as he walked up beside Sun li. They burned into the jammer accusingly.
“I had no choice,” Brit explained. “The Gray Man got loose. His autolyte system revived him. Fortunately mine did as well.” The words made sense, but the tone sounded hollow to Sun li and she guessed Math felt the same way from the pained look on his face.
“She was just an operator,” he said. “She was unarmed.”
“What did you want me to do? Let the Gray Man take the rubricon and kill us all?” Brit continued, defensively. “And even if I let the engineer live, I hardly think she would have been looking to do us any favors.”
Math wiped the tears which appeared at the corners of his eyes. “She was the one who recruited me into Factor Ten. She was my friend.”
“Well, that’s touching, but in my line of work, friends are a liability. Deal with it. Now where is the rubricon?”
“What?” Math replied, still in a daze, fighting his back tears.
“The rubricon,” Brit repeated. “That’s what I came for, remember?”
Math motioned vaguely towards the alcove. “It’s—it’s back there,” he said.
Brit moved in that direction, but Math shouted after him.
“Wait, what about my wife? We need to get her out first.”
Brit gave him an impatient look. “Fine,” he said, waving Sun li over towards the door. “I’ll go get the device.”
Sun li's fingers and toes were still a bit numb, but she had no difficulty walking as she made her way to the door. She walked over to the door and fired up her blades. “Stand back,” she called in to Constance.
Then, making quick work of the thick metal door she stepped inside. The room was identical to the one where Math had been held prisoner. Constance was bound to a chair with energy bands in the same way he had been. She had long brown hair and a flowing beige dress on that went down to her ankles. Though the dress was loose fitting and draped the floor around her it could not entirely hide the fact that she was pregnant and very far along. Most surprising of all, however, she had the slender eyes and high cheek bones which clearly marked her as Chayan.
Sun li stopped when she caught sight of her, overcome for a moment by the fact that this was one of her people. Math rushed up from behind her to embrace his wife.
“I’m sorry, Const,” he said. “This will all be over soon.”
A tender look passed between them. “Oh, Math,” she said. “I knew something like this would happen.”
“It's all right. Deliverance will make it work. We're on the right side now,” he assured her.
Sun li placed a hand on Math’s shoulder.
“We should hurry. Let me free your wife.”
Math nodded and stepped aside. It only took a moment for Sun li to dissolve the bands with her blades. Constance rose, her dress billowing around her.
Brit poked his head in the doorway and held out a little black box with a hollowed out cone on one side. “I’ve got the rubricon,” he said. “But I have no idea how it works.”
“I’ll show you once we meet up with Deliverance,” Math assured him.
“Part of my instructions were to verify that the device was operational before leaving the ship. The Doctor was very specific on that point,” said Brit.
Now it was Math’s turn to flash a look of impatience. “You can’t be serious. Jel was the sole operator of this ship. When this vessel fails to sync up to her biosignature, the automatons will flip to hostile, the ship will go into lockdown, and the navigation systems will plot a course for the nearest mothership. We don’t have time for this.”
“I can get us off the ship even if it takes off,” Brit insisted. “Trust me. I'm a jammer and she's a blade. Besides, how long can it take?”
“Fine,” said Math, hurrying over towards him. “Just place a hand on either side for a few moments to activate the device. Then point it at whoever’s thoughts you want to read and use the code word ‘jailbreak’ to start streaming their thoughts into the device. The animorph waveforms will appear on the top of the cube.”
Brit nodded and did as instructed. A moment later, the entire box pulsed with a green light. The box then returned to its glossy black color, but the edges remained glowing green. He held the device out and pointed it towards Constance as if it were a gift he was anxious to return.
“This thing can actually read people’s thoughts?” Sun li asked, marveling at the simple design of it.
“It’s just a prototype, but yes. Thought translators have been in development for several years, but until now, the only successful ones had to be tailored to a specific individual. But I uncovered a universal thought language which can be used to translate the thoughts of any person it’s synced up with. I call it the anima and I created the rubricon to decode it.”
After Math’s explanation they waited for several moments but nothing happened.
Brit gave Math a suspicious look.
“Give it time,” Math assured him with a nervous glance. “The device is still initializing.”
Brit’s eyes flitted towards Constance and the tick started up in his mouth again. Sun li began to worry about what he might do if the device did not actually work.
CHAPTER TEN
False Impressions
Brit took in a deep breath. It looked like he was just about to say something when blue waveforms appeared on top of the cube.
“Warm,” came an emotionless voice from the cube. It had the same flat intonation Sun li was used to hearing in artificially generated voices. “So warm,” it went on. “Feels good.”
Brit stared hard at the waveforms projecting on the cube. Sun li could tell he was still skeptical.
“You’re telling me this is all the device can read? Basic sensory information?”
The artificial voice fluttered in something that sounded a bit like a giggle.
“He’s laughing,” Constance said, her face lighting up with a smile.
“What are you talking about?” Brit inquired. “Who’s laughing?”
“Is that her voice?” said the cube. “I wish I could hear it again.”
Math shook his head. “You’ve got the rubricon pointed too low,” he said. “You were pointing it at our baby.”
“You’re telling me—” Brit began but then smacked his lips in frustration and lowered the cube. “Look, that’s impossible. The brain doesn’t develop the capacity for speech until around a year after birth. And those were fully formed sentences. You’re telling me—”
“She’s almost nine months along,” Math informed him. “Due any day now. But that has nothing to do with it. The universal language is pre-cognitive. It isn’t generated directly by the brain. That’s the mistake all the other researchers made. Yes, they get filtered through the brain, but the true source of the anima is what some people call the soul.”
Brit stared at him in disbelief, as if Math had just confessed that he was a hard-boiled egg. But the young inventor ignored his reaction, grabbed hold of the box and adjusted its position so that it pointed towards Constance’s head.
“You cannot understand things that you have ruled out as impossible,” said the voice from the rubricon. “Listen to my husband. He is not only brilliant, but wise. That is why I married him.”
Math and Constance exchanged quiet smiles. Then, unexpectedly the room lurched to the side. Math slid his hands over the top and bottom of the device and all the lights disappeared.
“There, you’ve seen enough. The ship has started the launch sequence. We have to get off before it’s too late.”
He started to pull the rubricon away from Brit, but the jammer held on to it.
“I’m still not convinced this device actually works, but I’ll be taking it from here on out, if you don’t mind,” said Brit. “Come on, Sun li.”
Math released the device and the four of them filed out of the small room and into the outer chamber.
Sun li turned her eyes away as she passed by the two fallen figures of Jel and the Gray Man. The rest of the room looked like it had been hit by a hurricane.
Brit paused at the threshold leading out to the hallway. The energy barrier had re-engaged once again.
“If you have any personal effects, you might want to gather them now,” Brit instructed them.
“Right,” Math replied. He motioned to Constance. “You get my research logs and I’ll get my artifice kit.”
Brit gave Sun li a hurried look and nodded towards the doorway.
She sunk one of her blades into it and it vanished as before. Sun li passed into the hallway. The windows were no longer dark but showed the view from above Torrid Canyon. It looked like they had only just cleared the crested butte where the ship had been hiding.
Brit placed a black disc on the wall beside the doorway and stepped through.
Math and Constance were hurrying towards the exit when they caught sight of the device and stopped.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “What’s that contingency trigger for?”
“You’re a scientist,” Brit smiled. “I think you can figure that out.”
“No!” Math shouted. “The Doctor promised—if I gave them the rubricon, Deliverance would smuggle both me and my wife safely out of Factor Ten territory. If you leave us here, we’re as good as dead.”
Brit chuckled. “Leading a rebellion against the Delegation is not an easy task,” he said. “The Doctor doesn’t want this technology falling into the wrong hands.”
“But Matthew made it. It’s his invention,” Constance cried, stepping towards the opening, but Math held her back.
“Stay back, Const. It’s motion sensitive. If you get close enough it will blow us both up.”
“You won’t have long to suffer,” Brit told them. “I made it altitude contingent as well. Once we hit twenty thousand feet, it’ll take out this whole floor.”
In a heartbeat Sun li whipped her blade and had it at Brit’s throat. “Deactivate that trigger,” she ordered him. “We are not leaving them to die.”
“Oh, really?” Brit replied, “is that what your Code teaches you, to slit the throat of an unarmed man? The only reason I had to use the contingency trigger was because you wasted two shots on the Gray Man. But jammers always have a contingency plan. We’re sort of like a human contingency trigger, really, when you think about it.”
“The Code says that we do not harm innocents. By my judgment you hardly qualify for that category.”
“Very well, then gut me,” Brit shot back. “You still won’t be able to disarm the trigger and your father will die as well. Then you’ll let three people die instead of just two.”
; Sun li wavered. She couldn’t think what to do. The Code didn’t seem to have any clear answer for a situation like this. If she went against Brit her father would die and yet she could not abandon Math, Constance, and their child to a senseless death. Either way, someone would die. She felt her grasp on the Code rapidly slipping away.
“You promised me no innocents would die,” she said.
“I only said you would not be killing them,” he replied. “I said nothing about my own intentions.”
She wanted so badly to send this man to his death. She was certain he deserved it a hundred times over, but even as conflicted as she was, she still remembered enough of the Code to know that killing a defenseless man would be wrong. And Brit was right, even if she did do away with him, she still wouldn’t be able to save Math and Constance. She had no idea how to deactivate a contingency trigger.
“All right,” she said through gritted teeth, lowering her blade. “I’ll help you to get the device back to Deliverance. But if it weren’t for the Code you’d be a dead man right now.”
Brit gave her a crooked grin. “You see now why I needed an honest blade?” Then he turned and took off towards the ramp.
Sun li gave one last desperate look towards Math and Constance. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish there was some way I could have saved you.”
“Please,” Math replied, swallowing hard. “Don’t leave us.”
“I’m sorry…” she repeated.
Sun li could not bare to look at them any longer. She turned and rushed after Brit, her heart breaking every step of the way.
* * *
Sun li caught up to Brit at the door to the ramp. It was closed.
“The emitter won’t work any more,” he said. “You’ll have to cut through it.”
Sun li stepped in front of him, quickly slicing an oval-shaped opening in the door.
The Jammer and the Blade Page 7
