Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

of Harry, too much shared experience. Harry-Pan would have left too great a hole in his memories, to not be noticed. The person who was missing must have been too briefly in his own memories, but perhaps more fully in the memory of the dead copy of Direk.

  He needed to see if the copy's auxiliary memory was available and still viable. He needed to absorb it. He dreaded doing that, fearing for his own identity. He did a terrible thing, that copy, executing four men he judged guilty of raping Jamie.

  A terrible thing.

  The ghostly memory brushed past his conscious and he leaped into the darkness to grab it. A pattern coalesced for an instant: Sammy. Jamie. Horss. A terrible thing had happened to all three. It was all he could grab before the klaxons sounded.

  Direk accessed his shiplink and searched for the cause of the critical alert. He saw the ship was under attack and was possibly boarded by hostile forces. He made use of algorithms that Security used to detect abnormalities in the life aboard the ship. He saw he was near one such abnormality. He set out to intercept it.

  Sammy and Jamie: Zakiya's children? Horss: not her child - but he jokingly offered himself for adoption. The missing person was... Zakiya's child? How could Zakiya not already know that, if that was a valid hypothesis?

  Direk looked at the bottle in his hand. Water, under pressure, could be used to detect an invisible combat soldier. What one did after that was limited to muscle and bone. He had also procured an i-field emitter from Security. He made himself invisible.

  The bottle in his hand. A bottle of... what? Whoever it was he was trying to remember, Direk thought, would also not remember things that were dangerous to remember, things that could expose himself and others to the enemy. He would be invisible, even invisible to himself. He would not even know who he was. He was so important that his own true identity would be lethal knowledge.

  A bottle of water... to stop invisibility...

  Antidote! The antidote was never administered! Someone whose auxiliary memory had not begun remembering! Someone who was not remembered by others! Someone with an extremely important task!

  Who? Zakiya's child? Someone very important. Important even beyond being her child.

  Petros! The name blazed into his mind, yet found no portrait of a physical person.

  Direk stood in blood and watched horror. From the trail of blood Direk knew the invisible attacker was ahead of him. People fled away from him in all directions but the way ahead offered the most victims. He dodged the staggering wounded and stepped around the fallen, tagging their locations in his data augment. The neighborhood lane opened onto the village commons just ahead, where people were rushing to get within a Marine defense perimeter. The barbarian seemed to favor what was probably a large knife, although he also used a slug weapon and a beam weapon when he could not get close to his prey.

  Direk sprayed the water. He moved closer. He made himself visible. He seized the invisible demon and discovered surprising strength in his own arms. He threw the enemy down and tried to pin him there but was forced onto the ground where he rolled furiously with the adversary, trying to wrap his legs around the slippery defense field within the invisibility field that protected and obscured the form of the enemy.

  Direk probed the creases and field joints of the enemy's d-field, holding the person partially locked between his legs. He found the neck and above it the head. He wrapped one arm around the invisible head and turned it in the only direction the d-field permitted. Turned it too far.

  In time, the d-field would exhaust its power, as would the i-field. The intruder would not be viable by then. Direk was disturbed he had killed the murderer, and killed him so easily.

  2-29 Little Heroes

  "They'll never find us here!" Ibrahim uttered breathlessly, pulling the cabinet door closed but leaving a small gap he could see through.

  "What's happening?" Sammy asked. He huddled behind Lam's nephew in the empty storage cabinet. He called him Abie. Abie called him Sammy.

  "Maybe it's just a drill!" Abie answered, holding the door very still.

  Sammy didn't like the dark but he did like the excitement of hiding. Still, he didn't feel right about what they were doing. "We're not supposed to hide! We're supposed to go to a designated location!"

  "Where?"

  Sammy didn't know, so he said nothing. If Mom asked him where he was during the drill, he wouldn't lie to her. He just hoped the drill would end soon! The klaxons were very loud and wouldn't stop and were beginning to scare him! At least the cabinet shut out some of the blare.

  "I wish we had shiplink augments," Abie whispered loudly, "so we could listen to what's happening! I could hear Uncle Lam! I could tell him where I am!"

  "They won't give one to me, either!"

  "Do you hear people running?"

  "I can barely hear you, Abie!"

  "Are you scared, Sammy? I think I am! Almost! We'll be safe, if we stay in here!"

  "Safe from what?"

  "I don't know! We can pretend the barbarians are boarding the ship! The Fleet! Are you sure they're just humans, like us?"

  "I told you I saw them!"

  "You didn't make them sound very scary!"

  "I don't like to talk about them!"

  "Then they are scary! I like to be scared!"

  "Then you've never been really scared!"

  "I could be a Marine, like my Uncle Lam!"

  "You already told me that!"

  "You want to be a Navy officer, like your mom?"

  "I suppose so! But I like what Uncle Phuti does, too! He gets to talk to so many people!"

  He liked that Abie always referred to Zakiya as his mother. He never contradicted him. Abie could see she was not his real mother. Abie was a good friend. It was wonderful having a friend who was almost his size and age.

  "She seems too nice to be a Navy admiral!" Abie said. "Do you love her?"

  "Why do you ask that?" Guys didn't ask questions like that and Sammy felt uncomfortable with answering it.

  "I love my mother!" Abie said. "It's good to love your mother! Does Admiral Demba love you?"

  Sammy was sure Zakiya loved him. He loved her. He was proud of that, yet reluctant to be as direct as Abie in proclaiming private feelings.

  "You're very different from everyone I know," Abie said. "Everything is different now! We've lost our home. It's scary! But Admiral Demba is great and powerful. I want to know that you're good people. Good people love each other."

  "We love each other," Sammy finally admitted, knowing Abie would not see him blush.

  "Good! I really like you, Sammy! You make me think about many new things! Tell me more about Oz, the barbarian world! Tell me again how Admiral Demba escaped the Lady in the Mirror!"

  The door to the room opened and they heard the frightened voices of adults. Sammy tried to see over Abie's shoulder through the crack. He leaned too hard and the cabinet door opened too much. Two grownups saw them: a man and a woman. The woman registered shock at seeing them and motioned frantically for them to stay where they were. The man had a terrible cut on his back and was dripping blood on the floor. Abie pulled the cabinet door back but still kept the crack to peer through.

  "This is not a drill!" Abie cried. "The man was hurt! More people! They're closing the door!"

  "It could still be a drill," Sammy said, "but it's way too scary!"

  The people who had flooded into the room became so quiet that Sammy and Abie could hear a woman whisper, "There are children here!"

  "Where?"

  "In the cabinet!"

  "This is the last room! We have no choice!"

  "It was right behind us!"

  A sharp crack shook the whole room and a loud ripping followed. The noise and vibration almost seemed to be coming through the bulkhead into the cabinet. People screamed and backed toward the far wall where Sammy could see them through the gap in the cabinet doors. Several of the grownups cried out from new injuries. They flailed arms and brushed at burned spots on their bodies. The rippi
ng stopped. The odor of burned metal reached even into the cabinet. Then the hammering began.

  People shifted against the walls and cowered behind pieces of furniture and storage containers. Something made the smoke in the room swirl. Something stepped on melted pieces of metal, sending them skittering and clinking. Something became visible.

  Abie opened the gap wider, to see better, even though Sammy squeezed his shoulder as a plea to stop. "Fleet!" Sammy whispered in Abie's ear, hoping his tone of voice would make him pull away from the opening and stay hidden. Sammy could see the barbarian pivot to leer at the dozen terrified people who were backed against the walls of the room. His black uniform was all but obscured by a harness that held multiple weapons and other machinery. His face was scarred and brutal, devoid of pity. He dropped a rifle-like weapon on the floor. He pulled a power-knife from a scabbard.

  The barbarian lunged at several people, playing on their fear, making them try to evade his buzzing knife blade. He cornered a woman who couldn't stop crying and pricked her with the tip of the knife, making her scream. When she reflexively reached out to push the weapon away, the barbarian cut off her arm just below the elbow. The woman fainted. The barbarian leaned over to threaten a finishing cut, teasing the others by thrusting the blade at the victim's neck.

  Abie threw open the cabinet, shoving Sammy backward to propel himself outward. He dashed forward and scooped up the weapon the barbarian had dropped on the floor. He closed on the barbarian from behind, swinging the weapon up on the elbow of the arm that held the knife. The knife fell