Rift Breaker

by Tristan Michael Savage

  Luylla retrieved her gun belt and climbed up Tazman’s stiff form, pulling herself inside the carriage.

  ‘Some help, please,’ Tazman yelled.

  She poked her head out.

  ‘Come on, I’m handcuffed,’ he pleaded.

  The chilled metal grip of her merciful hand hoisted him though the opening. Once in, he face-planted on the floor.

  ‘We have to get off this rig,’ he said, picking himself up. ‘We’re going too fast to stop before the next platform. They’ll be waiting for us down the line.’

  Luylla fastened the buckle of her holster. ‘I can call the Inhibitan,’ she said, raising her left wrist.

  ‘There’s no time,’ said Tazman.

  ‘Well what do you propose, jumping?’ she yelled.

  Tazman pushed onto his feet. ‘Calm down, will you? Uncuff me and I’ll show you.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Come on, come on. We’re on a schedule.’ He walked towards her.

  Sighing angrily, she pulled the key off her belt and scanned it over his restraints. They dropped to the floor.

  With his tail whipping excitedly, he crossed the carriage and unwedged Adel’s rifle.

  ‘That’s not enough firepower to take them all,’ Luylla argued.

  He raised his finger to silence her. ‘In times like these, you need a bit of lateral thinking,’ he said. He pressed the butt to the control panel and stood in the doorway. The emerging crosswind blasted his shaggy hair.

  Tazman squinted and leaned out to examine the position of the surrounding buildings. The track curved to the right. He sank to one knee and cocked the rifle. While it heated he activated the zoom screen; it flipped up and lit with a grainy resolution. He pressed on the control buttons to zero in on his target.

  The wind shook his view. With a steady hand he aligned the on-screen crosshairs and pulled the trigger. The shot ejected. Way ahead, a bright yellow sphere fell from the gravi-track and blinked out. The rest of the nodes turned red.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ yelled Luylla.

  ‘Don’t even get me started on that debate,’ he replied, still concentrating.

  He fired again, dropping node after node before they had a chance to adjust themselves. He looked up at his handiwork. ‘That should do it.’ He stood and placed the rifle in her hands.

  ‘Hold on to something,’ he added, closing the exit door.

  The skyway carriage hit the gap in the line and dropped. Tazman, Luylla and the cargo crates floated for three and a half spuckons before crashing onto the floor. Adhering to Tazman’s calculations, the carriage slammed onto a rooftop traffic park. It scraped across the building and ploughed through a line of parked hover vehicles, sending them flipping in different directions, spraying a hail of glass and metal. The skyway carriage skidded horizontal and screeched to a halt.

  Tazman stayed for a moment, happy with the position. He smiled up at Luylla who just happened to land on top of him. He sniffed at the curve of her neck. Fruity. The hard parts of her armour dug into him. The little he could feel of her flesh was firm and bouncy. ‘Well, hello there,’ he said, deepening his voice. She scrunched her face and pushed off him, straightening her hair tie as she stormed outside.

  Tazman slowly rolled to his feet and stumbled to the door. Luylla stood across the rooftop with her back to him. He straightened his back and marched over. She studied a small screen that had flipped up from her fake arm, and fingered the adjacent controls.

  ‘Do I get a thank you?’

  ‘Shut up. I need to concentrate,’ she snapped, keeping her head down.

  ‘I demand you thank me now.’

  She turned. ‘Look what you did!’ she said, waving at the magtrain wreck.

  ‘Me? You’re blaming me?’

  ‘I had it under control before you screwed it up.’ She pushed her index finger hard into his shoulder. ‘That was my only chance to get the Composite off my back.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ yelled Tazman. One of the hover vehicles near the wreck exploded into orange and purple flames. They both flinched. An invisible cloud of hot air wafted over them. Smoking debris rained down.

  ‘She had evidence that could clear my name, something about the Nova Corp ship.’

  ‘The Reconotyre?’ he shouted. ‘If a Tyde pirate vessel found the wreckage … well the recovered intelligence could clear all our names. What else did she say?’

  ‘She said she had it stowed away at a nearby stronghold.’

  ‘Mayogen Tower!’ Tazman cried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a building in the business district, the major Tyde stronghold in these parts. That’s where they store all the data, Luylla!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I used to work there.’

  She turned back to her arm. Tazman looked at the display over her shoulder. The small point of view zoomed through a line of traffic. The markings on the display indicated a semi-autopilot sequence for the Inhibitan.

  ‘Then I’m going in there to get it,’ she replied.

  ‘There’s no way you’ll survive,’ said Tazman.

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘No you won’t. You don’t even know where the information is held. That building has a state-of-the-art defence grid.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘I’m coming with you. Without me you’re lost.’

  She broke her gaze from the screen and looked him in the eye. She was trying to stare him down. Unfortunately for her, Tazman was experienced with this kind of stubbornness. He held his ground and returned the stiff gaze. Another vehicle exploded; neither of them blinked. Orange flames fed along spilt oil trails, lighting her face. She broke the silence.

  ‘Don’t get in my way.’

  Voids away, Milton was dead — or having an out of body experience at least. He looked down on his body. It was face-down on a padded operating table. Moments ago Reelai had applied a mask to Milton’s face. The gas had tasted minty and had knocked him clean from his body. Was he dead? His body rose and fell with his breath. A glance at the life support display indicated everything was satisfactory and going to plan.

  Over him an elaborate set of polished silver equipment hung from the ceiling. With an unbreakable concentration, a Xoeloid scientist positioned the rig carefully over the back of Milton’s head where a small bald patch had been made. A thin drill extended from the device and whirred into a spin. Milton watched anxiously. The drill inched closer. His skin was pierced. Blood oozed out and dripped down his neck. His head gave resistance so the scientist applied more pressure. The drill cleared his skull and thrust into his brain. Everything went black.

  His vision came back. As to how much time had passed Milton had no idea. He was not even sure if he was conscious. His body was encased in a cell. Not like a prison cell, but the kind of microscopic cell found in a living thing. The blobby wall rippled under his fingertips. A shadow brushed past on the other side. Without seeing, Milton already sensed who was there. He made a fist and pushed into the wall. It stretched out. The black eyes flashed in his head. He gasped. The wall spontaneously flexed against him and thrust his hand out, leaving indented grooves of his fingers. He looked up and around. The eyes were gone.

  The next thing he knew the cell floated high in the air. Way down below him was a city, arranged in a perfect circle surrounded by a blanket of green. In its centre a great tower loomed above all other structures, glistening in the sun. A giant platform ring stretched wide around the tower, standing high above the smaller skyscrapers. A speck of light flashed from somewhere in the city. Milton leaned forward. Another beamed from somewhere else.

  He heard a voice — an unfriendly one at that.

  ‘Destroy,’ it whispered.

  Milton asked what it meant.

  ‘Destroy,’ it repeated. The flashes spanned across the city. The city was burning. Everything, all the buildings, the people and the floating ring engulfed in flames. The ring broke away
and its smaller pieces melted. Bloodcurdling screams rose up from all directions. Their howls cut deep inside him.

  ‘Hey! Stop it!’ Milton cried, pounding the fatty wall of his floating home. The chaos worsened, serving to induce a radiant joy in the thing that breathed down his back.

  Sixteen

  Greatek’s three moons were insufficient to illuminate the tenebrous surfaces of Mayogen Tower. The building instead opted for its own moon, a white logo that pompously blazed through the fog of the dank business district.

  Luylla surveyed the site from a shadowy rooftop across the gaping traffic void. Her padded climbing harness hugged her waist. The leg loops, strapped tight against her thigh armour, housed a pistol on each side. She had also brought along a rapid-fire stream gun, which was a little shorter than her forearm. She tightened its strap across her torso before raising the barrel of her grapple launcher.

  She placed the sign in her sights. Wind sprayed icy droplets across her face. She defocused her eyes and used her peripherals to adjust her aim to where she estimated the logo’s scaffolding to be. The trigger gave resistance and the launcher fired, the spike exploding from the barrel and the recoil sending her back a step.

  The device shook as the thin cable uncurled from the feeder. Luylla kept her grip tight. The projectile lobbed in an arc and disappeared behind the foggy glare of the sign. With the distant sound of metal clashing on metal, the cable stopped. The launcher beeped and signified that the claw pads had secured to an appropriate surface.

  She detached the cable feeder from the gun and slotted it into the winch she had fastened to the bottom of a construction crane. The slack tightened to the optimal tension. Luylla slid the launcher with its spare cable into the sheath across her back and fastened her karabiner to the mechanical zip line. With the push of a button, the device took her across. She cleared the edge. An updraft carried fluctuating sounds of the distant flying traffic below.

  A lens on her collar sent a feed directly to the Inhibitan’s forward pane. Tazman’s voice came through her earpiece. ‘Can you still hear me?’

  ‘Touch my ship and I’ll drag you through an asteroid belt on this cable,’ she replied.

  The device slowed as she reached the scaffolding. She unclipped herself and her boots touched the platform. She climbed down to the roof.

  ‘There’s a vent column on the south side,’ instructed Tazman.

  She jogged over the rooftop landing pad and found a row of columns secreting warm vapour.

  ‘To get in you must —’

  Luylla stabbed her metal fingers through the cover slats and ripped herself an entrance. She tucked her legs through the opening and dropped into the windy duct. Clamping a small torch between her teeth, she crawled on. Tazman talked her through the system to a seemingly bottomless elevator shaft.

  ‘Use the maintenance lift to get down to the two hundred and fifteenth floor,’ said Tazman.

  Luylla climbed from the vent and stepped onto the maintenance lift dock. The balcony, a tiny strip of walkway, had barely enough surface area for the span of her boots. Holding the safety bar, she shuffled along to where her spotlight caught a control panel. She pulled the lever, activating a hum of electricity. The lights on the platform edges heated to life. Evenly spaced white orbs down the shaft side lit in unison.

  She pushed a large button and a distant sound from below got nearer. The red lights of the maintenance lift blinked to life as it rocketed up towards her. The machine slowed at the last moment to fall in line with the dock. Luylla stepped on. She punched the floor numbers into the keypad and went for the big button.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tazman.

  Luylla stopped; she realised she hadn’t been breathing and filled her lungs.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘You might want to hold on to something.’

  Luylla gripped the railing and spread her footing. When satisfied, she pressed the button. The platform dropped, freefalling on its rails. Her hair shot straight up and her face stretched in the turbulence. In her vision, the white orbs blinked past. She closed her eyes.

  A few spuckons later, Luylla felt the platform slow. Her insides began to settle beneath her tense abdominals. The lift stopped and locked onto the rails. Luylla rested her head on the railing.

  Tazman’s voice crackled in her ear, ‘Are you okay?’

  With effort she calmed her nervous breath before opening her mouth to speak.

  ‘I’m—,’ the real elevator shot past from below, leaving an updraft in its wake. Luylla dropped her light beam and it spun into the bottomless dark. She cursed.

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ said Tazman. ‘Now open the doors and you’re in.’

  She looked up; the shaft doors were on the other side. At this point she fully realised the insanity of the plan. She psyched herself and began working her way around the strip of platform that surrounded the drop.

  When she reached the other side she wrapped her flesh arm around the safety rail and worked her metal fingers between the doors. Bit by bit, the doors were forced open. She got a decent grip on the edge and threw her weight back until the opening was large enough for her to swing inside.

  Luylla found herself in a darkened office space. Rows of desks were evenly spaced across the carpeted floor; each desk had a holo-data terminal embedded. All furnishings faced the same direction and were arranged at immaculate right angles. A spotless glass wall revealed a main stretch of sky path. Several hover units whizzed past.

  She kept to the shadows, Tazman leading her on, and advanced through a corridor that led to a similar room, bar the set of glass doors on the far wall.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Tazman.

  The glass opened automatically. Beyond lay the entrance to the mainframe room. The reinforced double doors were secured with internal security locks — there was a keypad with about fifty different alien symbols. Squinting into the dim light of the keys, Luylla felt around underneath the buttons and found the small port Tazman had spoken about, a sentinel input terminal. She detached Tazman’s haphazardly made leeching device from her belt and had to bend one of the prongs into line before plugging it in the socket.

  ‘Now it’s Tazman’s turn to shine,’ the simian chimed.

  Luylla sank bank into a dark corner. From the ship, Tazman hacked the system with software designed to mimic a Tyde sentinel. The locks released one by one, clicking heavily enough for her to feel. She wiped her sweaty face. You shouldn’t be here, she thought. ‘Shut up,’ she answered herself.

  ‘What was that?’ said Tazman.

  ‘Just open the door,’ she shot back.

  ‘Way ahead of you.’

  The last lock gave way and the door began to move. Luylla grabbed the leecher and ventured inside. Continuous rows of towering rectangular mainframes lined the straight path before her. No ceiling was visible. Beeps and spinning drive sounds emanated from the blocks. The edges of the walkway a nd bases of the mainframes had strips of light that shone up against the metallic surfaces. Luylla’s boots clicked on a slightly elevated metal grate under which clumps of tangled wires wound and twisted.

  ‘Turn right,’ said Tazman. Luylla glanced back at the door where she entered, which now seemed tiny. She entered the alley. A few paces down, Tazman stopped her. ‘That one will do.’

  She felt the surface for a place to put the leecher. The connection points were of all different shapes and sizes. On the opposite side she found one that fitted.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Luylla, securing the pins.

  ‘Me too,’ replied Tazman.

  Luylla let out a shaky sigh. Almost there, she thought. She leaned against the adjacent column and watched the blinking green light as Tazman interacted with the computer system. Luylla was grateful she hadn’t needed her guns. Now that the data transfer was underway she found herself breathing easier. Mayogen Tower didn’t feel all that intimidating anymore.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Tazman shouted.


  An alarm echoed through a distant hollow.

  ‘What did you do?’ Luylla shrieked.

  ‘Umm, the alarm—’

  ‘I know, the alarm.’ Luylla’s nervous system quivered, her breaths shallowed, her heart pounded. She darted out to the main path.

  Dark, glistening figures appeared at the security doors. Energy weapons clicked and charged. Sentinel arms rose. Luylla ducked back into the maze. An indiscriminate spray of plasma fire blasted forth, shattering the mainframe of her previous position and exploding out chunks of flying debris.

  She kept moving and loosened the strap of her stream gun. Columns whooshed past on either side. Clunking footsteps with hydraulic muscles rushed the room.

  ‘I thought you had it?’ she said in a yelling whisper, pulling the strap over her head.

  ‘Just get out of there!’ Tazman yelled.

  A sentinel sprang from the left. Luylla reached with her stronger arm. With no momentum lost, she slammed the sentinel’s weapon to the closest wall. The metal arms wrestled with a straining of machine hydraulics. Luylla hooked her stream gun over the clashing limbs and squeezed the trigger. The hammering shock of continuous pulse hit the sentinel’s torso plate. The gun rumbled in her shaky grip. The machine head twitched with every blast. Face lights blinked out. The pulse stream blew out the sentinel’s reverse side, spraying circuitry, robotic innards and metallic spine pieces. The broken machine collapsed.

  Another click behind. Luylla turned. The fast metal hand circled her aim away and a discharge fired upwards. She snatched its neck. With all her strength she slammed the machine’s metal skull repeatedly into the edge of a column. The head buckled and, on the third blow, lenses cracked. The sentinel released Luylla’s weapon. She stepped back and kicked the machine to the floor.

  Machines appeared down the alley. Luylla sprinted, doubling back to the exit. Relentless firepower blitzed from all sides. Debris and hot slag flew off her surroundings.

  She raised her weapon and emerged again at the main path, firing a spray in the general direction of the door. The sentinel there was caught in the stream and dropped. The twisting body fired off a blast that skimmed her metal forearm. Luylla grunted. The door started to close. She kept her focus; tri-blasts shot from behind and sparked against the doors. She cleared the gap in time and blasted away to make an exit through the glass.