by Aer-ki Jyr
“That…is why your workouts are pathetic. You’ve got to have the cardio to boost you towards self-sufficiency…you do know what that is, right?”
“Yes I know. I read the Star Force fitness manual. What’s cardio have to do with it? I thought any workouts would increase your healing ability.”
David was confused as to how inept this operative was but he was definitely sensing an opening, so he decided to pursue it.
“Efficiency is the key. For that you need lots of reps. When you run you get thousands of cycles on your body, even in a short workout. When you lift you only get a handful. They’re more powerful, which induces more muscular strength and new muscle fibers being added if you overdo it, but it won’t boost efficiency. Efficiency will reduce your attrition, as well as making your body capable of doing progressively greater workouts…which will then further increase your healing ability, allowing you to attain self-sufficiency.”
“That wasn’t in the manual.”
“Yeah it is,” David said, crossing his arms over his chest again. “But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to read in prison. Plus you’ll have all the workout gear you need. You can actually diminish your stay by completing workouts, so you’ll get in better shape during your solitude if you choose to. Was that part of your plan?”
“What do you mean, part of my plan?”
“Knowing that you’d be able to train at a higher level than ever before, all by yourself, once we caught you? Was that a perk The Word mentioned when they assigned you to this mission?”
“My training is a private hobby.”
“So what, they told you to expect a traditional prison if you got caught?”
“The subject never came up.”
Bingo…first crack.
“You had to know this wouldn’t last forever.”
“Lots of people work for Star Force. I’m just one of the many. You weren’t supposed to notice.”
“We did.”
“Obviously. Mind telling me how?”
“One of your students,” David lied.
Kilmeade lowered his head. “How’d you catch them?”
“Just kidding,” the Archon said, adding another data point to his mental list. “Most people don’t go on vacation for a few hours. You should have stuck around for a while, gave yourself some more obvious cover story for why you were coming and going.”
“They told me to keep everything to a minimum to avoid drawing suspicion…and you’re saying that’s what led you to me?”
“That, and the fact that one of their other operatives mouthed off that they’d infiltrated us so we started looking harder…and found you,” he finished with a sarcastic smile.
“So much for ‘mind your own business and you won’t get picked up,’” Kilmeade scoffed.
“Is that why you were training in your quarters?”
“Yes.”
“As I said, you’ll have better training facilities to work with from now on.”
“I still don’t get that. Why give your prisoners stuff?”
“More like borrow, but I get your question. You’re not the first to ask, by the way. The basic point is, if we wanted you dead we’d just kill you, so why lock you away in a cage where you’ll rot to death or get killed by other inmates? Kinda counterproductive. This way, we isolate you, don’t harm a hair on your head, and drive you insane with the isolation. Now, for me and others in Star Force the isolation wouldn’t be a problem, but for weak-minded people with a pack mentality it is. You can call it revenge…or an impetus for change.”
“Rehabilitation?”
David shook his head in the negative. “Change comes from within. It can’t be forced. It can be heavily encouraged, but not forced. So, you can sit on your butt and stagnate if you want, or choose from a list of activities that we feel will be beneficial for you…and if you haven’t noticed, we really like training.”
“So how long are you going to give me?”
David uncrossed his arms and planted his hands on his hips. “Depends how much you actually did. I’ve got people digging through things, are they going to turn up more than just the blood injections?”
Kilmeade sighed. “No, that was my sole purpose here. They tell me who and when, then the student finds me right before graduation, I inject them, they move on, and I wait for the next person on the list.”
“Where are you injecting them?”
Kilmeade pointed to his inner right elbow. “Easiest veins to hit and doesn’t leave a visible mark if you’re wearing long sleeves like the neck would.”
“I meant the location in the city.”
“They told me the hallways were monitored, so I had to use the restrooms…the target would show up, say a code phrase to confirm identification, then I’d find a little privacy or diversion and inject them. Sometimes all it took was one of us having our back to whoever else was in there. Nothing complicated.”
“What did you do with the injector?”
“There’s a button to press after use that causes it to disintegrate. Never stuck around to watch how. I just hit it and tossed it in the trash, like I was told.”
“Were any of the contacts in your classes?”
“Two were prior to my being given instructions, but at that point they’d already moved on to other instructors. I handle the basic linguistic translation, so the ones I’ve got aren’t near to leaving. Something about the liquid was time-sensitive, which was why they had to be injected right before they left.”
“You call it liquid, why?”
“That’s all I know. It looked like blood to me, but they never said and I never asked.”
“What were you getting out of this?”
“A job that pays 5 times what this one does, after I complete my stay here.”
“That’s it?”
“That and a philosophical justification. Why, were you expecting more?”
“So you’re more of a contract case rather than a member of The Word?”
“Both small and large, we are all The Word. There’s no mission too small, for all support one another in building the structure that will take Humanity back to our rightful place.”
“Team mantra?”
“Something like that. Then again, they also told me I wouldn’t get caught, so who knows.”
“What made you think they’d come through with the job afterwards and not just cut you loose?”
“They said the job would be a step up in the organization, so it wasn’t so much a payoff as a promotion. They’re not just going to let someone in that hasn’t proven themselves.”
“So this was an initiation?”
“You could say so.”
“How much information were you given about the organization?”
“About an hour long speech. After that the only contact I’ve had was at the drop points and the contact lists. How’d you unscramble those anyway?”
“It wasn’t that hard when the instructions were still in your files.”
A weird expression crossed Kilmeade’s face. “I never had an instruction file.”
“It was deleted, but not all the way.”
The man facepalmed. “I wrote a note to remind myself the first time, then got rid of it. You’re saying it was still on there?”
“Computers have a way of backing up lots of things.”
“So you know who that last vial was going to?”
“Yes.”
“Are you picking him up?”
“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”
“Have you picked him up yet?” he insisted.
“Not yet.”
“Can I get a lighter sentence if I help you?”
David frowned. “Meaning what?”
“I don’t know where they go, but if you know who it is you can follow them down the line…if I inject him as expected.”
“That’s assuming word of me punching you in the face and carrying you across the building over my back hasn’t gotten ar
ound to him.”
“Oh…hadn’t thought about that. You carried me through the halls?”
“I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
“It might still be worth a try?” he pressed.
“So what happened to your philosophical loyalty?”
“It died.”
“What was their selling point, by the way?”
Seamus sighed, figuring there was no harm in explaining fully, now that he realized he wasn’t getting out of this. “Meat. There are very few places you can get it nowadays, thanks to you. My father took me hunting as a child and I grew fond of the taste of the wildlife cooked over a campfire. So their pitch to return things to the way they used to be while improving on the mistakes of the past had something tangible for me to hold on to…that and the assignment seemed a pathetically easy inroad to the organization.”
“How’d you even learn of the organization?”
“They found me…I don’t know how. Guess they did their homework, because the hunting was brought up as one of the first complaints against you guys, along with a list of others, most of which I didn’t care about. I actually like how you’re defending the planet and all…assuming that isn’t a gigantic hoax?”
“It’s not. So why help take us down if you want us defending the planet?”
Kilmeade frowned. “The Word isn’t trying to take you down. Fighting a civil war would do more harm than good. They’re changing things from the inside, which is why they have to stay hidden. They didn’t say, but I got the feeling the injections were some sort of message being carried. They assured me there wasn’t anything dangerous, like a disease or something, just an injection that had to be given within a certain timeframe. I thought it might also be some type of medication or drug, but nanites holding a message or something made more sense. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s undergoing analysis now, but I can tell you that it is blood. Were the contacts always delivered singly?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t make drops that often, so they’d give me a set of liquids that I’d wait on. Each one was different. They insisted that I didn’t get them mixed up.”
“Can you give us the names of your other contacts?”
“I deleted the messages…can’t you pull them back out of cyberspace too?”
“No. The instructions were a document on your tablet. The messages weren’t. How’d you know where to look for them?”
“If I tell you that, you can backdate them, I assume? They’re in public documents. Surely those haven’t been deleted?”
“No they’re not.”
Kilmeade smiled. “I can give you the most recent few from memory, then maybe a few more. They updated the key each time I picked up the vials.”
“Who was your most recent contact, and when?”
“Harold Smithison. About two weeks ago. The 3rd I think. I don’t usually remember past one. I’d write it down, but they told me not to, so I make myself remember until it happens. The previous code cypher was ran…random kitty. That was good for 5 people.”
“I think I’ll arrange for your prison stay to be…oh…let’s say about 2 years. If you complete the training programs that’ll decrease considerably…or lengthen based on bad behavior. It’s all up to you. If this information, or anything else you can provide us, turns out to be valuable in some way, I’ll see that your pay continues…that way you’ll have a tidy little sum built up by the time you get out.”
Kilmeade half smiled, not liking the idea of going to prison but favoring the terms the Archon was offering. “I can live with that.”
9
August 21, 2406
Solar System
Earth
David ducked just in time for a tiny ‘thud’ to zip by his ear, missing his shoulder. The mundane ball hit the far wall, compressing on impact so as to give little rebound. It fell to the ground and rolled towards the exterior of the dark training room where there was a collection tray set into the floor. Gravity pulled it down and in, then it rolled to an intake port and disappeared from the Archon’s spherical sight, though he wasn’t paying attention to it any longer as more thuds were firing out at him from multiple launchers in the walls.
The tiny ball slipped into a mechanized elevator that pulled it up high into the wall and placed it in a dispersion machine, waiting its turn to be sectioned off and returned to one of the launchers in the room when the hopper ran low. That occurred about 40 seconds later and it, along with several dozen other thuds, were scooted through an internal track around the inside of the curved wall and dumped into the weapon’s ammunition store. From there it waited again, before being pulled into another transition chamber, then shifted down into the firing tube.
The barrel tilted slightly within the wall, adjusting to David’s position, tracking his torso, then a bit of compressed air propelled the thud back out again towards its target, but the Archon deftly twisted to the side and let it slide underneath his armpit...then it impacted the far wall and began to repeat the same cycle.
Over and over the little thuds would cycle, giving David an unlimited amount of training time if he chose. This was a staple of Archon agility drills, the trick of it this time was that the room was dark and there was a white noise generator, sounding like an oscillating hiss, that was covering the telltale ‘whiff’ of the thuds coming out of their tubes which normally alerted an Archon from which direction they were coming, giving them a split second or so to react.
With that advantage gone, as well as his sight, the only way David could track the thuds was with his spherical sight…which ironically worked far better than usual for this drill, because he didn’t have to be constantly alert for getting hit in the back when he could ‘see’ everything in the room as if it was in front of him…meaning that, as far as his sensing ability was concerned, he no longer had a back.
The trouble was, both for him and others, that the smaller the object was the less it stood out in his spherical sight…or any other sight for that matter. If David’s ability wasn’t refined enough he wouldn’t be able to sense the thuds coming out of their tubes until they were only a meter or so away, or maybe not even that, meaning that those Archons with a low level spherical sight ability just beginning to manifest couldn’t use this drill until they progressed a bit further, making it something of an alpha dog scenario that currently only he and Jason were developed enough to use.
Not that he was anywhere within Jason’s league. David had worked up to a level 4 setting, compared with the level 37 he managed when the lights were turned on. Jason had already progressed to level 34 with the lights off, blowing David thoroughly out of the water…but it was still a feather in his cap just to be able to use this challenge, and he definitely wanted to stay ahead of the rest of the Archons just now beginning to experiment with level 1 runs.
David had this current scenario set at a simple 10 minutes…no scoring threshold to meet, just gaining experience picking up the fast moving objects on approach and getting his body out of their way in time. When he finished he’d accumulated 57 hits, which averaged out to be one about every 10 seconds. That wasn’t good, but it wasn’t horrible either, considering how many were being spat out of the walls.
As David exited the chamber he pulled off his safety sunglasses and put them in a rack along with several others of varying size, knowing from experience that he didn’t want to take one of the thuds in an eye socket again. His spherical sight stayed on until he got into the hallway, then it slipped out of focus and disappeared. It had been staying on longer than David liked, but he also appreciated the fact that he didn’t have to focus to keep it active, which allowed his mind to move to other tasks…like evasion, with the sight as an afterthought. It was simply there, like his eyes were, and had become quite natural after so many attempts.
His endurance had skyrocketed as well, with him almost having to concentrate to turn the sense off. Usually he could just relax and it’d knock itself offline, but the more and mor
e he got used to seeing through it his subconscious mind didn’t want to let it go and he had to make more of a mental choice to shut it down.
Right now that wasn’t an issue because he was feeling a bit of fatigue from using it and it slipped off on its own. He had a bit of a headache from the effort, having had to metaphorically ‘squint’ a lot during the drill to catch the thuds coming out of their barrels. If he didn’t he had only a 50/50 chance of picking them up enroute with enough time to evade, so he’d been having to press his spherical sight as much as he could to give him another few hundredths of a second to work with.
To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he was actually doing anything when he ‘squinted’ or just giving his head a brain cramp, but he was trying none the less. Other than Jason’s instruction…which was quite helpful at times…David had to poke and prod around inside his head to figure out how things worked, which a lot of times meant trying the stupid and pointless and seeing if anything happened…and on occasion something would.
As David’s spherical sight released and the hallway returned to his normal vision he felt a release of pressure in his head, now that he wasn’t expending the mental energy to produce the field that allowed him to ‘tactilely’ touch the objects around him to generate the image in his head. Jason had figured it out first, then was later backed up by the medtechs when they confirmed that the energy field being produced was not straight line beams like conventional sensors were. Instead it operated as a cloud that filled in the area around the person, allowing them to ‘see’ the backside of objects as well.
Not that it mattered, but David could ‘see’ the entire way around each of the thuds if he’d had time to concentrate, the same way that Jason could ‘see’ around the perimeter of his favorite marble. Neither of them could see inside objects well, unless they were porous. The energy field could push through lower massed walls, but it was more concentrated with direct access. This the medtechs had also confirmed with multiple studies on Jason and backed up with tests on David and a few others.
David’s test had been two balls. Both had an inner core that was hollow, one was sealed and the other had a tiny pinprick of a hole. He could see the hollow center on both, but the one with the hole was more distinct, confirming that even though the energy field he was producing could penetrate the material, it also was being restrained by it in some fashion, the exact specifics of which the medtechs hadn’t deduced.
