by Mark Wandrey
Sato was in the midst of a tangle of limbs and tails, four opSha and the scientist spinning in an orgy of violence. Rick really wanted to watch the tableau, but the second guard had drawn a metallic truncheon and was beating on Rick’s head from behind.
“I don’t want to hurt any of you,” Rick said as he turned.
“What are you?” the second guard cried out as he saw Rick’s glowing eyes and metallic face. The man reached for a high-voltage stunner on his belt. He jammed the conductive tip into Rick’s metallic abdomen, triggering a 50,000-volt discharge. The Æsir’s hybrid batteries registered a 12% increase in power.
Rick sighed and backhanded the man, sending him cartwheeling to the side, where he landed in a heap. Spinning around, he found only one opSha still moving, but Sato was on his knees, the alien on his back, and its hand around his neck. Sato was screaming and writhing. Rick moved in a blur.
* * *
Just like the time he’d apparently fought the men in Houston, Sato didn’t remember any of it from the instant before the fight began until the end. This time the ending was different.
His feelings of self returned with a crash; awareness of his situation instantly sent him into a panic. Around him, three of the opSha were sprawled, contorted in either death or unconsciousness. The final one was on his back, scrambling to get a grasp around his neck. Along with his feelings of self were the sensations of many bruises and scratches. This hadn’t been a one-sided fight like the one with the street toughs in Houston.
“Hold still, damn you!” The opSha on his back snapped, its fingers trying for a grip in his hair.
Sato had never taken to combat courses while in the Winged Hussars. He was a scientist, not some grunt in a CASPer. This strange part of him was disturbing. “Proctor,” the opSha had called him. His knuckles ached, likely from smashing them into the alien’s face or other parts.
“Get off,” he cried and tried to shake it off. He was at least five times the size of the opSha, but it was amazingly nimble and strong for its size. Then he felt tiny hands scrambling to reach his pinlinks, the external access ports for his pinplants. Fear exploded in the pit of his stomach, and he somehow knew it wasn’t the first time. It had touched them moments ago, briefly, and attempted to access his mind through them! It must have some sort of interface in its hands.
Sato did the only thing he could think, he threw himself at the ground, backwards. It was a wild reverse jump, almost like a dive toward the water. It was a completely instinctual move, with no concept of the repercussions, and it was the best move he could have performed.
Halfway to the ground, the opSha’s hands touched his pinlinks, and he felt the attack. A brutal lance of thought, the way a laser focuses light; boring, cutting, probing into his pinplants and…reaching…
Then he hit the ground, crushing the opSha between himself and the concrete walkway outside the museum that had become a battleground. He clearly heard the hollow thwack of the opSha’s head striking concrete, and the grasp lessened. The loosening upon impact was also accompanied by the cracking of bone, which was transmitted through their flesh. “Grahh!” the opSha cried out in pain.
He’d had a simian cushion between himself and the unyielding concrete. Still, he added another handful of bumps to the already long list. He hadn’t felt this beaten up since he’d returned to New Warsaw after the Keesius incident. With a groan, he rolled off the opSha, who raised a weapon pointed at Sato’s head.
“So be it,” the alien snarled, and pulled the trigger.
The pop of the tiny projectile weapon firing and the clang! of the bullet striking Rick’s armored hand were nearly instantaneous. So close together Sato jumped, fully believing the round had split his skull.
“You okay?” Rick asked, hovering a meter up and casually dropping the bullet. The opSha struggled with shaking hands to reload the apparently single-shot weapon. Rick moved an arm, and a tiny laser pulse split the weapon in two, taking some of the alien’s fingers with it. “That’s enough of that,” Rick said to the alien.
Sato struggled to his feet and stared at the defeated being, holding a savaged limb and glaring at him. The face held pain and hate in equal parts. “What is this all about?” he demanded.
“You should have stayed hidden,” the opSha said. “Saisho knows and will find you.” It took a calming breath and closed its tiny eyes. A moment later an electrical spark arced from the being’s pinplants, and it spasmed for a moment before falling limp.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Rick demanded as he landed next to Sato.
“I-I don’t know,” he admitted. His left knee and ankle hurt badly. He was afraid his ankle was broken. He pointed at the other three opSha. “Are they dead?”
Rick’s head turned fractionally as he used his suit’s sensors. “Yes, all from various blunt force trauma, and one broken neck. I wish you could turn that shit on and off when you wanted.”
“Me, too,” Sato admitted and moved closer to the last one. He quickly pulled a logic probe from his little toolkit and touched it to the alien’s pinlink. The computer diagnostic tool quickly told him the pinplants were completely destroyed. “Burned out his own pinplants, killed himself,” he said aloud.
“Surprised he didn’t say ‘Hail, Hydra,’ or some shit like that,” Rick mumbled.
Sato didn’t have time to wonder what Rick meant. The two guards Rick had disabled were slowly coming around. At the entrance to the museum, people were screaming and running about. The sound of sirens in the distance was growing closer. But he couldn’t leave immediately. He bent over the body and started searching.
“What are you looking for?” Rick asked. “We gotta get outta here.”
“Clues,” Sato said.
“The police are coming. We’re all over their dispatch.”
“Then the faster you help, the quicker we can get out of here!”
Rick cursed quietly but went to one of the fallen opSha and began rifling through their minimal clothing. Once Sato finished with the last to die, he went on to one of the others. Rick finished, and Sato was working on the last of the attackers. The sirens were noticeably closer. In the dead opSha’s hand, he found the cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Son of a bitch,” he snarled and took it back. He was almost finished when he remembered the logic probe and touched one of the opSha’s pinlinks. It showed functional. He used his pinplants to link the logic probe to his slate and triggered a full diagnostic. It wouldn’t execute; the pinplants were encrypted. He wasn’t surprised; he was frustrated.
“Rick, cut this bastard’s head off.”
“What?”
“I need to get into his pinplants.”
“Then do it, but hurry.”
“I can’t with what I have here.” He gestured at the deceased alien. “I need his head.”
He couldn’t tell what Rick was thinking, only imagine it. Why had Sato become so suddenly bloodthirsty? In reality, Sato had never been overly squeamish. He disliked personal violence while simultaneously being keenly aware he was a warship and weapons designer, and those machines caused untold loss of life. The realization he’d almost set loose a doomsday device was the first time he recalled feeling regret or remorse in regard to his chosen profession. At the moment, though, he wasn’t feeling particularly squeamish.
When Rick continued to hesitate, Sato dug into his toolkit. There was a knife there, just not a very big one. When Rick saw the little blade, he cursed and gently pushed Sato aside. Schnict! The Æsir’s 60-centimeter-long blade slid from the right arm and came down with smooth precision, severing the opSha’s head. Shrill screams came from the crowd of museum goers, some of whom had come closer after the fighting stopped. Now they fled in terror as Rick’s arm blade dripped bright red blood.
Sato shuddered a little, despite his new lack of squeamishness. The eyes were still open. He bent with the intention of picking it up only to retch and nearly puke.
“I got it,” Rick said and tucked
the head under his left arm. “No way we can catch a taxi now, though.” He gestured toward the museum parking lot, 500 meters to their left. A stream of police vehicles were flooding in, and men in armor jumped out. “Time to go.” Rick grabbed Sato around the waist. “Hang on.”
“Wha- Oh, boy!”
The Æsir turbines spun up in an instant, and they leaped into the air. Not quite leaped. Sato knew the load capacity of the Æsir, and it was pretty close. Rick executed a low-altitude transition to lateral flight, zig-zagging between an office building and a parking garage. Sato felt a different kind of sickness.
“How are the jump turbines handling the load?” he yelled over the screaming engines.
“I’m at 112%,” Rick replied. As his voice was coming from speakers, he was able to cancel out much of the engine noise and make himself easily heard. “Don’t worry, it’ll be enough to get us out of here. I can reduce power, but I’d have to fly higher.”
On cue, the sound of a siren and powerful flyer fans screamed past nearby. The police were using aircraft to search for them. Sato closed his eyes and hung on, trusting Rick to get them to safety.
* * * * *
Chapter Ten
Rick ran a diagnostic on the armor while Sato got his more advanced tools unpacked. The scientist seemed no worse for wear after they’d spent 30 minutes doing escape-and-evasion against the Tokyo police.
After they’d returned to the hotel via its flyer landing pad, he’d logged into the Aethernet through their room’s connection. He didn’t want to use his personal node and risk that the authorities had identified either of them. They hadn’t. The news was reporting the incident as a fight between alien mercs.
Some of the witnesses suggested the opSha had attacked a tourist, Sato. There were only a few blurry images of the scientist, not enough to ID him. The story continued that some unknown alien in combat armor had intervened. There were better pictures of him, but of course he was wearing his cloak, and the armor hid all his features. Popular theory seemed to be that he was either a Lumar or a Torvasi. It didn’t matter; they were clueless.
As he monitored the news and worked on assuring his armor wasn’t damaged, he watched Sato work. Now that they were in a controlled environment, he was all business again. A scientist working on a problem. He’d set out all the items taken from the opSha on the room’s small table.
There were three intact handguns of the same design the one had tried to use on Sato. A small pile of credit chits numbering no more than 200 credits. Four Yacks from the dead opSha, which all matched the specimens. The last things were a strange glove which looked like it was made of cobwebs and a metallic cylinder 5 millimeters by 10 centimeters long.
“Any of that stuff mean anything?” Rick asked.
Sato picked up the glove. “Not this,” he said. “Though they used this to try and access my pinplants.”
“What were they trying to do? Kill you like that one committed suicide?”
“Maybe,” Sato said.
“And that other thing, the cylinder?”
“This…” Sato picked it up and held it. “This is familiar.” He spun it between his fingers, casually, like one would a stylus. He examined it closely, slowly turning it over in his hand. All Rick could see was a tiny logo, a star casting rays in all directions. “Nothing is coming to mind, though.”
Rick nodded to the dismembered head. “Did I carry that all the way back as a grisly souvenir?”
“No,” Sato said and moved to the head. He made a slight face of disgust as the dead eyes stared at him. The ears had drooped in death, making it easier to access the tiny metallic pinlinks just behind them.
He gritted his teeth and attached a pair of data probes. “These will let me interface with the pinplants.” He closed his eyes, and the nearby slate lit up and began scrolling data at a blinding rate. After a long time, he spoke. “Damn, there isn’t much here. Even critically injured, they managed to initiate a wiping program.”
“Can you get anything from the head?”
Sato gave another little shudder and he looked away from it. “Yes, there are some residual pieces of data in here.” He closed his eyes again; Rick could see them darting behind their eyelids. “Three series of numbers.”
“Do you know what they’re for?”
“Not a clue,” Sato said. He took the folded fabric bundle from his pocket and sat it next to the end, unfolding it to reveal a metallic cube about 15 centimeters on a side. He slowly examined it, turning it over and over like it was a puzzle to solve, which Rick guessed it was, of a sort.
“What is it?”
“This,” he said, holding up the cube by steepling the middle three fingers on each hand and balancing it on their tips. “This is an Enigma.”
“I’d say more of a mystery than an enigma.”
Sato laughed and shook his head. “No, I mean it’s called an Enigma. It’s a device for…” His eyebrows crunched together. “It has something to do with being a Proctor.”
“A proctor is a teacher,” Rick said. “You were a teacher?”
“I don’t think so.” Sato kept turning the cube over and over again. “Teachers can’t kick people’s asses and shoot lasers.”
“Merc teachers can,” Rick replied. Sato looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I get you.” He gestured at the Enigma. “That thing make some connections?”
“Maybe starting? Not sure.” Sato gestured at the head lying nearby. “Wish I had more from that…” He stopped, his eyes going wide. “Oh, fucking hell.”
Rick turned and saw the opSha’s head had opened its eyes and was looking around.
“Oh, that’s not right!”
“Dakkar!” Sato moaned.
A pair of tentacles emerged from the back of the head and disappeared over the edge of the table. Rick bent over and looked underneath. Dakkar was lying in a puddle of water, pulsing in incredibly intricate patterns as he did whatever he was doing.
“What happened to me?” the opSha—or rather its head—demanded. Its eyes looked around, then down at the table it was sitting upon.
“Fuck me!” Rick yelped and jumped back halfway across the room. “How is it talking?”
“They use an ultrasonic pulsing,” Sato explained with a sigh. “They don’t need airflow to work the organ.” He glanced under the table at Dakkar. “Dakkar, why?”
“You said you wanted information,” the Wrogul said. “I admit, I’m curious, never having examined an opSha. Add that I was curious if I could reanimate a severed head, if even for a short time…it was impossible to resist.”
“Not that you tried very hard,” Sato countered. The Wrogul pulsed contentedly.
“Let me die!” the opSha wailed.
Rick swallowed and looked away. This was a little too close to his own situation. He’d once been dead, as well, and was alive now thanks to a curious Wrogul. That was Dakkar, too, though an earlier version. It seemed the buds were indeed identical to the original.
“I thought you were making progress,” Sato said.
“Progress? What do you mean?”
Sato sighed again.
“The head function will not last long.”
Sato forced himself to look at the head. “What are the numbers?”
“Let me die!” the head begged.
Sato’s mouth became a tight line. “Tell me what the number series mean.” Sato spoke the three numerical sequences. “Tell me what they mean, and I’ll end this.”
The head’s ears quivered, and the eyes moved for a moment.
“I can induce pain,” Dakkar said.
“No, please,” the head said a split second before Rick would have spoken the same. “The first is my Himitsu division’s field funds code. The second is the authentication for the code. The third is planetary coordinates for us to report after our mission.”
“Anything else?” Dakkar asked.
“No, end it,” Sato replied. The tentacles withdrew, the head jerked, then it sagg
ed and became mercifully still. “Please return to your support module.”
The Wrogul gyrated and slithered across the floor and up the side of its module. As it crossed the threshold, it flashed back at them. “You do not have to thank me,” he said and fell into the water with a plop.
“Sato,” Rick said in a breathless voice.
“I know,” Sato replied. “Remember what I said about the Wrogul?”
“Yeah, but…” he pointed to the head.
“No but about it. To Dakkar, or Nemo before him, that’s just a pile of cells to be manipulated, explored, exploited.”
“He brought it back from the fucking dead.”
“As he did with you.”
“You don’t think I know that?”
“I interfered with Nemo’s little science experiment to stop what he was doing. The Wrogul’s word is solid; if they say they’ll do something, or won’t do it, as long as you’re damned sure to be exacting in the details, they’ll keep their word. I put a stop to his Rick Culper manufacturing line.”
“And the others he’d already made?”
“He wouldn’t give them up,” Sato admitted. “I did get him to promise not to awaken them, like you. You’re the only one who was conscious when I found out what he was doing.”
“I don’t remember.”
“No, he was holding you in a form of coma to work on you.”
Rick made a face inside the armor that Sato wouldn’t be able to see. “He promised to stop messing with my…my bodies?”
“He agreed not to bring any of them to consciousness.” Sato shrugged. “That was the best I could do.”
“How many of those monsters are out in the galaxy?”
“I have no idea. There were dozens on Azure when I was there. Might be hundreds of thousands now. They bud at a certain rate, but I can’t remember how long that is. Plus, nobody knows where they came from. One of the Azure researchers thought they might exist in 2nd Level Hyperspace. Back then we hadn’t even confirmed it existed. Just a theory. After my trip there, I’ve been doing math that suggests there might be many more levels, each only accessible from the one above it. Like layers in a cake.”
