“Comrade Thomas,” said Lorre with a grimace, but Thomas was too angry to care.
“I’m going to put her to use,” said Thomas.
“What are you talking about, Thomas?” said Roanna.
“You’re going to join us,” said Thomas, and Lorre sighed with annoyance. He was too canny an operative to gloat about his plan, but Thomas lacked that kind of discipline.
“Comrade Thomas,” said Lorre, “there is no need for your sister to know…”
“She will know!” said Thomas, his voice rising to a shout as he glared at the older man. “Let her know! I want to wipe that stupid smug smile off her face, just as I’m going to wipe the smug smiles off the face of every stupid stinking noble on Calaskar.”
Lorre sighed again. “Fine. Just please be quick about it.”
“You, sister, are going to join us,” said Thomas, calming again.
Three hundred and sixty seconds.
“I will never join the filthy Machinists,” said Roanna, making no effort to hide her contempt. “I know the atrocities the Final Consciousness has carried out. And I saw them with my own eyes. I saw what you did to the Graywolves! Your own men and you stabbed them in the back and turned them into those monsters. And for what?”
“To bring you here, of course,” said Thomas. “And you will become one of us. Entirely against your will.”
“No,” said Roanna.
“Yes,” said Thomas. “You see, sister, the victory of the Revolution of the Final Consciousness is inevitable. I have seen the future. I have seen the secrets of the Final Consciousness, and the Pulse is coming. It will bring Calaskar to its knees. To prepare the way for the Pulse, we are seeding agents throughout Calaskar. The science of the Machinists has found a way to forcibly convert someone to our cause.”
“What?” said March.
“Oh, the Silent Order doesn’t know everything?” said Thomas. “There’s a surprise.” He laughed as the four hundredth second passed. “I admit I don’t understand the science behind it myself. The machine rewrites and reprograms the nervous system, mapping its electrical impulses and reshaping them. With the device, we can turn anyone into a covert agent for our cause without their knowledge. It actually is rather brilliant. Agents of the Final Consciousness tend to have red flags in their background like I do now, or have obvious cybernetic and nanotech alterations as does your poor pet Iron Hand here. The device will create undetectable agents.”
“Then that’s what this was about,” said March. “This wasn’t a ransom. This was never a kidnapping. It wasn’t even an assassination attempt. This was always a trap. You and Lorre wanted to lure your sister out here so you could use this machine of yours to convert her into a Machinist agent.”
“Yes,” said Thomas. “Once you are dead and we have finished, my sister and I will return to Calaskar with the machine. No one will suspect us. I will renounce my past sins and throw myself into my work with enthusiasm, all while feeding information to the Machinists. And I will convert my siblings one by one. I especially look forward to seeing my father’s expression when I strap him into the machine.”
“Why would you do this?” said Roanna, on the verge of tears. “We love you, Thomas. I love you. I…”
“What a useless word,” said Thomas. “You love me? You and all my family only loved me so long as I smiled and saluted the King and went to church and said all the right things. What useless, hollow creatures you are…and you are all the more appalling because you stand in the way of progress. You stand in the way of human evolution. The Final Consciousness is God, Roanna. Mankind will evolve to become God, and all shall be one together in the unity of the Final Consciousness for the duration of the universe.”
“I’m sure the people in the Machinist slave camps,” said March, “are feeling all kinds of unity.”
Thomas laughed. “When mankind becomes God, the unworthy will have to be purged.”
“You’re a monster,” whispered Roanna. “You’re a monster, and you’re a murderer. I defended you! I stood up for you for years, every time you got drunk and made a scene! I came here to rescue you.” Her face quivered with grief. “I thought you were a better man than this.”
Five hundred seconds had passed. March just had to keep this conversation going for another minute and a half, and then he could act.
“I am a better man than you thought,” said Thomas. “I am one of the vanguard of the Revolution.” March was watching Lorre, so he caught the brief flicker of contempt that crossed the Machinist agent’s face, a flicker that soon vanished behind his professional, sardonic mask. “I will help overthrow the obsolete and reactionary Kingdom of Calaskar and bring it into the fold of the Final Consciousness. History will remember me as a hero.”
“I threw away my life to save you,” whispered Roanna, “and they were right about you.”
“What?” said Thomas, his face darkening. “What did you say? What did they say about me?”
“They said you were a coward and a drunkard, too much of a spoiled child to take a man’s duties,” said Roanna, “but I see that they were too kind. You are a coward and a murderer, tearing down the work of better men to salve your pride…”
“You dare!” said Thomas, starting towards her, drawing back his hand to strike her. Roanna did not move but only glared at him with shriveling contempt.
“Comrade Thomas,” said Lorre. “Comrade Thomas!” He grabbed Thomas’s arm, and the younger man stilled, glaring at Lorre.
“What?” said Thomas.
Five hundred and forty-seven seconds had passed.
“You’ve said your piece, and further delay is dangerous, comrade,” said Lorre, his attention on Thomas, though his gun remained pointed at March. “Might I remind you that both Administrator Heitz and Ronstadt Corporation know exactly where we are located? The sooner we are gone from here, the better.”
“Yes,” said Thomas, getting control of himself with an effort. “Yes, you are right. Maybe we had better load the machine onto the ship.”
“No,” said Lorre. “That would defeat the purpose of this entire operation if you were caught with me. No, the procedure on Lady Roanna should take no more than five minutes. Once that is done, I will depart. Eventually, the Ronstadt thugs and the local branch of the Silent Order will arrive, and you and your sister can spin a tale of how Captain March sacrificed himself heroically to save you both, though the sinister Machinist agent escaped in the chaos.”
“So, what are we going to do with March?” said Thomas.
Five hundred and eighty seconds had passed.
“This, of course,” said Lorre, and he pointed his pistol at March and squeezed the trigger.
There was a flare of a plasma bolt, but March had seen it coming, and he had been ready. His left arm snapped up, his metal hand coiling into a fist as it tried to shield his chest.
The plasma bolt drilled into his left arm and turned his hand to vapor.
It didn’t hurt, not precisely. His left arm never felt pain the way his flesh did. Nonetheless, it was not a pleasant sensation, and the feeling of damage shot up his cybernetic arm as his brain tried to interpret the input.
But in the heat of the moment, there was no way for Lorre to know that March’s arm had blocked the bolt.
March threw himself backward, feigning a grunt of pain, and collapsed upon his back, breathing hard. Roanna screamed and started towards him, but Thomas pointed his gun at her again, and she froze.
“Is he dead?” said Thomas.
“Not yet,” said Lorre, taking one step forward and leveling his gun at March’s face. “But he’s going to be. Take her back there and strap her into the machine, and start the precheck. We’ll begin the procedure as soon as I…”
Six hundred seconds had passed.
For another second, nothing happened.
March felt the vibration in the floor before he heard the explosion.
Lorre froze, looking around in alarm, and then the sound reached
them as Heath’s railgun shot ripped off the top of Dome 12. A howling gale rushed through the reception room, followed by the furious bleating of vacuum alarms. More alarms went off as the air started to retreat, followed by a metallic hiss as an emergency door came down over the entrance.
“What the hell?” snarled Lorre, stepping back, his gun sweeping back and forth as he tried to cover every possible angle at once.
“What’s happening?” said Thomas, his eyes wide as he backed towards the wall.
“A breach,” snapped Lorre. “An attack. An ambush…”
He realized his danger at the last minute and swung back towards March, but by then March was already moving.
He leaped off the floor, his damaged left arm serving as a lever, and flung himself at Lorre. The Machinist agent cursed and fired again, but March anticipated the movement and ducked. He felt a flare of pain in his left shoulder as the plasma bolt passed close enough to vaporize a patch of his jacket, and then his shoulder slammed into Lorre’s gut. The Machinist agent fell with a grunt, and March hammered his damaged left arm down like a club. The stump of his wrist clipped the pistol and sent it clattering to the floor. March drew back his right arm to strike, but Lorre reacted faster and grabbed something from his belt.
It was a stun gun.
March twisted as Lorre fired, and the stunning blast only clipped him. Nevertheless, it was enough to make the muscles of March’s left leg seize up, and he stumbled and landed hard on his back as the alarms continued wailing. Lorre whirled and sprinted down the corridor, and a second later March heard the clang of a cycling airlock. Likely that airlock led to Lorre’s gunship.
Simon Lorre was clever enough to know when a situation had gone bad and it was time to cut his losses.
March cursed in fury, trying to force his twitching legs to obey him, and Thomas Vindex stepped before him.
His gun was pointed at March’s face.
“It’s over, Thomas,” said March.
“No, it’s not,” said Thomas, his voice glacially calm. All the rage had drained from him, leaving cold clarity in its wake. “If I kill you, I can say Lorre did it. There’s still time to put Roanna in the machine and finish before your friends arrive to rescue you.” He smiled. “Then the plan will still work, and I get all the credit.”
“Then you’ll do this to your sister?” said March. “To your family?”
“With a smile on my face,” said Thomas, “because they deserve it. Just as I’m going to kill you with a smile on my face.”
He smiled, pointed the gun at March’s chest, and a plasma bolt flared in the gloom.
Thomas stiffened, his eyes going wide, and smoke rose from the crater that had just been blasted into the back of his head.
He collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
Roanna stood behind him, Lorre’s gun in her hands. She dropped the weapon, walked to her brother’s side, and fell to her knees next to him.
She bowed her head and sobbed.
Chapter 10: The Silent Order
Between the stun blast, the near-hit from the plasma bolt, and his damaged arm, March didn’t feel all that good, but there was work to be done.
“I’ll be right back,” said March.
Roanna didn’t seem to hear him, her shoulders hunched and shaking as she wept. March started to head down the hallway and then realized that leaving a distraught woman alone with two guns was probably not the smartest thing to do. He picked up both pistols with his right hand.
Roanna didn’t seem to notice.
March headed into the hallway, tucking one pistol into his pocket and holding the other with his right hand. He walked to the end of the corridor and peered through the narrow windows in the airlock door. Beyond he saw the barren surface of the asteroid, with recent scorch marks from a takeoff. No doubt Lorre’s ship had left the scorch marks when he made his hasty escape.
That was disappointing. He had really wanted to kill Lorre.
In the last office before the airlock, he found the jamming device. It was a standard broad-spectrum radio jammer, similar to a hundred other March had seen, and he switched it off. Next to the jammer rested something that looked like a dentist’s chair, and attached to the head of the chair was a machine that March had never seen before.
A metal visor rested against the back of the chair, adjustable to the size of the victim’s head. Electrodes ringed the visor, a bundle of wires connecting to a small cylindrical computer about the size of a can of soup. The computer was connected to…
March blinked.
He didn’t know what the computer was connected to.
It was a bundle of alien-looking electronics about the size of his head, glowing with an eerie green light. Part of it looked like fiber-optic cabling, and if he had to guess he would say that some of the components were capacitors and transmitters of some kind. At its heart was a strange thing that looked vaguely like a metallic green beetle the size of his thumb, and March had no idea what it did.
He felt a growing pressure in his damaged left arm. He would have to attend to that soon.
His earpiece crackled. “March? March, you there?”
“Yeah,” said March, gazing at the machine. “Good shot, Heath. Came right in time.”
“What’s your status?” said Heath.
“A little scorched, but otherwise well,” said March. “Lady Roanna is unhurt.” He grimaced. “Lorre escaped, and Thomas Vindex is dead.”
“Dear God,” said Heath. “What happened?”
March looked up and saw Roanna standing in the doorway, her face twisted with pain.
“Lorre tried to kill Roanna to cover his escape,” said March. “Thomas threw himself in front of the shot, and Lorre got away before I could get him. I don’t suppose his ship got shot down?”
“No,” said Heath. “The station fired a half-dozen missiles at him, but he opened a hyperspace tunnel about three seconds before they would have taken him.”
“Damn it,” said March. “Bring the Tiger to Dome 12 and dock at the airlock. We’ll come aboard and decide what to do from there.”
“Acknowledged,” said Heath, and the call ended.
Roanna looked at him in silence, and March grimaced and pressed the stump of his left hand against the interior wall of the office.
The pressure in his arm got worse.
“Is that what we’re going to tell everyone?” Roanna said at last. “That he died heroically saving me from Lorre?”
“Yes,” said March. “Unless you would rather tell everyone the truth.”
“The truth that I murdered my brother?” said Roanna.
“You saved my life,” said March. “Also, killing isn’t murder if it’s in self-defense.”
Tiny holes appeared in the wall around the stump of his arm, like the holes in expensive cheese.
“He wouldn’t have killed me,” said Roanna.
“No,” said March, nodding towards the machine. “He would have done something worse.”
“What…what is that thing?” said Roanna.
“I have no idea,” said March. “At a guess, I think that it would turn you into an agent of the Final Consciousness, maybe even without you knowing. It can’t be nanobots or cybernetics. Those show up on most scans. It must be some kind of…neurological reprogramming. I don’t know.”
“We should destroy it,” said Roanna.
“No,” said March. “We need to take it back with us. The Silent Order has to know about this thing, whatever it is. You heard your brother. He planned to use the machine on your entire family. I would bet this isn’t the first time the Machinists have done this.”
The pressure in his arm got worse.
“Oh, God,” said Roanna. “Oh, God. Thomas, how could you have done this?” She rubbed her face. “I’m always going to hate myself for this. Always, always, always.”
“You shouldn’t,” said March. Wisps of smoke rose from the wall. “You saw what he helped to do. He confessed it in front of
you. He would have done much worse.”
“Is…that how you live with what you’ve done?” said Roanna in a small voice.
“Sometimes,” said March.
“Does it get easier?” said Roanna.
“No,” said March.
They lapsed into silence. Roanna cried for a little while, the silent, ugly tears of someone who could not stop themselves. At last, she pulled herself together and sniffled a few times.
“What are you doing to the wall?” she said.
The pressure in his arm reached a crescendo. “This.”
He wrenched his stump loose, and Roanna yelped and took a step away from him.
A mass of molten metal glowed at the end of his arm, rippling and folding as the nanobots did their work.
“The wall,” said Roanna. “It…it looks like the wall in the hydroponics bay.”
“It does,” said March. “I was an Iron Hand. This is a Machinist cybernetic prosthesis.” The pressure grew, and he clenched his new left hand, the fingers molten and glowing. “It knows how to rebuild itself. The nanobots in my arm harvested metal from the walls and started repairing the hand.”
Roanna stared at his glowing fingers with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. “Like…like the infiltrator drones.”
“The exact same technology,” said March, forcing the fingers to clench again. It would take a while before the new hand was calibrated. The pressure in his arm had eased, but his shoulder hurt, and he felt light-headed and ravenous. Rebuilding damage to his cybernetic parts always threw his metabolism into overdrive.
They waited in silence. March occupied himself by searching the remaining offices. He found the room where Thomas had been staying, with a cot and a laptop computer. The computer he would take with him. Perhaps the Silent Order could find something useful on it.
“Captain March?” said Roanna at last.
“Yes?” said March, looking at her.
“Thank you for trying to save my brother,” said Roanna.
March inclined his head.
“I think I would like to go home now,” said Roanna.
“We can do that,” said March.
Light flared outside the airlock window as Heath brought the Tiger in to dock.
Silent Order: Iron Hand Page 17
