by Frank Carey
"Aerith, this is Tannith. Do you copy? Over."
Only static came from the radio.
"Aerith, this is Tannith. Do you copy? Over."
Still, only static.
"Dammit, Aerith! Answer! This is Tannith. Do you copy? Over."
"Tannith, this is Aerith. I read you five by five. Sorry about the delay, but my radio was off. I didn't want the little buggers to trace my signal. I'm clear of the camp, but I can still see it. The bots are finished and have returned to their hiding place. They're very interested in shield technology."
"Copy that. We've made it to the cave and are setting up camp. Hurry back. Tannith out."
"I'll be there shortly. Aerith out."
Spontaneous applause broke out as relief flooded through the group before they got back to work preparing the camp.
Chapter Six
Ten years prior to the Maranta Five Incident...
Having grown bored with the hacker work he had taken of late, Atmar took a no-brainer of a smuggling job which involved the theft of a small freighter stored in a hanger near New York City on Earth. A simple snatch and grab with delivery at Albion station in three days. Atmar took the job at his normal rate, ironing out the details via avatars in the middle of one of the more popular multiplayer online role-playing games hosted on the InterWeb.
The ship was located in a hangar at a long forgotten spaceport outside New York. Outside two bored guards half-heartedly walked the perimeter in an embarrassingly predictable pattern. A blind Malthusian wombat could dance a reel in the doorway without these two noticing. Atmar watched the two meatheads while he checked his hacker ball one final time, pressing a tiny switch on its top, which activated the device's self-diagnostic routines.
The hacker ball was one of Harmon's greatest inventions. Cobbled together before the divorce, it was a quantum computer encased in a sphere the size of a ping-pong ball. The hacker ball allowed its owner to neural interface with any computer system in the League. Harmon was proud of his invention and pleased at the amount of revenue it brought in. Even Atmar was impressed by the creation of his sniveling other self.
Putting the ball away, Atmar walked through the open front doorway of the hangar while his two friends continued their dance of the oblivious.
Atmar's target—the tramp star freighter Spindrift—sat unguarded in the middle of the hanger sealed and ready to go. He didn't bother scanning the ship since he knew it was shielded to prevent spaceport security from detecting the weapons cache being carried on board. Instead, he walked up to the ship and pulled the hacker ball. He looked around one last time before placing the ball gently against the lock pad next to the port side crew hatch. Small tendrils shot out of the ball and embedded themselves in the surface of the pad. Within moments, the door slid open to reveal the pitch-black interior of the ship. Harm removed the sphere and placed it safely in his pocket before walking up into the ship. The door closed behind him leaving him standing in a dark airlock. He looked around, his acute night vision allowing him to see clearly in conditions which would cause a bat concern. Getting his bearings, he headed to the Bridge.
Atmar strapped into the pilot's seat before closing the window shields and bringing up the ship's power system. He activated the external cameras and kept an eye on the monitors while placing his hacker ball on one of dashboard control pads. Like with the lock pad, cables shot out and embedded themselves in the control surfaces. The instruments lit up as Atmar was granted full access to all ship's systems. After a quick preflight, the ship lifted off and headed into space, leaving behind two very pissed-off and confused guards.
Once in other-space and on course for Albion, Atmar sat back to relax for the next six hours. Something about the takeoff bothered him, so he hacked into the ship's inventory to see what he was carrying. His clients had told him the ship contained a shipment of gold bullion earmarked for Tralaska, but with that much weight, the ship should have wallowed during takeoff. Even with the inertial dampening system set at full, the little ship should have flown like a drunken boar. He looked at the ID monitor, then the load weight monitor, and saw the cargo weight was way too light for gold, so he brought up the manifest and blanched at what he saw. He ran back into the center bay and saw a single tarp covered pallet. He pulled away the tarp and saw a brand spanking new Goranthi Decimater just waiting to commit genocide against an unsuspecting planet. The Decimater would wipe out all sapient life forms while leaving buildings and animal life intact. There was even a packet complete with operator's manual and a "Thank you for your purchase" card taped to the top of the device.
Atmar began to shake and tremble, as if in the middle of a pitched battle which, in a way, he was, for in the face of such horror as that represented by the Decimator, Harmon was wresting control of his body from his evil twin. As he regained control, he heard movement behind him. Instantly, he reached into his pocket and activated the voice recorder Atmar had kept there for recording his ramblings for posterity’s benefit.
"Beautiful, isn't it," a voice said from the darkness surrounding the weapon.
Harm spun around to face a blaster set to kill. Holding it was a tall human male with a scar running from next to his eye, down his cheek, to end at his chin.
"No. It's an abomination," Harmon said as he thought about going for his pistol. Anticipating this, his captor relieved the elf of his weapon, placing it out of reach on a table behind Harmon. "The Goranthi outlawed these decades ago. Who the hell are you?"
"Who I am is unimportant, and yes, this device, and others like it, were outlawed, but the Goranthi have no qualms about selling the remaining inventory."
"What are you going to do with it?" Harmon asked.
The human smiled. "We're going to rob the Cube by lighting it off inside the station. Once the vapor is inert, we’ll go in and take what we need. We'll be on our way less than an hour after killing everyone on board the League’s greatest research facility."
"You'll kill thousands of researchers and staff," he said, though he was thinking of only one person he knew at the cube, his cousin and Royce's sister, Gloria.
"It sucks to be them. Speaking of sucks, any last words?" the man asked as he raised his weapon.
Before Harmon could answer, something in his coat began to beep. The human frowned as he walked up and extracted the voice recorder from Harm's coat pocket. "What the hell is this?" the human asked.
Harm just smiled as he rammed his tail upwards into the man's chin and out through his brain, killing his assailant instantly. As the man fell, Harm grabbed the recorder from his dead hand and ran with it to the cockpit. He slammed the device into an interface port and downloaded its contents into a file. Once the transfer was complete, he bundled it with the ship's log, and cargo manifest before sending it to the director of the Cube marked ultimate priority. Once the message was safely away, he dropped the ship out of other-space, coming to a complete stop in the middle of cosmic nowhere.
Harm ran back to the Decimater and sat down at the device's control panel with owner's manual in hand. Nodding his head, Harmon keyed a sequence into the keypad.
"Destruct sequence accepted. Self-destruct in tee-minus twenty-minutes and counting," the device announced as a red beacon flashed. Satisfied with his work, Harmon headed to the back bay to grab an escape pod. He opened the door and was shocked to find ten Lycastrans in dirty coveralls standing around the back bay.
"By the gods, slaves. Damn those idiots to all seven Alturan hells," he said as a female who was obviously in charge, walked up to him and smiled. Her nametag read "Kestra Mrantz." "Listen, I've set a weapon in the other room to self-destruct. We need to eject it into space..."
Still smiling, Kestra knocked Harmon unconscious and threw him into a life pod.
###
Harmon woke a day later inside a life pod on course for Albion station. He was sore, but his physical pain was nothing compared to the anguish he felt when he reran the pod's log. It showed the pod ejecting from the Spindrift. Minute
s later the ship disappeared in a blaze of light. When the cameras came back online, they showed only empty space. The Spindrift was no more.
Harmon’s actions had cost ten innocents their lives. He put his face in his hands and wept. When he raised his face, he realized Atmar wasn't going to give up that easily.
###
The Cube med team waited at the edge of the shuttle bay as the Starguard ship landed. "Move!" Dr. Prentis yelled as the ship's aft ramp lowered and disgorged a Starguard med team escorting a patient on a gurney. To the doctor's dismay, the patient was double strapped to the stretcher and one set of straps were beginning to unravel from the strain.
"Let me loose, damn your eyes!" the patient yelled with a distinctive British accent. "I will have you all drawn and quartered!"
Without warning, the patient went momentarily limp, then his head snapped up, his eyes wide as he looked around in fear. In a different voice he yelled, “What are you standing around for? Atmar must be stopped!”"
The doctor looked at his Starguard counterpart. "This one is Harmon Aymar. The Brit goes by Atmar. We think the elf is the primary, while the Brit is malignant. We've given them both enough sedative to stop both hearts, but he—they—refuse to go down."
Before the Cube doc could reply, the head of Cube Security walked up and listened to the two sides of Harmon go at it. When they finished, he shot them with a blaster set on heavy stun. "Thank you," the Harmon ID said as he slid into unconsciousness.
"We've got this, doctors," the OffSec agent said as several agents walked over and wheeled the gurney off the deck.
"Wait a minute. He's in shock. He's in need of medical..."
"We've got it," the leader said as he handed over an authorization form.
"I'm calling Director Devlin," the Starguard doctor said, sorely pissed at what had just happened.
"I wouldn't bother," the Cube doc said, showing him the authorization. It was signed by the OffSec Senior Director himself, a signature that superseded Dir. Devlin's by several levels.
###
Special Projects Director Josiah Muntz stared at the image of an elf brain on the viewer and grimaced. "What am I looking at, Doctor?"
"Mr. Aymar's brain with his two IDs superimposed on it. The blue splotch is his while the red one if Atmar, who Harmon calls his evil doppelganger. We've run tests on Harmon. He’s suffering from severe separation disorder, something we can easily treat."
"What about Atmar?"
"Simply put, Atmar is a malignant sociopath who should be committed."
"Can they be separated?"
"Sure, with great risk to both individuals. We have the device Dr. Taggart developed many years ago. In theory, we can use it to excise Atmar and put him in a hamster ball until we can find a suitable synth body for him."
"What's the downside?"
"We risk killing both subjects, or Atmar gets loose in the Cube central computer and wreaks havoc before making his way into the InterWebs, killing the staff of the Cube and millions of League citizens in the process. There is more, but I think you get the gist of the danger involved."
Muntz looked at the doctor with a raised eyebrow.
"I am not indulging in hyperbole, Dir. Muntz. Both IDs are computer geniuses. Given a chance, either one could take over the League if their souls are allowed to get inside the InterWebs. Harmon just needs help. Atmar needs to be eradicated."
"Can you bring Atmar out without disturbing Harmon?" Muntz asked.
"Sure, if you've got a squad of Goranthi Marines nearby. Elves are stronger than humans. Hell, they put Tralaskans to shame. I'm telling you, you do not want to wake him up."
"Have Atmar prepped and awake in one hour, Doctor," the director said as he walked out of the room.
"It's your funeral," the doctor replied to a closing door.
###
Atmar was wheeled into a room containing ten large, burly individuals of various species, all wearing lab coats. There was a tray of surgical instruments next to where he lay.
"Atmar, relax. This won't hurt, much," a voice said over the intercom. Atmar closed his eyes and could detect Harmon with him, though his brother was in a near catatonic state.
Atmar looked around and detected danger from the occupants of the room. He concentrated and quietly broke the strap holding his arm in place, the one closest to the instruments. With a chuckle, he grabbed a scalpel, freed himself, and then killed everyone in the room in a matter of seconds. He then realized they were all synths.
When he finished, Atmar looked up at a vid camera and sneered, "Is that all you got?"
This occurred once a week for six months, each time with varied setups, and each time ending with Atmar standing under the camera, blood covered and sneering.
The final test was very different. For six months, an orderly would wheel Atmar into a room full of synths and leave him next to a table holding various instruments of death. Today though, the table held a single, large knife with straight edge and open handle. The restraints were also gone, as were the synths.
The room was filled with living, breathing assassins, all of whom were staring intently at Atmar.
"This will be... NOOOO!" he screamed as the shaking began. Moments later, Atmar was gone, replaced by Harmon.
"Doctor! You said this couldn't happen!" the director yelled as Harmon grabbed the knife and threw it into the observation window, shattering it. Before the assassins in the room could react, he leapt through the opening and into an adjacent hallway.
"This is impossible," the doctor said as he hit the alarm button before the director could stop him. "Director, you should leave, now!"
Harmon had no idea where he was or what had happened. The last thing he remembered was being aboard the Spindrift, telling a woman to take her people and get out. Now, he was somewhere else. Around him, people scattered as alarms sounded while inside him Atmar fought for control.
"This ends, now," he yelled as he came to a doorway marked dispensary. He ran inside and found two pharmacists nervously watching him.
The door opened and a guard ran in. Without hesitation, Harmon grabbed the guard’s gun and stunned him with it before turning to the two druggists. "Twenty units of potassium, injectable. Now!"
One of the apothecaries looked at him and said, "That'll kill you."
"That's the idea, now move it or I fire."
The pharmacist went to the back and returned with a large syringe. "Look, there has to be another way,"
"Not really. The thing inside me needs to die before it harms anyone else. Now, get out!"
The two carefully walked around Harmon, then through the door, leaving Harmon to his fate.
"You don't have to do this," Atmar said from behind the counter.
"One simple question: would you have killed those men? Yes or no."
"Yes, of course I would. Don't you see? You're the brains, and I'm the brawn. Together, we can rule this pitiful League of Planetary Systems. They will all come to kneel in front of us as a god deserves.
Harmon took the syringe and plunged it into his hearts, pushing the plunger down until it stopped.
"Hardly," he replied as Atmar disappeared along with the room around them.
The door exploded inward as the security team rushed in followed by a med team. Having been briefed by the two pharmacists, they immediately administered a double round of nanorobots in solution to scavenge the potassium chloride out of Harmon's system while the techs monitored from the outside.
"Problem," the tech monitoring the nanorobots said.
"What is it?" the lead tech asked.
"The nanorobots are not responding to commands. They're exiting the body."
"Twenty units of Stripaway, stat!” the lead tech yelled as a silvery puddle formed next to Harmon's body. It sat there a moment before moving to a nearby chair and consuming it. It moved to a nearby table which it started to eat.
Before the guards could react, a large elf in fatigues, with master sergeant
stripes and a big gun, ran in.
"Kill that thing!" the lead medical technician ordered as the nanorobots began to form a humanoid shape.
MSgt. Royce Aymar took careful aim, thumbed his blaster to full power, and pulled the trigger, instantly vaporizing the silver thing standing before him. Behind him, the techs raced Harmon out of the room as they hurried to save his life.
It was only years later that Royce learned who he had saved.
###
Harmon woke up in a room befitting a bed and breakfast. Sitting next to him, watching him intently, was a pretty human woman with dark hair and piercing eyes. She reminded him a little of Marta.
"Hello," she said in a deep, almost sultry voice. Her perfume smelled of vanilla.
"Hello," he replied. Behind her was a picture of a large, Cube-shaped structure floating in the blackness of space.
"How do you feel?"
"Like I went ten rounds with a Goranthi prize fighter."
"Did you win?" she asked.
"No. I think I lost after the first round, but I kept going out of pure spite," he said. "Who are you, and where am I?"
"Mr. Aymar, my name is Ciara Devlin. I am the Director of this facility which we affectionately call the Cube We owe you the League's largest apology."
Confused, Harmon asked, "Why?"
She explained about his kidnapping by members of a rogue OffSec group led by Dir. Muntz and the events in the apothecary. “Muntz is gone, but we were able to secure the data from his experiments. Comparing the brain scans they took of you while you were in custody with those an hour ago, our people found a radical change in your brain wave pattern. Based on the data, our doctors are convinced that Atmar was the personality which took control of the nanorobot swarm," she said as she looked at him.
"You're not human, are you?" he asked, noticing her fingernails moving in and out of her fingertips, probably due to nerves. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
"No, I'm Venlanten. Why?"
"Royal?"
"Yes, but why..."
"Please, read my soul."
"Why?"
"I have to know if I'm the only one in here.
