Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1)

by Ben Sheffield

  Ubra and Sabrok grappled on the ground. The fight was all one way traffic. She tried to wriggle out of the knife’s downward path, but it came closer and closer, a train that terminated inside her body. Suddenly, she relaxed her grip on Sabrok’s wrist and whipped her neck out of the way. Unprepared, he let his downwards pistoning triceps thrust the electric knife straight into a pool of water. It arced and shorted out in a flash that lit up the room like day. He screamed, pulling away a burned hand.

  She rolled from under his pinioning leg, and seized the gun on the ground. Just then, Kai’s feverish tapping on the control panel bore fruit.

  “EMERGENCY OVERRIDE AUTHENTICATED.”

  The sprinklers stopped.

  The lights came back on.

  Four a few seconds, the five of them were locked in a bizarre tableaux.

  Sabrok, clutching a burned hand. Ubra, sighting down the barrel of a gun at him. Two guards. Commander Wake. Warrant Officer Enoki Kai, caught in the middle.

  Sarkoth Amnon was nowhere to be seen. He must have gotten clear of the entire prison.

  “Let’s be reasonable,” Sabrok held his hands out in front of him.

  “Let us out of here,” Ubra told Sabrok, tightening her grip on the gun. “Or I’ll put a hole in your skull. Reasonable enough for you?”

  “Go ahead.” Sabrok said, gesturing at his chest. “Shoot me.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. She lowered the gun, looking confused, and he burst out laughing.

  The security chief laughed. “You moron! You utter bimbo! That gun is hard-coded to Solar Arm security. It doesn’t work if anyone else uses it, idiot.”

  She threw the gun to Wake, and he caught it.

  His movements after that were quick as sparks from superheated metal. He jumped to his feet, settled into an A frame stance, and started shooting.

  One of the guards half-got his gun out of its holster before a slug blew his head apart. Andrei sighted the other and squeezed off a tight pattern. The first two shots were blocked by the guard’s body armor. The third tore through the thinner material on his shoulder. He tumbled, clutching the flesh wound.

  Andrei’s next round opened his carotid artery.

  Sabrok was halfway up the stairs as soon as the shooting started. Kai tried to follow, but he was too slow. Andrei lunged at him, tackled him to the ground, and jammed a gun to the back of his neck. “Remember how I was appointed rescue officer? Looks like nobody ever bothered to revoke that status. Stay there, Warrant Officer. This round travels at twelve times the speed of sound, and I don’t think you can run that fast.”

  Kai whimpered and kept low, his face in a puddle of water.

  “Nyphur spoke to me, not long ago.” Ubra said, snatching a sonic cannon from a weapons rack. It was marine issue, from their own stock, and there was no security lockout. “He told me a lot of things, but you were completely right in your suspicions. He was a spy.”

  “I knew it.”

  “He says that he’s making it his mission to sow as much chaos as possible, in the name of stopping Sarkoth Amnon. And that if you knew the full story, you’d be down there with the Spheres, helping them fight.”

  Wake stripped off the nanomesh armored suits from one of the dead guards, and quickly dressed himself in it. As soon as it touched his naked figure, it dynamically reshaped itself to his height and proportions. “The Spheres started this whole mess.”

  “Apparently, the mess was started before you and I ever got here. It was started before man ever got here.”

  Just then, Kai tried to make a break for the door. Ubra whammed him with a sonic cannon, and he went down hard.

  You don’t deserve live ammunition, Wake thought.

  “Was Nyphur trying to kill my men down there?”

  “Even if he is, does it matter? Sarkoth Amnon wants to kill everything.” She said. “That’s what he tells me, and there’s reason to think he’s correct. Have you ever wondered what that ticking thing on the planet was? Have you ever wondered why he brought an army to this planet in response to a minor security incident? Caitanya-9 is a superweapon. And he’s now very close to getting his finger behind the trigger.”

  Andrei cursed. “I don’t trust him. And I don’t trust you. The Spheres have cloning technology. Maybe you’re a spy.”

  “Mistrust me all you want.” Ubra said. “But right now, trust doesn’t matter. The stakes are too high for that. Some people are trying to shoot you. Some people aren’t. What else do you need to know?”

  He nodded. “Nothing.”

  The section of the prison where the suspendor beam was located offered a wealth of supplies and weapons. Most of those were normally locked away, or suspended in particle beams, but thanks to Nyphur’s interference it was all for the taking. They found Vyres, as well as most of their old weaponry. They locked and loaded.

  “So what’s the plan?” Wake asked.

  “Die, probably. Nyphur’s probably being taken out of the picture by now. We can’t count on any more help from him. By my count, there’s ten or twenty permanent members of security. Hard to imagine that we’ll be able to get into space, or get to the ground, or kill Amnon, or do much of anything.”

  “Can the Spheres help us?”

  “They’ve got their own problems. There’s an army trying to wrest control of the Doorway from them. Based on the ticks, it seems to be counting down to some kind of event. Whether that event can be changed or averted is still a card that’s yet to fall. But come on, let’s get some visuals on the doorway past the stairs. That’s the way they’ll be coming, and that’s the place we need to defend.”

  Then Andrei grabbed her shoulder. “Wait. There’s something else I have to ask.”

  “We don’t have time.” She pushed his hand away. “We really don’t have time.”

  “It’s important. It’s something that makes me want to turn this gun on myself.”

  “Holy fuck, what?”

  He gestured at the suspension beam. “When I was prisoner here, Amnon showed me some holographic videos of my past life. Or what he claimed was my past life. My real name is Andrei Kazmer. The videos showed me committing crimes. Murders. Bad things. Please tell me…do you know anything about this?”

  Ubra shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that, and that’s another complicaton we don’t need. But I’ll tell you this: if you’ve got Andrei Kazmer locked away inside you, now would be an excellent time to bring him back out. We need all murderous bastards we can get our hands on.”

  Konotouri Alpha – March 18, 2136 - 1220 hours

  Havoc.

  Inside the main control room, computer panels were smashed, and loose objects were knocked askew. Nyphur sat in a chair, scowling like a surly and implacable toddler. Handcuffs held him to the seat. A guard had a Meshuggahtech pressed against his head. The barrel was a chilled circle of metal pressed into his scalp.

  Amnon charged into the main control panel, followed by Sabrok. He was a thundercloud of rage, disheveled and dripping wet. Nobody dared hold him to task over the fact that he was leaking chemical-laced water all over the agora carpet, even though it had been imported at a cost of hundreds of ducats per square foot.

  “You did all of this?” Amnon snarled, waving a hand around the trashed room.

  “No comment.”

  “You want to fucking die?”

  “I want a fucking lawyer.”

  Minutes ago, with Ubra’s help, he’d broken into the control room and started sabotaging everything he could get get his hands on, both digital and physical. He’d been subdued in minutes, but the damage was done.

  If reports were correct, two security guards were dead, a dangerous prisoner was at large, and Warrant Officer Enoki Kai’s status was unknown.

  “We’re now at war, professor,” Amnon said. “Habeas corpus is suspended, along with everything else. Mind explaining your motives to us?”

  Nyphur ignored him.

  Amnon gave
the nod to his personal aide. “Wilseth, please induce Nyphur to talk.”

  Wilseth was a wiry rodent of a man. He opened up an attache case, filled with ominous metal toys, and retrived what looked like a circular disc, about palm-sized.

  He pressed a metal buzzer to Nyphur’s’s skin. Instantly, terror erupted in his mind like flames consuming bracken.

  Spiders. I’m buried in a pit of spiders. They’re crawling on me. I feel their weight, like a rippling velvet cloak.

  Convulsive shivers rocked him. “What are you doing?”

  “Tu quoque, Professor Nyphur.”

  He felt the hair of their twitching legs. The sensations were so visceral, so strong, that he started to hyperventilate, hardly noticing the pain of a fractured rib.

  “This is a phobia resonator, Professor Nyphur.” Amnon said. “Hallucinations of your worst fear, made stronger than life. It is currently set to Level 1, but it goes to Level 5. Ready to talk now?”

  Nyphur shook his head, and the torturer turned up the sensation another level.

  The spiders are bigger, heavier, hairier. Hundreds of them now, thrashing legs as thick as my fingers, thick bristles like a toothbrush, clicking mandibles, chitinous shells, swiveling eyes. They’re trying to crawl past my lips…WHY CAN’T I CLOSE MY MOUTH? NO! NO! NOOOOO!

  “I’ll talk!” He gasped. “Just get that thing off me!”

  The phobia resonator was taken away, and immediately the phantom sensations ceased.

  “A wise choice, Nyphur.” Amnon said. “Prisoners who experience Level 3 or higher invariably suffer permanent neurological damage.”

  “I’m under orders,” gasped Nyphur.

  “To do what?”

  “Destroy.”

  “Ah.” Amnon said. “So Andrei was correct. You really are an accomplice of the enemy. Tell me more. Much more.”

  Nyphur clamped his mouth shut, but when Wilseth produced the phobia resonator and ominously ratcheted it up to Level 3.

  “We are the Defiance – a group of human defects that lives on the planet.”

  “Who commands these ‘Defiant’?”

  “Yuri Mykor.”

  Amnon’s eyes widened. “Is he a man about my age?”

  “You’ve met him before. One of your old friends, I believe.”

  Amnon started pacing. “He was my only friend. The only one I ever trusted. He commanded an expedition to Caitanya-9. When we lost contact, I assumed he’d died. But that was thirty years ago. How have you lasted this long? How have you survived the moons? They make the planet quite inhospitable.”

  “We found Vanitar technology.” He said.

  “The Spheres, for example?”

  “Yes. They are ours, or perhaps we are theirs.”

  “How incredible! Have you found any living Vanitar?”

  “No, they’re extinct, as far as I know. Killed off by the Wipe. But some of their toys are still in the game.”

  “Incredible. If I’d known about this before, we could have learned so much from you.” Amnon said. “As it stands, you, the Defiant, and your stolen equipment are fairly irrelevant. I expect to hear a report of victory from my ground forces at any minute. And then the Doorway will have lost its sad, deluded gatekeepers.”

  Nyphur’s brows were heavy. “We’ve been on this planet for decades and haven’t found it. You won’t either. I’m beginning to suspect that nothing humans do can ever have a bearing on Vanitar affairs, even after they’re dead. Whatever happens when the wipe goes off, it was something set in motion years ago.”

  “Thank you for the lecture, Professor. But you’re in error on at least one point: you haven’t been on the planet for decades. Until a few years ago, you were a geologist on this station. Do the Defiant have Black Shift technology, by any chance? So they can load false memories into a man’s brain? Oh, yes, you didn’t consider that, did you?”

  Nyphur scowled, and turned to Sabrok. “Do you know what this man is? He’s insane. Part of a doomsday cult. Have you heard of the Sons of the Vanitar? Do you know what exists on this planet, and what they plan on doing?”

  “Lunacy.” Amnon said. “Let me ask you something, Sabrok. You saw Professor Nyphur attack me, correct? Try to kill me?”

  “Witnessed.” The oafish Chief of Security nodded.

  “And faced with my obvious danger, I had no option but to shoot him in self defense.”

  “Witnessed.”

  “Goodbye, Omai Nyphur.” Amnon said, drawing his ceremonial sidearm. It was gold-plated, and fashioned like one of the iconic pistols of centuries past.

  It fired gas-inflated rounds that struck the target and then widened to the size of baseballs.

  The sound of the gunshot echoed in the small space like a hard slap. Nyphur’s head burst, and the guards tried to look impassive as brain matter flecked their suits.

  “I will take a shuttle down to the planet.” Amnon said, as the decapitated body thudded to the ground. “Deal with those two rats on in the prison sector in whatever way you feel appropriate. Blow Konotouri Delta up. Flood it with poison. I couldn’t give a fuck.”

  “What about Warrant Officer Kai?”

  “What about him?” Amnon was already halfway out the door

  Konotouri Delta – March 18, 2136 - 1220 hours

  Kai muttered darkly, his body spasming like a boneless fish.

  Klaxons were screeching through the walls, but no bullets.

  Konotouri’s security response was slow. Ubra knew that Sabrok somewhat hindered by the fact that nothing ever happened at Caitanya-9.

  Everyone who landed there was either a tourist or a merchant – all of them carefully screened. Once or twice a year someone got drunk on synthetic alcohol and got into a fistfight. Until Andrei Kazmer’s arrest, the prison section was completely empty.

  Ubra and Andrei debated Enoki Kai’s fate.

  “Kill him.” Andrei said. “I won’t shed many tears.”

  “He’s a hostage. Valuable.”

  “We don’t have enough manpower to keep an eye on him without compromising our ability to fight. He’s a liability.”

  “Not right now, he isn’t. Come on, we need to find more supplies. Court is adjourned.”

  They were stashing marine gear at the foot of the stairs to the prison sector. Some of it had come to the planet with them, some of it was Konotouri issue. Meshuggahtechs. Vyres. Rounds to stun, rounds to cripple, rounds to just blow you apart. Nanomesh computer suits. Ubra fitted one of hers on to replace the one that had shorted out in the earlier fight. It was made for a man, but she held her arms out to the side and with a gentle schlllllp sound it fitted itself like clingfilm to her body. She put on a helmet, with infrared vision, flash and sonic smoothing, and a heads up display.

  “Our best chance is getting down to the surface.” Andrei said. “And making contact with the Spheres.”

  “Won’t happen,” Ubra fitted a nitrogen round into a Meshuggahtech. A bloodless, messless weapon that turned its target into a human block of ice. In the second chamber, she loaded pop-up shields. Shots that would follow a curved trajectory to the ground, then deploy a small but durable Repulsor to that spot. “The shuttles are on Konotouri Alpha, and we’ll need to take several elevators through space to get to them. All they have to do is disconnect the power while we’re in one, and we’ll be stranded in mid-space. Assuming we can fight our way to there, their ships require an access code, which we don’t have. Assuming we accomplish that, we’ll then have to get to the digging site, which is surrounded by soldiers and under heavy attack.”

  “Can we barter Kai’s life for ours?”

  The battered Warrant Officer raised his head from the ground, glaring daggers of hatred. “It is not our policy to negotiate. My replacement will have already been deputized, and I will have been stripped of my rank. I am a civilian now. If you stick your head past that door, you’ll be the first to die. If you use me as a human shield, you’ll be the second to die.”

  Andrei swore, an
d then heard pounding footsteps in the hall beyond the metal stairway above him.

  Sounded like ten men, at least.

  “Well, we’ve got nothing to lose but our chains.” He chambered a round, and stuck his head past the door.

  Sabrok stood near the entryway to the prison complex. Ahead of him were the twelve remaining guards of the Konitouri Station.

  The lead one poked his head down the doorway, and began speaking into his wrist. His voice carried and echoed through the PA down there.

  “Attention Prisoner Andrei Kazmer and Private Ubra Zolot. Your situation is untenable, and you will surrender without further bloodshed.”

  A gun barrel suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairway, Andrei Kazmer’s face behind the sight.

  FWOOOM!

  The nitrogen grenade struck the lead solder square in the chest. His ribcage instantly imploded and then exploded, a massive spray of ice-cold blood drenching the stairway. The four soldiers behind him were hurled to the ground, scattering like ninepins.

  “Negotiations have failed,” observed Sabrok. “Hit them with frags.”

  Grenade after grenade was fired down the stairway, bouncing and rebounding of the walls. Explosions and flesh-ripping shards of metal filled the air below.

  He was strictly limited in how much firepower he could unleash down there. They were in a space station, built between a careful balancing point between lightweight materials and overweening cheapness. They were essentially fighting inside a tin can.

  Any thermal explosion would puncture a hole in the station wall. There was a thin layer of hydrostatic gel in the walls that would film over small holes, but any hole larger than a fist would cause depressurisation. They’d be sucked out into space.

  Sabrok was vaguely aware that this would be an entirely acceptable solution to Amnon. He'd made it clear that he didn't give a shit about Konotouri or any of the frightened scientists on the three inner habitat wheels. Let them live or let them die.

  Well, I care about myself.