The katanas had been a good choice. They sliced fluidly through the air, as well as the arms and legs of her victims. Hands, fingers, heads, and other appendages littered the floor of the still-locked ballroom, lying where they had been severed.
And the blood. There was so much blood.
Some of the aides had tried to fight back, attempting to punch or kick Ursula. They had lost hands and feet in the attempts, Ursula dodging out of the way and swinging the katanas, lopping off the limb as she went. Some of the severed heads Ursula had kicked over into corners. Others she had picked up and hurled at the men and women continuing to dart about the ballroom. One head had been caught by a man who clearly intended to hurl it back at Ursula. A single thought was all that was needed to make the head explode like a bomb in his hands, nicely intensifying the panic of those still alive. Desperately, they scrabbled at the fittings and the walls, seeking a way – any way – to get out.
It had taken a while, longer than she had originally anticipated, but now Ursula’s revenge was almost complete: the Upper Circle and their aides were either dead or dying. Two alone remained – Skillman and Jane. Skillman cowered behind the woman, holding her before him and promising terrible things should Jane refuse to protect him.
“A man should stick up for his wife,” Ursula tutted, looking over the blood-sodden blades she held in each hand. “The old saying is ‘behind every great man is a great woman’, not the other way around. But no matter – all I see here is a snivelling coward.”
“I never hurt you as much as they did,” Jane started to plead. “I ... only ever asked questions. I never agreed with the other methods.” She glanced back at Skillman. “I never would have let him rape you if I’d known.”
“But you never objected to being involved, either,” Ursula said.
“I was forced to do it! I was made to act against you! I never wanted to. Skillman and the others told me to. I never enjoyed it.” She struggled against Skillman, but the man held her firmly between himself and Ursula, continuing to use her as a human shield.
“You seemed happy for them to kill me and my sister, though.”
Jane looked around at Skillman. “I ... told them to do it humanely. So you’d never know it had happened. One moment alive, and the next ... gone.”
“Like this, you mean?” Ursula clicked her fingers, and Jane shattered like glass, exploding into a million black fragments. Skillman staggered as the tiny shards showered through his fingers and spread out across the floor, glittering in the light.
Skillman fell to his knees as Ursula advanced on him, pleading with her to spare his life. She did not hear exactly what he said; she wasn’t listening properly, but she didn’t care. Slinging both swords over her back, she grabbed the WEAPCO CEO by the throat. The man’s hands flew to her wrist to try to prise her off him.
“I thought I would leave you until last,” Ursula murmured, “so you could see what happened to everyone else that followed and supported you. Believe me, I didn’t really enjoy it. I pitied those people. It’s better that they are dead.”
“They’re really dead?” Skillman choked.
“Dead, gone. This isn’t a simulation in which death results in a disconnection. This is permadeath; you die here, your consciousness is permanently erased. It’s as real as it gets. Allow me to demonstrate.”
She punched him in the gut, her hand penetrating the man’s flesh and taking hold of his stomach. Skillman screamed in agony as she did so, his shrieks growing even louder as she began to squeeze.
“The pain is true to life, as well,” Ursula said. Her anger deepened as she felt herself finally at the end of her journey, her own determination to finish this once and for all coursing through her veins.
“How does it feel to have someone force themselves inside you?” Ursula asked. “Hurts, doesn’t it? But it’s much more than the physical pain – it’s the mental pain that goes with it; that feeling of violation and intrusion, that someone would do that to you.” She squeezed a little harder on Skillman’s stomach, the man’s fingers digging harder into her wrists. It didn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt her here.
Skillman tried to speak, choked, his words unintelligible.
“You can what?” Ursula asked, her tone sublimely indifferent.
“I can ... get you ... anything,” Skillman spluttered. “I ... can be useful to you.”
“You can’t offer us anything,” Ursula said. “You’re redundant.”
Skillman tried to say something further, but failed.
“You can’t give me anything,” Ursula finished. “The galaxy is free once again.” She loosened her grip enough to allow the man to speak.
Skillman’s face twisted into a mixture of pain and defiance. “You stupid little girl. Do you really think that it will be that easy? You think that you can just take control of everything here and make the galaxy a better place? Most people need to be controlled, to be put in their place. Separation into social classes is a natural thing, to sort the wheat from the chaff.
“Freedom?” Skillman almost chuckled, a fair trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “Most people wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Ursula glowered. “That was never for you to decide. You are not a god. You are a mortal, like the rest of us. Which means you can die. And I think you’ve lived long enough.”
With that, Ursula wrenched the man’s stomach from his belly, his entrails spilling out with it, sinew splattering down onto the floor. Skillman barely had time to scream before he collapsed. He lay in a heap, convulsing briefly until the light went out in his eyes and he was still.
Ursula exhaled, dropped the dead man’s organs on the floor and looked all around herself. She had done it. The Eternal Engine was her domain now. With the Upper Circle and their aides dead, she felt her connection to the central mainframe growing stronger. She was in control of everything. She was absorbing the thoughts of all the citizens of the Engine, hearing their voices, feeling their emotions. Most were fearful. They knew that something was wrong, that their overseers were dead, and that there was a new person in charge. Ursula felt the thoughts of the drones and the bots, all simple binary operations.
And for a time, she was a god. She was everywhere, felt everything, knew everyone. Nothing was out of her reach, beyond her control.
Her newly found omnipotence quickly threatened to overwhelm her, and so she did as she had always done and began to delegate tasks to the drones, telling them to carry on as normal, but with the one caveat – to stop attacking the intruders to Sol, and let them pass. They were no longer threats. They were friends.
~
They’ve stopped firing, Athena told Chris.
“Who have?” Chris asked. For an instant, he thought that Phoebe had lost control of the starfighters that Ursula had left her to command, unable to handle the demands and pressures placed upon her. At any moment, he expected a naval force twice as strong as the one they had been facing to turn and focus their attention exclusively on him.
The WEAPCO fighters and warships, Athena said. They are broadcasting a signal of surrender.
Chris saw that Athena was right, and that the opposing warships were now hanging in place, having brought themselves to a stop. A brief cycle through his radar system revealed that they were standing down, their weapons silent, and their targeting systems offline.
“What happened?” he said.
“Ursula’s in control, now,” Phoebe told him.
“Of the fleet?” Chris asked.
“Of all of WEAPCO.”
Chris was totally speechless. “So ... we’ve won?” he asked.
“Looks like it,” Sid said.
That had been easier than he could ever have expected. WEAPCO had presented itself as a powerful corporation, but at the end of the day had been easy to overthrow. Chris felt himself relax, looking over the swashes of fighters before him, and the giant blue marble that was Earth hanging directly in front of him. He wondered wh
at he would do next, how they might go about telling the galaxy that the Corporation was no more, that there was nothing to fear, that all of WEAPCO’s resources were available to them.
A shape then caught his attention, one that was moving quickly through the hanging fighters and warships. It was a Fer-de-Lance. Kethlan. Chris had lost track of the man during the dogfight, Kethlan falling back as Chris had started to overcome him, taking cover behind the WEAPCO fleet to allow his fighter’s shields time to recharge.
Chris swung around to follow the path of the Fer-de-Lance, seeing it speeding into a still-operational jumpgate. The portal opened and shut as Kethlan crossed the threshold of the point, disappearing out of Sol.
Chris, we should go after him, Athena spoke seriously. He is a troubled soul. He needs our help.
“Agreed,” Chris said. “Can you trace the gate’s destination?”
No, but Ursula will know. A brief pause. He has headed to Mars.
“We’re going after Kethlan,” Chris told Phoebe and Sid, starting to make his way towards the gate. “I want to bring him in alive. After what Overlook told us, I want to give him the chance to see sense.”
Chris also didn’t want to kill anyone that he didn’t have to. He thought of the four mercenaries – Tyler, Dar, Clayton, Eve. All people he had fought against and killed. He really didn’t want to add Kline to that list. He felt warmth from Athena as he thought that, a comforting, understanding sensation that he likened to a hug.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked Athena. “We could always let him go.”
I want to help him, Athena said. I want to say that I saved a life.
Chris acknowledged her there. “Can you handle things here?” he asked Phoebe.
“Yes,” Phoebe said. “Ursula has things well under control.”
“Good. We will be back soon. With Kethlan,” Chris added.
The jumpgate came online as the Firefly approached it, and Chris plunged into the portal, chasing after the former naval commander.
Chapter 31
Chris found Kethlan waiting for him as he exited the jumpgate and arrived in the vicinity of Mars. The man did not appear to have had any sort of clear plan in coming here. Perhaps he had simply panicked and run. Chris did not judge him for that. He was human, after all. He who fights and runs away ...
“Commander,” Chris said. “I am here to tell you that the Wade-Ellen Asset Protection Corporation is, effectively, under new management. I’m here to accept your surrender. Come peacefully, and you will be tried fairly.”
“Always have to be the hero, don’t you, Bainfield?” Kethlan answered.
“I mean it, Kline. Surrender. It’s over.”
“Never.”
He’s not going to respond to threats, Athena told Chris.
“I’m not threatening him,” Chris said.
He thinks you are. Try something else.
Chris thought for a moment then addressed Kethlan. “Why did you betray your brother, Kline? Why did you turn him over to WEAPCO?”
“He was a threat to the Corporation—” Kethlan started.
“Before that,” Chris said. “You fell out with him before you joined them. Why did you do it?”
“He was weak. He was wasting his gift, and didn’t understand the power that he possessed. We could have been strong together. But instead, he shied away and hid from the world. He didn’t deserve to live. He was a fool.”
Chris was exasperated. “Kline, he was your brother!”
“He was nothing to me.”
“I’m getting nowhere,” Chris said to Athena. “He’s been too badly corrupted.”
Keep trying, Athena said. He wasn’t always this way.
Chris did so. “Your brother—”
“I have no brother,” Kethlan said, dismissively.
“You weren’t always this way, Commander. You had some humanity once and were a decent man.”
“I was nothing. I was weak. I’m not anymore.”
This wasn’t working at all. Kethlan was too far gone. Chris felt himself once again detach from Athena as Kethlan directed his gift towards the Firefly and the Fer-de-Lance’s engines came online. Kethlan was done talking.
“I don’t want to fight you, Commander,” Chris said.
I doubt he’s going to give us any choice, Athena said.
Chris wasn’t sure that Kethlan fully appreciated how the last encounter had gone. Chris had bested him, certain that he would have done so even in a similarly powered fighter to the Fer-de-Lance. As it was, the Firefly’s modifications put it a notch higher on the scale.
“You’re outmatched, Kline,” Chris said. “Even without the timeslip, my fighter has been massively upgraded – it’s more powerful than yours. I’ll give you one more chance – surrender and come quietly.”
Kethlan did not respond. Maybe he wanted to die a warrior’s death, to go down in glory? Chris was forced to bank hard as he saw the tips of the Fer-de-Lance’s cannons light up. Several of the bolts struck home, forcing Chris to make quick adjustments to the weightings to compensate.
“Very well,” Chris said to himself. He knew before it started that the battle would not last long, and it didn’t. Kethlan’s reactions might have been sharp, his tactics solid, but Chris was simply a better pilot than the commander. That, coupled with Firefly’s boosted offensive and defensive capabilities, meant that victory had always been his for the taking. But Kethlan fought on regardless.
Why? Why? Chris wondered. Does he want to die? I won’t kill you, Kline! I won’t!
Four people he had killed – Dar, Clayton, Eve, and Tyler. He wouldn’t add another to that list. But Kethlan didn’t back down, forcing Chris to battle him harder and harder, for the sake of both his own life and Athena’s. And after only a few minutes of intense combat the Fer-de-Lance was tumbling, its core systems damaged, the engines and weapons no longer functioning.
Chris wondered if he might be able to tow the Fer-de-Lance back through the jumpgate before it went up. Or whether Kethlan would bail out. He doubted that, however. The man had made it clear he was not willing to surrender.
“It was an honour to fight you, Bainfield,” Chris barely heard over his comms. “A parting gift to you ...”
The Fer-de-Lance went up, Kethlan’s words cut short. It was over.
For a time, Chris did nothing but stare at the spot where Kethlan’s fighter had been. Then, with nothing more to do, he shifted the flight stick to take the Firefly back through the jumpgate, and return to Earth.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, waggling the control. He then saw that the main instrument panel was dull, and that the fighter’s engines had cut out. Chris stabbed at the panel, to no effect. He grabbed at the stick with both hands, tilting it this way and that, pulling the triggers, trying to do anything to provoke a response. The entire system was dead.
“Athena?” he asked.
Chris ...
Not every system; one was clear still working. He prepared to ask Athena what had happened, when something grabbed his attention. A single screen had lit up in front of him. There was a number on it. 10. Exactly one second later, it counted down to 9. A knot formed in Chris’ stomach.
“Athena, what’s happening?!” he asked, jabbing at the consoles and instrument panels in front of him for all his worth. It remained unresponsive.
8.
Kethlan has broadcast a self-destruct signal, Athena answered.
7.
The knot tightened, Chris felt his breathing coming hard. “Override it!” he shouted, still trying to coax some sort of response out of the Firefly. It was tumbling gently, as Kethlan’s Fer-de-Lance had been.
6.
I can’t, Athena said. Once started, the self-destruct cannot be stopped. Her voice was surprisingly calm.
5.
Chris looked at the number in terror. They were about to die. “Athena, there must be something you can do!” he yelled.
4.
&nbs
p; There is one thing ...
3.
Chris saw the canopy above him suddenly blow, and the next moment he was flung out into the vacuum of space, still strapped into the seat, speeding away from the Firefly that now tumbled beneath him.
“Athena!” he cried. He still had the helmet on, was still protected by his flight suit. He wasn’t sure that his words would be heard by Athena, but they were. And he could hear hers.
Thank you for everything, Chris. You have made me feel more alive than I ever dreamed of. I’m sorry I couldn’t have spent more time with you. Please don’t forget me.
“Athena ...”
The Firefly exploded ... and Athena was gone.
Chris felt he had lost everything that mattered. Asked several months ago, he would have denied that such feelings were possible. But in this moment, something had been torn from him, something that he knew was irreplaceable. He reached out a hand towards the dissipating explosion, as if attempting to grab hold of any little strand of Athena that might remain. But there was nothing left. Nothing at all.
“I won’t forget you,” Chris said. “I promise.”
~
Having not heard from Chris since his departure nearly an hour before, Sid arrived at Mars to discover what had become of him. Sid found just a single pilot ejected from a starfighter. But no Firefly, Fer-de-Lance, or Kethlan.
Sid asked no questions, the scene that had greeted his arrival making it plain what had happened. He brought Chris aboard the Dodger, and the two returned to Earth.
Epilogue
In the months that followed the defeat of the Upper Circle, Ursula Lexx declared herself the temporary ruler of WEAPCO, aided in the task by her twin sister. Those former members of the Corporation who had been placed in charge of the various outposts, cities, and worlds throughout the known galaxy were fired, their services to the Corporation terminated. Lexx did not, however, end their lives. Instead, Ursula confined them, along with Overlook, to an artificial world in which they would live out the rest of their – now mortal – lives. It was not such a terrible existence, and many would live for another fifty years or so. None were permitted to return to the real world as avatars, however.
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