by Tex Leiko
Finally, he was out of the camp and back into the unrelenting sands of the desert. He just kept running until he couldn’t any more. By the time he stopped to see if he was still being chased, he could barely see the camp. A few drones were still pursuing, but he had created a large gap between them. He breathed deep and continued to run toward Ilyeion.
* * * *
Zarfa’s blood was boiling as he grabbed Sofronio by the thumbs and bent them back until they snapped. He then proceeded to grab him by his right ear and avulse it using his great strength.
Zarfa had called Sarah on his way over to Sofronio’s apartment. He told her that he was okay and everything was fine. He told her he had some business to attend to before he came home.
She sounded worried. He assured her she shouldn’t be. Badger probed into Zarfa’s mind and told him he should be. Zarfa had to take the second and third rounds of Psyker bots to keep from going deaf, but his mental link with Badger was now stronger and they could speak crystal clear.
Zarfa didn’t need to worry about being controlled. It wasn’t until the fourth round of treatments that he would be at that level. It was still an annoyance, however, trying to keep his thoughts from Badger. He had to fill his mind with nonsense to block him out and he had to listen to his commentary as events unfolded that Badger was aware of.
“You are so cruel.” His probing voice invaded Zarfa’s head.
Zarfa snapped Sofronio’s right humerus and tossed him to the floor. Blood was pouring down the side of his head as he screamed and looked at Zarfa in fear. Sofronio was much larger than Zarfa, but had never been augmented in any way. Zarfa’s strength outmatched his greatly.
“Why do you think I betrayed you and Legion Nine?”
“You don’t easily mistake ten thousand for thirty!”
“So that makes me a liar?”
“Of course he’s a liar. He had us kill his team when we caught him and planned to betray you to save himself. What I didn’t tell him is that Synaptix doesn’t take kindly to traitors,” Badger’s voice raged in Zarfa’s head.
“That and Badger confirmed it,” Zarfa spat out, grabbing Sofronio by the back of his neck and lifting him back to his feet.
“I wouldn’t dare. He’s lying!” Sofronio shouted in agony.
“A liar to the end. Do it for me, Zarfa, kill him. He isn’t worth my time to hunt him down myself. Plus, he’s served his purpose.”
“It isn’t a risk I am willing to take,” Zarfa said, breaking his other arm.
Sofronio screamed and fell to the ground. He had a true look of fear on his face. Zarfa stood over him as he writhed in pain.
“I just want to know why? Jealousy?”
“Zarfa, Badger is lying!”
“Where are your other team mates? You took ten with you, right? Where are they?”
Sofronio was silent.
“Right, underlings without families that nobody would recall missing. I did my homework on the way over. When Badger first told me, I figured he was just trying to cause dissent in the ranks. That is why I gave you the benefit of doubt and dug up from facts before I came here, but they all just confirm what Badger is telling me. I know you betrayed me; this is my justice. Call it what you will. Maybe it’s petty vengeance, but your actions may have killed thousands. If it were possible, I would kill you over and over again in the worst ways possible. But there is neither the means nor the time for that fantasy, so here it is.” He grabbed Sofronio by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. His arms dangled by his sides, unable to move. Zarfa spit in his face and said, “At the very least, I give you the honor of dying on your feet facing me, you filthy coward of a backstabber.”
Zarfa placed his hands on Sofronio’s face and jerked hard. He snapped his neck, fracturing and disjointing the cervical one vertebrae from the cervical two vertebrae. Sofronio fell to the floor like a limp doll.
“Good work, puppet, will you dance if I ask you to?” Badger invaded his mind.
“Shut up, Badger. I’ll kill you tomorrow and get my friend back,” Zarfa thought powerfully enough for Badger to hear loud and clear.
“About that, he proved to be more trouble than he was worth.”
“What do you mean by that?” Zarfa questioned. Even in telepathic communication, he sounded panicked.
“Oh, you’ll see,” Badger responded, as cryptic as possible.
“Okay, I am heading home, Sarah,” Zarfa said over the com-link.
“I will heat your food back up, brother!” she exclaimed over the connection.
“Don’t be alarmed, but my clothes have blood on them… It isn’t mine.”
“Okay, brother, I won’t… Whose?”
“A loud mouth coward, it’s okay. Tell her, Zarfa.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s best I don’t tell you,” he said coldly to her, and disconnected.
* * * *
Seven hours until the battle of Ilyeion
Max jumped out of the chair in a hurry. The leads attached to his chest popped off and fell to the floor. His head was aching from the scanner. Luther had tried to explain to Max why it hurt so badly when the waves passed through, but he couldn’t really recall all the details of his design with his limited memory.
“You got it from here?” Max asked as he shoved his head through his shirt and pulled it over his chest.
“You can trust me. I remember this part. It is really only a few simple commands with the interface and a waiting period… It won’t be ready for…well, three days.”
“Okay, damn,” Max said with a sigh, slightly disappointed.
“Three days, Max, for something this marvelous? You really are the sort with little patience, aren’t you?”
Max huffed again as he shrugged at Luther, who was staring at him with his cold, robotic eyes. “All right, well, there isn’t anything I can do. I’ve got to get to Crimson fast. It sounded like something was really going on.”
“Leave the rest here to me, Max. I promise it will all work out.”
At that, Max sprinted out the door and made his way for Crimson’s place. By the time he arrived, there would only be seven hours left until the war was to begin in Ilyeion. Max had intended to sleep prior to this in case any of his services were needed. He wanted to be on the top of his game. It’s funny how life never works out how you intend for it to, he thought to himself.
He dug around in his pocket as he ran toward the main base where Crimson was no doubt eagerly awaiting his return. He felt a few energy boosts in his pocket, pulled one out, and injected it into his neck without breaking pace. The vial shattered behind him as he ran with a new vigor toward his goal.
By the time he reached Crimson’s, he was panting and sweating like a junkie going through withdrawals. He squeezed through the door of the elevator before it had even opened. He had crammed himself through the tiny opening so hard and loud Crimson jumped. She was laying on the couch holding her data-pad in her hands.
“It’s about time!” she shouted at him as she leapt up from the couch.
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely.
“Whatever! Power up your bots!”
“What? Now? But…”
“No talking! Get in there! Power them up! They can fly, right?”
“Yes,” he said as he moved swiftly to the lab.
“Good, power them up and let them swarm outside,” she said firmly.
“Okay, but where to outside? They’re supposed to track people who have the Psyker Scream augmentation. There is no telling where they are right now. We don’t want them out free floating in nowhereville. Then we would have wasted that weapon entirely.”
“Don’t worry, there aren’t any in the city, Max. They’re all camped out twenty miles north of the battleground of Ilyeion! Something you would have known hours ago if you had bothered getting here!”
“What? Shit! Ilyeion! They can’t fly that far!” Max exclaimed as he entered the protocols to activate the nanobots.
&
nbsp; “I figured they couldn’t, but I have to show my ace now. Seven hours early shouldn’t make too much of a difference. You fly them to this location. All of them, in a swarm, cloud, whatever! Get them here!” she said, tapping a spot on the map two blocks away from where they were. “Fly them up as high as you can, okay, Max?”
“Okay, got it,” he said calmly as he entered the commands to do so. “So what’s the plan?” he questioned.
“Gale force winds, time to really test the Pilvikones,” she said. “I only hope they can transport quick enough…and precise… It’s sort of an experiment. You see, I didn’t want to get detected so I haven’t tested what all of the machines working together can do, but by my calculations…I can get a wind going about four hundred miles per hour. They should arrive in two hours, fifty-three minutes. How long do the bots take to be fatal?”
“Four hours?” Max asked rhetorically, shrugging his shoulders.
“You designed them, Max!”
“Never tested ‘em.”
“You…you are…”
“Ready! Let’s let down the barriers that are holding them back.” Max pressed the final button to execute the commands he entered and a giant Salvariantium container opened up. The bots had been replicating inside of a tank roughly eight hundred gallons in size, and it was filled to capacity. “This swarm may not look like a lot, barely a small cloud in the sky… But considering how small they are…there are more bots in that swarm than you could count in a lifetime,” Max stated, in awe of his own work.
“Shouldn’t we open the windows or something to let them out, Max?” Crimson questioned nervously.
Max chuckled and let out a little snort. “Ha! No. Why would we do that? They’re nano-particles.”
“Yeah?” she questioned as she watched an ominous cloud of bots pass through the solid wall into the outside.
“Nano-particles are small enough to pass in between molecules. Solid matter is of no problem to those little guys. In fact, they hunt out people with the Psyker Scream nanobot augmentation, however, they don’t even need to breathe these guys in. One just has to come close to them. The bots will do the rest, drilling through their victim’s skin and bone if they have to… Though drilling may not be the best word for it, more like squeezing.”
“So why did the Psykers have to inject their bots? The serum you made for Zarfa? He had to inject that too.”
“Well, you see, those bots we wanted to go directly to the blood to administer to the brain and to pass through the brain-blood barrier. In short, I really didn’t want my bots passing through his muscle, just going to his brain as fast as possible. A shot right into one of the ventricles of the brain would have been safer and more effective, however, intra-venous should work fine as well.
“As for Synaptix design… Well, pure theatrics. Also, if you looked at how they were constructed, the way they were programmed to affect the nervous system, there is no way you would want them coming into contact with peripheral nerves. It would get…ugly. Oh, and muscles, blah. Anyhow, the way they were programmed was to work from the blood to the brain-blood barrier and finally into only the nervous system of the brain. It could have been done simpler; however, Synaptix did it that way. However, I wont lie, I am a theatrical guy myself. I only wish that you would be there in person to see it.”
Crimson had blanked out as Max went about trying to explain to her in simple terms the way that the bots worked. She shrugged and asked, “Oh, what kind of theatrics?”
“I added to the bots a gene from plankton that will cause them to be bioluminescent. The rain will be red as they fall and the bots will appear like a fine red dust to the eyes. I figured it would be a fitting weapon for the leader of the Crimson Crusade.”
“You are too funny, Max, and it is a shame I won’t be able to see them work in person,” she said with a grin. “It is going to be cutting it close. Seven minutes before the swarm comes out of the ground is when the Psyker army will begin to feel your bots. I certainly hope this works. It will be too late for Zarfa to retreat. Oh, and Max,” Crimson said with a grin as she finished commanding the Pilvikones to send forth her storm of destruction.
“Yes?” he said as a strong wind shook the building they were in.
Being at the top of a sky rise apartment during an unprecedented storm certainly was an awe-striking experience as he feared that the building would collapse.
“While I assist Zarfa here, directing the weather to turn the tides of his battle, I need you to go to Synaptix headquarters and purge them of whoever is behind everything. Think you can do that?” she asked in a playfully innocent tone.
“You’re crazy,” Max said.
Crimson giggled. “I’ll send out my third missive in seven hours. It’s how long you have to prepare for the assignment. You will hopefully have a large crowd of warriors by your side as you rush the building,” she stated, as serious as could be.
“All right, I guess this really is show time. But all of that talk about me not dying, well, it’s sounding more like you were building false confidence in me.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist.”
“I’m an optimist. I am quite positive I am going to die.”
* * * *
Zarfa and Sarah were both very nervous. They had decided to try to sleep early when Zarfa had returned home. With the recent incident of betrayal, Zarfa was feeling more and more uneasy about the events that would occur in the near future.
Zarfa’s communicator rang in his head. He wasn’t sure if it had awakened him because he wasn’t sure if he was asleep. He wasn’t even sure how long he had been lying on the floor next to his sister, who was also laboriously trying to sleep.
“Zarfa, it’s Crimson. Tomorrow you are going to get a bit wet. I can’t tell you everything, who knows if Synaptix is listening. But your salvation is coming on the wind. Don’t worry about their army, and proceed as planned.”
“What time is it?” Zarfa asked.
Before Crimson could respond, there was a crash of knocking on Zarfa’s door. It rattled the frame and he leapt to his feet before he had even realized that he responded to it.
“It’s about time for you to get up, in fact. Three hours now until the battle. Trust me, everything is going to be okay. In fact, by Synaptix sending their army, the Psyker Screams…well…they’ve only sped up progress. Tomorrow, the same time as the battle of Ilyeion, I am going to broadcast my final missive and command the Crimson Crusade to march on Polyhelix and Synaptix.”
Zarfa approached the door as he responded to Crimson. “Then it is only the Alexarien government that we need to topple… Is that right?” he questioned as he opened the door.
“Right, but we can deal with them when you get Legion Nine here.”
“Zajifa! Thanks for your support, Crimson, and I really hope that you provide salvation as you promise. Not for my sake or my sister’s sake, but for the sake of the people who have put their trust in me,” he exclaimed over the com-ink as he hugged Zajifa, who was standing at his doorstep, in joy.
“Um? Zajifa is there? How? I haven’t done anything yet,” Crimson’s voice rang in his ear.
Zarfa took a moment to register her words. He was too happy to see his friend to really notice what she had said at first. In a few minutes, though, it registered. “What do you mean you haven’t done anything yet? Then how is he right here?”
Zajifa just stood there silently with a large grin on his face. Finally, he spoke. “Guess I’m just better at escaping than you ever gave me credit for.”
“Did you hear that, Crimson? He is just as arrogant as ever! Anyhow, if he could escape Badger on his own, I really hope you can crush him on your own the way you say you can.”
“I will. I promise. Just do your best fighting out there.”
“I will,” Zarfa said as his communicator logged off.
He looked down at his sister, feigning sleep. She may have even been on the cusp of it, but he knew she was as worried as he was. He
knelt down beside her and stroked her cheek gently with his hand. “It’s time to get up, my dear Sarah. You know you don’t have to join the battle if you don’t want to.”
“I know, brother,” she said, opening her eyes. “It isn’t like I haven’t seen battle before. I’ve seen the atrocities of war… I was forced to do so from the other side. I only hope to have a hand in killing as many of the Faraza as I can. They’re sick, twisted, sadistic… I want to destroy them.”
“I don’t want people to be hurt any longer, sis, and this is the only way I know how to prevent it. I don’t enjoy killing… It’s…well, it is something I am good at.”
“I can’t argue that,” she said, pulling herself to her knees and wrapping her arms around Zarfa.
“C’mon, get yourself washed off and have something to eat. We have a long day ahead. Let’s hope it truly is over after today.”
“I don’t see the point in washing off… I mean, we are going to get covered in blood and sand. But I’ll have some food,” Sarah said in response.
“A good point.”
Zajifa just stood behind Zarfa watching the brother-sister moment when Sarah’s eyes raised to meet his. They looked like beautiful glimmering jewels to him as she smiled and said, “Excuse me for not jumping up and down with excitement. I knew you’d be back, though. Welcome home, Zajifa.”
“Excused,” he said, shrugging.
* * * *
From the moment Zarfa informed Crimson about Synaptix sending their army, Crimson activated every minion chip that she had planted. There was one in a member of every Barometrics office that housed a Pilvikone.
Brian stalked down the corridors of the office to the chamber of the Pilvikone. He had come into the twenty-four hour facility as if it were any other day at work. It wasn’t his shift, however, and he had with him a gauss-powered pistol with a silencer hidden under his suit jacket. He also was carrying ten magazines that held eighteen bullets each, all carefully concealed in his clothing.
He came in through the front door, which had two sleepy security guards. They both greeted him with a smile upon seeing his badge. He went back to the security desk where a third was watching the monitors for suspicious activity. A small puff of noise, and a projectile rocketed through the security guard’s head, sending bits of brain and bone all over the displays.
