by Barry Kirwan
Vince laughed, shaking his head. He walked over to the window, touched a small panel on the wall. It began to snow. "Well, I can see you’re feeling much better. Anger is a more useful emotion than people realize, and you’re going to need your strength. I’m neither philosopher nor historian, Micah – I’m a pragmatist, so I’m not going to get into socio-political rhetoric with you. I never, ever sympathize with the enemy. But let me leave you with something to ponder." He reached over to the drip feeding trimorph into Micah’s veins and shut it off. For Micah it felt like being thrown out of a warm bed into a bath full of ice and glass. He gasped, but gritted his teeth, determined to say nothing.
"Our most recent intelligence suggests that the Alicians are a much older organization than we ever suspected. I know what you’re going to say – their very name, Alicians, a nickname taken from one of the early, vitriolic verbal assaults on them by our late President before they took up arms, comparing their political naivety to Alice in Wonderland – is too recent. But did you ever wonder why they accepted this name so quickly?"
Micah decided to store these points for later analysis. He simmered. He glanced upward at the trimorph control, out of his reach.
Vince carried on. "You’re right, of course, at least partly – the situation surrounding the creation and rise of the Chorazin may have actually increased their support and given them a substantial legitimate political base via the Fundies. But I assure you Micah, that even without the Chorazin, they’d be here. And maybe they want people to think just the way you do. The greatest weapon in earth’s history has always been ideology. With ideology you can persuade millions to fight, to revolt, to resist, or to give up and never fight. So, Micah, the question is, what do the Alicians really want?"
Micah had no immediate answer. He’d always considered them as counter-point to the Chorazin. It was his turn to shrug, painful though that was.
"Exactly," Vince said. "One of our intelligence agents recently uncovered something, a deeper scheme. He was terminated before he could give any information over a secure network. But he was one of our top operatives, and he was pretty scared. Well, we found a few pieces of him yesterday morning." Vince faced Micah again. "So, Micah, you decide who your enemy is. And if you’re ever unsure, take a look at the bruises on your back. Or ask your mother. And one more thing. You should freshen up before you go to work. Trust me, you look infinitely worse than you feel."
Vince walked to the door, palmed it open, and stepped outside into a bland corridor, the door swishing closed behind him.
Micah watched the snow falling for some time, cooling his anger. He’d read about the Chorazin, how they were trained in advanced psychological manipulation techniques. Perhaps Vince was telling the truth, but probably only as he saw it. The Chorazin used ideology themselves, and precise, constrained information flow. Disinformation as well, to keep Chorazin members aligned and on track. Fear – always a deeper, more sinister plot – the favorite myth of the despotic hierarchy. He decided then and there that he didn’t believe a word of it. But now that the anger had subsided, the full extent of the pain from his back returned with a vengeance. He hoped the doctor would turn up soon with this miracle booster injection. Reluctantly, he also wished his mother was there to comfort him. The tough hero image he was experimenting with could re-emerge later.
But as he lay there, thoughts of his father intruded. He’d died in the decisive battle for Indonesia, near the end of the War. Died a war hero. Micah had had heroism rammed down his throat since he’d been a child. Yet he’d seen the other side of it, how it tore up families, how heroes usually had sharp edges with their spouses, how they couldn’t tolerate weakness from their own offspring – they could save people they didn’t know, but fail to protect and nurture their own.
He’d not shed a single tear at the full military honors funeral. Nor had he ever really considered how his father had actually died. For the first time, he imagined his father lying prone on that blood-soaked battle-ground in Jakarta, the life draining out of him while all hell was breaking loose, the din of combat all around. He wondered what his father would have been thinking in those last moments, whether the heroism, the honor, even the war itself would have been finally irrelevant as he’d felt life slipping away. Instead, maybe, just maybe, he’d have focused on the smaller people in his life, his family.
Micah shut out the hospital room, the world. He imagined himself on the bloodied battlefield, sitting by his dying father. He wouldn’t reach out his own hand unless his father did first, which was unlikely. Still, Micah remained, not speaking, not looking at his father, just staying there with him at the end, as the snowflakes slowly settled on both of them. It was the best he could offer.
Chapter 9
Decompression
The outer airlock door hissed closed and clunked into its locked position. Blake peered through the porthole into the fourth compartment. In the dimming light he could just make out the helmeted outlines of Zack and Pierre. Even in the near darkness, he could tell both men were stressed, shoulders tensed inside their suits. They were immobile, like statues from the New Smithsonian. He secured his lanyard to the airlock eyebolt, and strained to see the ghoster.
"Pierre, very slowly, lower your flashlight to the floor, point it to the ceiling like an uplighter – it has good night vision, we don’t."
As Pierre obeyed, Blake caught his first glimpse of the creature – still basically human in shape. It crouched behind the neutralino detonator. The last time he had seen one… he skipped over the memory. He glanced down through his visor to check the self-rigged short-range land-mine lashed onto his chest. The push-button actuator protruded two centimeters. It would kill him and the ghoster, but the others should survive.
He circled his tongue inside his mouth a few times to generate some saliva, and then swallowed, angling his two pulse rifles forwards at rib height. "Okay, everyone listen up. This is what’ll happen. I’ll count down in one second intervals from five to one. On 'Two', Zack go short to the left, Pierre, go three meters to the right, so you don’t shoot each other in crossfire. On 'One' I’ll open the door, and that creature will do one of two things – it’ll either come straight at me, or go for you, Pierre. I know you have the pulse rifle, but at close quarters Zack is a better shot. Reel out your lanyards so they don’t auto-stop when you jump. Kat – stay sharp and speak only if urgent. Any questions?"
"Just one, Skip," Zack said. "What’s the surprise you have in store?"
"Then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?" He couldn’t tell Zack, or else he’d try to save him, and they’d all end up dead. Blake took the silence that followed as assent.
He drew in a breath.
"Five."
Pierre reeled out several meters of lanyard, not taking his eyes off the ghoster, nor lowering his weapon. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was being used as bait because of the friendship between Blake and Zack. But there was logic in the plan. Even though he had the rifle, he’d never been in a real battle, and might freeze up. Zack wouldn’t.
"Four."
A trickle of cold sweat rolled down Zack’s spine. He’d been in too many battles to worry anymore about whether he would survive. He just wanted to get as many shots into the ghoster as possible. He wasn’t too sure of the "surprise" – especially after Blake’s once-only hesitation to kill the last one in Kurana Bay. He flexed his knees, shifting his weight onto his thighs, ready to spring.
"Three."
Thirty meters away, Kat sat in the cockpit, wondering how long it would take after the others were dead for the ghoster to make it to her, if it bothered at all. The landmine was a noble gesture, but she’d heard how indestructible these genetically re-engineered soldiers were, having been morphed with reptile genomes to make them fast and very, very tough. She chewed on a knuckle as she watched the screens, oblivious of how hard she bit down.
"Two."
Blake watched Zack and Pierre dive to left and right, and open
fire. The ghoster leapt faster and higher than seemed possible, ricocheting off the ceiling, heading straight towards Pierre. Its head bobbed lizard-like to left and right, making it a tempting but elusive target
"One!" He rammed the "open" button with the rifle muzzle. The airlock door stayed closed. Christ! Not now! "Kat! Power!" He smashed a glass panel with the butt of his rifle to gain access to the manual lever, knowing it could take thirty seconds to open the hatch by hand. He cursed again, as he had to put both weapons down to try and get the door open.
He watched helplessly as Pierre got five rounds off into its chest before the creature smashed the firearm out of his arms, almost dislocating Pierre’s shoulder, and lunged forward with a claw-like hand to break his neck. Zack fired successive shots into the creature’s knee, causing it to lose its balance. Pierre kicked hard at its left side, trying to knock it over, as he dived out of range. A swipe from the ghoster’s claw-like hand hammered onto the floor where Pierre’s head had been a split second earlier, denting the metal deck.
The ghoster sprang backward off its good leg and spun in mid-air, hit the front of the neutralino detonator, and then rebounded off, colliding with Zack, knocking his pistol out of his gloved hand. Zack dodged the ghoster’s gnarled fist just in time as it pistoned into the hull, sending a deafening echo around the room.
"Got it!" shouted Kat, re-energizing the relays. "Captain, it’s armed the detonator! Fifty-seven seconds!"
The hatch slid open. Blake snatched up both rifles in one fluid motion and began firing, just as it stamped its good leg down on Zack’s knee. Zack yelled with pain, while Pierre got to his feet and loosened his lanyard, his shattered pulse rifle lying next to him. Six shots from Blake pounded into the ghoster’s right side, enough to make it turn. Zack, his faceplate close to the ghoster’s eyeless head, rammed his knife into its stomach, between ribs that criss-crossed its torso, twisting the serrated blade between the scales. The ghoster’s scream intensified as it leapt off Zack towards Blake.
He fired both weapons at the ghoster in synchrony. Each double-pulse shot shoved it back, but still it closed on him. The ghoster’s mottled scales glowed red where the pulse charges hit. It leapt forward and swept Blake’s arms aside, spinning his pulse rifles against the walls. Then it saw the landmine on his chest and recoiled. For a fraction of a second, Blake could discern the features of the human face that had once been there, and almost faltered, but then he seized the ghoster’s wrists and tugged it towards him, pushing his own chest outward.
With a strangled shriek, the ghoster was yanked backwards, breaking Blake’s grip. Pierre’s lanyard was taut around the ghoster’s neck, like a lasso. After a moment of disbelief that he wasn’t dead, Blake dived for one of his rifles, rolled and came up firing again, this time aiming at its head. It was losing strength, but it yanked Zack’s knife out from its ribs. With its double-jointed shoulders it slashed the lanyard behind its neck and once again went for Blake, raising the knife high.
Zack, his voice choked in agony, shouted. "Pierre, hang on to something fast!" Zack fired his pistol at the escape hatch panel. Pierre threw himself towards two large crate straps and locked his arms around them. The ghoster saw where Zack was aiming and moved to grab a harness. At that moment, a shrill ghoster-like wailing erupted from the comms system, causing the ghoster to spin around to see where it was coming from. Blake fired twice hitting it straight in the face, knocking it off-balance. At Zack’s third shot, the hatch flew open.
The room depressurized with a thunderclap and a howling wind. Zack had already anchored himself. Pierre clung on for his life as his legs lifted off the ground.
Blake was whisked off his feet, suspended in mid-air by the decompression, tethered by his waist lanyard, but he kept firing at the creature. The ghoster hit the man-sized hole and almost passed through it, but clung on to the edges with its claws digging into the metal, trying to pull its body back inside the ship.
Blake knew that if it hung on for a few seconds longer, the room would fully depressurize, and then it would enter the room and once again attack.
Kat shouted "No!" as he retrieved his own knife and in one smooth cut slashed through his lanyard. The suction propelled him head-first into the ghoster. He spread his arms wide and smashed into the ghoster full-on, head-butting its chest like a human cannonball. With one last gurgling scream, the creature lost its grip and reeled into space. Blake’s shoulders tore at him as he fought to prevent himself being dragged out too. With his head poking through the hull, he watched the ghoster flail wildly, spinning away from the ship. When it reached the invisible warp shell, it blazed bright as a meteorite for a second, then was gone. The depressurization ceased, and the artificial gravity pulled Blake back inside.
Kat came on-line, desperate. "Pierre, the detonator!"
Pierre sprang over to the ND console. For a moment he stared at it. He hit several keys, his left hand steadying his right wrist. The counter stopped at two seconds. He slumped down with his back to the ND, raised his knees, and rested his helmeted head on them.
Blake had landed hard on the floor, where he crouched, panting, sweat streaming past his ears inside his helmet. He lifted his wrist console and checked the heart rate indicator: 192, descending.
Zack spoke first. "Sweet Jesus! I just aged…ten years. Nothin’ to do…with relativity. Kat. Trimorph. Please…Leg..." The rest was mumbled expletives.
Blake helped Pierre upright while he flicked a few more ND switches. The counter reset to zero and three green lights glowed.
"It’ll take 30 minutes to shutdown fully, Sir, but it’s safe now. I’ll come back later. I can seal the escape hole, but to save on air, I suggest we transfer the three remaining oxygen cylinders out of here and leave this room depressurized."
Blake was still catching his own breath. "Agreed. And thanks Pierre, that was a pretty unorthodox move back there."
Pierre was visibly shaken, but a smile cracked across his face. "Just came to me. My mother once sent me to a ranch in the Pyrenees, to get me away from equations. I spent the summer working with wild horses. They usually broke me rather than the other way round, but I learned a few rope tricks."
Blake nodded, and then looked to one of the internal cameras. "I assume that was you, Kat, distracting the ghoster."
She laughed nervously. "Felt pretty helpless up here – had to do something. I figured the one thing it wouldn’t expect to hear was another ghoster. I recorded one of its screams and played it back over the speaker."
"Good work, Kat."
Blake moved over to Zack, squatting next to him. "How are you, buddy?" He stared down at his mutilated leg. The word "ugly" didn’t cover it.
"Shattered. Cracked rib, too. You gonna… take off… your surprise?"
Blake tilted his head downward. The actuator had been pushed half-way in. Gingerly, he eased it back out, then twisted it clockwise, locking it into safe mode. He unhooked it and set it down on the floor.
Zack tried to laugh, grimacing. "That was… your whole… fucking plan?"
He shrugged. "Kat, meet us outside the hatch with the trimorph. He watched Zack’s face contort with pain. "Double-dose."
Blake re-entered the cockpit where Zack, leg plastered in an ivory gelcast, tried unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position. Pierre and Kat slept. They were all exhausted, but someone had to stay awake – he was Captain, and Zack was in too much pain to sleep, despite the trimorph.
"That was pretty close," Zack said. "A little too much like the old days."
"Unless Eden becomes a real possibility, those days will be back soon enough." He brooded, while the silence congealed around them. He hadn’t noticed how noisy the cockpit had been, until the virus wiped out most of their systems.
"What’s up, Skip? Is it Robert?"
He hadn’t been thinking about his dead son, though he knew why Zack might assume he was. He stored it for later. "Something else. You won’t like it."
"I didn’t sign up wit
h you for happy endings."
Blake got up and walked around the small cockpit, testing various pieces of equipment; most of it didn’t respond in any way. "The Alicians hold three as a holy number."
Zack’s brow furrowed. "Oh, I get it. The ghoster and the computer failure: that makes two." He looked around. "You thinking another piece of equipment?"
"No. They call it a triangulated attack. The three attempts must be of a different nature."
"Boss, I’m just a simple astronaut from Queens."
"You see, a computer – something electronic; a ghoster – something bio-engineered."
Zack leaned forward. "You know I’m crap at this. What comes next?"
"I’m not sure. There’s no textbook, but it would be something more subtle."
Zack nudged him on the arm. "You have a hunch. What the hell is it"
Blake frowned. "Trouble is, once I say it, it’s out, there’s no going back, and if I’m wrong…"
"Goddammit, Blake. Tell me what you think it is. What if you’re right? At least let me know, just in case, you know…"
"Something happens to me?"
Zack shrugged, then winced with pain.
"Okay. Here it is: one of us. Unconscious implant, so we’d get through the screening, unaware until a pre-set trigger event or signal."
Zack sat back and let out a whistle. "You’re right. I don’t like it at all. We’ll be watching each other like hawks, knowing that once the implant is triggered, that person will turn into a homicidal maniac." Zack pounded the upper part of his cast with a fist.
Blake raised an eyebrow. "Does that help?"
"Sometimes one pain can dull another." He scratched his cast where he’d just been hitting it. "Makes you wonder though, don’t it, why they’ve gone through all this trouble to stop us getting there?"
Blake pursed his lips. "They feed on people’s desperation. Eden is hope; spoils their rhetoric, not to mention their balance sheet." He wanted to spit.
