The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy)

by Thomas M. McNamara

  They eventually came to the spiral stairs. Darius angled his father’s body carefully as he carried it up. He counted the 113 steps back to the surface until he found himself back in the cube-shaped room.

  When they stepped outside, they were surrounded by imperial troops.

  An officer stepped forward out of the line of troops and said, “Nadira Markosian, you are under arrest on suspicion of treason. Darius Bakari, you are under arrest for consorting with a suspected traitor.” The man glanced behind him. “Take her away.”

  Nadira looked at Darius. “Remember your promise to your brother,” she said. They dragged her away. “Remember your promise, Darius Bakari!” She disappeared into the line of soldiers that surrounded them.

  He glanced back inside. The circle on the floor was now re-materializing. The structure was returning to its original state.

  “Put the object down, Bakari!” said one of the troops.

  He set the sheet-wrapped body down gingerly. “It’s a body,” he said to no one in particular. “I found it.”

  A soldier walked behind him and cuffed his hands together. “Let’s go, buddy,” they said. “Nice and easy.”

  A breeze came across the valley of the ruins, carrying the scent of berries and wet leaves.

  Part Two

  Baptism and Fire

  -8-

  Darius Bakari had a lot of questions right now.

  And he anticipated that he wouldn’t have anyone to ask for a while yet. All he could do for now was bide his time in this interrogation room and hope that they didn’t bring out a hot poker or Vorchi mindworms. He’d been questioned by the police before, in another life, but military interrogations were a different matter. All he knew of them was what he’d seen in the vids, and the occasional rumor of things much worse.

  There was no clock or window. The chair was uncomfortable. The temperature was too high. The light overhead was harsh and buzzy. Before a word had been spoken, the process of eroding his resistance had already begun.

  The metal door to his right creaked open, and in strode a high-ranking imperial officer. She had no rank, insignia, or nametag, but she definitely wore the uniform of command. She quietly took her seat and opened her holoscreen. He pretended that he hadn’t even noticed that she’d arrived.

  Eventually, she looked up at him and asked, “Have you ever heard of a penal military unit?”

  He shrugged and looked at the wall to his left as though there was a window with a mildly interesting view, instead of another portrait of the emperor.

  “PMUs were popular among the Germans and the Russians during World War II,” she continued. “Do they teach pre-exodus Earth history on Telemat?”

  He met her eyes with as bored of a look as he could muster and said, “Can I get a glass of water or something? I’m kind of parched.”

  She leaned back in her chair and smiled faintly. “PMUs could be comprised of deserters, or people who retreated against orders. And sometimes they were just convicts—conscripted right out of prison. The army gave them all the most dangerous jobs. It could be a suicide mission, or being forced to walk through a minefield to check for unexploded ordnance. Or perhaps hard manual labor on the war front, if you were lucky.”

  She looked back down at her holoscreen and scrolled aimlessly through the documents of his life. “If you proved your worth, your loyalty to the cause would sometimes be rewarded. You could be promoted out of the unit and given the full rights and responsibilities of any other trooper. Unfortunately, the mortality rate was extraordinarily high. Most of them ended up with little more than a proper burial.”

  She examined her fingernails. “Have you ever fought in a war, young man? I know you’ve shot some arrows and swung a machete around. We’ve done the forensics on that squad that you and your friends played peekaboo with. Do you think that’s war?”

  The woman leaned forward now, and her gazed bored into him. “I can show you war, Mr. Bakari.”

  He swallowed and tried not to sweat. He’d heard about the Gemini front. Everyone had. It was currently the most popular destination for Sar-Zin’s cannon fodder. Sometimes the emperor rained his disfavored subjects from the sky in dropships and drop pods until his enemy simply ran out of bullets.

  She leaned back and was smiling again. “Of course, we could just have a chat about the ruins. You like ruins, don’t you? Your whole family does. Speaking of which, have you talked to your mother lately? She’s very worried about you.”

  Darius looked at the left wall and was having a hard time imagining that window.

  The officer drummed her fingers on the table patiently.

  He shifted in his chair and looked down at the table. His hands were restless creatures.

  Without another word, the woman slowly picked up her holoscreen and headed out the door.

  ✽✽✽

  Darius was actually getting kind of thirsty. It was probably the heat in this room—just high enough to keep you perspiring. And it was just humid enough to keep that sweat from bringing the relief of evaporation.

  He had to admit that he was a little rattled. They wouldn’t really toss him a rifle and drop him into a battlefield—would they? Or send him on a one-way mission? Just to scare him into talking?

  He shook himself. I can’t let them get inside my head, he thought. If I tell them what they want to know, they’d probably toss me out one of these airlocks as soon as they recorded the last word of the transcript. If I tell them everything I know, they’d probably vaporize my body with a gravity cannon for good measure.

  A few hours later, the officer sauntered in again, this time with a drink in hand. She sat down languidly in her chair. She looked as calm and relaxed as a windless sea. She scrolled through her holoscreen and took periodic sips of her drink. Beads of condensation formed on the glass. Her air of satisfaction was irritating.

  After a while, without looking up, she said, “I was just taking a look at your friend’s file.”

  Darius waited.

  She sipped her drink. “Nadira is a very interesting woman, don’t you think? If that is her real name, of course.”

  Darius tried to imagine this officer without clothes.

  “We’re chatting with her too,” she continued. “I’m hoping that she might be able to clear up some questions for us. You know, fill in some gaps. I think if she helped us, maybe we’d be able to work something out with her. The thing is, if she did that for us...then there wouldn’t be much for you and I to talk about. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the courts would look favorably on an uncooperative associate of a traitor.”

  She took a long sip of her drink and sighed with satisfaction. “It’s a bit warm in here, don’t you think? Maybe the climate control is on the fritz.”

  He knew from experience that they were giving Nadira the same spiel. If you couldn’t get someone to crack on their own, you put the fear into their minds that a buddy might crack first. That would make you lose the bargaining chip of silence. He just wished he knew how much experience Nadira had with interrogation techniques. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t...

  The officer took another contemplative sip. “It’s too bad about the money,” she said idly.

  Darius waited.

  This time, the officer did not elaborate. She went back to scrolling her holoscreen.

  Every fiber of his being wanted to ask, but he knew he couldn’t take the bait.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m not supposed to say things like this, Darius, but...I kind of admire you. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve faced some real challenges, and you’ve come out the other side stronger every time. And I think you meant well. I don’t think you ever intended to get caught up in anything political. You were just on a job, right?”

  She got up and began pacing around the room. “I can see things from your perspective, Darius. You just needed some money, and Markosian had some work that you were very qualified for. It was also a way to get out of town for a few day
s. You probably didn’t notice when she started working you. But next thing you knew, you were fighting for her and risking your very life for the success of her mission.”

  She paused, crossed her arms, and stared down at him. “I bet she gave you a big speech about how the empire did some terrible thing to her, or her family, or her neighbor’s dog. I’ll bet she cried a little. When a good-looking woman like her has enough experience with that, it can be hard for a man like yourself to make a clear judgment. Emotions get involved. You want to come to her aid.”

  The officer sat back down. “I can see it all clear as day, Darius. But the thing is, unless you start helping us...my hands are tied. Every chit of that money comes back to us, and I can’t stop the brass from just tossing you a rifle and dropping you into a battlefield.”

  She leaned forward. “If you give me something, I can use it to limit the damage. I can make sure that your mother is taken care of, at least. She’s such a sweet woman, you know. Zara reminds me of my own mother. She’s worked hard all her life to provide her children with love, and opportunities to grow and thrive. But she’s also seen loss and heartache. She deserves better. Let’s not add more to her pain. What do you say?”

  Gods, he thought, they’re throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me.

  And if the empire was doing that, it meant that they were making this intel a very high priority. It meant they knew enough to know that there was a lot more to this story than what they’d gathered so far.

  That’s the thing about interrogation. The less you talk, the more they talk. The more they talk, the more they reveal. Not necessarily because of what they say, but often from what they leave out.

  A person with less to tell probably would have started breaking by now. But what he knew was so much greater than his personal problems, or his money problems. What he knew might help bring down the emperor—or put Sar-Zin beyond the reach of accountability, if the evidence of his crimes could be found and destroyed.

  So Darius waited.

  The officer leaned down over her chair. “Darius, I have to be honest, I’m about out of time for this. They wanted to come in with all kinds of toys, but I said, ‘No, let’s give him a chance to just talk to us.’ They gave me a few days, but I don’t think I can keep holding them off. This may be your last chance to help before they...start getting creative.”

  He waited.

  She sighed and looked down. “All right. Let’s pick this back up again tomorrow.” She looked to her left and nodded. The door swung open, and two soldiers came to escort him back to his cell. Well, he supposed they were technically Marines, since this was a spacecraft. “These two will be by your cell all night long. If you want to talk, you just tell them, and I’ll get over to you as quick as I can. Any time, day or night.”

  They took him out into the corridor. It was tall and rectangular with angled corners, like the rest of the facility. Midnight blue with stark white accents. Paneling everywhere. The way was lined with doors just like the one he’d exited. The doors had white borders and angled corners of their own. They all appeared to be “interview” rooms. There were dozens. Darius would have bet money that the whole ship was dedicated to housing and interrogating prisoners.

  He guessed that Nadira was on a prisoner ship too. Hell, they could have been keeping her one cell block away, for all he knew. In fact, it was pretty common for interrogators to cluster their targets. That way, when a prisoner started cracking, you had the option to pipe the audio to their buddy without any signal delay.

  In fact, that gave him an idea.

  The Marines escorted him through a few more hallways, down a staircase, and into a cell block. Darius noted a lack of elevators, and there were no vents large enough to crawl into; these people knew how to incarcerate.

  They ushered him into his Spartan cell. He had an elevated sleeping pad, a toilet and sink made of plasteramic, and another portrait of the emperor. It sat right across from his bed. He sat down on the bed and stared right back.

  He knew that those Marines weren’t just hanging around in the hopes that he would crack. They were also his suicide watch. He knew that the portraits of the emperor weren’t just portraits. They were multi-spectrum wide-angle audio and video recorders.

  He lay down and slept fitfully. He dreamt of arrows and machetes.

  The bang of a nearby cell door jolted him awake a few hours later. It had sounded like gunfire, and for a moment, the specters of battle were all around him. As he stared into the shadows, the shapes disappeared like clouds of smoke. For a moment, he had held a knife, but he looked down, and his hand was empty. He looked down at his shirt, and the blood was gone. He was back in the world again.

  It took a while to get back to sleep. When it came, his dreams did not embrace him.

  He woke more gently a few hours later to the sound of a food tray sliding into his cell. It looked breakfast-like, so he guessed it was morning at the facility. He felt like he’d slept for an hour at most. And he was not remotely hungry, but he knew he had to keep eating as though he were fine. There were many ways to show gaps in your armor, and loss of appetite was one of them.

  He’d watched the shift changes over the last several days, and he rarely saw the same person twice. That indicated a sizable crew complement and an accordingly sizable ship. Large enough to house a gravity field, anyway.

  Everyone’s uniforms and weapons were spotless, and the corridors were tidy and brightly lit. None of the weapons he’d seen so far were designed to be lethal. So this was not a random barge on the outskirts of empire territory.

  The Marines guarding his cell brought him out as soon as he’d finished his meal.

  They sat him down in another interrogation room. It had been a different one every time. His cell had also been a different one every time. They evidently didn’t want the prisoners to get any sense of routine or familiarity. They were doing every subtle thing they could to make a person want to return to the normal world. Even the food was blander than it should have been.

  The only common thread had been the interrogator. She arrived this time with two Marines in tow. One was pushing a cart with a device on it. The device was cube-shaped, metallic, multi-paneled, and red. There was a long, flexible tube coiled on top of it.

  Darius tried to give the device no more than a detached glance. He thought he already knew what it was. He’d seen something like it used on Captain Lazarus. The thought of that scene made his hands feel clammy. So in a way, he supposed, the device was already working on him.

  “Darius, I’m pretty much out of time here,” said the officer. “Now please hold still. These gentlemen need to strap your hands down. And your legs. I’ll need you to place your hands on the armrests of the chair.”

  One Marine held Darius’s right arm on the armrest while the other tapped on a wristpad. A circular clamp appeared on one side of the armrest, went around Darius’s wrist, and closed on the other side. Then came his left hand. Then his legs. Then his chest. They took their time. This was the last squeeze before the interrogation went to the next level, so he knew they wanted to make every moment count.

  “I’m sorry, Darius, I really didn’t want this to happen,” the woman said wistfully. “I can only buy so much time to do things my way.”

  One of the Marines opened a drawer in the cart and pulled out a very thick glove. He took some time fitting it onto his hand. The other Marine just stared at him dully.

  They were about to attach the tube to his right ear when Darius looked the officer in the eye and told her, “I wish I could tell you something. But I made a promise to a man who saw my future.”

  The officer held up her hand, and the Marines froze. She leaned over the back of the interrogator’s chair and placed her hands on the table. “Tell me more.”

  He waited.

  “Darius, if there’s more you can tell me, now is the time.”

  “I have said all that I will say.”

  She sighed and gestured
to the Marines. They attached the tube to his right ear.

  “Enjoy your mindworms,” she said flatly.

  Darius smiled inwardly, despite his fear of the immediate problem. At some point, they would have to ask Nadira about what he had said, if she was still alive. And with that, maybe she would piece together the knowledge that he was still holding fast against the storm.

  You plant your seeds...I plant mine.

  ✽✽✽

  Darius stood in the middle of his bedroom. It was mid-morning, and he smelled the mouthwatering aroma of freshly baked kuboos wafting in from the kitchen. The traditional Old Earth bread was one of his favorites, especially when Mom was able to get the proper ingredients.

  He stepped out into the hallway. Rali’s room was on the right, but he’d gone off to college. Dad was already making plans to turn it into a study for all of his notes, maps, and treasures from the ruins that he didn’t want to sell.

  As Darius passed by the room, a memory flashed through the back of his mind—something to do with the jungle. He could almost recall it, but there was a haze as though it were a dream he was thinking of, and not something real. That happened to him sometimes.

  He came into the kitchen and found his mother rummaging through the food cooler. She heard him come in, and she turned around to hug him. “Good morning, Darius. Come, sit down, I’m making you breakfast.”

  It was odd of Mom to greet him with a hug in the morning, but he didn’t mind. He sat down at the kitchen and checked his wristpad for the latest news. It was an unusually quiet day, apparently, and he was having trouble concentrating on the feed. He gave up after a minute or two.

  His mother pulled the kuboos out of the oven and set them on the stovetop to cool. Then she sat down on the opposite side of the table. “How are you doing, Darius? I checked on you earlier, and it looked like you were having a bad dream. I was going to wake you up, but I decided to make you some of your kuboos instead.”