“What is it you want?” Major Terra said, walking past me as the doors shut behind us. “Since I refuse to believe you are taking your duties—”
As she turned around, I jabbed her in the throat with a stun rod. She fell to the ground as I gave her a triple dose for good measure. Now I just needed Isla’s help in rebooting her brain to normal and removing Judith’s pawn on the ship. That was when Fade walked and stared at me as I stood over the body of his companion.
Well shit.
Chapter Fourteen
I struggled for a moment to think of an excuse, only for Fade to immediately make a motion for his pistol that I knew I didn’t have time to dodge so I instead charged at him. The two of us slammed into the back of the doors before I threw him over my head onto the digital aquarium that shattered underneath, spilling real water. Both his gun and my stun sick crashed to the floor. I could have drawn the sword he’d just presented me but I didn’t want to escalate the fight even if I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t.
“Lock the door,” I commanded the ship’s temporarily non-sentient virtual intelligence system. “Also put something on to cover up the noise.”
“What, sir?” the ship’s virtual intelligence asked.
“Anything!” I snapped as I moved to grapple Fade before he got up.
A Crius orchestral rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” started playing. It was amazing what music stood the test of time. I didn’t get to respond before Fade grabbed the lid off the shattered aquarium and threw its chemical-filled watery contents in my eyes. Instead of going for his knife, he instead kicked me in the stomach then grabbed my head to drive into his knee. I didn’t want to hurt Fade because this was all a misunderstanding, but instinct took over. When Fade threw me over in a Belenus judo throw, I grabbed his arm and reversed it. I then grabbed his head and smashed it down into my desk, cracking it.
“Stand down!” I commanded, holding his head down against the desk’s surface.
“You first,” Fade said, blood pooling from a cut across his forehead.
That was when I noticed he’d managed to grab the stun stick I’d dropped on the ground at some point, probably when I’d smashed him into the aquarium.
“Ah hell,” I said, moving to dodge only to be jabbed in the stomach.
If I’d been a normal human being, that would have been the end of the fight right there but I’d been cybernetically and genetically enhanced for combat. As a pilot, mind you, but that still gave me the ability to resist incapacitation better than most. A pilot was no use if he couldn’t withstand G-forces, after all. It was why most of the best were from heavy-gravity worlds or engineered like myself.
Another reason I’d succeeded where so many others had failed.
“Dammit,” Fade said, realizing I was still intact when I head-butted him in the nose then pulled my fist back.
That was when he pressed the gun he’d pick-pocketed from the holster at my side into my chest.
“That’s extremely impressive,” I said.
“It is,” Fade said. “Back up.”
I did so, raising my hands.
“We’re going to have a chat,” Fade said. “Because I’d very much like to know—”
“Security override: Clarice O’Harra,” a female voice spoke on the other side of the door before it opened up. They revealed Clarice standing there in a form-fitting suit of zero-gravity armor that was primarily the kind used underneath Nina-class power armor suits. Isla was standing beside her, holding the medical scanner from earlier as well as a neural-inhibitor collar.
Fade moved his gun toward her.
Clarice responded twice as fast as a normal human being and quicker than most cyborgs, sending a micro-dagger from her side into Fade’s hand, causing him to drop my Fusion pistol on the ground. Clarice then strode forward and grabbed Fade by the right arm before breaking it in one easy motion, slamming his head down against the same spot I’d thrown it. Except much, much harder.
Clarice took one look at my battered form then looked down at Fade. “You’re going to scream before you die.”
Fade started to say something before she twisted his broken arm and he let out more of a yelp than a scream so she twisted it more until he did.
“You think you can hurt my friend, my captain, Isla’s lover, mine, and not die for it. I’m going to make your last moments—”
I took a deep breath. “A.I. Judith is actually an evil Elder Race computer-god thingy manipulating us to blow up an imprisoned one on Kolahn IV. She’s reprogrammed Major Terra here so I’m going to have Isla fix her so we can actually make peace and figure out what to do. Please don’t kill Fade because Ida might take that personally and I’ve got enough omnipotent forces of nature against me.”
The room was silent for three seconds. Clarice then let go and took a few steps back.
“You could have said that,” Fade said, stepping back and pulling out a handful of blue pills before tossing them in his mouth.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Something to make me forget I have a broken arm,” Fade said, shaking his head. “What the hell, woman?”
Clarice crossed her arms, standing a foot taller than Fade. She then glared. “You hurt my family. Give me a reason and I’ll cut your face off and throw it at your grandmother.”
I stared at her. “Okay, that was a little extreme even by my standards.”
“You helped me with the Chel,” Clarice said. “My family and Ida betrayed you yet you helped me escape. I’m not going to forget that.”
Isla approached Fade, who jerked away at first then relaxed when she started to treat his arm.
Isla snorted. “Don’t be such a big baby. I can fix this in an hour. Your face will be disgustingly pretty within minutes.”
“Thank you,” Fade said, taking several deep breaths. “I would hate to have to rely on actual depth of personality. What is this about an Elder Race?”
“Big Bad Ancient Alien in ship’s computer, or would be if not for the fact she left so the one on Kolahn IV doesn’t sense her,” I said, looking back at Major Terra’s still unconscious form. “I’ll tell you about it later, but only if you’re buying.”
“He hit you,” Clarice said. “We should lock him up in the brig until this is over. Preferably with no air.”
“Lower it down about a million notches,” I said, simply. “I’m fine except for a few bruises and a need to wash out my eyes. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Except that’s literally her job and you did,” Isla said, moving Fade’s arm back into place with a crack. “Are you going to be any more trouble for us?”
Fade looked between us. “It depends what you’re going to do to Anya.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Anya, is it?”
Fade shrugged. “Well—”
“You slept with Shin.” I shook my head. “Aren’t you married?”
“And?” Fade asked.
Clarice and Isla also looked confused. Spacers.
Isla looked down at her. “We’re going to restore her previous self and remove Judith’s brainwashing as well as the Commonwealth’s. She’ll be exactly as she was before they got their hands into her.”
This was, notably, a lie.
“Ah,” Fade said, pausing. “I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“Unless she tries to kill us,” Clarice said, surprising me by objecting. “What if she was a serial killer or terrorist beforehand?”
Isla looked at Clarice then back at me. “Strange minds think alike.”
“There’s nothing strange about that concern,” I said, noting it was a moot point since Isla intended to make sure Major Terra was loyal to us anyway. It was a thought that left me feeling somewhat ill. It was an old Crius saying from an Old Earth myth that a human being without free will was as useless as a clockwork orange.
Fade stared around my devastated room. “Well, I’m going to stay here to make sure she’s alright.”
; “And do what, exactly, if she isn’t?” Clarice said, her voice low and threatening.
“You’re beautiful when you’re angry, you know that?” Fade said, trying his best smile despite his face looking like a bot had stomped on it.
“Then I must be positively stunning now,” Clarice deadpanned.
“Do it,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We don’t know when Judith will come back and it’s entirely possible Major Terra might know something about her plans.”
“Also we need to know about her planet-destroying bomb,” Isla added.
“What now?” Fade did a double-take. “I feel like I’ve walked into the tail end of a conversation I should have been a part of.”
“More like punched your way into,” I said. “Then again, maybe we should have let you in from the start.”
“Yes,” Fade snapped.
“The spy,” Clarice said. “The Commonwealth spy.”
“Yes,” Fade repeated. “Would have saved you a lot of trouble.”
I looked to Isla. “You should do it now. She’s waking up.”
Major Terra was already on her feet before I finished, only for Isla to slap the neural-inhibitor around her neck before she could move. The Shin immediately fell to her knees as her eyes glazed over. Neural-inhibitors were a vile tool, but I was glad Isla had one.
“You realize those are primarily found among slavers, right?” Fade said, not apparently having learned how to keep his mouth shut.
“Yes,” Isla said. “We got a whole bunch of them when we spaced a crew of them.”
Fade paused. “You know, I’m starting to like you people. It’s beginning to make sense why my grandmother recruited you.”
Clarice literally growled at him.
Fade looked to the side and opened his mouth to make what I assumed would be some pithy remark before closing it. “Not worth it.”
It was the first smart thing he’d done today.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Isla said, moving her medical scanner over the back of the woman’s head.
“Have you done this before?” Fade asked.
“Sort of,” Isla said. “If she ends up brain dead, don’t worry, we’ll kill you before you have a chance to complain.”
“Your honesty is….not appreciated,” Fade said, sighing.
Seconds later, Major Terra blinked multiple times.
“It’s done,” Isla said. “The ninja is no longer a threat.”
“What’s a ninja?” I asked.
Isla shook her head and removed the collar with a single swipe of her thumb across its keypad. That was when Major Terra swore profusely in multiple languages with a strong Xerxes Dust Plains accent. An accent some people in the Spiral might have called Scottish but wouldn’t have passed muster with most of the New Glasgowigians I knew.
“Is this part of the process?” Fade asked.
“No, it’s not, ya dumb fuck!” Major Terra shouted, sounding nothing like her previous self. “It’s realizing you’ve been the Commonwealth’s goddamn meat puppet for the past nine months. A curse on them and their bastard offspring one and all.”
“Well,” Fade said, pausing. “This is awkward.”
“Which part?” Clarice said. “The fact you slept with someone who had their brain drilled out or the fact you’re just realizing it?”
“Ah, that was me,” Major Terra said. “He’s far from the first Commonwealth dog I’ve fucked. I just usually slit em afterward.”
“Oh, William is going to love her,” Isla said, smiling.
“I thought Xerxes hated Crius,” Clarice said. “I thought it was a point of national pride.”
“Only the Northern Hemmers,” Major Terra said, spitting. “We Southern Hemmers know every last one of the Northerners are murderous barbarians standing in the way of civilization. We swore an oath to the Houses of Crius and those honorless dogs who would break it deserve nothing more than to be castrated before being tossed in a pit.”
“She’s certainly more entertaining than William,” I said, chuckling. “Out of curiosity, may I ask what you did to get into this situation?”
“You mean brainwashed and enhanced into a ninja for a regime I despise?” Major Terra asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Major Terra lowered her head. “I dinnae do anything. I wish I had. I spoke against the Commonwealth occupation and said the Crius were our friends, not our enemies. That, for all their flaws, they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
“Then you did more than most,” I said, looking at her. “Do you know where Judith’s bomb is?”
“I know where a bomb is,” Major Terra said. “It’s in the supplies loaded.”
I nodded. “We need to secure that and make sure it’s disconnected from anything resembling remote access.”
“Shouldn’t we just dump it out an airlock?” Clarice suggested.
I shook my head. “I don’t like being manipulated, especially by something impersonating my dead wife, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. It may be that this Kathax Prime does need blowing up along with the planet.”
Fade raised his hand. “Maybe you should tell us the whole story.”
“Aiye,” Major Terror said.
“The name Judith sings in my head and I hear all manner of terrible things,” Major Terra said, holding her head. “Images that make no sense and dive in and out of my mind like bloodfish in an oasis.”
“Are you sure she’s fine?” Fade asked.
“Yes. Shut up,” Isla said, scanning her again. “We might be able to get the remaining memories to resurface but it’s uncharted territory. Zoe’s work with human brains via cybernetics is far in excess of Ares Electronics has been able to do with bioroids.”
“If you do will I be able to still play the piano?” Major Terra asked.
“Could you before?” Isla asked.
“No,” Major Terra said, grinning.
That was when the doors opened yet again and, this time, William walked through. He took one look at the room and the various wounded before starting to speak. He then hesitated as Fade had done before. “You know, screw it, I don’t actually want to know. What I do want you to know is something is coming our way now that we’ve entered the cloud. It’s popped to the edge of the system and moving really, really fast despite being in normal space.”
Normally, traveling at the limits of lightspeed meant it would take a while to reach us. Also, I was surprised we’d managed to make the transitions through jumpspace so smoothly. Then again, Munin had managed to get ahold of a Community jump drive during our acquisition of those ill-fated slavers’ vessel. If anyone in the Spiral could get human technology up to their standards, it was her.
“Something isn’t very informative, William,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it’s not anything I can identify. I’ve raised the shields and put thrust up to maximum,” William said. “We’re trying to outrun it.”
“Are we succeeding?”
“No.”
Chapter Fifteen
The screens showed we were travelling down one of the many large “tunnels” of normal space through the glowing multi-colored orihalcum gas all around us. Electrical surges and explosions of strange matter were seen throughout, showing the weird reality-warping volatile properties of the gas in action.
It wasn’t all orihalcum, of course, but it was perhaps the largest single quality I’d ever seen. Just wandering into one of those “storms” would probably tear the Melampus apart. We were going through the pre-plotted “safe route”, but if there was something following us that spooked William, I wanted to know what it was. As many differences as we head, I respected him as an officer. Sort of.
As I stepped onto the bridge, everyone’s attention turned to me, causing them to blink as they saw I’d had the shit beaten out of me.
I lifted my hands up in the air. “It’s okay, I just fell into someone’s fists. Happens to me all the time.”
Everyone looked at C
larice with mixtures of horror and disgust.
Clarice looked offended. “What the fuck, people?”
“Not funny. We’re not in that kind of relationship.” I sat in the captain’s chair, ignoring the fact they thought Clarice was capable of that. “Show me the ship.”
As Fade and the others arrived on the bridge, causing even more confusion as to what the hell had just gone on in my ready room, I saw Jun pull up an image of the vessel that was following us into Lucifer’s Nebula. It wasn’t the most pleasant-looking vessel, resembling a flying ball more than anything else, but as it matched our speed and exceeded it, I saw large black tendrils extend from its surface like they were liquid forming into a squid’s appendages or perhaps a spider’s legs. There was something almost malevolent about the sight even as the sensor readings showed it was only twice the size of our vessel. It took me a second to realize what the ship was even as the sight made my blood run cold.
“Oh shit,” Clarice said, looking at the sight and recognizing it as well.
“What is it?” William asked. “Is it Chel?”
“Worse,” Clarice said.
“It’s Chel,” I said, lying.
It was an Elder Race Probe. I had only seen a few holograms of such things in my time as a high colonel of the archduchy. Elder Race Probes were the smallest vessels known from the Elder Races and even then, they usually left no survivors when they appeared. It wasn’t so much a question of whether our vessel was a match for it, it wasn’t, but what did it want from us since it was as far above our technology as the Melampus was above the wooden sailing vessels in Earth’s distant past.
Maybe more.
“Give me manual control over the ship,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Sir?” Jun said, looking over at me.
“Now,” I said.
Going to manual control for a ship the size of the Melampus was, generally speaking, a terrible idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to start a panic and knew any hesitation in my next moves would possibly cost us our lives.
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