Extinction Level Event (The Consilience War Book 2)

by Ben Sheffield

  “Terrorism. My agent entrapped her in some flaky bullshit that will fall apart in about two seconds. But for the moment, we can detain her, away from prying eyes.”

  Sarkoth Amnon’s own memories of Caitanya were badly damaged. He’d spent much of the time in a ruined Spidermecha, nearly killed by that lunatic Andrei Kazmer. And there were still many things that he didn’t know.

  He’d retrieved Mykor’s desiccated body and had covertly shipped him to Selene, but still hadn’t reanimated him.

  Mykor saw him as an enemy, and would probably refuse to help him. Or worse, he’d try to deliberately lead Sarkoth down false paths.

  He needed a second person with Caitanya-9 memories, that he could check Mykor’s recollections against.

  That planet had been full of terrors, and he’d rest far easier if he could stop those terrors from coming to Terrus.

  “I doubt we’ll get much information out of this person,” Sarkoth said. “These memories aren’t exactly intelligence goldmines. And they’ve been badly distorted by Black Shift.”

  “But we can use her to validate Mykor’s answers,” Gatag said. “Incidentally, have you awoken him?”

  “No.”

  “Better get on it. At the moment we have shock on our side – she’s scared, alone, and doesn’t know what we’ll do her.”

  “Give me an hour. I’ve had to retrieve his memory module from storage – amazing how much dust can gather over a man’s entire soul. Once he’s rehydrated, we’ll get the headset on him, then we’ll get to work on these two.”

  “I’ll get to work,” Wilseth said. “That’s the point – this is all highly illegal, and nobody can know you were here. “

  Oxygen.

  The man started to breathe, and as consciousness returned, it seemed that was all he was: just a breathing set of lungs without a body, raw nerve ends exposed to the chilling air. The in and out of respiration was like a cosmic cycle of birth and death.

  Then his eyes open, and light flooded in.

  “Uhhh…”

  He felt unbearably weak, intolerably sick. Nausea roiled his stomach like a cauldron. Through the piercing headache he tried to look around and ascertain where he was.

  In a white room. As his pupils dilated, it became a light gray room, and then a dark gray room. There was a chair before him, and he thought he heard something or someone move behind him.

  There was a series of tubes attached to his wrists, flooded with clear liquid that pumped into his body. He started trying to pull them out, not liking the plastic and metal intrusions. His hands were like boneless flippers.

  Then he realized – and the thought had zero emotional content – that he didn’t know who he was. Not even slightly.

  Then he felt something get pressed down over his head, foam pads cradling his ears. A headset. He was too weak to resist, too weak to even feel alarmed.

  “Whatever you do, don’t take them off,” the man behind him said. “Undertake any action in the world except that.”

  Atonal buzzing and hissing swirled into his ears, tones massaging his neurons and causing strange growths there. At first, just primitive gestalts of color and sensation. Then actual memories.

  His identity started coming back to him.

  - You are Mykor –

  - You were born on Terrus, late in the last century –

  - The son of aristocracy, or what passes for it. You would never want for anything, and naturally you wanted for everything –

  - Yours was a mind attracted to the strange, the ersatz, and the unseen. You refused to read digital books, they had to be paper. You threw countless tomes away because their publication date was too late. Your prized possession was an early edition of Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, borne through the second World War and the atomic and antimatter age –

  - Bright greens of earth became the murky swamps of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Your matriculation now occurs, surrounded by lakes of pure methane –

  - You meet a short fat boy, Sarkoth Amnon. How do you become friends? That is missing from this record. The memory has a gap – colors and sounds purged either by your brain or the technology -

  - You walk into apocalypse engineering with your eyes wide shut. A man called Emil Gokla takes both you and Sarkoth under his wing, and you learn about the secret nerves that run beneath the Solar Arm. There are men out there who want nothing more than a finish line, an end, and now you are one of them. –

  - In 2075 a new source of light is detected in the Proxima Centauri system. Parallaxing reveals it to be a planet, a third of Terrus’s diameter. Utterly mystifying that nobody noticed it before –

  - A method of life-preserving interstellar transport is invented and perfected by Emil Gokla. Its trial by fire is a research station on Caitanya-9. The station is a bit of a joke, and fails to accomplish its goals, but it’s still there, orbiting the purple world like a gaudy fake piece of jewellery. An incredible proof of concept that Black Shift works, despite the unavoidable infodeath of having your cells dehydrated.

  Mykor groaned, feeling black seas press down on him. He now had inklings of where this was going, but there was no way to stop the waters rushing in to his mind.

  - The Sons of the Vanitar, Gokla chief among them, suspected that the planet was not what it seemed. A crazed miner had been captured, with a head full of burning apocalypse. The Sons exerted enormous influence to keep Konotouri Space Station functional for decades after it obviously wasn’t serving any purpose. And then, a few years past the fin de siècle, you were selected to conduct an investigative mission there –

  Mykor’s memories kept multiplying like unwanted children. He’d been allowed free reign to choose whoever he wanted to carry out the mission, and he’d picked the best and the brightest: engineers, doctors, scholars, soldiers, insane people whose minds looped along the same curious track that he did. Emeth. Jaginov. Haledor. Sankoh. Noritai. Many others.

  The thirty of them had boarded their Black Shift capsules, had the tubes and cables fitted to their bodies, and the thick polymer wrap bonded around their bodies. They would have their temperatures cooled, their bodily functions shut off one by one, and then every single molecule of liquid would be drained from their bodies through osmotic transfer. They would be dried out, mummified, no more moisture left than in the bodies of the pharaohs of Egypt or the Sapa Incas of Peru. Instead of consuming hundreds of kilos of food and producing hundreds of kilos of waste, they’d consume nothing except a few liters of water to rehydrate them.

  Mykor felt claustrophobia as the lid was closed on him, and was thankful that he wouldn’t have to experience it for long. Partway through the journey, the capsule would retract, leaving him covered in the polymer sheet. At the end, the sheet would be sprayed with enzymes and would decay, leaving his rehydrated body to awaken at its own schedule.

  It would be the same body, but would it be the same person?

  When he’d arrived at the docking bay of Konotouri Station, he was horrified what sort of mind was installed in his body. A traitor to his race. An omnicider, or at least an omnicider’s useful puppet.

  He reviewed the materials left by Emil Gokla and Sarkoth Amnon, explaining what to look for, and how to survive the planet’s vicissitudes so that he might find it.

  And he realized that he did not want to do it.

  He didn’t know if the Black Shift process had corrupted his mind, and turned him into a different and kinder man. Or maybe guilt was a slow acid, and it would have collapsed his resolve in the end anyway.

  But he woke up his fellow men, and told them the only possible truth. “We cannot do this.”

  They prepped for the descent to the planet, timing so they’d avoid the passage of Somnath and Detsen. They had a choice to make – they could fumble around on the planet, report failure, and come back to Terrus. Failure might be an inevitable option anyway: they’d climbed a long way out on a very fragile limb. They had zero evidence of the Vanitar’s existe
nce that didn’t come from a madman.

  But someone else would come. And then, once more, the die would be cast. The Vanitar might be discovered, or they might not. The Sons of the Vanitar might get their hands-on world-ending technology, or they might not.

  Against these unknowns, Mykor could be a bulwark of certainty.

  They went rogue. They timed their descent so that Detsen was plunging across the sky like an unholy dragnet, disrupting their communications and sending their descent shuttle into a spin. To anyone watching on the station, it would have looked like they crashed. Mykor switched his crew to a closed channel commlink, to seal the deal. Radio silence.

  They’d spent weeks hunting in silence, taking to the air when earthquakes threatened below, clinging to the ground when hurricanes threatened above, watching their supplies dwindle, and finding nothing.

  Mykor no longer remembered exactly who had located the underground bunker. But when they did, it was an almost religious moment. As if whatever god oversaw this planet was vouchsafing them, and had offered a miracle.

  There were the Spheres – strange biomechanical devices that allowed powered flight and combat. Soon they were buzzing around the planet, piloted by Mykor’s men. It was inevitable that they’d be seen: occasionally people did land on the planet, for all the good it did them. But even that was useful. It allowed Mykor to build a half-myth of alien inhabitation. The Solar Arm had statutes in place for the respectful treatment of native species, and nobody bothered the Spheres. They could search openly now.

  There was the Skyfortress: an oblique piece of Vanitar art that could be raised into the cloud canopy by inflatable balloons. A method of hiding that rendered them immune to the destruction on the surface, while escaping detection from prying eyes. It even allowed them to extract trace amounts of water from the atmosphere.

  And then there were the incredible polyfleshing devices – small instruments that could heal wounds and even revive the dead.

  Wait…what became of the one that was clipped to my belt?

  An improbably stroke of luck, but it was the last stroke they’d have for more than twenty five years. They searched and found nothing but rock. They did not want Vanitar toys, they wanted access into the heart of the planet, access to the might contained within.

  Then Mykor had a daughter.

  Zandra’s mother died in childbirth, her final words that she did not want to be brought back by polyfleshing. Mykor felt bitterness and hopelessness then, at a level entirely deeper than their failed search for the Vanitar. He could not stop loved ones from dying, and he could not commemorate their deaths, not even with a gravestone. The gnawing teeth of the planet ate everything. Soon he would disappear into that mouth too, and what for?

  There was nothing keeping them going but the sheer fact that they would keep going, inertia pushing them on, day by day.

  They mapped out the planet laboriously, quadrant by quadrant. These all shifted all the time, but they couldn’t think of that. They dug tens of thousands of pointless holes, hoping to stumble upon the Doorway, or at least another cache of Vanitar technology. Occasionally, one of them would die – buried in a rockslide, or blown by a five hundred kilometer per hour hypercane straight into a canyon wall. But they trudged on, enthusiasm dwindling with their numbers.

  Zandra grew up to be a headstrong girl, a talented Sphere pilot but also a constant source of trouble. She did not share his belief in the Vanitar, or his optimism that this problem would be solved. Soon, at the end of another fruitless day beneath a cloudy purple sky, he wondered if she ever thought of life off this world, and realized how close it stood to her reach.

  In the end, a strange signal within the planet had been discovered by a group of scientists, and Zandra had discovered them. Thanks to Zandra’s stupidity and inability to think of the big picture, there were no survivors, and the trail was lost. One of them was revived and implanted with the remnants of Black Shift’s memory replacement module, reprogrammed to falsehood. He spent time on board the Konotouri, acting as their eyes and ears.

  Then Sarkoth Amnon himself had arrived. Gunsmoke scorched the horizon as battles were fought for control of the digging site. Nyphur had died, along with a great many others besides.

  The next part tore at him when it entered his mind. This memory was lined with fish-hooks, gouging and tearing.

  Zandra.

  His only child, had left on a scouting mission. He’d told her not to go, but even now, guilt asked him whether he’d asked hard enough.

  A strange man had returned, flying her craft. Whoever this man was, he derived great satisfaction in telling Mykor that his daughter was now dead.

  Everything else was blur of tears and sweat. With his dreams in tatters and destruction raining down, he’d been captured, and escorted on board Sarkoth Amnon’s ship. When they’d seen each other face to face, Mykor had regretted not having the willpower to spit in it.

  Sarkoth was incapable of wielding this much power. All of them were. Some were delusional enough to think that the ancient might of the Vanitar was theirs to control. These were the most delusional of all.

  Mykor had ignored all questions, had lapsed into a universe that consisted of three things, the countdown, his daughter, and her death. They all seemed entwined, like a braid, and when the planet disappeared he wondered why this forestallment of vengeance hadn’t also spared his darling girl.

  His final.

  His body was still badly shocked by the Black Shift procedure, still in need of fluids. But he found himself weeping. Harsh tears cut lines down his face.

  “That should be enough.” The man removed the

  “I am in a world of shit.” Sarkoth Amnon said. “I don’t give a damn about you and what your motives are. Whatever they were, all of that has changed. I need help. And only you can give it.”

  Mykor sat upright, meeting his old friend’s gaze.

  Five years ago, they’d been shooting at each other. And to his dehydrated brain’s reference point, it was only hours.

  “First, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Get these god damned memories out of my head.”

  Gatag Wilseth switched on the mic.

  He now had two nuts to crack – Rose Rohilian, and Kymmure Mykor. He had them in adjacent cells, each unaware of the other’s existence. He spoke to them through a speaker mounted on the wall.

  He could use torture on Mykor. Mykor was an unperson, someone everyone thought had died on Caitanya-9 decades ago. His defection and subsequent return to the planet were unknown except to Sarkoth Amnon and a tiny handful of confidantes.

  He couldn’t really use it on Rose. Still, the implicit threat might loosen her tongue.

  He slipped fully into questioner mode. He no longer thought of them as human beings. They were out of sight, out of mind. Now they were just cells. Inscrutable black boxes that gave and processed input. Perhaps accurate, perhaps not so much. Which way the coin fell was his task to determine.

  Sarkoth Amnon at his side, he spoke into the microphone.

  “Good evening.”

  It was actually still morning. But they had no way of knowing that, and it would distort their internal sense of how long they’d been imprisoned.

  From Rose’s cell, a dispirited “hello.”

  From Mykor’s cell, dead silence.

  Wilseth gritted his teeth. Sarkoth had rehydrated Mykor’s body, and reported that he’d been surly and uncommunicative. This was going to be a pain in the ass.

  “I am going to ask you a few questions regarding the planet Caitanya-9. We know you have no reason to keep secrets from us, so let’s ride this out and see where it goes.”

  Rose’s cell: “OK. Fine. I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

  Immediate, showy compliance. That was either a good thing, or a performance. He flagged that as something to follow up on later, when he had more data.

  Mykor’s cell: “If you want to end the world,
I’ll be happy to tell you how impossible that is.”

  “First question, what is the year?”

  Rose’s cell: “2142.”

  Mykor’s cell: “Don’t know. Haven’t seen a calendar in a while. It would either be 2142 or 2143, depending on the exact distance between Terrus and Caitanya-9 as they orbit the galactic center.”

  Wilseth put a tick on his form.

  “What color is Caitanya-9?”

  Rose’s cell: “mauve.”

  Mykor’s cell: “purple.”

  Another tick.

  These were what he thought of as Q1 questions – innocent, easily checkable facts that they’d have no reason to hide. More of a basic test of insanity than anything.

  So far, so good.

  He moved on to the next level, Q2 questions.

  Into Rose’s cell, he asked. “In your dreams you were on the surface, attempting to wrest control of a digging site. What were you fighting?” Into Mykor’s, he asked: “what were you using to fight the Solar Arm’s forces.”

  Rose’s cell: “weird glowing things.”

  Mykor’s cell: “we call them Spheres. Metallic battle carriages.”

  Into both of them, he asked: “how many of these things were there in total?”

  Rose’s cell: “I don’t know. In my dream I think there’s a couple dozen.”

  Mykor’s cell: “we originally found forty, but some were lost in accidents and misadventures. You fought a battle against thirty of us.”

  Wilseth and Sarkoth Amnon shared a nod. They were both in concordance so far. Q2 questions involved general information that was known to the interrogator, but which the prisoner didn’t know the interrogator knew. The intent was to discover whether the prisoner would try to lie.

  If the Q1s were a test of sanity, the Q2s were a test of honesty.

  The final step up the ladder was the Q3s. Just because you were sane and honest, didn’t mean you were accurate. More elicitation was required. More probing.

  He asked both cells the same question.

  “There was hole in the ground. A man was thrown into the hole. Before he vanished, he said something. What was it?”