It was so good to be arrested, so good to be interrogated, so good to be treated as though your insanities were worth something.
She began the long walk to West Sydney. She still looked like a street-walker. By daylight, she was watched by a train of appalled parents instead of enthusiastic perverts.
She smiled and kept her glance to the ground in front of her. She had a secret, and it wasn’t for sale any more than her body was.
She remembered something she’d heard about the value of therapy.
Usually you expect medicine to have an elastic relationship with how much of it you take. A little bit of caffeine wakes you up a little. A lot of caffeine wakes you up a lot. Therapy, strangely, doesn’t have that kind of elasticity. Once you’ve had a little therapy, it’s had all the positive effect it will ever had. Ten years of psychodynamics or past life regression has the exact same positive effect as a stranger listening to your problems for a few minutes. Whether it was a placebo, or just the fact that humans were starved from the very basics, a tiny amount went a long way.
She found her way back to Yves’ apartment, and knocked on the door.
The other woman let her in without a word, and they sat on the couch together. They didn’t bring up any holographic television programs. Eventually, their hands intertwined.
Rose was surprised by this expression of trust. Yves had all the reason in the world to mistrust those hands.
“Sorry,” she said, lamely.
“It’s OK.”
“How are the cuts?”
“Painful. One needed two stitches, the others I just have to disinfect twice daily and they’ll heal on their own, or so I’m told.”
“It wasn’t me that made them, you know.”
“Really? Then who did it?”
“The Black Shift Corporation.”
Cygnus Cluster – time and date unknown
A wormhole yawned, breaking the black, and Caitanya-9 emerged.
It was now overlooking Deneb, a main sequence star in the Cygnus cluster. Orbiting it were a number of planets, several in habitable zones. One had liquid water – an improbably miracle in a universe that almost didn’t allow such things to exist.
Creatures were well established there. More sophisticated than the ones on Alnitak, they could build shelters on dry land, and survive in both land and water. They had primitive light sensitive organs that quailed from the sudden shower of ionizing radiation produced by the wormhole.
The creatures could have had a long future ahead of them. Or perhaps they would have failed, superseded by a fitter species. But even then, they would have remained in some form. Their bones would have lingered beneath the earth, each one a memorial to what had been.
But now Caitanya-9 overlooked the planet, its two moons akimbo.
A gamma ray burst flashed out, bright enough to end worlds.
Everything in the path of the burst became exotic rarefied physics, a starburst of plasma that would eventually form a cone hundreds or thousands lightyears across, streaking out across the galaxy like a beacon of destruction past and a warning of destruction future.
No bones. No trace that the creatures had ever existed.
Terrus was only two thousand light years from Deneb.
Caitanya-9 – March 19, 2142 - 0800
During the night, there had been another strange warping of the stars, and another bright flash. When they could safely open their eyes again, they were in another place. Another set of stars now glowed overhead.
They spent the morning clearing the site, bagging human remains as best they could, and setting up a camp. Sixty pairs of hands made the work go quickly.
Nobody buried any bodies, for reasons that were both obvious and unspeakable. Sankoh, Sigrid, and all the others would reach their final resting place as the planet simply folded itself over them.
Noritai hadn’t spoken a word to anyone. He was an island of one now, in an unreachable ocean of scowls and frosty silences.
By then, it was the middle of the day. MREs were distributed, and campfires built. Everyone else passed the time in a mood of slightly strained pleasantness. Enemies would not be welded into friends in a day. Ubra slept for a few hours, woke, and tried to be friendly to a man with one hand. It was difficult, given that she kept wondering whether her bullet had taken his other hand.
But almost immediately, there were problems.
“Want to hear something bad about water?” Jagomir said.
“Let me guess,” Zelity said, “we don’t have any.”
“The Solar Arm soldiers have a water buffalo out on the plains. I tapped it on the side. It seems to have about three hundred liters left. If we ration ourselves to a liter per day, across sixty people…” he shook his head, stunned by the despair of the math. ”Make it a liter and a half. Caitanya-9’s a dry fucking planet, and most of our food is reconstituted.”
“Okay,” Zelity fried a single Terrestrial hazelnut over the fire, watching it go black and smoke. “So what about our water?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing, that was a pretty aerial show you put on, but you also destroyed our ability to harvest water.”
“I tossed the water collection canisters over the side. I’ll go looking for them in just a minute.”
“It doesn’t matter, because we have no way of taking them up to the clouds. The Skyfortress itself is a twisted wreck, and none of our Spheres are able to fly. Our standing supply is about twenty liters of potable water, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Food?”
“Same story,” Jagomir said. “They have a little. We have even less. We did have a way of growing more, and now we don’t. You snookered it. Not blaming you, you did what you had to do, but that’s how the situation is right now.”
With poetic timing, the feeble campfire sputtered and died. Zelity sighed and stretched his legs, standing to get some more propane gas.
“Surviving down here will be a cakewalk,” he said. “We just need to figure out how to drink sand and eat rocks.”
The eerie blue sun was now directly overhead, shining a piercing thin light that didn’t warm.
Caitanya-9’s landscape spread out around them, a vast panorama that was somehow incredibly varied while being stultifying in its repetition. Hills rolled in a series, like hair dragged by a comb. Craggy peaks poked through the ground, rock mingled and forced past its breaking point in the subduction zones. The handful of smoky campfires were the only reprieve from the endless vista of purple.
Ubra pointed up at the sky, “what if we got in contact with Konotouri Space Station?”
“We’ve tried,” Noritai grunted. “Either they’re not picking up, or they’re even deader than us. Remember the flashes in the sky? I’ve buzzed and squawked them on every frequency we’ve got on Sakharov’s stolen gear. No dice.”
“What if we sent a flare? Or a rocket? Or something? If they were in orbit overhead, do you think they’d see it?”
“I haven’t even seen them pass overhead,” Jagomir said. “Normally it’s a bright light, kind of like a star. Either they’ve changed their orbit or they’re gone. Zandra originally went out to investigate some falling debris, if I remember correctly. Maybe that was them.”
As the afternoon passed, they soon realized they had bigger problems.
They first realized it when tremors began to run through the ground, and gusts of wind blew through the camp.
Then the curve of a black disk started to appear on the horizon, growing and spreading like a dark tumor.
“Somnath,” Zelity said. “Holy shit, we’re fucked, aren’t we?”
Looking across at the horizon, he could see gentle undulations rolling through the ground. He knew it was only great distance that made them gentle. As the moon approached, that gentle rolling motion would be flinging tanks into the air and breaking necks.
“We need to get out of here,” one of the Solar Arm soldiers said. “You know the planet better than us. Pick a direction an
d we’ll get moving.”
Haledor shook his head. “You cannot outrun the moons.”
“With our hardware, we can. We have a couple of functional dune buggies.”
Haledor laughed. “The moons have an orbital velocity of more than seven thousand kilometers an hour. I hope you’ve got a good fuel-injection system in those buggies.”
All of them watched and waited, hoping that someone would take charge, and start issuing orders. Nobody did, because nobody could.
“So how do you normally survive the moons?” Ubra asked Jagomir.
“In the past, we used the Spheres to stay airborne,” he replied. “And now they’re even deader than us.”
Somnath was now more than a hundred arc-minutes from the horizon and rising rapidly.
“Are we in the path?”
“I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter. The earthquakes and tornadoes cover an entire hemisphere”
“Makes you think about your actions yesterday, doesn’t it?” Noritai said, hardly looking at the moon. “All those prisoners saved, just so they can die later, from the moon, or from thirst, or from a hundred other things.”
“Don’t bring that up again. It was wrong. Killing prisoners makes you no better than Sakharov killing Sankoh, or Kazmer killing Zandra.”
Noritai chuckled. “I never got on well with Zandra. I managed to force a tear or two for Mykor’s benefit, but really, Kazmer was a bit of a gift. All I know is that he took her out of the picture, then fought the Solar Arm alongside us. He wouldn’t have wanted the prisoners left alive.”
A voice cut the air. “You’re wrong.”
Andrei Kazmer was back.
He strode among them, affable and confident. While everyone else was half-crouched, in deference to the quakes palpitating the earth, he strode freely.
“You’re all parasites on my surface,” he said. “I cannot see any logic that would induce me to kill them while leaving the you alive, and inversely. You are not as separate as you think.”
His thoughts hung on the wind, unanswered. One word had left Emeth’s mouth, and for that he’d been charbroiled.
Nobody wanted to try for a word of their own.
“You had a stupid battle plan,” he told Noritai. “Your tactical strength was in your mobility, and your knowledge of how to survive on this planet. You should have run, and spent days or weeks sniping at them from holes. Instead, you dug in, and gave them a stationary target to hit. You neutralized every one of your advantages and allowed them to use every one of theirs. Put Ubra, Zelity, or Jaginov in command, and you wouldn’t have taken a single casualty.”
Noritai offered no reaction to that.
“I thought you’d take the hint when I stopped the Vanitar shield from working.”
“That was you?” Zelity broke the eerie omerta.
“Everything that happens on this planet is my doing. When a rock falls on your head, that’s me. When a barrel of fuel bursts, that’s me. When you take a shit and half of it clings to your ass, that’s me. In any case, you’ve survived Noritai’s stupidity. I recommend relieving him of his command, rather than risk it a second time.”
The seven-foot tall goliath turned around and paced to the other end of the camp.
Pots and pans were now bouncing on the ground. The wind howled across the ground, lifting up clouds of dust and excoriating them with it. Somnath still continued its ascent, her passage knotting and unknotting the landscape. The worst was yet to come, and few of them would survive it.
Suddenly, Wake snapped his fingers. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was wondering why you all looked so uncomfortable. The moon. The earthquakes. How inconsiderate of me.”
Then he pointed at Somnath in the sky.
Everyone watched the finger in perfect silence and stillness, until eventually they realized that the stillness had settled over the land, too.
The earthquakes were dying down, even as the black moon climbed in the sky. To the offworlders, it was a relief. To the Defiant, it was a shock.
The ground was never still when either of the moons were visible.
“What did you do?” asked Noritai.
Put a smaller field of antigravity, between the moon and us. Somnath’s effects are cancelled out.”
They stared stupidly at him.
“You’re welcome,” Wake pointed at the wan, flickering fire, and it roared to life. Ubra shuddered, remembering Emeth. A fire could cut both ways.
They’re like him. He’s pure evil…and that pure evil just saved us, I think.
Then Noritai stood, and started walking.
Where are you going?
He was facing down Wake, staring at him with bitter contempt.
“Can I help you?” Wake asked.
“So, let me get this clear,” Noritai said. “You don’t control the Wipe, you are the Wipe.”
“Something like that.”
“And you know who we are, and what we’ve spent thirty years on this planet trying to do.”
“Closer to thirty-five, at this point,” he said. “Time passes erratically in the wormholes. Days outside are years inside. Or the reverse.”
“We have only one mission in life, to be the anti-Sons of the Vanitar. Where they want to destroy, we want to save. And if you’re the embodiment of the destruction, then you’re our enemy.”
“You are very stupid,” Wake said. “Do you think I care about that distinction? You never were my friend. When I was a mortal man, you would have used me to further your goals, just as they did. You’re diamond and graphite. One’s maybe prettier than the other, but you’re made of the same stuff as they are. And what can you do to stop me, anyway?”
Noritai didn’t do say or do anything in response to that. Wake eventually broke eye contact, stood up, and turned to leave.
The surly Defiant’s next move was a lightning flash. He drew a pistol, a lightweight KA-32 salvaged from the battlefield, and shot Wake twice in the back.
Ka-POW! Ka-POW!
As the echoes faded, Wake collapsed, spasms running through his body, and then he was still. No blood flowed from the wounds.
Zelity ran over to Wake’s body, and checked him for signs of life. The pulse in his wrist had stopped. There was no response when Zelity snapped a finger in front of those colorless black eyes.
“Woah…” Zelity sounded gobsmacked. “You killed him. Just wasted him.”
“Funny how that works,” Noritai smirked. “You need to be wise to trickery. Requeiam aeternam to Wake. As false a god as ever was.”
Then Wake’s voice came from beyond the camp. “Were you talking about me?”
Everyone’s breath froze in their lungs as the giant purple-skinned man returned to the camp, and sat in front of Noritai.
There was no seat there, no rock. He was sitting on his own corpse. The dead body gradually faded away, leaving him supported by empty air.
“I cannot die,” he told the Defiant leader, and a note of panic entered Wake’s voice. “I’ve tried so many times, so many ways. I always come back. There must be some way I can destroy myself. I killed the last Vanitar when I was underground – there must be a way. Perhaps there’s an…art to dying? Perhaps it is something I need to practice more? Who knows. But if I cannot do it, you will surely fail also.”
Then he lifted up Noritai with a single stroke of his hand. No physical contact. There was only air between their bodies. But Noritai found himself floating in the air, suspended in unseen bands.
“I’m going to end you for that, Noritai,” Wake said.
“Do it,” the man snarled. “I don’t care. Just end this foolishness, this stupidity. I’m not your plaything, and I won’t be your plaything. Go ahead. I’ve lost my leader, I’ve lost my command, and I’ve lost my dignity. Finish it. There’s nothing more you can do.”
Wake put a finger to his chin, deep in thought. As Ubra watched, she realized that there was a slender red line tracing itself from the back of Noritai’s neck, rising up to its p
eak on the crown, then dipping back down until it was sliding down the bridge of his nose.
Then the red line started widening, and with a sick and fascinated moan they all realized what it was.
The skin on Noritai’s head was peeling off, separating left from right until it was crumpled like a hood on his shoulders.
Beneath was a slick tracery of veins, muscles. He was a living anatomy chart. His eyes rolled around in their sockets, comically alarmed, looking massive without eyelids or canthal folds.
His mouth stayed shut.
A second line appeared on the back of his neck, this incision cutting through the subcutaneous flesh and muscles, and peeling it back in a second layer. Now there was nothing left but a bare, exposed skull, shining in the blue Deneb sun.
Wake’s expression was one of quiet contemplation. Nobody spoke, or could even think about what they were witnessing. It was beyond unimaginable, well into the unthinkable. A denuded skull, on top of a hale human body.
There was a thud. Haledor had fainted dead away in shock. Wake looked at him, smirked slightly, and then continued.
Noritai’s skull seemed to widen. To stretch.
No, Ubra thought. It’s something else.
The segments of the skull were teasing themselves apart, unbinding like puzzle pieces torn from a jigsaw. The fontanelles that had closed on Noritai’s skull as a baby were coming wide open again.
And then, with the precision of an anatomical study, his skull gently split.
It was neat, orderly, methodologic. The frontal bone drifted into the air ahead of what had been Noritai’s forehead. The zygomatic arches spread apart on each side. The massive parietal bone split along its coronal, squamous, and lamboid sutures, drifting away to the rear. The jutting mandibles unhinged themselves, and descended to Noritai’s chest. Finally the hooklike occipital bone floated down and to the rear.
The assembly was separated. The puzzle box of the human head had been solved.
What was left was just a brain, open to the air.
Extinction Level Event (The Consilience War Book 2) Page 12
