Skyline Severant (The Consilience War Book 3)

by Ben Sheffield

  If this is him, then it all ends tonight. Unless I can do something.

  He reached into his bag with all the speed quietness allowed, and retrieved a small triangular object.

  He felt small nibbling rodent teeth of doubt, as he had so many times over the years. He was a man who thought of the big picture, and the big picture often wasn’t big enough to accommodate individual lives, or individual wills.

  I’m sorry, he thought. But there’s no time to run for help, and I don’t stand a chance against an armed man.

  He activated the polyfleshing device, and stood over the two bodies. Particles beamed over them, infusing their bodies with liquid light.

  You thought you could have peace.

  And now I have to bring you back.

  “What am I doing here?” the man asked, his face a mask of horror and confusion.

  The woman was stumbling to her feet, and tried to walk. Her heels brought her crashing back down.

  Mykor tried to project an aura of calmness and authority. Both of these people had lost their memories, and he was the first experience of their lives. He needed them docile, controllable. Needed them to believe that he was trustworthy, and that the fictions he told them were the truth.

  When he’d found the polyfleshing devices, decades ago, he’d marveled at their ability to heal wounds. Cuts closed. Broken bones re-set. Severed limbs attached themselves.

  They also revived the dead.

  This was the final, dark door that they held the key too. It was fraught with issues, both moral and practical. The freshly-dead could be resurrected without issues. For anyone deceased for longer than a minute, it was an unpredictable process, and one that he’d never seen have entirely good results. Nyphur, the scientist, was the most successful case, but even he had been utterly horrifying to be around. Just a walking bag of sticks with an off-kilter gait and the conversational skills of a scarecrow.

  Can you really bring a dead man back to life? He’d always wondered. Or are you just pumping nervous electricity into a corpse?

  Mykor was not a religious man. But whenever he revived the dead, dragged them back into shambolic half-life, he felt hell fire burn at the back of his mind. This is despicable, he thought. So why am I always in positions where it’s the only way?

  The resurrected dead lacked memories. The polyfleshing could restart stopped hearts and deflate embolisms in the brain, but they could not take one step towards reproducing lost memories.

  The adult brain did not react well to emptiness, and it would often repopulate the missing neural connections completely at random. Insanity and delusions were an expected result. But if you were clever, you could insert a false identity into their heads.

  Quickly, he decided on an angle.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you remember what just happened?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Damn,” he affected an expression of regret. “I’ve spent the past hour trying to wake you. You hit your heads pretty badly when Wilseth attacked you.”

  The woman just looked confused. Even before death, she wouldn’t have recognized that name. But the man was a security guard, one used to liaising with Sarkoth’s most trusted agents.

  “Wilseth…” the man muttered. The name stirred something in him.

  “Please try to stay calm – I’m from the Solar Arm Constabulary, you’ve just been attacked, and we need to get you to safety.” Fuck, I sound like Schottkein.

  “What’s my name? I can’t even remember my name…” the woman asked, staring into her immense cleavage, as if seeking inspiration there.

  “Chastity,” he said, cringing at himself.

  “Where’s Wilseth?” the man asked.

  “Upstairs. And he’s got your daughter Verity.”

  The man and the woman stared at each other in horror.

  Mykor marveled at how well the human brain confabulated fake memories. I didn’t even say you two were married!

  He let the melodrama play out for a moment. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stop him. I arrived at the scene just as he took your daughter upstairs. He said he was going to show her how adults love each other.”

  The woman moaned sickly.

  “Please stay calm,” he said. “I’ve requested backup from the police, but they’re nearly half an hour away. I’ll go through that door up there and do my best to rescue your daughter. Please wait on the steps for the police.”

  “We’re not leaving,” the woman said. “Not without Verity.”

  He held out his hands, tried to look like a man doing his best to talk them down from a ledge. “Wilseth’s armed and dangerous. He is capable of murder. It’s vital that you stay away.”

  “We’re going up there,” the man said. “And we’re going to rip that motherfucker’s spine out through his asshole.”

  Mykor weakly babbled protests...and then nodded.

  It was so easy to lead men astray like this.

  So heartbreakingly easy.

  This was the way he’d recruited soldiers to his cause, and thwarted the Sons of the Vanitar at every turn. Kill them. Wipe their brains. Bring them back. Tell them nonsense. It worked every time.

  The person usually went crazy afterwards, when they realized the world wasn’t like the falsehood in their head, but by that point they’d served Mykor’s purpose and could be cast aside.

  Just as these two would be, in time.

  They started climbing the stairs, the start of his new army.

  He couldn’t find any weaponry, and couldn’t go looking for some with the time he had available. He didn’t know what Wilseth was doing up there, or whether Sarkoth Amnon was still alive. Didn’t matter. One had become three.

  The woman and the man still had blank expressions on their face, blank save for one thing: horror at the fate of their nonexistent daughter.

  In this line of work, you’re supposed to worry about receiving post traumatic stress disorder, Mykor thought, ascending the steps. I’m the other side of that equation. The one that gives it.

  Surrounded by the computers and their holographic ghosts, Wilseth and Sarkoth Amnon wrestled on the floor. Wilseth was somewhat impeded by his broken cheekbone, as well as the fact that he couldn’t outright kill Sarkoth.

  Occasionally, messages from the defense efforts played, ignorant of the fact that nobody was listening.

  “We’ve received word from General Rodensis. More assault vectors from Mars are opening up, and we expect light raids against Selene and Terrus.”

  He pinned the heavy Prime Minister to the ground, and tried to administer short, hard jabs to his solar plexus – instant paralysis. Sarkoth twisted and oscillated his body from side to side, trying to avoid the blows.

  He didn’t notice that Wilseth had the phobia resonator back in his hand, and pressed it to his head again.

  Sarkoth Amnon screamed, beads of sweat standing out on his face.

  “I have many places I would prefer to be than here,” Wilseth said. “You can make all this unpleasantness end with a single sentence – a single word!”

  "Two hundred Exhorders are breaking away from the main fleet,” the computer chirped. “We expect bombing runs against infrastructure targets on Selene."

  Sarkoth struggled until he had nothing left in his muscles. Froth bubbled from his mouth as he struggled to escape the nightmares breeding inside his skull.

  Finally, he shouted “I’ll do it! Damn you, I’ll do it.”

  Wilseth whipped the resonator away.

  He held it in front of his face. It had a shiny metallic surface, and he stared into the reflection.

  Then it went back in his pocket, as easily banished as the bad dreams it conjured. “Excellent. We’ll launch the missile together…just as soon as I’ve dealt with these fools who have come up the stairway, and thought I couldn’t see them.”

  Sarkoth groaned.

  Mykor was doomed.

  “General Rodensis is marshalling reserves from aerospace bas
es in Neo Mumbai and Neo Nairobi. He expects that the Reformation Confederacy will not be able to exert much pressure on ground-based defenses,” a recorded voice informed them.

  Wilseth snarled as he turned and opened fire.

  Two bullets nailed the woman in the chest, hurling her to the shiny LCD flooring. A third pinged over Mykor’s head as he took cover behind a flashing computer console.

  “Chastity!” yelled the man, and Mykor was torn by the pain in his voice.

  "20mm and 40mm mobile anti-spacecraft guns are now in operation on the rim of the Kepler crater. To all civilian spacecraft remaining over this quadrant, return to surface immediately."

  He tried to run to be with what he thought was his downed wife, but Mykor seized his hand and pulled him under cover. “She did what she had to do! Come on, let’s get your daughter to safety.”

  The resurrected guard crouched beside him, shaking him by the shoulders. “Who’s that man on the ground? Where’s my daughter?”

  A barrage of bullets pounded the computer console. Sparks flew, and then flames burst from the machine. No doubt Wilseth was betting that the control panel was weak enough to shoot through. And given the ridge of welts that had just appeared in the metal in front of Mykor’s face, his bet had almost paid off.

  "We have received negotiation terms from General Orzo Feroce. Current war cabinet is still in the process of evaluating our tactical position. Please do not stand down prior to direct orders. We will - "

  A ricochet smashed a computer screen to pieces, and the voice cut to hash.

  Mykor shoved him. “Never mind that. Get as close to him as possible, and try to distract him. So long as he has a gun, distance is our enemy.”

  The man darted to the left, his face wet with tears.

  Mykor was glad for his sorrow. It would stop him thinking, stop him asking obvious questions – such as why he was obviously in a government building of some sort, dressed in the garb a security guard would wear. Or why his wife was dressed in the clothes of a woman who spent her life between two sets of sheets.

  Grief would stop the fable Mykor had spun from falling apart.

  Mykor started moving, changing one hiding spot for another, trying to get closer to Wilseth. He knew that the man would probably die soon. But perhaps his life would buy another few seconds.

  His impression of Gatag Wilseth was limited to their brief but unforgettable interrogation. He had no doubts whatsoever that he’d die against this man too, unless he found a way to close the odds.

  I heard them talk about missiles, he thought. Sarkoth was trying to escape his duty. Caitanya’s back, and those antimatter warheads are the only way to stop it. He needs to issue those launch codes.

  He had no clue as to what Wilseth was trying to do here. He only knew that the Sons of the Vanitar worked to an agenda that was forever the opposite of his own.

  Wilseth made a sudden move. He pinioned Sarkoth Amnon’s leg on a raised obstacle, and stomped down.

  There was the crush and crunch of bone and cartilage, shockingly loud. Sarkoth bellowed in pain, and Mykor winced.

  With Sarkoth crippled, Wilseth started to move and hunt them like a vengeful ghost, stalking them to the back of the building.

  The man, tears streaming down his, lunged out of the shadows. Wilseth shot him.

  -ka-BLAM! Ka-BLAM!-

  The lunge turned into a tumble, and the thud of a body not controlled by muscles any more.

  “What the fuck is this?” he heard Wilseth ask the dying body. “I killed you before. One of the guards on the stairs.”

  “Give me my daughter back,” the voice choked.

  -ka-BLAM!-

  The choking stopped, and Wilseth’s approaching footsteps echoed around the room once more.

  Mykor was on the verge of panic. In a hiding place that would be discovered in seconds, he scrabbled around the floor, searching for something that could be used as a weapon.

  But his hands closed on nothing, and seconds later he was staring up into the cold dead-fish eyes of Gatag Wilseth, sighting down the barrel of a Meshuggahtech KA-32 pistol.

  Click

  The chamber was empty.

  Wilseth smiled again, discarded the pistol, and drew his flechette gun.

  Mykor readied himself to die, and then he heard a roar of inhuman fury.

  The woman had gotten back on her feet, and Wilseth had about half a second to react before she tackled him from the side, sending the flechette gun flying from his hand as he crashed against the wall.

  “Where’s Verity?” the concubine screeched, her hands clutching Wilseth’s neck. Gaping bullet holes in her breasts bled rivers of blood.

  Mykor got back on his feet, head swimming with adrenaline.

  She didn’t stand a chance. Her body was built for beauty, and beautiful things died.

  Wilseth smashed his fist in a hard-right cross, and she let go of his neck. Then with a single fast gesture, he reached behind his neck, and there was a flash of light.

  The hidden knife blade gleamed, almost invisibly thin, but Mykor knew the design. A nano-teflon edge that was thin enough to conceal against well-tailored clothes.

  He slashed the dying woman across the throat. Her piercing screams of anger choked out, dying away like an extinguished fire. Blood sprayed and pulsed, decorating the blue-hued floor with specks of red.

  With a grunt of effort, Wilseth threw her off him…

  …and had a chair crash down on his head.

  He cried out, recoiling. Then Wilseth pounced on him.

  A straight up fight would have ended almost instantly, Mykor skewered and bleeding out from Wilseth’s blade. But it never got to a straight up fight.

  The phobia resonator that Wilseth had put in his pocket had come loose, and was dangling from his wrist by a lanyard.

  In the tiny, infinitesimal window of time he had available, Mykor seized it, cranked the dial to its highest setting, pressed it to the nearest patch of skin he could find…and depressed the central button.

  At the sound of that bonelike click Wilseth’s eyes went saucer-wide in fear.

  He stabbed upwards, the knife moving so fast the air hissed. If he’d been even a quarter of a second quicker he would have disemboweled Mykor, but as it was the knife pierced Mykor’s lower stomach, and then stopped.

  The voltage was discharged into Wilseth’s skin…and he learned what true fear was.

  He opened his mouth…but no sound left.

  The phobia resonator had five settings. It had been set to 1, the usual recommended setting for non-crippling forms of torture. Anything higher had a successively higher risk of permanent mental damage.

  At number 5, Wilseth never even had the chance to scream.

  He just died.

  His eyes flickered around wildly, spinning incoherently in circles. One of his hands moved. And then his brain just shut down like an overloaded fuse.

  Wilseth’s body sagged, all of his muscles relaxing. The dying hand fell, dragging the knife out from inside Mykor.

  There were only two people alive inside the control room. Mykor stood up and walked gingerly across the field of cracked glass, shattered polyplastic, and spreading blood. Much of the blood was his. He initially felt no pain, but as he gingerly touched his hands to the stabwound in his stomach, it burned inside him like a sizzling flare. He had to choke back a scream. His pants were soaked with blood, and so was the hand he brought back up to his face.

  He looked on his belt for the polyfleshing device. It wasn’t there. It must have gotten knocked loose during the fight.

  I’m hurt.

  Maybe I’m dying.

  He couldn’t die. The job still wasn’t finished.

  Sarkoth Amnon was lying against the main console, whimpering in pain. His leg was now contorted in a direction the human femur was never meant to go, and he was soaked in sweat from his ordeal. But he looked at Mykor in relief.

  There was a holographic message on the computer. AWAITING VER
BAL INPUT. CONNECTION TO DAKSHA-53256 SELF-TERMINATING IN 2:00…1:59…1:58…

  “How did you know?” Sarkoth whispered.

  “The security lights were off,” Mykor said. “Hence, no security. Or perhaps the wrong kind of security. You should have been more careful. It was stupid that one man had the ability to disable all the defenses around the Atrium.”

  “I thought he was loyal,” Sarkoth whispered. “I told him that I was leaving the Sons of the Vanitar, and he said he would do so alongside me…”

  “He flapped his tongue in the manner required to make you happy, and obtain closer placement. No more, and no less.”

  “Well, it’s over now. Have you called for medical assistance?”

  “No,” Mykor said. “And I won’t. Not until you launch the missile.”

  Sarkoth couldn’t even process that. He just gaped, an expression of disbelief on his face.

  Mykor’s hand clutched the microphone on its adjustable stand, and dragged it down to the ground. Now it was inches from Sarkoth’s face. “I listened to Wilseth talk through the door. He was trying to get you to do this. But he allowed you to get free, and I couldn’t take the chance that you’d escape.”

  “No,” Sarkoth gasped. “I can’t.”

  “You can,” the phobia resonator now twinkled in Mykor’s hands.

  The Prime Minister groaned in despair as the hateful disc of metal drifted closer and closer to his skin. “This is insanity. The planet’s too close – do you understand that, Kymmure? It’s too close. We’ll get hit by blowback.”

  “It’s the only way to destroy Caitanya-9. And unless it goes, the Sons of the Vanitar have won. The human race is doomed.”

  “No! It’s not going to destroy us! If it was going to, it would have already.”

  “Argue with this thing, not me,” Mykor put the phobia resonator to Sarkoth’s skull, on setting 1.

  He spasmed and screamed at the demons inside.

  “Do it,” Mykor said. “Give the command, and then this stops. In another ten seconds, we go to level 2.”