by O. J. Lowe
Sinkins was the man with the plan, he’d managed to get his hands on the floor plans of the Aerius, the picture boxes and videocams on the outside of the shuttle had scanned the entire area, recorded it all for their entry into the unknown. Right now, as the snowflakes slapped at her, she knew they had to wait.
Domis smiled at her. He inclined his head and bowed, even as his own skin was chapped pink by the air. His eyes looked shocking, the water running down his cheeks threatening to freeze as he stood there. He brought back an arm, wiped them clear and bowed again. The moment was broken, the sound of hot flame meeting aged metal, ripping through it with the hiss of arrogance.
It might have been old, but things back then had been made to last, some parts of the hull further away had torn into high-rising rocks and they’d come off worse by the looks of the landscape. No expense had been spared in putting this ship together, yet something had gone badly wrong when it was in the air, the same something that had brought it down mostly unharmed. The lance beat a slow path through the metal, the flame burning brighter and brighter as it laboured its way onward.
It might only have been mere minutes, but that time out here was worse than hours spent elsewhere. She was too grateful to hurry through the rough gap, free from the assault of the elements. Ahead of her, the two point-men led the way, blaster rifles up and ready. She doubted they would be needed but being careful wasn’t a sin. Anyone up here would have been dead for years, if not from the elements then from starvation. Any length of time here was a death sentence. Domis followed her through, having finished directing the remaining men. He was good at that, she’d noticed it early on. A natural organiser. He’d left three troops with the shuttle, two at the entrance. That cut their party number to seventeen. An interesting move, she had to admit. If the shuttle was sabotaged, they were doomed to fail, for death wouldn’t be far behind. Leaving someone at the entrance was a wise choice.
“Remember,” she said. “You know what we’re looking for. Anything vaguely mystical. There’s something here that will help our conquest.” Our conquest, not hers. Anything to throw them a bone, make them feel more valued.
The truth was, she didn’t know what she was looking for, truly. Just that there was something on the ship that would help her achieve her goal. The ritual. The Forever Cycle. A tacky name, she thought. It promised so much and likely would deliver little. She could only hope that the name was deceptive, that its power hadn’t lain solely in the imagination of those who named it with such disregard.
It could be anything, she thought. Only the vaguest hint of memory lurked within the recesses of her mind, nothing concrete, nothing certain. She knew it was important, she knew that the memories she had been permitted to bring back from the Chamber of Fate told her that. Knowledge was never wasted, just too often misused in her experience. That was just what people did. They didn’t focus on what was important, they sought to bundle themselves down in minor details until the fear of inaction brought them to a halt. She despised people like that.
“Okay, can you hear me now Mistress?” Sinkins asked, his voice coming through loud and clear. She tapped a finger to her earpiece, cleared her throat. “Sorry for the delay there, weather conditions outside are less than ideal. Plus, we don’t want the Premesoir authorities to know we’re here. We don’t have any friends in the Oval House any more, do we?”
They didn’t. Their one foothold in Premesoir had been lost in that respect, with the arrest of Thomas Rogan months ago. If you wanted someone in your pocket ready to usher in a new regime, a vice-president was a good card to have. She’d looked at Joseph McCoy, the current president and decided he wouldn’t be sympathetic to her. He had too much allegiance to the way things were. The Senate had done much for him to get him into power, Premesoir traditionally held the title of ‘Most Powerful’ in the five kingdoms and the Senate preferred that it was submissive to them in as many matters possible. McCoy would have to be dealt with and Rogan would have been the one to replace him. Now though, that plan had been discarded for the immediate future.
“I can hear you, Doctor,” she said. “Where are we going here?” Two of the men were already placing sensors on the wall. They’d been Sinkins’ idea. Archaeologists used them to map out ruins, use their readings to formulate an approach to whatever they were searching for. She’d not been sure about Sinkins at first, but his approach had been refreshing. When one had dealt with the fanaticism of his predecessor for as long as she had, Sinkins had been a welcome change.
“Sensor readings are already transmitting, I’m comparing them up with the maps we already have to get a read on your position.”
“I want half of our number to go to the passenger cabins and search each and every one of them thoroughly, I want Domis to go to the captain’s cabin and check the safe, I want the other half to move to the cargo hold. It may be any of those places.”
“It might help if we knew what we were looking for,” one of the soldiers muttered. She glanced back at him.
“It might,” she said. “Anything that looks out of the ordinary. That’s your only brief. Use your judgement. You find anything, you report it to me or Domis immediately. You remember where it is, you secure it, you move along. I want to stay here for as little time as possible, but I want it done right.”
She rose to her full height, about level with Domis’ elbow. “A reward to the man that finds it.” She ran her eyes across the insignias on their uniforms, found the man with the lieutenant’s bars. Nodded at him. “Promotion awaits. I reward well those who do not fail me.”
The less said about those who did fail her, the better. She’d never tolerated it before. She wasn’t about to start now. She’d considered putting a rank to the offer. Whoever finds it gets made a captain. The thought had briefly flirted with her mind, before she’d come to her senses. Better to leave it open to interpretation. Better for those more qualified to judge where skills lay, rather than have someone promoted who was painfully unqualified for it.
They’d reached the point where the corridors of the Aerius intersected and they’d gone their separate ways. Half the men had gone towards the cargo hold, she’d watched them leave with resignation in her heart. She wanted to trust them to find what she was looking for, yet she couldn’t shake the ache inside that she’d have to make the pilgrimage herself down there to check.
She didn’t delegate well. Not with matters of this importance. Not with the pitiful intelligence that they had. Vague memories from a man that wasn’t a man. Her say-so. She was lucky they were following her at all. Credits only bought loyalty for so long. They probably thought she was a madwoman. They could think what they liked. She’d be vindicated in the end. Back when she’d been the CEO of Reims, she’d never had issues like this. She’d always felt so confident, that feeling had flooded through her veins like so many designer drugs, never threatening to overwhelm her but a feeling she’d never forget.
Like most highs, it had faded with time. That feeling was something that no longer excited her. The only way to go was for higher stakes. Different rules. Larger rewards. Scratch that, the greatest rewards of the lot.
The air was warmer in here, not that that would be hard given the freezing temperatures outside. She could breathe again, though every inhalation brought something stale to her nasal passages. Stale, musty and pungent, not a scent she could place. It was time, she guessed. Time and air, sealed in, locked down here for decades.
Domis broke away from them, she heard Sinkins giving him directions and he made for the captain’s cabin. She watched his huge profile stride away into the shadows. Jewel in her wrist or not, she felt exposed without him. He was very comforting, like a loyal gorilla that didn’t know it wore a leash. Her soldiers were trained, she had their loyalty for the time being, but they weren’t the same.
“Right, Mistress,” Sinkins said. “I’ve been looking over the passenger manifestos from the Aerius, at least the ones that we could find and trying to find possib
le matches for whomever might have brought onboard the thing that we were looking for. Given the lack of intelligence, other than the description of ‘some sort of artefact,’ it’s tricky. The Aerius flew out of Canterage on her maiden voyage, was going to head over Premesoir and onto Serran. Quite a long round-trip really, but looking back then, there weren’t many options. Not like there is now. Cross-kingdom travel…”
“Really kicked off in the last few decades, I know,” she said, frowning in the darkness. She didn’t need Sinkins giving her a history lesson. She’d owned a few airlines in her time, she knew how the boom had affected travel. “What do you have?”
“Well, it landed in Blasington, then set off towards Serran. Only one stop here, the capital. If the people were still onboard with the item, we can discount anyone who got on in Blasington and anyone who got off there. That still leaves well over four hundred suspects.”
She said nothing. They couldn’t search that many cabins. Not before someone realised they were up here. The Eye had flown low to await their return, someone would spot it sooner or later. This area of Premesoir was notorious well-patrolled by their air force. They conducted training exercises across the nearby flat snow lands to test their skills in less than ideal conditions.
“But, I have examined those four hundred further and cut some more names out. Anyone who booked the trip well in advance has been pushed towards the bottom. Some sort of artefact. That could cover anything. But given the rarity of said artefact, I’ve moved last minute arrivals to the top of the search list.”
“Why?” she asked. Something about it made sense, yet she couldn’t place why. Sinkins sounded confident enough with his logic, she was curious as to his reasoning.
“Mistress, I’ve been in the position. Before I came to work for you, I handled artefacts. Some of them were legal. Some of them were not. Given there was no record in previous days to the first flight of the Aerius, of any item classed as expensive or religiously significant being stolen, or bought for that matter, it is more prudent to presume that it may not have been a legal transaction. When you have something less than legal, it is quicker to move it on as fast as you can. Leaving the kingdom is a good start. I did notice something else as well when considering the past records.”
“Go on?”
“There was a big bloodbath a few miles away from the aeroport where the Aerius departed. A large group killed, without any hint of the attacker left behind. Some had been shot, some had been dismembered. The files are closed, I can’t access them, Unisco sealed them, until your Mister Subtractor opened them up to us. Local law enforcement suspected something had been removed from the scene. We don’t know what it was, but the agent was Brennan Frewster. Make of that what you will. So, the Aerius link hints at a speedy getaway. It’s only a theory but I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to support it.”
She said nothing. Ideally, she’d have had Frewster in her custody by now. Rocastle had been left in charge of the operation to retrieve him. So far, he’d been quiet on the subject. That didn’t fill her with confidence. Unlike most of the kingdoms in this matter, Frewster actually appeared to know something in relation to this matter. It had been a gamble to try and grab him but if he knew something, it was one worth taking.
His name had come up just one too many times. She’d met him before, quite a few times and the notion she could have asked him already was aggravating. The perils of hindsight.
“Besides, we don’t have much else to go on. Might as well examine the rooms of the most recent arrivals first. Work our way down the list. It’s as sound a strategy as any under the circumstances.”
Claudia scowled. She couldn’t argue with his reasoning. This whole thing was frustrating. She just wished that she could remember more about why they were here. The Aerius holds the Forever Cycle. She could remember that. She could remember why all that knowledge and power she’d accessed couldn’t come back with her. She could remember that the Forever Cycle helped with that. Not how though. Nor what it exactly was. Just that it was here.
She cursed silently. Part of her hoped the Divines heard her. It was all their fault. They’d left this tempting little boon here and now they were waving her own powerlessness in front of her. Sinkins had come up blank when she’d mentioned the Forever Cycle to him. Said he’d never heard of it, though she wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. His body language hadn’t entirely spoken of innocence, she’d seen something in his eyes.
For the time being, she needed him. She couldn’t afford to accuse him of duplicitousness, but that seed of suspicion had taken route. Claudia didn’t know if she’d ever be able to trust Dale Sinkins ever again.
“Okay,” she said. “Point the way and we’ll take it from here.”
“At once, Mistress. Your wish. My command.”
Chapter Ten. Wrath of Angels.
“Nature cannot be denied. It can be cheated but not forever. You can pull someone back from the brink of death, but it does not mean they’ll be the same. If death is ready for them, it will take them sooner or later. With this, it is merely a case of prolonging the inevitable, a moment of dying stretched out across days rather than seconds. Horrific, but a necessary invention. Sometimes, our people will die, yet that need not be their ultimate end. With this, they can have one last hurrah in your name, Mistress. It’s not even close to being ethical, no organisation in the kingdoms would sign off on it. I imagine that doesn’t trouble you though.”
Doctor Hota to Claudia Coppinger regarding the development of a new treatment.
Her entire body hurt, every iota of muscle and bone in searing agony. She remembered too much, her eyes couldn’t see but the memory of fire and death was there. The target had done this to her. He’d fired something at her, something she’d thought insignificant, but it had done so much damage. She didn’t know how she’d survived. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe this was death and she was in the hells awaiting her judgement.
She tried to move her lips, let out a scream. Every movement sent fresh waves of pain wracking her body. She wasn’t an enemy with pain but here it scared her, she’d never felt it so close and so strong. Death was close, she could smell it, just as she could smell her own cooked flesh and boiled blood. She should have already succumbed.
She hadn’t. She wasn’t dead yet. And like any good gambler, she still had one card left to play. Rocastle had insisted on a contingency for all of them, him and Doctor Hota had worked something out. She remembered the class all too well.
“Now, possum-babies,” Rocastle had said, his face swimming in the vision of her memory. He wasn’t so thin or as ugly in real life as she saw him now. Her memory had to be going. Breath broke out of her in shallow gasps, she coughed and tasted the blood in her mouth. That wasn’t good. Maybe one of her ribs had punctured a lung.
Short answer. Not a lot of time left. Right now, she wanted relief. She wanted to die, she wanted it all to be over. If she lay her head back and closed her eyes, it’d come. She knew that. All she had to do was give up. She could do that, couldn’t she? Just lay her weary head to rest, don’t cry no more.
No. She couldn’t. The tears had sprung to her eyes, the salt stung her ruined cheeks, the harsh pain snapped her into action. Her body was ruined. Broken. Nobody in their right mind would consider her a candidate for living a good long life right now. But there was a way.
“Chances are some of you are going to get hurt in the line of duty. You might find yourselves inches from death. If you give up, you’ve brought shame on yourselves and the Mistress. That’s why we’ve put this in one of your back teeth.” He’d held up a tiny capsule, the size of one little fingernail. She’d suspected, had woken with a pain in her mouth one morning and a fleeting memory of the previous night involving the sound of drills reverberating through her head. Not a pleasant sound, the memory had made her brain ache. She was glad most it was lost to her. She might never get it back and she could easily live with that.
“A last
resort solution for when you’re on your way out. Dying does not have to be the end. Granted, there are dire side-effects…” The grin he’d given them all as he’d said that had been horrific, like a shark with a pain in its rear end. “So yeah. Last resort. When the only other option is failing your mission, you break your tooth and you take it. Understand me?”
She did understand. He’d never gone into details about what the side effects were. Nobody had wanted to ask. Nobody had thought that they’d reach the point where death was so close. She knew she hadn’t. All of this had spiralled out of control for her. It had never meant to be like this, Rocastle had never really told her what was going to happen, only that they wanted those who were pissed off with the system. She had been pissed, annoyed enough to listen, angry enough after talking to him to take him up on it. He’d been in a bad way, hopped up on painkillers and his hand bandaged up but he’d spoken a lot of sense, told her words that she wanted to hear about smashing the system up and starting anew. By the time he’d finished, she was ready to sign up on the spot and to hells with the consequences.
People had gotten away with things for too long. Ritellia was a corrupt man, he’d do anything to line his own pockets with credits and he’d long stopped caring about the sport. She hadn’t been present when he’d died but she’d had mixed feelings. Not that she cared one way or another if he lived, but to hear that the Mistress had snuffed him out was intriguing. She wasn’t messing about with what she did. It was going to be her way or the void.
It was also too late to back out of it by that point. The indoctrination had started. The first moments she’d heard that soothing voice in her head, the Mistress speaking to her, she’d been hooked. She’d listened. She’d agreed. Looking back now on what she’d done compared to who she’d been, it felt like a different person. She’d had to have been changed somehow. Because if she hadn’t, then what did that make her?
