by Barry Kirwan
“This isn’t making much sense, Zack. You’re beginning to sound like Kalaran.”
Zack got to his feet. “Better move, Boss.”
Blake felt a chill down his neck. Stepping forward, he turned to see why. The fog was right behind him. “It’s expanding.”
Zack sighed. “Actually, the bubble’s shrinking. Come on. It’s exponential, I’m afraid, we’ll have more time in the centre.”
Blake followed Zack further into the middle of the beach. The beach had lost around thirty metres in diameter.
Zack talked while they strolled. “Emotional trauma can cross the boundary between conscious and unconscious.”
Blake looked over his shoulder. The fog was following. “If you say so.” A thought struck him. “Are we in Transpace?”
“Bingo! Well, kind of. Kilaney’s ship is travelling in Transpace with you locked down in stasis in the hold, and the Spiders can access you, ‘cause you have some of their DNA. Qorall can’t touch you here, but as soon as you exit Transpace, this bubble will close.”
“And you’ll be gone.”
“Along with your consciousness, Boss, which will dwell in that fog until you die, so back to the reason I’m here.” Zack surveyed all around them. “This’ll do.”
Blake reckoned they were dead centre.
Zack squatted again. “You’re going to kill a Spider.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of your friends. Your best friend. You’re going to kill him. You know, the one you and Glenda secretly called Robert, after your son.”
Blake stepped backwards. “Jesus Christ, Zack. I will not! What the hell are you saying?”
Zack remained unperturbed. “You’re going to claw Robert apart with your bare hands, and rip him to pieces.”
Blake felt his heart race, his skin grow clammy. “Zack. I would never… I’d rather die, you know that!”
Zack stood up, came closer to Blake. “You’ll sink your teeth into his flesh like he was a hamburger, then spit it out.”
“For God’s sake, Zack, stop this!” Blake tried to back away, but Zack grabbed his shoulders, pinning him there.
“But you will do it, Blake. Or something like it. Hell, we don’t really know. But that’s what being taken over by Qorall means. Like when I attacked you because of that implant. I’m sorry, Boss, really.”
The fog accelerated. With a rising hiss it swept towards them over the sand.
“What can I do?”
Zack shrugged. “It’s already done. Most – well all of Qorall’s minions – don’t know what they’re doing when they do it. Now you do, or you will. You’ll understand at the end.”
“Will I? How will I see in the fog?”
“Just don’t move from that spot. Try to hold on, Blake. And think of Robert.”
The fog enveloped Blake, a frigid embrace. It chilled his lungs. He couldn’t see his friend anywhere. “Zack?”
But Zack was gone, and the fog became denser. He couldn’t see anything, or even feel his body, and then he couldn’t think.
Petra tapped the black oval object on her antique wooden desk.
“General?”
Kilaney answered, and began his report. She didn’t interrupt, as this wasn’t instant Hohash communication; Kilaney was just outside the Esperian system, and while the ten minute lightspeed delay had been compressed, the lengthy pause and echo were both noticeable. His report didn’t improve her mood. She’d asked Blake to act, but she hadn’t anticipated this.
“How are his life signs? His EEG?”
Again, a short delay. “He’s strong as an ox right now. Thank God he’s in stasis, I don’t think restraints would hold him. His metabolism has sped up three hundred per cent, heart rate one-ninety even in the stasis tube. We’ve suspected for a while that the turning does this to those it infects. Makes them exceptional warriors, and they don’t sleep. It must shorten the host’s lifespan, though, there has to be a cost.” He paused, but Petra kept quiet.
“As for his EEG, that’s the strange part. All the normal waves – alpha through delta – are gone, replaced by a square wave, very strong. For a short time there was a sinusoidal wave, but it diminished, then flat-lined about half an hour ago. We have no idea what it all means.”
“Bring him here, General, a contingent of Ossyrians and an Ngank surgeon are setting up a lab.”
There was a longer pause, so she broke it. “General… Bill. Is there something else?”
“Yes, Madam President. It’s Hellera. Her ship is gone.”
Petra stood up. “The dark worms! Are they still –”
“… worms are gone, so… Sorry, you are speaking, please continue.”
Petra deliberately slowed her breathing. “No, General. Please continue, I need to know everything, including your suppositions.” She sat back down again.
“Her ship is gone, but so are the worms. According to the intel from the satellites we placed around the system perimeter, the worms left first, then Hellera’s ship followed them.”
Petra scratched at a knot in the desk wood grain. Why did the Kalarash never tell her what was going on? “So, we’re defenceless.”
“No, Madam President. The Shrell field will keep out invaders. No one knows how to get in except…”
Petra waited. Then waited some more.
“Sorry,” Kilaney said, “I was just checking the hourly data-stream I saw earlier, something snagged my memory.”
She heard him sigh.
“The Mannekhi, their twelve worlds were hit by a dozen Orbs in a coordinated attack five days ago. That’s not all. The Mannekhi worlds weren’t at the war front. Their planets shouldn’t have been attacked for another month. I saw the spike in Qorall’s front line but neither I nor the other commanders knew what to make of it.”
Petra didn’t need Kilaney to join the dots. The Mannekhi knew how to navigate through Shrell wires, since the Shrell had poisoned their space many times in the past.
She leant closer to the oval transmitter. “Bring Blake here, General, as soon as you can without slicing your ship in two on a Shrell filament.”
Kilaney acknowledged, then broke the connection.
Petra needed to think. It would take Kilaney a couple of hours to arrive. She knew where she had to go.
On Silent Hill, Petra stood over the graves of Gabriel and Virginia. She wanted to cast off the mantle of President, if only for a short while. She missed her friends. Rather, she missed Gabriel.
“Gabriel, you’d know what to do. They’re coming again.” She sat on the rough grass, drew her arms around her knees. “They’re never going to leave us in peace, are they?” She stared up at the cracked sky. At night the stars were no longer visible. Somewhere up there were her mother, Kat, and in a completely different direction, her father, Pierre, whom she’d only just begun to get to know.
“Petra, are you okay?”
She got up quickly. Brandt, the leader of the Youngbloods following Gabriel’s death. Her cheeks flushed at the interruption. “Are you following me? And it’s Madam President to you.” She knew she was over-reacting, displacing her anger.
Brandt approached until he also stood over the two graves, towering above her.
“I miss them, too, you know, especially Gabriel. I can never replace him.”
“You’re right about that.” She almost spat it out, then berated herself. “I’m sorry, Brandt. That was uncalled for.” She folded her arms. “Things are closing in on us again, and it sits heavy on my shoulders.”
“You’re not alone, you know. You only…” He stopped under her glare.
“But I want to be alone, Brandt. That was the point of coming here. Why did you follow me?”
Brandt shifted from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat. “Petra, all those years you… I knew how you felt about Gabriel. You hid it well, but I knew, Virginia too. You see, I knew because –”
“Stop! Don’t say it, especially not here.”
“Why
? There are no lies here, Petra. You can’t lie to dead people. Here we have to speak the truth.”
“Look, Brandt, I can’t deal with this right now. Maybe later.”
Brandt gazed up to the sky. “There probably won’t be a later, we both know that.”
Petra turned away from him. “I’m sorry, Brandt.”
She heard his feet turn to go, then he paused. “If I could swap places with him, Petra, I’d do it in a second. You’d be happy, and we’d all be better off.”
He left. She waited a long time before she turned around to see him descending back to Esperantia, then spoke to one of the graves.
“I know what you would say, Gabriel. But it wouldn’t work. Maybe if there was more time.” She took another look. Brandt was almost at the Dome. “Anyway, I should leave you two alone, you’ve both earned some peace.”
She began her trek down the escarpment. Despite the undesired encounter, or because of it – she didn’t know which – she felt lighter, and began planning defensive strategies. They included the Youngbloods, so she’d be dealing with Brandt again, but she could handle it, and so could he. She called Vasquez. “Commander, we need to meet. My office in fifteen, please.”
The doors to the atrium closed, sealing Ramires and Ash inside the Alician headquarters. Ash had his hands bound and was surrounded by six guards, so Ramires couldn’t count on any help from him. He walked calmly towards Louise, his left hand on the hilt of the nanosword inside his jacket pocket, his right hand concealing a skin-coloured wafer. Louise stood at the head of six armed Achillia, her personal guard. Ramires estimated that with the advantage of surprise he could take her down and maybe three of the others, though he and Ash would not survive. A fair trade.
Time slowed for Ramires as he neared his target; he and countless others wanted Louise dead on account of her crimes during and after the fall of Earth. Her succession of Sister Esma only served to underline that objective. His son Gabriel had killed Sister Esma, now he would be the one to execute Louise.
Diagonal shafts of sunlight from high windows bathed the Alician leader and her entourage in an orange glow. She looked younger than he’d expected, but then Alicians barely aged once re-sequenced by the Q’Roth. Her eyes, though, reminded him of some of his fellow trainees back in Tibet who had gotten a taste for casual killing. His Master, Cheveyo, called them ‘shark-eyed’, because they had lost perspective, and were highly dangerous. Ramires noticed the claw where her left arm should be; no matter, the nanosword would slice through it, he’d tested it on enough Q’Roth.
Louise’s eyes narrowed, as if she recognised him, though they’d never met. Two more steps and he’d be close enough. He froze; she’d drawn a pistol unbelievably fast – one moment it wasn’t there, the next it was – her arm steady, the weapon aimed at his face; quicker than a normal Alician, quicker than a Q’Roth.
“Ramires, isn’t it? I’ve heard so much about you.”
Guns ripped out of the guards’ holsters, and pointed at his head. The moment had passed. He let the nanosword slip back into his pocket and stood, feet splayed, ready to spring in any direction. Ramires folded his arms, one palm concealing the wafer. He recalled a Sentinel maxim: never converse with the devil.
Louise spoke again. “I watched the vid of you fighting two Q’Roth warriors back on Esperia. Impressive. The last Sentinel.” She put away her pistol. “Well, not quite the last.”
Ramires kept his poker-face, but wondered what she meant. All the other Sentinels were dead.
Her demeanour changed, a little more tension around the eyes and lips. “Where is Micah?” she said in a flat, controlled tone. “We have some unfinished business.”
He stayed silent.
“We could torture you, but I’ve studied the history of our so-called Silent War. Sentinels are notoriously resistant, almost as if you relish pain.”
There were twelve Alicians around him and Ash, all armed. Too many.
“Or we could torture this one,” she said, nodding towards Ash. “Looks like someone already started.”
Ramires wondered if Ash would hold up under torture. Perhaps he should kill him now with the sword. But Ash was four paces behind, Ramires wouldn’t get close enough in time.
“Or your wife, Sandy.”
Ramires outwardly showed no reaction. Inside, his heart slowed, and his muscles loosened. In nine hundred years of unseen war between Sentinels and Alicians, there was one maxim both sides shared: better to die than be captured, because the latter path never ended well. So be it. He was less sure he could kill Louise, but he could take out several of the guards. Better to die on his feet than chained to an interrogation rack.
Without moving his eyes, he pictured where each man stood, and their most likely pistol aim trajectories, given that the wafer would catch them off-guard. He envisioned the layers of pulse-fire. In the initial confusion, blinded by the flash as soon as the wafer ignited, they would fire towards his trunk or head; he would have to duck low. A second later he would need to be above three intersecting layers of pulse fire. He estimated that there was a sweet-spot where the guards’ lines of sight would be conflicted: they would hesitate, in order to avoid killing each other in the crossfire. It would require a high leap but he could do it. Next he calculated the place where he would be least easy to target, but from where he could still shoot Louise. After that it didn’t matter.
The assessment had taken two seconds. He’d trained blindfolded hundreds of times back on Earth, and had continued to practice with Gabriel and the other Youngbloods on Esperia. His right hand gently squeezed the wafer inside his fist so that it split open. Now it just needed a little air.
Louise studied him, then the corners of her mouth lifted a fraction. “Let’s see how good you are, Sentinel.” She took a step backwards then spoke to her personal guard. “Take him.”
Ramires took in a sliver of air, and then held his fists out in front as if to be cuffed, but as two of the Louise’s personal guards seized his wrists, he blinked hard and dropped the wafer. It burst into a curtain of blinding light that smarted his retinas even through closed eyelids. He locked the wrists of the two stunned guards, then drove them into each other. Ramires ducked amidst a sizzling eruption of pulse-fire that fried the two guards. Two down. He leapt up high and spun mid-air, flailing the nanosword around him, decapitating two more guards and slashing the arm off a third, releasing a pistol that he snatched before it reached the ground. He breathed in more air. Five down. He landed behind one of the collapsing bodies, and used it as a shield while he fired at the two guards on either side of Ash, striking them in the middle of the neck, sending them tumbling to the floor. Seven. A pulse strike speared through his pistol arm, rendering it useless. He took another sliver of air as he dropped the sword and grabbed the pistol with his left hand and fired at Louise, who had vanished. The pulse round found another of her guards; they moved in a zigzag pattern aimed to defend and distract. Four left. They shot Ramires’ corpse-shield again and again, blowing off its head and limbs, leaving Ramires with only the torso as a barrier, the tang of ozone and charcoaled flesh sharp in his nostrils.
Two more of Louise’s guards toppled backwards; Ash, hands still bound, had fired two weapons from a prone position. Two left.
Ramires’ legs exploded with pain, making him gasp in air. With a grunt, he flung the charred torso away from him and rolled to the right, firing two quick shots, dropping the last two guards.
Louise was nowhere to be seen. He reached for the nanosword, but it was gone. There was a ‘pfft’ sound, and Ash slumped forward, a feathered dart sticking out of his neck. Ramires fired towards the likely point of origin, but only hit shadows.
“Here,” Louise whispered, behind him.
Ramires made to turn, but felt ice on his neck, and found he couldn’t move. His chest muscles locked, and he rocked forward, his forehead striking the floor with a thunk, his eyesight growing blotchy.
She whispered two more words to him.
“Not yet.” With her boot, she flipped him over onto his back.
Ramires struggled to remain conscious; whatever Louise had used on him was powerful. He let his face muscles, closed eyelids and neck go slack. He heard soft footsteps, like those of a cat, approach Louise.
“I didn’t need you to fire the dart, Toran,” Louise said, “everything was under control.”
“This one is good, very good. I admit I could learn from him. I have the knowledge, the latent memories. Sparring with this one would activate them, translate them into real skills and reflexes. Your next set of guards could do with more training, though. They were complacent, unattuned to the shock of a sudden, violent attack. They have grown soft.”
Ramires listened to Toran’s voice. He didn’t recognise it.
Louise nudged Ramires with her boot. “That’s why he isn’t dead,” she said.
“I doubt he’ll help you, Louise, even if you use Sandy as leverage. He’ll just as likely kill her quickly. It’s what I’d do. It’s what we were trained to do if the situation ever arose with a partner or children. We call it ‘releasing angels’.”
Ramires’ mind sprinted. Louise had implied there was another Sentinel. And this man knew one of the most guarded secrets. Ramires thought about opening his eyes. But Toran started to walk away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Louise said.
“He’s still awake. Some of the training school memories from my original host are still intact. I heard rumours about this particular Sentinel. We never knew each other’s names, but during early training nicknames were common. His was ‘possum’.”
Ramires opened his eyes in time to see Louise crouch over him, and he felt the ice cold touch of something on his neck again. This time there was no resisting it. But as he slid towards unconsciousness, he quickly put the pieces together. Toran must have been cloned from a Sentinel, probably with Alician enhancements to make him even tougher. An abomination, yes, but that was irrelevant now. He could only exist for one reason: to infiltrate Esperia. Infiltrate and assassinate. Yet Toran was not ready; borrowed memories are not the same as honed skills. If Ramires could kill him, then the problem was solved. But if they fought and Toran survived, that could catalyse Toran into the strongest Sentinel ever.
