by Barry Kirwan
She folded her arms. “Then, he will hunt down the other five Kalarash, erasing their galaxies, too. Make no mistake, he will leave nothing of your precious Milky Way other than space dust, because higher Level species exist here in abundance, as in all galaxies the Kalarash have fostered. In the end Qorall will tolerate nothing above Level Six, because even if turned by him, they may one day rebel.”
She circled the throne. Her hand briefly caressed the top of the Hohash.
“He will take his children to new galaxies where sentient life has not yet begun, or is in the fallow stage after the collapse of space-faring civilisations, and he and his progeny will expand his empire across the universe. With us gone, he will have time.”
She sat again. “What we did may have been wrong, but we are Progenitors. We Kalarash breathe life into galaxies, cultivate civilisations and encourage species advancement to higher levels. Qorall will exterminate such species, and create followers who will be devoted to him and his children. He will build a homogenous universe, where he and his kind are so far beyond other species that they will be treated as Gods. They will be unassailable.” She gazed toward the horizon. “Perhaps this is why even universes have a limited time-span.”
He is what you made him.
Her eyes flared. “Careful!”
Why are you telling me all this?
She touched the throne and it vanished. “I have decided you are worth reconstruction. There is a task you must fulfil. I have embedded it in your subconscious. When you are in the right situation, it will override everything else and you will execute it. Although it may interfere with the plans of the humans, it is imperative that you carry out this mission, no matter who gets in your way. You will remember all we have discussed, except where it concerns this hidden task.
My name?
“It will be the first word you will hear upon awakening.” She vanished.
The two suns turned grey, and the sea became absolutely flat calm. The Hohash faced him. He studied his reflection: he knew his body, but still could not recall his name.
As the sky around him turned to night, he tried to hang on to the memory that he harboured a hidden task. But he grew sleepy, knowing that when he awoke it would be gone.
Micah recalled the adage ‘be careful what you wish for.’ The Nchkani were attacking Savange, perhaps from their ship in orbit, perhaps via ground troops, he didn’t yet know. The air above him in the drop shaft brimmed with sounds from outside: explosions, buildings collapsing, energy-beam fire, and Alician shouts, cries and screams. He and Kat reached the top and found themselves halfway up one of the seven hills surrounding Savange City. Micah scanned the area but there was no sign of the Rapier carrying Aramisk and the freed captives. For now he took that as a good sign.
“We’d best stay here, Micah, at least for now.”
It was hard not to agree. Citizens of Savange were scurrying about the city, a large number heading to the West. At first he couldn’t see why, then he noticed the black and white crab-like vehicle making its way down a main street. His resident zoomed in, so he could count the eight legs and see the turret at the top, spinning and unleashing fire in all directions. The Alicians tried to stop the crab with all manner of beam and projectile weapons, but it was shielded, and ploughed through manned Alician barricades like an armoured tank crushing sticks and ants. Occasionally, one of its legs lifted and fired at the base of one of Savange’s many towers, sending a white hot wave up its length, leaving a charred structure in its wake with liquefied glass dripping down like rain. Micah glimpsed cremated corpses through some of the gouged windows.
Five craft Micah didn’t recognise lifted off from the Western side of the city and headed to meet the Nchkani crab. They banked skilfully around the towers left standing then deluged the crab with high energy plasma beams. Undamaged, it let loose fireflies that tracked down the airborne craft, no matter their avoidance manoeuvres, and blasted them into glowing embers of ash as soon as they made contact. Micah noticed a single male spring up from a heap of corpses in the crab’s wake and run towards it, holding a ball in both hands. Others attacked from the front, aiming to distract it, and were mercilessly cut down. The male reached the trailing legs and leapt up to the turret, banging down the ball on its cover.
The whole city was drenched in blinding white light, making Kat cry out and reel away, an elbow across her eyes. Micah’s nannites instantly applied filters, protecting his retinas. A cylinder of light projected skywards. He reckoned it was some kind of channelled fusion device, as nearby buildings melted and crumbled, and people burst into flame. Six seconds later crackling thunder, accompanied by a blast of scorching heat, swept through the air for several seconds, before dissipating, leaving a ringing in Micah’s ears.
The crab was motionless but intact, a heat haze shimmering all around it. The surrounding ground had sunk into a crater, and a new wave of Alicians ran towards the pit, some with wide hoses. They doused the crab with a glistening liquid.
Kat groped for his arm. “Micah, I can’t see!”
He took her hand. “You’re flash-blinded, it will pass in a few minutes.” He recalled the aerial detonations over LA that left many flash-blind, unable to run from the shockwave that incinerated them. He recalled the last days of Earth, how quickly the Q’Roth overran the entire planet. Defensive nukes launched by desperate governments probably did more harm than good, but at least they tried.
“What’s happening?”
He told Kat, relating the Alicians’ actions. He presumed the liquid was some kind of crystalline polymer; they were trying to vitrify the crab in solid glass, probably liquid diamond. He almost hoped it would work, but he kept remembering how the Alicians contributed to Earth’s demise, disabling its defences as the Q’Roth vessels appeared, even sending people to Eden for the first Q’Roth feed.
Turning to the West part of the city again, he saw children – precious few of them due to the Plight rendering most Alicians sterile – shepherded into rapid ground transports. His gaze caught on one particular figure, and again his resident zoomed in. It was Louise, overseeing the evacuation. He was surprised, he thought she’d be leading the defence, or even running to save her own skin. He unslung the rifle, and brought her into his sights. It was a difficult shot, but he could make it. But others kept running past in front of her, and several times she picked up children to put them into the transport herself. He waited, finger on the trigger.
“What’s happening, Micah? Why have you gone quiet?”
“Louise,” he said. “But I don’t have a clean shot.”
Through the targetter he saw Louise suddenly look to the East, just as he heard a massive explosion that spat fragments high into the sky. “Shit,” he said, as his resident auto-tracked shrapnel headed his way. He dropped the rifle and pulled Kat towards him.
“Trust me,” he said.
She clung to him, eyes scrunched closed. “Like I have a choice!”
A tumbling clump of jagged metal was falling towards them, but it was difficult to judge its size and final impact trajectory. In the last two seconds his resident worked it out and told him to dive left. He picked up Kat and threw them both sideways as the metal meteorite slammed into the earth, showering them with soil, and bouncing them off the ground. He landed on top of Kat in order to protect her, and rolled off, spitting out dirt and wiping it from his eyes.
“Thanks Micah, I think.”
He sat up and looked to where the rifle should have been, but it was buried under a mass of twisted girders.
“I can see now,” Kat said. “Where is she?”
Micah scanned the area where Louise had been, but there was no sign of her. He saw two dust trails heading to the West, but he couldn’t see Louise.
“There!”
Micah followed Kat’s pointing arm and saw Louise sprinting with a half-dozen Alicians to the base of one of the large defence towers cut in half by the Nchkani warship beams in the first seconds of the assaul
t.
“What’s she up to?” Kat asked.
A good question. Micah tracked east and saw that, as he’d expected, the crab had survived the fusion bomb and escaped its glass casket, and was on the move again. Fully half the city had been reduced to smoking ruins. No one was putting up a defence anymore. The crab killed anyone in its path.
“I hope you’re not feeling sorry for them, Micah. It’s rough justice, I know, just remember what they did to Earth. Seven billion dead; don’t forget that for one second.”
Micah wondered what the opposite of a conscience was. He wanted to ask all Earth’s dead if they were enjoying watching this. He wasn’t. If this was justice, it tasted bitter. But he knew he shouldn’t be distracted by it, and he couldn’t help them anyway. The Nchkani were clearly going to exterminate the Alicians. Micah decided he’d seen enough.
“We have to get moving, try and rendezvous with the others.”
But Kat didn’t budge, instead gazing to the West. “Micah, what was in those two transports?”
“Chil–” The breath went out of him. Two plumes of smoke and fire billowed from the vehicles. The Nchkani ship in orbit must have targeted them. His resident zoomed in for a second, before he asked it to zoom back out. There could be no survivors.
“Bloody hell! Now even I’m sorry, Micah.”
He scanned the broken tower and found several figures half way up, staring out. Louise was one of them. She darted back inside.
He and Kat spent twenty minutes on the high ground, occasionally glancing down to the ongoing demolition of Savange, its surviving inhabitants pouring from its main gates and fanning out, presumably to offer too many targets to the orbital enemy. Yet they weren’t in panic, instead moving methodically, helping each other. Micah respected them for that.
When he turned to see the crab, he stopped dead. Kat followed his gaze. Louise was standing in its path, holding some kind of bulky rifle. His resident identified it, and he told Kat. “Anxorian; Level Sixteen.”
“I thought the Anxorians were extinct? Qorall must have given it to her.”
Louise hefted it onto her shoulder, then fired a jet of mustard-coloured liquid at the advancing Crab. It stopped dead in its tracks. Nothing happened for ten seconds. Then its armour began to melt: the turret collapsed first, then the legs dissolved into muddy puddles. Soon the entire vehicle was reduced to mush dripping off the single Nchkani occupant, who floundered amongst the steaming residue. Louise raised an arm then dropped it. Out of the ruins men and women emerged with weapons ranging from pulse rifles to spears and knives. They fell upon the creature and butchered it. A long, ululating cry rang out across the city, echoed by all who heard it, until it reached the exterior, and those fleeing the city stopped and turned. Micah asked his resident to count the survivors. Savange had had a population of eight thousand. His resident counted two hundred and eighty-four.
Micah gazed upwards, waiting for the Nchkani response, which could well be planetary obliteration.
“Well, it’s been nice knowing you, Micah,” Kat said.
He braved a smile, then they waited for the killing blow to fall upon Savange. But it didn’t come. Instead, a small, boxy craft descended, no noise whatsoever, until it hovered above the Nchkani carcass. Metal claws unfurled from its underside and scooped up the remains, forcing several Alicians to leap out of the way. Once collected, the ship rose into the clouds. Micah had the sense that everyone left alive was holding their breath, but the final strike still refused to come.
Aramisk contacted Micah via his wristcom. “Micah, there’s been a development.”
He almost laughed; a development. The city was decimated. “Where are you, Aramisk? Did you make it to Shiva?”
“Not yet.”
Her voice sounded tense, but then, to Micah, she always sounded that way.
“We’re hiding in a dormant volcano about a thousand klicks south of your position, but we’ve been watching everything via the remote cams Shiva sent out before the rescue. I’m in touch with Shiva, and she’s intercepted a message from the Nchkani. They sent it broad spectrum, but I doubt the Alicians can translate it.”
“What’s the message?”
“The Nchkani want the weapon, the one the woman just used to kill a Nchkani soldier.”
“It’s just one rifle.”
“You’re missing the point. This is about technology. The Nchkani were Level Fifteen, the Anxorians were the Nchkani’s patrons; quite good ones apparently. When the Anxorians were eradicated by the Tla Beth, there was almost nothing left of their culture, their science, or their weaponry, which rivalled the Tla Beth’s own. With the rifle, the Nchkani could reverse engineer a whole arsenal, updating their capability at a pivotal moment in the war.”
Micah didn’t like where this was headed. “Why don’t they just take it by force?”
“It has a self-destruct, a nasty one. The woman seems to know her way around it.”
“And if the woman – Louise – gives it up?”
“They’ll leave. They’ve already determined the Spider has been destroyed, and they’ve laid waste to the place and decimated the population. But they’ll have to destroy the planet, Qorall would be angry with them otherwise; in his mind the Alicians screwed up by allowing the Spider to be destroyed. A planet-killer is already implanted underneath Savange’s crust. However, they can set a delay on it.”
“Otherwise?”
“Shiva might escape. The rest of us…”
Kat kicked a small rock, sent it tumbling down the shaft. “A bloody rifle. Unbefuckinglievable.”
Micah reflected. The Alicians had paid a heavy price today. He looked upwards, trying to see any sign of the warship, but there was none.
“Aramisk, contact the Alicians. Tell them I’m coming down to sue for their surrender.”
Kat folded her arms. “You’re going to talk to that bitch again, aren’t you?”
“Stay here, Kat, no point…”
But Kat had already moved in front of him and started scrambling down the escarpment towards what was left of the city.
Micah and Kat walked through the rubble, the only sound their footsteps and the creaking of metal still under heat stress, and every now and again a crash as yet another tortured building collapsed. He coughed once or twice, acrid fumes mixed with dust lacing the air. Alicians lined their path, creating a corridor that closed behind them. As they approached, he couldn’t help notice that Louise looked like hell. But there was something else. In all the time he’d known her, she’d never cared for anyone else, except maybe Vince. Nothing fazed her emotionally. This time, however, she seemed devastated by what had happened, her manner less confident. But he’d learned not to trust anything about Louise.
She gave Micah a long hard stare. The rifle hung from her human hand. ”Give me one good reason to believe all this.”
Aramisk had relayed everything to Louise.
“How about two hundred and eighty reasons?”
“We’ll die out soon enough. The children are dead. We can’t have more.”
“Alicians live for centuries. That’s a long time to find a solution.”
“There’s nowhere for us to go. Besides, your fancy little ship will shoot us down as soon as the Nchkani are gone and we try to escape.” She took a step forward. “That’s what I’d do, Micah.”
“We won’t. I give you my…” He stopped himself.
“Exactly.” She hefted the rifle.
Another voice cut in. “You have my word, Louise.”
Micah turned around. It was Ash, being led by Sonja through the rubble. He stumbled, nearly fell over, but Sonja caught him, and he carried on walking.
“Ash,” Micah began, “let me –“
“No, Micah. Let me.” The Alicians moved aside as Sonja steered him in front of Louise, within reach of her claw.
“I’m listening,” Louise said.
“I will come with you,” Ash said. “Micah will not fire on your vessel with me
aboard.”
Kat reacted first. “Ash, excuse me, but have you lost your fucking mind? Sonja, talk some sense into him.”
Sonja turned to Kat. “Where he goes, I go.”
Ash continued. “We will head far from the front line, find a world, and a doctor who can perform the necessary genetic extraction. Sonja and I will give you some of our genetic material voluntarily.”
Louise lowered the rifle, and stared at Ash a long while. Then, without another word, she deactivated the rifle and held it out to one of her aides, who took it. “Take it up to the hill, and leave it there.”
Louise studied Ash and Sonja, then turned to another Alician, a female. “Call the southern post. Tell them to bring the ship once the Nchkani have left orbit. Take… escort these two to the boarding tower.” She touched the Alician with her claw. “Treat them carefully. They are our future.”
Kat muttered behind Micah. “This is a mistake.”
Louise heard her. “Possibly. But death leaves one with so few options.”
Micah noted that Louise was returning to form, becoming more dangerous again. But his prime concern was Ash. Micah pulled a hand out of his pocket and laid it on Ash’s shoulder as he passed, depositing a comms micro-patch on his jacket.
“Are you absolutely sure about this? Do you want us to come and retrieve you?”
“Yes, I am sure, and no, Micah. It is time this rift was healed. The Alicians have paid for their crimes. I would ask you to take Sonja back, but she won’t accept that, and the truth is, I need her.”
Sonja spoke up. “As Zack would say, damned right on both counts.”
Micah removed his hand. “Good luck, both of you. If you can send word –”
“No, it will be better to break contact. And I’m sorry Sandy didn’t make it, Micah. She stayed behind, made sure all the other captives were freed. We think she went back for Ramires.”
