Silent Order_Image Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  A prerecorded speech. March had not expected that. Where was Slovell? Had he been unable to tear himself away from the actresses in his private studio?

  “Guests of the RSCFMA,” intoned Slovell, his bearded face solemn and a bit pompous. “Distinguished visitors, both from the Falcon Republic and other interstellar powers. But most of all, you, the students, the next generation, those of you who will shape the thought of interstellar culture for decades to come. You will guide the hearts and souls of mankind.” His lips thinned. “Some fools think that what we do is frivolous and superfluous, that we play with images rather than deal with reality. But we know better. We know that our images shape reality. We know that we are the sculptors of the human soul.”

  March listened as Slovell launched into his speech. The Kingdom of Calaskar, Slovell claimed, had failed to appreciate his genius and his talent, and had persecuted him for his artistic vision and his desire to cast off the shackles of the past. (Somehow, he failed to mention the various actresses he had assaulted.) In the end, he had been forced to flee from his hidebound and reactionary homeworld to shelter with the Falcon Republic, which took a more enlightened view of such things. Here, Slovell claimed, he would have his revenge. Both his new videos and the generations of young filmmakers he trained would shape public perception, turning it against Calaskar and all that it stood for. Slovell’s eyes glowed with passion and anger as he spoke, and March suspected that whoever had edited the recording had done a good job of removing the spittle that must have flown from Slovell’s mouth. They would help create a new future, Slovell claimed, one where mankind would be free of all the traditions and laws of the past, and a new and more evolved humanity would spread across the cosmos.

  He stopped short of mentioning that the new and evolved humanity would be part of the Final Consciousness, but Slovell had enough self-control not to blurt out his allegiance to the Machinists in his speech.

  “What a load of shit,” muttered Winter.

  “You’ve been listening, Eighty?” murmured March.

  “Yeah. Jesus, that guy can go on and on.”

  “Sounds like he’s wrapping up,” said March. “You can hear him?”

  “Yeah, sucks to be us.”

  “When he finishes, and the crowd starts applauding, send the signal,” said March. He looked at Winter, and she nodded, taking a few steps away from him. March eased towards the stairwell door. He shot a quick glance around the room, but no one seemed to have taken notice of his position, and all eyes were on the ranting hologram of Roger Slovell.

  “Let us stride boldly forward into a new and better future!” thundered Slovell. “Together, we shall train mankind to throw off the false and superstitious shackles of dead laws and religions. Through the images of our art, we shall raise humanity to a new and better consciousness. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the RSCFMA student festival!”

  The crowds started applauding as the hologram winked out.

  “Now,” said March.

  “Sending the signal,” said Eighty.

  Nothing happened. At least, nothing happened at first. March did see several bright flashes near the air ducts scattered around the room where he had hidden the smoke bombs. A second after that, harsh white smoke started to billow from the vents.

  A second after that, the smell hit March’s nose.

  They had mixed a variety of foul-smelling but harmless chemicals into the smoke bombs, and the effect was more potent than March would have expected. A stench like rotting flesh mixed with sulfur flooded through the lobby, and a ripple of alarm went through the guests. Several of them doubled over and threw up, adding the sharp reek of vomit to the mix.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” roared one of the policemen, holding up a loudspeaker to his mouth. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please exit the lobby in an orderly fashion. Use the nearest exit or the front doors. Please move in an orderly fashion…”

  March looked at Winter and nodded. She nodded back, though she looked a little queasy, and began following the general exodus towards the front doors.

  While she did that, March stepped back, opened the stairwell door, and slipped through it.

  No one noticed.

  Chapter 7: Setup

  March moved down the concrete stairs in silence, his ears straining to detect any sound. As he came to the basement level, the noise from the lobby faded, replaced by the whine of the Center’s HVAC equipment. Nothing seemed to have changed down here since his last visit, and he hurried through the utility corridor, came to the door that led to Slovell’s private studio, and eased it open.

  The huge studio beyond looked the same. The same sets still filled the space, and the same long table ran the width of the room, loaded with computer equipment, cameras, and pharmaceuticals. The odor of sweat and body fluids hung in the air, faint and sour.

  One thing had changed, and that was the vault door.

  March and Eighty had planted their charges well. The vault door had slid halfway open, a haze of smoke hanging in the air around it. They had expected that the door would fall through the floor and into the utility tunnel, but instead, it had gotten stuck halfway through at an angle. It was probably just as well. It must have generated less noise that way.

  “Cassandra?” he murmured, scanning the room for any movement.

  “The quantum entanglement effect’s right in front of you, Jack,” said Cassandra. “It hasn’t moved. It ought to be forty or fifty meters behind the vault door.”

  “Acknowledged,” said March. “Going in now.”

  He hurried in silence down the metal stairs, walked past the table of drugs and equipment, and looked past the damaged vault door. Beyond was a narrow utility corridor, lit only by a few lights secured in wire cages on the ceiling. At the end of the utility corridor, maybe ten meters away, March saw an open, gloomy space.

  His fingers grasped the vault door, and with a deep breath, March squeezed through the narrow gap the explosion had made. He was vulnerable for a moment, caught between the door and the warped frame, but pushed through and into the corridor.

  And as he did, a burst of static went through his ear.

  March stopped and tapped the microphone unit hidden in his collar. Again, static flooded through his ear. It seemed that Slovell had a radio jammer behind the vault door. March hesitated for a second, then squeezed back through the vault door and into the studio.

  “Jack?” Cassandra’s voice crackled in his ear and became clearer. “Jack, are you there?”

  “Yeah,” said March. “There’s radio jamming behind the vault door. I’m going in.”

  “Good luck,” said Eighty.

  March nodded to himself, pushed past the ruined door again, and moved down the corridor in silence. Again, static cracked in his ears and then went quiet. The air in the corridor was dry and cold, and a thick dusty smell came to March’s nostrils.

  He had smelled that odor before.

  So he was not surprised when he stepped through the door and found himself in a room of corpses.

  The room looked like it had been designed to house HVAC equipment. March saw the hookups for pipes and electrical cabling on the walls.

  His focus was on the desiccated corpses.

  There were dozens of them, and they looked identical to the ones that March had seen in Outer Vanguard Station, withered and dry and crumbling. Like the dead on Outer Vanguard Station, their garments were intact, a stark contrast with the crumbling flesh. All the corpses wore either short dresses or women’s undergarments, and March realized the dead were all women.

  Young women, probably. Likely actresses and students who had come for Slovell’s “auditions.” Slovell had learned his lesson from Calaskar, it seemed, and now made sure that none of his victims could testify against him. March ought to have checked into local disappearances, but the idea hadn’t occurred to him. Slovell’s previous patterns of behavior hadn’t included murdering his victims, but perhaps he had decided to both rid himself of potenti
al future enemies and test the Machinists’ radiation weapon at the same time. Still, March could both make use of the dead and avenge them at the same time. Once he had secured the relic of the Great Elder Ones that powered the radiation weapon, he could send an anonymous report to the police or even Falcon Intelligence.

  No matter how well-connected Slovell was, there was no way he could get out of having dozens of murder victims hidden in his basement.

  March eased forward through the silent room of corpses, his left hand drawn back into a fist and ready to strike. The fingers of his right hand itched for the lack of a weapon. March hadn’t seen the Iron Hand he had spotted earlier at the reception in the lobby, which meant that the man was almost certainly down here. It was also likely that Slovell had more than one Iron Hand assigned to guard (and possibly babysit) him since the Iron Hands never operated alone.

  There was another door on the far side of the room of the dead, and March opened it in silence. Beyond was another room of about the same size, but cardboard packing cartons lined the walls instead of corpses. Several of the cartons had been opened, and March looked into the boxes. Inside, he saw dozens of thick hardbound books, books that looked somewhat familiar. Frowning, he reached into the box and drew one out.

  It was the official catechism of the Royal Calaskaran Church.

  March had seen the book countless times on the various Calaskaran worlds and space stations that he had visited. Calaskarans had a mania for printed books that extended to their religious literature. He had tried reading the catechism a few times but had given up somewhere between the one-third and the halfway mark, since it was a remarkably dense book. He opened the cover and turned to the copyright page and saw that it had indeed been published by the official press of the Royal Calaskaran Church. To judge from the number of boxes in the room, Slovell had thousands of copies of the book. It seemed that he had indeed followed orders and obtained the copies.

  That didn’t make any sense.

  Another opened box caught his eye, and March put the book away. This box held hundreds of printed pamphlets, and March picked one up. The seal of the Royal Calaskaran Church was at the top, and below it marched lines of crudely printed text. March flipped through it. The pamphlet claimed that the disaster that had befallen the Falcon Republic and the city of Northgate was God’s judgment on the Raetians for their wicked ways and indulgence in the sins of the flesh.

  Disaster? What disaster?

  A cold chill started to settle around March.

  Perhaps Slovell and the Machinists were getting ready to manufacture a disaster.

  March hadn’t thought that Slovell would try anything at his own film festival, but March had been wrong before. Perhaps Slovell would use the radiation weapon against his own guests, and then leave Calaskaran religious literature scattered around the building. The inference would be obvious – and false flag terrorist operations were an ancient tactic. The incident would give the Falcon Republic all the justification it needed to move against the Kingdom of Calaskar.

  Which, no doubt, was what the Machinists wanted.

  March grimaced and hesitated for a half-second. He ought to report this back to Winter so she could prepare for the threat. Yet his microphone was still being jammed, and he would have to go back to the studio to make a transmission. This was likely the best chance he would ever get to capture the relic of the Great Elder Ones that powered the radiation weapon, and without that relic, none of Slovell’s plans could continue.

  Either way presented a risk.

  March decided to press on.

  He crossed the room to another door and opened it a few inches. Beyond was a wide concrete balcony overlooking a large room. March looked around but saw no one on the wide balcony. He dropped to his stomach and crawled to the railing, dust gritting beneath him. Part of his mind noted that he was going to ruin the suit that Eighty had found for him.

  The rest of his mind focused on the sight before him.

  The room below looked like a laboratory or a workshop. Four long metal tables held a variety of electronic equipment, tools, and what looked like scientific instruments. There was a raised dais against one wall, almost like a small stage. March looked around the room, wondering where the relic would be. Locked in one of the storage cabinets, maybe? Or…

  He saw it.

  Surprise and alarm froze his mind for an instant.

  March had seen a relic like this before.

  There was a metal cart before the dais, and atop the cart rested an intricate machine. It was an elaborate metal framework about the size of a small refrigerator, the interior filled with various components that looked like parts from a commercial hyperdrive – a dark energy manifold, surge suppressor, and other components. A radio dish the size of a serving platter was pointed at the dais, almost like the emitter of a weapon.

  In the center of the machine rested a crystal.

  It looked like a multifaceted ruby, except it was the size of March’s fist. And unlike a ruby, it gave off a steady red light. The crystal lay in an elaborate wiring cradle in the center of the machine. March had seen a gemstone like that exactly once before. Adelaide had found one during her expedition to Xenostas, and she and her team had called it the Firestone for lack of a better term. The Firestone had been a relic of the Great Elder Ones, and while March didn’t know what it had been designed to do, it acted as an energy amplifier. If exposed to visible light for a long enough time, the Firestone would generate a small explosion.

  If exposed to a more powerful source of energy, such as plasma bolts, the Firestone would create a much more powerful explosion.

  March wondered if the Machinists had somehow stolen the Firestone that Adelaide had found. As he looked closer, he realized this crystal was a different shape than the one that Adelaide had brought back from Xenostas. This one was longer and less round, more of an oval shape. The Machinists must have located another one somewhere.

  And it seemed they had also unlocked the purpose of the device, or at least discovered more of its functions. That Firestone had to be the source of the triple-theta dark energy radiation that had killed those men on Outer Vanguard Station. The technology of the Great Elder Ones had been advanced beyond anything modern human or alien science could replicate, and no doubt the Firestone could generate triple-theta radiation inside a planetary gravity well with ease.

  The machine housing it was likely the weapon that the Firestone powered. Some of the mechanisms within the machine must keep the Firestone from generating constant explosions. Probably the elaborate wiring cradle itself. March had seen a similar cradle in other Machinist devices built to use the relics of the Great Elder Ones.

  Well, it was all moot now. March would take the Firestone and get the hell out of here and off the planet before Slovell or anyone else noted its absence. He needed to find a way to cover the Firestone so no visible light touched it, but his coat would serve that purpose well enough.

  He started to straighten up, then he heard a door open below him and the click of multiple footsteps against the floor.

  March went motionless, peering through the steel railing of the concrete balcony.

  He heard the woman’s voice first, a shrill whine that had been slurred with alcohol or perhaps stronger drugs.

  “Roger, baby,” said the woman. “Don’t you want to party? I’m ready to party.”

  “I am certain that you are,” said Slovell in his smooth voice. “But you need to audition for our guests first, and then you can party to your heart’s desire, my dear.”

  “All right,” said the woman, and she giggled unsteadily.

  The woman came into sight from beneath the balcony first. She could have been no more than twenty, and she was stunningly beautiful, with the sort of appearance that came from both fortunate genetics and a skillful cosmetic surgeon. She was wearing a tight red dress that left her arms, most of her legs, and a large portion of her chest bare, and she tottered forward on stiletto heels, threate
ning to pop out of the front of her dress with every step.

  Next to her came Slovell, wearing an expensive business suit that mostly managed to conceal his paunch, his hand on the woman’s arm and a cold gleam in his eye. Then came the Iron Hand that March had seen earlier, and three more tough-looking men who had the look of Iron Hands. With them came a burly man in a gray suit. He looked older, at the late edge of middle age, and he had iron-gray hair and a close-cropped goatee of the same color. His face was lined and weathered, the face of a vigorous man who had spent a great deal of time outdoors, and a patch of gray metal concealed his left eye.

  March recognized him at once with a surge of alarm.

  He didn’t know his real name. He doubted anyone did. The man was known as Mr. Odin, and he was a Cognarch of the Machinists, one of the controllers of the Final Consciousness. Odin was the head of the Machinists’ covert arm, the supreme commander of their army of spies and saboteurs and terrorists, and he had the blood of billions upon his gloved hands.

  If he was here, the Machinists were taking this operation seriously indeed.

  “Roger,” said the woman, her voice a whine.

  Slovell’s lip curled with annoyance.

  “Come along, my dear,” said Odin, his charm smooth and wolfish. “One more audition. Then we’ll see if you’re going to be a good fit for our little project. Yes, right over there. Right in front of our camera.”

  The woman, probably an actress, smiled at Odin and wobbled over to the dais, striking a pose as she did.

  And with grim disgust, March realized what was going to happen. He racked his brains, trying to think of a way to stop it. If only he had been able to bring a weapon into the Slovell Center! If he had been armed, he could have killed Odin and all four of the Iron Hands before they reacted. If he vaulted the railing…no, that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t take four Iron Hands in hand-to-hand combat, and almost certainly they were armed. For that matter, the drop from the balcony was high enough that he might break an ankle with the landing.