“What is he holding?”
She walked over and fortunately this time the screen stayed static free. “That is a magrupter.”
“What is that?”
“A piece of technology that can make people pass out and cause electronics to malfunction,” she told me. “If we need to exit the facility quickly, leave him to me.”
“How new is that thing?”
“They only just tested one on me last mes.” Then she casually added, “I used one to help me escape.”
“Does it affect you?”
She turned away from the viz screen to look at me. “No. It does not affect me at all.”
We heard Kull’s voice next, “I am here, let me in.” I stared at Kore, and she nodded her head curtly once. I removed the lock from the door that was he standing in front of. Then Kull opened the door from the outside since neither of us was near the hatch to manually finish opening it for him.
He walked into the ship with a plazgun held in front of him. Without taking my attention from the internal viz system, which was tracking every move Kull made, I said, “Leave your gun at the hatch.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I already know that our world has been nudged,” I told him. “Our time here is running out. We could take this ship and fly away, but how far would that get us. You have resources. You want Kore. Why would we want to remove the only ally we currently have?”
“How do you know that I won’t turn her over in exchange for my safe passage off the planet?”
“Because you know the Council is in league with the Ouder. You know that only she matters to them. Once they have her, we are all collateral damage.”
“But I am her handler. I can share the details about how she was made.”
I guessed this next part, but said it with gusto, "They already know how, they just need to know why it worked with her. Can you tell them that?"
He paused and then set his gun down.
“You really aren’t in league with the Ouder are you?”
He did not answer as he wound his way through the corridors, making his way to the pilot’s pit where we were sitting. I could tell Kore was restless, as her pinky finger twitched, betraying her inner turmoil at being reunited with her old keeper, mentor, or whatever he was. Finally, I could read a tell on her. I reached out a hand and took hers in it. She looked at me and smiled. I was breathless by her response. Was she mimicking people’s emotions, or did she really feel comforted by me? Then we heard his footsteps approach, and she pulled her hand away from mine. The moment was over, spoiled by Kull.
“There you are,” Kull said as he took in Kore.
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
“Plan for what?”
“Escaping the Ouder’s influence and grasp.”
"I don't think you understand," he said as if I were a young child. "Are you under Kore's influence?"
“What do you mean?”
“She is Ouder.”
Chapter 20
“I am not an Ouder.”
“No, not exactly, but you know better than I do what you are capable of… or not,” he told her.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Why not ask her yourself? She knows what I mean.”
Her skin did not flush in anger. Her lips did not tremble from an onslaught of emotion. I studied her, and she remained as impassive as ever. Finally, she said, "I am human."
“You are in a human body, that is true, but your DNA is not exactly human. What is inside you is something else.”
Her mouth tightened, but she did not say a word.
“What proof do you have of your allegations?” I asked.
He chuckled and asked her, "Do you hate me?" She looked down and shook her head briefly, indicating no. "Why do you think you do not? I certainly have earned your loathing over the annos, just as I had grown to hate the success of the mutation between the aliens and us. I did not want you to survive, but you did. We all did. Now they are ready to harvest you and make vessels for their species, using your genes and whatever humans they can salvage from this planet."
“How successful was the process? How many more of her are there?”
"There aren't anymore. We killed them all."
“Why aren’t you killing her now?” I asked.
“She is bait for them.”
“But if they know she is here, why did they bump the planet?”
“They believe she will find a way off before the cataclysm, and despite you and me, I believe she will. And if she does not, then they won’t be interested in her anymore and we will all die on this hot chunk of rock.”
“Are you still working for them?”
He sighed and said, “The debt has been nullified.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
"Tell me, Jett is it?" he asked while avoiding my question. I eventually nodded since sometimes questions can give you just as much information as answers. "Jett, how do you think the Overseers found this planet?"
"They must have stumbled upon it, just like the ARC did," I guessed, hesitantly remembering the stories told to us as children. A story I never doubted.
“No, we were led here. The Ouder found it for our species. Haven’t you ever wondered why everyone did not stop and settle here?”
“There was not enough room for everyone.”
"There certainly was enough. The land that was not habitable could have been terraformed, or alternate cities could have been made below the planet's surface or even placed in the skies above. It was a gamble our forefathers took, and while it appears that it paid off for the Ouder, it apparently did not pay off for us. They knew better than to chance our species’ survival to aliens.
“Turns out they were correct. The Ouder are destroying this planet and most likely the red star with it. Where does that leave us? If we don’t hand her over, then everyone on Icharus is doomed, but at least the ARC will sail onwards to new systems to explore and possibly inhabit.”
“But we can leave on this ship.”
“Ah, you were right about that Jett, but where will you go? The ARC won’t take you. This ship was not made for deep space travel. How long will your fuel and supplies last?”
“Do you have a deep space ship?” I asked.
“Of course, as a Councilman, I have a reserved spot on a deep space ship that will take me to the Overseer’s ARC.”
“So why are you here? Are you going to turn her over?”
He paused and stared at us, before finally saying, “No, I’m not.”
“Why?”
"Because I have had enough. Enough of the manipulations. The inherited lies that I have had to perpetuate. I'm done being used and using others. We are going to fight back."
“Using her as a weapon?” I asked.
“Not a weapon, but as bait.”
“I’ve seen what Kore can do, and if the Ouder are a less diluted version of her, then how do we stand a chance of defeating them?”
“Every living thing has weaknesses.”
“That sounds cryptic,” I said sarcastically.
“No, he is right,” Kore piped in.
“How?” I asked.
“I was able to escape Kull by exploiting his weaknesses. Regarding the Ouder, I would need more contact with them to observe their flaws."
“I would not recommend it,” Kull said.
“Why?”
"Humans experimented on Kore using human known tortures, but the Ouder are more advanced than us, so they would use the methods known to work on other Ouders. It would be infinitely worse for her."
"Humans as in you?" I balked.
Kull glowered at me but did not confirm my accusation. Maybe he did not torture her, but he ordered others to do it.
“How are they different from us then?” I finally asked.
Before he could respond, the emergency siren sounded. We turned and checked the viz panels and saw that the ship Kull had arrived in was gone.<
br />
“Where did they go?”
“They did not go anywhere,” Kore informed us.
“What do you mean?”
“It has been vaporized.”
“Did you see it?” I asked.
“Yes, while you two were babbling with each other.”
“Our time is up. We’ll have to discuss how we can defeat them once we are in my ship. Can you fly this piece of junk?” Kull asked Kore.
“Yes, give me three tigs.”
“Jett can co-pilot for you.”
“Where are we going exactly?” I asked.
“Back to the city. My vessel is in the Council building. We’ll be able to survive deep space travel for a couple of meses in it. Don’t be alarmed by the changes you observe when we approach the city.”
I swiveled in my seat to initiate the process of waking up the engines and asked, “What do you mean by changes?”
Kore, done reviewing the operation specs on the onboard oculus in under one tig, sat down next to me and swiftly began activating the primary codes we needed to become airborne. While she enabled the opening of the hangar, he said, "Icharus has begun rotating on its death descent for about a dag now, which is wreaking havoc on the planet. You'll see."
"Are we going to have trouble getting to where your vessel is?" I asked as Kore activated the propulsion to upward thrust.
"Yes and no." That did not sound promising. "But we should make it to Kinnopolis if we are able to escape the Ouder."
I looked out to where his ship used to be. Could there be an Ouder ship there now, invisible to the eye? I pushed the button to switch the view to inside the hanger we were vacating. Nothing gave their presence away in either locations.
“If they know she is here, why aren’t they coming for her?”
“It’s the electromagnetic layer in the hull. They can’t penetrate it,” Kull calmly informed us.
“But they know she is in the ship now.”
“Yes, I believe they do.”
Kore and I exchanged meaningful glances. “How will they know she is on the ship?”
“I believe they will know her by sensing her.”
“So they won’t accidentally kill her?”
“Right.”
I flipped around in my seat and told Kore, “I highly recommend belting yourself in your chair in case this gets messy out there.”
Kore said, "I don't injure easily." That only made me moderately uncomfortable, because it most likely meant the Ouders were nigh impossible to hurt as well.
The light was exceptionally bright as our ship rose up from Malik's facility, but we were not alone. The ship he arrived in was fighting the Ouder to the south of us. At least that is what I assumed it was because I could not see what they were firing at. As I looked more closely at the viz panel, there may have been a disturbance in the air that appeared more like a heat mirage.
Abruptly, their ship dipped and appeared to fold in half, upon itself. I slipped into an acceleration pattern reserved for mid-stratosphere travel and then we were gone, away from the destruction and death of the desert. I dimmed the windows to forty percent, a much higher light shielding than I usually would have set.
“We have tilted,” Kore said serenely.
“Yes, the light is brighter here than it used to be,” I added.
Kull did not comment but did remove the harness from himself. He walked over to a window and stared out over the barren plain. I returned to monitoring the fuel, the unusual readings generating from the magnetic poles, and the erratic temperature readings, inside and out. We should be off this planet before the dag was over and it could not come soon enough.
Finally, Kull said, “I will miss this world, walking on real earth, with real magnetic poles, and growing plants in soil with natural light. I will even miss this planet’s natural fauna as well.”
“If there is one, there are bound to be more,” Kore casually added.
“Coming from you that is rich.”
She ignored him and rechecked the engine output levels.
“All this mess is because of you. Sometimes I wish that you had died like the others.”
“It was not from lack of trying,” she mumbled under her breath, which made me almost lose it on Kull right then, but that would certainly hurt our chances of leaving with him. I held my tongue and fists as I reigned in my anger with tepid results.
“Do not bother yourself with him,” Kore told me. “We have more to worry about.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When we leave the ship, we will be visible.” She turned to Kull and asked, “It seems odd that the only ship available to you is located where the Council convenes. Why not keep ships available in the other zones?”
“If you haven’t realized, this planet only has enough resources to barely keep a reproducing population alive. Did you know that Jett’s job was to kill off the less productive members of society?” Kull told her.
“Self-preservation makes for a strong ally,” she off-handedly said.
“He could have chosen a different profession.”
I could have argued with him, but it was true, I could have. Even though I was younger and naïve about what my job would entail, I could have always put in a request to change professions. Who knows, they might have even granted it. But I wanted the dira and the easy lifestyle. Looking back on it, I realized that it was not such an easy lifestyle at all. All I could say was, "I've only hunted, not killed, for the past ten annos."
“While you watched your partner kill the ones you found for him, rather mercilessly I might add.”
“Who ordered these kills?” Kore asked, not even bothering to look up from the control panels. She now appeared to be examining the climate levels within the ship.
“It wasn’t me,” Kull defensively replied.
“No, you were too busy carrying out the Ouder’s demands.”
“You don’t even know the half of it,” he growled.
Before I could ask him anything about that, the ship slowed down and the view outside became in some ways less of a blur. We were just outside of the Senja zone, and the sun illuminated the city when it should have been draped in twilight. I estimated the approximate distance from the planet to Aka using the OS and was surprised when it said that we were already one-tenth of the distance closer to the star than we had been a dag ago. The temperature had risen about twenty clicks hotter, but that was not what I was worried about. The radiation was still patchy, but where it was high, it was fast becoming high enough to be lethal. How much more time did we have on this planet?
“We need to put on the radsuits before we exit the Hejira,” I said as I moved to the storage compartment that held them.
“We won’t need them. We’ll be landing in a protected pit.”
Very few buildings had pit entrances, but knowing that the Council had one for their personal ships did not surprise me. "I still want us to wear one. We don't know what Aka is capable of this close to Icharus."
“Have it your way, but I’m not wearing one.”
I got up and retrieved the suits. When I returned, I scanned our environment through a window and was disturbed to see Kinnopolis had changed so dramatically in just one dag. The entire city was flooded, and the source was obvious as we watched waves of melted ice flow from Torva. Buildings I had frequented were gone, swept clean of their foundations. Bodies floated in the water, bloated. Floating along rivers were metal beams, wood fragments, and trash that shadowed where the streets used to be. Electricity sparked from transformers and what was left of the buildings' windows were dark, as snuffed out as the people who used to live here.
“The Council building is approaching, due north,” Kore informed us.
“Where are all the ships?” I asked as I pulled the form-fitting suit over my clothing.
Kore paused and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
"Shouldn't people be trying to escape this place?" I asked.
�
�Everyone who could have, left oras ago. Excluding a few stragglers, who were too poor or weak to find a way out on their own, we are probably the only living things left in the city.”
“How can you be certain that your ship will still be there?” I asked.
“We each had our own vessel, and besides, I am the only one with the code protocols to wake it up,” Kull told us. “Look, there’s the landing pad up ahead.”
The Council building was still in decent condition, in comparison to the rest of the city. It was a towering building, built of steel, f-glass, and Mayenite. However, just like in the city, no discernable lights were emanating from this building either.
“Put this on, and I’ll land her.” I handed her the suit.
"I do not need this." I leveled a stare her way, but she ignored me all the same, focusing on the landing procedures instead. I looked over at Kull, and he shrugged his shoulders. I studied her, considering her hybrid capabilities – her lack of emotion, her superhuman speed and learning rate. She certainly appeared human, a pretty one at that, but what proportion of human genetic material made up Kore Β5?
Chapter 21
We cruised down over the building, which was only five stories above ground with an unknown number of stories underground. It was not just the largest building on Icharus, but it was the tallest building too. It had a broadcast tower also on top of it that easily doubled its height. The blinking light at the top was visible throughout the entire city, but now it was dark.
After we landed on the pad, I asked, “Should she stay here until we confirm the location of the other ship?”
“Why?”
“To make sure it’s still there and flyable? I don’t want her leaving the protection of this ship until it’s absolutely necessary.” Suddenly, the entire building began shaking.
“Quakes. The hanger is reinforced, she needs to go with us. Once inside, all the electrical wires and metal beams should also confuse the Ouder should they be looking for her. Come on, it is only a few tigs away if we run.”
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