by Barry Kirwan
“You mean enslavement, don’t you?”
Pierre didn’t know how to answer. The orb had shown him, made him believe in the necessity of the galactic order. Kat had seen it on the Hohash, like a movie, whereas he had felt it to the core of his DNA. The Grid laws had functioned well for a million years. Who was humanity to try and go against them? But he decided to be diplomatic. “We’ll see. We’re not there yet, anyway. Oh, and the bitch, as you call her – her name is Chahat-Me. And she understands English now, though her vocal system can’t make our sounds like ours.”
Kat turned to the Ossyrian. “Charmed, I’m sure. Anyway, ‘bitch’ is a term of endearment, really. Just between us girls, that is.”
Pierre smiled. It felt odd to his facial muscles. It had been a while. “I’m really glad you’re here Kat.”
Her eyes sparkled. “So stick around, okay?”
* * *
Kat watched from the viewport of their small pyramid that had detached from the mother ship. The huge silver ball shed pyramids like crystal snowflakes falling from orbit towards the yellow-green planet below. Despite herself, she was impressed by these Ossyrians, and relieved that compassion wasn’t a uniquely human trait. She felt Pierre’s hand touch hers, tentative, unsure. She took it, wrapped her fingers around his, and squeezed. She would lose him, sooner or later. Sooner, she decided. She let go.
She stepped away from the portal and glanced at Chahat-Me who was maybe looking at them both, maybe not – it was impossible to tell with her quicksilver eyes. She sat cross-legged in front of the Hohash. It displayed data on the progress of the medical mission as she’d requested. She’d studied epidemiology at University before crossing over into comms, and was interested to see how much more advanced this race was at dealing with pandemics.
The Hohash entertained a number of vistas and displays with fuzzy maroon borders: some were actual pictures relayed from the surface. One showed the Ossyrians in golden encounter suits which she presumed served as protection against the plague, either for themselves or to prevent them from becoming carriers. They streamed out, administering equipment and drugs. Some Ossyrians were on foot, others on amber sleds that skimmed the surface as smoothly as an ice skater on a frozen lake.
Another vista showed Ossyrian pyramids, slowly spinning, traversing the landscape at low level, dispersing a colourless hazy gas over the landscape. However, she was drawn to one particular data screen that illustrated circular pictograms of the spread and density of the affected areas: concentric circles radiating out from an obvious epicentre. Three-dimensional graphs, like mountain ranges, showed density of the plague as a function of the region and time since it had started. As she stared at it, she knew something wasn’t right. A stabbing pain behind her right eye made her jolt and let out a gasp.
Pierre turned around from the portal. “Are you alright?”
“Good question.” She knew what it was. It was the Hohash – it had just nudged her mind for some reason. She looked at the display again. It looked perfectly normal, exactly what she’d expect from her knowledge and understanding of epidemiological incursions; a textbook case. She studied it harder. It was a classic example… This time the pain made her cry out. Chahat-Me’s silver paw on her shoulder stopped her from toppling backwards. She scrunched her eyes closed, trying to recover her breathing. It was as if a needle had just passed through her eyeball. She leaned forwards, her hands on the ground for support.
“What’s going on?” Pierre said, standing in front of her.
She opened her eyes to see Chahat-Me move towards the Hohash, she guessed to try and disable it. “No,” she said firmly. “It’s trying to tell us something, to make me see something.” She pushed away Pierre’s steadying hand that had replaced the Ossyrian’s on her shoulder, and rocked forward onto her knees. She took a breath, and squinted at the data fields, ready for another mind-pulse through her node. This time it didn’t come, it didn’t have to: she got it. She rose to her feet, accepting the helping hand from Pierre. She spoke directly to the Ossyrian.
“It’s a trap! It’s so perfect an example of plague radiation, so classic a mixture of randomness and single node origin that it has to be false. Someone has lured you here.”
Chahat-Me’s eyes danced.
“What’s she saying, Pierre?”
He moved side to side with her. “I don’t know, it’s too fast, too complex, or both. I think she’s communicating with the others, rather than us.”
Kat supposed he was right – their Ossyrian guardian had that look of being elsewhere, as far as she could tell. Abruptly, as Kat looked on, fascinated by the shapes forming and collapsing at almost subliminal speeds, the eyes settled down, then appeared flat. But she wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Chahat-Me held out her two arms, and each one split into two thinner arms, peeling apart as if they had only been lightly stuck together, all the way to the armpits. Kat and Pierre both took a step backwards. One pair of the thinner arms swung back behind her to a wall control panel which appeared out of nowhere, and blurred into action. The space they occupied went dark, just before their craft rocked heavily.
Kat tumbled into a corner, her shoulder landing hard up against one of the benches. She tried to get up but gravity squeezed her into the soft fabric, her internal organs pressing against her back. She realised they must be doing high-G manoeuvres, straining the inertial dampers to their limit. When it stopped she ended up rolling helplessly into the centre towards the other side, only to be stopped by one of Chahat-Me’s feet which pushed down on her chest, pinning her to the floor. The room spun a few times and then the sense of normality returned, leaving only a trace of nausea, reminding her of her space sickness training two years earlier.
The foot released her. She sat up, glaring at Chahat-Me, but she managed to growl a begrudging “Thanks, I think.” Pierre was already up behind her, and helped her to her feet. “What –?” But she didn’t need to ask, as soon as her gaze reached the portal. She saw the mother ship shattered into several large chunks, surrounded by myriad smaller fragments. Flames sputtered, then winked out as soon as they formed, as the oxygen flashed into space. She glanced at the Hohash, still in view mode, giving ugly close-up shots of Ossyrians tumbling into space, jerking spasmodically for a few seconds before freezing into corpses that would shortly be cremated as they fell towards the atmosphere. A number of Ossyrians on the planet lay prone on the ground, the helmets of their encounter suits smashed open, their muzzles gasping and bodies twitching, clearly unable to make any concerted movement. Nerve gas, she reckoned. The low-level pyramids were crashing, one by one, she presumed due to some kind of EM pulse or similar device disabling their engines or guidance systems, probably both. She watched the mother ship explode into even more fragments, though many of them remained whole. Only then did the other ships appear – black, spiked spheres reminding her of long-spined sea urchins. They approached the fragments and stuck into them, pricking their hulls. They’re boarding the mother ship, or what’s left of it.
“Why?” Pierre said.
Kat knew it was a pointless question. What he really meant was how could they? She reckoned it was probably technology capture by a lower level race. Then came a shock. The Hohash showed some of those boarding. They were wearing space suits and though she couldn’t see their heads inside the helmets, they definitely looked humanoid. She snuck a glance at Chahat-Me, to find that she was communicating with Pierre. She waited, trying not to look at the carnage.
“Mannekhi raiders,” he said, “Level 5.” He seemed about to speak, but stalled, staring at the Ossyrian. His eyes moved like Chahat-Me’s, only less fluidly.
“What?” Kat asked.
Pierre’s brow creased, and he looked from Chahat-Me to Kat, then out the portal. “We’re … we’re cloaked. So…”
Kat walked up to him, put her hands on his elbows. “Pierre, talk to me. What’s going on?”
He turned back to her. Despite the silver eyes, she could see
how anxious he was. He sat down on the bench.
“The Ossyrians have a vow to help people, a kind of Hippocratic oath.”
She folded her arms. “So, they’re going to stand by, while these Mannekhi bastards –”
“No. No, that’s just it. They have a higher oath, related to Galactic security. If the Mannekhi get the technology, the database from a mothership, well…” He waved a hand, listlessly.
She glanced through the portal again. Around thirty of the spike-ships festooned the collapsing hull fragments of the Ossyrian’s mighty vessel. “What can they do?’ What can we do? We’re just one tiny ship, maybe the only ones free right now.”
Without warning, Chahat-Me seized Kat’s shoulders and spun her around to face her, catching both her wrists and locking them in a vice-like grip. Kat’s eyes were wild. “Pierre!” But she sensed no movement behind her. Damn – he knows what she’s going to do to me! She watched as Chahat-Me’s second pair of aluminium-coloured arms transfigured at the ends into large needles – syringes.
“Pierre! What’s going on?”
He stood up, laid a hand on her shoulder. “She’s saving your life.”
With a blur, the first syringe stabbed into the left side of her neck, a fraction of a second before the second one pricked her belly.
“Christ!” she yelled, just as Chahat-Me released her. She took a swing at the dog-faced alien but hit nothing more than air, nearly falling over.
“Kat, don’t.”
She regained her balance, and glared at the dispassionate Ossyrian, then turned to Pierre. “Wanna see if you can move that quickly too?”
He stood right in front of her. “Go ahead. I won’t move.”
Her fist ached to connect with someone, or something; she realised how much she’d been holding in this past week. She thought about hitting the wall, but she’d given that up years ago. “Tell me what she just did to me.”
Pierre walked over to the portal. “Come and see.”
Reluctantly she joined him, just in time to catch a flash of emerald lightning that lit up everything. For a moment, as far as she could see, space turned an eerie green, and then faded back to black. “Fireworks. So what?”
He nodded towards the vista. She watched. The bustle of activity slowed down. Ships still moved, but nothing changed course. One or two of the spike ships collided, bursting into flame for a second before snuffing out. Her anger subsided. Everything was stilling, silent – she tried to avoid the word which most aptly described the scene, but said it anyway. “Dead?” She tried to imagine how that could be.
He nodded.
“How?” So fast, she thought, so damned efficient.
“A Level Eight weapon, like an electromagnetic pulse, but tuned only to organic signatures. Operates on what they call the epsilon spectrum: subatomic, penetrates hulls and shields.”
She felt light-headed, nauseous. “Then why aren’t we dead?”
“The weapon targets anything organic without Ossyrian DNA. The ship’s cloak transmits the DNA signature, and, I already have some Ossyrian DNA so my body doesn’t reject the eyes, and now … well, now you have some too.”
She sensed there was something else he wasn’t telling her, but it would wait. She moved back to see the Hohash, and was aghast. “The population! It’s wiping them out too!”
“I know. You were right about it all being too perfect. Most probable scenario is that the inhabitants, or at the least their government or factions of it, were in on the raid from the start. Probably they were promised advanced technology too.”
She stared in disbelief. “But that’s all supposition. You don’t know that. She doesn’t know that for sure!”
Pierre faced her, with those damned eyes. Less human again, she thought, the Ossyrian’s defender.
“You were right, Kat, and thanks to you they had a few seconds to take the appropriate precautions, or at least to set in motion their contingency protocol.”
“A few seconds! A few fucking seconds to decide to commit genocide!” Her fists were ready for use again.
“They’re Level Eight, Kat. They think much faster than we do, and have considered all manner of scenarios before, including this one, and the appropriate response.”
“Stop talking like a diplomat, Pierre! It doesn’t give them the right –”
“But it does, Kat, that’s the whole point. That’s how this galaxy works.”
“Like the Q’Roth culling us. That okay with you too, Pierre?”
She saw his confidence falter, a crack in the façade. Too little, too late. But she had nothing more to say. She moved to where she could see neither the Hohash nor the portal, drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Pierre kept his distance, but the Ossyrian walked over towards her. It opened its mouth revealing the fibrous layers, like she’d seen once inside a dead whale’s jaws. A shrieking noise like a psychedelic choir emanated. Through the cacophony, Kat made out two distorted words: thank you.
She turned her head aside, unable to think of a suitable response.
Chapter 12
Igloo
“Your plan is going well,” Hannah said.
Louise nodded: two nuclear threats neutralized, Blake out of the picture, Zack stuck in orbit, and Micah trapped in an Optronic landscape. Victory was within her grasp, and yet… She didn’t relish any of it. She was changing, could feel herself slipping away, thinking a little more like a Q’Roth warrior every day. She’d begun to second-guess her motives, her plan, and she knew how dangerous that was during battle. But showing any indecision in front of her Alician crew, or the humans for that matter, was out of the question.
Vince was still the key. She could negotiate a truce with him, maybe a more generous arrangement than she’d originally considered. But the thought came back – what was she changing into? Louise knew now why she needed to see Vince – so that he could pull her back towards her humanity, before she went too far over to the Q’Roth side.
She focused: see it through.
“Status,” she barked.
“Ready on all fronts,” Jarvik replied, crisply.
She took her chair. “Take us down to the surface, half a kilometre up-slope from their MCC. We’ll humour their pathetic stealth technology for the moment.”
Louise studied the viewscreen as the stars pitched upwards and the planet’s surface loomed into view, then raced towards them. The ship sliced into the atmosphere as easily as a scalpel making its first incision. They plunged straight towards the cloudless, starlit landscape, gathering speed, the hull’s shield systems displacing the heat energy to their phosphorous-white wake – their screeching, incandescent approach would not go unnoticed. The night-time landscape shifted into sharp relief, enhanced by the ship’s sensors and her Q’Roth-augmented vision: mountains, paths, a sleepless Esperantia, and desert-shrubs manifested beneath her. Despite her trust in Q’Roth inertial dampening technology, she had thought she would at least fall forward in her seat. But it was like an old-style fighter simulator – no gravity effects except inside the mind. The ship’s descent simply froze at its nadir, hanging Damocles-like above the terrain.
“Set us down, Jarvik. Hannah, contact their commander-in-chief.”
She knew how to play this out, she was good at this after all, having learnt from the best. For an instant she wondered where Sister Esma – her mentor and Alician High Priestess – might be now, and how they were faring under Q’Roth sponsorship. She flushed away the thought. Focus, she instructed herself.
“Colonel Vasquez is on the line,” Hannah said.
“Audio only,” Louise said. “Colonel Vasquez, I believe.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Good, military respect at least. “Your crude attempts to nuke me out of existence have failed. The three Q’Roth ships are … elsewhere –” two inside the sun, the other on this planet’s small moon as a back up for later, along with her insurance package “– and your commander Blake and his foul-
mouthed pilot are indisposed.”
There was a pause. “And Mr. Sanderson?”
“Ah, yes, I’d almost forgotten. Micah is safe enough, for now.” Your move, Colonel. Empty threats would be bad. Her eyes darted to a geographic display showing the exact position of their MCC. She switched to penetration mode and clearly saw the outlines of the people inside.
“What do you propose?” he said.
So nice to deal with a professional. “I will meet with Vince. Alone. Unarmed.” She watched the display, seeing the obvious rapid conference going on between them. Hannah had been eavesdropping their comms for the past twenty-four hours. On cue, a display of key personnel information flashed up beneath the MCC view. Not bad, Hannah. Maybe I’ll keep you alive after all.
“Very well,” Vasquez started, “I’ll give you the coordinates –”
“I know where he is, Colonel. But I see him alone. Tell the good Professor Kostakis and Antonia, who are currently with Vince, to leave immediately.” She heard a woman gasp and another say “fu–” before Vasquez’ reflexes clicked off the microphone. She waited.
“They are leaving. Anything else?”
Really professional – she was impressed – not the slightest hint of sarcasm or distaste. She would keep this one, too.
“No, Colonel, that will be all for now.”
Louise stood, hands on hips, and faced Jarvik and Hannah. “I’ll be gone an hour. If my life signs stop, nuke the city, then take the last Q’Roth ship to the Grid. Leave the MCC alone – they’ll rot in their own guilt as they slowly starve to death. You’ll be on your own, but there are still non-nomadic Q’Roth in the Grid system.” They’ll probably kill you of course, but there might be some gratitude for a returned ship. “As for Micah, if I don’t return, leave him where he is. His body will die eventually, but not before his mind gives way. Questions?”
Jarvik shook his head, Hannah studied her console.
“Good.” She walked to the central walkway to the lower floor, then paused there. “One more thing. Whatever it is you’ve been plotting, Hannah, don’t. Let’s just say I have taken out an insurance policy, should there be any foul play.” With that, she left, knowing that Hannah’s mind would be doing overtime trying to work out what Louise could have set up, and Jarvik would respect Louise to the end now, and be more likely to kill Hannah himself before joining a mutiny.
