by Barry Kirwan
“What’s the trade?”
“Yes, to business. After all, there isn’t much time. I have always found people over-complicate things. Personally, I simplify matters. One only has to define the solution, and then apply the required leverage. For example, I don’t want you to become a martyr. I need my people to break with the past, the old ways, and look ahead to a hard-earned but brighter future.”
Blake imagined Carlson, swinging at the end of a rope. “They already have one martyr.”
Shakirvasta shook his head dismissively. “People will soon forget Carlson. But you, Commander, are a different item altogether. If my citizens were able to watch you being publicly executed, with you being heroic till the end… Well, I would rather have a unified collective society of strong sheep, than one comprising a few heroes followed by weak and dissenting sheep. You are the last hero, Commander, an anachronism, and so must disappear, but in a cowardly way unbefitting your heroic status. So, here is the deal: a quick death for a painless one, that’s the trade. You try to escape, and I kill you, but your wife gets her endomorphine reinstated.”
Blake was on his feet before he knew it. “You sonofabitch, when did you take her off it?”
The pistol rotated idly in his direction. Shakirvasta spoke with his customary nonchalance. “Not yet, Commander. But if you wish a public execution, she will receive no more. Trust me, the pain will be severe before she dies. She may last for weeks –”
“Enough!” Blake’s muscles flexed, pulling the handcuff chain taut in front of him. He glanced down at the shackles. “But how can I make an escape attempt wearing handcuffs?”
“A good point, Commander.” He lodged the cigarette between his lips, and with his left hand fished into his pocket, producing a digi-key. He held it in front of him, staring at it for a moment. “Commander, I should give you fair warning: this gun shoots neural darts, the effect is instantaneous. The nervous system freezes, muscle control goes into spasm, the vagus nerve stops working, the diaphragm and lungs lock, and you asphyxiate, completely conscious throughout. I know because I’ve watched it happen every time somebody attempted to kill me.” He tossed the key at Blake’s feet.
Blake bent double and stuck the digi-key into the slot. The cuffs clanked to the floor. He rubbed his wrists, curling and uncurling his fingers to get the blood circulating properly. When he rose back up, Shakirvasta was standing, and had backed to the far side of the wall. He nodded to the oval doorway. “After you, Commander.”
“Carlson. The plaza. We do this there.”
Shakirvasta cocked his head, squinting slightly at Blake. “Why, Commander?”
“Last respects. He wasn’t one of my men, but in a way he died for me. I want to honour him before I go.”
Shakirvasta eyed Blake, then appeared to make up his mind. “Very well, it is close by. But no more words, Commander. You have been sentenced to death. You are technically already dead, and are no longer entitled to speak: a dead man walking. I have always respected you, Commander, so please don’t disappoint me now. In the plaza, you’ll have a brief opportunity to attack and kill me, or to run, in which case I will shoot you in the back. I think we both know how this is going to end. You’ll preserve your dignity. Come Commander, it is time.”
Blake thought of Rashid. Too late my friend. It all rested on Antonia now, his rook.
Chapter 26
Verdict
“This really is unfortunate timing, Louise. Or do you prefer Arctura, as the Q’Roth now call you?” Sister Esma stood on the bridge of the Q’Roth fast-liner. With the ship in idle mode, all the screens emitted a sleepy green glow and a rhythmic soft clicking, like crickets, just at the human hearing threshold. Two Q’Roth warriors barred the entrance. They were so still, Louise wondered if they had slipped into hibernation.
Louise paced slowly, hands clasped behind her back. “Court’s in recess.” She stopped. “Worried I’ll testify?”
Sister Esma’s eyes and nostrils flared. “Do not try my patience. You know what hangs in the balance here.” She cocked her head. “And what exactly is that abomination you have brought with you?”
Louise didn’t turn around to where the Hohash hovered behind her. “I was expecting this to be, somehow, different. You tried to kill me, remember? The nannites you had placed on my ship?”
Sister Esma waved a wax-skinned hand dismissively. “I knew you would find a way to survive, Louise. It’s what you do best, one of your two greatest talents.”
Louise ignored the invited question. She felt the dagger nestling inside her sleeve. “But finding your new homeworld would have been tricky, wouldn’t it?”
“Our homeworld: it is yours, too, especially after you sent me this message. You are already a hero, Louise.”
Louise frowned. She’d planned to strike as soon as the Q’Roth guards departed the bridge, but they hadn’t; the alliance with the Alicians had drawn the Q’Roth into limelight they didn’t relish, and they had Sister Esma on a tight leash. Louise knew that if she made her move now, she’d never get off the bridge alive. Another approach, then. “So what’s my reward?”
Sister Esma scrutinised her once-protégé, pausing to stare at Louise’s sleeve, the one that concealed the dagger. “I see.” She sat down in a make-shift throne chair, adopting a regal air. “What is it you want, exactly, besides my head? You can’t have it, Louise, you know that, don’t you? I played you, but that is what we do – in my position you’d have done the same. And look how far you’ve come. Level Five in a matter of months, your knowledge of Q’Roth customs and history rivals my own.”
Louise knew the moment had passed. Worst of all, Sister Esma’s logic was flawless – brutal, but flawless nonetheless. “I need something, or else I can’t come back with you.”
“Hannah?” Sister Esma said, raising an eyebrow.
Louise tried to keep her voice cool. “You have her?”
“Yes. She became Micah’s lover towards the end.”
Louise almost smiled. It would do for now. “It’s a start. One other thing –”
“That, my dear girl, is already arranged. Micah unnerves me. Break his spirit. It is nearly done. Nudge him over the edge. Lead him down the path of self-destruction. That is your second greatest talent.”
* * *
Micah had been separated from the others, placed in a smaller holding cell. Same bare jade walls, but this time with an impenetrable glass door. He hoped the word ‘recess’ had a similar meaning in Grid law, that the verdict wouldn’t be passed in their absence. Maybe Josefsson had been right all along – we should’ve stayed on Ourshiwann, hiding, biding our time. He felt exhausted, deflated – seeing Carlson’s corpse… He heard footsteps – with a shock he registered heels. It can’t be!
“Hello, Micah, did you miss me?” Louise arrived on the other side of the glass. She carried a box under one arm. She set it on the floor.
“I saw you die.” That’s twice now.
“Must have been hard for you.”
He saw through the veneer to what lay underneath. “If I’d have known you were going to surrender, Louise –”
“Don’t you dare patronise me!” Her eyes whitened. Without warning, so fast he flinched, she punched the glass, causing it to ripple. “You set me up, Micah, killed the best man left alive.”
He stood his ground, close to the glass. “It was Vince’s plan, too. You must know that.”
“Of course I know that. He…” She turned her back to him, a hand touched a lock of her hair, tugged at it. She cleared her throat, faced him again. She flashed a smile. “This entire day; I’ve been planning it for months. It’s not going at all the way I’d like.”
He shrugged. “That makes two of us.”
She leaned her forehead against the glass and spoke softly. “I’d like this glass to be removed, Micah, so I could place my hands around your neck, stop you breathing, watch your lips turn blue, your eyes bulge, go wide with fear in the last throes of life.”
&nbs
p; He looked at her, felt sorry for her. “I know.” He leant his forehead to the glass, too. “But you know what?”
She didn’t answer.
“You killed two thousand people in a blink of an eye, without a second thought. You’re sick, Louise. Even for an Alician. I’d say you need help, but we both know you’re beyond that. I’m not even sure Sister Esma wants you back.”
She uttered one soft laugh. “I always knew you were special, Micah. You never made it to the Alician A-list, but I thought you showed promise back on Earth. Vince did, too.”
He felt a pang. “If I could bring him back…”
She drew away. He reciprocated.
“If I get the chance, I won’t hesitate, Micah.”
He nodded. “See you in court shortly, I guess.”
“Unlikely. Oh, a parting gift.” She picked up the box, took the lid off and turned to leave. Just before she crossed the threshold, she up-ended it. A head with flaxen hair thudded to the floor, eyes wide. It rolled toward him till it rested next to the glass.
Micah’s breathing crevassed. He pounded the glass with both fists, blood rushing to his head. “Louise! Why did –?” He knew why. He punched the glass with both fists. The glass shimmered. “The feeling’s mutual. You hear me? If I get the chance...”
There was no reply, the sound of her footsteps receding. He dropped to his knees, fingers trailing down the glass. He gazed at the head lying so close to him, remembering when he released the explosive bracelet from her neck, her in his bed, the last time he saw her on the bridge... He banged his head against the glass, repeatedly, eyes misting.
A bell chimed. He clawed his way up the glass to his feet. Vince, Zack, and now Hannah. He straightened his tunic, brushed his palms up over his face and smoothed his hair down. The glass peeled backwards. He knelt down, closed her eyes with his hand. “Hannah, I’m glad to have known you, and also sorry I couldn’t protect you. Rest now.” He kissed his forefinger and touched her dry lips. The Finchikta was waiting, only its blue third eye open, watching him. Micah left Hannah’s head where it was, recalling that Alicians didn’t care for burial rites, believing a corpse to be an empty husk. He strode straight past the Finchikta.
* * *
Micah shied away from the look of relish on Sister Esma’s face, as she ogled the two globes representing Earth and Ourshiwann, accelerating towards the throat of the funnel.
“Micah,” Sandy said, pointing to his right.
A new party approached out of the gloom, from behind Zack’s avatar. A triangular crystal plinth transported four figures he couldn’t quite make out. Across the arena, as he now considered it, Sister Esma flustered, communicating with the Q’Roth queen in a series of guttural clicks. The Q’Roth leader remained unperturbed.
The Finchikta bristled. “New witnesses,” it chirped. “An Ossyrian, another human, and… this is most irregular, this has never…” It moved to the ledge, craning its neck over the side to get a better view. Its blue third eye shone in the darkness. When it spoke again, it was in a hushed tone. “May the Progenitors be praised!” It wavered tantalisingly above the abyss.
“Good grief”, Sandy said, “it’s Kat!”
Micah recognised her as soon as Sandy said it, and the Hohash, which had obviously caught the Finchikta’s attention. An Ossyrian, indistinguishable from the one who had ‘fixed’ Zack, stood next to Kat, tall and proud, an arm or paw resting on her shoulder. But Micah was drawn to the third figure, a naked, but asexual, hairless man, fashioned entirely of glimmering flow-metal.
“Pierre,” Ramires whispered.
The plinth passed between Zack’s Transpar and the Ranger, and then split in two. Kat’s section headed to their platform, the other carried the Ossyrian, the Hohash and whatever was once Pierre, into the central area.
Micah studied Kat as she drew near. She clenched her jaw, trying to lock down her emotions. She looked angry, arms folded, lips a tight line. As she breached their platform, he held out his hand, but Sandy brushed past him and pulled her into a friendly embrace. He and Ramires glanced at each other, as Sandy held Kat’s rigid form, until it melted and Kat surrendered to the hug.
Micah wanted to ask her a hundred questions, particularly about Pierre, but Sandy, facing Micah over Kat’s hunched shoulder, said No with her eyes. He tried a different approach. “It’s good to see you again, Kat.”
The Finchikta, its third eye closed again, made a noise somewhere between a cough and a gulp. “The one calling himself Pierre is about to give evidence.”
Pierre faced the Tla Beth. He held his arms out and touched his metal fingers together. They flowed seamlessly into each other, so that his arms formed an unbroken circle. He then pulled his arms apart, shoulder width, and five tubes formed where his digits should have been. The tubes changed from a silver hue to white, then colours flowed rapidly along them in an incandescent pattern too fast for Micah to follow.
Micah turned to the Finchikta. “What’s going on?”
The court official watched, hawk-like, its orange eyes ablaze. “Your colleague is speaking Tla Beth! This is unheard of!”
“He’s almost gone, Micah,” Kat said, her voice crisp and dry, wrung free of all emotion. “His humanity. During the trip here, while we were in stasis, the nannites took over. I’ve lost him.”
Micah was jarred back to the arena by a sharp clicking from the Q’Roth queen. A Finchikta had appeared next to her, presumably as translator. Whatever had happened to Pierre, it clearly disturbed the Q’Roth. “What’s he saying?” he demanded of their Finchikta. The reply was halting, either because the alien had trouble translating it, or else had a hard time accepting it.
“He brings news … a Galactic Level 1 emergency. The … Kalaheii… returned! Your colleague says the Hohash has … proof … Q’Roth are arguing dismissal of irrelevant evidence. The Tla Beth … ah, there.”
The arena turned into a holorium, ectoplasmic light pouring out from the Hohash, condensing into images of a vast armada of ships floating inside a shimmering wall of light. The image shifted to myriad specks – broken hulls, metal debris littering the void, and then a face in freeze-frame. The only sound was Ukrull’s low growl. Micah noticed the Tla Beth’s inner hourglass pattern had stopped swirling, and became almost completely black, a lone mote of white swimming in the darkness.
Pierre looked over to Micah and the others. “Kat?”
She gathered herself and stood on the other side of the Finchikta, facing the Tla Beth. “Qorall,” she said. “Qorall, leader of the Kalaheii, has returned. You have to find the Kalarash, or your precious Grid Society will perish.”
Sister Esma tried to engage the Queen, but the latter gave a short burst of clicks, and Sister Esma bowed low in silence.
As the holo-image faded, Micah realised that the two globes had slowed down, no longer descending. They skirted the precipitous lip of the funnel, defying gravity.
Kat brushed down her tunic and continued to address the Tla Beth, ignoring the Q’Roth party completely. “We also have new evidence of relevance to this current case. We apologise for being late, but we were quarantined until Pierre –” she gestured towards him “– could demonstrate his Level Ten powers.”
Micah heard Sister Esma’s snort clear across the arena, but the Queen stretched her neck forward to gain a better view of Pierre. Micah glanced from Pierre to Kat; they had obviously thought this through, choreographed their duet. It would do no good if Pierre defended humanity – he was clearly something else now. Kat had to forge the main arguments.
The Hohash burst into life again, pouring out a new vision, of life some time ago on Ourshiwann. Micah felt a pang of loss as he witnessed scenes of everyday life on the planet before the invasion – the spiders and Hohash milling about the place he now knew as Esperantia with a grace and beauty he’d never imagined. They really owned the place, making him feel as if he and the rest of humanity were vagrants squatting in an abandoned mansion.
Incandescent
vistas splashed onto the night-time sky, portraying ancient battle scenes, framed by lasers reflecting off the moon to create a luminescent vista hundreds of thousands of kilometres wide. Micah saw globe-like ships destroying whole planets, suns being propelled into other star systems, collapsing them, leaving violent nebulas in their wake. Orange and black metallic fingers of light tore the fabric of space, creating rifts that sucked whole planetary systems out of existence, until ivory and gold crossbow-shaped ships materialised, strafing the globes with streams of emerald light, imploding them into darkness.
“What are we watching,” Micah asked.
“An ancient history lesson,” Kat replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.
“I didn’t realise the spiders were that old as a race.”
“They’re not, but the Hohash are. The spiders were artists, and they liked to space-paint what the Hohash remembered.”
The Finchikta interjected in a hushed, reverent tone, without taking its eyes off the display. “They are omnipaths, record-keepers of the galaxy.”
“I’ve gotten to know them a little, especially since Pierre...” She shivered. “They’re tortured souls; they’ve seen too much. They miss their masters terribly.”
The Finchikta closed both its eyes and turned and stared at her with only the blue one. It bowed once, low.
The scene shifted, and Micah winced as the Q’Roth invasion unfurled, with heart-rending images Micah knew Kat had seen before, back on Eden; the merciless culling of the spider planet. Micah had no idea if sympathy or empathy had any currency in Grid Society, but the Finchikta several times looked away with distaste.
