by Brett Patton
The camera’s opalescent glass lens didn’t even twitch. But somehow, somewhere, Matt knew he was being watched. He had to be. They wanted him for something.
“What do you want?” Matt asked.
Still no response. Matt’s cell was almost deathly quiet. Even the hiss of the ventilators only echoed in from the corridors outside.
“Come on!” Matt said, and slapped the wall next to the camera.
But its glittering eye just stared back at him.
* * *
Many hours later, as Matt was drifting off to uneasy sleep, they came for him.
Matt heard them coming down the corridor outside long before they arrived. Ten fingers, four hands, two strong men slapping on the hollow aluminum railings outside. They didn’t chatter as they came closer, and their handgrips were paced in a regular, metronomic pattern, as if they were machines programmed for a job rather than human beings.
Men acting like machines. Men become machines. The thought was sudden and certain.
How can I know this? Matt wondered.
But he was sure of it. Since he had woken, his thoughts seemed to rush at light speed. He could take tiny fragments of data and correlate them with the experience stored in his Perfect Record to understand things in a flash.
Dr. Roth’s words came back to Matt: enhanced inference to the point of precognition.
Was that what this was? Matt had never felt so clear. Every small sound spoke volumes. Even the lack of sound. The men outside didn’t speak to each other at all. They didn’t tell jokes, or talk about last night’s game, or even complain about the job.
They weren’t here just to do a job. They were controlled. Mind-controlled. And in a gut-churning instant, that reminded Matt of someone else from his past.
But that was impossible—
Shadows fell across the slit in his door. Matt flattened himself against the wall next to it. Maybe he could surprise them as they came though.
A small fish-eye lens poked through the slot in the door and turned to regard Matt.
“Prisoner away from the door,” a man’s voice said, in a bored monotone.
Matt didn’t move.
“Prisoner away from the door, or incapacitating spray will be used.”
Shit. Matt pushed himself away and turned to face the circular orifice.
The door clanked open and folded outward. Two men peered in at him. Both wore tightly tailored dark gray shirts and pants, with no decoration other than a small silver bar on their chests. One man was dark-haired and slim; another had mousy, receding hair and an average build. Their eyes were odd—not HuMax, but simply notable by their lack of engagement. The men looked through Matt, rather than at him.
Mind control. Like with Kyle Peterov, the Mecha pilot captured by Rayder, the general in Shadows. The man Matt thought he had killed.
“Take me to your leader,” Matt said, suddenly sure who it must be.
* * *
He followed the human drones down corridors lined with cell doors. Not a sound came from within any of the cells, but dim shadows moved behind many of the grim slits.
Were these people from Esplandian?
What had happened to Captain Gonsalves? Ione?
Eventually they came to a longer hall, where sparse traffic moved along the handrails. Most of the Last Rising crew were clad in the same dark gray outfit as Matt’s guards. Some wore a more decorated version, with two chest bars.
A few wore civilian clothes like Matt. Only the ones in civvies paid him any mind as he passed. A startling number of them had yellow-and-violet HuMax eyes.
A caste system where the more valuable members were under less mind control. Matt’s mind raced. His future was clear. Accept or be forced to accept.
The men escorted him to a heavy steel pressure door marked BRIDGE. There were no door screens, no palm-print-based genetic access locks, just a camera eye like the one in his cell.
The two guards paused and waited. After a few moments, the door groaned as its locks were retracted, and it swung inward on a small, featureless chamber with another pressure door on its opposite side. A protective air lock.
Matt barked a laugh. “Can’t be too careful, even with mind control.”
The two men didn’t answer. Matt waited as the first door shut behind them and the other door cycled.
It opened to reveal a conventional bridge: nonphysical displays over multipurpose consoles, with people hunched over systems diagrams. All of the console wranglers wore a different uniform, sleek deep black with a single red stripe on their chest. Aluminum handrails ringed the displays and consoles. A single captain’s chair rose above the level of the ship’s functional controls. It was currently unoccupied.
Slit windows at the front of the bridge showed a star field and the glittering lights of Esplandian. The residential blocks appeared to be largely intact.
Matt sighed in relief. The giant asteroid hadn’t been completely destroyed in the battle.
“Matt!” a familiar voice called. Matt turned to see Captain Hector Gonsalves entering the bridge from a small room off to one side.
“Hector?” Matt asked. The man looked exactly the same as he had when Matt last saw him. He still wore a casual gray suit. Not a single hair was out of place.
Gonsalves grinned at his reaction. “Yes, of course, who else would it be?”
Matt’s heart skipped a beat. There was no way Gonsalves should be smiling. He was already under their control.
“Hector—but—what about Esplandian?”
Hector laughed. “It’s all a big misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Yes.”
“But they attacked your asteroid!”
Hector waved a hand, as if batting away a fly. “You have to keep an open mind.”
“And you chose to join them?”
“Of course.” Hector’s expression was open and childlike. “You will too, once you understand what they’re trying to accomplish. They’re going to unify all the Corsairs. Exactly what you were beginning to talk about! Take on the Union.”
Matt only half heard Hector. “What about Ione?”
“The girl is fine,” said a new voice. “Except for the genetic rewrite your Union has inflicted upon her.”
Matt looked up to the source of the familiar voice. It was exactly what his accelerated Perfect Record had told him. Anger rose, twisting his guts and reddening his face.
“You should be dead,” Matt said.
* * *
It was Rayder.
Two meters of perfect HuMax, with dark, close-cropped hair and a chiseled face like something off a classical sculpture. He wore an all-black uniform devoid of any decoration, under a simple gauntlet of dark body armor. His belt held a small dagger and a Taikong P-06 pistol. His intelligent yellow-and-violet eyes fixed Matt with an unflinching stare.
The HuMax who had killed his father. The man whom Matt had cast into the molten core of Jotunheim.
“Dead?” Rayder said, smiling, amused. “More a ghost, soon to return to my old haunts.”
“I killed you.”
Rayder chuckled. “You forget the first rule of dueling: always ask to see the body.”
“I—how—” Matt stumbled over his words as his Perfect Record fed back a thousand painful images. The day Rayder struck Prospect, where Matt’s father worked for Union Advanced Research Labs. Rayder accepting Matt’s father’s data slate, then killing him in cold blood. Matt’s ill-fated charge in the powerloader.
Rayder’s one chilling line, as he spared Matt’s life: “Bravery must have its reward.”
And those years, all those years, Matt had spent plotting to avenge his father’s death. In the instant that Rayder spared him, he’d made Matt what he was. He�
�d twisted Matt into a machine, bent only on revenge. A broken machine once that revenge was accomplished.
But his father hadn’t been avenged. Rayder still lived!
Rage spiked in Matt. He screamed and lunged at Rayder. His guards caught his arms and held him back.
Rayder didn’t even flinch. If anything, his sardonic grin widened. “I expected a warmer welcome. You seem to have embraced the HuMax, if your companion is any indication.”
“Where is she?” Matt struggled against his captors, but they held him tight.
“Safe for now. That is, until the Union’s genetic rewrite works its way through her system.”
“Cure her!”
Rayder laughed and came to sit at the edge of the captain’s platform, as if he and Matt were having a friendly chat. “She’s that important to you?”
“Yes!”
“You side with HuMax now? With Corsairs?”
“Yes!”
“Then it will be only a small step for you to join me.”
“I—” Matt began, then shut his mouth so hard his teeth clicked together. Join Rayder? How could he even think that?
“I know you’re confused,” Rayder said, his voice almost kind. “But you’d be joining Captain Gonsalves, who voluntarily joined us, when we explained to him what we plan to do.”
“Rayder’s going to unify the Corsairs,” Captain Gonsalves told Matt. “If we’re unified, we’re the balance to the Union.”
“You’re mind-controlled,” Matt cried.
Captain Gonsalves chuckled, as if amused by the suggestion. “Of course not!”
“Why don’t you just mind-control me?” Matt asked Rayder.
Rayder looked away briefly. “Programming is for lower-level functions. I want your willing cooperation.”
But something in his tone wasn’t right. Matt’s accelerated thoughts matched his tones to ten thousand individual memories in an instant. Rayder was lying.
Maybe he’s already tried, Matt thought. Or at least tried as much as he trusts. He doesn’t want to spoil you.
Yes. That headache wasn’t just Mecha hangover. It was Rayder’s programming as well. Whatever was behind Matt’s Perfect Record might have given him some immunity to Rayder’s mind control. It might even have triggered his ability to infer and understand at a glance.
“I don’t believe you,” Matt said. Best to play the game. Get more info. Compute the probabilities.
A momentary flash of anger passed through Rayder’s eyes. “Why not? You are the only person ever to fight me to a draw. You have extreme innate talents, especially with respect to Mecha.”
Matt frowned. “You have your own Mecha now.”
A nod. “We’ve taken Dr. Roth’s work much further than he anticipated.”
“You or the Cluster?” Matt asked. They had the same Mecha on Tierrasanta.
Rayder shook his head. “The Cluster are good for only one thing: intelligence. Our people there helped determine your whereabouts.”
“They work for you?”
“They work for me, whether they know it or not,” Rayder said, sounding bored. “My informants exist throughout every Corsair faction, and our strength grows in the Taikong and Aliancia domains. My unification is unavoidable.”
“Keller. That was you.”
Rayder nodded. “By proxy, yes.”
Matt’s racing mind laid it all bare. Rayder’s programmed minions existed throughout the Corsair factions, an invisible network of power. Eventually they would rise, as one, and change the face of the universe.
“Is joining me so different than the changes you have already undergone?” Rayder asked. “You’ve turned your back on your Union. You’ve embraced HuMax as human. This is simply the next logical step.”
It all sounded so reasonable. So compelling.
“You killed my father,” Matt told Rayder.
“And you yourself have made no mistakes?” Rayder asked.
People did make mistakes. Matt made tons of them. And what happened in the past shouldn’t define the future.
But it was also completely wrong.
Joining Rayder wasn’t the same as joining Captain Gonsalves. It was like joining the Union again. The Union held HuMax against their will and did terrible experiments on them. They had no choice in the matter.
Rayder was the same way. His programmed masses didn’t choose to be that way. There was no way Gonsalves chose mind control, and Matt didn’t believe that any rational being had ever chosen to have their will controlled by another person.
Just like the Union. Both had decided that their ends justified their means, no matter how terrible they were.
The decision was clear. Even more, Matt’s path was crystalline. Save the universe. He knew what that meant now. It meant balance and freedom, in all human spaces.
“No,” Matt said. “I’ll never join you.”
For just an instant, Rayder looked genuinely surprised. “You know what you’re saying?”
Matt squared his shoulders. “Yes, I do.”
Rayder sighed and shook his head. He stood up, went to his captain’s chair, and sat down in it. When he looked up, his expression had hardened. “I’m tired of this. Accept my offer.”
“No,” Matt said. “I’ll kill you. This time for real.”
Rayder nodded and stood. “Then try to do so. Now.”
13
WILLPOWER
Matt shivered, chilled by the cold resolution in Rayder’s eyes. Take on Rayder right here, right now, barehanded.
Everything integrated into Matt’s Perfect Record to give him a complete understanding of the situation: Rayder’s tight jaw, and the corded muscles in his neck, the way he stood, slightly hunched, waiting for Matt to come at him. The glittering anticipation in his slitted eyes. Rayder was furious. This was no act. The HuMax superman was ready to beat Matt to death.
Which was exactly what would happen. There was no way Matt could win against Rayder, strength versus strength. Desperate stats raced in his head: HuMax were two to five times stronger than humans, in terms of both physical strength and speed. HuMax endurance was fifty percent greater than human.
Matt’s heart thundered, and his breath came in shuddery gasps. All of his accelerated thought ended in a single conclusion: I’m going to die today.
“I’ll get in any Mecha and take you on,” Matt told Rayder.
Rayder smiled, a slow, sad smile full of menace. “Are you so addicted?” Rayder removed his Taikong pistol and handed it to Captain Gonsalves, who took it without changing expression.
“I’ll take on your entire Mecha fleet in my Demon!” Matt said, his voice rising in desperation.
“If you are to kill me, you will do it here and now.” Rayder unstrapped his dagger and handed it to Gonsalves as well. He reached for the clasp of his body armor, popped it off, and hung it over his captain’s chair.
“A HuMax against a human isn’t a fair fight.”
Rayder laughed. “Life is never fair. You play the hand you’re dealt.”
Matt swallowed. Despite his laughter, Rayder was as angry as ever. Matt wasn’t going to talk him down.
“I hope you don’t mind if I broadcast this to my Last Rising command,” Rayder said, nodding at the camera eyes that extruded eagerly from the bridge’s walls. “Such entertainment as this is not to be missed.”
And used, Matt thought. His death would be used as propaganda when Rayder went against the Union again. He’d been hiding, rebuilding his power, but it was only a matter of time before he hit the Union—this time decisively.
Good. Let them cancel each other out, Matt thought. But his accelerated thought told him it wasn’t that simple. Calculations raced—the number of Mecha he’d gone up against, how large Rayder
’s organization had to be to spare four Displacement Drive warships on Esplandian, the interior of the ship and size of crew. Rayder might win. Would probably win. And humankind would fall before him.
Matt’s death could be the death of freedom itself.
The bridge doors opened, and a stream of men and women wearing civilian clothes came floating in. Every one of them had violet-and-gold HuMax eyes. They gathered around the walls of the bridge, jockeying for the best positions.
“It doesn’t hurt to have a few eyewitnesses as well,” Rayder said.
Of course. Rayder wanted to gloat. He’d invited his most trusted HuMax companions to watch the show.
“What about them?” Matt said, struggling to keep his voice even. He nodded at Gonsalves, the guards, and the HuMax spectators, who were all waiting eagerly for the show.
“They won’t interfere,” Rayder said. He waved a hand, and the two guards released Matt.
No choice. He had to go through with it. And somehow, he’d have to win.
Matt took a quick look around the bridge. It was clean and bare of ornamentation. There was nothing he could use as a weapon—not even a single forgotten coffee bulb or worklight in sight. The spectators and crew were unarmed, and the guards’ sidearms were snicked away into biokeyed holsters. Even if Matt could grab one, he’d never be able to use it.
He’d always been taught, If you have to fight, get in the first shot. Fight dirty. Nice guys ended up in the hospital.
Nice guys ended up dead.
But there was no chance of getting the first shot. Rayder stood tense and ready for him. There was no cover, no element of surprise. No matter how Matt came at him, he’d be ready.
Matt’s racing mind ran the probabilities in detail, instantly piecing together all the pieces from his Perfect Record—every fight he’d been in, every brawl he’d seen, every contest of strength he’d glimpsed in passing on a screen.
Turn away: Rayder would be on him in a moment, slamming Matt’s head against the aluminum railing of the bridge hard enough to bend the hard alloy. Go straight for him: Rayder would catch him and snap his neck in one swift motion. Dive under him, hoping for a dirty shot: Rayder’s pistoning fist would cave in his skull.
