Masada's Gate

by Chris Pourteau

  Klaxons began blasting shipwide. The ambient lighting changed to crimson.

  Now Milani knew she was dreaming. They were still torturing her. She’d started to doze, started to dream a perverse dream of rescue by her own captor, and they were trying to wake her up again, to start the cycle over.

  “Wake up,” she said aloud. “Wake up and make it stop!”

  Helena Telemachus spoke to someone through her sceye. A shipwide broadcast interrupted the red alert.

  “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All hands, repel boarders. This is not a drill.”

  Milani clapped her hands together, applauding her own creativity. All this detail was a healthy sign. They hadn’t broken her. She could still construct elaborate fantasies, right down to the emergency lighting, the overwhelming anarchy of a ship being boarded. And best of all? Milani’s mind offered her the sweet satisfaction of watching fear descend over the features of Helena Telemachus.

  “Payback’s a bitch, bitch,” Milani said.

  • • •

  Kwazi Jabari • Rabh Regency Station

  The vator doors opened. Kwazi’s fire team stepped onto the station.

  Rabh Faction personnel went about their business. And why shouldn’t they? Kwazi, Braxton, and the other four members of Fire Team Alpha were dressed in the same maroon overalls with the double-bar R of Adriana Rabh over their left breasts. They were all part of one big, happy corporate family.

  “Do I have to wear these?” Kwazi asked, hoisting his wrists. It was an effort. The gravity cuffs were set at two g’s.

  “Gotta make it look good,” Braxton said. “Won’t be for long. The docking ring is close. Fire Teams Bravo and Charlie are offloading there now. Mario, take point.”

  Kwazi nodded like he understood. A young, thin squad member and his partner led the way. Braxton and Kwazi came next, with the final pair from their six-man team guarding the rear.

  “Stay next to me,” Braxton ordered as they walked. It wasn’t quite a march. “Shit starts flying, you just hunker down. We’ll take care of any business needs tending to.”

  When they took any notice of Kwazi and the others at all, the personnel passing nodded and smiled. Until their eyes lit on Kwazi, when the smiles would fade, replaced by expressions of betrayal. There might even have been hatred. It made him feel outside himself again, like he was his doppelgänger from Cassandra’s video, not Kwazi himself. The lines of reality and fantasy and deception had begun to blur. It was like his life had become an Impressionist painting, colorful and blurry and indistinct.

  They halted at the airlock connecting the station to the Pax Corporatum.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the Hero of Mars,” said a soldier wearing Taulke black. Kwazi had seen row after row of troops just like him from atop the platform where Tony Taulke had given him his medal in front of the whole solar system. The yellow stripes on the man’s shoulder made him a lieutenant. “Back from being AWOL, I see.”

  Braxton faded to the front. “Not without some help.” He nodded at Kwazi’s gravity cuffs, sounding half offended. Frenemy competition among factions.

  “I heard it was a Taulke man spotted him,” the officer said. His assistant was tapping commands on the screen in front of her.

  “You heard wrong,” Braxton said.

  The officer smiled. “He’s back. Guess the details don’t matter.”

  “Don’t,” Braxton acknowledged.

  The portal opened, and the officer stepped aside. “Helena Telemachus will be glad to have him back. And maybe quit riding the rest of us so damned hard.”

  Mario led the team again. As Braxton passed, he said, “I wouldn’t want to be ridden by Telemachus for any reason.”

  The airlock door shut behind them, cutting off the officer’s laughter.

  “See?” Braxton said, leaning in to Kwazi. “Piece of cake.”

  Chapter 10

  Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Pax Corporatum

  “Hold up there.”

  Braxton, Kwazi, and the other members of Fire Team Alpha kept walking.

  “I said, hold up there!”

  Braxton lifted a closed fist. “Stay frosty,” he whispered. Then, “Can I help you, friend?”

  Like the soldiers at the airlock, the man who’d spoken and his partner wore uniforms of Taulke Faction black. Military, not civilian personnel. Part of Helena Telemachus’s escort, maybe.

  “We’re here to take custody of the prisoner,” the man said. He was in his mid-thirties, like Braxton, with gray lining his brown-black hair. He had a scar on the left side of his face that made his jawline seem slender. “Orders of Helena Telemachus.”

  “Ah, I see. Hang on a second,” Braxton said, then looked away to a point on the ceiling. “Checked my sceye. Nothing about that in my orders from the old lady.”

  “Maybe it’s delayed,” the man suggested. He didn’t seem to believe it himself. “You know, those fucking rebels have taken over CorpNet. Local network could be compromised or something.”

  “Could be,” acknowledged Braxton.

  The man placed his hands on his belt. Kwazi tried not to stare at the holstered stunner there. The leather loop securing the weapon was already unsnapped.

  “In any case,” the man with the scar said, “Regent Rabh has surrendered all claim on him. We’ll take him now.”

  Braxton bobbed his head, like releasing Kwazi would just be one less pile of shit he’d have to shovel today. “Works for me,” he said. “Let me get you the key to the cuffs.”

  “Appreciate it,” the man said. His thumbs were hooked into belt loops now. As green as Kwazi was, he still recognized a mistake when he saw one.

  “Of course,” Braxton said, smiling. Then he quick-drew his stunner and shot the man in the forehead. Before the second Taulke soldier could respond, Braxton shot him in the head too. “Cat’s out of the bag,” he said as the second body hit the deck. He passed the electronic key to Kwazi’s cuffs over them, and they dropped. “Won’t be needing those anymore. Bravo, Charlie, report status.”

  Two members of Team Alpha moved to drag the bodies out of the corridor.

  “Leave ’em,” Braxton said. “It’s too late for that.”

  “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All hands, repel boarders. This is not a drill.”

  “See what I mean?” Braxton said.

  “What happened?” Kwazi had almost let himself believe it would be as easy as the story of the Trojan Horse made it seem.

  “Dead man switch, likely,” Braxton said. When Kwazi stared, uncomprehending, he continued, “Mod to the implant. Soldier dies, lack of vitals triggers an alarm.”

  Two ship’s personnel, non-military by the look of them, rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. They seemed in a hurry to get away from something. Mario and one of the other SSR Alphas shot them down. Civilians weren’t wearing military, MESH-woven uniforms like Taulke’s soldiers. A hit anywhere by a stunner set to kill would electrocute them.

  “Bravo Team in place. Engineering secured.”

  “Well, well, that’s half the battle right there,” Braxton said. “Bravo Team, cut the cord in twenty seconds.” To Alpha Squad, he said, “Let’s keep moving. Mario: point.”

  “Charlie Team here. Meeting heavy resistance in the penthouse. Could use some backup.”

  “On our way, Charlie,” Braxton said. As they quick-marched, he pulsed the ship’s layout to the Alphas’ sceyes, a red dot showing their current location, a green dot showing Charlie’s. “Sounds like the Queen of All Media is putting up a good fight.” Then, with relish, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  The corridors were practically vacant of shipboard personnel. That made sense to Kwazi, if what Braxton had said was true. They were probably in their quarters or a dark corner of the ship somewhere, lost in Dreamscape. This was a civilian ship, so most souls aboard were there to serve the officers and, of course, VIPs like Helena Telemachus. The minimal military complement the Corporatum had shipped out with
from Earth would be there partly for show and partly to handle any hiccups Tony Taulke’s flagship might encounter. They were stationed in sensitive areas of the ship—Engineering and VIP quarters—or guarding the airlock to the station. The two Telemachus had sent to retrieve him, the ones Braxton gunned down had been unexpected. Which begged the question: what other surprises might they stumble over along the way?

  “Down! Down!” Mario shouted. Before he could heed his own warning, multiple shots from an old-fashioned projectile weapon sped down the corridor at them. Mario went down.

  Fifty feet further on, the barrel of an automatic rifle pulled back around a corner.

  Braxton snapped two fingers toward cover in each of the nearby hallways flanking the main corridor. Mario’s partner and the two guards behind them went left. Braxton pulled Kwazi right.

  Mario was bleeding out in the middle of the corridor. Kwazi could see his battle buddy wanting to pull him into cover, but the other two Soldiers in their fire team held him back.

  “Well, now it’s getting interesting,” Braxton said. “They—”

  He felt it in his stomach first. Kwazi’s center of gravity became untethered, like he’d just crested the hill of a rollercoaster. Someone had switched off the ship’s artificial gravity.

  “Excellent work, Bravo,” Braxton announced over comms. There were shouts of confusion and fear from the end of the corridor. “Charlie, we’re near your position. Hold fast.”

  Acknowledgments checked off from the other squads. Braxton threw Kwazi a toothy grin. “Here’s where your training comes in.” The three men in the opposite corridor had slung their weapons and were squatting, braced against the wall. To Kwazi they looked like armed baboons in their maroon uniforms. Braxton said, “Give ’em hell, boys.”

  Two of the men launched themselves upward, turning to land gut flat against the ceiling. Each began to pull himself along, finding handholds in the fire-retardant tiles and processor vents and recessed lighting panels. A burst of stunner fire sounded from the Soldiers on the ceiling, and the rifle that had shot Mario floated, minus its owner, toward the middle of the T-intersection down the corridor. Braxton followed along the near wall with Kwazi close behind. Elongated drops of Mario’s blood hung in the air as he passed. Mario wasn’t moving, and his partner had abandoned the mission to tend to him.

  At the T-intersection, the two Soldiers swung themselves around, readied their weapons, and looped around the corner, one to cover either direction.

  Punk! Punk!

  The odd, muted sound of two stunner shots dispatching one Taulke combatant. The other came spinning past them, swimming like a man on a wire, trying to get away. The second Alpha took him out.

  Braxton grabbed from the air the M24 rifle that had felled Mario and slung it across his back.

  “Never know,” he said.

  The two Alphas who’d cleared the corridor were already moving down the eastward hallway of the T-intersection. Kwazi checked his sceye, finding Alpha Squad’s red dot nearly on top of Charlie’s green. He could hear the punk-punk-punk! of stunner fire nearby. Braxton motioned him to stay to the rear. The corridor turned left, and four members of Charlie Squad were hunkered down behind bulkheads. Braxton joined them, ordering the Alpha Squad Team to guard the rear.

  “Like I said—”

  “You never know,” Kwazi finished. The sophistication of what was happening, the power of planning that Braxton and the others had done, dawned on him like new knowledge blessed upon the ignorant. The bulkheads were the shipping crates in the simulations, natural cover you’d find aboard any ship built to protect the rest of the vessel in case of a hull breach. The random pair of Taulke soldiers earlier, the M24 that had taken Mario out—unpredictable factors in an otherwise elegant and disturbingly simple equation to take Tony Taulke’s flagship. It was impressive, not to mention frightening as hell, when Kwazi realized just how unprepared he’d been for combat.

  “Shraz,” Braxton said. The leader of Charlie Squad turned. “Throw one past the catcher.”

  The man smiled, nodded.

  “What does that mean?” Kwazi asked. Not knowing what to expect next, he felt exposed. Despite Braxton’s attempts to keep him to the rear of the action and alive, it was almost like he didn’t really care if Kwazi survived or not. In point of fact, it was really starting to piss Kwazi off.

  Ignoring him, Braxton engaged comms and said, “Engineering, would you be so kind as to override the Queen Bee’s door? And reengage gravity in twenty seconds, ship norm. From my mark. Mark.”

  Kwazi recognized it as a flash grenade, perfectly spherical. Shraz eyeballed the angle, then arced the grenade overhead. It ricocheted off a far wall, but redirected without gravity, bouncing off a second wall before exploding. There were screams from the team defending the entrance to the VIP quarters.

  The door to the quarters slid open, and Shraz threw a second grenade at the deck halfway between their position and the VIP quarters. It bounced, its momentum carrying it forward, then careened at a thirty-degree angle into the room. Its burst was bright and severe, and more screams followed.

  Kwazi felt an elbow in his ribs, then the pull in his gut of gravity reengaging.

  “You first,” Braxton said. “We’ll be right behind you. Here, take this.” Braxton handed him the M24. “It’ll play well on the ’net. Remember: Helena Telemachus is in there. Make it good.”

  Ahead of him, the chaos from the two grenades was subsiding. Human suffering was the only sounds he could hear. The woman who’d killed Amy and the others was in there. Kwazi didn’t care about Cassandra or the SSR or what they thought they could make of him. But he did care about exacting justice for murder.

  Taking the rifle from Braxton, he stood up and strode forward with purpose, ignoring the groaning, flash-burned Taulke soldiers as he passed them. Once inside the room, he found two more defending troops blinking hard, trying to recover. Two women were sprawled on the floor. He raised his rifle at the first one and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  In the aftermath of battle, the sound of an empty rifle was like a rimshot after the stale punchline to a bad joke.

  Braxton walked up beside him, holding up a magazine. “Can’t kill her yet, Jabari. Emphasis on the yet.” He moved past Kwazi and knelt beside Helena Telemachus, who was jabbering about being blind.

  Robbed of his justice, Kwazi took what satisfaction he could find as Braxton jerked Tony Taulke’s mouthpiece to her feet.

  “Jabari?” someone said. The second woman in the room. “Kwazi?”

  He sought for the source of the familiar voice. She was still on the floor. Her color was pale, her face lined in a way that it hadn’t been when he’d last seen her.

  “Milani?” he said, moving to her side. Her arms groped for him, finding a shaky purchase.

  “I’m good, I’m still good, this is so real,” she said. He didn’t understand. “They didn’t break me. You’re alive, and this is so real!”

  “It is real, Milani,” he said as she pressed against his chest. Her arms wrapped around him. “I’m here now.”

  “I forgive you,” she said. “I know why you did what you did.”

  “I—I…”

  “It’s okay,” Milani said. “Even if this isn’t real, it’s okay.”

  Kwazi looked up to find Braxton standing over him, Helena Telemachus in the gravity cuffs he’d been wearing earlier. There were burns around her eyes, like someone had tried to put them out with a burning torch.

  “What’d I tell you?” Braxton said. “Piece of cake.”

  He dragged Telemachus to a wall and engaged the ship’s comm system.

  “Crew and passengers of the Pax Corporatum. Your ship is now forfeit, claimed for Cassandra and the Soldiers of the Solar Revolution. Your Engineering section is ours. Your Queen of All Media is ours. Any further resistance will be met with summary judgment and extreme prejudice. Lay down your arms and present yourselves in the ship’s assembly room. Fail
ure to do so will result in the immediate execution of Helena Telemachus.”

  “You wouldn’t dare kill me,” she said, eyes wide and bloodshot and full of doubt, despite her bravado.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Braxton said. “That man there? I could hand Jabari a butter knife and he’d slit you from naughty bits to gullet.”

  Helena tried to pull away but was held firm by Braxton. “Jabari?” she said, sightless but defiant in the face of capture. “This is your doing?”

  He stood, remembering the line Braxton had taught him to say for the camerabot.

  “The Company is done, Helena. Justice has come home.”

  Chapter 11

  Ruben Qinlao • Darkside, the Moon

  The whir of the scooter sounded weaker, sicker somehow. Being weighed down with supplies and food stuffs was part of it, but Ruben was fairly certain the maintenance bike wouldn’t last much longer. He’d begun to wonder if it was simply his new destiny to only drive antiquated vehicles soon to fail.

  He gathered the bundles from the passenger seat. Protein powders and water, meds from Brackin’s list, and a spare vac-suit for the doctor. All of it had cost SynCorp dollars, and it was only by the grace of Brackin’s syncer they’d been able to make the purchases.

  “I’m keeping track,” Brackin had said the day before. “It’s going on my bill.”

  Ruben mounted the short, sloping entrance from the tunnel to Point Bravo, hands full of Brackin’s grace.

  “Did you see this?” Strunk demanded by way of welcome. The enforcer took the load from Ruben and indicated a screen on the wall with his elbow. They’d made it functional with some skill, luck, and a boost from one of the power conduits in the Roadrunner. Old LUNa City’s castoff tech had become their lifeline.

  “See what?”

  Standing by the screen, Brackin swiped up the volume. Cassandra, the hybrid AI-human, was talking from her throne. On her right hand, the pilloried head of her mother, Elise Kisaan, stood on a pole. It had been days since Cassandra took her life. That fact was evident.