by M. R. Forbes
He went to the safe, noticing the blood stains on the keypad. Lin had died before the khoron tried to guess the access code, likely using his wife and children’s birthdays, his wedding anniversary, and all of the obvious combinations to get in. Of course, Aeron knew better. The same way he knew not to use biometric security because his fingers or hand could be cut off, his eyes could be gouged out. The system had offered four guesses and then locked out. At least, that’s what the khoron had believed because that’s how Aeron had told Kirin it worked.
He had lied. The system wouldn’t respond to any more incorrect guesses, appearing secured. But the correct entry he tapped into it caused it to come back to life. The electromagnets disengaged, the heavy alloy bars retracting and the door swinging open.
There were only three things inside. One was a gun. Special tech. An ion blaster. The second was a data chip. The third, a key—a small, flat rectangle with an encrypted code embedded in it. The Organization’s best-kept secret. Only the head of the Organization knew it existed, and if he didn’t find a replacement before he died, the secret would go with him.
That would be a damn shame, but that was how valuable the secret was.
Aeron grabbed all three, not content to shove the chip and key in his pocket. He unbuttoned and pulled down his pants, and then pulled at a small pocket on his inner thigh - a seamless augment purposely designed to carry these two specific items. He stuck the chip and key into it and pressed it closed.
“Looks like I caught you with your pants down, General.”
Aeron didn’t turn around. He recognized the voice of Judicus Hale without seeing him.
“Hale,” Aeron said. “Did you come to question me?”
“No. The safe is empty. Give me whatever was in it.”
Aeron still held the ion blaster in his other hand. “How do you know I have it?”
“Because I’m not an idiot,” Hale replied. “Give it.”
“Why don’t you kill me and take it?”
“Okay.”
Aeron didn’t need to see Hale in the doorway behind him to know he was about to get shot. He dove sideways, falling behind his desk as the shots hit the metal, denting it but failing to punch through. The khoron realized quickly the furniture was hardened, and Aeron heard Hale rushing forward.
He rolled onto his back, grabbing for the microspear. Hale jumped over the desk, catching an ion blast in his face that melted the flesh clean off, and then landing on the spear as he came down on Aeron’s chest.
Aeron rolled the corpse off him, yanking out the spear and getting back to his feet. How many of the Judici were compromised? He was going to guess most of them, if not all. The Judicus Department was the easiest place for the aliens to hide in plain sight.
He pulled his pants up, rebuttoning them and straightening himself out before rushing for the door. A second Judicus was entering the living room as he came out of the office, and he fired without hesitation, catching the woman in the chest. The ion blast went clean through her body armor, reducing her innards to soup and dropping her.
Aeron ran past her, checking the lift controls. The cab was already dropping, so he turned to the door on his right and slowly pushed it open , looking down into the emergency stairwell. He heard feet coming up. More enemies. It wasn’t going to be easy to get out of here.
He went into the stairwell, turned and ran up them. They hadn’t spotted him yet, but if they slowed down they would be able to hear him and where he was going. He grabbed his Oracle from his coat pocket as he ascended, putting it on and activating it. He placed a comm to the terminal he had tried earlier.
This time, it was dead.
Damn it.
He tried the next. The result was the same. His opposition had caught up to at least two of his operatives. He tried the third.
“Deckard,” the man said.
“Code Twelve,” Aeron said, and then disconnected.
Now all he had to do was stay alive for the next ten minutes until the cavalry arrived.
31
Aeron
For Aeron, staying alive another ten minutes was easier said than done. The race to the rooftop was on, but even once he got there, the Judici at his back would have him cornered, and he’d be fending for himself against who knew how many khoron-infected Judici.
That was the hardest part of the situation. Not the fact that they would find his wife dead in their apartment, the khoron no doubt disappearing before the body ever made it to the morgue. Not the fact that he would soon enough be a wanted man, both for her murder and likely as an accomplice to Chair LaMont’s death. Not even the fact that his sons’ lives were forfeit the moment he shot Kirin to preserve the Organization. No, the hardest part was knowing the people chasing him weren’t in control of themselves. That they would never hunt him on their own, and could only watch as their bodies were taken and used for the task.
And that he had no choice but to kill them before they could kill him.
He continued up the steps, having to climb from the eighteenth floor to the top of the fortieth. It was a long way, and while Aeron had kept himself in good shape despite approaching his fiftieth birthday, he wasn’t a young man anymore.
Meanwhile, the Judici climbing the stairs behind him were driven by khoron, their bodies fed chemical cocktails to allow them to work harder without strain, giving them a massive advantage in overall speed. Aeron’s only advantage was time. He had started nearly ten floors ahead of them, and he heard when they stopped on the eighteenth floor, not realizing he had gone up instead of down. It took them close to thirty seconds to scour his apartment and double-check all possible avenues of descent before accepting he had done the unthinkable.
Once he got to the top, where was he going to go?
Aeron knew where, but they didn’t. It gave him a second slight edge because they didn’t hurry after him with all the fervor they were capable of. They took what was for them a leisurely pace, though for him it meant they were gaining.
He was out of breath by the time he made it to the door leading out onto the rooftop. It was access secured, forcing him to use his embedded ID to open it, which in turn would confirm to the Judici he was there. It was unavoidable. The aggressors were only five floors behind him, which might not offer enough time for him to find cover before they burst out onto the rooftop.
He pushed through the door, checking the time on his Oracle. He was halfway to pick up. He had never been in a real gunfight before, but he had done plenty of simulations as part of his Marine training. He knew how time slowed down when the fighting started. How five minutes seemed to take five hours.
A quick scan of the rooftop left him with limited options for cover. He could swing back to the other side of the stairwell, but that would keep him too close to his pursuers. He could cross to the north toward the water pipes. Or he could head south to the electrical junction.
With the entire Proxima settlement inside domes, the blocks didn’t have HVAC units for heating and cooling. The whole dome was kept at a constant temperature determined by the atmospheric units currently projecting cloudy skies across the thick, transparent shell. Without the projectors, they would be looking at a constant starscape instead of simulated weather patterns during the day.
With District A located at the outer ring of the dome, it meant incredible views of the rocky terrain stretching out to domes three and five, and then twelve further behind that, partially shrouded by an overhang. The river split all of it, the main line of domes intentionally built along or over the river, making use of its constant flow for both added power generation and general supply—the lifeblood of the entire planet.
District A’s location was also going to make pickup tricky. Only a minimal number of vehicles had airspace access inside the dome. The position left the dome arcing downward over Aeron’s head, leaving only thirty meters or so between the rooftop and the shell. His contact had a tight squeeze to reach him and would need to be careful not to collide
with the dome.
It was that consideration that sent him around the stairwell toward the electrical junction on the inner side of the block. There wasn’t enough cover to confuse the Judici anyway, so he might as well give his pickup a better chance of avoiding disaster.
Aeron bolted to the other side of the door, sprinting across the rooftop to a two-meter high cube positioned a third of the distance from the ledge. The cube was access secured, its contents critical to the management of the electricity flowing through the building. It was thinly protected with sheet aluminum, generally untouchable to anyone without access to the door. That was one of the reasons it was on the roof in the first place.
He ducked behind it, crouching low. The cube wouldn’t offer much protection from heavy rounds, but the Judici likely weren’t carrying any. It made more sense for them to be armed with stunners, lest they accidentally damage the precious cargo he had collected downstairs. It was cargo he considered threatening them with, but they would guess correctly that he wouldn’t risk destroying it unless he was confident it would stop them.
He wasn’t.
It took another minute before the Judici moved slowly and cautiously onto the rooftop. Aeron risked peering around the corner of the cube, quickly counting six agents. He held the ion blaster close to his chest.
“General Haeri,” one of them said. “You’re wanted for questioning. Surrender immediately. ”
Aeron didn’t respond to the request. The Judicus made it a second time, the others already advancing toward him, expecting he still wouldn’t react. Aeron checked his Oracle. Two minutes.
Too long.
He backed up slightly, getting the blaster into a shooting position and then swinging around the back of the cube. He started shooting, sending a quick succession of rounds into the midst of the Judici. They evaded the blasts, raising their guns and taking aim. As he had guessed, stun rounds zipped across the distance, flashing blue as they smacked into the power cube with enough force to dent the aluminum.
Aeron kept firing, sweeping the blaster across the rooftops. The misses were leaving spots of cracked concrete across the surface, kicking up dust and powder that spread around the site in a light cloud. The Judici didn’t retreat from the assault. Instead, he doubled down and approached more rapidly.
He had tried to warn them back, taking care not to hit them with lethal shots, but also putting extra effort into scoring hits. He changed tactics, hiding behind the cube and swinging around the other side to shoot. He hit two of the Judici in rapid succession, the ion blasts tearing through their light armor, each time feeling a slight twinge of guilt at the action. But war was coming to Proxima. Check that. War was already here.
He ducked back behind the cube as a pair of stunners nearly hit him. He might be able to stay upright after one strike. Two would knock him out for sure. The rounds punched into the aluminum, already dented from the other shots. One must have gotten through the thin protection, because a moment later a massive shower of sparks shot from it, blowing the cover off the front of the cube and taking out the power to the block. Aeron dove away from the malfunctioning unit, rolling over and coming to his knees facing the ledge. One of the Judici rushed through the sparks, lunging at him.
Aeron let the man hit him and knock him onto the roof, remaining calm as he jabbed the microspear into the Judicus’ neck. A short growl and he became a dead weight on top of Aeron, who rolled the body off and started getting up.
“Don’t move.”
Aeron froze in place. Two of the Judici had caught up to him, and were pointing their guns at him from three meters away. Why didn’t they just shoot him?
A quick glance back answered the question. He was too close to the edge of the roof. If they knocked him out and he fell backward, he and the cargo would fall forty stories to the street. He’d be dead, and the data chip and key would likely wind up crushed.
“Move forward,” one of them said. He didn’t recognize either of them. Were they even with the Judicus Department?
“Not a chance,” he replied. “Shoot me.”
They looked at one another before pausing, making it clear a puppeteer was calling the game from offsite. One of them started toward him.
“Not so fast,” Aeron said, pointing his blaster at them. “It seems we have an impasse. You get too close, and I throw myself from the building.”
“You’ll lose your opportunity.”
“Will I? I might have another trick left up my sleeve. If I let you take me, the loss is definite.”
“Your loss is already definite. We wish to preserve the people here. Especially the Centurions. We have need of them.”
“I bet you do. How did you get here? How did you find us?”
“The information was in Valentine’s mind, and her mind became one with the Collective. From there, the matter was trivial. Did you know there’s an Axon portal on your planet, General? Unfortunately, we can’t access it without the coordinates.”
Aeron stared at the khoron-infected Judicus. If there was an Axon portal here, it had to be on one of the generation ships. Not the Dove, and not the Mir. That left fifteen other ships. Fifteen other possibilities. But why hadn’t they sent an army through it, if they had access? Why send a warship?
Because the planet they had arrived from was too distant and didn’t have enough of the enemy to send. That wasn’t exactly right either. A human must have come through the portal, host to a khoron and transporting other khoron. That’s the only way they could have slipped past unnoticed. But where else had they gotten a human?
Unless the khoron had come from Earth.
Damn it.
The Judicus smiled. “I can smell your fear, General.”
Aeron shifted his focus to the Oracle over his eye. Then he smiled. “Thanks for the chat.”
He hit the roof as a large Law drone shot up from behind the building, its forward cannon opening fire on the pair of Judici. Multiple stun rounds smacked into them, jolting them with enough electricity to knock them to the roof.
“Perfect timing,” Aeron said, getting back to his feet. He hurried over to the fallen, quickly stabbing each of them with the microspear. Every khoron he killed was one less he’d need to fight later.
Then he went to the ledge and climbed onto the back of the drone, hunching down and holding on tight as it spun away from the scene. It streaked across the dome and descended in C-District behind a Reclamation Center. The enemy would know he’d landed there, but they wouldn’t find him. He had lots of friends in low places.
It was the best place for the Organization’s army to hide.
32
Aeron
Not everyone who wound up in a Reclamation Center was there because they were criminals. That wasn’t to say the residents had never done anything wrong. Everyone there was less than a model citizen, and less than a model Centurion. But some of the charges were more severe than the crimes. And some of the sentences were less severe than the charges. Every Centurion who went through the system spent a few years mining asteroids, though the mining rig the convict ended up on was decided by factors no single civilian understood, and transfers were common. There was an established and elaborate system in place. A system Aeron had helped refine during his tenure. A system that helped ensure that when the Hunger came, the Organization would be ready.
The residents in the Centers who needed to know the score knew it. And they stayed quiet about it. Hell, they were chosen in part because of their loyalty and their ability to keep their mouths shut. They didn’t know about the Relyeh and the Axon per se, though they had heard the rumors. But they did know Aeron had enlisted them for a particular purpose, and when he came calling they were to move without question.
That’s why the drone dropped into the split behind the Center. And that’s why Aeron jumped off it and ran to the doorway a few meters away. It opened as he approached, and two men in hooded shirts grabbed his arms and pulled him inside. An entire second squad hurried
out into the alley and quickly began breaking down the machine.
The Organization soldiers led Aeron into the Center’s basement, to a poorly lit room with an old, cracked dental chair in the center.
“Sit, sir,” one of them said, gently pushing him into it. “Liggie’s on her way down.”
“Thank you,” Aeron said.
“Yes, sir.”
Aeron could hear the men talking to one another in the alley and the sound of power tools removing the wings from the drone. They were coming down the stairs when Liggie came around to the front of the chair, smiling at him.
“What’s up, boss?” she said. Short dreadlocks hung along the back of an otherwise bald head, while tattoos ran down the length of both bare, sinewed arms. She wore a fitted white tank tucked into a black skirt that hung down to her feet, scraping along the floor.
Aeron turned his wrist over and laid it out on the arm of the chair. “We’re in Code Twelve,” he replied.
“Shit,” she said. “I better hurry my sweet little ass up.” She grabbed a laser scalpel. “You sure about this?”
“No, but it has to be done.”
“General.” Another soldier came around the table. A Fox clone. Square jaw. Short black hair. Muscled. He wore an Oracle with an opaque black screen over his left eye. “They’re saying on the comms that you killed your wife?”
Aeron’s look caused the Fox to flinch. “She was compromised,” he replied. “I told you. I told all of you. If you have ties, you might need to cut them one day. No excuses. No hesitation.”
Liggie put the scalpel to Aeron’s wrist. He gritted his teeth as it burned through his flesh. There was no time to numb it.
