by Clara Woods
Lenah shook her head. They had only worn white T-shirts and boxers underneath. Definitely nothing to hide access chips to the cell.
She eyed the metal bars, then the suits behind her. “I have an idea.”
Persia followed her gaze. “If I’m right about what I think you’re thinking, then I’m in.” She grinned, then turned with a wince.
Lenah went to help her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Persia muttered. “But I definitely wouldn’t mind the help of one of these suits.”
“Just be quick please,” Doctor Lund called as they left him.
Lenah bent to pick up the helmets and handed one to Persia, showing her the switch.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of interfaces. How did these guys even see us?” Persia blurted as she put on her helmet.
“It’s a little like looking at flight controls in a cockpit,” Lenah told her. “You learn which one to look at in a given moment and which one to ignore.” She put on her own helmet, then went to the suit. “I hope these won’t be too big.”
Neither she nor Persia were very tall, and the guards were definitely taller. Lenah had to take off her shoes to get the suit on, but it fit surprisingly well. It was too big, yes, but it was almost as if the material was trying to cling to her wherever it could.
As she picked up her boots again, she was surprised to find them weighing almost nothing. Actually, she couldn’t really feel it.
The suit’s UI blinked in front of Lenah’s eyes, asking what mode she wanted to use it in. The options were light, medium, fighting, and heavy load.
“I turned on fighting mode,” she told Persia, her voice sounding muffled. Did this thing have speakers?
Scanning the interfaces, she found an audio symbol. There it was: internal and external speakers. She turned both on by letting her vision linger for a second.
“I’m in fighting mode,” she repeated her comment to Persia.
“What?” Persia seemed to yell, but Lenah could barely hear her.
“Look at the audio symbol in the upper right. Turn on your speakers. And your fighting mode is in the menu that pops up.”
While Persia stood still to follow her instructions, Lenah turned to Doctor Lund’s cell. Time to try out her new cyborg strength.
31 Becoming Cyborgs
Lenah fisted her suited hand and drove it toward the wall, putting all her strength into the movement. Metal cracked with a satisfying sound, and her fist left a several-centimeters-deep indent in the sheeting. She tried again and again, and every time the wall gave in further, until the panel was so warped she could easily pull it off.
“First my cell and now a wall. You’re a cyborg, Lenah,” Doctor Lund said.
Lenah grinned under her visor. It did feel amazing. How could Cassius not feel elated all the time? Persia ducked through the hole Lenah had made, and Lenah followed with Doctor Lund. It was dark, but as soon as she thought about it, the room became visible in front of her eyes, bathed in a light that was too bright to be natural. Night vision.
“Wow, we can even see in the dark.” Persia’s voice carried through her speakers. “These suits are neat.”
Lenah didn’t answer. She heard sounds of a fight in the next room and went to check the door, but it was locked, and there was no access panel.
She lifted her fist again when Persia interrupted her. “My turn,” she said, swinging her hammer, and Lenah smiled despite herself as she stepped back to give Persia room.
Lenah got out her knife and stood at the ready as Persia made quick business of the door. With a few well-aimed blows, the mechanism came loose. Light shone in the room beyond, where the fight became visible. Uz and Cassius stood back to back, surrounded by four adversaries who were still standing. All of them were clad in fighting suits. Cassius was bleeding from a gash at his temple. He was trying to confront three and leave Uz with only one. The four moved at the same time, and Cassius intercepted by swinging his metal arm. What usually had a great effect, barely stopped these guys. Without further thought, Lenah burst through the door, followed by Persia.
Lenah picked the one attacking Uz, and unlike what she’d learned in Cassius’s training, she didn’t do her usual dance around him. This time, she wasn’t the weaker target, and she had surprise on her side.
Lenah put all her anger about her father, her sense of urgency, and her indignation about the mages into the blow. Her opponent pulled up his arm in defense to meet her fist, but Lenah figured he would and adjusted her aim in the last moment. He blocked, pulling up his arm at an impossible speed. Lenah wasn’t the only one with better-than-human reactions now.
She gritted her teeth and took a fighting stance after all, then started to dance around him. He attacked next, trying to land a blow to her gut. She evaded, jumped away, and suddenly found herself several meters from the fight. This new strength was taking some time to get used to.
The man followed her with a few controlled steps, launching at her again. Lenah bent and kicked. It hit him hard in the side and he stumbled but didn’t go down. She followed up again, but this time he evaded her kick, then turned away and tried to get closer to her. She let him, figuring she could withstand one blow and planning to use the chance for a counter-hit herself.
His fist smashed into Lenah’s helmet, and the displays in front of her visor blinked and wavered. Everything was turning on and off at the same time. She stumbled, becoming disoriented, and lost sight of her adversary. A fist in the gut finally told her that he was right in front of her. Pain exploded in her already sore middle, and she gasped, trying to stay upright.
She thought quickly to use her talents on him, but he was coming for her, and she put all her effort into breathing and jumping out of the way. Lenah stumbled and landed on her butt, unable to keep her balance when the suit exaggerated her movement.
The man followed up with a jump himself, only, his was more controlled. His weight pressed exactly where her belly already ached. She wiggled under him, but he wouldn’t budge. Instead, he followed up with another blow to her face. Lenah lifted her hand in protection, but he just used his other fist to land his blow. Blinking lights erupted all over her vision again. He definitely knew the weak spots of this armor.
Changing tactics, Lenah grabbed him by his torso and pulled. She used her leg and trapped his thigh next to her. She had practiced this with Cassius’s weight and was surprised how easy it was to pull this man down with the suit on. He seemed surprised too, as she was able to pin his arms under her, then roll over. Her stomach protested at the motion, but she pushed through.
When she was sitting on top of him, she targeted his helmeted face and landed several fast blows. The speed at which she moved was incredible.
He tried to protect himself from her incoming fist, but she changed direction, and when he didn’t follow her movement, she knew that all the blinking displays blinded him. Lenah fumbled for the button on his helmet and pressed. When she delivered a final blow into his face, he stopped moving.
Around her, the sounds of fighting had ebbed. Persia stood in the room, hammer lifted, and two adversaries in front of her on the ground. Cassius had taken care of the last one and was breathing heavily and wiping the blood off his bruised face.
“Are you alright?” Lenah asked him and closed the distance between them.
“Fine,” he said in a clipped voice, then turned away.
Lenah regarded him, taking in his slumped shoulders and wheezing breath. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him this exhausted, not even after confronting Kahoot’s cyborg in the Syrr temple.
She looked around. Six suited men were in various places unconscious on the floor. It was safe to assume that Cassius had managed to knock out three of them.
Uz and Doctor Lund caught her attention, approaching the door behind the body scanner. It was made of thick material and reminded her of a spaceship hatch.
Persia followed her eyes. “That door looks like the real deal. I bet we finally f
ound it.”
Lenah nodded and stepped closer. As Doctor Lund touched the door, it gave a beep of denial, and a panel lit up in its center. Lenah fumbled into her suit to get out the chip card she’d taken from her father. She winked it over the panel and was rewarded by the mechanical sounds of an opening hatch. The door swung upward.
What lay beyond reminded Lenah even more of a spaceship. It was a small chamber, empty but for blinking panels on the wall and an identical hatch door at its opposite side.
“Please step into the decontamination chamber,” a friendly AI voice said.
“What will you do to us? Where does this lead?” Doctor Lund addressed the AI. He sounded nervous, and Lenah couldn’t blame him. After having to fight all these guards, she was nervous about what else the place had in store for them.
“Please step into the decontamination chamber,” the AI repeated.
“Is the farm on the other side of the hatch?” Lenah asked.
“Command not recognized. Please step into the decontamination chamber,” it repeated stoically.
Great, a non-intelligent AI.
“For stars sake, I’ll do it,” Lenah said and walked into the room. Everyone else followed suit.
“We’re not letting you do this alone,” Uz said.
“You’re the only one with an access card.” Persia shrugged. Cassius just glowered wordlessly.
The hatch closed, locking them in the small chamber.
“Decontamination in three…two…one,” the AI announced. Lenah looked around, unsure what was about to happen, when the room was suddenly bathed in a sickly green light. For a moment, her stomach and every other organ and blood vessel in her body felt as if it were being turned upside down. She was going to throw up. The sensation vanished as quickly as it had come, and the light restored to its normal white color. She swallowed hard.
“Atmospheric adjustment in three…two…one,” the AI said, unaware of the discomfort of its decontaminated subjects.
“What’s atmospheric—?” Persia asked, but her voice cut off as the room and their bodies suddenly seemed to lose weight. Instinctively, Lenah knew that they were now in a zone of reduced gravity.
“Thank you,” the AI announced in its robotic, cheerful tone as the hatch in front of them pulled open, engulfing them in the dark-purple light of the room beyond.
Behind Lenah, Cassius stepped forward to overtake her in the front row. He had his weapons lifted and head turned to listen into the room. Lenah pulled out her knife as she walked out of the decontamination chamber behind him.
The room was empty, except for a large tree that dominated a wide and tall space. Lenah blinked several times to confirm what she saw. It was a tree.
Next to her, Uz took in a sharp breath. Lenah looked over and saw the Cassidian staring open-mouthed and with wide eyes toward the tree.
Doctor Lund joined her. “Uz, what is it?”
Uz didn’t react, just kept staring. Her hand went up to the scars on her forehead, and she seemed almost surprised not to find her gyrums there. Lenah looked back at the tree, taking in its sheer size and detail for the first time. It was bathed in purple light, but Lenah could see that the tree, both its bark and leaves, were of an even deeper purple. At the same time, they shimmered in a pearly hue. Was that one of those sacred Cascra trees? Lenah looked back and forth between Uz and the tree and considered her suspicion confirmed. She inspected the tree again, marveling at its magnificence.
The branches started only halfway up the trunk, a good seven or so meters above the ground. They were wide and quickly became covered in a mass of large, blade-shaped leaves, each growing in a circle around the thinner branches. A red fruit was growing at the very tip of some. It was beautiful and eerie, but a tree after all. Just—what was it doing here?
Behind the tree stood a small production line. A conveyor system was slowly moving something—she couldn’t see what from this distance but imagined warp drives—taking it through various stations behind panels. At the far-right side, silvery boxes were neatly stacked up. Lenah had seen those before. Each would hold several hundred of the small hand-sized disks that were the warp drives.
“Rumors have it that Cassidia is covered in vast forests of purple trees. Trees no creature but those native to the planet are allowed. They are set far away from the public meeting places where Cassidians permit the very rare visits of off-worlders,” Cassius said slowly. He wasn’t looking at the tree but instead studying Uz’s face. Lenah followed his gaze. Uz still looked stunned as she gazed upon the tree, incredulity written all over her face. She didn’t deny Cassius’s words.
“Is this a tree from Cassidia, Uz?” Cassius asked her, his deep and raspy voice sounding softer than Lenah had ever heard him. Uz licked her lips, then slowly nodded.
“This is…” her voice broke up, “…heresy.”
“I take it it’s not just a decorative tree, given that someone went to great lengths to put it here?” Persia asked from behind.
Lenah shot her a silencing look. Whatever was going on with Uz, she was sure sarcasm wouldn’t be appreciated right now.
32 Rare Trees
“It’s not just a tree,” Uz said almost mechanically as if Persia’s irony hadn’t reached her. She slowly walked forward, taking careful steps toward the trunk. Lenah and Cassius followed, worried that security measures were in place.
Doctor Lund took the rear, murmuring to himself. “This place is big,” he said twice. “And we only have the few backpacks of explosives.”
Uz turned so suddenly, Cassius almost walked into her. He stopped and lifted his weapon, looking around. Lenah searched too but couldn’t find anything that had changed in the last few seconds.
“There’s no way you’re blowing up that tree,” Uz growled at Doctor Lund, pointing a long finger at him. “No way. They’re the most important living entity in the universe and they belong to the home world only.”
Lenah found Cassius’s eyes as he arched a questioning eyebrow. Remembering Uz’s reaction when Lenah had asked about the Cascra logs on Neeth Station, Lenah thought she understood what was going on. “I think the Cascra trees are more than just a big forest on Cassidia. They are extremely important in Cassidian culture and have something to do with the vertex.” She explained.
“They’re untouchable,” Uz whispered. Then she shook her head, but at least she was no longer staring daggers toward Doctor Lund.
“Do you know what an entire tree is doing here?” Lenah asked her, hoping that turning the conversation away from Cassidia itself would make Uz speak.
Uz shook her head, then looked up again and nodded. But she didn’t speak.
“Uz, we’re your friends. We won’t share with anyone what you tell us.”
“But you’re here to destroy it,” Uz said, still looking up into the treetop. Lenah followed her gaze and realized that the red fruits on top looked like they were pulsing with colorful energy. Was that really a fruit? Or was that the magic Uz had been talking about?
“Are you sure we have to destroy the tree?” Lenah asked softly.
“How could this person do this? Bring a Cascra tree off-world. And for what? For implementing this stupid technology. Technology, of all things.” Uz shivered.
Lenah had never seen Uz—the most tech-friendly person she knew—have such a mainstream Cassidian opinion. Her gyrums had even been cut off because of her love of technology. It all added to Lenah’s confusion.
“Implementing the mage farm?” Lenah said, instead of asking any of the other pressing questions she felt bubbling up inside of her. At least, it sounded like a clue to what was going on here.
Uz looked at Lenah. Their gazes met for several long moments before Uz broke the contact. Her shoulders slumped, and she stared lovingly at the tree trunk. “You can’t tell anyone ever what I’m about to tell you. Not to non-Cassidian, and, especially, not to another Cassidian. It’s one of the most closely guarded secrets of the galaxy.”
Everyon
e nodded, but Uz didn’t even look at them. Nonetheless, she continued. “The Cascra tree, its fruits specifically, serves as an amplifier—a catalyst—to the vertex. It lets us use more warp magic than we actually possess. In a way, it stabilizes the magic, makes it tangible to our vertex sense. The fruit only works as long as it is connected to its mother tree. Once plucked, it will lose power and just be a random crystal with no special use. They are sacred. And what’s worse, this tree was taken from Cassidia. For sure without the necessary ritual performed by the High Priest.”
“Are you saying that this tree was stolen from Cassidia?” Lenah asked.
“It has to be. There is no other possible explanation.” Uz nodded.
“But for what purpose? Stabilizing what?”
“I believe it must be serving a crucial purpose in extracting the warp essence from the mages and storing it on the drives. Destroy the tree and you destroy the farm.” Uz sounded really miserable as she said that.
Lenah nodded. She still didn’t understand most of what was going on here, but that general notion made sense.
“And why the purple light?” Persia asked.
Uz’s shoulders drooped. “It feels like home here. The light, the slightly lower gravity…”
“They’re mimicking the tree’s natural conditions,” Cassius concluded.
“I hate to say anything, but we have less than an hour,” Doctor Lund said, putting down his backpack and starting to unpack its content.
“Don’t you understand what I just said?” Uz shouted. “We can’t damage that tree.”
Lenah thought about that, but if this was the secret to how the magic got stored on the warp drives, then there was no other way. “Uz, the tree is already lost to your people. If this is such a closely guarded secret, that’s another reason to destroy it.”
“No.”
“Uz, think about it.”
“No.”
“We don’t have time for such childish arguments,” Doctor Lund said matter-of-factly, looking up from the explosives on the floor.
Uz turned. “You think this is childish? What would you do if someone wanted to blow up every single theory USO had ever proven to be scientific?” She breathed hard. “Would you call that childish too?”
