Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “I really should get going,” he said, walking away. “Nice talking with you, maybe I’ll see you again later, or something.”

  Back off, come up with a plan that wouldn’t fail, then resume where they left off. Yes that was going to be his plan, he was convinced she wouldn’t mind the delay, no matter how long it took, after all she approached him, and therefore she found him sexually interesting. Oh gods . . . he thought. She found me sexually interesting . . . that means the idea her bedding me crossed her mind . . . oh gods, gods please help me!

  Dienei stood on a balcony overlooking the Veromacon night time skyline and its bright lights. High winds blew through his brown hair, then later the hair of Byikanea as she stood behind gazing at a data pad with Armuzei looking onward at it.

  “I told you it was amazing,” Dienei said. “The gravity is only five percent less than here as well, it’s fantastic.”

  “It’s tempting, it really is,” she said.

  Dienei turned away from the view of the city, and pointed toward a satellite picture of a large island on Eiri, being displayed on her data pad. “This island here? The company plans to give me the whole thing if the council changes their stance. I can get you two similar deals as well if you make it happen.”

  “So if I were to demand, say . . .” Byikanea’s finger slid across the touch screen, zooming into a lush green clearing on the world in question, “. . . this valley here?”

  “All yours, no questions asked, they’ll even build what you want there.”

  “I don’t know, “Armuzei said. “I have a lot of good things here as is.”

  “It’s about the future,” Byikanea said. “We live here on Aervounis with its overpopulated cities. But what about when we retire? Do you really want to live on such a cramped world? We gave up our homes to live here and would have to find a new one when we leave the council.”

  “And most importantly,” Dienei said. “The humans, should they change their mind will need a new world as the population caps on most of our inner world colonies will reach their limits within a few centuries.”

  “And I for one would rather we not share too many worlds with humans,” Armuzei said with a grumble.

  “Exactly, if they join, we keep them in their system, Lejorania and Eiri for a few generations, breed out the chaotic nature of their kind.” Dienei faced the two council members. “So we got a deal?”

  “The other three will push to keep this planet free of cities.”

  “Then delay it, until after the elections,” Dienei said. “Gonvilei is stepping down; whoever replaces him might have a different plan in mind for Eiri.”

  Chapter Eight

  Silver Raven, Rasi, Barnard’s Star system

  The arcology that housed Courelia city appeared in the distance as the Silver Raven got closer. The glow from the Silver Raven’s engines dimmed slightly, reducing its speed as it began to circle around the massive structure being buried by the relentless blizzard. Eupiar typed a series of commands across her holo keyboard, while data from the arcology transmitted to her laptop.

  “According to the knowledge network, the whole place is locked down,” she said. “No one gets in or out due to the outbreak.”

  “Outbreak?” Jazz asked.

  A video playback of a security camera appeared in a holo window, she pushed the screen toward Jazz, Destiny, Chloe, and Vaishea to watch. In the projection he saw the wraith become a dangerous threat to the people within the streets of the city. There was nothing but chaos. Radiance races got jumped and mauled to death, only to mutate and rise, joining the ranks of the wraith. The wraith with cybernetics utilized powers that were all too familiar to Jazz and Chloe. Psionically powered beams that vaporized fleeing civilians, sliced skyscrapers in half with one swoop and picked off fleeing transports.

  There was one piece of footage that showed some promise. The slums district which became a safe haven for those that managed to flee from the insanity, while armed Radiance races stood on guard with their rifles aimed toward the elevators that connected the slums to the rest of the city.

  Jazz’s face cringed. “Fuck.”

  “The wraith,” Vaishea said.

  “You know what’s up?” Destiny asked them.

  “Vaishea and I came across a lab run by the Celestial Order,” he said. “They stored up refugees that fled Earth during the invasion to do some kinda of whack ass tests on them.” He pointed to the projection of a wraith as the video play back repeated its gritty footage. “The result was those fuckers.”

  Chloe leaned in closer to look at the wraith and its destructive force, namely the augmented ones.

  “Look familiar?” Jazz asked her.

  “Yeah . . .” she said and winced. “That Hashmedai commander on the command ship.”

  “Bingo,” Jazz said. “That gem he had turned him into one of those things, and now the order must have figured out a way to mimic it and turn other people into them.”

  “So the humans you mentioned?”

  “They were next up to be tested on,” Jazz said. “But we got them out; I just don’t know if they made it to safety. The Whisper and exiles we found would know.”

  “I’m still a little curious as to why the two of you look the same?” Destiny asked both Vaishea and Chloe.

  “Yea, what’s up with that?” Eupiar was curious as well.

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now . . .” Chloe said. “At least until we find the Whisper, they hold the real answers.”

  The Silver Raven’s proximity warming alarm sounded. Jazz turned around and saw multiple small red dots populate its sensor scan screen.

  “Psionic teleportation . . .” Veloshira said to him. “They found us.”

  Jazz relayed Veloshira’s announcement to the rest of the English-speaking group. “We need to get inside now!” Chloe said, once again barking orders like she owned the place.

  “Eupiar, any ideas?” Jazz asked her.

  “I should still have access to the city’s network,” Eupiar said, while keeping her eyes on the three holo windows in front of her. “If we can get closer my laptop can get a stable link.”

  “There, that looks like an opening,” Jazz said, pointing to what appeared to be a small doorway on the side of the arcology.

  “Let’s do it,” Chloe said as she gazed at Jazz’s discovery.

  Eupiar switched the view of one of her holo screens to a zoomed in view of the doorway Jazz saw. More data populated the screen as she used her laptop to learn more about the doorway. “Looks like an airlock,” she said. “It’s locked down like the rest of the place, but I should be able to override it.”

  “Have Vel get us close to drop us off.”

  Jazz nodded to Chloe and Vaishea then retreated back down to the cargo hold of the ship. He saw his assassin attire and plasma katana resting on the floor in the lounge as they passed through it. It was tempting to get back in it since it would provide better protection than the environment suits he and Vaishea wore. But time was of the essence. Slipping out of the environment suit and into his trench coat armor would take too much time, time they couldn’t afford to waste as the psionics outside began their attacks against the Silver Raven once again. Besides he was still going to need the suit outside Silver Raven and they weren’t going have enough time to latch into the airlock. They were going to have to leap out of the entrance to gain access to the airlock.

  The cargo bay doors lowered while all three stood shoulder to shoulder; suited up once again to enter the hostile and cold environment and armed with their looted Radiance magnetic rifles. The Silver Raven hovered two meters away from a small platform that was located outside of the airlock on the upper section of the arcology. Jazz moved forward first, looking down he saw just how massive of a drop there was should they fail to make the jump. Simply put, he couldn’t see the surface below them, just snow slowly falling into a dark void.

  Jazz leaped across first, the low gravity of the planet helped him glide
across much like he leaped from rooftop to rooftop during his violent encounter with the order not long ago. His feet touched down on the raised platform, the impact sending small plumes of snow upward. He saw Destiny wave toward him from the forward windshield of the Silver Raven.

  Chloe leaped across second, her impact was slightly harder due to the combat armor she wore. Vaishea was up next and Jazz could tell she was a little hesitant at first as she looked down at the wide gap like he did while she came toward it. Jazz moved forward with his arms opened, making an ‘I’ll catch you’ gesture. She smiled, then leaped across, landing in his arms.

  A thumbs up aimed up toward the Silver Raven and its cargo bay doors shut as it returned to the skies where an angry swarm of psionics were in the process of flying down toward it. Jazz hoped that the Silver Raven was deemed a bigger threat to them, all it would take at this point was one telekinetic push, and all three of them would be finished.

  “Eupiar,” Jazz said to her as he stood in front of the sealed shut airlock door.

  “I’m in, give me a sec,” she said.

  He locked back and saw the shields of the Silver Raven flicker as psionic plasma hit it from all sides. He didn’t see any signs of the psionics coming toward them, then again with all the snow and darkness, one could be lurking around the corner. The door needed to open yesterday. Three smaller plasma balls hit the platform, missing his feet by inches. It triggered all three of them to raise their rifles in preparation for what might come next. A firefight on a small rail less platform.

  Come on, come on come on!

  He heard the sound of gears moving and the hissing noise of sliding doors starting to open. The next sounds that followed were plasma balls hitting the walls next to them, melting the surface of it instantly. Finally, the airlock doors opened, and without a second thought, the three back pedaled inside as the doors slid shut.

  The three exited the airlock and progressed through a narrow corridor, its lights were off and walls painted with blood and burn marks. Below them were the bodies of fleeing people who didn’t convert to wraith. Their bodies were extremely mangled, some were missing body parts, and others showed signs of being partly vaporized. It was clear to Jazz at that point the wraith only possesses those whose bodies were still intact, or so he hoped. If he was wrong, the three of them were going to have a serious challenge on their hands.

  The corridor trek ended and the streets of Courelia city appeared. It was a lot different from how Jazz had remembered. The artificial sunlight and holographic skies above flicked on and off, fires raged in the downtown core with no signs of any effort to deal with it. More bodies littered the streets as they walked through a razed neighborhood, like the ones in the corridor earlier; their corpses were sliced in half at the waist. The rampaging wraith showed no mercy to anyone, even children and the elderly were torn into chunky meaty pieces.

  Shrieks of the wraith echoed in the background, a reminder to the three that they were prone to an attack at any moment. Their hands firmly held on to their rifles as they kept them aimed forward. Holographic signs, the ones that still worked, displayed emergency alert messages in the Radiance language. They double-checked a directory listing sometime later, verifying that they were indeed heading toward an entrance that would lead them toward the slums district.

  The Radiance Temple Jazz first encountered came into view a few minutes later, it was a sign they were getting close. As he recalled, he and Destiny only traveled a few blocks after their escape before he fell down and was recovered by Vaishea.

  “Jesus . . . this is fuckin’ nuts,” Jazz said, finally breaking the sixteen-minute silence.

  “This was once a fantastic achievement of Radiance colonization . . .” Vaishea said eying the damage done to the temple; its ceiling had collapsed.

  Vaishea ended up leading them the remainder of the way to their destination; she was of course the only one of the three that was familiar with the streets here in this particular section. The ally where Jazz and Vaishea fell down to came into view sometime later.

  Jazz looked up at the balcony where Jainuzei had tossed them off, flames roared out from that suite. “Vaishea, remember that time you tried to kill me?” Jazz said to her half joking.

  “Who isn’t trying to kill you?” Chloe asked.

  “Shi’ . . . now that you mention it,” he said, while thinking about what she said. “I think both of ya’ll tried to pop me.”

  “Here,” Vaishea said, pointing toward the elevator at the end of the alley. They ran toward it, while conducting a brief check of the area around it. No wraiths sighted. Vaishea interacted with the elevators control terminal. “This is it.”

  Its doors swung open, damaged cabling hung down from the elevator’s ceiling while its lights struggled to stay on. They entered and as its doors slid shut, they noticed bloody hand prints on its surface. Jazz winced as it the elevator descended toward the slums district slower than it should, there were clear signs it was badly damaged judging but the uneasy noises it made.

  A computer voice said something but it was garbled, neither Chloe nor Vaishea understood what it was trying to say. Another item to add to Jazz’s growing list of concerns.

  “This is, reassuring,” Chloe said.

  “It’s like a fucking horror movie,” Jazz said.

  She laughed at him then asked. “Scared are we, Johnson?”

  Jazz said nothing in reply. The truth was, he wasn’t scared. He was petrified. Not just at what he’d seen since entering the city, but at the fact that this was power the Celestial Order had access to, and clearly had plans to unleash it against their enemies. With power like this, the empire, union, Earth . . . the whole goddamn galaxy could crumble inside a few years. If the order wasn’t careful they too could suffer and die at the hands of these things. Hell, that could very well be happening.

  The elevator arrived at last. Its doors opened and give them access to the darkened slums area. “After you,” Chloe said to Jazz, gesturing him to step through first.

  “Fuck that! I saw the second Alien movie; black guy dies first.” He grinned directly at Chloe and added. “After you, Ripley.”

  They exited the elevator, stepping foot into a new eerie setting, one with fewer butchered bodies. Chloe led the way through rundown buildings and cancelled city expansion projects. After a few minutes they encountered a blockade of Radiance exiles that had not been turned into the wraith. Like in the video playback Eupiar showed them, many of them held weapons, weapons locked onto the three as they got close.

  One of them shouted words to them in the Radiance language, Chloe said, then later Vaishea. An exchange between them went on back and forth; neither of them lowered their rifles.

  “What do they want?” Jazz asked Chloe.

  “The usual,” she said. “He wants to know who we are and where we came from.”

  Vaishea stepped forward to add to the conversation, Chloe pushed her back, and muttered a few words that sounded pretty negative toward Vaishea. Vaishea wasn’t done however, shoving Chloe back she presented the data she had acquired from the now dead Whisper sleeper agent they found in the snow. After more chatter, the Radiance exiles waved them in.

  “I have a feeling I’m not going to like this Heurol person,” Chloe said to Jazz.

  The three arrived at the club that posed as a safe house for the Whisper. During their journey there, they saw an uncountable number of displaced people. Some of them were clearly from up above as they were better dressed, while others were clearly from the slums. Radiance and Radiance exiles helping each other, it was an interesting sight, too bad it took a disaster like this to get the two groups to come together.

  Inside the once loud and booming club were the humans rescued from the labs. Many of them rested on the floors, wrapped up in dirty blankets kindly provided to them by the Whisper. They all looked terrified, Jazz was surprised that none of them of them had straight up lost it. From their point of view they fled an Earth being invaded
by the Hashmedai Empire, only to awake in some strange lab then to be taken here. Worst part of it all? A handful of the people with them became wraiths thanks to the orders experiments, wraith that they were seeking refuge from.

  “They made it. Good,” Jazz said as the three walked past.

  “You weren’t kidding . . .” Chloe said. “These folks look like they came right out of 2018.”

  “Just wished we got there sooner. Sadly this ain’t everyone, order got to a bunch before we got there.”

  They arrived at last inside the Whisper compound underneath the club. Heurol turned around to face them as they stepped off the elevator and removed their helmets in the process.

  “You humans and your entrances . . .” Heurol said to them.

  “I’m not human,” Chloe said. “At least not according to this.” She pulled out a data crystal from a side storage compartment of her armor, tossing it toward Heurol.

  Jazz pondered what she meant by that statement, while Heurol examined both Chloe and Vaishea’s appearance. “Oh wait . . .” Heurol said as his grip around the data crystal tightened.

  “Blood work was done to me,” Chloe said to him. “It turns out I have nano machines in my blood, masking the fact I’m Linl.”

  “Typical set up for sleeper Whisper agents,” Heurol said.

  “A man named Fiesei insisted I was a sleeper agent, and that I was also his wife Vaish. I’m starting to believe it true as part of her memories got transferred to my brain.”

  “Hold up,” Jazz said. “Then—”

  She raised her finger and cocked it toward Vaishea. “This is the real Major Chloe Vaughan if I’m correct . . .”

  Vaishea took several steps backward; her hands covered her face, in a futile attempt at holding back the emotion inside her. “I assure you I am who I am,” she said.