by James McEwan
“So, did you really put a bomb in his chest?” Freya wanted to know.
Thad smiled, “Nope. We did not want to chance Riffrost trying to remove a bomb and accidently setting it off, so Eve created a convincing scar.”
The rest of the trip to Nova Texas was uneventful. Riffrost kept to himself and did as he was told while the twins took the time to learn about the planet they were headed for. “Pearl darling, would you put something together for us on Nova Texas? Oh, and keep it simple, I don’t care how many miles around it is, just the important facts please,” Freya asked Pearl.
“Just a minute while I compile the facts for you,” was the answer she received.
Freya turned to Fiona, “You okay, you look a little sick?”
“I have not been feeling well lately,” she said as she looked around to make sure they were alone. “I’m late.”
“What? Are you sure?” Freya was surprised and excited at the same time.
“I’m sure, I’m pregnant Freya!” She said as she took her sister’s hands.
“Wow, that’s awesome! Have you told Thad yet?”
“No, I’m not sure now is the right time,” she replied
“How far along are you?” Freya asked.
“Three weeks,” Fiona seemed depressed by the news.
“Oh honey, it will be okay. We will finish this business with Thad, then when can go back, and have a baby, or should I say make babies, after all, you are now ahead of me. I guess I need to go hunt that man of ours down and make him do his duty!” The sisters laughed and hugged.
Pearl was ready with the presentation, “Nova-Texas is the Bread Basket of the Federation. Alone among the highly industrialized worlds of the Rep-Com, the Nova Texas economy is almost wholly based on agriculture. The main products produced on Nova Texas are beef and dairy products.
Nova-Texas is a huge, low-density planet with a surface area approximately three times that of Earth Prime. Due to its low density, the terraformers were able to adjust its surface gravity to .98 of Earth Standard. Tectonically stable, it is a world of vast plains surrounded by low eroded mountains. Aside from a few large freshwater lakes, there is only one sizable body of water, the Belt Sea that cuts the landmass of the planet into two unequal hemispheres, the Great Northland and the Southern Farms.
The southern continent has been set aside for the raising of crops. Across the endless, grassy, plains of the northern continent roam vast herds of genetically modified cattle called Beaves, that range on the grasslands every day. The cattle keep the grass down, and much of the manure that is produced is sold throughout the Federation, where it is known as one of the best organic fertilizers available anywhere.
Life on Nova-Texas is complicated by the planet’s extremely slow rotation. Each full day on Nova-Texas is equivalent to 1.6 earth years. On the dayside of the planet, the great plains are covered with thick, lush grass; the hills and low mountains are covered with thick forests. The rivers run deep, full of marine life, as they wind their way across the plains to the great Belt Sea.
The night side of the planet is a frozen Hell of snow and ice. The great rivers freeze solid. Pressure from the expanding ice creates great mounds of broken ice along the pressure ridges. The frozen rivers gouge up the river bottom and pile it along the banks forming natural levees. Even the great Belt Sea freezes over. All life migrates or goes dormant as the night winter falls on the land.
In the twilight areas between light and dark, prowl the Garoos, Saber Tooth Dire Wolves, and the great Snow Yetis; indigenous life forms who have adapted well to the presence of humans and their tasty Beaves. The cycle of life on Nova Texas is inexorably bound to the long hot days and frozen nights.
The only permanently located settlement on the planet is the great underground mining city of Percival, located beneath the slopes of Red Star Mountain near the planet’s North Pole.” Pearl projected a 3-D hologram of the planet for them to see. “Nova Texas has several major cities built on special rails that encompass the planet. They are always moving, following the sun. ”
Fiona interrupted Pearl with her comment, “I would hate to be the guy who had to pick up all that poo.”
Pearl stopped for a second then continued, “The process is mostly automated with human controllers. Most people who live on Nova Texas do not do manual work. Due to the advanced automation, there are relatively few human jobs there. Most those who do work there are employed by some of the corporation headquarters located there for tax reasons, like the Red Star mining corporation for example.” The 3D model was zooming over the surface of the planet showing cites on the rails, and cows, lots of cows. “Because the cities are always in the sun many older folks have retired here.”
Thad walked into the room, “Yep it is the new Florida, some of the cities like Sunrise, which is the first city in the line of cities, is almost entirely retirees. That is, aside from the crews who smooth the roadbed and lay the tracks the cities roll on.”
Freya smiled to hear his voice, “I guess they call it Sunrise because it is near the sunrise all the time?”
Pearl answered, “That is correct, and the last city is called,”
Fiona spoke, “Let me guess, Sunset?”
“Twilight because it is so close to the sunset it is always twilight there,” Pearl spoke with a bit of snip in her voice.
Freya leaned into Thad, “I’m finding Pearl a little creepy to listen to, and she is a little bitchy if you ask me.”
“I heard that Freya,” Pearl said.
“Sorry, but it is true,” she said.
“I will have you know it is a byproduct of the former owner of the AI brain I am now occupying. There were many, let’s call them negative connections that will take a while to reprogram, so I am sorry if I come across as you say, bitchy. I am working on it, so deal with it!” Pearl said as she snapped off the hologram.
“See what I mean?” Freya said.
“Yeah, I do, but she did say she was working on it. For now, I think you should just ask Eve for anything else and leave Pearl to fix those little quirks,” Thad said.
They arrived in New Dallas at one a.m. local time, not that it mattered much. It was not as if they had the cover of darkness to hide. However, the ship they had acquired from Mr. Riffrost had a stealth cloak so they used it to mask their approach to the city. On board, Thad was suiting up in his body armor. This was the same suit he had modified, with a few gadgets courtesy of Doc Hammer. Freya was helping him get into the armor. It was the first time he had worn it since the fight with the Ralnai.
Freya was trying to zip up the back for him, “Damn it, I think you have put on a few pounds since you last wore this thing.”
“You think it’s all that fine Untor cooking! That’s what has done it to me.” Thad replied.
She slapped his ass, “And I thought it was just because so were so happily married.”
He spun around, grabbed her by the waist, and pulled her close, “I am very happily married.” He kissed her deeply, “But Untor food is awfully fatting.”
“You ass,” she laughed then kissed him again. “Maybe if you lay down on the floor, I can step on you and get the zipper up.”
Thad remembered something about the suit, “Wait,” he pushed a button on the suit’s arms control. The suit relaxed enough that she was able to zip it up. Then he pushed the button and it became skintight again.
“Cool, I could use underwear like that,” Freya, said as she pressed her hands to her stomach.
“You are silly. You are perfect the way you are, like a goddess, if you ask me.” Thad hugged and kissed her again.
“Ah, men are so easy to please.” Freya returned his kisses.
Fiona entered the room, “Hey! There better be some of those for me, before you run off to storm the castle.”
Thad pulled Fiona close, hugged, and kissed her, “I always have enough for both my goddesses.”
They laughed at him. “What?” He asked standing there, hands up in the air.
He was ready, “Okay, here is the plan. You will drop me off on the roof and I will infiltrate the building. I will get as much Intel as I can, and I will call you to come pick me up, okay?”
Eve joined them, handing him a chip, “Here, this will help. Just plug it into any network computer and I will be able to get in remotely.”
Thad took the chip, “Thanks,” he hugged her.
“You come back to us in one piece! You get it Mr.?” Fiona said with hands on her hips.
“One piece, check!” Thad said. He kissed both of his wives again then kissed Eve on the check. “Wish me luck.”
Eve pulled the ship into a hover above the roof. The airlock door opened and Thad jumped out. Landing cat-like on the roof, he took a quick look around and found his entry point at a door, which led to the roof. It was locked, but that was not a problem. He pressed the button on his arms control pad. There was a split second of disorientation as everything went fuzzy then black then back into focus, although to him everything looked translucent, with a slight double image. To anyone watching he looked as if he had faded away leaving nothing, but a very faint ghost image. He walked forward and passed right through the door. He felt some amount of drag and the familiar feeling of walking through a wall of Jello.
On the other side, he pushed the button and again things went fuzzy and black before back to normal. So far so good, it was time to press on. He made his way down the stairs to the floor where the bomb had gone off. Since then, the floor had been repaired and remodeled.
He looked around for a few minutes until he found Thorne’s office. As expected, it was locked and by the looks of it, quite a tight security system was in place. No problem, Thad activated the phase device and walked through the wall. Once inside he was able to plug in Eve’s chip, “Eve you there?”
He heard her voice in his head courtesy of the communications chip, “I’m here honey.”
“You’re in. Do what you do best, and if you can manage it I would like access to this terminal please,” he said.
“No problem, just give me a second, their security is pretty good, but like most AI’s or security programs or humans, for that matter, if you attack another part of the system they all go running to stop the intrusion and forget about the back door.”
“So I take it you are hitting their system somewhere else then?” He sat down in the chair making a mental note of the brand of chair. Trust Thorne to have the best. It was a very comfortable chair.
“Oh yes, as soon as you jumped out I started a brute force attack on their mainframe. I made it look like some poorly written spy program was trying to hack them. They fell for it, like a mouse to cheese on the trap.” He smiled even though she could not see him. “There you go Hon, you have full access now. Wow! This guy Thorne, is one very bad man, take a look at this file.”
On screen, a file named Project Phanes opened up for him to read. This was it the file he came for, it had everything about the program that created him. These were the people who made him a killer. As he read, he became more and more horrified at what he was reading. The information in the file revealed he had no mother or father just donated genetic material. Born a test tube baby, genetically engineered and grown in a lab, trained from birth to be the perfect weapon. He was the sixth child of one hundred in his batch. He was horrified to see only twenty-five of the original one hundred lived to adulthood. The other seventy-five were killed in training, some in accidents, others killed by the hands of their brothers or sisters.
It was then that Thad remembered his dream about killing number seven. It finally made sense to him. All these things were terrible but the one thing that made his blood run cold were the notes about children that failed any part of the training. The notes stated that the children had been terminated and their bodies burned.
He read his own mission reports and it was so far from the man he had become over the last three years, he felt sick. Seeing the pictures of the dead, whose lives he ended, triggered the memories. Now he knew who the faces were haunting his nightmares. They were his victims.
It was not that he had killed people which made him ill, but that he was made, assembled, like a machine, to kill with no other purpose, just to be a mindless assassin. This made him want to throw up, but then he found the file with the children’s faces on them. He remembered this was the mission that made him question, the mission he refused, the reason he went on the run. He remembered not wanting to kill innocent children for someone else’s political gain.
“Eve, make sure you upload all of this, people need to know the truth. They need to know what these bastards have been doing.” The feeling of sickness was replaced with anger.
“I’m uploading it, so what are you going to do?” She asked.
“I’m going to put an end to it. I’m going to burn it all down, and every last one of the people who were involved in this will pay.” Anger was replaced with a burning wrath.
On board the ship, Eve was busy with the hack and Pearl was busy flying the ship around trying to stay off the radar best as could be managed. The twins were sitting on the bridge waiting on pins and needles. Eve stopped what she was doing, “Shit, we have a problem.”
Shocked by her language the twins looked at her with blank expressions, “What is it?” asked Freya.
“It’s a trap. I should have seen this coming. It was way too easy to break the encryption. I can’t warn Thad. I’m cut off and that’s not our biggest problem, they backtraced the signal. They know where we are,” Eve said with concern in her eyes.
“That is a problem. Pearl take us into orbit now!” Fiona yelled at the ship’s AI, but it was already too late. The ship shuttered violently and pitched to the left. Fiona was not ready for the sudden change and was thrown from her chair, hitting her head on a panel. Freya was a little better off, but still not being able to avoid being thrown from her chair. She at least was able to roll into a ball and end up on her feet. Eve, on the other hand, was able to grip the sides of the chair and stay seated.
The ship was hit again and this time, it rolled over and over, pitching towards the ground. The twins were tossed around like laundry in a dryer. Eve and Pearl worked in tandem to get the ship under control, which they did just before it was too late to pull up.
A voice came over the intercom system, “Land now and open your airlock or be destroyed.”
Eve had no choice but to do as she was told. The two shots that hit the ship had knocked out their weapon systems. The twins were both on the floor, out cold and bleeding badly from head wounds. As Pearl landed the ship, Eve went to work providing first aid to the twins.
Eve had finished wrapping up Freya’s head wound when men, in the same black body armor that Thad wore, entered the bridge. They pointed guns at Eve, “Get on the floor now!” Eve did as she was told. She was flex cuffed and left on the floor as they looked at the other two girls. “Sir, we have three females in custody, two of them are pretty banged up, but the medic tells me they will be okay.”
“Good, Bring them to me, they will be useful,” Thorne said.
The team leader looked at his men, “You heard the old man, pick them up, and move out.”
One of the men asked, “Sir, what about the ship?”
He thought a second then answered, “Fly this piece of crap to the Belt Sea and blow it to pieces. Just make sure you jump out first.”
“Yes Sir,” he replied, as he slipped into the pilot’s seat, to fly it manually. The rest of them departed the ship with Eve walking and the twins being carried out.
Thad was still reading when a panel in the wall silently slid open and Thorne stepped into the room. Thad was so engrossed in reading he did not notice Thorne approach the table. “So the prodigal son returns.” In an instant Thad was on his feet, a pistol materialized in his hand.
Thorne was impressed with seeing the gun materialize in Thad’s hand, “That is a neat trick. I look forward to finding out how you did it. But really you don’t need the
gun.” He motioned for Thad to put it down.
Thad recognized him right away. It was not just the picture in the file, he did not need a picture to remember this man, he was the one behind every nightmare he had ever had. He remembered now, even when he was a child, he would have nightmares with this man in them. “Well if it isn’t General George Thorne or should I say disgraced General. Why should I trust you? Tell me why I shouldn’t just put a round through your head right now?”
Thorne seemed to be strangely comfortable, even though he had a gun pointed at him, by a man who wanted to kill him. “Go ahead if it makes you feel better,” he said. Thad tried to pull the trigger but for some reason, he could not do it. “Having problems?” Thorne asked as he walked closer and took the barrel. “Here let me put in my mouth and make it easy for you.” He placed the barrel in his mouth, but again even though Thad wanted to kill this man with every fiber of his being, he could not pull the trigger.
Thorne pulled the barrel out of his mouth and took the gun from Thad, “Oh that’s right, you can’t hurt me. It was programmed into your subconscious from the time you were created. No matter how much you want me dead, you can’t do it. You cannot hurt me or kill me,” he got nose to nose with Thad and laughed. “What a bitch, I know. However, when one is in the business of manufacturing killers you have to take some precautions so your little monsters don’t bite you in the ass.” He stopped and rubbed a healing wound on his chin, “I have to admit the bomb you sent almost did the job. This is going scar now, although I should thank you, women love a military man with a scar,” he pointed to the wound.
Thad finally was able to speak, “I’m glad I could increase your standings with the cows you hire.” That comment earned him a backhand across the face. He rolled with it the best he could.
“Damn it!” Thorne said as he rubbed his hand, “You have a face like an anvil.”
“Okay, so you caught me, what are you going to with me?” Thad asked as he shook off the strike.
Still rubbing his hand Thorne said, “Me, nothing. Your head is far too hard to hurt my hands on, but I have people who will get the information I want from you, then they will terminate you.”
