by Dan Schiro
Chapter 4
Out in the void, inside a comet that wasn’t a comet, headed toward a star that wasn’t a star, Typhus the Mad Thinker lay in an extra-wide bed. His huge, hairy body intertwined with the sweaty limbs of durok, s’zone and temba nubu lovers. Just as he was about to drift into the soft nebula of sleep, the door to his chambers chimed.
“Who?” he called out into the candle-dappled dark.
“Vargas, my lord,” said a thin, flat voice through an intercom.
“Enter.” The muscle-bound vycart sat up. As the door hissed open and cast a rectangle of white light into the room, he glanced at his exhausted companions. “You are dismissed,” he told them coolly.
Vargas shuffled into the room as the young, collar-wearing men and women rose and gathered their clothes. “I’m sorry to interrupt, my lord.” His scaly white head gleamed in the light of the corridor, his beady red eyes catching flickers of candlelight. “But I have news.”
Typhus swung his legs over the side of the bed and kicked at the fawn-furred temba nubu groping for her shoe on the dark floor. “Be gone, I said,” he snarled, shoving one into another toward the door.
The half-dressed harem scrambled into the hall with a refrain of, “Yes, m’lord, yes, m’lord.” The door shushed closed behind them, and Typhus and his assistant were alone.
“400 lumens,” Typhus barked out to the automatic room controls, turning up the glowglobes.
Vargas took a few steps into the spacious captain’s quarters. His feet scratched across the steel floor with an uneven gait, and his short body shifted strangely beneath a tapestry of black robes. The small, lipless mouth under his sickle-like nose twitched with unease. Vargas was an unsightly combination of organic components, indeed. But Typhus kept him around for his sharp mind, because he could trust him, and because he knew what Vargas concealed beneath his robes. “I’m afraid the news is not good, my lord,” Vargas said, his voice an ugly squeak.
“Yes, I gathered as much from your bearing,” Typhus said, standing in front of him nude. His thickly muscled, nearly eight-foot-tall body had a gray vycart hide covered in patches of wiry black fur. On his head Typhus wore a latticed neural crown inlaid with threads of manacite silver, an artifact of the Engineers as rare as a spellblade. “Straight away, Vargas,” he said, his white-blue eyes flashing with a predatory gleam. “Tell me.”
“Of course, my lord.” Vargas laced his pale, many-knuckled fingers in front of his compact body. “It seems the slavers never made their rendezvous with the agents of the independent system of Yost.”
Typhus’ lips rippled back to display massive white teeth. “What?”
“It seems they stopped on a primitive forest moon to prey on easy meat, my lord. Slaughtered by Union agents, it seems.”
“And the asset?”
“Never delivered.” Vargas shook his head regretfully. “Presumably in Union hands, my lord.”
For a few moments, the whistling of Typhus’ wolfish snout was the only sound. Then the huge vycart roared with animal rage. Leaping, he smashed a small conference table with his two weighty fists, then drove a punch into a bookshelf that snapped it across the middle and sent old books tumbling down in a flapping avalanche. Spinning, he turned his wrath on a chair and shattered it with furious blows. When the vycart was done, his mighty frame heaved with growling breaths, and debris lay strewn across his quarters.
“My lord,” Vargas said, his voice thin. “I might remind you that I said it was hubris to let the s’zone live, even with her memory in shambles.”
Typhus spun on him with a murderous glare. “No, Vargas,” Typhus said, his white-blue eyes wide. “She has to see what she made possible. Even if her conscious mind can’t recognize it, the unmistakable truth will be branded on her soul.”
“Very poetic, my lord,” Vargas sighed. “But perhaps there’s no need to worry. Even if she is in Union hands, I doubt she can do much to stop us, emptied of memories as she is.”
“What can be done,” Typhus said, tapping his gleaming neural crown, “can be undone.”
“Verging on platitude, my lord.” He shrugged his uneven shoulders. “I see no reason to alter our timeline.”
Typhus smoothed his mane of black fur and thought for a moment. “We’re close enough. Shut down the warehouse and scrub the assembly sites.”
“Is that really necessary, my lord?” Vargas’ pinprick red eyes stared up at Typhus. “Why live in fear of a husk?”
“Enough, Vargas,” Typhus barked at the small creature. “Carry out my orders, and summon my children.”
“Yes, my lord.” Vargas nodded, his sharp chin stabbing down like three quick jabs of a shiv. “It will be done, my lord.”
“One more thing,” Typhus added as he glanced around his wrecked quarters. “Send a few collars to clean this up.”
“Of course, my lord.”
His assistant exited with scratching steps, and Typhus stood alone in a room scented with sex and rage. For a few moments, Typhus simply fumed. He ran dozens of calculations and adjusted internalized timelines intuitively, his once-in-a-generation mind made three-fold more powerful by the ancient neural crown. Once he was resolved in his decision, Typhus picked a red-and-black robe out of the debris and draped it over his immense frame. Striding to a cabinet he had left intact, he pulled out a large glass jug of old vycart wine and a goblet. The very smell of it reminded him of vicious wilderness, tall mountains, family, mass graves — of home, of why he was doing what he was doing. After splashing his cup full, Typhus turned to a long, blank wall and spoke.
“Viewscreen on, forward camera.” The wall lit up with the canvas of space, a white dwarf star in the center of the screen. “Zoom on target.”
The room controls magnified the view of the white dwarf star to reveal that it wasn’t a true star at all, but the artificial nucleus at the heart of the Maker Rings. The four orbit-wide bands moved as slowly and surely as the shadow of a sundial. Three of them were alive with self-sustained ecology, but the fourth was black and dead since no one could figure out how to restart it.
His war machine was in motion now, Typhus thought, and its gears would pick up speed with every moment. It had been launched earlier than he would have liked, but no great conquest had ever gone according to plan.
Chapter 5
Once everyone in the lobby had a chance to catch their breath, Orion pushed a coffee table out of the way and Zovaco laid Dalaxa Croy on the bio-mold cushions of a leather couch. The two of them stood over her limp body silently for a moment.
“Is she in shock?” Orion asked, still snorting from the punch to his nose.
Zovaco stooped over the pale s’zone, his thick fingers placed gently on her neck. “Vital signs are faint but steady.”
Orion shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Koreen, call a med-cab and have it meet us in our private hangar.”
“Hold that,” Zovaco said, a hand raised. “I’m sorry Orion, but this is too sensitive. We’ll have to revive her here.”
Mervyn, still cradling Koreen in his arms, cleared his throat. “Yes, we’ll need to question her immediately, find out if there’s any truth to what she said about…” He trailed off shaking his head, seemingly not ready to say the name.
“She needs medical attention,” Kangor grunted, “not interrogation.”
“I know it seems callous,” Zovaco said as he gazed up at Orion. “But I swear to you, it’s for the greater good.”
Leaning against the hibernation pod, Aurelia chuckled. “I always find that so much easier to say when it’s not my life on the line.”
“Okay,” Orion said, chewing his lip. “Okay, we’ll deal with it here.”
He went down the hall to the office with the green door. Though it had Aurelia’s name on it, Orion could never once recall her using it, and so it had become a de facto storage closet. After enteri
ng and pulling away a dusty plastic tarp, Orion dragged out a Phuturistic Pharmaceuticals diagnostic station and wheeled it to the lobby. A quick scan of the unconscious s’zone revealed dehydration, mild malnutrition and a touch of shock. Kneeling next to one another, Orion and Zovaco worked together dexterously to slip an IV into Dalaxa’s hand.
“That’s all we can do for now,” Orion said, sitting back on his haunches. “We’ll just have to wait and hope the prescribed solution is enough to bring her out of it.” He tinkered with the IV line that ran from her hand to the diagnostic station, straightening it so the clear fluid ran full-force into her delicate veins.
“It might be best,” Zovaco said in a low voice, “if the room wasn’t quite so full when she awakes.”
Orion agreed with a grunt. “You guys might as well get some rest,” he said to the others over his shoulder. “But,” he added as stood and glared at them, “Kangor, don’t get lost out in the Kapata Wilds, and Aurelia, try to keep any revelry to the four-alarm variety.”
Aurelia and Kangor muttered in agreement as they headed for the frosted-glass doors, and Mervyn of Claddaghsplough tapped his cane and turned to Koreen. “I will depart as well. There’s a new hiver-durok fusion restaurant on North Point 5, and I know a beautiful young lady who’s been eager to try it.”
“Who is she?” Koreen asked as she scooped up her purse and looped her arm in Mervyn’s. “I’ll kill her.”
They departed, and when Orion turned back, Bully was licking Dalaxa’s limp face with great strokes of his huge tongue. “Bully,” Orion hissed, snapping his fingers. “Go lay down.”
Zovaco smiled as he watched the genetically engineered dog pad over to the mat beside Koreen’s polished wooden desk. “What a charming life you’ve crafted for yourself, Orion.”
Caught off guard, Orion hesitated for a moment as he tried to see it through the eyes of an assassin-turned-politician. “You think?”
Zovaco nodded as he scanned the office lobby, admiring the waterfall and the shift-skin paintings. “Adventure, intrigue, loyal companions and freedom — no man is your master. Positively charming.”
“I suppose.” Orion shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind getting shot at during your workday.”
“Ah,” said Zovaco, flexing the cybernetic arm where his spellblade used to live. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my nerve for that sort of work.” He folded his hands tightly behind his back and looked down at Dalaxa Croy. “What about her? Do you think we can expect another fight when she awakes?”
Orion shook his head and disengaged his smartcloak from the collar of his kinetic bodysuit. “My hasty, under-powered spell seems to have restored her sense of identity, at the very least.” He draped his cloak over the back of a well-padded armchair and took a seat, the chair’s bio-mold cushions comfortably conforming to his body. “Plus, the wake-up drugs the hibernation pod pumped into her are pretty harsh. She should be more reasonable as they fade.”
With a heavy breath, Zovaco collapsed onto a short sofa across from Orion. “Good.” He closed his three tired eyes for a moment. “We need more information, immediately.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Orion said with a smirk. “Tell me about Typhus the Mad.”
Zovaco opened his three eyes without moving his head and gazed at Orion. “Typhus the Mad Thinker, Grand Warlord of the Crimson Claw Empire.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think that was the official title.”
“Kangor sure seemed to know the name,” Orion said.
“As he would.” Zovaco gave a slight nod. “How old is your friend — 300 standard years? 400?”
Orion chuckled. “Actually, in two months he’ll be refusing to celebrate his 399th birthday.”
“Ah,” Zovaco sighed, shaking his head. “He was a young man then, when the plague struck Vyca. Likely just finishing his compulsory military service, starting his life.”
“His family. A clan of his own.” Orion’s mismatched eyes searched the floor. “From what little the big guy says… sounds like he lost a lot when the plague swept through.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway… Typhus.”
“Right.” Zovaco let his eyes close for another long, weary blink. “Well, the vycart called the Mad Thinker was about Kangor’s age now when the plague shaved their people down to a sliver over two and a half centuries ago.” He paused and seemed to consider Orion for a moment. “It probably sounds strange to humans who were exploring their own system at the time, but that’s relatively recent history in galactic terms.”
“Oh, right,” Orion smirked, “as if you trislavs didn’t tiptoe into interstellar travel less than a century before us. But go on.”
Zovaco conceded his point with a tight-lipped smile. “You have to understand that at the time, the Crimson Claw Empire was a close second to the Union, in size and certainly in strength. The vycart bred fast, and they bred for war, and their swelling numbers had claimed a great number of desirable planets by then. Some in Union space worried they wanted more.”
Orion tipped his head, not bothering to induce Memory’s Prism for the fact. “But the vycart fought with the Union when the Dark Spacers stormed in from beyond the ether routes. What happened?”
“Well, that was over 700 years ago, and that was a partnership of necessity.” Zovaco opened his palms in his lap. “Time passed, and what always happens happened. Both sides got greedy. Both sides feared the other because they were just that — the other. And as they jockeyed for planets and ether routes, both sides prepared for war. Just in case.”
Orion nodded, thinking of Earth’s brief first-contact war with the hivers back in the original Orion Grimslade’s day. The insect-like hivers had probably seemed outrageously different to late 21st-century Earth men, true alien monsters. “So this Typhus the Mad Thinker, he was at the head of the vycart war machine?”
“That he was, Grand Warlord of the Crimson Claw.” Zovaco stole a glance at the unconscious s’zone on the long couch and tapped his foot impatiently. “A formidable leader, according to the holos on the datasphere. Cunning. Brutal. Patient.” He gave Orion a significant look, all three eyes wide. “A genius, and in that, I mean a true polymath. A battle master, a social engineer, a geneticist, an architect, an artist, on and on. One can only be so talented before he’s called ‘mad.’”
“Sounds like a real player.” Orion laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in the armchair. “But is it possible he’s still alive? I mean, Kangor’s the only vycart I’ve ever seen.”
“From what I remember of my ‘Imploding Empire’ course at Galactic Core U, the records from that time are a real mess. Think of it, Orion.” He narrowed his gaze thoughtfully. “Billions of vycarts, on scores of worlds and hundreds of thousands of ships, all growing sick as their collective genetic code ticked to midnight, their powerful bodies betraying them before their very eyes.” He shuddered, shaking his head.
Orion tried to imagine the chaos of the collapse. He failed. “They say only one in 10 million survived.”
“A proud, powerful empire reduced to a scattering of thousands.” Zovaco sighed and glanced at Dalaxa Croy. “One would think Typhus ended up in one of the mass graves on their colony worlds, or dead in one of the warships that SpaceCorps picked clean or… stripped bare by the beasts on that spinning tomb of a homeworld.”
“Wow,” Orion muttered. “You know how to paint a gruesome picture, Zo.”
“Sorry.” The politician offered a contrite smile. “So, I hope our sleeping friend is wrong, or simply crazy. I can’t imagine an adversary more—”
“It’s him,” said Dalaxa Croy, her large pink eyes blinking open. “You can be sure of that. He was every bit the polymath that holographic history says, plus a sadist and a torturer.”
Orion and Zovaco froze for a moment, startled out of their conversation, but Bully lifted his huge head from the mat and interjected a single loud
woof. “How… how do you feel?” Orion said when he found his tongue.
“I’m sure I’ve been better,” Dalaxa said sharply as she looked down at the IV in her hand. “What is this?”
Orion pointed to the bag hanging from the diagnostic station. “It’s just a solution of—”
“Yes, saline silicate and consulin base, I see,” she said, squinting at the symbols on the side of the bag. “Well, at least you can tell a s’zone from a durok. Who are you?”
“Friends,” Orion said quickly. “I’m Orion Grimslade III. You’re in my office, in Echohax Tower, safe and sound in the middle of the Hub.” He gestured at Zovaco. “And this is Zovaco Ralli, um… Member of Union Parliament.”
With a start, she looked back and forth between the two of them as if seeing them for the first time. “Were… were you two on the news? Why am I remembering some kind of prison break?”
“Yes, that was us,” Zovaco said with a tight smile at Orion. “I was elected to Union Parliament shortly before your abduction, if my timeline is correct.” She looked a little stunned, but Zovaco carried on with a kind smile. “I apologize for my urgency Dr. Croy, but please — what do you remember?”
Dalaxa put a slender hand to her temple. “My name, at least.” Her face contorted with pain. “I… I was born on… Calidai? And moved to Respatine? Or was it the other way around?” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “The pieces are all broken, jagged… jumbled in my head.”
“I fear someone’s used an Engineer artifact called a neural crown on you.” Zovaco frowned. “A bit crude, but what happened to you is commonly referred to as a ‘brain-blur.’”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes, I know what a brain-blur is. I remember him staring into my eyes, that horrible crown on his head, and…” She looked at Orion skeptically. “But how is that possible? How can I remember anything at all? Multiple sessions should have erased me.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t heal all of the damage,” Orion said as he raised his right hand. With a slight act of concentration, the spellblade silver flowed out of the A-within-O tattoo on his wrist and swallowed his arm to the elbow with a barbed gauntlet. “This thing’s a useful tool, but it’s only as powerful as the available fuel.” With a snort, he wiggled his swollen, red nose.
