Bounty Hunted

by Ian Cannon

  “Uh-huh. Color me curious, pal.”

  “There are forces among the war that you are unaware of, forces of immeasurable power. They possess a greater right to the war than the parties that grip our solar twins in conflict now.”

  Ben muttered hysterically, “Yeah. They’re called the Imperium and the Underworld Cabal.”

  “You speak of two houses that stand apart, nations divided along the meticulously constructed lines of ideology.” He leaned in toward Ben with a sudden motion emphatically and said, “But, unified in conflict, they will each wield the other’s hammer. They will wield it together for a common purpose.”

  Ben shook his head miserably. The creature’s words spoke of some high-level coercion involving the war, some sort of betrayal in top leadership. He said, “Brother, that sounds an awful lot like conspiracy to me. I’ve heard this story before. Everyone wants a piece of the war. They think they can end it, be the hero for peace. It’s a hookah dream, pal. And you’ve bought into it turbine, booster and warp drive.”

  Specter straightened emitting the ominous sound of laughter regenerated—Heheheh. He said, “You are too small to understand. The Imperium and the Cabal are pawns. They always have been, Benjar Dash. They are only tools to be used as a means … but without an end.”

  That didn’t make any sense. It was a confusing thing to digest. It made Ben shake his head and ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Specter placed his hands on the table at Ben’s feet and leaned forward to gain his complete attention. He said, “Not everyone wants the war to end.”

  That possibility struck Ben like a fist. It emptied his stomach, made it hard to breathe. He’d never even fathomed such a thing—an entity existing invisibly throughout the solar twins, conducting the war, instigating it, wanting it to go on and on, literally preventing its end. “That’s crazy,” he whispered.

  “Are you so different?” Specter said.

  Ben blinked and looked at him. Of course, he wanted the war to end. But he was different. He and Tawny never profiteered from the war. Never! Their entire existence was shaped by their Space Rules—the very document they’d fashioned precisely to steer clear of the war, to avoid conflict, to strike a perfect and pure neutrality. They’d defeated the frenetic ideology of enemies. They’d come together as unique and strange individuals, accepting, loving, even tolerating. But they were alone.

  It made him wonder what other factions there were operating out there with an opposite fervor. What other factions were out there perpetuating the conflict for their own gain? All of them. All of them! And this creature was no different. He wanted the war, needed the war.

  It made Ben nauseous. He looked up at the creature standing at the foot of his table and hissed, “You’re sick!”

  “No!” Specter boomed. “Sick is what you have done to me. Sick is a man living his entire life without ever knowing love nor the touch of a woman. Sick, Benjar Dash, is to dream of a thing that can never be achieved. That is what you have done to me. Therefore, sick …” he paused for effect before continuing, “…is what I am about to do to you.”

  Ben’s eyes widened. For the first time he began to feel real threat. His arms flexed slowly against the restraints, testing them. He looked up as his captor continued.

  “Do you know what this machine is?” Specter asked marching slowly around the table and caressing a hand across the machine’s contours. “It is a mind decoupler. It strips the delicate bond between the mind and brain. It rips the personality from the person. It tears the constitution from the man. Decoupler, you see?”

  Ben could almost hear this Specter grinning underneath that mask. He swallowed nervously, still listening.

  Specter continued proudly, “But it has many possibilities. Or in my case, it has many purposes. You see, my use for this wonderful machine is twofold—dare I say creative. I will not decouple your mind, Benjar Dash. But I will duplicate it. I want your memories, everything that makes you the man I see before me, the man you see in the mirror.” Again, he paused for affect before saying, “The man adored by your wife.”

  Ben jerked on the restraints with a bang. They didn’t give. Not even close.

  “Oh yes,” Specter went on uninterrupted, “you are a great recipe with many ingredients. I will have them all, especially those that center around …” he ran mechanical fingers through Ben’s hair and whispered, “Tawny.”

  Ben jerked again, this time with an angry growl. There was no ripping free.

  Still unfazed by Ben’s reaction, Specter said, “I will take them, Benjar Dash. I will download them into my thought patterns and become irrefutably one with them. I will make them mine. I will become you. And when I do, only then will I begin the decoupling process. But not yours. Oh no.” He leaned in close, closer than before, and said, “Hers.”

  “No!” Ben spat, writhing against his restraints again.

  Specter paced around the table one way, then around the table again, continuing to speak. The more he did so, the more Ben twisted and jerked against his restraints with his desperation growing. “And that is when my true creative purpose for such a machine will come into play. You see, I will take your memories—everything you are—and I will reverse engineer them to build hers, but with one new ingredient in the recipe. Me. I will replace you, Benjar Dash, and you will have never been.”

  “No! N-no!”

  Specter kneeled again by his table side and began toying with his hair gently, like a loving mother, and said, “And it will have all been out of love. My love for Tawny. And hers … for me.”

  Ben kicked hard, again and again, convulsing his body against the lower restraints, sneering—nguh! Nguh! Nguh!

  “And your mind,” Specter said with unaffected, benevolent words, “having been preserved perfectly intact, will be left to blubber endlessly for the life you once had and the beautiful Raylon wife which will now be mine.”

  Ben twisted powerfully back and forth on the table held helplessly at bay. He finally looked into Specter seething fury from his eyes, and screamed, “You have no idea who you’re dealing with!”

  “Do you see?” Specter said filling with evil glee. “It has already begun.”

  “I will kill you!” Ben screamed in a mindless wail. “I. Will. Kill. You!”

  “I know that look,” Specter said. “There is none deeper, none sharper, none more determined.” He drew out the word in a sinister whisper, “Haaaate—lovely, delirious hate. Oh, hate in deed.” He stood to full height. “Good. Perhaps then it will come down to your hatred versus mine. And then we will see who best deserves her.”

  He strode powerfully to the laboratory exit before spinning around and declaring as if to the cosmos itslef, “My name was Torian, member in the Confederation senate house of planets! You have destroyed my life, Benjar Dash! Now, I will destroy yours! And from your ruination, I will ascend from the ashes … to rise again … and be rebuilt … ANEW!”

  With a final glance at the machine’s operator through a mirrored viewport, he called, “Begin the process!” The table activated. With that, Specter made his exit, leaving Ben strapped to the table thrashing and screaming in bloodletting desperation, sliding headlong into the machine.

  Seventeen

  “What is this? What is this place?” Ben heard these words but could not determine their origin. He sensed they were his own, yet disembodied. This place was darkness, or rather, emptiness. He was aware, yet he could access no consciousness … no real consciousness.

  And then something happened.

  People began phasing into existence all around him. No, not people. Apparitions of people. They were images, but not digitally or holographically emulated. They were …

  He squinted at them. Something about them was all too familiar. He’d seen these people. He knew them. More strikingly … he remembered them.

  They were noumenally created, taken from his memory and placed here like lucid afterimages of what once was. Everyone wore the g
rays of Imperium uniforms, some officers, others bearing the insignias of their command placement. Everything was battle weary and somber. And they were in a room, most of them sitting down facing the front, others standing loosely along the perimeter.

  Benjar was amidst them … but not among them. He was a watcher, as if standing apart and possessing some strange perspective that was unique only to himself.

  Another man—the last image to phase into existence—stood at the front addressing them. Ben gasped in sudden recognition. That man was Admiral Andar, Imperium force commander of …

  “My gods, no,” he whispered.

  This was the battle of Malum. It was a strategy room. He was back. He recalled this moment. It had been over five years ago. He’d been a cog in a great machine, fighting a pointless war, trapped in a deadly routine, stuck in the madness of lunar combat, over and over, day after day. These were the darkest days of his life. And from them had come the greatest, shinning light.

  Tawny.

  He heard a voice say, “Welcome to your duplicative state, Benjar Dash.” These words were meant for him alone. They were not in the empirical dimension. They were cerebral.

  He spun around startled. There was a man who did not belong, not part of the memory. He stood apart from the rest, much like Ben himself, and stared into him, grinning in greeting with his hands placed before him in a neutral manner, fingertips pressed together. He wore a long lab coat with patches at the shoulders emblazoned with the Incarcerum emblem and an odd cap of headgear placed over his crown. It was some sort of mind melder accouterment. His body glowed with a thin, blue translucence giving him the feel of a phantasm.

  “Who are you?” Ben said through a straining voice.

  “Not who so much as what,” he said.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “What?”

  “I am an embed planted inside your process to guide you, if need be. Memory duplication can be a tumultuous experience for the subject. I am merely here to assist.” The person moved forward. He didn’t step. He … moved.

  “I can reasonably assume that in the empiracle world—the world you know to be—you would address me by my name. That would be Jinn-Junn, the …” he thought momentarily on his next words, and said, “…architect of the machine. It’s creator, if you will. He has placed this embed into your duplicative state to adjudicate and expedite the process.”

  “Do you even know you’re here?” Ben asked.

  “I, the embed, does. To my model, I probably appear only as a unique blip in the noumena wave as he monitors your duplication process.”

  “So, how about I kill you?”

  The embed smiled patiently. “You cannont kill an embed any more than you can kill the admiral.” He motioned toward the front of the noumenal room where Admiral Andar stood. “In a very sublime sense, Benjar, I am you.”

  “So basically, I’m sleeping in a bed right now, and you’re just in my head.”

  The embed’s grin broadened. “Perhaps, academically.”

  “Then how do I wake up and kill you?”

  “My model—and that is to say Jinn-Junn himself—would have to initiate the task.”

  Ben sighed angrily. “He’s got to wake me up at some point.”

  “You’ll be sedated, I’m almost certain.”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “I do not know.” He waved a hand at the people milling around the room as if waiting to move forward. “Shall we?”

  “No, we shall not,” Ben replied, his anger still showing.

  “I believe you’re ready,” the embed said, and the memory displaying in vivid reality all around them, began.

  Andar’s voice said from the front of the room, “The Cabal was able to break through our naval lines at Sola with two groups, full complement each. Our task group was undersized. They staved the enemy off longer than we could have hoped. Nevertheless, they arrived in orbit yesterday and began immediate deployment of ground troops. We’re expecting a full legion.” He took a breath, said, “Our tactical advantage for Malum is gone.”

  Ben remembered this. It was the combat briefing moments before his life changed. He remembered where he was standing when this moment occurred. He looked over. There he was, standing at the rear wall of the room. It made him gasp. He moved over as the combat briefing continued, unable to take his eyes off himself. It was him from five years ago. He was war torn, battle heavy. He looked haggard and tired. He’d been on Malum duking it out with the Cabal for over a year, piloting sorties into the fray. He could hardly remember the man he’d been back then, and yet here he was standing directly in front of him.

  Andar’s voice concluded the briefing with, “We deploy for combat reinforcement and tactical execution in ten minutes. This is why we’re here, people. Any questions?” A pause. “We are Ae’ahm. We are the Imperium. No quarter. Dismissed.”

  Everyone shuffled out on the double leaving him standing alone in a room constructed solely from his memory. It was so lifelike, so … real. It haunted him to be back in this place.

  He turned to his embed and said, “What’s next?”

  “You tell me, Benjar. They’re your memories.”

  “My memories. Are they being … duplicated … right now?”

  “Of course. That’s what this is.”

  Benjar looked to his feet and slammed his eyes shut, pressed his fingers to his temples.

  The embed smiled again, humored. “Your memories will play out, even against your wishes. You are only an observer, here, Benjar, but necessary for their extrapolation.” Benjar cut him with his stare. The embed said, “The past cannot be altered. You can only remember something the way it happened.”

  “That’s not true,” he argued. “People remember things wrong all the time.”

  The embed asked, “How do you define wrong?”

  Ben wilted against the question. How can a memory be wrong? How does one correct a memory? Furthermore, how does one change a memory?

  The embed said with surprising compassion, “Help me … to know your experiences, Benjar.”

  He was trapped here. There was no way out. He looked up and muttered, “I think … yes … next was the key to freedom.”

  An explosion ripped their attention away. They were outside on the tarmac. His squad was hoofing it in formation to the Y-Tac Mark 4 personnel carriers when the compound was bombed. The next moments slid by like a media stream playing out before him, but they told the story of that day with clear precision. He watched the whole thing wide-eyed, reliving the entire ordeal.

  Benjar had assisted with the injured. One man was hurt, smoke rising from burns on his face and back and bleeding from a head wound. He was a private—no, he was a corporal. He entrusted Ben with an auto-key to one of the abandoned privateer vessels. An RX-111 cargo carrier. That’s when the idea of desertion struck Ben like a fist. Yes, he would keep the key for himself. Take the RX-111. Get off the moon. Be gone. This was his key to freedom. It had been a moment of revelation, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But first … he had a sortie to fly.

  Moments later after dropping forty soldiers off to face their doom on the battlefields, he was airborn again and headed back to the operations center. This was his last mission. He was done.

  Ben closed his eyes as he watched the memory unfold, knowing what was about to happen next. A pair of rockets seared across the sky. One missed. The other didn’t. The explosion made Ben flinch. By gods, he could still remember the sound of the klaxon, the wailing of the ship’s internal system indicators as they screamed. It seemed he flew across half the moon in that spiraling, smoking, burning craft, out of control and in the wrong direction.

  “Eject!” he screamed on impulse.

  And, as the memory went, he did. He watched himself plummet out of the sky. The embed observed Benjar, watching him relive the moment as it occurred, flinching against the velocity of neural impact. He raised a finger and placed it onto Ben’s shoulder making him jerk. The embed discerned his empiri
cal life readings. Heart rate—approaching 120 bpm, blood pressure skyrocketing.

  “Hold,” he said, and the noumenal space froze.

  Ben snapped back as if released by a mental rubberband and found his footing, suddenly released from the moment. Up in the sky, he—the other Ben—sat on the air, frozen in freefall, trapped in the prone position and screaming a death toll. He had bailed out once the craft cannon-shot his ejection pod away and blew up. The explosion lit up the dark sky overhead like a ball of orange flame stuck in time.

  Ben found himself standing below on the moon’s steel gray surface looking up at the scene. He turned away and padded up a shallow ridge to stand on a high spot overlooking the landscape. It was a broken area of the planetoid, shattered by tremendous crater bowls, razor-sharp ridges and ditches that jagged for miles.

  The embed murmured, “What a terrifying place.”

  Ben dawned a toxic look. He’d never wanted to see this place again.

  “You know this place,” the embed said. “You remember.”

  Being here formed a knot in his gut, made his head hurt. He had struggled so hard to leave it behind, not only in the years since, but in this moment trapped in time. But he hadn’t been alone. He had discovered Tawny. She was waiting for him down in that expansive crater he now gawked into.

  He sighed, “Of course, I know this place. The crater fields.” He leaned down, grabbed a handful of dirt and felt it in his hand—the thick, ashy consistency of it. It was more real than even a memory. This duplicative space was a wonderful reminder of even the tinniest minutia of memory. He let the sand fall in a fine stream from his fist watching it whisk off in the breeze, and muttered lowly, with great disdain, “Worst place in the system.”

  “And yet?” the embed said.

  He looked out across the crater. It was just as he remembered all these years later. Dark and gray. Ugly and broken. And … worst of all … littered with dead bodies. The entire crater bowl was filled with them. It was a landscape of doom. He murmured with sad irony, “This is where I found her.”