by Hodden, TE
Niloc walked onto the steps. “Very well.”
They followed him through the maze of passages, and into the hive-like chanber.
Niloc paused to consider Summers, the psionic circuitry on his mask glowed. “You… were at the museum? By the staff?”
Summers’ throat went dry. She felt echoes of the terrible piercing pain from the sonic device used in the museum heist, the needle drilling into her skull, her skin tightening around her skull, and her teeth grinding. “Yes,” she whispered.
He bowed his head. “I am pleased you are… unharmed.”
Summers fingers curled into fists. “You are pleased you didn’t kill me?”
Niloc nodded. “I was… mistaken.”
Catherine cocked her head. “Trying to murder people is a Hell of a mistake to make.”
Niloc nodded again. “Yes. It was. When last I saw Earth, the primitive human tribes were dominated by the Orphan. They built pyramids of stone in his image, and worshipped him as a God. When I awoke, I found a powerful artefact in what appeared to be humanity’s palace city, displayed as a trophy of conquest. You seemed to still worship the Orphan, to follow his creed of war against the unlike, and the different.” He held up a hand. “I was… still living in the war I hoped to be over when I woke, and to my eternal shame, I longed for vengeance, for… blood…” He sat on the steps. “I am weak… rotten in my core. You believe the fates chose me to live, when my family was chosen to die? No… I am dying. I am rotting from the inside out. I have to… I have to give the others life, before…”
Catherine let out a long sigh. “Your pod failed too?”
“It lost… some percentage of effectiveness, over the many, many, long centuries.” He looked at Summers. “I have so many regrets. Perhaps I will set some small balance right, before I am… gone.”
Summers touched her lip. “You were… not meant to be the Emperor, were you?”
The Martian let out a long breath. “I was supposed to assign living quarters to the Reborn, in townships that are now rubble.”
Summers smiled. “Perhaps one day you can show me. You can tell me of how the townships were designed and planned.”
The Martian made a curious noise, that might have been a laugh. “Perhaps, but you would be bored.”
“No.” Summers touched a hand to her heart. “I would be honoured to ensure something of the history of your world, even the unwritten history, was remembered.”
Catherine pointed at the control console. “Emperor Niloc… may I?”
He stood. “What do you wish to know?”
Catherine pointed to the cells. “I have an uncomfortable notion, itching at the back of my mind. I would like… I would hope to prove to myself that I am wrong.”
“Ah.” Niloc tapped at the controls. “I see. What is it you wish to see?”
“The records of the damage to these cells,” Catherine said. “If… that is not a painful subject?”
Niloc tapped away at the controls.
Summers looked around the chamber. She stared at the cells, at the stains, at the cracks and burns in the glass.
The stains.
“If,” Summers whispered, “the cells failed gradually, over the centuries… why… are the stains all so fresh?”
Niloc stared at her. “What?”
“Well…” Summers stepped back. “Wouldn’t some be older and… more faded than others?”
The Martian shook. “What?” He jabbed at the control panel, and stared at the scrolling data. His circuits glowed. “The pods were stable, until… less than one half of a Martian year ago, and then… they all failed. All but mine. And I was… cooked… for months.”
Warner laughed, behind Summers. He was suddenly looming in the doorway, clapping slowly. He smiled at the Martian. “Yes. I had to make sure you were… fatally compromised. I could not risk you living too long, after I was… done.”
“Done?” Niloc whispered. “Orphan did not send you to save us, did he?”
“No…” Warner smiled. “No, he did not.”
Catherine held her spear ready. “What did you do, Warner?”
“Ah.” Warner clucked his cheeks. “That is two questions.” He stepped over to Niloc, and placed his hand on the staff. “What Warner did, was die, screaming for mercy. What I did was come here, to end what I once began. I cleansed the universe of the miserable scum who betrayed me. Well… most of them. One little ant had to survive the kettle of boiling water. One little ant who could be handed this staff, and use it, to unlock the systems in this palace, to grant me power over the gene foundries and world shapers.”
“No!” Niloc tried to pull the staff from Warner’s grip, but it was unmoving. “No!”
“Yes!” Warner whispered. “Yes! Because this frail little shell will not hold me for long, and I need to be… reborn!”
The sphere on the top of the staff flashed white, and Niloc fell away, screaming, as his body reduced to ash, and his empty robes billowed to the ground.
Catherine vanished, into a blur that warped the air, as she flashed across the chamber.
Niloc’s staff flashed again, and Catherine popped back into reality, skidding across the floor in a shower of sparks, screaming. He turned and grabbed Summer’s wrist. “No, Miss Summer. You are coming with me.”
“Professor?” She fought against his grip.
He snorted, and dragged her with him, through the tunnels. “I told you, the Professor died, three years ago. He died alone, screaming.” His grip tightened, grinding against the bone of her wrist. “He is dead and gone.”
“Then who… what… are you?” Summers demanded.
Nicol stared into her eyes…
…And for a moment she wasn’t looking at a man at all. She was looking at something older than she could imagine, that had worn and discarded many bodies over the centuries.
“The Orpham,” she whispered.
Warner smiled, and threw her ahead of him, into the crystal matrix chamber.
Summers landed in a heap at the edge of one of the pools. She rolled onto her knees.
Warner held the staff above his head. The sphere burned as bright as the sun, so bright that Summers had to shield her eyes with her hands, and could see her bones behind her flesh.
The pools began to boil. The crystals cracked and shattered. Thick clouds of steam billowed to the roof.
“Don’t!” Summer screamed. “You’ll¬”
“Kill them?” Warner roared. “Do you mourn the bacteria in the yoghurt you quaff for breakfast?” He leant his head back. “After so long… oh so very long… I can… feed!”
He roared with laughter, as his eyes shone a sickly red.
01110
Rock Harris stood in the office of the provincial Sheriff’s Department, the phone pressed to his ear. Out in the main body of the office, Elois Croft was talking to the Sheriff, and a pair of deputies, passing time while a couple of their number went to confirm that Airforce One really was crashed and burning in the heart of their county.
When Harris had screeched into town, and parked a stolen military grade vehicle on the doorstep, there had been… questions, and certain looks from the officers of the small department.
He was still getting the looks.
“Okay,” Special Agent In Charge Richard Fry said, on the other end of the line. “Why me? Why not the Secret Service?”
“Because,” Harris said, “I trust you.”
“And the Nomad?” Fry asked.
“I trust the Captain,” Harris said.
“Amen to that, brother.” Fry thought a moment. “I know somebody from the field office out there. Expect a car or a helicopter in an hour.”
“Which?” Harris demanded.
“I’ll let you know, when I know,” Fry said, softly. “Okay?”
“Ring me back,” Harris said. “Soon.”
He hung up, and stepped out onto the office floor.
Elois grinned at him, and held up her mug. “They have coffe
e!”
“How is it?” Harris asked.
“Terrible!” Elois declared, with the elation of one who desperately needed something -anything- normal to tether her to life.
The Sheriff glanced up from the desk covered in maps, and gave Harris one of those looks.
Elois leant over, and lowered her voice. “They sent somebody to check out our story, and they lost contact for a while. When he got back in touch, he reported a whole big chunk of the county is under a communication’s blackout. And…”
“And?” Harris asked.
“And,” the Sheriff said, “we can’t find your assassin, but we found his handy work. There was a farm three miles from where you crashed. Looks like the owners went to investigate the fireball on the horizon and were… silenced.”
Harris bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
The Sheriff’s nostrils flared. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell us what we are dealing with here?”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Harris said.
Elois gave the sheriff a pained look. “We told you all we know.”
“Yeah?” The Sheriff put his hands on his hips. “If this was a guy with robot spider legs, or laser arms, or something, you would let us know now, right?”
Harris shrugged. “All I know is that somebody started trying to kill the President in Portland, and hasn’t stopped just because they got the job done. Rail guns? Drones? That truck? They have serious hardware.”
The Sheriff’s shoulders sagged. “Right. Well… maybe they will stand down now they can’t contain the news, right?”
“Maybe,” Harris agreed.
The Sheriff lumbered away, grumbling.
“You should try the coffee,” Elois muttered.
“Are you okay?” Harris said.
She put her coffee down, and leant against him, wrapping her arms around him in a hug. The tears caught up with her suddenly, and they hit her hard.
*
An hour later, Harris and Elois were aboard a helicopter, being escorted by some FBI agents in tactical gear.
Agent in Charge Fry gave Harris a sad look. “A lot of people don’t like you going outside the chain of command, Rock.”
Harris shook his head. “Something smells rotten. I have to assume the chain of command is compromised. Maybe even the Secret Service.”
Fry glanced over to Elois. “How are you holding up?”
She shrugged, and went on staring out of the window.
The helicopter banked around, over the docks, as they got clearance to land on the USS Nomad. The Super-Carrier dwarfed all the conventional aircraft carriers that surrounded it, standing higher in the water, and stretching so much longer that it had to be housed in a bespoke berth at the harbour. The weapons turrets were heavily reinforced with ceramic shielding to protect the crew from the Phased Energy Projectors they carried, with their distinctively short and broad barrels.
The helicopter set down on one of the landing pads, with naval crewmen waiting to greet them.
Captain Alex Blathe, better known as Captain Lionheart, was waiting for them on the gangway, dressed in his naval fatigues, the jacket open to reveal his distinctive red and gold top beneath, with the lion head stencilled in gold leaf. He was a giant of a man, a larger than life presence with a square jaw, slabs of muscle, and a mane of long hair in a shade of metallic red not found in nature.
At first glance, he looked to be in his mid to late twenties, but he had looked that age since the early nineteen forties.
He clapped his hands together. “Scimitar! Miss Croft! Welcome to the Nomad. I only wish I could welcome you under… happier circumstances.”
Harris nodded. “Can we talk?”
“In the situation room,” Blathe promised. “So, do you need a lift, or a safe haven?”
Harris gave him a helpless shrug. “Until I can work out what’s going on, I don’t know. Most the Guard are off world, one is out of action, and Osprey is with a Special Duty battalion.”
Blathe smiled. “It’s nice to be remembered.” He touched his ear. “This is Blathe.” A pause as he listened to somebody at the other end. “No Sir. I believe that the safest place for her right now is right here.” Another pause. “Sir Yes Sir!” He glanced at Harris. “You two had better come with me. The Secretary of State wants to talk to you.”
Elois made a brave attempt at a smile. “Luther? Is he here?”
Blathe gave her a sorry look. “This way.”
Blathe led them into the carrier, and took them to the Nomad’s Briefing Room. The walls of the room were clad in black smart-glass, in which numerous windows of data were floating, In the middle of the room was a large circular table, in the centre of which was a hologram projector.
The largest of the displays was a link to Luther Allistaire’s office. He was with some of the Joint Chiefs of staff.
“Elois?” Allistaire asked. “Are you okay?”
“Hey!” Elois touched her fingers to the screen. “I’m okay. The Scimitar kept me safe.”
“Then,” Allistaire looked to Harris. “You have my thanks, Agent Harris. I’m sorry to sandbag you like this Harris, but I’m using Article Nine of the Honour Guard’s Sanction. As of this moment, you are reporting to duty in service of the United States. Bring in any of the Honour Guard you want, but this is Captain Lionheart’s show. Understood?”
Harris nodded. “Understood Sir.”
Allistaire sighed. “You can have the paperwork in an hour or two. There’s some administrative stuff, and a little ceremony, then people start calling me Mister President, and…” He sighed. “Okay… Captain, the Nomad and her crew have one mission now. I want you to find and disable the threat that has attacked us. Best we can tell they have at least six more of the experimental drones.”
Blathe frowned. “Sir. How do we know that? Where did this come from, Sir?”
Allistaire drew a long heavy breath. “It came from us, Captain.”
A hologram shimmered into being over the table, displaying one of the drones.
On the screen, the Airforce officer leant over Allistaire’s desk, and peeked out over the frame of her glasses. “This is Project Venator, our experimental air/space drone, designed for combat inside and outside of our atmosphere. This was to be our first line of defence when the Legion returned. At the moment it’s armed with rotary cannons, but we were hoping to fit rail guns, or the next generation of PEP weapons, when the drones went into full scale production.” She paused. “Some hours ago, we lost control of the drones. All of them. They left their orbital docking pen, and… well… They are no longer in our control.”
Harris held up a finger. “The assassin I encountered in Portland?”
Allistaire shrugged. “We don’t know who they were. Their DNA, dental records, fingerprints, all of it offers no matches. We can’t be sure which country they are from, but… at the moment it’s looking like they are a ghost. Like somebody deleted them from the system.”
Harris thought on that for a moment. “And their rail gun?”
The Airforce officer checked her notes. “The rail gun, and the military vehicle you borrowed, are… a different kind of troubling. We checked their manufacturing numbers, and… we know where and when they were built, but all records have been scrubbed. As far as the manufacturers were concerned, their logistics skipped the number. Every trace has been scrubbed with bleach, from the components to the delivery.”
Blathe looked worried. “So, this is digital. They hacked the drones, they hacked the factories, they have… God alone knows what at their disposal. Is that possible?”
“It shouldn’t be,” Harris said. “Who can do that?”
There was a disturbance on the screen. Allistaire looked off camera. “What kind of an… incident?”
Somebody said something Harris couldn’t catch.
Allistaire looked distraught. “I have to go. The Martian situation is boiling over…”
“What?” Harris tapped his earpiece.
“Cathy?”
01111
“She needs a moment,” Matthew said, sitting Catherine up against the control podium. “Now is not a good time.”
“Why?” Harris demanded over the earpiece. “What’s happening.”
Catherine clutched her spear, and rubbed her head. “Something surfaced in Warner, something more than human. He killed Niloc, and took Summers. He was headed for the crystal pools.” She looked at Matthew. “I’m okay! Go!”
Matthew flexed his aura, rose from the floor, and flew through the palace, shattering the sound barrier on his way.
Warner was floating above the tanks, clasping the ancient staff, surrounded by a bubble of silver white soul-fire, drawing the energy from the pools of crystals. The bubble suggested another shape, a coiling mass of tentacles and eyeballs, that seethed and writhed about him.
The pools were billowing steam and acrid vapours, as they boiled away to nothing. One by one the crystals blackened and cracked, turning dull and cloudy as the souls within were extinguished.
Doctor Summers cowered from the ghastly inferno, shielding her eyes.
Warner- no, the thing that wore his body- was laughing.
Matthew flew at it, both hands held before him in fists, wrapped in his aura, channelling the full force of his willpower. He plunged into the maelstrom of soul-fire, and grabbed Warner, slamming him to the far wall. Warner smiled, and the aura of soul-fire formed tentacles and crab claws, that tore through Mathews aura, ripping it painfully apart, reaching through.
The fire washed over Matthew, in a wave of agony, as it threw him back. He landed awkwardly, on his left arm with a jolt of fresh pain. The fire closed in around him, lifted him up, and slammed him back to the floor, again and again, until the stone crumpled into dust, shattering into a crater beneath him.
Matthew pushed back with his aura, driving back the flames.
Groggy pain muffled the world, and his racing heart deafened him, but Matthew made himself stand. He bolstered his aura, and dragged himself to his feet.
The thing in Warner’s body laughed. “Impressive! See! This… this is why humanity is slave-stock not food!”