by Viki Storm
Hollyhock plugs an analog cable into my collar and leads the other end into the back of her computer. I’m so antsy right now, my legs are jangling, and I’ve torn all the skin around my fingernails, creating no fewer than twelve new, bleeding hangnails.
She frowns and then coughs. “What?” I ask.
“Nope,” she says.
“Nope?” Anax asks. “I’m not paying you for nopes.”
“You’re not paying me at all,” Hollyhock points out. “Technically we’re bartering.”
“I’m not bartering for nopes. I want results,” Anax says.
“Then I have some bad news for you two. This collar? It’s genius. I’m genius, but this collar? Real extra genius. Lucky I saw it. Boom. There’s a fail-safe hard-coded into the software. If I deactivate the explosive, I’ll end up detonating it. No can do. Outside my area of expertise. Sorry.”
“But—” I say. Surely she can’t be giving up so easily. Aren’t these hackers supposed to like a challenge?
“Can’t do it,” Hollyhock says. “No way. I lack the skills required to remove that collar.”
Chapter 14
Anax
All this for nothing.
All this hope.
All this promise.
Not just for me, but the entire Kenorian race.
With the return of mates, arlo jzumaks, will the Kenorians begin to breed and repopulate again?
On the settlement, is there the possibility of building something more than just a few dormitories and fire pits?
It seems now that I have the answer to all these questions.
No.
Did the Universe gift me a mate, the most perfect treasure a male could hope to receive, just to take her away?
An odd warbling sound issues from one of Hollyhock’s computers. It sounds like an avian, specifically one in great pain. “Yes,” Hollyhock mutters to herself. “The sparrows fly at midnight.”
She’s been ranting and tapping on the key panels and swiping at her multitude of screens since she delivered the bad news. As if it was just business as usual, and her inability to deactivate Brooke’s collar was the same sort of professional disappointment as if she was unable to decrypt someone’s communications password. These Jirdies are a strange race indeed. I was right not to expect too much from one.
“Now,” Hollyhock says. She grabs Brooke’s collar and yanks my mate to the corner of the room where the avian noises are coming from. She plugs a different cable into the collar, a flat, thick ribbon with many prongs at the end. Her comm-screen lights up, and I hear a small voice.
“You are a disappointment to your teacher,” it says. It sounds like a children’s toy, tinny and far away, toneless intonations and no animation.
“I have failed you,” Hollyhock says, “but I gave my word to the kind barbarian and his human breeding slave.”
“Hey,” Brooke protests, and I smile. “I’m no one’s slave. Especially not for… that.”
“Phurusian programming,” the small voice says. “Interesting. I’m surprised you could not accomplish the deactivation.”
“There is a fail-safe mechanism,” Hollyhock says. “I would have tried, but the slightest error and it would explode—” She makes a cacophonous noise that sends spittle flying in all directions.
“Put on your goggles and watch,” the small voice says. “I will show you. This is good training.”
“Training?” Brooke asks. “I don’t want you to test anything on me. This is not a classroom. You do realize if you screw up and detonate it, you’ll be exploded, too.”
“No, I won’t,” Hollyhock says. “The explosive charge is retroactively stabilized. The kinetic energy of the blast channels inward, not outward.”
“Goody me,” Brooke says. “All this time I thought I was going to explode, but it turns out I’m going to implode instead.”
“You are not going to implode or explode or anything,” I say, taking her hand. “Right?” I say through gritted teeth, but Hollyhock ignores me. She’s put on a pair of VR glasses and is almost cooing as the voice is narrating what I assume are the complex steps needed to hack into the software.
Brooke’s grip on my hand tightens so slowly I don’t notice it until I feel the pins and needles of paresthesia start to travel to the tips of my fingers. But I don’t tell her to loosen it.
“An infinite loop,” Hollyhock mutters. “With an intentional error in logic. Interesting.”
“Interesting, but not particularly challenging,” the small voice says.
There is a click, and all of a sudden Brooke drops my hand and claws at her collar.
It’s off.
“Sweet Saint Molasses,” she says. “Wait, is it still going to implode?”
“No,” the voice says. “I have rendered it entirely inert.” Brooke turns it over in her hands a few times before a look of disgust washes over her face and she tosses it to the floor.
“Hey, I can reprogram that,” Hollyhock says. “For the North!”
“For the North!” the voice repeats.
“For the North?” Brooke asks. “Who’s on the other end of this little FaceTime? Jon Snow?”
“It is Rhomheria, Guardian of the Ice,” Hollyhock says.
“What in the infinite Blackness are you talking about?” I say. “Rhomheria is a kids’ tale.”
“Who?” Brooke asks.
“The mythical guardian of the lost frozen galaxy. Like…” I struggle to think of my knowledge of Earth lore, but it’s relatively scant. “Your Santa Claus or Hercules.”
“There’s a pretty big difference between Santa and Hercules,” Brooke says.
“Rhomheria?” I ask again. “May we humble mortals be blessed with a glimpse of your otherworldly visage?”
“You mock me?” the small voice says.
“You have done so much for me that I am forever in your debt,” Brooke says, elbowing me when I start to respond. “But I ask one more favor, which is to look upon a legend that no human has seen. I want to look into your eyes and thank you.”
“Very well,” the voice says. “Hollyhock, screen two.”
Hollyhock takes off her goggles and flips on a vid screen.
The image is crystal clear, radiant and dare I say beautiful. A majestic winged spirit hovers before us, wings slowly pulsing in a hypnotic figure-eight rhythm. It’s made of solid ice, blue and bright as the sun. The eyes are black as the void of space, the hooked beak a razor-sharp point.
“Thank you,” Brooke says, and to her credit, she doesn’t say anything stupid.
“You are welcome, mortal,” Rhomheria says. “Remember when the icy chill is at your back, to seek the righteous path. Remember that the frostwind cools a hot heart. You tumble like a leaf in a storm, but where you land, you take root.”
“Absolutely,” Brooke responds, her face betraying nothing.
The screen goes black.
That had to be a trick. Some CG animation. Another Jirdie hacker in an abandoned building that takes on the persona of a mythical creature to protect his real identity.
“Why did she help you?” Brooke asks. “If she’s some Santa Claus immortal god? And how come you can just pick up your phone and call her?”
“Rhomheria is the guardian of the lost frozen galaxy,” Hollyhock repeats. “She is reborn from ice and snow.”
“Like the legendary Phoenix of Earth,” I say to Anax. “Not Santa Claus.”
“She protects the realm,” the Jirdie explains. “The chill winds that guide the Hands of Fate. In ancient days, her army wielded the magical arts against her enemies. But she is reborn. Later incarnations wielded cudgels and obsidian arrows. But she is reborn. Thousands of times. Millions of times. Now we wield knowledge, which is pure power. Our mana is the electrical connections, and our attack speed is measured by bits per nanosecond. The sharpened edge of the sword is a keen mind that can thwart an enemy’s transportation, weapons and armor all by infiltrating his own systems.”
“You’re a warrior guardian of the lost frozen galaxy?” I ask.
“I am,” Hollyhock says. “One of many. Our army is legion. We die. Rhomheria is reborn. Only she knows the face of the next battlefield and the weapons the army will wield.”
“Thank you,” Brooke says. She seems to be accepting what just happened as the truth. She’s probably in shock, the overwhelming relief making it difficult to see through the great farce just performed for our benefit. These damned Jirdies. I knew Hollyhock had a sickness of the mind. Great genius, I will give her that, but genius is often a form of delusional insanity—both are channels for the mind to see and experience things that no other being can see and experience. The reality of the genius is not our reality—not real reality. That’s why they can create and build and calculate on a different plane of existence.
“Thank you,” Hollyhock says. “For the aranthius. Armies march on their stomachs. That’s an old saying.”
“I have heard it,” Brooke says.
“That much I can agree on,” I say, thinking of the battles I’ve fought on thin rations, half-starved and completely exhausted. “But you cannot eat aranthius.”
“Armies need to fill the coffers, too,” Brooke says.
“Yes, this will outfit the Guardians for a long time.”
“One barrel of purple aranthius?” I ask skeptically. The stuff is outlawed and scarce, therefore has some black-market value. But Hollyhock could probably sell this barrel for ten thousand credits. Not a lot to sustain an entire army. Then again, why am I even considering her ridiculous tale to be true? She’s going to split the take with her bird-brained Jirdie hacker partner. When you live in a condemned building, five thousand credits can go pretty far.
“Not the aranthius,” she says impatiently. “You think I want to go into the textile business? Do Kenorians only exercise their bodies and neglect the mind? The human, she at least has an excuse.”
“Hey,” Brooke says. “It’s not my fault that none of you out here ever made contact with Earth and brought us into the fold.”
“Why would the shepherd bring a flea into his flock?” Hollyhock says.
“Fleas?” Brooke says.
“Small, annoying, mildly parasitic,” Hollyhock says. “I do not require aranthius for its colorant properties.”
“Then what do you use it for?” I can’t help but ask.
“I extract the methylsuccinicateoctaline. From there I can—”
“Make octalmeth?” I venture. It’s a dangerous black-market stimulant. It has some performance-enhancing qualities in low doses, some palliative effects on victims of certain illnesses, but it’s mostly created in ultra-potent crystalline form for illicit use by criminal lowlifes.
“You use it to make drugs?” Brooke asks. “You guys sell drugs to finance your noble crusade?”
“Why not?” the Jirdie says. Brooke shakes her head, unable to reconcile Rhomheria’s noble crusade with selling illicit street drugs. But octalmeth is extremely expensive, and while I don’t know anything about the manufacture of the substance, I can imagine that a barrel this size can make quite a lot of profit for Rhomheria’s Guardians.
Now that Brooke’s collar has been removed, I want to go back to the Kenorian settlement and turn my attentions to Hilf. I haven’t forgotten him and his betrayal. He knows everything about our settlement, and the Phurusians are probably on their way to arrest and collar us all.
“Thank you,” I say. “We will leave you now.” I bow and take Brooke by the hand. She bows deeply, too, probably feeling twenty kilos lighter now that the collar is gone.
Then an idea hits me like a bolt of lightning from Rhomheria’s cold and stormy sky.
“You distill a chemical from the aranthius to make octalmeth?” I ask.
“No, distillation is a process by which the steam vapors—”
“Extract it,” I interrupt. “I don’t care about the technical terms.”
“Your brain is like a muscle, too,” Hollyhock says. “It wouldn’t hurt to exercise it.”
“What about vita-packs?” I ask, thinking of Hilf’s mysterious trade with Shooki and why he seemed so scared of pissing off Hilf.
“Those are not used in the manufacture of octalmeth,” Hollyhock says. Brooke’s eyes light up, and she gets where I’m going.
“No,” she says, “but do people use vita-packs to make something else? Can you extract or distill something? Is it a chemical component of some other illicit material?”
“Oh, of course, yes,” Hollyhock says. “The Guardians tampered with various techniques and formulations, but we could never get a product that was sufficient for our monetary and temporal investments. Sadly we lack the artistry required to finesse the proper chemicals—”
“What does it make?” I ask.
“In theory, if one does possess the proper artistry, vita-packs can be utilized to synthesize an extremely potent explosive device. It can split atoms, and then split the protons and electrons—and then split those pieces, each iteration releasing exponentially more raw force.”
“That sounds bad,” Brooke says. “It sounds like an atom bomb.”
“An atom bomb?” Anax asks. “Think of an atom bomb like your feeble old grandmother giving you a slap on the wrist for reaching across the table to get a cookie before you finished your meal. The technology Hollyhock’s talking about is like a sledgehammer through the skull.”
“Worse than that,” Hollyhock says. “If done correctly, there is the potential to start a chain reaction that will fuel itself indefinitely, a perpetual explosion machine that will only stop when all matter in the entire Universe has been consumed.”
“And that’s what we delivered to Hilf,” I say. “The key ingredient to the recipe to destroy the known Universe.”
Chapter 15
Brooke
I’m trying to be worried about Hilf and the vita-packs being used to make a weapon, but I just can’t. My neck is bare; the collar is gone. Relief isn’t even close to what I feel. It’s like being able to breathe after having my head forced underneath a rapid, roiling river. We’re about to land, and I don’t even know where we are. I’ve spent the entirety of our short flight touching my neck and relishing the freedom that I swear I will never take for granted again.
“Where are we going?” I ask Anax. I’ve mostly grown accustomed to the supra-light speed travel, and I can tell that we’re decelerating out of supra, preparing to land.
“The Floating City of Asherah,” he says.
“That sounds like a video game,” I answer. He pushes a button on the instrument panel and the ship jerks down, making me lurch against the restraint harness. “Can you take it easy?”
“No,” he says flatly. “I wish to land before night.”
“How can you even keep track of nights and days and time on all the different planets you go to?”
“I don’t,” he says. “It’s all in a database on my comm-panel.” Sounds like the Internet, so I guess I can understand.
“What’s at this great Floating City?” I wonder. I picture something like Venice or Amsterdam, even though I know that’s a silly thought. There won’t be sidewalk cafes and cathedrals and quaint little shops. Unless the cafes sell tumblers of green protein slurry, the cathedrals pay homage to the Unseen Hand and the shops sell particle blasters.
“Absolutely nothing,” he says. I’m now thoroughly confused. I assumed we need to talk to some shady underworld character who could get ships or weapons.
“You’re not fired up to wage war against Hilf and Lord Phuru?” I ask. “Now that you know they have the means for a doomsday weapon?”
“They will be dealt with,” he says. “But first, there is a more pressing matter to attend to. Much, much more pressing.”
“What’s that?” I ask. In truth, I’m glad for this diversion—any diversion. I understand that the Phurusians are planning to first take over that strategically located planet, set up a base of operations, then branch out and c
onquer as many planets as possible. And I understand that the Kenorians are going to do everything in their power to stop it. But that doesn’t mean that this is my battle. I know the Phurusians need to be stopped, but I’m just a human, as everyone keeps reminding me, and there’s nothing that I can do. I know it’s selfish, but I want to relax and enjoy my new collarless neck.
“You’ll see,” he says. “And you’ll like it. Especially if we can get there before dark.”
“Now I’m intrigued.”
Anax finishes the descent and the Floating City comes into view. I was not expecting this.
It’s a large, sandy island. I was thinking the Floating City was going to be a marketplace, not like Venice exactly, but maybe a multi-tiered steampunk-looking thing with rope bridges and spires. This is more like Gilligan’s Island. First of all, it’s not a city. I see no buildings at all—none. No people, no roads, no signs at all of civilization. The sandy beach is dotted with trees that my mind first mistakes for palm trees, but they aren’t. They’re tall, skinny things, but the trunks are covered in craggy bark, and the leaves are bushy. Waves lick the shore, white foam like a thirsty tongue sweeping over the sand. The water is emerald green, like a richly dyed fabric, and it has to be a trick of the atmosphere because no way regular old H2O is that color.
“Wow,” is all I can say.
“It is a nice place,” Anax replies. “Once a bustling metropolis in ancient times, the Universe has reclaimed it.”
“Why didn’t anyone rebuild the city?”
“No clue,” he says, “but probably superstition. Ancient legends say that the city was flooded for its vice and inattention to their gods.”
“Are we going to get struck down by lightning if we go there?” I ask. I’m not particularly religious, but I am a little superstitious. “I don’t want to go capering on a holy site.”
“No,” he says, “this is a welcoming place for those who want to commune with nature, who want to experience the mighty power of the Universe.”
“And that’s what we’re going to do?” I ask.