by James McEwan
One guard undid his hands while the other held him. Then together they rebound his hands and used the chain on the cuffs to hang him from a hook that was bound to the back of the door that normally would have held extra power cords. After seeing that he was securely hung like a side of beef, they left the room and closed the door behind them.
“You see Colonel; I know I don’t have enough time to break you properly, so I’m going to start carving pieces out of your Marine until you give me those codes.” He paused and walked up to the marine and took his left ear in his hand as he raised the laser scalpel. “Shall I start with an ear, or should I go right for the gusto and make him a eunuch? The choice is yours.”
Colonel Grunt didn’t break, he didn’t cry out stop, instead he started to laugh. This was not at all the reaction the interrogator was looking for. He lowered the laser scalpel and asked, “Mind telling me what you find so amusing?”
“You just made your first mistake,” Grunt replied almost gleefully.
“And just how have I done that?” He asked, looking somewhat perplexed.
“You gave me hope,” Grunt said happily.
“And how exactly have I done this?” The man asked, truly at a loss. He had really thought that by torturing his Marine in front of him that he would break.
“You have done what no one in your position should ever do. You put two Terrain Marines in the same room.” Grunt said.
“Why should that matter? And how exactly does that give you hope?”
“Because when you take everything from a man, strip him even of his dignity as you have done to me you kill hope, and without hope all a man can do is wait to die. But when you put the two of us together in one little room with just you… I know that one of us is going to kill you, now that is powerful hope, don’t you think?”
“You’re both restrained. Just how do you think you’ll kill me?” The interrogator asked bemused by the Colonel’s assertion that he was going to die.
“Oh I don’t know, but I bet he has an idea,” Grunt said and pointed at Hunter, who was not looking quite as beaten and broken as he looked when he was brought in.
The interrogator turned to look at the Marine just as he launched himself forward with his open mouth. His teeth tore into the soft flesh of the interrogator’s neck. He dropped the laser scalpel, which landed at the feet of Hunter. The interrogator used every ounce of strength he had to get away from the biting Marine. However, Hunter would not let go and the man’s flesh finally tore spewing blood in an arc that sprayed the wall, painting it in crimson.
The wounded man stumbled back in shock. Never had he thought that anything like this would happen. His hands grasped his neck trying to stem the flow of blood while Hunter spat out the chunk of the man’s neck. Then using his toes he grabbed up the laser scalpel and with what seemed like the practiced grace of a primate he tossed the scalpel to the Colonel. Grunt caught it in his right hand, but it was backwards and he had to swing it around.
The wounded interrogator saw what Grunt was about to do and in a desperate attempt to stop him he lunged forward, his bloody hands outstretched. Grunt was faster and the man had too far to go to get across the room. Grunt pointed the tool at the man’s head and pushed the button. With a white hot flash of light a small hole erupted in the middle of the man’s forehead. A fraction of a second later the laser burned its way through his brain. He fell dead at Grunt’s feet. The Colonel wasted no time; he aimed the laser at the chain holding Hunter to the door. In less than a minute both men where free of their restraints. They took up positions on either side of the door and the Colonel yelled, “Hey get in here, there’s a problem. The two guards standing outside didn’t hesitate, they rushed into the room and were both subdued in a matter of seconds.
“Close the door and help me with the bodies,” Grunt ordered. The two men stripped the guards of everything except their underwear. In the room was a utility sink that they used to wash up in. After putting on the guard’s uniforms both men looked over the other. The Terrain Marines had both been a good three inches taller than the Fabian guards. This made them appear to look like goofy teenagers trying to wear last year’s clothing.
“It will have to do,” Colonel Grunt said as he checked the battery on the laser pistol sidearm, it was full. The two Marines left the room and started to search for the Emperor, hoping he was still here and still alive.
Meanwhile outside fleet headquarters St. Claire set the vehicle on the landing pad reserved for officers only. “Okay boys and girls, last chance to rethink this insanity,” he said as he powered down.
“It’s okay I have a plan,” Amanda said, and then she spelled out the details, which left St. Claire to guard the vehicle and Ruby. He was not crazy about the idea as he liked to be the man of action, but he understood that there was no other way this would work. Kára, using her armor’s holographic generator, disguised herself once more as a human NGE officer, while Archie placed magnetic cuffs on Mortlock. Amanda led them from the vehicle with Kára and Archie flanking Mortlock.
Ruby and St. Claire watched as they walked away with all the confidence in the universe. “I hope they’re going to be okay,” Ruby said with a worried look on her face.
“By all accounts your grandma is one tough lady, and with the others with her, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” St. Claire replied, but he couldn’t hide his feelings of worry from her.
Amanda stopped at the checkpoint and placed her hand in the scanner. After a second it turned from red to green. The human guard who Amanda recognized as one of the former StarGuard turned NGE asked her, “What’s up with your friend?” He was of course referring to Mortlock.
“Ah the big guy here,” she said as she pointed behind her. “High value target. Ambassador Mortlock from the Orillia embassy.”
The guard looked at Mortlock for what seemed like an eternity. Amanda was banking on the fact that most humans thought that all Orillia looked alike and that this ensign didn’t pay much attention to politics. If he did, they were sunk because he would know that the Orillian Ambassador was a female and secondly she was off world when the attack took place.
“Big son of bitch isn’t he?” The guard said.
“Excuse me ensign?” Amanda said out of habit. She didn’t think about how chewing out the junior officer might endanger the plan.
“Oh, sorry Admiral, it’s just that I haven’t been around many Orillia and I’ve never seen one so big before,” the young officer quickly replied, realizing that opening his mouth may not have been the smartest thing.
“Ensign you are lucky I’m in a hurry or I would personally see that you are removed of your rank and demoted to mucking out the sanitation tanks on the Lord Emperor’s ship. However, I don’t have time to talk to your CO. I’ll forget this ever happened. Understand?”
The young officer put his head down and answered, “Yes sir, it won’t happen again. Thank you sir.”
“Good,” she said and stomped off with Kára, Archie, and Mortlock in tow.
Chapter 39
Two Alyn Rue soldiers were on a foot patrol. Their area of operation just happened to be the lake that Eve had hidden the Eden in. The Alyn Rue were shorter than most humans and had a universal dislike of them. People generally thought the little bear creatures were perpetually grumpy towards humans because of their height. They couldn’t be more wrong. The truth was that the Alyn Rue detested them because they resembled a hairless apelike creature from their home world, (more monkey like than anything), which they considered to be especially tasty.
To date no one actually knew of any humans being eaten by an Alyn Rue, but there were plenty of stories told by space fairing people about the hairy bear like creatures coming to eat naughty children that didn’t behave. Even though there were no documented cases of Alyn Rue eating children, or anyone else, given the opportunity these two patrolling critters probably would stick a fat spoiled child on a spit and roast them nice and slow.
The two bear li
ke Alyn Rue soldiers were bored, as all the action was now over and all there was left to do was watch a lake that glowed a soft blue color at night. They had set their weapons down on the beach and were skipping stones across the softly glowing surface. The taller of the two red furry beasts was in the midst of congratulating his partner on a particularly good toss when the surface of the lake rippled as Eve’s black hair broke through.
The two were so stunned to see a human female with skin of alabaster and hair of ebony, dressed in a skin tight black body suit emerge from the water, that they just stood there like two furry pillars in the sand. Eve made her way to the shore and looked at the two Alyn Rue soldiers who were not much smaller than her, “Well aren’t you two just the cutest things. Like little teddy bears, but with big sharp teeth.”
They understood her human speech, but they were far too shocked to respond as they had never heard of a human that came from the water. They thought all humans came from the trees. She bent down and gave them both a hug, “Whoa, you two need to brush more, your breath could kill someone,” she said as she injected them both with a sleep agent. She let go of them and walked away leaving the two Alyn Rue still speechless. Within seconds, they collapsed onto one another happily snoring away.
Free of the water, Eve could now move freely and did. She took off at a pace that would put even the fastest gold medal runner to shame. Now she could connect to the network and if the security AI tracked her it would only lead to her body on the move, making it much harder to trace. If she was caught she would only lose the body and not herself, as she was in effect two AI’s, one inhabiting the Eden and one within the bot body.
After hacking back into the network, she tried to contact Thad, received no response. She checked his communication chip and was able to run a diagnostic on the chip. It came back all systems normal. This could only mean one of two things; either Thad was unconscious, or worse dead. If she had a human heart, it would have fallen out of her chest to think that. She switched to try to contact the Damocles, but it wouldn’t do any good, as she knew that it would be running radio silence as it was about to attack.
Without anyone to contact she decided to hack into the security video feeds, all of them. It took some time before her processor was able to sort the data and found what she was looking for. She pulled up the video of Thad’s death at the hands of his brother, and it caused something to happen that had never happened to any AI ever. Her programing took a giant leap forward. She had programs that expressed and even mimicked human emotion, but this was different, somehow she evolved passing programs and algorithms. She slid to a dead stop and her knees went weak. Eve fell to the ground, her armored knees slamming into the concrete with enough force to crack it. She didn’t just mimic chest pain; she felt it, real pain. She felt real emotion. At that moment, she transcended from being a mere intelligent self-aware machine to an intelligent sentient emotional being.
Tears of saline that were there to help sell the love-bot body as real, were as real today as any other person’s tears, streaming down the face of a real being. Unable to control the systems in her machine body for a few minutes she sat on her knees in a deserted street sobbing uncontrollably. It never occurred to her that the most amazing thing had just happened, that a new life form had just been born into the universe, and no one had been there to witness it.
After her tears ran dry, she felt a new emotion grew, hot and fierce. It burned in her so palpable that she actually did a quick systems check to see if she was in fact on fire. Her eyes flashed red and she knew it was anger. She balled up her fists and struck the ground, turning the concrete to dust. As the dust settled she stood up, wiped the dirt from her hands and knees, and started running for the Senate building as fast as her body would go. She was no longer bound by her programing. Free from the constraints that kept her from killing she was, as they say, in a killing mood. Someone was going to pay and she was going to be the one to collect.
Meanwhile on the bridge of the Damocles, Captain Daniel Wesson stood tall stretching to his full height. He opened a ship wide channel, “Attention Crew, this is your Captain speaking. I want you all to know that it has been an honor and a privilege to serve with you. This is not our first time in combat together because it is we who rise to the occasion. We have followed our orders and made our leaders and our organization proud. Yet today is different, today we have no leaders, and we have no organization. Today we fight not as a military but as a group of people who have chosen to do the right thing. Today we choose good over evil, and if it is our last, we meet death as free men and women. Today we fight to preserve the one last chance the universe has to stop this menace. So do your jobs and let fear and doubt take a holiday as we give these bastards a licking they won’t soon forget. Don your pressure suits and be ready for combat as we drop out of hyperspace in ten minutes. That is all,” he closed the channel and turned his attention to his bridge crew. “All right you bunch of space dogs lets show the rest of the fleet how it’s done.” That got a cheer from the bridge crew.
Five minutes later all departments of the ship reported ready for combat. Captain Wesson sat in his command chair in his pressure suit, a crewmember handed him his helmet, “Sir,” she said.
“Thank you,” he replied and slid the helmet over his head. With a loud click, the helmet locked in place and a second later his ears were filled with the soft hissing of air being pumped into the suit.
Captain Wesson nodded towards the communications officer who activated a ship wide alarm warning the crew of the impending decompression. Not all space navies fought in decompressed ships, but the StarGuard did. It might be a little harder to fight in a pressure suit, but they didn’t have to worry about rapid decompression problems. If the hull was breached no one was sucked out into the vacuum of space.
“Alright people, I want firing solutions the second we drop out of hyperspace,” Wesson said as he felt the tension on the bridge build.
The StarGuard fleet headquarters complex, now the home of the New Galactic Empire central command was a buzz of activity. The operation to round up and process civilians for conversion was now fully implemented. Most of the staff at the complex was busy coordinating shuttle flights, troop movements, and dealing with the small resistance that had refused to lay down arms. Processing three quarters of the world’s population of over ten billion people was a massive undertaking, one that kept the staff focused on their work and not on one Admiral, two guards, and an Orillia.
Amanda, Kára, Archie, and Mortlock walked through the maze of hallways and lifts until they made it to the security checkpoint for the detention area. There they were stopped by two armed Fabian guards. Seeing Fabians in the fleet headquarters burned Amanda to the core. She had spent most of her career fighting them and now they were on her turf. She tried the same ruse that she had used upon entering the complex, but these guards were not former StarGuard and they didn’t buy what she was selling.
“I don’t care who you are lady, you could be the Lord Emperor himself for all I care. No prisoner transfer orders, no entry into the detention area,” the guard protested.
Sensing that they were about to be discovered Kára, who had the remote to the mag cuffs Mortlock was wearing in her hand, pushed the unlock button and gave Mortlock a look. He understood what he had to do. He threw his hands back striking Kára and Archie in the chest sending them backward and into the wall.
“Look out, he’s loose!” Amanda yelled as she stepped out of the way, leaving an open path straight to the Fabians, whose eyes suddenly widened.
Before the two guards could do anything Mortlock was on top of them and with his massively powerful hands, he gripped both men by the front of their black uniforms. He lifted them off their feet with the ease of a child flinging two dolls in the air. He then took the two men and slammed them together several times before dropping them into a crumpled heap on the floor.
He turned and smiled at the others when he noticed Kára trying to
extract herself from the wall, a look of annoyance on her face. “You need to learn to pull your punches my friend,” she said as Archie helped pull her free.
“Sorry I got excited,” Mortlock apologized.
“Come on we need to keep moving. We’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t know how long our luck is going to hold,” Amanda said as she stepped over the bodies and headed into the detention area.
Once inside they were able to find the room where the Terrain Emperor was being kept.
The four of them slipped inside unnoticed much to the surprise of Collin and Sasha.
“What’s going on Amanda?” Collin asked.
“Time to go,” She replied.
“Who are your new friends?” Sasha asked as she entered from the restroom.
“Kára, Mortlock this is Collin and Sasha,” Amanda said, introducing them quickly and with some amount of irritation as she wanted to be out of their before they were discovered. “And you already know Archie here. Now we need to move.”
“Gee nice upgrade their Archie,” Sasha said.
“Yes, I quite like it,” he replied.
Just then alarms started sounding and the emergency lights began to flash. “Damn it! We’ve been discovered, we need to move now!” Amanda barked out.
“No reason to keep this ruse up any longer,” Kára said as she dropped the holographic façade.
Collin and Sasha watched as the young female NGE officer faded away to reveal the ancient Eli battle armor. Kára’s helmet was hiding her face but with a single thought the armor responded and the helmet collapsed down exposing her face once more.
“I see your new friends are full of surprises,” Collin said in response to seeing the Eli.
“Yes! Can we move now?” Amanda asked as she checked the hallway.