by Tim C Taylor
A shock of fear sparked through Tawfiq, and she half moved her hand to her sidearm, but for the benefit of the human observers she concealed her reaction, transforming it into a languid stretch, a natural movement for an individual enjoying this open-air spectacle of humiliation.
“I’ll take you with me, you perverted monkey-frakk,” whispered the translation of the human’s thoughts in her ear.
The psychologists had warned her this day would come, these last spasms of defiance before Romulus’s mind finally imploded. Curse the foolish creature for frustrating her carefully planned enjoyment of him. He was giving in too soon. But she had prepared for this moment. She knew what to do.
Romulus flinched as she descended the steps of the Tawfiq Memorial to his kneeling figure, but when she touched him, it was not with a whip or club but the caresses of her tail. “I wish to consult with you,” Tawfiq told him, as if addressing a senior member of the New Order. “Your former warband, the Human Legion, has landed in Africa and seems to think that it will take this world from me. What do you advise should be our New Order response?”
“There’s nothing you can do,” said Romulus. “Not now that they have orbital superiority. We’ll both be dead within the week.”
Tawfiq slapped his face with her hand, while still caressing his neck with her tail. “Be serious, human. You know perfectly well we have responses prepared. Why, only this morning you yourself gave an excellent broadcast explaining to all civilians why they should be very afraid, of both the ravages of the Legion and the perils of collaboration. There must be more you can do.”
Romulus dared to raise his eyes to meet hers. “Aren’t you even concerned by the invasion?”
“Concerned?” Tawfiq withdrew her tail and moved behind the human. “My only concern is that your mind will shatter before you appreciate the depth of your defeat.”
She grabbed him by the hair and shook his head. “I need your sanity a little longer. Perhaps ten days. Can you keep yourself together that long? For me?”
Romulus ripped his head from Tawfiq’s grip and spat. The gesture was fittingly pitiful; the human had tried to twist around and spit on his mistress, but the chains that bound him were far too tight, and he managed nothing more than to dribble down his chin. Nonetheless, his intent was clear, and the guard hauled at the golden chain, dragging Romulus across the gravel on his side. The waiting Janissaries would either beat or execute the human at their commander’s instruction. The situation was exceptional, however, and Tawfiq desired neither.
“Leave him!” she ordered. “I need a little spirit left in him.” She gave Romulus several sharp kicks in his chest, making good contact with the ribs she knew to be already covered with a mass of bruises and scars.
“Let me give you something to think on,” she told him, “something to give you hope. Shall I tell you why I do not fear the Legion?”
Romulus lay still and silent, but Tawfiq wasn’t stupid. She knew she had the human’s full attention
“My psychologist warned me that you would exhibit this behavior. You are exhibiting signs of rebellion, but they do not come from strength. For many years now, your subconscious has been trained to protect you, and to protect your sexual mate, Janna. No matter how much you despise yourself for giving in to my demands, thanks to our work in your subconscious, you will betray anyone and anything to protect yourself and your lover from harm. Just as your physical body is powerless against your Hardit superiors, so is your higher mind a slave to your subconscious… a subconscious controlled by me.”
“That’s not true,” growled the human.
Alarm flickered through Tawfiq once again. The Blood Virus system scented Romulus’s words with truth. He actually believed he was in control of himself.
“You were brave once,” she told him. “You resisted far longer than my human specialists said you would. But you could not turn against your own subconscious without–”
“Go frakk yourself.”
Tawfiq blew happily along her lips. “That’s my boy. That’s the spirit I need…” She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “Your subconscious is exhausted,” Tawfiq explained. “It’s finally abandoning all hope. This defiance is a symptom of your mind finally shutting down, and so what you need is hope. I can give you that. I’ll reveal my greatest secrets. Two of them. And then do you know what you will do with this vital information?”
Romulus rolled over so he could look up his tormentor. “I will take anything you give me and use it to defeat you.”
“No. You will do nothing because I have broken you. Even if you weren’t, I know everything that you think. If you even dared to imagine the possibility of truly rebelling, I would know before you do. That’s what so precious about you, Romulus, the glory boy of the human X-Boat squadrons, the beloved of Colonel Nhlappo… Oh, did I tell you she was a field marshal the last I heard of her? A field marshal! What a ridiculous title, and yet it did nothing to stop her being betrayed by her own Legion soldiers and hunted like a dog. She will be long dead by now, and it is a mercy that she’ll never see what became of you. But talking of family, perhaps you’ll enjoy your brother’s company soon, or your lover, the very same Janna you betrayed your people for. My signals team are busy listening out for them as a high priority. I would enjoy observing a family reunion before you die.”
Tawfiq regarded Romulus for a while, but he did not give her the satisfaction of responding. He had long practice in shutting down his mind so there was nothing for the virus to hear. No matter, she would plant something there.
“Bring him,” she ordered her Janissaries, and strolled to the White House where she would reveal secrets Romulus didn’t even suspect.
— Chapter 43 —
“Do you remember how I took you from the Legion?”
Romulus narrowed his eyes, squeezing pure hatred into the back of the creature who had ruined him and was now holding open a floor hatch as if one friend courteously opening a door for another.
Tawfiq was friend to no one but her own arrogance. Even her own people detested and feared her.
“Well?”
Was he quick enough to grab the wretched creature’s neck and snap it? With just the two of them here in these tunnels deep under the White House, Tawfiq looked so casual, so vulnerable, but like everything to do with her, it was a lie. Romulus had tried to kill her many times, but he only had to succeed once…
“You’re no threat to me,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Get out of my frakking thoughts!
Tawfiq gave an impression of a human laugh. “No, seriously, Romulus. Do you remember how we met?”
Sighing, Romulus went through the hatch and into the darkness below. “No,” he said. “My memories have gaps.”
“Let me fill some of them back in. Corrosive munitions. Your X-Boat was eaten away to dust. Don’t you recall screaming as the destruction approached you, trapped in your cockpit?”
What is her game? Romulus wondered as he descended the narrow ladderwell into a rough-hewn cavern system that glowed a hellish red.
“And that’s what I’m going to do to your Legion,” she said, sealing the hatch above them. “My corrosion traps will destroy every ship in orbit. Once I’ve re-established orbital superiority, any Legion forces on this world will be cut off, surrounded, and destroyed.”
Pretend you can’t hear.
Romulus tried to force his attention to remain on his surroundings. Even so, a fleeting fantasy caught him in which he killed the tyrant and reached a radio to warn the Legion before he was gunned down by the Hardits. But they both knew there was nothing he could gain by reacting to Tawfiq’s gloating. He was completely isolated. Even his thoughts were monitored.
What can I possibly do?
They were descending a 100-foot vertical shaft similar to a starship deployment tube, although the more he distracted himself by observing these underground tunnels, the easier it became because he’d never seen anything like this.
> Where the hell am I?
His sense of direction wasn’t what it had been, but he reckoned he was under the Potomac River. The rock was crudely finished, but that seemed to be a deliberate aesthetic choice because set flush into these rocks were ventilation grilles, sensors and equipment of which he could only guess the nature. And the glow? This should be sedimentary rock down here, but the rock faces looked volcanic smooth and glowed red like coals, although they were cool to the touch.
He glanced up at Tawfiq and saw she was watching him closely, probably enjoying his confusion.
If so, then she enjoyed it all the way down to the bottom where they dropped into a 5-way intersection.
The route to get here had been convoluted, skirting the ‘looms’ as Tawfiq called them, the breeding factories where Hardit embryos were force-grown into the sexless Janissaries, and the Faithful were created out of human children. Tawfiq’s route kept them out of sight of these hideous perversions of nature. Soon they were doubling back and forth along barely used passageways, passing through tight corners that forced the Marine to turn sideways to stand any chance of squeezing through. It felt as if they had taken the back alleys through the seediest parts of the complex the Hardits had burrowed underneath the White House, and yet he guessed this deepest level would seem palatial to a natural tunnel dweller.
The path led to a dead end. Tawfiq turned and Romulus nearly flung himself at her, a final, hopeless gesture because this sure seemed like an execution spot.
Why else would Tawfiq bring him to this blind alley, deep underground?
But a little voice of reason reminded him that even for Tawfiq, this was too overelaborate a performance just to execute him. No, she was planning something worse than death.
She lifted her lips over the upper right of her jaw, a gesture he interpreted as a sneer. Had she read his thoughts and enjoyed the way he’d talked himself out of attacking her?
“Your former comrades in the Legion are as good as dead,” said Tawfiq. “I’ve already explained how I will destroy them, why they do not concern me. However, I do have enemies who concern me greatly.”
She touched an unremarkable patch of the tunnel wall, and the rock at the end of the passage slid away to reveal a smoked glass window.
“Go on,” she said, stepping aside. “This is my second secret. Look!”
The cavern beyond resembled the looms in the upper levels, but if this was a loom, then it was so immense that it took Romulus a while to adjust to the scale. It was a sterile facility in which tiered layers of bubbling fluids were slowly rocked by robotic arms. Inside the tanks were creatures. At this distance, Romulus couldn’t make out their features, but then he looked farther down the cavern where larger tanks – similar to Night Hummer environmental capsules – held what he guessed was a later stage of the creatures’ manufacture. They resembled Hardits, but in the way a Wolf-Marine like him resembled the Earthers: as titans of war.
This was no experimental lab. Romulus was seeing a mass-scale production operation in full swing. It was a factory making a new model of Hardit warrior.
A lot of them.
“Who will these soldiers fight?”
“My real enemies are my Hardit rivals. They do not know about my personal army. And that’s why I shall be free to program the warriors of my New Corps to be loyal to me alone.”
“How will they be programmed?”
“That’s not an appropriate question for a human to ask.” Tawfiq slapped him with her tail. It didn’t hurt but he understood its significance as a dismissive gesture. The supreme commander had tired of him. “Leave me now,” she said. “Go back to your quarters and drown yourself in gin.”
“I can go freely? I don’t need to wait for guards?”
“If you deviate from the path I took to get here, I’ll have you killed. If you are too slow in returning to the upper levels of the White House, then I’ll have you killed.”
“But I don’t know the way,” said Romulus. It was true. His concentration had frequent lapses these days and the route had been complex.
“Really?” Tawfiq with relish. “Then you’d better start praying, because if you deviate so much as a footstep, you won’t make it back alive.”
Romulus bowed and hurried away. As soon as he was out of sight, he began pulling so hard at his golden collar that he had to stop and draw in deep, rasping breaths because he had half throttled himself. Why he did this was a mystery to him. He had bonds that trapped him far more securely than his collar. But no matter how much his head spun, and his bruised throat screamed in protest, he tugged on his collar all the way back to the den reserved for him in the White House.
— Chapter 44 —
The New Order’s instructions had seemed almost innocent at first.
No, Romulus admitted to himself as he took another swig of barely chilled gin. Never innocent, but… yes, it had been constrained.
Tawfiq’s controllers had told him to meet with as many Legion officers as he could, the more senior the better. If possible, he was to make physical contact – a simple handshake would be perfect. If a handshake would draw undue attention then to pass nearby would have to suffice, but Romulus would have to try his best. If he didn’t then they would know. And then there would be consequences for Janna.
Give us what we need, Romulus, and your Janna will live. We will leave this system soon and we’ll never meet again. No one need ever know the trifles you did for us… so that your Janna would live.
Romulus hurled his glass against the wall, spilling gin over the stained paint of his private White House room.
Tawfiq had lied.
He grabbed the gin bottle off the dresser and sent it spinning through the air to thud into the wall.
Tawfiq had never left him.
Neither glass nor bottle had shattered – the ones they gave him never did these days. He bent down to retrieve the bottle before too much of its contents spilled out onto the carpet, and refilled his glass.
The reflection in his dresser mirror pulled at his attention, but he didn’t want to look. All he would see there was failure, a fool who had betrayed everything and everyone, himself most of all. A traitor. A coward.
But he hadn’t always been a coward.
Nor a traitor.
His memories were tattered and disordered. The constant drinking didn’t help and yet… Romulus was taken by the ridiculous notion that his drinking was somehow admirable, a secret form of rebellion.
He laughed and watched himself in the mirror perched on his bed with a bottle of gin trying to kid himself that he was drinking loyally on behalf of the Legion.
He frowned, the brightly patterned scales on his forehead bulging powerfully. Janna had thought them handsome once.
Was she out there, part of the invasion force? His brother, Remus, too? Did they curse his name or never mention him? They must surely hate him, but what form did their revulsion take? He wanted to know.
And now he was drinking for victory! What a dumbfrakk idea. What would they make of that?
He found his gaze pulled inexplicably down to the reflection of the gin bottle in his hand and felt a flicker of pride lick through him.
Pride? What is this? Is Tawfiq right? Am I finally losing my sanity?
He drained the glass. Spluttering as he drank too greedily of the coarse liquor.
The fire burned the back of his throat. Shit! That was seriously bad gin. He might have to rustle up a mixer.
That’s enough.
Drink for victory? Hell, no. He drank to forget.
Enough for what?
He was ready to look into the mirror.
All these random thoughts rioting in his mind. Where did they come from? He smacked his head repeatedly against the empty glass, but the ghostly words only firmed into compulsions.
Sweat pooled on the backs of his hands. Was this how insanity felt? The thoughts weren’t his own… but they didn’t have the feel of his Hardit controllers either.
<
br /> He needed to look into the mirror.
His reflection peered back, as confused as he was.
Romulus felt his gaze pulled down again, this time to the dresser table and the two drawers beneath. The one on the left held a spare glass and a fresh bottle of gin. But the drawer on the right…
What was in the drawer to the right?
Why couldn’t he remember? It was just a frakking dresser drawer but… whatever was in there was important.
Trying not to make his curiosity obvious in case anyone was observing, he slowly pulled out the drawer and contemplated its contents.
Empty.
Oh, perfect. This was his last source of pride. The secret weapon with which he would kill Tawfiq and begin to atone for his treachery. An empty drawer! What was he supposed to do? Beat her about the head with it?
He laughed bitterly, but the compulsion that the drawer was important only grew, worrying at him until he felt inside with trembling fingers.
There was nothing in the drawer. And when he reached up and felt the wood above he found only an old ball of gum that was sweating almost as much as him.
The idea of slimy gum made him shudder, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he kneaded the gum in his fingers. Milked it. Soon it was dripping slime. He knew what to do. He rubbed the backs of his wrists against the slime. Why? He had no idea, but he had to do this.
His back was aching with the awkward stretch, but still nothing happened. Was a secret door going to open? Maybe a magic sword. The Earthers loved their stories of magic weapons.
Then he fell into a hallucination.
He blinked, hard, and opened his eyes on a scene that he was convinced wasn’t real.
Romulus seemed to be himself. Same stained shirt and tie. Same golden collar around his neck, and a gin stain soaking into the wall from when he’d thrown the glass. He twisted around to scan the room, seeking out any sign that would confirm this wasn’t real. But in every detail, this was the familiar White House prison cell for Tawfiq’s favorite pet. Contents: one drunken traitor with a fraying mind.