Submantle- The Alpha Key

by Patrick Lane

  Hopefully, but not slagging likely.

  Nifty abandoned the journal entries and instead checked out the files containing Rion’s Ring data, specifically Rocktower personnel.

  Several dozen names flashed by, including Chadlock Brackbash. That name didn’t surprise him, but others, including Efren and Able Fergraniteson, left him stunned yet somehow relieved.

  Then he saw it: Barton Fartwell, listed clear as day. Nifty shut off the mantle watch in disgust. He’d had enough for one day.

  He retrieved the machine room Key from the console and studied it with interest. Grunt had spat it out as soon as they’d entered the storage bays.

  As far as he could tell, it didn’t work. None of the access ports would open, let alone power up. No wonder the fool in the gate room had perished; the Key’s power source had obviously been depleted eons ago. It had been a doomed mission from the very start.

  Holding it between his palms, he studied the layers of silver swirls linking the dials around the band. It was far heavier than his mantle watch. He held them side by side and compared the two devices. The Key was a really beautiful piece and he couldn’t help but be impressed with the workmanship.

  I wonder how you adjust it?

  He removed his watch and squeezed his hand through the band to slide the Key onto his forearm. Surprisingly, the device began to whirr—the silver dials spun and adjusted as the mechanism came to life on his wrist. The silvered straps tightened briefly before settling into place around his arm.

  Nifty admired how it looked, with its layers upon layers of finely machined metals. It was, without a doubt, designed by the ancients. Trying to make sense of the controls, he noticed a small, decorative clasp built into the band so it could be removed. Very clever, he thought, flicking the latch.

  Without warning a searing pain lanced his forearm, as if filling his veins with acid. He clawed frantically at the Key as the pain surged up his neck and to the back of his skull, shattering his senses, numbing his limbs and sinking him into darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Nifty's first thought upon waking was of food. Hunger cramped his stomach, he felt like he hadn’t eaten for a month. He licked his lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper. It didn’t help. A building pressure pulsed in his temples with every breath until he was retching and gasping for air. His body tried to jack-knife into the fetal position only to have his movement cut short by restraints on his wrists and ankles.

  He snapped open his eyes in a panic.

  He regretted the decision immediately and only managed the briefest glimpse of machine parts and crates stacked around him before the light seared his vision and forced his eyes shut. The pain returned, sending additional waves of nausea throughout his body.

  “Scotty?” His voice was weak and hoarse. The numbing pain blurred his senses. He had no idea where he was, or how he got there.

  “Easy Ranger,” said a deep voice at his side. “Do you want something to drink?

  Nifty nodded cautiously, his head heavy. He felt a straw placed between his lips and a familiar scent flooded his nose. He drank the liquid greedily, recognizing the taste at once: lichen-brew mixed with a cashew nut extract—his favorite flavor. It was a standard issue item, stocked in all medical kits. As each mouthful ran down his aching throat he felt the throbbing pain behind his eyes subside. He lay back, letting the effects take hold as the brew was absorbed into his system.

  After two more servings, his head began to clear. His throat no longer burned.

  “Alright Ranger, let’s get you up,” the voice instructed.

  The blanket he hadn’t realized was covering him was pulled away. Chilled air rushed over him and brought him to the realization that he was only wearing his small clothes.

  Nifty felt strong hands on his wrists and then his ankles. The hands untied the tethers and then scooped under his shoulders to help him upright. “How about trying to open your eyes?”

  Although still drained and nauseous, Nifty complied. A dimly-lit room greeted his blurred vision. He was seated on a metal cot next to a workbench littered with medical instruments.

  On his other side, standing patiently, was Field Major Toro, one of his favorite sparring partners. Gone was his uniform, instead he wore a plain-cut civilian suit with simple geometric embroidery at the cuffs.

  Toro was younger than Scotty by at least half a dozen years, and Nifty was struck by how ill-suited the elegance of his clothing was against the hard won lines of his aged face. As unyielding as weathered stone, with a beard trimmed to a sharpened point, his face bore witness to the fact he’d spent the better part of his life exploring the crust. Not to mention the four small jewels above his right eye, a none too subtle reminder of his victories at the Brawler Bash.

  “Thank you, sir,” Nifty croaked, tilting his head in respect. “What happened?” He looked past Toro, the lichen brew working hard to flush away his disorientation, and studied the contents of the cramped room. “Where are we?”

  The room was large and windowless, but it felt small and cramped due to the accumulated machine parts and cargo crates stacked neatly, yet oppressively, against the walls.

  Toro’s blue eyes were as clear and intelligent as ever as they regarded Nifty with keen interest and a hint of concern. “Why don’t we start with what you remember,” he stated in a grandfatherly tone. He sat on a stool next to Nifty and retrieved a long cane that had been leaning against one of the crates.

  Nifty raised a hand to his head, trying to rub away the persistent dull ache and find the information he needed. His hand moved to his chin, his fingers running through the thick stubble on his face—a detail that struck him as odd.

  I just shaved yesterday morning.

  Bits and pieces of their mission were starting to surface through the fog. He tried to put them all in order.

  “Scotty and I were—” Nifty’s eyes opened wide as all the pieces locked together and almost guiltily he jerked his arm up for inspection. There, snaked around his forearm like a silvered lattice, was that slagging Key–somehow not quite the same as he remembered. Thin tubes extended from the device and buried seamlessly into his forearm. He scratched at the intruding metal in a panic, prying at the tubes, but the silvery skin around each insertion made it impossible to remove. The relic seemed to be a part of him now.

  “It’s not going anywhere, Ranger,” Toro said calmly, indicating the tools on the table beside him. “You’ve been shock-linked to the Key and have been unconscious for the past eight days. Shy of amputating your arm at the shoulder, those tubes are as much a part of you now as your own flesh and bone.”

  “What?” Nifty was horrified. “What are you saying?” Nifty stared at the device on his forearm, trying to make sense of Toro’s words. “That’s impossible,” he mumbled in dismay. “It had virtually no power. I checked it. How could it be a part of me?” Nifty’s eyes darted furtively between Toro and the Key, his mind racing. “Why was it so easy to get it off the dead body then?”

  “Slow down, Nifty.” Toro reached out and put a large, worn hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “Take a deep breath.” His voice was so calm and steady that Nifty felt compelled to obey. “Good. Now let it out.” He nodded, removing his hand. “Better, then?”

  “Scotty and Snort, are they okay? What happened to them?”

  “Scotty and the rest of your team are fine,” Toro reassured him with a smile, his eyes remaining serious. “Now, I don’t mean to be a nuisance, Nifty, but this is a pressing matter. Other than the tubes, do you see anything different about the Key?”

  Nifty regarded the device, turning his forearm to look at the underside of his wrist. “No,” he said. “Other than the tubes, it looks just like before.”

  Something nagged at the back of his mind. Nifty swung his feet over the edge of the cot and held out his wrist. Ignoring the Key’s standardized watch functions, he pressed three buttons on the device simultaneously and engaged the power lever, causing it
to spring into life. A holo-viewing field projected from the Key’s outer surface, showing the entire Terraport Helix wrapped around his wrist.

  Nifty accessed the most recent machine room records. There was a single entry. As expected, the Terraport machine room, number twenty four, was the last door accessed twenty one days ago, and for just four minutes. The right of passage was abruptly terminated due to the host’s organic failure.

  That would be our corpse, Nifty mused.

  He exited the file and continued to scroll through the access records. The last access entry was dated 1393 years ago, and it lasted seventeen days and six hours. That seemed normal, but Nifty couldn’t be certain, so expanded the search to the other Helixes as well.

  “What are you doing, Lance Corporal?” Toro demanded, leaning forward intently, his tone distracting Nifty from his exploration.

  “Nothing, I just wanted to see how much I could find out about the machine rooms in the other Helixes….” He trailed off, suddenly mindful of the instinctual way he was able to access the information. He looked at the image hovering above his wrist and studied the words and symbols more closely. The ancient language he’d never fully learned or understood was as simple and easy to read now as if it was written in his own hand.

  Well what do you know? Nifty almost smiled to himself.

  “What else?” Toro asked in an urgent tone, puzzled by the comment. He gripped Nifty’s shoulder firmly. “How do you open the doors?”

  “I don’t know,” he lied, for reasons he couldn’t say. “You put the Key in the console and activate them somehow.” He shook his head and pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. “Sorry, Toro, enough for now. I can’t think straight.”

  He was about to cross to a small stack of freshly laundered clothing when he felt a nagging scratch where the key met his elbow. A flash of anger surged through him as closer inspection revealed a small square box added to the rear of the device. The box that hadn’t been there when they’d first found it, and it wasn’t part of the original piece.

  It had been designed to look like part of the Key, but as the wearer Nifty instinctively knew it was a sinister addition installed by the Ranger Corps. His mind balked at the thought as he reconsidered his knee-jerk assessment. No, he decided, not the Ranger Corps, this wasn’t their style, they preferred to do things by the numbers. He wouldn’t be tucked away in a cramped storage room if that were the case.

  That left another option. Rion’s Ring?

  “Sorry Nifty,” Toro said in reply to Nifty’s accusing stare. “I fought to keep it off, I truly did, but many think you can be trusted to go roaming about without some kind of reassurance in place. Our dead friend you peeled from the keyhole was an excellent example of a mission gone awry.”

  “Gone awry? That’s an understatement.”

  “Yes lad, we still have unanswered questions as to why they were in the Terraport Gears to begin with, it was supposed to be a contingency destination, nothing more.”

  “So, this is to be my leash then?”

  Toro ground the tip of his cane into the floor and in a measured tone he said, “No. It’s a measure that will protect the key from getting into the wrong hands. The Ring has discovered that the Scourge is all but cured, and we have begun to delve into ancient tech. Much like these greenback bastards. Should you fall into enemy hands and the minder of this device becomes aware, the square will detonate. You probably won’t survive the blast.”

  “Are you serious?” Nifty spat. “Don’t think me a fool. If it’s tampered with, it will detonate. If I am gone too long without checking in, it will detonate. If I am seen deviating from my mission, it will detonate—and so on, right?”

  “You are no fool, young Niftmire. You have proven that time and again. We have shared meals, you and I, we’ve gone into battle together. I would count it as no small loss to see you gone.” He sighed and twisted the top of his cane once again as a small light on the Key sprang to life. “At my insistence to the Ring, I will be the minder of this detonator.” He rested his free hand on the cane so both hands were positioned for the Ranger salute. “You have my oath on my bat and on my heart that no harm shall befall you unless you are seen to become a threat to the Ranger Corps and her allied nations.”

  Nifty didn’t even begin to know how to respond to what amounted to a veiled threat from a close friend, he needed a moment to think. If he were sitting in Toro’s place he’d probably have done the same thing, but the realization did little to lessen his anger.

  Nifty staggered to the freshly laundered clothing, the chill of the room encouraging him to dress despite feeling a desperate need to wash.

  Toro cleared his throat. “Well, you seem to have the device well enough in hand.”

  Toro grasped the cane below the orb and twisted the top ring. A hiss of energy escaped from its base. “You can never be too careful, son,” he said as Nifty turned to him, his wide-eyed stare alerted by the sound. “You were thrashing around like a bug bean on a hot plate.” He chuckled and returned to his chair once again, turning the head of his kill cane to expose the familiar double R crest of Rion’s ring.

  “So, young Niftmire, descendant of Jax, I am to understand that you met with Ink during your visit to Terraport.”

  Nifty was surprised at how little those dreaded words shocked him. He nodded in reply.

  “Good, it’s about time. The Ring has been patient for far too long.”

  “Patient with what?”

  “Ink,” Toro replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, not having had the pleasure of meeting the fluxform myself I can only speak to what others have said. It, she, Ink, or whatever you wish to call the repair solution, doesn’t always appreciate our mortal timelines. It is the opinion of many in the ring that this Hadron Drake, if that is indeed who it proves to be, should have been dealt with a millennia ago.”

  “Dealt with?”

  “Yes, purged from the machine prison where his mind resided for the last fifteen hundred years.”

  “Are you serious?” Nifty fought to consider the implications of such an imprisonment and what kind of enemy it would produce.

  “Was this not discussed when you visited Ink?”

  Nifty suddenly remembered his bird pendant and the gift Ink had bestowed upon it. He tried to casually look around the cramped quarters to see if his jacket had remained with him. It hadn’t.

  “No, not that part,” Nifty said. “I’m still struggling with the fact that I may be a Jax.”

  “You are, I can vouch for that myself. I was on the committee that accepted you into the academy on your thirteenth birthday. Only a handful of the Ring know the truth of this and I would prefer to keep it that way. No need to endanger your life any more than necessary.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Think about it, Niftmire. Hadron Drake will have blamed Rion Jax and the Ring for his imprisonment. We can count on any descendent of a Jaz becoming a target for his ire. Not to mention it wouldn’t take an acumen engineer to realize you may contain enough genetic material to reactivate the machines in the Jax storage facilities. Machines that could pose a serious threat to whatever this Drake scoundrel plans.”

  “Jax storage facilities?”

  Toro returned his question with a blank expression and a gentle shake of his head.

  A thought suddenly occurred to Nifty: what about the pendant? Maybe his questions could be answered if he reviewed the files Ink had installed on it. In secret. After all, it was probably still tucked into his jacket, just waiting for him to access it. If there was one thing he’d learnt from playing Lag and Slash it was to never to let your opponent know where you wanted to strike. But unfortunately Toro was his opponent right now and he already knew far too much.

  “So what’s next?” Nifty asked, surprising the Field Major.

  “Let us find out together, young Niftmire,” said Toro as he indicated towards the exit. “But I feel like I m
ust warn you. Scotty, being the brindle badger on a grub stump he is, became aware of my involvement in the Ring some decades ago, although he doesn’t know much about the situation. He has my trust and has kept it a secret between us, so unless pressed we should both behave as if the Ring does not exist when we’re around him. “

  “Makes sense.”

  Toro turned to the doors and called out, “You may enter.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Ancient doors slid on ancient hinges, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. Scotty, the person Nifty trusted most in the world, stepped inside, his newly-healed face wearing a deep frown. He carried several books and a large bundle tucked under one arm. A decidedly frail-looking Monsourian, wearing a work apron and spectacles, stepped into view behind the Ranger. Both regarded Nifty with interest.