The Star Mother

by J D Huffman

  “This isn’t even for anyone important. It’s going to the Trust. The boss man is trying to induce them to finish up whatever stupid thing they’re working on.”

  “Buying them off with fruit now? That’s a new low. But it’s not like they do anything but eat, sleep, piss, shit, and fuck. And I thought we were doing something about the fucking.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Martan says the Trust gets upset about having parts cut off and refuse to work if they get threatened with stuff like that.”

  “So what? They’re slaves.”

  “But the kind you can’t replace that easily. So we have to treat them like kids. They do a good job, they get a cookie.”

  “I wish I had a fucking cookie.”

  “Do your job and Cylence might give you one.”

  “I’m the only one even looking around here! You just stand there doing… doing nothing. And I’m doing the work.”

  “Looks to me like you’re just moving your hands around in a box. A slave could do that. You wanna be replaced?”

  “What I’m doing is consolidating three or four boxes here, which would go faster if you’d help but you’re just going to complain about how slow I am because you’re a jerk!”

  William heard one of the boxes shift abruptly, as the Totality who was closest to him yanked it, and then a loud thump as it and a couple other boxes hit the floor.

  “Oh, great. That’s perfect,” the one who’d been complaining moaned. “You see what happens when you don’t help?”

  “I see what happens when you run your mouth instead of doing your job.”

  “Fuck you. I’ve been on shift for ten hours already. I didn’t get a break. The slaves get breaks. Something about how their bodies break down.” William heard the sound of a soft packet slapping the inside of a box with almost every syllable, indicative of the angry Totality cleaning up the mess. “I think they’re making it up. I don’t get tired. I get sick of this, but I don’t get tired. I don’t do that thing where I feel like I’m going to collapse and go unconscious. The slaves do it but I always think it’s some kind of scam, like a performance they all agreed to put on to get out of doing work. I bet if we started zapping them they’d suddenly stop needing so much ‘sleep.’”

  The other one, who hadn’t been helping whatsoever, let out a belly laugh. “Yeah, I’ll send that recommendation down to the behavioral psychology department. I’m sure they’ll love your brilliant insights into slave culture.”

  “What ‘culture’? Cylence said it best: they’re animals. Sometimes I still can’t believe that ‘Trust’ group even exists. None of them are worth it, if you ask me. Don’t we have our own scientists and researchers?”

  “Not enough of them.”

  “We don’t need disgusting human ones to make up for that.”

  “Tell it to personnel.”

  “You know they won’t listen.”

  “I’ve been sick of listening to you for the last five years. Shut it, already.”

  William puffed out an irritated sigh, wondering for how much longer their inane banter could go on. Just get the fuck out of here already! he wanted to scream at them.

  He immediately regretted allowing himself to become distracted once the one who’d been digging through the boxes accidentally knocked several more from the shelf—enough to reveal William’s presence on the other side. It wasn’t until the other Totality called, “Who’s there?” before William fully jolted back to the situation at hand.

  Fuck. Instinctively, he dove and rolled. That proved a fortunate move, as he barely dodged a lick of fire from one of them and a bolt of lightning from the other. He hadn’t expected to encounter such dangerous abilities from men who were relegated to inventory duties, but he supposed there must be underachievers even among the most powerful Totality. The sociology research will have to wait for another time, he thought as he ran behind another set of boxes, which quickly caught fire from another blast. Holding his weapon at the ready, he mentally calculated the positions of the other two with the intention of firing the moment they were in view. Evidently, they had similar designs on William, as he could’ve sworn he smelled his own hair singe when another volley narrowly missed him, coming through the gap in an aisle as he zipped through it.

  It was an enclosed space—not small, but still enclosed. The layout didn’t lend itself very well to hiding. His choices quickly diminishing, he came to the conclusion that to stand and fight would be his only real option for surviving, much less progressing. He paused, then backtracked to one of the aisles the Totality had already immolated, counting on them to assume he would keep running in the same direction and have their attention elsewhere when he struck.

  He caught the enemy off guard with a shot from his pistol, sending one of them tumbling to the ground with the stench of seared flesh. William only had time to see the body briefly twitch before he had to contend with the other—the lightning-thrower. This Totality was faster, certainly a greater challenge than he’d faced before. It occurred to him that his direct engagements with the Totality had thus far been very limited. There were the slavers on Actis, whose superhuman abilities didn’t seem to extend beyond some enhanced strength, speed, and endurance. The earth-shakers at the weapons depot had trashed Sasha’s team quite thoroughly, but William only watched that encounter from afar. Here, he was all but face-to-face with someone who could hurl lightning from his hands. Demeter had mentioned their ilk during the briefing: “Don’t be surprised if you encounter Totality will all sorts of abilities you wouldn’t find in a typical human. Superior strength and agility, energy manipulation, illusion. The key to engaging them is to not. Avoid them entirely, or kill them before they notice you. Odds of survival in a stand-up fight with a Dominix-quality Totality are low.”

  William always appreciated a vote of confidence like that. He appreciated having a full head of hair even more, which dwindled every moment he spent in this room that now smelled of electricity and burnt flesh and hair. How much of said hair was his own, he couldn’t say. He only took comfort in the knowledge that, if it was his skin that had been scorched, he’d be hurting a lot more by now. He was, at least, thankful for the Order physician who put his various infirmities “on hold.” He felt no pain from his back or legs, and could move freely as he had when he was a Militiaman. He wished he had time to enjoy the experience of being fully mobile again, instead of having to defeat a walking thundercloud.

  He collapsed behind another set of shelves, breathing heavily. Whatever the doctor had done to alleviate his pain, it hadn’t done much for his endurance. There was no mistaking it: his muscles had atrophied from lack of use since his injuries on Actis, and he was absolutely paying for it now. He hoped it wouldn’t end up costing him his life.

  He heard the Totality grunt in frustration as the boxes rattled around him but refused to be fully penetrated by the man’s bolts. Is he running out of energy? Is that something they do? I wish Demeter had told me one way or the other. I wish Demeter had told me a lot of things! William decided to take a chance and peeked his head around the corner to his right, and nearly fell over when he saw the Totality was close enough to smell his breath. It became a question of reaction time, and William reacted first. He pulled the trigger on his pistol several times—he lost count—until the man fell, a smoking pile of skin and bones and hair and fabric where once had been something like a man.

  He stood up, dusted himself off, and sighed. Checking the energy reserve on his pistol, he saw he’d depleted more than half already. I can’t afford any more encounters like that. He had to admit, though, that Demeter had been honest about the weapon’s characteristics. It was highly effective, and his wrist didn’t sting from any recoil. After taking the time to stash the corpses in a storage bin, he searched around for a maintenance hatch he could use to escape. Finding none, he turned to the access lift instead. An elevator was hardly the
safest proposition for moving about the Centrality undetected, but William found himself short on options. Within the lift itself, he didn’t have any trouble locating a lower hatch. He could climb through that and hold onto whatever was underneath—cabling or scaffolding or whatever else the Totality used to hold these things together.

  Unfortunately, there didn’t turn out to be all that much he could get a grip on. A couple impressions spaced uncomfortably far apart gave him just enough to hold onto, though he retained serious doubts that he could keep his grasp if it moved at all. His next priority became descending the shaft and finding a way out that didn’t involve accessing a main floor. He realized how similar this situation was to Devon’s movement through the elevator shaft at SINAI’s Seattle office. But here I am without a PMD or any technical skills at all. He swung himself over to the shaft walls, and that hurt. The impact hurt, then it hurt again when he slid down a few levels and stopped himself by desperately clutching at anything he could get his hands on, nearly yanking his arm out of socket. A cling and a more distant clang followed by several more pinging sounds informed him that he’d lost his pistol down the shaft that looked bottomless from all the way up here. Fuck. This is a bad day.

  Then, the Centrality began to shake around him, slightly at first. It quickly escalated to more violent trembling, and he became aware that the Order must be attacking. There’s my mother, a little late, as usual. That’ll make this fun.

  Chapter 42

  Source Code

  Sasha was rudely awakened by the shuddering of the floor beneath her, a shaking so abrupt it slid her cage noticeably along the slick tile of Cylence’s office. She quickly deduced that the Centrality was under attack, almost surely by the Order. And Zotz isn’t here. Someone needs to let me out. For the first time since her imprisonment, she felt truly helpless. She could resist Cylence’s taunts and capricious punishments—she had some feeling for how far she could push him. But she couldn’t do anything about an outside assault, and if the Order chose to simply blow up the whole complex rather than try to hold it, she’d die just like this, locked in a cage, killed either by incineration or exposure to vacuum. She found neither an attractive prospect.

  Discontent to sit idly by while others decided her fate, she paid attention to the trembling of the room around her, leaning her body this way and that to affect how the cage slid ever so slightly along the floor of Cylence’s office. She didn’t know if she could find a key or some other means of extricating herself, but she knew she had to try. Soon, she had her cage banging against the side of a desk, so forcefully the desk itself moved toward the wall. Once it got there, she kept helping her cage ram more and more into the desk. The bars barely warped—they were much stronger than the desk, which had already deformed considerably under her impacts on one side and the resistance of the wall on the other. This isn’t going to be enough, she decided.

  So, she tried another approach. Grabbing onto the bars behind her, she tried to move in time with the lurching and shaking of the facility around her to flip the cage onto its side, where she might have a better chance of attacking the top. A few minutes of work paid off—at least, she had the cage reoriented so it was lying on its side, at which point she could push against both the top and bottom and try to bust one or the other out. Those bent and warped more readily than the bars which surrounded her, and she found herself wishing she’d tried this sooner.

  She’d built up quite a good dent in the roof of her tiny prison when a harried Zotz burst into the room. “Sasha!” he called.

  “It’s about time!” she yelled. “I was sitting here thinking I was just going to be left to die, or blown up, or something. So, I decided I’d have to get myself out.”

  “Well, I could just leave and let you try to do that,” he shot back.

  She was unamused. “Don’t be a jerk. Get me out of this thing!”

  “I have to find the key,” he announced, shoving things off of Cylence’s desks and ripping out drawers.

  “Are you serious? You don’t have a key for this?”

  “I thought he’d have it somewhere easy to find!”

  “You could have killed one of the guards for it. I know they have keys.”

  “There’s no time for that now.”

  “There’s no time for this,” she retorted. “Look, just help me break the top. I’ve already got it most of the way.”

  He came closer and observed the damage she’d wrought. “Impressive for mere physical force.”

  “Thanks, I’m glad you’re impressed,” she quipped. “How about some help? Get an axe or a sword or something.” She gestured toward the walls, where various bladed implements were hung. “Grab something blunt and start bashing!”

  Zotz took Sasha’s advice. She squeezed herself against the other side of the cage while Zotz swung some kind of warhammer at what he perceived to be the weakest point of the cage: the locking mechanism on one of the top corners. Several good swings paid off, and he had the lid compromised enough that he could pry it wide enough for Sasha to get out.

  “Oh, finally,” she breathed with tremendous relief. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get out of that alive.”

  Zotz nodded. “I’m happy to be of service. Not to be indelicate, but… we need to clothe you. A naked woman wandering the Centrality is hardly inconspicuous.”

  “Wonderful insight,” she hissed. “I can see why Cylence put you in charge of his special projects.”

  Zotz guided the now freed Sasha out of the office and through the throne room, scouting ahead to make certain they wouldn’t be spotted. Squads of Totality troops rushed past from time to time, forcing Zotz to duck back around the corner, or hide in the nearest wall recess, or take refuge in whatever room was close by. In any event, it soon became clear that the Totality were far more occupied with the external attack and the possibility of being boarded than they were with Zotz’s activities. Zotz, after all, wore the Trust uniform. Sasha assumed the other Totality didn’t see him as a threat, and even if they’d seen her, they might not take notice under the circumstances.

  Nevertheless, she preferred to play it safe, and so did Zotz. When they made it to his quarters, he quickly tossed her one of his uniforms. “Put this on. I apologize if it fits poorly.”

  “A Totality uniform?” she scoffed. “A slave uniform, no less.” But she immediately turned glad to have any clothing at all, after so long in the cage. She quickly wriggled into the clothes Zotz provided, tugging the top down over her head and evening it out over her abdomen, around which it hung loosely past her waist. She yanked up the pants and tucked the excess shirt into them, though they also threatened to slide down her legs.

  Zotz detected her predicament and swiftly pinched some of the waistline and drove a small pin through it to hold the fabric more tightly against her skin. “That should keep them up,” he nodded.

  “Thanks,” she said flatly. “Now, weapons. Do you have any?”

  “No. Cylence allows us considerable latitude, but it doesn’t extend to weaponry.”

  “I knew that. I was wondering if you’d given yourself access to any.”

  “Still, no.”

  Sasha sighed. “How was this supposed to work? The Order come, they attack, then what?”

  The old man didn’t soften the blow. “They take the Dominix by force if they can. Destroy it if they can’t.”

  “Then we need to help them take it, or find a way out before they decide to blow it up, don’t we?”

  “My responsibility is to ensure Cylence doesn’t escape with any materials from my research.”

  “I don’t care what your responsibility is. I do care about anything that hurts Cylence, though. Where is it?”

  “The Source. That is where we should attack. Cutting power to the entire Centrality will make the Order’s job easier.”

  Sasha recalled their earlier conversation.
“I thought you said it was almost impossible to get to the Source?”

  “I’ve been working that problem,” Zotz said thoughtfully, twisting the tip of his beard between his fingers. “It should be more possible now.”

  They ducked down a corridor, narrowly dodging a group of Totality. Zotz found them a maintenance passage which offered a good bypass of further patrols, and soon they made it down the several levels they needed. Sasha heard at least one firefight, and that told her for certain that the Order had boarded. That, or they have a slave revolt on their hands. No way to know for sure without getting into the middle of it.

  When they reached the target level, Zotz again opted to go on ahead of Sasha. She didn’t want to stay behind—she didn’t fully trust this man, nor did she believe he would go as far as necessary to beat Cylence. Where are his true loyalties? What if he turns on me when he’s caught? I shouldn’t have let him go alone.

  Nevertheless, he returned in short order. “The Source is under guard,” he frowned. “I attempted to explain that Cylence had sent me to gather some research notes from the lab inside the Source chamber. They told me the Centrality is on lockdown and no one is allowed to enter any secured areas. I wanted to press the issue, but they threatened to shoot me on the spot. That would have been less than ideal.”

  Sasha was unimpressed. “Go back there and tell them you have special orders from Cylence to enter and do your work. They wouldn’t want to upset the boss, would they?”

  Zotz shook his head. “They would never believe such a story.”

  “Let’s try something else. It’s just another hallway, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Two men guard the entrance to the Source chamber.”

  “Walk past them. Make eye contact. Get their attention, but keep walking.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle the rest.”