Synthesis

by Rexx Deane

  Sebastian lugged himself forwards. The hatch was only feet away.

  ‘Thirty seconds …’

  He bent down. ‘There’s no handle!’

  ‘Twenty-five seconds … I have released the electronic interlocks.’

  A small aperture slid open by the hatch, exposing a familiar red bar. He pumped it with his free hand.

  ‘Fifteen seconds …’

  The hatch crept open.

  ‘Ten seconds …’

  Almost there. Hurry up!

  ‘Seven …’

  The actuator snapped back as the hatch finally opened to its limit. Sebastian heaved himself in and slammed into the floor below.

  ‘Five …’

  He stood and reached for the button next to the hatch. It was beyond his touch.

  ‘Four …’

  ‘Deactivate the boots, now!’

  ‘Three …’

  He jumped.

  ‘Two …’

  His finger hit the button squarely.

  ‘One … Zero.’

  The hatch slammed silently shut and the room thrummed with the impact of solar energy from above.

  ‘One hundred degrees and rising,’ Wolfram said. ‘Your suit will not withstand this temperature for long.’

  Vents hissed as the chamber filled with air. Sebastian activated the inner airlock door, but was greeted with a blarp! Oh Gods, now he was going to boil to death!

  He hammered the button again. The door slid open and he staggered into a tiny maintenance room, where he stripped off the roasting pressure suit. There was no way he’d have been able to pursue Gladrin in it even if he wanted to.

  ‘Are you ready, Wolfram?’

  ‘Yes. If you need me to cast one of the spells, say the word.’

  He slid open the door enough to pop his head through and looked down the corridor to the left. It ran a hundred metres before ending in a heavy door, where a glowing red line ran halfway up. All clear that way – Aryx must be the other side, cutting the seal. He looked to the right and pain shot through his skull as Gladrin brought the butt of his gun down on his temple.

  Chapter 36

  ‘Sebastian, wake up!’

  Agony pulsed through Sebastian’s head with every heartbeat. The world slowly came into focus, in one eye at least, and he found himself lying halfway through the door into the corridor.

  ‘Are you injured?’ Wolfram’s voice came from underneath a storage bin in the maintenance room. Gladrin probably hadn’t spotted the cube when he dropped the gun.

  Sebastian slowly stood up. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, rubbing his head. His hand came away bloody. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I believe he went down the corridor to the right.’

  He picked up the gun and made his way out. The world was wobbly, but he had to move quickly. The door at the end of the corridor stood open. He ran through and continued for another twenty metres, until the passage turned sharply to the left. He crept along the wall and peered around the corner.

  One hundred metres ahead, the corridor ended at a pressure door similar to the one Aryx had been working on. Gladrin stood on the far side, tapping at the controls. His left hand held Janyce tightly by the wrist. She was blindfolded, had tape across her mouth and wore a thin, sleeveless orange top and pale blue leggings. Handcuffed to her other wrist stood Erik, similarly bound, wearing pyjamas.

  Gladrin looked up and Sebastian shuddered as a cold wave of adrenaline washed over him. ‘Let them go, you bastard!’ he shouted, and strode out from behind the wall with the pistol raised.

  Gladrin didn’t respond, but sidestepped momentarily. The door began to close and he dragged Janyce and Erik to the far side of the storage depot.

  Sebastian charged. The heavy pressure door was already half-closed, and with fifty metres still to go, it could have been a million miles away. It was closing too quickly. He’d never make it!

  ***

  Aryx looked the armoured figure up and down. ‘Is it just you?’

  ‘Hmpf!’ grunted the white-furred Bronadi. ‘In spite of my desire to be somewhere other than this station, I am the best this place has to offer. If my support is not wanted, I will leave.’

  ‘Don’t! I’d just hoped there would be a few more of you, given the situation.’ Aryx pulled the welding mask down over his face and turned to resume cutting.

  ‘What is the situation?’ Deruno growled.

  ‘Agent Thorsson is pursuing Agent Gladrin, who has taken his sister-in-law and nephew hostage. Gladrin’s sealed this door, which I’m cutting through while Thorsson’s gone outside in an attempt to enter an access hatch in one of the collectors.’

  ‘A dangerous and foolish move.’

  ‘Tell me about it! I can’t contact him. The hull’s blocking the wristcom, so I’ve no idea what’s going on.’ The plasma cutter flared and a blob of hot metal shot off the door, landing between the front wheels of his wheelchair. ‘Whoa!’ Deruno grabbed Aryx’s shoulder, spinning him away from the door to face him.

  He looked Aryx up and down. ‘Are you injured?’ His eyes stopped when they reached his legs.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. The weld missed. I’m nearly done.’ He turned back and resumed cutting. The doors parted. Deruno’s weapon clunked heavily in his paws.

  The corridor ahead was empty.

  ‘How far is it to the depot?’ Aryx asked.

  ‘Several hundred metres. The corridors are long for safety reasons. Your friend may be there already if he has entered through the maintenance hatch.’

  ‘I hope so.’ It was difficult for Aryx to conceal the concern in his voice. ‘Come on!’ He wheeled off as fast as he could.

  Deruno’s booted feet clomped behind him.

  ***

  Sebastian couldn’t run fast enough. The door was closing.

  ‘Wolfram, cast the acceleration spell!’

  The lights on the side of the cube flickered as it resonated a deep chord and chanted in peculiar throat-sung harmonic tones, ‘Transmitir dent ocius velocidade.’

  Sebastian pressed the button and the air shimmered around them.

  He partly expected things to slow, but instead every stride took him several metres. He barely skimmed the floor. It moved beneath his feet like a treadmill in overdrive, as though gravity now pulled him forward. The walls of the corridor whipped past in a blur, and before he knew it the effect ended, catapulting him to the ground, and he landed on one knee in a half-crouch. The door slammed shut behind him. He looked up.

  Gladrin stood several metres away, working on the door at the far side of the room.

  Sebastian got to his feet and, taking a wide stance, held the pistol in both hands and took aim. ‘Let them go, Gladrin!’

  The agent spun around and pulled the blindfolded Janyce in front of his body. A gun went to her head. ‘I’m sorry, Sebastian, I can’t do that. I need the cube.’ He shifted his grip on the weapon.

  Janyce made a muffled, whimpering sound, and stiffened at the mention of his name. Erik staggered to one side and began to sob, nasally.

  Sebastian activated the laser sight: no dot. He gritted his teeth.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d give you a fully functional weapon, did you?’ A smile formed in Gladrin’s eyes.

  ‘Wolfram,’ Sebastian whispered, ‘I need you to block my aim so I don’t hit my family.’

  The cube didn’t respond.

  He glanced at the side of the weapon. Almost all the lights on the side were lit. Shit! How was he going to manage without the override? Sweat ran down his forehead into his eye and it stung. His palms became slick and the heavy gun began to dip.

  Gladrin relaxed, allowing the gun to move away from Janyce’s head a little. ‘I didn’t choose you by mistake, Sebastian. I needed your skills and your personality. I had hoped we could work together, but now it’s come down to this. I suppose it’s lucky the explosion happened before you had any weapons training.’ The gun moved farther away.

  Sebastian gripped
the pistol tighter to steady his aim. He had to buy time. ‘Why did you give me the cube to investigate if you already knew what it was?’

  ‘You know what potential it has. The unfinished cube was already active, but I wasn’t sure why yours wasn’t. I thought it was malfunctioning, but I had my suspicions. My only option was to give it to someone it could learn to trust. Someone uninvolved.’ He gestured in Sebastian’s direction with his weapon.

  This was it. He had to follow his instincts. Closing one eye, he swept the gun down towards Gladrin’s right leg – the safest bet to avoid hitting Janyce – and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 37

  The steely crack echoed in Sebastian’s ears, joined with a cry of pain. Gladrin, Janyce, and Erik collapsed. Who had he hit? Gladrin’s gun skittered across the floor and Sebastian bounded towards them.

  Gladrin released Janyce and crawled away, blood trailing from his leg, his face contorted with pain. He reached for the weapon but Sebastian swung out with his foot, kicking the pistol.

  Sebastian dropped to one knee, landing it squarely in Gladrin’s back. The agent grunted in pain and tried to roll over, but stopped when Sebastian put the SI-gun to his head.

  ‘I can’t let you have the cube and, more importantly, I can’t let you hurt my family.’ He glanced down at the lights on the side of the cube. They were dark. ‘You need to be purged.’

  Wolfram emitted a rising tone and a bead of sweat rolled down Gladrin’s head onto the muzzle of the gun against his temple. ‘What are you doing? Please, don’t kill me—’

  ‘Expurget … Exorcizamus …’

  Sebastian’s finger went to the button. Click.

  Gladrin flinched.

  The air rippled as a distortion wave expanded from the cube and swept through the room. Gladrin sighed with the relief of a man spared execution. Why was he still conscious? Had the entity somehow resisted being purged?

  Sebastian raised his leg and, still pointing the gun at Gladrin, rolled him onto his back; he didn’t resist.

  The faraway gaze and tell-tale glimmer of distant stars he’d expected were not there. Other than expressing a mixture of terror and relief, in equal measure, Gladrin’s eyes looked normal.

  ‘You’re not one of them!’ Sebastian said. ‘Why have you done all this, if you’re not one of them?’

  A deep crease formed between Gladrin’s eyebrows, and his chin rumpled. ‘They made me do it,’ he sobbed. ‘They have my family. They made me—’

  Sebastian drew the gun away from his head and pressed it to his chest, pushing him back to the floor. ‘Who? Who made you do it? I thought you were possessed.’

  ‘Wha—what are you talking about? Possessed? The Independent Terran Front has my family.’ His expression seemed genuine, his tone of voice convincing.

  The adrenaline subsided, and Sebastian struggled to bring his ragged breathing under control. He eased the gun from Gladrin’s chest and slumped back to rest on his haunches. He had become so drawn into the issue of possession that he’d not even contemplated other explanations for Gladrin’s behaviour. Even his own behaviour had changed; that change had blinded him to the truth. His attention turned to Janyce and Erik, who lay near the door, quivering.

  The lights on the cube were dark; he laid the gun on the floor next to Gladrin with the muzzle pointing at his head. ‘Wolfram, if he moves, shoot the bastard.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  Gladrin’s eyes widened and his face lost even more colour.

  Sebastian crawled to Janyce. ‘It’s me,’ he said, and pulled up her blindfold.

  She blinked in the bright light. Her cheeks were dark with mascara runs and her red hair straggly.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Hold still.’ He pulled the tape from her mouth and repeated the process with Erik. ‘Wolfram, can you hack the security on these cuffs?’

  The manacles fell from their wrists and Janyce fell forwards to hug him. ‘Thank the Gods you got here. I thought he was going to kill us!’

  Erik shuffled in and hugged him around the waist. ‘He dragged us out of bed in the middle of the night!’

  The three huddled together for a moment.

  ‘Sebastian,’ Janyce whispered, ‘what did you mean by possession?’

  There was no point in hiding the truth from them, but there wasn’t time for explanations. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Is it the same thing mentioned in your grandfather’s diary?’

  He tried to keep one eye on Gladrin, who remained still, staring intently at the intelligent weapon beside him. ‘What do you mean?’ He hadn’t read much of the diary – after all, most of it was illegible.

  ‘There are stories in it about the starry-eyed people,’ Erik said.

  The hair on Sebastian’s neck stood on end. Why was there mention of it in the diary? He grabbed Janyce by the arms and shook her. ‘What on Earth were you thinking, reading stuff like that to him?’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘I read it myself,’ Erik said, looking up at him. ‘So, is that man one of the nasty people who have monsters in them?’

  ‘No, Erik, he isn’t.’ He gave Gladrin a sidelong glance. ‘Actually, I think he’s just like me. He’s doing what he must to protect his family.’ Once again, he was forced to see the perpetrator as a victim.

  The pressure door opened behind him and Aryx wheeled in, followed by a menacing figure clad in black. ‘Aryx!’

  Aryx approached the group. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘We’re fine. Everything’s under control. Who’s this?’ Sebastian looked up at the Bronadi looming over him. It held a rifle, which it kept trained on Gladrin.

  ‘This is Officer Deruno, station security.’

  Deruno nodded.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Aryx, can you take them to the ship? I need to clear things up here.’

  ‘Of course …’ Aryx said, giving him an I’ll-leave-you-to-it look. He beckoned to Deruno, who helped the others to their feet.

  Sebastian stood as Aryx wheeled out of the depot, followed by Janyce. Erik walked hand-in-paw with Deruno, an expression of awe on his face. ‘Can I have a go with your gun?’ Erik asked.

  ‘No, you may not,’ Deruno growled.

  Sebastian gave a brief smile and turned his attention back to Agent Gladrin.

  Gladrin kept his eyes on him as he approached and picked up the SI-gun; the agent’s fear having apparently given way to curiosity.

  ‘I appear to have misjudged you,’ Sebastian said, holding out his free hand. ‘I believe you. Things don’t seem to be as cut and dried as they used to.’

  Gladrin lay, unmoving, with his hands over the gunshot wound in his leg. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Sebastian crouched next to him. ‘I had reason to believe you weren’t acting of your own volition.’

  ‘Is that what you meant by possession— Argh!’

  ‘Wait here.’ He went to the medical station on the wall, retrieved some bandages, and began wrapping them around the injured leg. ‘Yes – I take it you heard what Erik said?’

  Gladrin winced. ‘I did, although I still don’t understand.’

  ‘I thought you’d got acceleration psychosis. I’m pretty sure that’s another cause of possession.’

  ‘Never heard of it. Although I have seen people that looked like the boy described.’

  Sebastian stopped bandaging. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the ITF. One of their agents, the one that approached me. His eyes had bright specks in. I assumed it was some new fashion contact lens.’

  Things were beginning to add up. If members of the terrorist organisation were under the control of the entities, that would explain how they knew where to intercept the Ultima Thule. He resumed bandaging the leg. ‘Why have they got your family?’

  ‘It’s because of the SI. Like you, I used to be a technician. I worked in cybernetics and stumbled across it after being recruited into SpecOps.’ Gladrin winced again
as Sebastian tied off the bandage and helped him to his feet. ‘I didn’t know why the project was shut down, but it was intriguing enough for me to want to revive it.’

  Sebastian supported him as they made their way out of the storage depot. ‘How did you discover it?’

  ‘I was researching artificial intelligence when I came upon some old papers by Dr Harrison of the Oxford University of Robotics and Cybernetics. The idea of using it for long-distance travel intrigued me – you know, nobody wants to go out that far without the assurance of finding a node. I thought if we could use sophisticated AI tech to do the exploration, it would be the solution to everyone’s problems. No more worrying about fuel, food and water being carried for long-term travel, and no emotional attachment to those left behind.

  ‘Unfortunately, the resources from the project had been stolen by the ITF during a spate of bombings a few years back. I decided to track them down and retrieve them.’

  ‘So, what happened? You obviously succeeded.’

  ‘To a degree. I tracked them down to a colony on Cinder IV where they had a secret lab. I broke in and stole the cubes—’ Gladrin put his arm against the wall. ‘I need to rest.’

  ‘How did you get out with them? Did you have backup?’

  ‘Not exactly. SpecOps wasn’t aware of the project. I was working autonomously. I managed to get into the lab when the marines raided the place. Shortly after I escaped, the reactor blew.’

  ‘Shit. That sounds like the mission Aryx was on.’

  Gladrin gulped air. ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘How did Kerl get involved?’

  ‘I knew him from when I studied at university. His interest was cybernetics and behaviourism, and his biology research focused on helping those with brain injuries, accessing their thoughts with technology that might overcome locked-in syndrome and other paralyses. John had been working with Alvarez because of his connection to the military and war injuries units at several hospitals. He’d used him for some of his early interface experiments, detecting and recording brainwave activity. I thought a possible application for SI units could be to replace damaged parts of the Human brain. To that end, I prompted John to attempt to integrate existing brainwave patterns from patients with the SI’s matrix. It didn’t get that far.’