As the smoke cleared, they saw one of the predatory assassins had sustained shrapnel damage, but it didn’t seem to impact its effectiveness. Wounded, another of the four tried scooting to safety. Its leg lay near the room’s center; sparking circuitry made the knee joint spasm violently and click with odd hums.
“Hyper-reflexive joints and overclocked modules?” Guy guessed. “These things are definitely top of the line.”
Nathan leaned around a crate; he took careful aim and blasted the crippled one wide open. The blast burnt a gaping hole in the unit and exposed both human tissue and coiled mechanical components.
“Mechnar confirmation,” Vesuvius spat as one of them tried to take a new angle on the bunkered investigators. It ducked perfectly under the crossfire, and dove through the air with its laser pistol flashing. A beam caught Nathan in the midsection and knocked him aside.
The agile cyborg kicked against the wall and leapt to twice his height, spinning in a circle. It slapped a sticky patch onto the wall at the apex of his jump. Tumbling to the ground, it scrambled to safety under the protection of his allies’ cover fire.
“I do think these things can actually read our minds,” Guy stated. It might have sounded more absurd had the data not been so convincing.
Dekker shot him a wink. “You know how, whenever we play chess, you always know exactly what my next move is going to be, and yet you still can’t beat me? It’s just a matter of moving the right pieces into place, and maybe a little bit of unpredictable misdirection.”
Vesuvius sprayed another random burst, pinning down the two attackers which provided cover fire. Dekker snapped off a shot, placing a laser beam through the rear of the runner’s cranial jack.
As soon as Vesuvius’s guns seized with heat, one of the bunkered mechnars grabbed its fallen comrade and activated the detonator on its limp forearm. The explosive patch erupted, blasting a hole through the wall.
The remaining two intruders leapt into the fray before any could react. Their first barrage of rays tore through Jamba as he tended to the fallen Nathan. The second destroyed the door controls. Blast-shielded doors clamped shut, sealing the tomb shut, save the smoldering hole high above.
Jamba clutched the wound at his chest and groaned as he collapsed. Dekker cried in rage-tainted desperation. “SHIP! Do we have an EMP safety shield installed in my location?”
“Affirmative.” Many loading docks had such a feature for responding to critical safety emergencies.
“Activate!” A blue wave pulsed through the air, making it crackle with electromagnetic energy and a heavy ozone smell.
The mechnar units still stood erect, defying Dekker’s gamble. They’d somehow been EMP shielded. Tossing aside the disruptor pistols which the electromagnetism rendered impotent, the assassins drew their blades and charged ahead as one unit—only to meet Vesuvius, a whirlwind of bladed fury. Her katana flashing in one hand and the matching wakizashi in the other, they burned through the air, invisible in their speed.
Flawlessly, she whirled and deflected each blow, maneuvering and yet engaging each of the remaining four with Muramasa-trained precision. Her toe caught the hilt of the blade owned by the assassin Dekker had killed; she kicked it through the air to her partner.
Dekker snagged it from the air and rushed forward. He isolated one cyborg from the group as Vesuvius’s superior skill overmatched the remaining three—keeping them each at bay.
Vesuvius moved with razor fluidity. Her training took over fully; her mind concentrated and released into the core principles of her discipline—immersed into a system and technique rather than individual movements. Muramasa’s legacy lived through her.
Dekker struggled to maintain his position against the obsidian hit-man. Their blades locked and Dekker stared into his own eyes as they reflected back at him in the glassine ebony. A split second passed—a kind of shared connection as they stared each other down; the mechnar stepped back and straightened. Dekker didn’t waste a beat, he yanked his revolver, an MEA restricted projectile weapon, and fired a bullet through the assassin’s chest. Old-fashioned guns didn’t require power.
As Dekker’s victim crumpled under its own weight, Vesuvius cut through the first, and then caught another with a secondary backhand from her wakizashi. Her last two blades moved with a mechanically practiced combination that knocked aside her opponent’s blade. She severed the first joint, then the next, and then both arms before a whirling maneuver separated head and split the mechnar at the midsection, putting the humanoid device to rest in pieces.
Without giving the defeated assailants a second thought, they rushed to check on Jamba and Nathan. Nathan grimaced with intense pain. “I’ll make it,” he grumbled.
Dekker, checked Jamba for a pulse. He shook his head negatively. He rolled Jamba over, checking his wounds. Jamba’s bubbled, burned skin proved the analysis correct.
Dekker stood and snorted in painful disgust. It had been a while since they’d lost any members. He’d nearly forgotten how painful that felt.
Guy shook his head solemnly. He put a hand on Dekker’s shoulder. “I know we’re not invincible. But I think we forget that sometimes.”
Staring daggers into the bodies of their mechnar attackers Dekker spoke in a low, gravelly voice reserved for dark times. “These things are connected: the mechnar reappearances, apothecium spores, Prognon Austicon, and—” he kicked the head of the nearest mechnar, shattering the face-shield, “—that damned, red tree.”
Squarely in the center of the cyborgs forehead, above the eyes that had been surgically rendered permanently open, it blazed defiantly. Inked into the gnarled face’s leathery skin was a tattoo: smaller, yet identical to Prognon Austicon’s. The red tree.
***
Dekker and Vesuvius walked through the empty building. Their footsteps echoed against the barrenness of their former home in Reef City. All the important stuff had already been loaded aboard the Salvation.
Only the stuff they’d initially assumed as vestigial remained. They’d come to collect Jamba’s personal items. Here’s the important stuff, Dekker thought as the door to Jamba’s room opened. Photos of the team’s accomplishments covered the walls. Jamba had been with them a long time.
After a few minutes spent reminiscing and romanticizing, they located the box. Each investigator had a lockbox with instructions and requests for their remains along with any contact information for their loved ones.
They opened it with a heavy heart. Inside, they found an older, faded photo of the team taken against the backdrop of the Rickshaw Crusader, less battered than in her current form. The only other item was a sealed envelope labeled, “Just in Case.”
Vesuvius pointed to the photo as Dekker opened the envelope. “Look, there’s Trigger and Murtaugh.” She pointed out the other two most-recent members they’d lost. There were only two other faces not on their current roster in the photo, but they’d been lost to retirement.
Dekker read the succinct letter. “‘You probably expected some list of grand wishes and people to contact. The photo is my family; this was my life; this was my true, great love. We did good in a universe gone to crap and lived as men of conscience and courage—plus we got to blow stuff up on a regular basis. Tell the dozen it was an honor serving. We were brothers. Spend more time celebrating me than mourning!’”
Dekker nodded. “That’s it. That’s all it says.”
A footfall clicked in the hall and the two Investigators drew weapons. “Hello?” The voice was not familiar. “Dekker? My report says you landed here and I haven’t got much time.”
The investigators didn’t respond. They remained poised to strike if necessary.
“I contacted you earlier. I am Satyr.”
“In here,” Dekker responded, using the contact’s codename.
Satyr was a small, weasely looking man, plain in every aspect: forgettable. He quickly explained that he worked as a personal attaché to The Pheema as a human relations liaison; his job demanded
sixteen hours of every day spent in close proximity to the Krenzin leader. “This was the soonest I could get away. I have very small windows when I’m unmonitored; they keep privacy with extreme prejudice. The Pheema is in Reef City for a meeting and has a thing for a local Krenzin brewer’s swill,” Satyr shook a small, bulging sack that he clutched tightly.
“Here’s the deal: I’m putting my life in your hands for one reason: you’re the only one with both the guts and the ability to stand up for the human race—the real portion of humanity, anyway. Some things are just right and some things are plain wrong. It’s not always about perception—crank pills might hide a junkie’s pain, but it don’t take him from his circumstances. We can’t hide from the truth forever. Mankind can’t survive what The Pheema is doing to us. I mean, disarm? Really? Why not give us all guns instead? If he’s making us all ‘citizen soldiers’ anyway, then what better way to make the galaxy safe? I can’t blindly trust him, or any government, for that matter.”
“And how do we know you’re the real deal?”
“Because if you don’t, they’ll kill me in due course. Believe me or not—I’m eventually a dead man if I can’t get out. And then, all this spying—my entire life—has been pointless and a living contradiction to my own beliefs.” He shook the bag again. “I’m a friend, but I have an expiration date. Take this.” He handed off his satchel. “I have to get back before they realize I detoured, even for a few minutes.”
They watched him go. Satyr walked as fast as he could, checking his timepiece.
“What do you think, Vivian? Can we trust him? I mean, can a person ever trust a spy?”
Vesuvius rummaged through the contents of the purse. “Trust him,” she stated, handing him the top file while she continued the search.
Dekker opened to a photo of Satyr and his family. It included names, addresses, pictures, full disclosure.
“He’s out on a limb and in over his head. And he knows it. Here it is.” There was a photo of one of the black assassins that they’d just killed. The caption read Psy-nar, and a subheading noted the unit’s limited ability to pick intercept and interpret brainwave activity: psychic mechnars. She dug in again. “I found the files on the Red Tree.”
***
Guy clicked the communicator, “What’s the holdup, Doc?”
“I hit something out here, and it’s bigger than your typical space debris,” Doc Johnson replied. He piloted a cargo barge that hung just a few hundred meters from the Salvation’s docking port.
“Well, that’ll teach you drink and fly. Yeah, I know all about that high-octane moonshine you guys brew out there on Darkside.”
A couple minutes of silence passed, and then a squelchy signal broke through. “I think you’d better meet me in your cargo bay and check this out.” Doc sounded excited. “I hit a ship! I’m inside it now; open your doors. It’s damaged, but I can nurse it inside.”
Doc brought the small, black shuttle to a grinding halt inside the berth and exited as he stripped his EVA suit. He met Guy who waited below. “Wait right there a second. You gotta see this.” Doc ran back inside and then the entire ship disappeared.
Doc came back out, suddenly rematerializing at the shuttle’s entry. “It’s only a class A point five—but it’s got a cloaking device!” Doc tried to rap on the ship’s hull, missed the first time, and then knocked on the invisible metal. The ship bent the light around its surface; it shimmered and distorted slightly, like the air at the tip of a candle flame.
“I almost don’t believe it,” Guy stated. “But, this does explain how the intruders snuck in. Though I’d always heard that cloaking devices were impossible.”
“Yeah. That’s what they’ve kept telling us, isn’t it,” Doc whistled. “Get in here, check this out.” The ship was a small, heavily armed fighter with only three seats. Within seconds, Doc had torn apart the access panels and exposed the cloaking device’s mechanical unit. “Since I signed confidentiality contracts many years ago with some MEA stooges, I can only say that the old Darkside R and D departments have never been working on very similar units in our labs.”
Guy held a flashlight for Doc while he crept down around the mechanics. “A three-seater? That means there must be at least one more of these things out there. There were six assassins.”
“I get it now.” He was too consumed to bother with Guy’s comment. Doc Johnson pulled his head out and wiped his hands clean. “I see how they finally got it to work…” He mumbled some calculations aloud. “I have enough parts,” he grinned. “Dekker really is going to owe me those cupcakes.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I’ve got everything I need in the warehouse. I could install a similar cloaking unit on the Salvation. And it comes at the bargain price of exactly one dozen cupcakes.”
***
The dead unit suddenly sat upright; a timed failsafe delivered an electric charge to restart his artificial heart and reactivated his systems. With a mental control, Leviathan brought his power core back to full strength. As soon as his neuro-network recovered from the shock, he crawled from the pile of bodies. With cold apathy he noted the remains of his brothers. Emotion had been programmed out of him, and the other presence he sometimes felt in his mind paid no regard for it. Leviathan lived for the accomplishment, for the kill—fulfilling his purpose was his only reason for existing.
A more important objective had surfaced in due course of their mission. Had those muscles in his mangled face not been surgically severed, he might have smiled. The psy-nar had gathered all the info he’d need during the final assault in the docking bay. Dekker had played his part perfectly, as Leviathan knew he would; he had every confidence that the investigator would aim for his chest and the human heart that had long ago been replaced with more durable, synthetic replacement. He knew it with unquestioning certainty—he’d stolen the data from Dekker’s mind.
Like a wraith, Leviathan crept through the corridors, reached out with his senses, and avoided all paths that might have led to personal encounters. Like the ships they’d snuck in from, he was perfectly invisible.
He arrived at the access to Dekker’s private quarters and crept inside the investigator’s secure, locked area. Leviathan keyed in a complex combination. Including the psy-nar, there were exactly two persons in existence who knew that code.
Stalking through the shadows, he went straight for the prize. Beneath a heavy blanket, which Leviathan psychically knew Dekker’s grandmother had made for him long ago—an abeyant memory Dekker’s mind associated with the item—Leviathan pulled the DNIET device out from hiding.
Tucking the unit under his arm, the phantom scanned the remainder of the room. He knew the story behind each artifact in this room, each secret book and item Dekker had collected through his adventures. But Leviathan had no concern for anything but DNIET, the chief prize desired by his master.
Minutes later, Leviathan jettisoned himself through the void, and set a trajectory for the exact coordinates of his cloaked ship, one of two. Seconds later, the assassin-thief disappeared as if he’d never existed.
***
They spread Satyr’s files across Jamba’s bed and tried to make sense of them. There were photos of The Pheema and Prognon Austicon scrawled with notes. Some files were so heavily redacted that they were of no use, others seemed to verify Satyr’s fears that the two had worked together at different times in the past. Question marks and random notation filled page margins; test was circled seemingly at random. Especially erratic were a series of hand-drawn star maps with constellations and coordinates—they didn’t match anything either of them were familiar with. A constellation making a red tree had been scribbled on a worn piece of paper alongside the Greek character Phi and a question mark.
A myriad of images, a collection of mysterious red tree tattoos, were photographed on ranking Druze warriors from both before after the religious purge that had claimed the lives of men like Dekker’s father. Several images directly tied those Druze to Aus
ticon.
An unedited video file of Austicon’s escape from the Dozen showed those same assassins freeing Austicon. Giving no new data, it ended the same way: with Austicon taunting Vesuvius.
Old paper files showed that the assassins had once been patients at a psy-ops research facility which had experimented on them with Mechnar technology. They eventually scrubbed the project, but only after the psy-nar team had been “forcibly evicted.”
“Someone busted em out and they tried to cover it up,” Vesuvius clarified. “Maybe they were repaying the favor to Austicon? I guess it explains why they could anticipate our moves so effectively.”
Dekker followed her statement to its conclusion. He had to vocalize it to make it sink in more fully. “They were psychics; they read our minds.” The horrible results of that fact filtered through Dekker’s thought process. “We have to get back to the Salvation, now!”
***
Within the subterranean complex Leviathan bowed low before Prognon Austicon. He reverently pressed his face to the floor until his god stroked the back of his head and bid him stand. The divine one was the only being whose mind remained closed to Leviathan.
“So tell me, beautiful Leviathan, what mission brings you to my keep?”
The Right Hand desired that we brothers destroy your enemy, Dekker.
“That much I’ve already assumed.” Austicon curiously stuck a finger into the hole torn open in Leviathan’s chest. “I assume by your solitary visit that your mission did not complete successfully?”
There is something of great value which The Pheema desired I obtain for the Verdant Seven—something they desired more than revenge: the Directed Near Infinite Energy Technology Weapon.
“And you have come here to take it from me? Would a man rob God?” Austicon motioned to the machine on a nearby table. Two lifeless bodies lay nearby; both suffered from the early stages of decay.
Leviathan cocked his head, confused. I already delivered DNIET to The Pheema earlier today. And I would die before betraying my god. Leviathan drew a blade and sank to his knees, placing it before his beloved, surrendering to his master if he so willed it.
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