by A. R. Knight
“Then we will find another way to calm them down.”
The terminal pauses again.
“Do you see the problem?” the Amigga says to me. “Ignos believed willpower was the key to defeating the Sevora. What it failed to realize was that same willpower could, one day, be used against the Chorus. When we saw these recordings, when we saw Ignos’ continued failure to make humans happy in a controlled, defined existence like the Oratus have within the Vincere, we made the choice to end your species before it could proliferate.”
“You didn’t like that we thought for ourselves?”
“Not only that you thought for yourselves, but that you acted on those impulses. Ignos also had your breeding rate tuned high enough to make galaxy-wide populations a strong possibility. Oratus are controlled. Vyphen, Teven, most species have low enough birth rates to keep them manageable. Flaum are too skittish and ill-equipped for command to be a threat. Humans, though? They would be problem.” The Amigga gives a monotone laugh. “You are a problem.”
The terminal flashes again, and now Ignos is floating fast towards the base’s large docking bay. Things are shaking, panels on the roof are falling in, and the Flaum around Ignos are yelling at each other and the Amigga.
“Make sure the back-up supplies are ready!” Ignos shouts as the Amigga enters the shuttle-filled bay.
When I was last there, the exit had been buried shut. T’Oli, using a stolen shuttle, crashed through the roof to give us a way out. Now, through Ignos’ eyes, I can see a wide open ramp leading to bright blue sky. Grass and trees peek around the sides as Ignos takes what looks like a longing glance at an Earth it’s about to leave.
“They are. We already have enough stored away.” The same Flaum’s voice. “Ignos, we have to leave now. The Vincere are sending shuttles down.”
“Then we have one chance,” Ignos says. “Set the save-state protocol. Make them lose too much, and they might leave us alone.”
Ignos floats its way up a shuttle’s ramp, and within moments the craft blasts out through the bay. Instead of rising into the sky, however, I watch through Ignos’ ‘eyes’ as the ship barrels through the tops of trees and narrow passes, hugging the ground.
“Chorus, when you see this, know that I don’t hold your short-sighted faults against you,” Ignos says, and the recording blinks to black. “You may think I have failed, but I promise you, I have not.”
“That’s the end of it,” the Amigga says a second later. “After that transmission, we heard nothing more from Ignos. We commenced a cleansing bombardment of that side of Earth a short time after, and it was assumed Ignos perished in that assault. Now, though, it seems more likely Ignos and its associates died a more natural death after helping your species start again.”
So it’s all true, then. I’m surprised at myself for the confusion I’m feeling, the disappointment. I guess I had hoped, somehow, that everything I’d suspected was all wrong. That the humans Viera and I discovered on the far side of Earth were a product of some later experiment gone awry, not the original tests for what later became Father, Mother, and me. That most of humanity worships the great yellow star in our sky as Ignos makes more sense now - the haunting ghost of where we began.
The unsettled twinges in my gut curdle to distaste quick. Being the creation of a hard-driving, brutal Amigga isn’t a history I want to have. It’s not an inspiring story. Not one of overcoming hardship, or creating a better world. It’s one alien’s idea that, through luck and some planning, survived forced extinction from the rest of the civilized galaxy.
More than all of that, though, I don’t want to be the property of the Chorus. I don’t want to be their creation. Their product.
“Delete it all,” I say, and when the Amigga doesn’t immediately move to follow my order, I raise the hammer in my right hand. “Do it, now.”
“Human, these are sealed records,” the Amigga replies. “They are not on Caches. They do not exist anywhere but here, where only those with proper clearance can view them. Humanity’s origins will remain a secret, I assure you.”
“Yes, they will,” I say. “Because you’re going to destroy them. Now.”
The Amigga hesitates. I gather the creature takes the destruction of knowledge like this some sort of sacrilege, given the setting and its ability to access these secret records. I, though, see these recordings as evidence of something that doesn’t matter.
Before I saw what Ignos did, I believed we came from the dust, from the magic of a god. All of the humans back on Earth believe something similar. Myths and legends, stories are told every day and night about the wondrous ways our civilization grew. These... these are nothing. A bad story told by a bad species, and one that doesn’t deserve a second telling.
“Do what she asks.” Malo appears next to me, and together we use our weapons to imply the consequences.
The threat can’t have much weight, as I don’t know how the terminals work. How the Chorus stores these recordings. If the Amigga doesn’t obey, I don’t think we’ll be able to—
The terminal flashes. A black circle, outlined in red, appears in the center of the screen. Slowly, the solid red fills in from the outside until the entire circle is complete. Then, with a tiny chime so low I can barely hear it, the terminal goes back to its static, icon-covered screen.
“It’s done,” the Amigga says. “Your secrets are lost, now.”
“How can we trust you?” I ask.
“I do not think I can convince you,” the Amigga replies. “You would not understand how to verify. What you can do, though, is choose to believe.”
“Choose to believe? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it? Aren’t you making the same argument for your own people? Letting them choose to believe their own stories for their origins?”
I stand with that for a breath. The Amigga’s right on all counts, though the thought annoys me. Still, the creature did say that these secrets are only stored here. Why take any chances?
“Malo, let’s break these things, and then go find the others. Viera, keep an eye on this one.”
The Amigga’s smart enough to back away as we start swinging. It doesn’t say a word as I bash in one terminal screen after another. As Malo tears apart the thick cords linking things together, prompting sparks to fly in the dark spaces of the level. Despite the size of the place, with both of us working together, we manage to devastate everything fast. I’m sweaty, but smiling at the end of it.
“Feels good getting back to what we know, doesn’t it?” Malo says to me when we’re done.
“I’m definitely better at smashing these things than using them.” I look over at the Amigga, floating silent amid the rubble. “Thank you for your help. When the Chorus falls apart, I’ll let whatever replaces them know you’re worth keeping around.”
“It doesn’t matter who’s in charge,” the Amigga replies as we head towards the lifts. “The cycle’s always the same. The stories are forgotten, and then retold.”
“What a boring philosophy,” Viera mutters. “I think you made the slimeball a little sad.”
“It’ll get over it.” The lift panel, for the one we didn’t barricade, sits in front of me. “I’m guessing we need to keep going down?”
T’Oli slithers its way onto my shoulders. “If you want to find those fighters, that’s probably a good idea. Unfortunately, these lifts only go back up.”
“Then I guess that’s where we’re heading.” I put my hand out, touch Malo’s shoulder. “You ready?”
“I am, Empress.”
“Viera?”
“I’m ready to shoot something, Kaishi. Let’s get’em.”
A battle-cry for the ages, I think.
14 Traps and Triggers
Rovel sputters protests as Sax drags the old Oratus back towards the lift bank. The words aren't worth paying attention to; gibbering insults and petty threats from a coward. Sax has heard the same many times before, usually from his soon-to-be victims.
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Not that Sax plans to kill Rovel. No, if there's anything that will serve to turn the Vincere to the side of the Resistance, it's the sight of this creature. This anathema to what an Oratus should be. If the Chorus are willing to do this to an Oratus, then there are no limits to their evils.
"Activate it." Sax pulls Rovel the rest of the way.
"You think I would still be here if they let me use the lifts?" Rovel switches tactics.
It doesn't work.
"Yes." Sax takes Rovel's last remaining claw and presses it against the panel.
As expected, as Sax knew it would even as he hoped, in some small corner of himself, that Rovel really wasn't such a servant of the Amigga, the panel turns green. The nearest lift ought to be coming now, and if Sax is lucky, it'll be the one he's looking for.
"I tried," Rovel says low and soft, defeated. "I told them I would try to turn you, when their methods failed."
"A stupid idea," Sax says.
"Almost as stupid as attacking the Chorus."
Rovel's hiss dies as the lift's doors open, revealing not an empty container that Sax could ride to the top of the Meridia but an Amigga. Or a warbot. Or both. Sax back-steps from the lift while Rovel moves to the side, giving plenty of room for the new arrival to plod out on its trio of metal legs. Those three limbs form the foundation of an exoskeleton that sweeps up and around the gray-green bulk of the Amigga, which is covered in a filmy seal that Sax recognizes as a mask. Splitting the mask are a quartet of metal braces that slide up and over the Amigga like a cage, only this cage has lethal attachments.
Unlike the warbots, which played their weapons off of thin metal limbs streaking from their floating bulks, the Amigga's artillery spreads out over its head like a canopy, with a central beam rising like a rotor sitting across the top of the cage and splaying forth glowing ends like a leaf spreads its veins.
Sax looks at this assembly, at its lethality, and does what any Oratus greeted with such a display would do.
He laughs.
The hissing sound gets the Amigga to freeze, its body settling on those three legs with a creaking halt. The miners over its head angle their points towards Sax, as if that's going to scare him. These Amigga keep forgetting that Sax is supposed to be dead - there's not much to be afraid of when every breath is already borrowed.
"Not the reaction I was expecting," the Amigga says, its voice low and grave, and still monotone. As if a computer were attempting to intimidate Sax. "I suspect you will change your assessment soon enough."
"Not likely."
"Those warbots below are old. Artifacts. Too many Amigga believe we need to rely on others to do our fighting for us," the Amigga says. "Using those old warbots as a guide, I've designed a way we Amigga can finally take control of our own destinies."
While the Amigga prattles on - Sax suspects the words are more for whomever is watching than Sax himself - he sidesteps towards the left wall of the level. Unfortunately, Rovel hasn't outfitted his floor with anything resembling furniture, so there's no cover on the flat, plain tiles. Without something to hide behind, the best move is going to be a fast assault. And not from where the Amigga expects it.
"You had control of your own destinies," Sax hisses back at the Amigga once its speech breaks, continuing to move. "Look at Rovel. You took him and turned the next version into me, and now you've lost."
"No, we've learned."
The Amigga swivels its body and Sax realizes a second too late that those three legs are designed to go in any direction, and the Amigga can wheel itself in whatever way it chooses. As that array of lasers turns towards Sax, the Oratus jumps towards the level's left wall. Catches on it with his claws, digs in and moves fast, clawing and climbing his way up the side towards the ceiling. Behind him, Sax feels the heat and sees the flashes as the Amigga burns a lot of bolts into the wall beneath him.
When Sax gets to the ceiling, he starts towards the Amigga and stops when a cascade of hot red fire burns in waves directly in front of Sax. The bolts leave a black line scored into the ceiling, and as the whine fades, it's replaced by Rovel's rasping laugh. Sax, frozen, has no doubt the Amigga could have roasted him right there. The monsters array is focused right at Sax, but the Amigga doesn't fire.
"See? This is as easy as it gets," the Amigga says. "Not even an Oratus that has defeated your execution plans can handle my design! After I finish him, give me the seat I deserve!"
There it is. Sax's last question is answered. The lifts stopped here, Rovel's been waiting here, and Sax would bet the warbots were activated all to lead him this way. Survive this far and he'd make a worthy kill for an Amigga looking to elevate itself all the way up to the Chorus.
Sax has been used for his entire life. First by the Vincere, and now by Evva. Not once has it made him angry, not until now.
The Oratus drops from the ceiling, pushing off with his claws to fall too fast for the Amigga's array, which starts blinding the level with laser fire, to track Sax. With a twist in mid-air, using the push-off as momentum, Sax hits the ground claws-first and, ignoring the shock of impact-pain, he pushes off towards the Amigga. Sax keeps his body as low to the ground as he can, his vents pressing against the floor as his claws, talons, and tail push him forward.
To its credit, the Amigga isn't so confident in itself that it doesn't try to back up. Those three legs start their rise and fall while the array orients on Sax's charge. Unlike a microjet, though, there's no instant propulsion here. A sacrifice of speed for stability, for the heavy weight arms like the ones the Amigga's carrying require.
Unfortunately, Sax is fast.
The Amigga scores a couple of glancing shots far down Sax's back as the Oratus leaps, the pain washed away by Sax's bloodlust - that unquenchable thirst for the destruction of everything lying between Sax and his goals. The Oratus hits the Amigga in the middle, and Sax drives his claws through the mask's main weakness: close, personal, devastating blows. Every part of Sax contributes - his mouth tearing away the array's attachment to the rest of the Amigga, his claws shredding apart the cage and the creature inside of it, his talons ripping away the connections to those thick legs. Sax's tail, too, gets in a good whack when Rovel makes a worthless attempt to dislodge Sax from the assault, sending the old Oratus crumpling back against the very water station Rovel sat next to when Sax first arrived on this level.
Before the Amigga can say another word, before it can fire another shot, it's gone, and Sax is gulping down the remnants. He's never actually eaten an Amigga before, and while few things compare with the delicious, furry meat of a Flaum, Sax doesn't mind the mid-mission snack.
With sparking remnants littering the floor around him, Sax rises from the kill and turns back to Rovel, who's fallen into pure groveling mode now that his apparent benefactor's met the fate Rovel deserved cycles ago.
"Please," Rovel says, his voice a sickening whine. "I had no choice."
Sax doesn't answer. There's one thing he still needs from Rovel, and he understands that the only thing this Oratus truly values is its own skin. A currency as easy to exploit as any other.
"Then let me give you one," Sax replies, pouring every bit of a real Oratus' hiss into the words. "You will get me to the top of the Meridia, or I will give you your death here and now."
"The top?" Rovel says, and here his eyes track to the other lift panel, opposite where the Amigga came from. "I don't have that clearance. Allocite, the Amigga you just... ate, would have been able to take you there."
"Then how close?" Sax says.
Rovel pauses, again throwing eyes towards the other bank of lifts, then the Oratus gets back on its talons. "Close enough, I think, for you to go the rest of the way."
At a wave from Sax's foreclaw, Rovel leads the way to those lifts and places his claw on the control panel. Once again, it turns green. This time, though, a lift doesn't immediately open, and a series of numbers appears on the panel.
"A queue," Rovel explains when Sax gives a slight warning hiss.
"No games. There aren't many lifts that can traverse so many levels. For security, I believe. I don't have a priority clearance."
Sax can agree with the Chorus on one thing - trusting Rovel with anything important would be a mistake.
"After I leave," Sax says. "Summon another lift and go down. Find Evva and tell her what you did."
"They'll kill me if I do."
"I'll kill you if you don't," Sax puts a single foreclaw against Rovel's nose. "You turned against your own species. I can't say what the galaxy will look like when the Chorus falls, but perhaps, if you help us get through this tower, there might be a place in it for you."
The traitor's access might not last long once whichever Amigga controls such things realizes Rovel isn't on their side anymore, but even if the Oratus' claws get the fighters up a few more levels, then it's worth the attempt.
"I didn't want to do it," Rovel tries again as the counter on the panel ticks lower. "You see these stumps? They were burned off. One by one. Allocite made me fight, made me try to destroy its tests."
"You failed."
It's the truth, and it's devastating. Rovel shrinks away from Sax, goes back to the wall and sits, staring sullen towards his fellow Oratus. For his part, Sax is just fine cutting off the conversation. The stakes have been laid, the deal's been made, and there's no reason anymore to suffer the conversation of someone so lost as Rovel. Maybe Evva can redeem the old one, if she cares to try.
The lift dings a moment later, arrives empty, and Sax delivers one more hard stare to Rovel. A look that ought to haunt the Oratus' nightmares. One more price for him to pay, and far from enough.
A coward.
Sax would die a thousand times first.
15 Promises
Despite being armed and ready for anything, my twitchy aggression, spiked after our successful destruction of my own species’ history, falters when I’m confronted with what’s pasted in gold-rimmed Chorus blue on each of the lift’s three walls and, once they close, the two doors: