The Last Cycle

by A. R. Knight

  “Then it’s serving its purpose,” Sax says, turning and spreading his claws. Yet, he can’t attack yet. He can’t assume that he’s going to figure out how to use the Priority Beam on his own.

  The First Chair seems to know this too and doesn’t make a move. “I don’t know how you made it here. Kah and Lei vanished, and yet here you show not a scratch. That should not be possible.”

  “But here I am,” Sax says. “Show me how to use the Priority Beam. The fight is over.”

  “Is it?” The First Chair says. “In spite of those few out there who choose to betray us, our forces will still win. No matter how far up the Meridia your friends get, the Vincere will still bomb it to oblivion. Nothing will be left except rubble, except your broken, shattered dreams.”

  “Did you forget you’re still in this tower?”

  “Like I said before, I don’t care. I’m dead either way. The only thing that matters is making sure you and your efforts die with me.”

  The words are the only signal, and one Sax doesn’t catch. A pair of bright red bolts lance out from the rings as the weapons spin, triggering at the precise times to send their hot death right at Sax. Who moves, but not fast enough. Nothing is faster than light.

  The first bolt strikes Sax in the side, down near his waist and causes his right leg to wobble, to lose feeling. The second one hits Sax’s left midclaw and shears it off at the wrist. High-powered, deadly.

  There’s only one way to fight an enemy that has range when you do not, and Sax closes as quickly as possible. He dives, presses with his tail, his left leg, and with what he can get from his right. It’s a fumbling leap, one that falls short but nonetheless forces the First Chair to float back into its bunker.

  The weapons come around again on those rings and fire off another pair of shots but now Sax is moving forward fast, digging his claws and talons in and gouging that black metal floor to propel himself along it. The shots miss. Leave smoking marks in the tiles behind Sax. The Oratus is scrambling still and now he’s beneath and near the First Chair. Sax reaches up to grip with his left and right foreclaws, snagging those rings and beginning to tear when he receives a shocking reply. A heavy burst of electric energy shimmers through his metal claws and sends Sax twitching to the ground as all of his nerves lock up.

  But death doesn’t come.

  What does come is a second sound, the clang of metal as the First Chair and its body hit the floor. The Amigga’s microjets are struggling, sputtering to come back to life. For moment both of them lay there, unable to fire, unable to attack, unable to move.

  “I didn’t plan for this,” the First Chair’s voice comes through weak, soft. The power pushing to its communications array not quite enough to give the voice its full volume. “Miners, microjets, the shock shield all at once. Congratulations, Oratus. You found a flaw in my defenses.”

  Sax catches the words but can’t do much with them. He’s trying, in the same way that he might try to move an arm or leg that’s fallen asleep after lying on it all night, to restore connection, to twitch, to move to bring himself to life and when he hears the telltale whine of the jets coming back, that’s when the icy hand clamps over his hearts. When he realizes he can’t do it.

  He can’t move.

  But he can roar. Long, and loud.

  There’s panic in the sound, there’s fear and anger and loss having come so close but now with the First Chair hovering above, dangling those weapons down on him... it’s over. One blast to the head and it’s done and all Sax has fought for is ruined.

  The lights die. The bunker goes dark.

  In that moment of confusion Sax knows the Amigga down below can see, can help at least to some degree. Knowing he’s not alone, that there’s another helping him, gives Sax the boost he needs. This is not solely his cause, but the fight for every species living in this galaxy. Every species that wants freedom and is willing to try to get it.

  Just as the First Chair starts to ask what’s going on, Sax pushes his tail and his left talon. He kicks himself beneath the First Chair and this time, this time, when he reaches to grab the rings there is no electric shock. There is no burst of numbing energy. Only a tremor, a taste of what might happen if Sax gives the First Chair more time.

  Instead, Sax’s claws dig deep. They tear the metal and rend the rings and send the First Chair rocketing away. There’s a clang as the Amigga strikes the far side of the bunker, which isn’t a more than a few meters wide.

  At the sound, lights flash back on, blinding Sax for a hot moment, then his eyes see the First Chair covered in a flow of sparks from its broken rings; one of its weapons and one of its jets show their damage in an incendiary shower.

  “Unexpected,” the First Chair manages to say as it cuts the power to those rings, restoring itself to a lopsided sort of hover only centimeters above the ground. “I didn’t order those lights off.”

  “You’re already losing control,” Sax hisses, struggling back to his talons.

  “You’re running out of time to talk,” the First Chair responds and swivels a second weapon towards Sax.

  There’s no room for fancy maneuvers, no time for bobbing and weaving. Instead, as a laser shoots into his chest, Sax charges forward and crashes into the First Chair, biting slashing snarling and feeling again and again the red laser gut punch as the First Chair continues to fire.

  Moments flash in fire and instinct and pain.

  It’s broken. There’s no rings left except for the one Sax meant to leave out of his hacking slashing biting. The First Chair’s covering itself in the dissolving acid that Amigga’s use to feed, and its presence keeps Sax from carving any more into the Amigga’s body.

  Not that Sax needs any help to fall back. He’s burned and bleeding too. Parts of himself are hollow, though any pain that’s coming is being quashed now in waves of adrenaline. Stim would be nice. Any one of a number of drugs that can keep him numb. As it is, Sax’s just going to have to rely on his own strength to make it through.

  “Tell me,” Sax says. “Tell me how to use it.”

  “The Priority Beam?” Even in monotone, the First Chair’s voice carries with it a quiver, and a weight, the dull sadness of terrible loss. “Why?”

  “Because you have nothing more to lose,” Sax says.

  Going all the way back, all the way to his first moments on Solis when he first hatched, Sax’s been taught, told, ordered, that the mission comes first. Ensure the enemy’s defeat, or as much of it as you can, before you die. It’s an ideal that’s carried Sax through countless assaults, adventures to worlds enemy and friend. Yet here he is, commanding, beseeching the very core of that vision to ignore it.

  “Why?” The First Chair says. “If I’ve lost everything, why help the ones who took it from me?”

  Sax has an answer. He knows why you might help the enemy. Why you would abandon everything you’d been taught.

  “Because we’re not the ones who took everything from you,” Sax says. “You took it from yourselves. You lost your way, and you know it, or you wouldn’t be here waiting to die. Help us clean up the galaxy. Help us make this better. That’s what you want, and we’re ready to give it to you.”

  It’s not Sax’s most eloquent speech. It’s not going to be replayed for cycles in front of classes to study how to turn someone’s mind at the last moment. But it’s real, it’s what he has. The First Chair, who has very little, listens.

  “Then promise me,” the First Chair says. “Promise me you won’t destroy our species. That Amigga will have a place in your new world, in your grand vision.”

  Another deal, another promise that Sax has no right to make and no position to guarantee. But he can guarantee it. As long as Sax breathes, just as he has here, the Oratus can fight to make sure the words he says are honored. So when Sax agrees to the First Chair’s ask, he does so with confidence, with courage and conviction.

  “Yes,” Sax hisses, a rasp low in week as the whole of the blast are starting to take their tu
rn. The creep along his muscles and bones stabbing, burning, aching and yet, for now, he keeps enough of it away to focus. “I will. The Amigga will not die while I have claws with which to defend them.”

  “Then you can have your message. You can have your victory,” the First Chair says. “Though I don’t think the rest of the Chorus will lay down easily.”

  Before Sax can say anything, the First Chair rattles off a series of words that make seemingly no sense. Names of places and people in a specific order and cadence that suggests a code. When it finishes, there is a grinding beneath the floor of the Priority Beam and from around the circular dome emerges a series of terminals. The screens plug into the nubs, and as each one connects, the screens large and small light up and show in greens and reds when they’ve connected to quantum satellites far beyond the planet.

  This is how it works, this is how the Priority Beam reaches all corners of the galaxy and moments. How it can transmit beyond the confining speed of light and send Sax’s request, his plea.

  Near the bunker, two more panels in the floor shift aside and raise a simple interface. An interface for typing words and that’s all. Visual data can’t make it so far, can’t make it to the simple itemized connection of the quantum network. Sax claws his way to the terminal, he’s glad of it. If the first message of liberation came from a bleeding, battered, nearly dead Oratus, Sax isn’t sure many would sign up.

  Instead, Sax taps the words on the display. Simple, and yet complete.

  “A new government has taken the Meridia and a new galaxy has begun. Come to Aspicis if you can, and claim your freedom.”

  Evva may want to send something longer, and doubtless the various news agencies covering this attack will have their own interpretations out before long. But this message gets the point across. Once he finishes, Sax sits back from the terminal and stares at the wall of red and green the lights across the screen. As the message goes out, as those quantum points find their counterparts, each icon on the screen changes from red to green.

  It’s done then. At last.

  21 Vengeance

  We’re bloody, bedraggled, and barely standing.

  But we are standing.

  Bas and Lan are using their claws to dabs bits of cold, gray cream along the various cuts we’ve suffered while the green lights on those cameras glow on. Apparently our fight was, is, being sent all over the planet, including inside the Meridia, which is how the Oratus knew to come here in the first place. The Meridia’s own lifts seemed to know too - sending the Oratus to this level without them having to choose it.

  “What?” I manage to ask.

  “Perhaps someone wants you to live,” Bas says, turning a couple of her claws up in a question. “Sax, maybe. Or an Amigga tired of the Chorus running things.”

  Bas says Evva might know too, but the commander’s already left, gone off to reunite with some of their other forces. Bas and Lan, though, have a few vials of the cream and they use it liberally.

  “This itches. Really bad.” I bite my lip to keep from scratching at the line on my left arm where, I gather, some of the broken glass must have made a cut.

  “That’s the nanobots,” Bas hisses as she works on Viera’s more numerous wounds. “You’ll get used to it. They’re putting you back together.”

  I don’t even want to know what ‘nanobots’ are, and suppress any fear of the things getting inside of me. T’Oli sees my nervousness and tries to tell me that nanobots are why I’m still alive at all - after the seed ship, these tiny, invisible things put my body back together.

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like them,” I say, then spare a look for Malo, whose getting the first aid treatment from Lan. He’s going to have a couple of new scars across his chest, and his shoulder’s looking stiff after Lan popped it back into place. “You doing all right, Malo?”

  “I’ve lived through worse.” Malo flicks a finger towards Bas. “First time I met her, it was almost as bad.”

  I’d forgotten about how Sax and Bas thrashed Malo and Viera around the jungle when they kidnapped me from Earth’s surface. Back then I was still in thrall to the Sevora, back then I didn’t know anything.

  “Where is Sax?” I ask Bas.

  “Somewhere in this tower,” the Oratus hisses back at me. “Causing problems, as always. After you, I’m going to find him.”

  “Not alone,” Lan adds.

  “You’re not going after Evva?”

  Bas laughs. “I think we’ll all wind up at the same place before this is all over.”

  I would ask where that might be, but my eyes float to the lift across from me. The right one of the two, a silver color and the one Ferrolite must have taken. The one to its left is shaded red, and Bas says that means it’s dedicated to the media levels of the Meridia, and I can’t imagine Ferrolite docking its escape shuttle anywhere this low. The Amigga’s pet Oratus might be dead - Lan insisted we leave the body in clear shot of the cameras, so that anyone watching understands this is real - but Ferrolite’s continued existence has taken priority on my list of things to handle while I’m here.

  Apparently, a mission to join the Chorus has turned into a violent protest against most things the Chorus stands for. Guess I’m not the best choice for Ambassador.

  Bas steps away from Viera, who manages not to collapse all over again. Instead, the Lunare just looks tired, and I can empathize. Without the edge-of-death boost keeping me ready to run, my own muscles are telling me it’s time to grab a nap. Malo, too, looks like he’s best equipped for a solid chunk of hours on one of those red sponge beds the galaxy likes.

  Which is why I ask, “Have any stim?”

  Lan snaps her eyes to me, cocks her head at an angle. “Why do you want that?”

  “Have an Amigga to catch.” I have no idea if it’s possible, but if there’s any chance, any chance at all...

  Bas appreciates my sentiments with a low hiss of her own, then she scoops another black-topped vial off of her mask with her midclaws. “I was saving this for Sax, but I think you might be able to use it more.”

  “Wait,” Viera interrupts. “You want to go after Ferrolite? Now?” When I don’t shoot down the idea, Viera’s hands go up. “Why bother? Look at these two, and that other one, Evva - they’re going to have this thing won in a few minutes. Then we’ll have all the time to track down the Amigga, rather than right now, when we’re half dead.”

  “That’s what we thought about the Sevora,” Bas says. “Many times we thought we had them gone, so we held back. Did not over-commit. And every time, they would slip away and come back stronger than we anticipated. If you can crush your foe, then crush them.”

  “Or eat them,” Lan adds.

  “Yes, eating them is good too. Especially if they are tasty,” Bas hisses. “I have never eaten an Amigga, though.”

  Viera’s throwing disgusted looks at both Oratus, and I’m trying and failing to hold back some much-needed laughter. It’s a moment that dies when I catch T’Oli slithering over to Ferrolite’s chosen lift, the Ooblot’s sole eye stalk a clear reminder that, nanobots aside, we’re not getting out of this unscathed.

  “I’m with Kaishi,” Malo says. “We have to stand up for our species. Ferrolite wanted credit for bringing us to the Chorus. Let’s give it what it’s looking for.”

  “If this gets us killed, I’m holding it against you both.” Viera looks like she wants to add a few more gripes, but Bas’s outstretched claw coated in stim interrupts, and after that buzz, Viera’s objections die away in a frenzy of distracted twitching.

  Which is how the three of us, with T’Oli riding on my shoulders, wind up on Ferrolite’s lift heading up. I didn’t expect our options to be so narrow, but it turns out the Meridia doesn’t have many levels designed for docking. There’s the one we came in on, near the Chorus and meant for visitors and reserved as such. Then another five set aside for Chorus members themselves and their various entourages. Beyond those, there’s only one more level on the tower, labeled for eme
rgencies or high priority visits. I’d say Ferrolite’s evacuation qualifies as both, so that’s where we choose to go.

  “Are you going to be ok, with one eye?” I ask the Ooblot as the lift scurries up. I have to talk because the stim is hitting every nerve like lightning, and if I don’t say anything, I’m afraid I’ll be like Malo, who’s busy clenching and opening his fists, or Viera, who seems like she’s hyperventilating in the corner.

  “I will have it replaced later with a mechanical version. Until then, my depth perception will be off. Please don’t ask me to aim. Or judge distance.” T’Oli says.

  T’Oli says ‘later’ like it expects to make it to some future beyond the now, and I guess I’m there too, drifting as our lift rises to what I’ll do first when I get back to Earth. Maybe it’s being optimistic, but, well, maybe we deserve some optimism after all this?

  The lift hits its mark and the doors whoosh open into thin entryway that goes into a lobby sporting three triple-wide doors. One for each of the emergency bays, I gather. All of them are closed, and there’s no clear one Ferrolite’s chosen to use.

  “It went that way,” Viera points at the one to our right and I’m about to ask how she knows when I realize the evidence is at our feet.

  Black lines lead to the left and straight ahead doorways, but an amber-yellow glistens towards the right. Of course they’d light up the floor - smoke and such climbs to the ceiling, and you might not have time to mess with terminals.

  “Are we ready?” I ask, heading to the marked door.

  Bas and Lan each gave us a miner, so Malo and Viera have some lasers ready to go. I’m holding my scavenged tool, and T’Oli’s made a blade of itself again, putting us in as good a shape as we’re going to get. That we’re only standing because of a heavy dose of drugs is a fact I’m choosing to ignore.

  When we get close, the door opens on its own accord, no panel push required, which I guess fits the idea of emergencies. On the other side is, indeed, a shuttle, though a smaller one than I’ve used before. At first glance, this resembles a cone, though without the strict separation of cockpit and passenger hold. It’s been painted too, a deep blue with a small set of lime-green circles. Chorus colors. There’s no boarding ramp that I can see. Only a small platform lowered from the craft’s center. The rest of the space is lit in white, and decorations are non-existent. Racks of various things litter the sides, no doubt placed in case a last second fix is necessary to escape.