Legacy of Seconds

by Edge O. Erin

  He started with the weird, which was Riot Jr and Dana sparring.

  “As tough as you’ve described Dana to be, I’m a little surprised this Riot Junior got the better of her.”

  “I guess we have to keep in mind the clones are always training and exercising.”

  “My Mariot would’ve kicked her ass.”

  He knew better than to argue that point.

  “You’re probably right, but this girl has a real mean streak.”

  “Mean streak, yet she was open to a hug, of sorts?”

  “Ya, but I think it was out of respect for a worthy opponent… an opponent that wasn’t just like her.”

  “True that. It must be bizarre for the clones to be hanging out with each other and walking and talking the same way, liking and disliking the same things… ‘lookalike-bots’.”

  He had to employ a particular tact with her on this, “You’re right, of course, but if Mariot is their template, they must have some redeeming traits.”

  “Hmmph.”

  A “hmmph” was as close to agreement as he was going to get on the matter. Still, he had to walk it back a bit to keep Claire from drifting into sadness and anger.

  “Surprisingly, Riot Junior’s pupils weren’t swirling spiral galaxies cavorting like snails on steroids.”

  “What’s that?”

  He repeated his joke, but it only generated a half-hearted, but well-meaning smile.

  “How about the ‘wonderful’ part?” she added a tad sarcastically.

  He almost regretted using “wonderful,” but suddenly, he was done with using kid gloves, for Claire had to start realising that not all clones, nor every element of them, was evil.

  “The girl I grappled with was talented, sportsmanlike, and pleasant… very much a non-Riot.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “And had I not known she was a clone; I would’ve considered her to be a fine student and a good person. Apparently, she is more Mariot than some of the others.”

  “But still an imposter.”

  “Claire, do you think she is at fault for being who or what she is?”

  “Don’t patronise me, of course I know that.”

  He just looked at her with, as she phrased it, his ‘puppy-dog meets-concerned-psychotherapist’ look.

  “Oh crux,” she shook her head and laughed. “You got me again! I know, I know, there must be some good in them.”

  “Yes, and what kind of life do they have? Regimented and knowing they are walking and talking facsimiles. It must be depressing. There could be ten of them, there might be a hundred, but chances are none will ever live anything approximating a normal life.”

  “Ugh, ‘empathy’.”

  He laughed, “Yep, good-old empathy, ‘understanding’s’ well-groomed stepsister.”

  She laughed and added, “And understanding is tolerance with lipstick.”

  “Good one! And tolerance is the art of not dropping expletives in tandem with physical abuse.”

  “Oh, I don’t know what to say about expletives given I’m not partial to using them,” she winked at him.

  “I have to disagree dear as it’s your umm… wait…” he reached into his pocket for a bit of paper, which he then read, ‘It’s your proficiency in using unnecessary grammatical elements in a syntactic position that won my heart.’”

  “Ha! I haven’t used more than two curse words in the last five minutes!”

  “That’s true.”

  Just then, Jasker, who had snuggled in between them, woke up, and his favourite toy fell to the floor. “Cwux!” he exclaimed in a tiny voice.

  They both fought off laughing at that.

  “Okay, he did that get that from me.”

  “Of course, but he also got the incredible cuteness.”

  They shared a look that said more than words.

  ***

  “This better be good.”

  He knew it was for it had to be to gain entry to her office for a face-to-face meeting, as supported by a similar face-to-face meeting with “Head of Data Security.”

  He carefully shook a monochrome die from a pouch into her hand, and near-instantly colourful fractal lines started moving across its surface.

  She shrugged, “Hmmm. So?”

  Obviously, she was a born sceptic and had all the imagination of a turnip, “Give it a moment, it’s processing.”

  “Processing?” She eyed it curiously, and it was easy to see the wonder on her face when the fractal lines quieted and consolidated. The numbered dots were replaced with names, people she knew to have been in contact with, including him, in chronological order.

  “Ah, I see, nice trick. One can readily see its usefulness in tracking, forensics, espionage, and the like.”

  He let the “nice trick” barb go unavenged, for what would happen next would reveal her comment to be premature, and ignorant. Instead, he just added, “Rest assured, My Lady, we would never want to waste your precious time rolling trick dice. Please give it another moment.” He did his best to find the middle ground between obsequiousness and sarcasm.

  He was relieved she didn’t look up, for withholding his discomfort and dislike was almost as uncomfortable as what he was doing.

  Location information then followed for each of the six individuals named on the cube as well as that person’s most recent contact, with the most recent individual showing the highest degree of confidence.

  The PEDE leader looked up at him, “Do you know whom I’ve been in contact with?”

  “No.” He wanted to say, “Interesting that you asked,” but stuck to the game plan, as nauseating as it was.

  “But you know something incriminating about one of these other individuals or you wouldn’t be here, now would you?”

  As rude as it was accurate, “Yes, it indicates one of your colleagues has been in contact with non-sanctioned government entities.”

  “Non-sanctioned government entities, as in subversives or terrorist organisations?”

  He wanted to spit his repudiation of that narrow-minded view of things, but summoned a, “Yes, exactly my Lady.”

  “And how did it come to be you gathered this allegedly incriminating information of an important member of the Government and frequent contact of mine? Luck?”

  He couldn’t resist, “More like probability for ‘luck’ implies a lack of knowledge of the key and prescient variables, of cause and effect.”

  She looked at him as if he were a toilet seat or some other necessary annoyance.

  “At this time, ‘Daco’, an answer would be so much more appropriate than a pedantic foray into semantics.”

  It was a good comeback, and he grudgingly granted her some respect, as well he should, given he was partly responsible for who she was and why she was here.

  “Forgive me, my work has dulled my social skills, and I sincerely mean to inform and not irritate.”

  She waved it, or him, off as superfluous. “Tell me, what led to Mr Smik being implicated?”

  “To adequately test the cubes, they were given to investigators involved in trying to pin down high-level insurgents, and it was in that process that a strong trend was discovered, a trend that seemed to reveal key Men’s Equality Movement members.”

  She rolled her fingers across her desk and looked at him, or through him, he couldn’t tell.

  “Clear enough. I thank you for your time and expert analysis, Mr Ghan-Arn. You may go. My executive secretary will clear you outside.”

  “Understood My Lady and thank you for your time.”

  ***

  The microbots he left behind would purge the cube of his information and establish a chain-reaction charge that would be set off as soon as it was probed and make it nearly impossible to reverse engineer. Beyond that, his tiny foot soldiers would do some looking around.

  He had previously seen to it that the other two cubes in circulation went missing.

  ***

  Within the umbrella of Yugon’s “Empire Logistics”,
“Considered Defence” was Yazmin’s to manage. Over fourteen years, she had managed to funnel enough money and assets to create and grow an independent security entity called “Insight Tactical”. Insight Tactical cherry-picked a few of the best and brightest minds in Considered Defence, with its ultimate asset being Xanel Thrush-Ghan and Menhance. She had been exceedingly careful and calculated in the prosecution of the surreptitious endeavour and believed that since her father, Emaris, had become so disillusioned with menhancement that the exit of personnel related to that programme had not garnered his interest or attention. She was wrong.

  “For too long attempts to mollify your anger have been frustrated by your stubborn, self-serving, and ambitious nature. And now, despite my reluctance to intervene in the hope you would finally come to your senses, you’ve succeeded in forming your own company using Yugon funds, personnel, and connections. If you thought I wasn’t aware of it, you have been, and remain, sorely mistaken. Now, Insight Tactical and its depraved menhancement shall be your inheritance. As of right now, you have been removed from the Yugon family, and my protection has been withdrawn. You are daughter by name only, and pressure shall be levied to ensure you take your husband’s name or some other name of your choosing.”

  She had envisioned it ultimately playing out this way, but it was surprising to see the hurt in his eyes and how harsh and unequivocal he was in his judgement.

  He was looking at her expectantly, impatiently, but she was reasonably well prepared for this. How many times had she practised what she would say to him?

  “You’ve only yourself to blame. As the female and oldest child, the Empire was my birth right; but even if it wasn’t, I’ve always shown myself smarter and more capable than my brother. In time, you will realise I am right. Whether it’s when the door hits your backside on the way out, or when Pinto begins to drive the family name into the ground, you will come to know the truth; I am the one to make the Yugons more powerful than ever.”

  He shook his head, his face reddening as he walked towards her. She was prepared for a blow, but not the one he administered, for he grabbed Broken Fractal Abstraction, her favourite painting and smashed it over her head.

  Picking herself up off the floor, she looked aghast at the painting she had laboured on for months. She pulled an old-fashioned revolver from under her desk and pointed it at her father’s head.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” he bellowed.

  She shot precisely, and the bullet whizzed by his ear.

  “Get out, or the next one goes between your eyes.”

  He smiled then. “If I had any doubts about my decision, they are gone now.”

  “And if I had any doubts of killing you, they too are gone, for it will be better that you live long enough to see me achieve what you never even dreamed of.”

  He shook his head and walked out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eight on four didn’t seem fair, especially when the eight were all specially trained and merciless Redshirts. They were about to get underway with the test when Jop raised his hand, “My Lady, I request I be one of our eight.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Commander,” Riot rejected.

  “Please let me show you why it is necessary. It will only take a minute, trust me, please.”

  She nodded, “Go ahead.”

  Jop stepped into the 40’ x 20’ arena and did a curled-finger “Come and get it” to the nearest Redshirt. The man stepped forward and made to fist-tap to signify a fair contest, and Jop grabbed the man’s raised right hand with his own right hand, jerked him forward, and knocked him out with a straight left.

  “We’re here to win this damn thing, not play nice.”

  The display proved to all he should be one of the eight.

  The four black-clad Irregulars fanned out, and the eight security force fighters surrounded them. Riot instructed Dana to ring the bell.

  Cooper noticed that one of the Irregulars was an unusually large unit that had been badly burned at one point in time.

  The bell sounded, and he was struck by how the Irregulars not only did not assume a defensive posture, as one would think they would when faced with a superior force but went on the attack in a coordinated and furious fashion. It was utter chaos, clinical, bone-bruising, bloody chaos.

  He saw the big, burned guy pick up one of the Redshirts, smash him to the ground, and then blast him with a couple of hammer fists.

  In so doing, he yelled, “Shezzaz-ya! Who’s next?”

  He recognised the voice and the unusual curse, but the owner of both was dead. He saw the man stride forward, and the resemblance could no longer be ignored. Big and burned, he might well be, but it had to be Beriit or a clone of him. If the former, how in the world could he have survived a knife in the chest, let alone the inferno? The latter didn’t compute for Beriit was neither smart nor strong enough to be the stuff that a super-soldier would be made of. Shock and curiosity gave way to wanting to see how the fight would end.

  Only two Irregulars were out of commission, and they stood across from Jop, the last of the eight. Bloodied but not broken and pacing back and forth like a caged animal, Jop would die fighting. Just as the two men started to close in on him, Riot had Dana ring the bell.

  “Enough!” Riot yelled.

  The men came closer, and Jop let out a massive roar. The burned man responded with a bloodcurdling, “Arrr!”

  The exclamation took him back to the decisive moment in the records hall. Almost on cue, the man, who may have felt eyes upon him, glanced towards him. It was only for a split second, but it was telling.

  Dana clanged the bell a few more times, and the Menhance Commander calmed his men down. Dana and two other officers had to restrain Jop, who clearly wanted to continue. But even with his courage — or craziness — it served no purpose to see more violence and injury. The contest had proven that the mercenaries were a cut above Redshirts and hence head and shoulders above most soldiers.

  As medical staff administered to the wounded, Cooper moved back behind a column and considered what it meant that Beriit was alive. Dana spotted him.

  “Issue, need a tissue?”

  He stifled a “Fuck you bitch” and instead went with, “Considering the combat approaches and compiling an analysis for my betters while it’s all fresh in my head.”

  “Okay… good, continue. I look forward to reading it.”

  Sometimes she didn’t know how to take him, and he was thankful for that.

  He peeked around the column. The combatants had been removed. Was it really and truly Beriit, and had the man recognised him? Before he submitted anything to Jop and Dana, he had to get a message off to MEM.

  ***

  As promised, the performance was impressive and removed any doubt that out of the view of morality, propriety, and proportion, menhanced units would be perfect for Prometer.

  She received a video showing how Menhance had advanced and was employing younger, “more receptive” subjects. The enhancements used on one young boy, named Hew Satch, were more subtle and intended to endow him with elevated senses more than physical prowess. She would follow up on his progress and potentially shoehorn him into the mission to Prometer as one of the Wakees.

  A more immediate acquisition was the hulking man-beast from the contest. By report, the man was loyal, and while far from the sharpest needle in her lady’s pin-drawer, was, as she had witnessed, most unattractive while being positively barbaric and efficient. Her supplier certainly knew what she needed and what she needed to avoid. This “Ruprecht” fellah would have a role as one of her personal security guards.

  ***

  The three weeks of no contact wasn’t that unusual given she had been away. There were times she would go as much as ten days without speaking to him. He knew she often feigned busyness until the pregnant pause had given birth to a tension she could capitalise on. Yet today her silence was accompanied by a steely gaze that threatened to unnerve him, and he didn’t scare easily.
<
br />   Finally, he spoke, “So, what shall it be, the floor, desk or against the wall?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively at the final option.

  She rolled her fingers on the desk, which he took to mean she wanted it there today.

  “Sounds good!” He got up to walk over to her.

  “No, Mr Smik. Stay seated.” Her tone was often cool, but today it was ice-cold.

  She passed him a list of names and aliases, “I should have you executed for treason.”

  There was no point in feigning innocence; clearly, she knew some aspect of his other life.

  He glanced at the paper, no surprises there.

  “You should have me executed, but?” The fact that this meeting was in person and he wasn’t already in cuffs meant she had something else in mind.

  “Oh, believe me, it’s still on the table.” She pressed her intercom, “Please have Vetch McGhan come in.”

  Bringing in PEDE’s second in command was not a positive development…

  He had been somewhat prepared for this. It was a good thing he had already been selected for the mission to Prometer, for if he could survive this and go, he would avoid being murdered by his friends, or former friends as the case would be.

  “If I agree to name…”

  “There will be no negotiations, Mr Smik,” Riot commanded.

  “Quickly now, Mr Smik,” Vetch commanded as she stood behind him.

  He was reminded of a saying, “For there to be betrayal, there would have to been trust first.” He would be the first to admit that it was his double-dealing, criminal connections, present position, and questionable morals that had taken him to the upper echelon of MEM. They might have known better, but then again, he had helped them a lot at times.

  “The leader is Bien de Woon-Ghan, or at least was.”

  The dropping of that name caused Vetch to gasp and Riot to curse.

  “Second-in-Command?”

  “Titular, myself.” He lied.

  “Goddess-damn you are a slick one, I will give you that Mr Smik. So, if you are titular Second-in-Command, who is ‘effective’ Second-in-Command?” Vetch demanded.