by Eyal Kless
“And how are you feeling?”
“I guess I’m fine,” I said carefully, “considering what we are about to face.”
Rafik leaned forward, interlacing his fingers. “It will happen soon, and you have a very important part in the attack plan.”
I sipped more wine. “Only logical that it would be me. Even with the aiming mechanism, the others are so much better at fighting than I am.”
“And how do you think the others are faring?”
Ah. I smiled to myself. For an all-knowing entity, he was quite obvious.
“Probably better than me. You did a good job in comparing this mission to a deep run, and I guess most of them warmed up to this idea. They are Salvationists, after all. Facing death is what they do on a daily basis, and they are used to fighting Lizards.”
“And Vincha?”
I leaned back and looked at Rafik, searching for clues in his face and finding none.
“My guess is that there is more than one reason she will not be coming into Cain’s territory with us.”
“Vincha is a capable fighter, but her role is that of CommWoman, and with the new gear there is no need for her to be physically next to you.”
“And regardless of the outcome, you’re hoping Vincha will bring her daughter to you.”
Instead of answering my accusation with denial, Rafik simply asked, “Do you think she would?”
Not a rusting chance.
“Perhaps,” I said in the most neutral tone I could muster and poured myself some more wine. “She is a hard one to read, and she’s spent a lifetime protecting her daughter. It will take some more convincing.”
“She seems to think quite highly of you.”
“That is quite surprising to hear,” I retorted, remembering how I hit her in anger while she was tied to the Duster. There were justifying circumstances, perhaps, but I still felt guilty about it.
“She didn’t say the words I am using, but she is not a woman of subtlety.”
I chuckled in agreement. It was the moment Rafik chose to push his real agenda for coming to see me.
“Perhaps you could speak to her about her daughter.”
I gulped the rest of the wine just to have time to gather my thoughts. “Why should I get involved in this? Seems like a private decision.”
“You are a high-ranking member of the Guild of Historians, are you not?”
“I fear I am the Guild of Historians . . .”
Rafik ignored my gloomy remark. “You above all should know how deep humanity fell. Tarakan must be awakened, to save humankind.”
You were the ones who destroyed it in the first place. I chose not to share the thought, and said instead, “You may be right, but before I’ll go risking life and limb talking to Vincha about bringing her daughter to this place, I have a few more questions of my own.”
Rafik leaned back and spread his hands in an inviting gesture.
“You have been sending this message of yours for years. How did you know that Vincha would ever hear you and, even if she did get your message, that she would actually come?”
“I did not know.” Rafik adjusted his sitting position, a very human reaction, which he probably did not physically need to do, “but Adam had calculated that there was a fair chance this message would eventually reach her ears. As to her reasons for coming: although Vincha betrayed me to Nakamura, I believe she felt she was doing me a favour as well. Perhaps her initial reason for talking to me was insincere, but I feel, in her own way, Vincha cared for me.”
“Guilt,” I said.
“Love,” he replied, “and it was only reasonable that if she came, she would not travel alone.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, several dots connected to an outline, and the picture it drew was sinister. I attacked from a different angle.
“How did the Catastrophe happen?”
“As I told you before—”
“No, how did it really happen? How did Cain happen?”
Rafik shook his head slowly. “I really wish I knew. We do not know. It was more than one insider, for sure, and the reason could be anything from corruption to manipulation or even idealism.”
“And since then, Adam and Cain have been at war . . .”
Rafik waited for me to form the real question
“I have been thinking about all the ways Adam fought Cain”—I looked straight at Rafik—“and about the means you will use to distract Cain when we enter his territory.” I leaned forward and put my empty glass on the table. “Adam could be the smartest being that exists, but every general needs troops. I have been thinking about those Salvationist crews that never came back from their deep runs.”
Did I just see Rafik blink?
“Sure, this is a dangerous place,” I pressed on, “and as your Master Goran used to quote, ‘the better the loot, the harder the lock.’ I am no Salvationist, but I have listened to many of them talk about their lives in the Valley, and I have heard how very experienced crews disappeared inside the City within the Mountain, never to return, while other, maybe less experienced or marginally weaker crews made it back rich with loot. They even had a name for it back in the Hive: ‘mountain roulette.’”
Rafik’s expression never changed. “I still do not understand what you want to know.”
“We are not the first crew to come here,” I answered, careful not to lace a questioning tone into my voice. “There must have been other crews—maybe there still are others, maybe they are the distraction Adam promised.”
Did I see him hesitate? Is he stopping himself from saying something important? Time for the last push.
“I’ve always wondered about something,” I continued. “Working in the Guild of Historians in a city filled with Tarakan thinking machines and screens, I have heard my colleagues commenting many times on how difficult it is to find solid reports about the Catastrophe and the events leading to it. I mean, it is easier to find out about events that happened four hundred years ago than about the Catastrophe. As if . . . someone had hidden this information.”
“It has been a pleasure talking to you.” Rafik got to his feet. “I hope we can speak again, at length, after the mission is completed.”
“That would be nice.” I bowed my head slightly.
This time, Rafik did not bother with the door. In a heartbeat, he was gone.
69
It was Galinak who elbowed me out of my daydream when the time came. “Time to move, Twinkle Eyes.”
I glanced around, surveying the fully armed crew, before stepping forward. We shuffled into an elevator cabin in relative silence. I was among the first to get in, and I stood near a semitransparent wall. Nature surrounded us. Trees and lakes and peaceful greenery merged with buildings of different sizes and shapes. I wondered, not for the first time, if it was all just an illusion and whether I cared anymore.
I turned back to see that the entire crew had settled in, noting how we all looked so much younger. Vincha stood in front of the elevator doors. Her red hair was back, full in volume and colour. I knew that she was fully attached with genuine Tarakan devices. I wondered if she felt as good as I did. My own sight was enhanced even further. The operation, if you could even call it that, was painless and quick, especially because there was no need to remove poorly installed augmentations or plugs like they had to do with most of the others. After rising from the med chair I felt like a blind man seeing for the first time. The only side effect was that I now had the tendency to stop what I was doing and stare around myself in wonder.
We all did that, to some extent. Bayne kept checking to see that his injured leg was truly cured. River couldn’t stop looking at his own reflection. The only exception was Jakov, who refused the offer to rejuvenate his body, saying he liked it the way it was, and insisted on keeping his metal arm as well. It was still weird to see his fully human face. It was nothing like I’d imagined.
Vincha smiled and waved at us. I smiled back, blushing slightly when I realised too l
ate that she was actually waving at Bayne. I knew for a fact that Vincha had tried to convince Rafik to let Bayne stay behind, but that did not succeed for all the logical reasons. I also knew that behind her smiles, she was terrified. I felt the same way.
We all waited, looking out at Vincha, until the elevator’s transparent doors solidified in front of our eyes. We were left on our own. Just as the elevator began to descend Galinak farted loudly with a great sigh of relief, and for some reason we all just laughed. He stood by my side, towering over me. His newly grown hair was purple and now in a Mohawk. It suited him. I smiled at him, and he patted my shoulder.
“Since we’re going into battle together, Twinkle Eyes, I want to tell you something important,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“You still owe me metal for the escort.”
Before I could think of a witty retort, Vincha’s voice rang in my ears. She was checking the crew’s main channel and individual, private channels. Many of us were still unused to not needing to speak our thoughts out loud, and I could hear most of us respond verbally to her testing.
“How are you feeling, Vincha?” I thought when it was my turn, succeeding in holding my tongue.
“Twinkle Eyes,” her voice was artificially upbeat, “try not to think of naughty stuff. It scrambles my channels.”
This time I chuckled out loud.
I had one last view of the gardens before the elevator went underground. The lights in the cabin changed to accommodate our sight, and the transparent wall became opaque. I caught my reflected image. I was one of the youngest in the crew, so there was not much rejuvenation needed, but I still looked like a different person. Just because I could, I changed my eye colour several times and smiled as I did so. I kept them at yellow green, which was definitely my colour.
The small communication disc attached to my right temple was already starting to blend in with my skin colour, as I was told it would. I couldn’t help but try to change facial expressions and watch the metal flex. The only other external Tarakan device was a button-sized piece of metal behind my right earlobe that enhanced my hearing. It was slowly melding with my body as well.
The mood in the elevator turned to sombre silence. The Trolls were checking their weapons, armour, and gear, and moving augmented limbs at strange angles, as if to retest their capabilities.
We all felt the elevator change directions and moving sideways as well as down. I felt my heart lurch in my chest and my stomach turn.
Galinak winked at me. “Don’t worry, Twinkles, I got your back.”
I nodded and swallowed hard as we began ascending again.
“Here we go,” Jakov said, and it caused a flurry of movement inside the cabin as weapons and gear were checked again. We knew we were still inside the safe part of the City within the Mountain, but somehow it didn’t make a difference.
The wide corridor was already lit when the cabin doors disappeared. A short distance from us, we saw enormous gates. We all stepped out and as soon as the last of us left the cabin, the elevator doors reappeared. I looked back just as the cabin sped away, leaving a large gap. I took a few steps back and looked down but saw only darkness, and with no time or reason to investigate further, I turned back and followed the others.
Several dozen massive cannons were pointing at the gates as well as more power machine guns than I could count. Despite Rafik’s reassurance that our entrance into Cain territory would be without incident, I wondered how I would react if a horde of Lizards would be waiting for us on the other side of the gates. I couldn’t help but struggle with the question how we, a crew of humans, could possibly succeed against an enemy that prompted such a defence.
When we reached the gates, I used my sight to point River to the hidden manual control panel. He quickly went to work. Rafik had said we would have a slightly better chance of avoiding detection if Adam didn’t open the gates for us. I tried not to dwell on the word slight, and I hoped that whatever Rafik, or Adam, was doing would help camouflage our crew for as long as possible. My hands touched the hilts of the pair of handguns on my belt. They were by far the least powerful weapons we had with us, and if we encountered metal bots I would have to rely on the crew’s firepower for protection. But the guns compensated for their poor firepower with manoeuvrability and an aiming device that was connected to my retina. I could shoot an apple off a tree half a mile away with one gun while firing on a drone with the other. I knew this because I had tried.
Galinak hefted the heavy power hammer on his shoulder and grinned at me.
“Ready, Twinkle Eyes? Stay close, but not too close, eh?” He shrugged the shoulder that balanced his enormous power hammer and winked at me.
I did not have time to reply, since at that moment the gates slid open silently. There was no waiting horde behind it, only darkness.
On Bayne’s signal, we formed pairs, one Troll holding a long-range weapon and the other a short-range, and fanned out in a diamond shape. Without a word, we moved in unison and stepped into the darkness.
When the last of us moved past the threshold, the gates silently closed behind us.
70
We found ourselves in complete darkness. Several heartbeats later, our new retina implants did what they were supposed to do. It still did not feel like daylight, more like a gloomy afternoon on a rainy day with the colours almost completely faded out, but I got used to it surprisingly quickly. Bayne was the first to move, and we all followed.
At the beginning of our training it was a little difficult to decide who the crew commander should be. The majority of the force was composed of Jakov’s mercenaries, but he was a merchant, not a Combat Troll, so he wisely nominated Bayne to act as tactical commander. If Galinak’s feelings were hurt by Jakov’s decision he didn’t show it, and Bayne, to my personal relief, positioned Galinak at my side.
Some part of me imagined the sections of the city controlled by Cain to be changed in a way that reflected the corruption. I expected it to be in ruins, or dirty, or ugly. I did not expect it to be perfect. It was motionless, colourless, and dead, but basically, the same awe-inspiring, breathtaking city, with wide streets and buildings in every shape imaginable. If the hordes of Lizards had managed to damage it somehow, it did not show, and as in the parts of the city controlled by Adam, it felt as if we were walking under the open sky, even though I knew we were inside a mountain range.
For obvious reasons, we avoided channelling to each other, or even talking, and so it turned out that we walked in almost complete silence for a long while—so long in fact, that some of my nervousness waned. When four Lizards came behind a strange string of intertwined stone cubes, I was embarrassingly slow to react. Actually, I did not even get to fire a shot before the crew dispatched the creatures. Seeing no colour made it a little easier to stomach the sight of the Lizards’ splattered remains all over the architecture, but it still felt like sacrilege, as if we’d just profaned a holy temple.
Despite the relative ease of the first battle, this was an ominous sign, and we all knew it. Bayne ordered us to up our pace.
Rafik had explained that the corrupt mind could not give complicated orders to its creations. They were sensitive to certain radio waves, but Cain usually just directed the Lizards to the Valley through underground tunnels, to roam and kill whatever they found. Inside the City within the Mountain, Adam was able to interfere enough with Cain’s signalling system to make it unreliable. Cain had to resort to controlling the Lizards’ movement within the city by releasing special chemicals through the air system as well as by drones. It was a crude method at best. When Cain detected an intrusion, all it could do was flood the area with a large number of Lizards in the hope that they would find and destroy the intruders. Once we were discovered, it was only a matter of time before the entire population of the Lizards in the city would be directed toward us.
Shortly after the first battle, a large number of Lizards converged on us from three directions. These Lizards fared a litt
le better than their brethren from our first encounter and got closer to us. As practiced, we each turned to face a designated angle. I was standing in a relatively safe area, within the parameter designated to me, and somehow managed to steel my trembling hands and shoot four from afar; two died from head wounds and the other two slowed enough to be killed by others. Yet despite my good aim, three Lizards got close. Galinak dealt with them with his power hammer and a sharp kick to the snout of the third one. When it was over, the terror I felt turned into almost childish elation at my newly acquired proficiency. I actually laughed out loud, waving my gun in the air, and earned several stern looks from the veteran crew members. We had no casualties so far, but it became obvious there was no more time to dwell on architecture or existential questions. We ran for it.
By the next battle we were fighting for our lives and any feelings of elation were long gone. I had to replace the power clips, and my hands shook so much one of them fell to the ground. Foolishly, instead of shooting with my other gun I went looking for the dropped clip and almost got decapitated by Galinak’s swinging power hammer.
“Whoa, Twinkle Eyes, you are out of position,” he shouted at me, sweat pouring down his bloodied face.
I turned around to return to my position just as a Lizard charged at me. It moved at an astonishing speed and I saw its gaping maw as it was about to close on my neck, when Galinak kicked my legs out from under me and smashed the Lizard with an uppercut. I shielded my face as the Lizard’s head exploded and what was left of its body flew backwards.
Galinak bent down, grasped me by the shoulder, and hauled me to my feet in one motion.
“Get back to your post, Twinkle Eyes,” he ordered and turned his back to me. The battle was as short as it was intense, and when it was over, I received another admonition from Bayne for moving away from my position.