by John Graham
Aster gasped when she saw who else was there.
“Mommy!” her four children chorused in welcome.
They dropped what they were doing and came running to greet their mother. Aster squatted down and pulled her children into a protective embrace, squeezing them close, then gave her mother-in-law a murderous glare.
“I picked them up after their medical appointment was finished.” Grandma Jezebel explained, “The poor things were exhausted; and bored.”
“We’re leaving,” Aster said with a scowl.
“I haven’t told you why you’re here, yet.” Jezebel said.
“I’m here to pick up my children,” Aster shot back, “and then to find out how you managed to convince the medical centre staff to let you pick up my children.”
“Lawrence Kane.” The mention of the name made Aster freeze up.
“As a blood relative, I’m not recognised as a threat by the medical centre androids,” Jezebel answered, “so why don’t you have a seat and we can discuss this like grown-ups.”
With profound reluctance, Aster took a seat opposite her hostess, and the children returned to their distractions. Orion, the oldest, picked up a tablet computer he had been playing with and sat down beside his grandmother while Rose and Violet returned to entertaining their younger brother Leo on the animal skin carpet.
“Would you like a drink?” Madam Jezebel asked.
“Tell me what you know about Lawrence Kane and why.”
“I’ve heard he was a colleague of yours,” Madam Jezebel replied, then added, “I’ve also heard that he wasn’t entirely loyal to his employers.”
Aster felt a wave of self-conscious dread wash over her. Was this Jezebel Thorn’s way of telling her she’d been found out?
“Although, you surely suspected as much.” Madam Jezebel added coolly.
As she spoke, she pulled out a tablet computer of her own and opened up a video file, then she placed it on the antigravity platter and gave it a tap. The platter floated silently over to Aster and landed on her lap. With trepidation, Aster picked up the tablet and pressed play, seeing an image of an office door secured with a biometric lock.
The colour drained from Aster’s face when she saw herself appear on screen, open up the biometric sensor’s panel and type in her personal override code to bypass the lock before slipping inside the office. The video then cut to a shot of her exiting Lawrence’s office.
“Water.” Madam Jezebel ordered the servant android with a snap of her fingers.
Aster was definitely thirsty. The service android returned with an ornate glass filled with water and offered it to Aster who took it and drained it to the dregs.
“What the fuck is this supposed to be?” Aster demanded.
“Do you usually talk that way around the children?” Madam Jezebel asked snidely.
The children were too engrossed in their activities to notice or care.
“Answer the question!” Aster snapped back, “What is this?”
“Something to secure your cooperation.” Madam Jezebel replied.
“With what?” Aster asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“Retrieving something,” Madam Jezebel replied, “and I think you know what it is.”
“By asking me here, you’re guilty of conspiracy to commit corporate espionage.” Aster pointed out, hoping to turn the tables.
“And by coming, you’re officially complicit,” Madam Jezebel retorted breezily, “unless, of course, the real reason – the one you’d like me to corroborate if the investigators ask – is that you simply came to pick up your children from their grandmother’s home.”
Jezebel was right. This whole setup made her look bad, even without the incriminating video. Not to mention her head was swirling with the implications of what she had just been shown: someone in her staff was on Jezebel’s payroll.
There were no surveillance cameras in the research labs, lest an outside hacker hijack the video feeds. That meant someone had to have either smuggled the camera in, or built it from scratch using materials in the lab.
“…The data chip,” Aster said hesitantly, “the blue one, that’s what you’re after.”
“Your employer, Darius Avaritio, came to me some years ago to help finance a new facility on Loki,” Madam Jezebel explained, “in return, I would get favourable stock options. Later, I found out he was deliberately undervaluing the company’s stock and thereby cheating investors, including me.”
“So you planted someone inside J.E. Co. to steal ‘your’ share of its intellectual property for your own business ventures.” Aster concluded.
“Life is so much sweeter when someone else picks up the tab,” Madam Jezebel said philosophically, “and the returns are so much higher when someone else does the hard work of research and development.”
“Do you even care that hundreds of people are probably dead?”
“No, I do not.” Madam Jezebel replied with sociopathic honesty, “Toying around with xenotech in the hopes of inventing the next trendy widget is like dismantling a fusion bomb to make a drum set. I want no part of that, and those who do are welcome to the consequences. But I do want my share of that ill-conceived investment back.”
Oblivious to the tense exchange, seven year old Orion shuffled over to his grandmother and tugged on her sleeve. Grandma Jezebel looked at the tablet computer he was holding.
“No, sweetheart,” she said helpfully, pointing to the exercises he was doing on screen, “that’s meant to be the future-continuative conjugation. You ‘will be doing’ the verb.”
“Thank you, grandma.” Orion said with a smile, his father’s luminescent green eyes shimmering under the light. Then he returned to playing with his tablet.
“It’s so nice to have intelligent grandchildren.” Grandma Jezebel beamed, making it sound as though she were taking credit for how smart they had turned out.
“I’m sure their grandfather would be proud.” Aster quipped.
Madam Jezebel’s implacably superior composure cracked. It was difficult to describe the expression she now wore on her face, but it was definitely not a calm one.
“On their mother’s side, of course.” Aster added, satisfied that her barb had worked.
“Bring me the data-chip,” Madam Jezebel instructed her daughter-in-law imperiously, “and there won’t be any problems.”
“Understood.” Aster replied as she got up to leave, “time to go, sweethearts.”
Obediently, the children gathered up their things and lined up to say goodbye to their grandmother. Grandma Jezebel’s composure returned as she kissed her grandchildren goodbye, then she snapped her fingers at one of the servant androids.
“Summon a taxi for five.” She ordered the android.
“Thank you.” Aster said with a courteous smile.
It was the least her fleekster mother-in-law owed her.
Without getting up from her seat, Madam Jezebel waved goodbye to her grandchildren. When the door had shut behind them, her smile disappeared.
“Frontier bitch.” She muttered.
* * *
Gabriel forced the captured jumper’s hand against the biometric scanner, and the door to the medical bay opened. Viker secured the room whilst Gabriel strapped his captive down to an examination bed using the patient safety restraints. Meanwhile, with immense care, Cato and Bale laid the unconscious and badly wounded Doran down on a surgical table, and a suite of robotic medical arms descended automatically from the ceiling to assess him.
He was barely alive.
“The room’s sealed.” Viker told everyone, “We’re secure in here.”
Having tied down the prisoner, Gabriel came over to join the rest of the squad.
“Doran’s suit’s taken too much damage,” Cato explained gravely, “his shields and armour saved his internal organs from being crushed, but he’s out of this fight.”
“Will he live?” Bale asked.
“The nanobots in his bloodstream should
stave off the worst of the damage,” Cato explained, “but the best we can do right now is stabilise him.”
The robotic medical arms paused in their work. The holographic patient monitoring screen displayed an error message: “obstruction detected”.
“It’s his armour,” Cato explained, “We need to remove it.”
“Well, let’s do it, then!” Viker demanded.
“Only the commanding officer can do that.” Cato elaborated, looking to Gabriel.
“Well, fricking hurry up and open it–” Viker began to shout frantically.
“STAND THE FLEEK DOWN!” Gabriel barked, the volume of his voice making the rest of the squad flinch with surprise.
The squad, including Viker, stepped back as Gabriel approached the surgical table and placed the palm of his gauntlet against the cheek-plate of Doran’s helmet, establishing a peer-to-peer connection between his own suit and Doran’s.
“Override: Lieutenant Doran, disassemble suit.” Gabriel instructed Doran’s suit computer, “Victory. Sovereign. One. Seven. Zero. Seven.”
The voice command was accepted and Doran’s suit began to unlock and disassemble, the pieces unfolding and retracting like a sentient jigsaw puzzle. Only his respirator remained secured to his face. Doran’s skin, visible through the under-suit, was a mess of fresh red bruising. His head looked unharmed, but lack of consciousness and a brush with death had turned his skin ghostly pale.
The error message disappeared and the robotic medical arms resumed their work, cutting open Doran’s under-suit with an incredibly fine circular blade, and subjecting his torso to a series of microinjections, targeting the areas of most serious injury with cocktails of drugs mixed into a solution of nanobots.
“It’ll take a while to stabilise him.” Cato explained, “But we can’t be certain if he’ll make it, we need to get him back to a proper DNI facility.”
“We still have a mission to fulfil.” Gabriel reminded everyone.
“Frick the mission!” Viker exclaimed, “Ogilvy’s missing and Doran’s close to dead. The mission parameters have changed!”
“The mission parameters change when I say they change.” Gabriel shot back, shutting Viker down without raising his voice.
“Respectfully sir, they HAVE changed.” Captain Bale pointed out, attempting to defuse the building tension, “We can’t rescue Ogilvy AND look after Doran without splitting up.”
“Then splitting up is exactly what we’ll do,” Gabriel replied with steel in his voice, “This is still an IRS op., which means we still have to investigate the nature of the xenotech being studied here and find out how J.E. Co. acquired it in the first place. If you would prefer to abandon the mission, so be it.”
“You want to go alone, sir?” Cato asked, his tone reflecting the squad’s incredulity.
“Going alone is the whole point of a voidstalker.” Gabriel replied coldly.
The squad was silent.
“Are we that much of a burden to you?” Viker asked, a note of anger creeping into his voice, “or did the DNI assign us to you as cannon fodder for this suicide mission?”
“If you were mere cannon fodder to me, I would have left Doran to die and Ogilvy to his fate.” Gabriel replied truthfully.
The squad was silent again.
“Tell me when Doran’s condition improves, and see what you can find in the computer systems,” Gabriel instructed the squad, “I need to have a word with our prisoner.”
“Computers are Doran’s field.” Bale said doubtfully.
“Then learn fast,” Gabriel ordered him, “we need as much intelligence as we can get, and right now the best place to find it is the computers.”
Gabriel turned away and headed over to the captive. Besides the skin-tight flight suit, the jumper’s entire head was contained inside a bulbous helmet with a reflective black visor. Its right arm had been cleanly severed at the elbow joint, and yet it made no attempt to struggle or break free. It didn’t even show any signs of being in pain.
Gabriel reached under the jumper’s helmet, feeling under the rim for a release switch. There was no switch that he could find, or any other means of removing the helmet, but he still needed to take off or cut through the jumper’s helmet to speak to him.
Before making a run for it, the jumper had retrieved his sword, giving Gabriel an idea. The sword’s sheath was actually a magnetic plate on a strap slung over the back of the jumper’s suit, strong enough to hold the sword in place, but weak enough to allow the wielder to draw the sword by simply pulling.
Drawing the sword and placing the tip on the ground, Gabriel found that it came up to his hip, with the handle alone accounting for a quarter of the length. At the base of the handle was a little switch, and Gabriel flicked it with his thumb, causing the blade to shimmer.
With immense care, Gabriel placed the blade under the jumper’s helmet, and pressed against the chin. The blade sliced cleanly through the material, giving off only a faint whining sound with no smoke and no signs of heat or plasma scouring. The sword was almost certainly based on xenotechnology; in fact, it might even be an actual piece of xenotech. Once Gabriel had sliced clean through the jumper’s helmet, he discarded the faceplate on the ground.
What he saw underneath disgusted him.
The jumper’s androgynous face bore the marks of extensive cybernetic modification to the point that ‘he’ was barely recognisable as Human. His skin was a normal colour, but there were glowing signs of circuitry just visible underneath. His cybernetic eyes turned to regard Gabriel, and the corners of his lips curled into a grotesque smile.
“You took off my arm.” The jumper rasped in an electronically enhanced voice.
“You took off my combat claws.” Gabriel replied through his helmet speakers.
“And now you want to know the truth about this place.” The jumper surmised with a leering grin, “Otherwise you would have killed me on the spot.”
“How long has this facility been experimenting with xenotechnology?” Gabriel asked, deactivating the sword and laying it to one side.
“Five years.” The prisoner replied.
“How long has J.E. Co. been smuggling xenotech and from where?” Gabriel asked.
“They didn’t smuggle anything in,” the prisoner answered, “it was already here.”
“What does that mean?” Gabriel asked with narrowed eyes.
“It means exactly that,” the prisoner explained, “the Temple was already here. This facility was built specifically to learn its secrets.”
“What is the temple?”
The prisoner’s eyes lit up, literally. A blue glow from inside his pupils illuminated the circuitry inside his bionic eyes.
“You have to see it for yourselves.”
“I asked you a question,” Gabriel warned, drawing his knife, “What is the temple?”
“No amount of pain will cause me to give you a different answer,” the prisoner replied, “Besides, I am volunteering all of this information to you.”
“I’ll ask you one last time.” Said Gabriel menacingly, flicking the hilt-switch to flash-heat the blade of his knife, “what is the nature of the temple?”
“It is far beyond the ability of mere Humans to comprehend, even I am not worthy to be enlightened with most of its secrets,” the prisoner replied, unmoved by Gabriel’s threats, “but it is alien in origin. You have to see it for yourselves to appreciate its glory.”
The prisoner's words and expression were filled with sincere awe. This was not a rational POW resisting interrogation, this was a fanatic who did not care to save himself and practically dared Gabriel to venture into the ‘temple’.
“Why has there been so little resistance?” Gabriel continued his interrogation.
“Has the challenge been insufficient to satiate your lust for battle?” the prisoner asked.
Gabriel’s already thin patience wore out, and he decided to test just how indifferent to physical agony the captive really was.
He
took the prisoner’s remaining hand – pausing briefly to note how baby-sized it was – then he pressed the flash-heated blade of his knife against the wrist, slicing clean through the flesh and cauterising the wound in one go. The prisoner inhaled calmly then exhaled with relief, as though he were relaxing in a hot-tub instead of having his hand amputated.
“Pain sensation has been dulled to the point of triviality,” the prisoner explained with a grotesque smile on his face, “the flesh’s loss is the spirit’s gain. It is of no consequence to those of us who have been enlightened.”
Gabriel had performed countless field interrogations on subjects who resisted the pain as best they could before finally breaking. But he had never encountered a subject who seemed to actually enjoy it, let alone someone who calmly spouted pseudo-spiritualist nonsense to explain why they didn’t mind the pain.
“You’ve been trying to lure us deeper into this place ever since we arrived.” Gabriel pressed, deactivating his combat knife and returning it to its sheath, “I want to know why.”
“I have already given you the answer to your question, DNI,” the prisoner responded, “We want you to see the glory of the Temple for yourselves.”
“Where is the entrance to the ‘temple’?” Gabriel asked.
“At the far end of the laboratories you will find an elevator that will take you down to the Temple entrance.” the prisoner replied obligingly, “the access code is 52133. No need to take my hand for biometric clearance.”
The prisoner’s imperviousness to torture meant that he didn’t have to give away anything. He was volunteering this information – whether freely or as part of a larger plan – to goad Gabriel into leading his squad into an obvious trap. Worst of all, Gabriel had no choice but to take the bait being offered because the mission objective was inside the trap.
Furthermore, given what they now knew about this enemy, Ogilvy was almost certainly dead or worse. The squad had been banking on his armour to keep him alive and safe, but their crazed enemy had technology that could cut through even the toughest materials. Judging by the enhancements given to the mobility platform pilot and the jumpers, it was almost certain that something similar had been done to Ogilvy.