Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1)

by Duran Cross

  Wanker frowns and almost looks threatening. “You’re making jokes when you’re about to shoot somebody?”

  “I’m not making jokes, God made you, it’s his joke.”

  “Listen to me, Rennin!”

  “God having a sense of humour almost got me to go back to Church,” he says now in autopilot, his emotions locked in an airtight coffin until the deed is done.

  “Caufmann is nuts, man, just don’t do it. Or miss.”

  “I never miss,” he pulls the bolt back loading a round into the chamber, then clicks it forwards ready to fire.

  Wanker shakes his head and grits his teeth.

  “Contact,” says Rennin as Michael Gainsford, the walking dead, leaves the building and is visible in the courtyard below. He hasn’t said ‘contact’ upon seeing an enemy since the war but Gainsford isn’t an enemy, just a target.

  Just a target.

  He takes aim.

  “Don’t do it,” pleads Wanker.

  Gainsford is almost halfway across the courtyard when the floodlights come on, drenching everything in a white haze. His brisk walk pauses midstride. He takes another resigned step then halts entirely.

  Rennin is about to pull the trigger when he notices that Gainsford doesn’t move, he doesn’t shield his eyes, he doesn’t run. He just stands there with his head down and eyes closed.

  The watchman freezes for a moment, taking stock of the man he thought was an idiot, accept his fate with courage. Gainsford has guts Rennin didn’t know he had. He takes a sharp breath, with a frown crossing his face as he pulls the trigger.

  The gun’s blast seems infinitely louder than usual and the bullet hits Gainsford in the side of the head, throwing him off his feet. Rennin doesn’t watch the body land he just drops his rifle on the floor and sits down next to his co-worker without any expression at all.

  His colleague says something but Rennin doesn’t even hear him. He falls into a kind of physical torpor. He hasn’t felt like this is a long, long time. He doesn’t feel bad, but there is a cripplingly distinct absence of anything good.

  ◆◆◆

  Caufmann is in the experimental lab, deep in the bowels of Godyssey, when interrupted by a call from security. Rennin has attacked his secretary outside his office. By all accounts, the watchman had told his secretary repeatedly to summon the doctor back from the restricted section. Her refusal to do so did not end well.

  She is a very difficult woman to deal with at the best of times, which is one of her best features. As official guard of Caufmann’s schedule, her tendency to be dismissive definitely has major perks. Despite being universally hated by all of Caufmann’s staff, she is good at her job. But according to the security team, Rennin hit her, and not softly.

  If he hit her with his right hand the damage would be horrendous.

  Caufmann mentally curses himself for not having the time to take Rennin aside after his surgery.

  The man must be a mess.

  His obsession with Rennin’s survival and successful reconstruction was mainly driven by his need for details on his encounter with Prototype. Though, as usual, other matters have gotten in the way. He’ll get the information he needs sooner or later. The glasses Rennin had that night were damaged and didn’t record anything useful.

  In the hallway to his office, he sees a splatter of blood across the floor near his secretary’s desk. He sighs and shakes his head but picks up the pace. This isn’t what I expected to deal with as Head of Research. Behind the desk, some of his staff are comforting his secretary.

  She’s not bruised. As far as Caufmann can tell she hasn’t been touched, but his relief is tainted by a massive dent in the steel desk.

  It makes some sense now, Rennin must have lost his temper and punched the desk, she then called security. He blinks wearily and asks where Rennin is.

  Entering his office, Caufmann finds Rennin handcuffed onto one of the seats facing his desk, head tilted to one side. Blood is dripping off his face onto the floor. Caufmann shakes his head, and steps around to get a better look. Rennin has a nasty bruise swelling just above his left temple.

  Caufmann leans in, and the watchman’s eyes flutter open. He steps back a bit to give Rennin a little space. Rennin’s pupils are unusually dilated, and his movement is groggy. I think I’ll be having a little chat with my security staff.

  “William…” Rennin manages to croak.

  All the years working in his employ Rennin has never called him William. They must have really hit him hard. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m not sure if I…” he takes a breath, “deserved the baton.”

  Caufmann doesn’t say anything.

  “What did you do to me?”

  Caufmann tilts his head questioningly.

  “My bones…” he sighs and closes his eyes as if they weigh a tonne.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to ask another time, when you’ll remember?”

  “Do I have a concussion?”

  “It seems you have been hit on the armoured section of your skull. Your brain may well have been shaken.”

  “But not stirred,” Rennin says with a weak smile.

  “I’ll see to it that you’re patched up. Take a day off.”

  Rennin’s smile vanishes. “What is happening to my body? The weird bone thing is spreading,” he says, his voice taking a serious tone.

  Caufmann takes a breath. “There was a lot of damage and you lost a lot of blood, we had to do something drastic. You almost died. Your body suffered serious trauma and you had a grievous head wound.”

  “What did you do?” he asks, slowly leaning forwards. He looks very awkward, trying to move while handcuffed in place.

  “We implanted two combat-grade limbs, your entire left leg and your right arm from the elbow. Part of your skull needed to be replaced and your left eye was damaged, easier to replace than fix.”

  Rennin takes a moment to process that, but handles it quite well. “So why is the bone definition spreading? At this rate I'll cut myself on my own cheekbones.”

  Caufmann breaks eye contact briefly and blinks. “Like I said, we had to do something drastic. With no living next of kin and your incapacitation, I took the liberty of choosing for you.”

  Rennin looks up at him with mildly clearer eyes.

  “We injected you with Thermosteel plasma.”

  Rennin stiffens, becoming absolutely still. The memory of something agonisingly hot stabbing into the base of his spine recurs, and is difficult to blink away.

  “The combat-grade limbs are far too heavy for a standard human skeleton to support, so we had to reinforce it. The organic components of Thermosteel make it ideal; it is designed to make bones stronger. It’s just spreading across your entire skeleton. That was not meant to happen. I’m sorry to say, I didn’t know enough about the substance,” Caufmann continues.

  Rennin blinks several times before hauling himself to his feet, dragging the chair up with him, “You injected me with a bone grafting plasma that spreads like a virus.”

  Caufmann is finding his remorse most unwelcome and uncommon.

  “I’m sorry, Ren, but you would have died. Or been incapable of supporting your new limbs.”

  “Well it’s shit.”

  Caufmann doesn’t respond.

  “My head still hurts like hell,” he says before a smirk crosses his face.

  Caufmann smiles, “Thermosteel plasma is in extremely short supply and it did save your life.”

  “Why not use regular andronic limbs? Not that I’m complaining,” says Rennin looking better by the moment.

  Caufmann’s expression returns to an uncomfortable kind of neutral.

  “You’ll need them.”

  ◆◆◆

  Rennin wakes up the next morning feeling unusually bad.

  Psychologically he feels just as enthusiastic as he did when he woke up in the hospital a week before. And apart from when he shot Gainsford, he has felt equally good emotionally every day since, for abs
olutely no reason. Today though, he feels physically sick.

  Rennin drank a lot last night, as he does most nights, but this is a whole new level of hangover. His vision is slightly split, he can’t keep track of his thoughts, and his entire body feels like it’s being hollowed out from within.

  He rolls over expecting to find Carla, but she’s not in the bed. Which is severely concerning as he’s usually a very light sleeper.

  The watchman swings his legs off the bed. The motion makes his head swim, pulling the world out from under him briefly.

  Rennin hears vomiting from the bathroom, which drags his concentration back to the present. He takes a few faltering steps before managing an off kilter stagger to the bathroom, to find Carla on her knees in front of the toilet. Her skin is extremely pale. “Puking first thing in the morning. You pregnant?” he asks.

  She huffs out a hacking laugh, “You’re so sensitive and considerate.”

  Rennin slumps down next to her. Her face is ashen, and her darkened sockets make her eyes look unnaturally bright. “Can I get you anything?”

  “A priest,” she says.

  He smiles but notices the veins on her neck and temples are severely darkened, almost black. “Well if you hadn’t noticed I am a devout kitchen.”

  She blinks at him, “Christian, I think you mean.”

  “You hope. Seriously, do you want some water?”

  “If you would pay attention I’ve been trying to reach it but my head won’t go down far enough.”

  “Never had that problem before.”

  She mockingly backhands his face, exaggerating the effort required. “Smart arse.”

  Rennin goes to the kitchen to make some coffee for her when a sharp pain runs up the side of his head. He closes his eyes and focuses on making coffee, trying to distract himself from the sudden surge of pain.

  When the fog in his mind clears he readies the coffee. He drops the small brown cube into a cup, adds a spoon full of old fashioned sugar, milk extract and water. He brings it into the bathroom and leaves it on the basin within arms reach.

  After dressing, he says his goodbyes to Carla, who smiles weakly in response. Rennin limps out of the house still unaccustomed to his heavy, combat-grade prosthetics. The leg particularly has been difficult to adapt to. It moves under its own power, but it pulls on his spine with each step.

  He reckons in another day or so the Thermosteel will have spread through his entire body causing the protruding look to his bones to appear everywhere. He is a little disappointed that it didn’t add the same symmetry to his left hand that his right hand now possesses, but Thermosteel can’t fix genetics.

  An hour into his shift at the lab Rennin bursts into the toilet and throws up before even reaching the bowl. It is mostly bile but it’s streaked with a fair amount of blood.

  Righty, he notes before stumbling over to the sink to wash his face.

  The cool water does soothe the sick feeling somewhat, but he feels like someone drained his blood and filled him up with formaldehyde. And dog piss.

  His whole body feels like it’s shutting down, waves of numbness manifesting randomly all over his body. He looks at himself in the mirror, I swear I look even worse than I did this morning. His real eye is paler, the pupil looking less distinct, almost hazy somehow. He throws up again in the sink before feeling his knees buckle. There’s a splitting pain in his spine, and the world turns dark.

  ◆◆◆

  Del sits in the Chair.

  The relic from over two decades ago is for use when androids are offline, in order to update and improve programming; in this case by Caufmann and Doctor Hillon. The skull plate across the back of Del’s head has been removed, replaced by thick cables that snake upwards to the wall behind, feeding into a mainframe designed to recalibrate and install.

  Hillon rubs her eyes in exhaustion, “This android is never going to work if it has to be mind-wiped every day and restored to factory settings just to function at a basic level.”

  “I’m aware of that, thank you,” says Caufmann.

  Hillon hands him a page of Transfilm, a holographic printout on a transparent blue sheet. “Look at this. I’ve never seen so much ghost-code form in an android so quickly, he’ll need to be constantly maintained.”

  “Not if we get his algorithms in order.”

  “Exactly how are you going to do that in the foreseeable future?”

  “Just by keeping at it,” says Caufmann.

  “Del has made an interesting first attempt but it’s time to move on to another experiment. Is Adrenin ready?”

  “No. Adrenin is still in the birth-pod. I’m attempting to program him while he’s growing to see if it’s more successful. At the moment I’m inclined to believe it is better. I should not have removed Del from the capsule so early.”

  “What about the Suvaco Program? Maybe those hybrid androids can provide some programming solutions,” says Hillon.

  The Suvacoes have been in stasis since their discovery and that was quite a long time ago. Caufmann was hoping they could provide data to improve future generations of androids. So far, with no success.

  Caufmann grumbles, “I have no idea. Their encryptions are so invasive I can’t even get basic information out of them. As far as I can tell from their construct they’re a hive-mind unit.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Those spikes that run up the centre of their heads aren’t just cosmetic. They are based on an insectile template, they are utilised to transmit signals. Since they are organic signals, we can’t intercept and decode them. Quite brilliant, really.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me where you found them?”

  “I didn’t find them. The HolinMech Warrior strike-team found them inactive. One of the androids had a seizure, so I’m told,” he says making a dismissive gesture, “and found an antechamber housing these units.”

  Hillon’s face turns sceptical. “Found them while in seizure?”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous.”

  “Which unit was it?”

  “A 22,000 series: Cain Hicks.”

  “A twenty-two went into seizure?” she says in disbelief. “Cause?”

  “Unknown. Either way, he found the Suvaco units and they were ordered to be shipped here.”

  “I don’t like that at all.”

  Caufmann nods in genuine concern, “Neither do I. I’ve put them in the most protected area available. If it’s locked down, no one should be able to get in or out.”

  “You think they might activate?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Hillon looks at Del, “He doesn't look much like a combat model slumped in that chair. I think whoever built the Suvacoes is a lot cleverer than we are.”

  “Speak for yourself. I have taken various precautions, you know. I removed most of the heavy armour and several of the sensors around the cranial cap, so even if they do activate they’ll be far less effective than they otherwise would be, should they turn hostile.”

  “Why not dismantle them?”

  Caufmann smiles, “So much work went into them. I have to know how it was done. I’ve sabotaged them as much as I dare to and created several vulnerabilities in their framework.”

  Hillon takes a steadying breath, “You cannot deny that cloning them may have been the worst idea you could possibly have had. The fruits of this work are one barely active, blind, android and a twin unit that is taking an ice age to gestate.

  “The Suvacoes are part organic. Their programming could well be genetic. You may be making Del worse by trying to implement programs he simply isn’t designed to assimilate.

  “More to the point, what if they were left there to find? And like the Trojans we may have brought the enemy within our walls.”

  Caufmann shakes his head, “Ludicrous. No one leaves engineering this sophisticated behind to take a chance like that.”

  “This fascination of yours may well be the death of you.”

  “I’m not
that lucky.”

  ◆◆◆

  Rennin pulls himself off the floor, unsure of how long he’s been unconscious. It can’t have been extensive, since no one has found him. He coughs, and a splatter of blood hits the floor in front of him.

  That’s not good.

  Indigo Reign was the last thing that knocked him this hard, but the pain here and now is nowhere near as intense. Unfortunately, the energy drain it causes is incredible. He can work through a bad flu with a few painkillers and an Irish coffee but this is different, despite the usual body aches of a virus. He also has the nausea, the weakness, all the typical symptoms of flu but the symptoms are amplified a great deal more. This is something far from normal.

  Exiting the bathroom, Rennin closes the door, and uses his andronic right hand to break the door latch. His sputum may be contagious, definitely for the best that no one comes in contact with it. Though looking around Wanker isn’t in the tower. Rennin wonders if he’s sick too.

  He gets on his personal communicator, dialling Caufmann’s link number. When the doctor answers Rennin lists his symptoms. Caufmann’s reaction is almost undetectable. Never a good thing.

  Minutes later, Rennin is slumped in a seat in Caufmann’s office, his head resting in his hands, while the doctor examines a vial of his blood. Behind his desk, seated in his throne-like chair, Caufmann reminds Rennin more of a school principal than a scientist.

  Caufmann’s face in unreadable. Another very bad sign. “I have some bad news, Ren,” he says.

  “Bubonic Plague?”

  Caufmann doesn’t miss a beat, “Worse.”

  Rennin suppresses the urge to panic. His body has never let him down without outside interference. He can’t find any way to respond.

  Caufmann steps around to the other side of his desk with slow precise steps, stopping directly in front of Rennin. When he makes eye contact he speaks in a soft voice.

  “You’ve suffered contamination from a mutagenic pathogen. It’s gotten into your blood and will soon build up bacteria in your spinal column. It will latch onto the nerves and grow into tendrils that clone your central nervous system, developing into a parasitic life form.