Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1)

by Duran Cross

  Rennin had to almost beg him to participate. The entire ceremony has taken less than twenty minutes, so Caufmann doesn’t look particularly vexed. He takes the parchment, signing his name.

  Rennin watches Caufmann’s abnormally smooth handwriting stroke intently. Something in the back of Rennin’s mind starts ringing with familiarity; he’d dreamt something similar the previous night but can’t remember it for the life of him. Something about the war, he’s sure.

  Caufmann smiles and shakes Carla’s hand. The priest directs them to stand at opposite sides of the altar, and to place their hands upon it. He then instructs them to close their eyes. A bright white flash follows, causing an instant of panic to cross Rennin’s mind. He hates white. And in that fraction of time part of the dream he had comes back to him.

  Indigo Reign.

  They open their eyes to see their white gold barcodes have been imprinted onto their forefingers.

  Marriage had generally done away with rings since these barcodes are recognised in every civilised country that possesses a scanning machine.

  It’s official, then.

  Rennin says a very brief thank you to the priest, snatches the parchment document for nostalgic value, and the three of them almost run out of the Antioch Cradle to the car waiting out front.

  An automated blast of confetti hits them on the way out, but they charge through, jumping in the car. Luckily it is archaic, and running on an old style combustion engine requiring petrol, since the main grid is still down. Caufmann revs it to life. As soon as the few people on the streets hear the engine, everyone is running towards them trying to get a ride in one of the only working vehicles.

  Caufmann ignores them and speeds off. “I can’t stress how much work I have to do, Rennin, but I’m happy I could do this for you.”

  “I appreciate it, sir, but where the hell did you get this old rocket?”

  Caufmann glances sideways at him, “It’s not mine, it’s Van Gower’s.”

  “Won’t he be pissed?”

  Caufmann’s face breaks into a strange grin, “He won’t miss it.”

  Unsure how to respond to that, Rennin turns to Carla. “Now we just have to get your folks to meet us at Gateway and then we can leave this hole.”

  “My parents live in England, can’t you tell I still have a slight accent?”

  Rennin hadn’t noticed at all, but he’s a quick thinker. “I’m a tits and arse guy.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  The jokes at least seem to ease the situation, helping to suppress their fear. Caufmann is speeding through the streets at a very unromantic pace towards the ever-growing queue at Gateway.

  Caufmann slides to a halt near to the crowd, letting Rennin and Carla out and speeding off quickly before any of the people try to leap onto the vehicle. The crowd is several thousand strong easily, some with their families and others on their own carrying a few belongings.

  There are two zones. One is for the general populace waiting to get out, and to the left, behind razor-wire topped unclimbable fences is the zone for relatives of the exemption groups, namely for Godyssey staff and the families of all military personnel.

  They run across to the exemption queue. It’s only a few dozen people long. They are eyed with death stares from the general population, lining up for their only opportunity to escape. Rennin decides he’d best tell her now, “Carla-”

  “Shit, Rennin, there’s a transport just there, we’re actually going to get out of here,” she says excitedly, trying to see around the crowd. A group of people at the front of the queue are allowed on after passing a decontamination scan, and the line moves forward considerably.

  “Carla, listen.”

  “What is it?” she asks up at him with her intense blue eyes.

  “I’m afraid-” he starts, cut off by a blaring alarm. Someone has just broken the lines and is running for a transport. Rennin grits his teeth a split second before the runner is shot in the back.

  That instantly kills Carla’s good mood. “Oh my god!”

  The line moves forwards again. “Carla!” He grips her arm tightly.

  “Ow!” She snatches away from him, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I have some bad news.” The line moves forwards and people grouping up behind them shove them forwards muttering in barely suppressed panic.

  Carla swears at the people pushing, while righting herself to refocus on Rennin. “What is it?”

  “I’m not coming,” he says with a minute wince.

  Her eyes turn stone cold, “What?”

  “I made a bit of a deal and I lied a little.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asks so quickly it sounded like one long word. “You said that Godyssey personnel and their families can get out.”

  “They can but not security’s families, we’re deemed non-essential, hence expendable due to a technicality of being a sub agency of Godyssey and not part of the main company body.”

  “So what are we even doing here? What the hell, Rennin?”

  Rennin’s face betrays his disappointment in himself and he sheepishly pulls his dog tags out of his coat pocket and puts them around his neck. “You can leave,” he holds up his left hand with the barcode imprint on the forefinger. “I’m now military and you’re my wife. You’ll be safe.”

  She looks at the barcode, then his dog tags, “Oh no, Rennin, no,” she says as her eyes well up, “You’ll be killed here!”

  “It was the only way,” he says softly, not meeting her gaze. “I’ll meet you afterwards.”

  “You told me, yourself, that this was a doomed mission the military had in mind. You saved my life, you’ve been shot, haven’t you done enough?”

  Rennin puts a hand on her face trying his best to savour how her skin feels while shushing her. “Don’t mention that here or I’ll be executed long before the mutants rip me apart.” It was meant to be a joke but it starts her weeping, tears streaming down her face. She grabs at his arms, unwilling to allow this to happen.

  The line moves forwards again. Carla pushes away from him, wiping her face with a determined expression is on her face. “Then I’m not going either.”

  Rennin shakes his head and meets her eyes with his own conviction. “I did this so you could get out and be safe, you’re getting on that ship.”

  “I’m not leaving you here. You’re a fucking idiot, but you’re my fucking idiot,” she says as the next movement of the queue draws them second to the front.

  He touches her face again and smiles. “I love you,” and lands a left hook across her jaw. Her head snaps back, knocking her out cold.

  Rennin’s next in line so he picks his bride up, as a groom is supposed to upon crossing their first threshold. The image in his mind of the current situation is nothing short of ludicrous. He steps up to the cluster of soldiers standing guard.

  “Name, pal?” asks one, a Sergeant by his shoulder detail.

  “Farrow, Rennin. This is my wife Carla Sp-Farrow,” he corrects himself. “I’m serving with the Horizon Military, but she’s here to leave.”

  The Gateway checkpoint soldier types Rennin’s name into his handheld tool then scans his hand. “Alright, you check out fine,” he says then his attention is drawn to Carla. “She sick?” he asks, obviously suspicious of her being unconscious.

  “No, she was just being difficult, but she’s leaving.”

  “Not until she passes a scan,” he says injecting her with some kind of serum. Rennin inwardly shudders at the sight of the needle. The soldier looks at a small gauge in his hand that lights up green. “Okay, she’s fine,” he says, nodding to one of the soldiers. He takes her from Rennin’s arms and carries her onto the transport.

  Rennin steps to the side, finding that his legs are shaking. He feels horrible. His stomach is in knots. He didn’t want to hit her. He hit her too hard, he knew, but he was frightened and wanted to be sure he knocked her out. He wouldn’t have been able to strike her twice. That’s somethin
g he knows he just couldn’t do.

  Yeah, you’re a real gentleman, fuckhead.

  He pushes his way back through the bustling queue, and back onto the street where he stops and takes account of his surroundings. The whine of engines draws his attention as the ship Carla is on lifts into the sky. Another empty one sets down straight afterwards to begin loading the next lot.

  Carla is on her way to safety, Rennin thinks with satisfaction. He sighs deeply, looking over the miasma of people yelling, calling or shouting curses at the soldiers, then slowly turns to face the city.

  Not far beyond the crowd the streets are completely deserted; the stark contrast to the madness of the exiting queues is extreme.

  “Piece of cake,” he says in the words of Basil Fawlty.

  Now comes the tricky bit.

  ◆◆◆

  Caufmann enters a heavily restricted room on Arca Drej’s level of the lab. This room is at the far end of the hall, constructed underneath the lab proper, personally funded plus some skimmed off the books. The project was done using the sewer system to bring in the required parts.

  The room is cylindrical with six pillars around the centre and made from a smooth substance that looks like black rock. The time is fast approaching when he’ll need to move Drej but Drake certainly was correct about not being able to do it alone.

  His heart is pounding, and he is not sure what to do. This room holds his greatest treasure, at one of the heaviest costs. He has four CryoZaiyon androids here, their stasis pods masquerading as solemn black support pillars, still powered by their own discrete solar generator far above the surface.

  They were once intended for the only survivors of the Venus III massacre, but something went very wrong during the retrieval. Forgal Lauros knew they wouldn’t live long after they arrived back on Earth, so Caufmann hid himself first. Not long after, just as Forgal predicted, the survivors began dying. Forgal flagged the position of their bodies in a coded message only Caufmann would understand, giving him a chance to collect their bodies and hide them. They weren’t dead, Forgal had incapacitated them with a drug Caufmann designed to knock them out, providing the appearance of death.

  The first was Advanced Infantry Trooper Sephirlin Darrad. He was one of the first batch of units built. He was an exemplary solo mission unit, capable of both long and short-term missions behind enemy lines. Forgal and Darrad never saw eye to eye, but he was always a very useful tool.

  The next was a captain, Xelxor Akcoda. He was part of the Devastator Program. Built with a heavier chassis than most, the Devastator units were shock troops during the war. Deployed in pods, they were used to pave the way for the Wolf-droid dropships that had once rained like a terrible meteor shower onto the battlefield. Poor Akcoda, last of the Devastators.

  Then followed Angelien Zillah, a gargantuan captain of seemingly limitless endurance. She and Saifer Veidan had spent a great deal of the war fighting on the frontline. For a while, Caufmann remembers, the pair of them spent so much time fighting he didn’t know if they’d ever be able to stop. Their personalities were so different but at the core, their drives were the same. Pain.

  The retrieval mission was going as smoothly as could be expected, things were looking up, then something terrible happened. Forgal and Saifer both actually died at the same time and were lost to him. As far as Caufmann was concerned, any plans they had died with them.

  He was stunned, to say the least. He contemplated shutting down the other pods, allowing the last three CryoZaiyons some final peace; but he discovered he couldn’t do it when it came time to flip the switch.

  Each pillar has a particular arrangement of glyphs inscribed at the base, symbols Caufmann invented. Each set of glyphs is the identity of the android within. He looks to the pillar inscribed with the name ‘Nexarien Decora’. He stoops, and in one smooth movement sweeps aside the “N” glyph, exposing the hidden plate beneath. Pressing it firmly, the base snaps up and out revealing monitors and a keyboard. The vital signs of the android inside are strong.

  He made this tomb for himself as a kind of requiem for the CryoZaiyon he once was. That android is very really dead as far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t even recognise himself anymore. He built the pillar with full functionality, if a day comes that he finds himself no longer able to continue. And with him would end the last of the CryoZaiyons.

  Eventually, though, he found another use for it.

  Caufmann had only been Head of Research for five years when the unbelievable occurred. A CryoZaiyon emergency beacon activated.

  Caufmann picked up the reading instantly. There was yet another survivor, but this unit couldn’t have gone to Venus III. Caufmann thought it must be a trap, and fought viciously with himself whether to investigate or not. The transponder ID wasn’t active and that was too suspicious to be considered.

  A day later, a call from Van Gower affirmed that Iyatoya’s long-range scanners had picked up a CryoZaiyon distress call.

  Van Gower went berserk.

  Caufmann recognised the reaction as genuine and ended the call, cursing himself bitterly for not investigating sooner. He didn’t know who it was, but he would find out, personally.

  It was the first time since the war ended he’d held an assault rifle. Caufmann casually appropriated the helicopter assigned to the abduction of viable targets designated for ‘high-level’ experiments. So in the interests of plausible deniability, it contained no tracker, ID transponder, or any other distinguishing marks, while in possession of a sturdy stealth system. Caufmann piloted silently across Switzerland, heading directly for the signal’s originator.

  Caufmann found the location most odd; the Swiss border was neutral ground. He couldn’t fathom what a CryoZaiyon would be doing there.

  He found the unit in the mountains, a female. Females weren’t rare in the CryoZaiyon army, but they weren’t as common as males. This was a trooper he’d thought dead a decade before.

  She had been shot repeatedly during some kind of escape into the mountains. With her cold blood, and snow all around, she’d become trapped in deep freeze. Caufmann was halfway through breaking her out when Special Forces bearing Iyatoya insignia began showing up on his radar. It was a standard kill squad of six. Three infantry, a medic, a sniper and heavy weapons.

  Caufmann had disabled enough of his circuitry by that stage to be completely invisible to their scanners. Their headwear used a filter to search out movement and specific CryoZaiyon traits so Caufmann simply moved to the side, remaining still. They all walked into view once they assumed the area was secure. They called in their location, giving an estimate of their return.

  It was their death sentence.

  Caufmann stepped out calmly, killing three of them almost unnoticed. The next two never got time to actually see him, but the last looked straight at his glowing eyes coming out of the shadows, but only for an instant before his death.

  He took the unconscious unit, who he had identified as Amber Antares, back to his helicopter. He patched her up as best he could but she wouldn’t wake. He tried transfusing some of his own blood to her since CryoZaiyon blood types were universal. At least they were supposed to be but Saifer Veidan was flagged to never give blood due to his many anomalies. Even after getting her back to the lab and repairing all the damage there was too much trauma for her to be brought round.

  The last time he saw Antares personally was the closing conflict of the Jupiter Sieges. She’d gone back to Earth with the others afterwards, and during the GA clean up where the last pockets of resistance were beaten down she was registered MIA after her craft was shot down over Europe.

  Since he couldn’t bring her round, he placed her in his personal tomb capsule where her body would slowly heal completely. That was eight years ago. He’d never intended to leave her there so long, but as each day passed he found less and less reason to try and revive her. He eventually thought it best to let her sleep alongside the others.

  Caufmann presses the ‘View Unit’ butto
n on the control panel, and the top half of the pillar shell slides back, revealing the sleeping CryoZaiyon.

  Antares was an experimental model built three years into the war. She had the strangest effect on Forgal, something similar to severe unease.

  Her hair is long, more akin to cables than anything, each a centimetre in diameter. It gives her the appearance of white gold matting. They are just past shoulder length. Caufmann had seen her detach the ends of them at times and place them onto other machines, allowing small tendrils to slither out and interface with the local system, providing free access to hack the CPU, giving her complete control. Caufmann found the trick rather unnerving the first time he witnessed it.

  Antares reminds him of Valhara with having a slender build and well-defined musculature. Though Valhara was almost twice her size and all CryoZaiyons have physiques beyond even the most impressive human athletes.

  Something about her frame suggests to Caufmann that she was a dancer of some kind in her full-orga life. Or a weightlifter. Maybe a sprinter? He shakes his head clear.

  He is completely unsure whether to wake her. He had heard nothing of her since her disappearance. She had somehow completely vanished, leaving no traces anywhere.

  Even when he’d known her in the past—although ‘known’ was a loose term—she was always a mystery. He glances to Sephirlin Darrad’s current resting place; that CryoZaiyon was a classic soldier, not very useful in a delicate situation, and he certainly wouldn’t tolerate Arca Drej’s fragile state of being.

  But Forgal and Saifer are both dead! He cries in a bitter lament within the confines of his own mind.

  Arca needs a woman’s touch, he thinks to himself before realising he may know the expression but has no true understanding of the meaning.

  Caufmann looks to Angelien Zillah’s tube. She was strong and capable but not gentle. Zillah was perfect at assassination, but being such a loner she’d be far too conspicuous in a group of people. She was never one to hide. If Zillah was out and about she’d draw far too much attention.