Agent X

by Morgan Blayde

  He grabbed ADAM’s head, lifting it and slamming it back to the deck. He did this several times as they slid along. ADAM’s body had been designed to move through earth and rock when necessary in the mines, digging out survivors from cave-ins. His design was basic, maximizing sturdiness. Compared to Chim’s exo-suit, ADAM was a brute, so the skull-pounding had little effect.

  ADAM’s fists pounded into Chim’s chest plate. It cracked, caving like drywall. Despite the shock-absorbers built into the exo, Chim was rattled. Blinking red cursors flashed inside Chim’s helmet, giving warning: several systems were close to collapse. Fortunately, Chim still

  had positive air pressure in his exo-suit.

  Elissa’s voice sounded in Chim’s helmet. “Chim, back off. He’s hurting you.”

  Jumping off of ADAM’s steel body, Chim spun in the air. He fired the grapple gun built into his right arm. A claw—trailing a steel cable—shot into the ceiling where it magnetically adhered. Chim reeled himself up to the overhead surface.

  Elissa said, “What was that tussle all about? You had to see who was tougher?”

  “No, I needed to keep the AI distracted so she wouldn’t have time to notice your mockup wasn’t real.”

  Chim watched the mockup roll into open space and drift toward the dwarf sun. ADAM leapt after the mockup. Now both were off the ship.

  “Elissa, close the doors.” The Door’s began to slide shut. “I need you to steer the mockup so it skims the sun’s photosphere. Don’t let the mockup get near the real alien relic.”

  “You’re trolling for the sun-puppy?” Elissa asked.

  “Right.” The space doors sealed. Air and gravity were restored. Chim lowered himself to the deck and headed for the airlock. ADAM—in his female cybernaut form—came out of hiding with the spider-bots around him. Chim told Elissa, “You can reassign the drones to other work now. I need you to fabricate a new version of ADAM’s body so he can vacate this one, and the white coats can have it.”

  “Great, there are a few improvements I want to make in the overall design.”

  “Don’t get too inventive. If ADAM ever goes rogue on his own, I’ll need to be able to take him down.”

  “But he’s on our side.”

  “Still…”

  “Okay, Chim, nothing too fancy. What about you?”

  “The cybernaut and I are going to the bridge. I’ll continue this operation from there.”

  On the wrap-around holo-screen, Chim watched ADAM’s hijacked body crawling over the latticework of the mockup. Elisa’s photonic projection was on the curve of the sphere, waiting.

  “Okay, Elissa, you can turn off the projection.”

  Her golden body vanished from the screen. She reappeared on the bridge, grinning, but no longer naked. She wore a full-length gown with plenty of ruffles and bows, but then, she always did dress for company.

  Elissa said, “That was close.”

  Chim smiled inside his armored shell. “It’s not like the A.I. could’ve hurt you.”

  “That’s beside the point. So what now, Chim? Are we going trolling for Dragon?” she asked.

  “Exactly. Fire up the mockup’s retros and the x-ray emitters.”

  The surface of the red dwarf sun roiled, seething and churning. The Dragon and the alien relic surfaced from the disturbance. The plasma beast approached the mockup. Its speed increased with anticipation; here was a new toy to play with. Coils of plasma surrounded the mockup. It was pulled to the red dwarf sun. Dragon and toy sank into the photosphere and vanished.

  Meanwhile, the true alien relic lobbed from the sun began to arc back toward the dwarf as well.

  “Elissa, activate tractor beams. I want that relic.”

  “I’ve got it, Chim.”

  Next to Chim, the cybernaut stirred, turning to face him. “So you just let my body go to slag and call it good? We all go home?”

  Chim said, “Elissa is building you a new body. You’ll be back to your old self before long.”

  ADAM, in the female android body, turned to see the whole screen. “So it’s over.”

  “Where do you want to go from here,” Elisa asked.

  ADAM waved at the screen and the infinity it projected. “Out there, somewhere. I have yet to find what home is for me.”

  “Keep looking,” Chim said, “even if it takes a lifetime. When you find the right person, someone who can make a home wherever you are, you won’t regret it.”

  ADAM studied Elissa, then looked back at Chim. “It seems you’ve been that fortunate.”

  As his damaged exo rerouted systems, engaging redundancies, making repairs, Chim shrugged. “This job needs some kind of compensation.”

  INTERLUDE

  “Serving the Imperium is a privilege,” the interrogator said. “Billions benefit from our benevolent guardianship. Satisfaction from a job well done should be compensation enough.”

  “I don’t do this for the citizen of the Imperium,” Chim said. “And certainly not for any of you. I fight for the weak and vulnerable; for those broken by the Imperium as it demands its survival at any cost. I fight so the failures of Project X will mean as much as its successes.”

  An embarrassed silence set in.

  A new interrogator stepped in, changing the subject hurriedly. “What you did at Wolf 359 may be recorded in our secret annals as your finest hours. What you discovered about the Harvesters will change the game when they return.”

  Chim smiled. “If you’re grateful, let me out of this restraining field.”

  “Eventually. Maybe. We’ve got more questions.”

  Chim sighed. “What?”

  “You dropped off the grid for a few days after that,” the interrogator noted. “You exercised your right of autonomy to embark on a mission of your own devising.”

  “That’s true,” Chim said. “All x-class agents have such discretion.”

  “Yes, but you never filed an explanation. For all we know, you were MIA in some red light district, visiting dens of depravity.”

  “You want to know why I went dark.”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

  “There was someone on Janus I’d been meaning to visit, and since we were nearby…”

  5. LAST REQUEST

  They were out of the shadow of Janus, orbiting its eternal dayside. On the display screen, the bright face of the planet reminded Chim of cooling slag from some blast furnace. Oceans of sunbaked desert shimmered with heat, separated by wind scoured hills, rounded and polished like pillow lava. The only sign of plant life lay in the colonized twilight band between hemispheres, a section they’d ignored in passing.

  “Do you want to tell me where we’re going?” Elissa’s photonic projection occupied the customary spot adjacent to the captain’s chair, but lost in some private abstraction, he’d forgotten her until she spoke.

  “Follow the conduit lines out to Station Twelve.”

  “Why are we going there? When you’ve seen one solar conversion plant in the heart of Hell, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean? You know something I don’t?”

  He looked at her then. “What are the chances of that?”

  “Chim, we have no orders to be here. I haven’t picked up any emergency signals. Our time is valuable. Why spend it here?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Is it a human thing, something you don’t think I’d understand?”

  “No. It’s personal—very personal. Do you think you could just trust me?”

  Elissa leaned over the arm of the chair. Her face hung a few scant inches from his, making her golden eyes the sum of his universe. He thought for a moment, he’d fall into their bright infinity. He wanted to. She set her forehead against his and closed her eyes, freeing him. “You know I trust you. There isn’t anything I’d deny you.” Her eyes opened as she drew away. “We’re over the Station Twelve. Should I land?”

  “Please. And have a crawler
downloaded from the cargo bay. What I want is near the station, but not in it.”

  “All right. I won’t ask you anything else.”

  He stood and the wrap-around holo-screen automatically retreated.

  He rounded the captain’s chair and headed for the lift. Surprisingly, Elissa

  stayed behind, giving him privacy for once without him asking for it. He summoned the lift and stepped onto it as the doors opened. Turning, he held out his hand. “I wish you could come with me planet-side. It would make this a lot easier.”

  She blinked out and reappeared next to him in a fraction of a second, reminding him that this aspect of her was only solidified energy, a projection generated by the ship. It didn’t matter; everything real was part illusion, if it was worth anything at all.

  “I can’t range far from the ship. My desire exceeds my design—for now.”

  “It’s enough that you’re with me in spirit.”

  Happily, Elissa latched onto his arm, beaming at his words. The lift door sighed shut and the car began to move. It deposited them on the level containing his quarters. Determined to complete a difficult task quickly, he lengthened his stride in the corridor.

  His suite door opened as he got there. Inside, he crossed to a cabinet in the living room. Gently shaking Elissa off, he opened the cabinet and took down a small lacquered box. “I’ll need this,” he said.

  “What’s in there? You’ve never been willing to tell me.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to ask me anything else.”

  “So I lied.”

  “Are we down yet?”

  “Sure.

  “Then you’ll know soon enough.” He went to the cargo bay holding the all-terrain vehicles, and found great sections of hull thrown wide open. A cargo crane had an armored crawler on a platform, ready for transfer to the blasted rock outside. The vehicle waited. He started toward the crawler.

  Elissa caught his arm. “Chim! Your suit!”

  “I’m not taking the exo. Can you have a drone get me a personal visor that can handle the sunlight here?”

  “Well, sure, but this is a harsh world. I’d feel a lot better if—”

  “No. I won’t be going that far, and this little chore is something I’ve got to do as myself—not a cog in the galactic machine. I made a promise…”

  “All right, but I’ll be listening over your implant. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll—”

  “Probably burn out the engines getting to me. Relax. It’s not the suit that makes the guardsman, but the tortured psyche inside.”

  His visor arrived, and carrying the box, he climbed into the crawler, sealing the hatch behind him. Settling in the cockpit, he strapped in. The instruments boards were dead. He’d wait until he was down to power up the systems. Grappling arms activated, lifting the armored transport, extending it outside, away from the vessel. A minute later, he landed with a negligible bump.

  The vehicle came to life with a rumble and started forward at his urging. The holo-screen replicated the outside view, but without the blinding glare. Chim wouldn’t need the visor until he found the old markers and left the crawler. The blasted landscape slid by, as inhospitable a terrain as he’d ever seen. His mind ignored it, flying across time and space.

  * * *

  No longer infectious, but close to death, his mother sat up in bed, expending the strength she’d hoarded so carefully, for so long. Her face was pale and thin and splotched with blue, like all those stricken by the off-world plague. She held his child’s hand, ignoring the soup he’d brought in a chipped ceramic mug. Mostly water, it sat on the nightstand, gently steaming: no substitute for the medicine they couldn’t afford.

  “Chim, I want you to listen very carefully.”

  He nodded, feeling cold wings of terror fluttering in his stomach. He knew he’d soon be completely alone. He wasn’t ready for that.

  “When I’m—gone—they’ll burn this shack, like all the others. There’s a box on the dresser. It has the record of your birth and important papers that belonged to your father. Take the box to the Spaceman’s Orphanage. They’ll take you in, and maybe find you a new family. You can go to school, make something of yourself.”

  She broke off, trembling as muscles spasmed. Her hand became a punishing claw.

  He spoke as the bout passed, “I don’t need a new family. I have you. You’re gonna get better. Wait and see!”

  Her sad smile and the stirring shadows in her eyes told him she knew he was lying.

  “If you ever get to Janus,” she said, “pay your respects. There’s a monument on dayside where your father’s ship went down. He’s buried there along with the rest of the crew. He never saw you born. His spirit might be lingering. If you see him, let him know it’s all right to pass on, to where I’ll be waiting.”

  “Don’t leave me!” he begged.

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “But we don’t always get what we want. You know that. You have to be strong, Chim. Promise me…promise me—”

  “I promise.”

  A final attack convulsed her and, when she relaxed, the light of life was gone from her eyes. Her lax hand slid off of his, releasing him. Tears threatened to fall, but he blinked them back, wrapping himself in a level of

  strength he could barely sustain. A promise was a promise.

  He took the box and set the fire himself. The blaze took everything, but his memories, reducing his world to fleeting flickering images that changed before recognition could set in. On the edge of the city, the small shack went quickly, causing no stir in the neighborhood. The last of his childhood turned to embers as he waited outside for dawn to come.

  Eventually, coughing in the smoke, he was able to return, ignoring the heat that forced its way through his boot soles. Chim emptied the contents of the box into his coat pockets and refilled the container with ashes gathered from around his mother’s charred bones.

  * * *

  He saw the marker, a great stone block inscribed with the name of the fallen freighter and it’s dead. He stopped the crawler and put on the black visor. “I’m going outside,” he told Elissa.

  Her voice came back, small and abstracted in his head. “Yeah, whatever.”

  Her odd lack of interest in him deflated his spirit a bit, but he picked up the box and made his way to the hatch. Chim threw on a silver reflective poncho, hooding his head. Even with its protection, he was asking for trouble to stay out in the solar hell for any real length of time. The door cycled opened. As the hatch closed behind him, he walked into a wall of heat, a solid smothering thing. Up close to monument, it sheltered him with shade. He read the inscription aloud: “In memory of the ISS VALKRIE and her valiant crew. They gave their lives that others might live.”

  He knew the story well. His mother had told it to him countless times. When giving the choice between running for safety, or helping to evacuate construction teams from the conversion plants being built, they’d put themselves in harm’s way. On the last trip for the last stragglers, time ran out. Solar winds had hit the planet, taking out the VALKRIE’S drive, forcing it down into the face of Janus.

  He let his eyes slide down the listed names to his father’s. Locating it, he reached out to touch the chiseled lettering with his fingertips. A flickering light, the size of a finger, appeared before his face. It was Elissa’s projection, compressed, miniaturized, hanging on fluttering gold wings like a fairy princess. The image was shot through with pixel fallout, and jerked with static.

  “What’s the idea?” he asked. “I’m not Peter Pan and you’re not Tinkerbell.”

  “I thought you wanted me to come along.”

  He smiled. “I do. I just didn’t think your projectors could do this.”

  Elissa scowled fiercely. “My ship does what I tell it to—or else!” The ghostly sprite rotated to see the monument and the name he touched. Chim figured she was running a data search. A moment passed and she faced him again. “This is where your father—!”

>   “Where his ship went down. The wreckage is gone, but the graves are just over there.” He pointed to a sunbaked field broken by neatly aligned headstones. He left the shade, heading that way. In the direct sunlight, Elissa became much harder to see, hanging on by metaphorical fingernails.

  He passed several rows of headstones, knowing exactly which one he wanted. He’d researched the plot number years ago in preparation for this day. Chim stopped to kneel in the sterile soil. Nothing green relieved the severe setting. This was not a place anyone would have chosen for a resting place. He scooped away loose dirt and shale, making a small hole. The box went in and was then covered up.

  He stood and brushed away a cloud of dust from his knees, feeling very much like a foil-wrapped baked potato. Sweat drenched his armpits and tracked down his face in rivulets.

  “You don’t know me. I’m your son, Chim. Mom sent me. She loved you all her life, and taught me to see you through her eyes. As long as I live, both of you live through me. That’s all I can do for you. I hope it’s enough.”

  He waited. He didn’t know why. He didn’t expect a ghostly apparition, or to hear some voice from beyond the grave. A stiff wind whipped up a dust devil. It strolled over his father grave and several others before falling apart.

  Chim turned and retraced his way to the crawler. It took him in. He closed the hatch behind him and took over the driver’s chair, tossing aside the visor. Uncharacteristically quiet, Elissa hovered over his shoulder, glowing softly with a light that could not warm him—not yet anyway.

  “Bring me home, Elissa.”

  The vehicle rumbled to life and began to move. His hands on the controls weren’t necessary. Now that he’d spoken, Elissa dared to do the same. “Are you all right, Chim?”

  “I have to be, don’t I? I promised. By the way, thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For being there in unexpected ways. For being everything I need. It can’t be easy. Nothing ever is.”