"Fuck you."
"It's true, Magnus."
"And why would I believe that?"
"Because someone who was there that day can show you what really happened."
"The Basilisk? He wasn't there. You told me yourself I've never met it before."
"No. Not him. I mean the mech."
"The mech?"
The mech had been there, of course. They were part of the Terran guard, assigned to protecting the High Command at the signing ceremony. An honourable settlement to the war that had raged for years. Then the Basilisks had shown their true colours. The Terran High Command wiped out in a single act of slaughter. Magnus, trying to protect them, had received the point-blank blaster shot right through his brain. The mech had seen it all.
"They wiped the mech's brain and filled it back up with the same false memories," said Tia. "But we believe there will still be ghosts of the true images locked deep inside it. We think we can bring them out."
"We? Who's we?"
"The people trying to bring the Basilion war to an end. To stop all the slaughter. On both sides."
"He's not going to help us, Tia," said the Basilisk. "Forget him."
"Please?" she said, pleading with Magnus now. "It won't take long. If the true memories are really gone we'll leave you alone. But if we can retrieve the story of what happened that day it would be invaluable. Things would have to change then."
Magnus looked from her to the Basilisk. The alien stood calmly waiting.
"Who is he?" Magnus asked, nodding at the Basilisk. "Why are you so keen for him to get away?"
"He leads the antiwar movement on Basilion. With luck he may become their Rex one day. He came to a high-level conference on Earth. But the Solar System infiltrated. We fled but the flipship was damaged and we only made it this far. This was two months ago now. They know he's here somewhere. They're looking for him on every planet, moon and ship in the system. That's why we need your help."
He said nothing. He still held the blaster in his hand, pointing at the alien.
"Magnus, if we're right these deleted memories will change everything, show you a different story of what happened. But I promised to help you. If we're wrong, we'll do what we can to track down the Basilions responsible."
"And why would you do that?"
"If they really did what you think they deserve all they get."
He took a step forward into the room, unsure what to do. The mech stayed close behind him. Transparent bulkheads showed the distant Strip against the greeny-brown disc of Mars. There weren't as many controls as on a military vehicle, he thought. The ship probably did all the work for you.
"What's to stop you planting your own images into the mech?"
"Because you'll do all the communication," said Tia. "We'll give you the commands you need to send it. Really they're just some decryption keys we've recently acquired. Keys that five people died getting hold of. But there won't be enough data to contain video."
He didn't know what to do. He tried to think what the original Magnus would have done. The true Magnus.
"This is as far as I'll go," he said. "I'll do this because it's you asking and then that's it. Understood?"
"Thank you."
The ship relayed the code to him on his public tPath channel. He examined it carefully. It was as she said: a small amount of data, commands and keys. Opening his private channel to the mech he relayed the instructions.
The mech stood in the centre of the room. It did nothing for a moment after he communicated with it. Then it began to shake and teeter. It dropped to its knees and slumped to the floor. Tia had to dodge out of its way as it collapsed. The floor shook with its fall. Magnus stood in amazement. Nothing had ever even touched the mech before, through all the battles. Was it all just a trick? Had they persuaded him to neutralize the mech so they could finally get to him? Had he just fallen into their trap after all?
He raised his blaster again. He pointed it first at the Basilisk then at Tia, unsure which he should shoot first. Even a stat field couldn't protect someone from a point-blank shot.
Wait … wait …
It was the mech, talking to him over the tPath link.
What is it? He replied. What's happening?
Wait … wait …
He watched as the mech began to twitch and flex once more. It found its knees, its feet and stood back up, swaying slightly.
"Ask it," said the Basilisk. "Hurry. Ask it for its memories of that day. Relay them to the ship for us all to see."
"Please, Magnus," said Tia.
He felt suddenly sick at the thought of what he might see. But he had to know. He sent the instructions to the mech.
The images filled one of the transparent bulkheads. There was the familiar scene Magnus recalled so well. The three generals of the High Command: Chang, Jackson and Umwe. Opposite them at the table, the three Basilisks whose names he never learned. Behind each a guard, green skin polished to iridescence, armed and watchful. Three human guards and their mechs, himself included, in the foreground. The angle of the mech's perspectives was unusual but the scene was completely familiar.
He watched as the leaders of the two races reached across the table to shake hands. Everything was as he recalled. But there, suddenly, he could see the join. Events on the screen began to diverge from his memories, changing as if they were happening in front of him.
It was subtle at first, a different hand movement, different words spoken. Then blaster streaks strobed out from somewhere he couldn't see. One of the Terran High Command. The six Basilisks were struck simultaneously. The died before any of them could react. The human commanders stood and turned. Magnus had a clear impression of a well-rehearsed plan. Each general carried a hand blaster. Magnus watched as Jackson raised his weapon to the chin of the Magnus on the screen and fired. The back and top of his head exploded, the blaster shot emerging undimmed from the top of his skull. He collapsed from view. He heard one of the others, Chang, speak.
"Shall we finish them off?"
"No. We need at least one witness. We'll bring this one back to tell the world."
He kicked at Magnus' body, somewhere on the floor near his feet.
When the pictures stopped, Magnus watched them again. His mind was a blank, trying to take it in. He watched over and over. Each time he picked out new detail. The choreographed explosions of green blood from the Basilisks. The look on Jackson's face as he fired: business-like, inexpressive. The mechs twitching, caught between protecting their bonded human and obeying a superior office.
"I'm sorry," she said, standing near him. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'm sorry it's all been for nothing. Not just you, but everyone that's died or been injured. You weren't out there defending us at all. I'm sorry you had to see what really happened. It might have been kinder to let you believe what they wanted."
"They're still alive," he said. "The martyrs of the armistice. Jackson and Chang and Umwe. They weren't killed after all."
"We've had one recent report of a sighting of Umwe. We've no idea where the other two are."
He watched the scene yet again. He thought about how he always went out of his way to recount his story to any customer who'd listen. Was that all part of his programming?
"The Solar System cruisers are leaving the station," he heard the Basilisk say. "Three of them. I think they might be on to us."
"The pictures," replied Tia. "They're all that matter now. Put them on the wires."
There was a moment's pause.
"They're sent," the alien said.
"Then we've done all we can."
"We could fight," said the alien.
"In this ship? Not worth it," said Tia. "We can outrun them for a time but they'll catch us now."
"No," Magnus heard himself say to them. "No, we can fight. I have a ship. The flipship I used to get home from Basilion. With the mech. We can at least get outsystem in it."
"Magnus, you've done enough," she replied. "Take a sh
uttle. Go back to your life on the Strip."
"Go back? I can't go back, Tia. Not after this."
"Ordnance-range in thirty seconds," said the Basilisk.
"Magnus, you've had your revenge," she said. "The pictures are enough. You don't need to do this."
"I do. Don't you see, Tia? What you said about me in the bar. I don't know who I am anymore. They just made me up. Filled my head with this worn out spacewreck. But that isn't me. I don't know what is me any more."
"The war changed you," she said. "It was inevitable. You're still you."
"No! There's more of me in the mech, the image of my brain implanted into it. And there's more of me in you, too, Tia. In all the memories you have of what I was. Everything we shared. That's why we're coming with you. Between you and me and the mech perhaps I more or less make up a complete person again."
He looked at the lights outside. The specks that were stars and those that were ships jostling around Möbius Strip. The base looked so small. He could also see, clearly, the phalanx of three Solar System cruisers heading towards them.
"You're sure about this, Mag?"
"I'm sure."
"What about the bar?"
"Donal will look after it until I return. If I don't he's welcome to it."
"Five seconds," said the Basilisk.
Magnus sent the co-ordinates of his ship. They lurched into motion, the star-field swirling outside as they headed away from the sun. The disc of Mars and the loop of Möbius Strip flashed across the screen and out of sight.
"Where are we heading?" asked Tia.
"The flipship is under a veil on a rock in the asteroid belt."
"We'll arrive in eighteen days," said the Basilisk. "Just ahead of the SS. We won't have long to power the ship up. Are you sure it's functional, human?"
"It's functional, Basilion."
Tia stood with him in front of the transparent bulkhead. He looked at the blaster he still carried, then let it clatter to the floor.
It came to him, then, what it was he had said to her all those years ago. The day he left for the war. He had promised to return to her, no matter what.
In the end, she'd had to come and find him. Well. It was, he thought, good enough.
Simon Kewin is the author of over 100 published short and flash stories, quite a lot of poetry and the novels Hedge Witch, Engn and The Genehunter. He can be found at www.simonkewin.co.uk
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The Lion's Den
by Devin Miller
Stuart Becker gripped a bag of raw meat in one hand and the rungs of a ladder in the other. He loved being part of the crew, but sometimes life aboard the Genus was downright onerous. Something needed cleaning every day, his hands always smelled bloody (the carnivores were his responsibility), and he never got much sleep sharing his quarters with five other snoring men in hammocks.
Fresh out of school, he knew he had to start as a grunt and work his way up to being captain one day. But he also knew what cutting-edge technology existed these days, and he noticed its stark absence on the Genus. The only state-of-the-art things were the habitats, which Stuart thought was terribly unfair. The animals they chauffeured from stellar zoo to stellar zoo stayed in five-star, specifically designed chambers on decks two and three. Each habitat could be completely sealed off from the ship and was separated from the hull by a combination of impact absorbers and G-force gel, which meant that the animals couldn't hear or feel a thing, no matter what maneuvers the ship took.
His spirits remained firm, though, in part because of a certain girl who had come aboard at the same time he had. Her name was Valerie, and she had aspirations to be a veterinarian at the Phobos Fear Zoo—this mission's destination—and since her father was the captain, she had no trouble securing a position that worked closely with the animals. Stuart had been taken with her from the start, and since the few other girls on board looked like high school outcasts with bad complexions, he found himself gravitating toward her.
But times like this, when he was aware of how long the day had been, that he hadn't showered since shoveling the manure from the hyena's habitat, and that the raw meat over his shoulder was particularly ripe, he hated running into her. His pace slowed as she came around the corner, his eyes falling to the floor. But her father was with her, and when he called his name, he had no choice but to stop and address them.
"Ah, Becker, just the man I was looking for," Captain Richter said. He was a broad man with a full beard and big hands. "Help Valerie with the giraffe compound, please, before you deliver that meat. Brutus isn't going hungry, eh?" He chuckled, clapped Stuart on the back, and left them alone in hallway.
Stuart dropped his shoulders, but cheered up when he saw Valerie in her dirty overalls. She couldn't possibly comment on his unattractive appearance dressed like that. She gave him a half-smile and a shrug.
"What did I do to get on his bad side?" Stuart asked.
"Wrong place at the wrong time," she said.
"More likely he was mad at you and took it out on the first person he saw. This is punishment by association." He took a snow shovel from her. "I hope you know that."
They climbed to Deck Three, directly below the carnivores. Green lights along the hall gave it an eerie feeling, like a cave of emeralds. The lights meant the habitat beyond each door was fully functioning. This jaunt housed giraffes, rhinos, oryxes, and wildebeests. Stuart dropped the meat outside the giraffe habitat and they both took deep breaths.
"Let's get this over with," Valerie said.
"The quicker we're done, the quicker we can shower," Stuart said. "In separate showers, obviously."
"Just go."
The door slid upward, the green turned amber, and Stuart stepped through onto thick grass. The light inside simulated evening, and the family of four giraffes lounged by the watering hole to the right. One looked up from drinking in that strange posture unique to giraffes and watched them enter. Once safely inside, the door shut, and all sound from outside stopped. It was as if they had been transported to a half-acre of African savannah.
"Right," Stuart said. After caring for the carnivores for a few months now, the herbivores didn't frighten him at all. The giraffes barely blinked as Stuart and Valerie walked around, scooping up heavy piles of dung and carrying them to a chute in the far wall, where they would be disposed of.
"I don't know why the Phobos Fear Zoo would place an order for a family of giraffes," Valerie said. "They're so nice, and not scary at all."
"Maybe they want to put on shows," Stuart said. "You know, put them in the same ring with a few lions and see what happens."
"Don't say that! I expect they think they'll get more customers with a well-rounded selection of animals to view. If all you see are scary carnivores, none of them are very scary anymore."
"Tell that to the cheetah's face and see what happens."
"Do you enjoy aggravating me?"
"Just getting what's due for helping you out. Why did you need help, anyway? The captain just feel like doting on you again?"
"No!" She hesitated. "There's a telecast soon about the effect of altered gr
avity on predators' ability to hunt game. Father said I could sit in, but only if my tasks were done—I still have the whole wildebeest habitat to do after this. And since he wants me to be a vet as much as I do, well. . ."
"He figured, why not rope me into helping you." He dumped a shovelful down the chute. "Ugh. You're lucky I like you."
He wasn't sure in the dimming light, but he thought she might be blushing.
The compound was satisfactorily clean after twenty minutes. Stuart wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and then wished he hadn't. They walked to the door and left the giraffes, still staring and lounging, by the watering hole.
When the door slid up, they weren't greeted by the emerald hallway of Deck Three. Instead, harsh amber lights reflected off the white walls, and harried crew members ran about. From somewhere else in the ship, an alarm shrieked.
Stuart grabbed a guy he knew from his bunk; he was in such a hurry he almost fell over. "Gerald!" Stuart said. "What the hell's going on?"
"Asteroid shower," Gerald said. "Came out of nowhere. Orders are to secure the ship if you don't have cargo care." He pointed at the bag of meat for the lion. "Go give Brutus his lunch, and meet me downstairs in the engine room—they took a hit down there, it's a little chaotic."
Stuart nodded and picked up the bag. Gerald ran off and disappeared down a ladder.
"An asteroid shower?" Valerie said. "Those habitat cells really are amazing—we didn't feel a thing. But why didn't we see the shower coming?"
"This close to the belt, they're harder to detect," Stuart said, but he knew the truth. He hesitated, then told her. "And the Genus doesn't have great equipment. You can't expect to avoid a shower if you don't dish out any money to improve the electronics."
"Well, animal transportation isn't the most lucrative of ventures," Valerie said.
"Still, if we take some damage, the repairs will be way more expensive. I wish the captain budgeted a little better."
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