The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4)

by Chris Eisenlauer

  When he was done, and the red haze of rage had died down, somewhat placated now by the dead at his feet, he calmly shook his fingers clean of blood, walked back to the torpedo, and collected Scanlan’s device.

  The highest concentration of instrumentation was just below the viewport. Jav assumed this would be the best place to connect the machine. As he lowered the dark metal cube down onto the instrument panel, it jerked with awareness. Gears started to turn, and he felt its internal structure shift. From the bottom of the cube, small probing bits of metal descended in anticipation of contact with the alien ship’s technology. He set it down, making sure that it was stable, and stepped away with a little hop. Its component parts shifted again and again, adapting as it reached down into the instrument panel, making contact with the ship’s computer to assert its control. This kind of power was new to him, or at least his acknowledgement of it was. For so long, he’d known nothing that could surpass his fists, but he had to admit that if not for Scanlan, the Empire would have come up short more than once now.

  He backed away from the panel, careful not to trip over any of the carnage he’d spread over the floor, and went to the pressure door that had caught his attention earlier. The emptiness hadn’t left him. The anger was still there, throbbing and ready for provocation, but he was in control now. His part of the plan was done. He had but to return. There was no hurry, though. He could and would investigate at his leisure.

  Immediately beyond the door was a young woman sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall. She turned in his direction, but nothing registered on her face. He knelt down to look at her closely. Her eyes followed his black sockets, but she didn’t appear to see anything that would be cause for reaction.

  She was beautiful. She had long, wild black hair that covered her like a silk throw. An image of Mai Pardine flashed in his head. Behind his skull helmet, he squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head in an attempt to banish the image. This was not Mai Pardine. Except for the black hair, there was no resemblance, and yet. . .

  He reached out with his right hand, ran his fingers along the delicate line of her jaw. He thought he saw the spark of recognition in her eyes, but when he looked, really looked, he saw that she was gone, dead in some fundamental way. She surprised him then by taking his hand in hers and nuzzling it.

  A strange combination of attraction and revulsion, both equally powerful, sprang up within him. He didn’t want to leave her, but at the same time, he couldn’t stand to be close to her. It didn’t make sense, though. What had happened to her? He saw that her right hand was bleeding, followed the red trail upon the floor with his eyes to her ruined Farmington.

  He stood, walked over to where the lower handle lay, dropped down into crouch again, picked up the perfectly cut chunk of metal and examined it. Shorn clean through. He looked back to the woman’s wounded hand. He stood again, casting the handle back to the floor.

  It didn’t matter.

  Jav was in a strange mood. An icy black calm, very different from the kind he’d experienced a short time before, befell him and his mind wandered into what he thought was new thinking ground for him. He’d never consciously known hatred on this order before. He hated this ship and all the rest in the two fleets for the fragile obstacle they presented. He hated the men and women who’d raised arms to stop him, but not because they’d tried. He hated that he would now have to roust the rest from their hidey-holes to give them a chance and would surely see them fail. He hated the hollowed out woman on the floor for failing to fix him. But most of all, he hated himself for the parody he’d become. The noble F-Gene Fighter. Killer. Mass murderer.

  His chest heaved with a great sigh at the realization of this truth.

  The universe had a pulse and it beat with a purpose. Jav had seen evidence of this more than once. The very existence of life, of intellect, were strong indicators, but then there were the abilities of F-Gene Fighters, of psychics, of beings like the Emperor, the existence of soul echoes. All of these things, it could be argued, were born into the universe by accident, gifted by some strange combination and confluence of genetics or an abnormal atomic structure, and made supernatural. But any fool could see that the frequency with which these anomalies occurred was far beyond any probability a statistician could quote comfortably and still refer to as random. No, it may not be personal, it may not be moral, but there was a pattern in place, a ghostly machine that worked just beneath the skin of reality. Maybe it was Fate. Maybe it was just a set of laws—some as yet unfathomable—that worked together, grinding forever like cogs and gears, but Jav could feel them moving with a purpose.

  This purpose had put him on the path he now walked and despite the emptiness that gnawed at the core of his being like insatiable hunger, despite his hatred for what he’d become, he would not step from that path without being made to. If he wasn’t what he was supposed to be, then the universe needed to tell him so. He’d always tried to convince himself, whenever he fought (killed) that he was engaging in a fair contest. Not fair in the sense of equal, but fair in the sense that he always insisted on meeting his opponents face to face; fair in the sense that he put himself up as collateral and if he lost, he lost. There was a time when he felt he’d slipped a bit with Garlin Braams, but maybe not. He’d had the means in the end to defeat Braams. He needed to find an opponent he couldn’t beat, and Braams hadn’t been it. Since Scanlan’s plan didn’t require the crew on this ship to live, he would start looking, though in vain, he was quite sure, right here, for the means to his own destruction.

  2.4 MASTERS & SLAVES

  10,810.303.0040

  Hilene Tanser emerged from her torpedo into darkness. Moving through the Patrol ship was a simple matter, though. She ghosted effortlessly through open corridors and intricate meshings of reinforced steel. In less than twenty minutes she found the computer core, accessed by a conduit that ran in an unbroken ring around the ship’s hub. She kept out of sight not because she was afraid, but because the mission didn’t particularly interest her. None of the crew would prove to be opponents of worth and being hung up by the struts and these fleets out here in interstellar space made her nervous. She was anxious for the Palace to resume its progress.

  She thought about having more time to talk with Jav when this was finished, but any conversation with him was a bittersweet prospect. She’d fallen into the depressing habit of trying to convince herself that there had been a time when his feelings for her had measured close to hers for him. She was never able to pinpoint such a time, but she shrugged this off. It would make sense for her to accept that their relationship had gone and would go no further. It would make sense for her to forget him—in that particular capacity—and move on. She deserved her equal, was entitled to it. But that was the problem. She knew she’d doomed herself with him. No one could ever compete with Jav in her estimation. She would do the only thing she could do, which was to keep trying. If, in the end, Jav changed as he said he might, it would be more than worth the effort—and the pain—along the way.

  To work now. She pressed Scanlan’s machine up against an interface panel in the core conduit and it adhered there. In fact, it moved within her grip, startling her. She released it and watched it work its way into the Patrol ship’s technology. Just as she was about to seek exit, she lazily looked over her shoulder, responding to the approach of ship’s personnel. There were two… no, six in all. She arched her body as if suspended in water and turned towards them, kicking off from where she’d stood. She passed through the group of them, but not before two had fired their pistols. Were those the Farmington’s Jav had described? For something comparatively small, they were rather devastating. She placed the Darkness Piercing Spear Hand through each of them then made sure that Scanlan’s device was unscathed and still working. The shots hadn’t come close. She would have been exceedingly angry if her foray had been for nothing. She sighed out a breath of relief and left the ship.

  • • •

  Upon insert
ion, Nils Porta found himself somewhat removed from the Patrol ship’s bridge, but breaking up into the Cloud of Gnats made his search go quickly. None of the crew the cloud passed remained alive. After finding what he sought, he returned to the torpedo to recover Scanlan’s machine. With it snug under one arm, he strolled casually through the ship’s corridors back to the bridge, encountering no other living crew on the way. When he reached his first kill site, he paused at the mess he’d left behind. He glanced at his bundle then back at what essentially blocked the way to foot traffic. He sighed and carefully hopped over bodies, concerned—it was a ridiculous concern he knew—that he would dirty his boots.

  In a way, Nils was like two different people. When Dark, he had no moral, mental, or physical aversion to killing. When he was normal, it always felt like someone else had been responsible for the acts he’d committed while Dark. He didn’t like to kill or the gory aftermath, but understood his job, what it required of him, and the necessity of it. At times, he tried to examine this dissociation, but always came to the same conclusion, that it was probably bad for him to fully embrace the amorality he exhibited while Dark. He felt the dissociation enabled him to maintain a portion of his humanity, however compartmentalized, and this he coveted, secretly fearing it would someday abandon him.

  The bridge was a giant dome in the heart of the ship, heavily insulated from without. Holographic screens covered the majority of the interior curve to give the appearance of being exposed to space. All the visuals here were from video feeds, and the overall effect was breathtaking. Ships were everywhere overhead and Nils had to remind himself that no one could see him down here or what he’d done.

  He approached what he assumed was the main console, and pushed a slumped body from it. He set Scanlan’s machine down upon the console and stepped back, watching as the machine altered in shape, spread out, and seeped into the ship’s control interface.

  • • •

  Raus Kapler pocketed Scanlan’s machine and turned to face the crew that had gathered in response to his arrival. He reached out for the one closest, gripping the Farmington barrel in his right hand and squeezing it closed. The weapon exploded, bursting out the back into the guild man’s face, erasing it with wet strokes of black and red. Raus took the man bodily and flung him into the rest. Farmington blasts tore through the compartment, two punching the lifeless body, setting it to lurch grotesquely in one direction then another, two more going wild, one singeing off the shooter’s own foot.

  Raus had been assured that his electrical pulse would in no way harm Scanlan’s machine and so he filled the compartment now with current, making everyone present go rigid. Smoke rose from beneath coats. Eyes boiled and popped. The stink of spilled bowels commingled with that of burning flesh. When he cut the power, everyone fell dead to the floor. And then rose again, responding to Raus’s silent control.

  He sent the animate corpses off to infect more of the crew to keep them from becoming more of a nuisance. There was a computer terminal in the compartment, but it had shorted with his electrical pulse. He went in search of proper access to the ship’s computer and wasn’t long in locating it with his knowledge of and affinity for technology. He set Scanlan’s machine to work and sought exit from the ship.

  • • •

  Icsain stepped from his torpedo into a mess hall full of crew members. Before a single one could draw his or her Farmington—despite or because of the shock of the breach—the Relic Cords were out and writhing, making subservient puppets of them all. He had the lot of them escort him to the nearest all-access computer terminal. They served unquestioningly as his armed human shield, dispatching any other crew they encountered, with several falling to returned weapons fire.

  Enslaving the entire crew was well within Icsain’s means, but this approach was so much more entertaining. During his time with the Empire, he’d developed a taste for watching the lesser beings suffer under his implacable control. Truly they were his puppets, and that they were fully aware of their forced actions and the resulting consequences only added to his appreciation of the practice of making them dance to his will. To him, it proved, over and over again, his superiority.

  • • •

  Brin Karvasti’s approach was not dissimilar to Icsain’s. People did what she told them. With some preparation, which they’d all had, language would pose no barrier to a Shade. Her device was put in place quickly. She spent more time finding an acceptable way off the ship.

  • • •

  Upon entry into the ship, Forbis Vays was set upon and put every one but one to death with the Titan Saber. The last he threatened until learning the way to the ship’s bridge. He left that man merely crippled—short one arm. During the course of the altercation, he’d discovered that, despite the impressive kick, their energy weapons could not penetrate the armor provided by the Titan Star. After the first shot hit him, he snorted, thinking that if god-forged Gun Golem pistols had been unable to breach the Titan Star, what right did manmade Farmingtons have to do so?

  Now Vays walked the corridors of the Patrol ship with Scanlan’s machine in one hand and the Titan Saber in the other, dispatching anyone who came his way or attempted to bar his passage without breaking his stride. He came upon the bridge—right where it was supposed to be—and, like Nils, was taken aback by the sense of openness in such a sequestered compartment.

  Weapons fire lit the bridge briefly, but each man and woman fell to Vays’s blade. He fixed Scanlan’s machine to a console, saw that it was doing whatever it needed to, and left.

  • • •

  Scanlan was unique among the current Shades in that he had never undergone gravity training—even Brin Karvasti had acquired a five-G rating. He was also unique in that his Artifact was forever working to improve his body, an autonomic response to his unvoiced and unconscious feelings of inadequacy regarding the disparity in gravity ranks. After receiving the Creation Cogs, Scanlan found that he could no longer return to normal. This was of no concern to him. He had no family. There was no vanity tied to his lost physical form. He’d given his life to the Empire and to intellectual pursuits. The latter he could now effect to a degree one might argue bordered on the divine and which was limited only by his imagination.

  Now, after nearly a hundred and twenty years of his Artifact’s striving, his machine body was harder, stronger, and more durable than the metal of which it appeared to be fashioned. His Dark Raw Physical Power had topped at 40,000, putting him on par with the rest of his fellows. His RPP would go no higher, but his body was constantly undergoing adaptations and adjustments, incorporating new technology as he encountered it, altering in form and function as the need arose.

  When the Farmington emission struck him, he was fascinated by the energy spectrum. The power generated by such a small device intrigued him. Immediately his thoughts moved to what might be possible when merging this technology with Vine ganglia. The second shot roused him from his musing.

  He looked up and narrowed his eyes. His face, a flexible plate of what looked like antique brass, was the most human thing about him besides his overall outline, and though still expressive, was ultimately inscrutable. He calculated a moment then the Clockwork Beam lanced from his monocle, drawing a line across the ten guild men who had their guns trained upon him. Wherever the Beam struck, the men clutched at themselves, suddenly unable to breathe. Each cast his Farmington to the floor and struggled to tear off his coat, his shirt, and whatever it was that was itching through the skin to the organs beneath. Dark, spidery arms of metal writhed, clawed, and multiplied wherever the Clockwork Beam had touched. It was like a festering infection spreading impossibly fast, hollowing out each man as soft tissue was sacrificed for more machine growth.

  Within moments, the men were unrecognizable. A new wall of machinery, different in character from that of the surrounding ship, stood in their place. It continued to grow, spreading to make contact with the ship’s wall and not stopping there. Scanlan’s machine began to re
ach out through the ship, so that it would soon permeate it totally. This ship would serve as the main processor for what he planned to do, communicating with the other devices the Shades had delivered, to those ships which would be masters to the remaining slaves.

  He saw no sense in wasting readily available resources, so walked to the ship’s bridge. It would serve as the perfect and appropriate command center. Through his connection to the infectious machinery, he knew the ship’s layout, its armaments, all its capabilities and limitations. He shut down the life support system, which would soon be repurposed anyway, so feared no retaliation from the crew. Given time, they might be able to formulate a plan that would at the very least extend their lives, but without life support, they had no hope. The temperature was dropping at a fantastic rate. Oxygen was being expelled by the ton from exhaust ports, and to help expedite this purge, the safety protocols on all airlocks were overridden, and the airlocks were made to open. This was perhaps the single most effective method of eliminating the crew. More than two hundred men and women were ripped from the ship on the outrushing tide of air into the vacuum of space.

  As Scanlan stepped onto the bridge, he received confirmation of established communication links with the majority of the master devices. The bridge personnel hadn’t fared well. The six at the forward stations below the main viewport were slumped in their chairs. Behind them, a man, most likely the captain, appeared to be dozing in his high command chair. Someone yet remained alive, though. A smallish figure covered in a bulky environmental suit cowered in the corner with a Farmington laid across its lap. It was a woman, Scanlan had no doubt.