EDEN²

by Matthew J. Drury

  “There’s more,” she continued. “The reason I exiled myself from Einek was because of what my life had become. A living nightmare.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She swallowed. Tears began to form in her eyes and roll down her cheeks. “Shortly after the marriage, I fell pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage. This led to the development of a condition called sclerotic atrophic endometrium – which left me infertile. Normally, this kind of condition could be easily treated by medical science, but I have a rare genetic defect that inhibited all attempts to correct the damage to my uterus.” She took a deep breath. “Nothing could be done. And so, I can never have children.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cris said, and meant it.

  She shrugged. “I learned to accept it. My husband, however, never could. His treatment of me took a turn for the worse. After the death of my parents, when he was all I had left… he started beating me, and raping me.”

  Cris frowned. “Oh, my God.”

  She nodded. “I put up with him for the better part of ten years. But enough was enough. I had to get out. So, one night, I fled the city on foot. I thought if I could reach the Silver City, Lord Damarus could help me. And here I am…”

  Cris nodded. Things were starting to come together and make sense now.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said again. “It’s not something I enjoy talking about, and up until recently I wasn’t sure whether telling you was a good idea.”

  “It’s okay,” Cris said. “I understand.”

  “Then you know why I can never go back to Einek,” she said. “I could never go back to that… that monster.”

  He squeezed her hand in his own. For a moment, they gazed into each other’s eyes. “You have me now,” he said. “I love you, Lora.”

  Her head was spinning. “I love you too, Cris. I only hope that this does not develop into a rebound relationship. You must still take time to mourn your wife – and your daughter.”

  He smiled. “I will, believe me. Love can be a dangerous thing, I am well aware of this. I do not believe in rushing headfirst into a relationship. We should take our time, and see where things go.”

  She nodded. “I agree, and…”

  A sudden, low rumbling sound echoed loudly in the skies outside; a pulsing, deep piping noise that took them completely by surprise.

  Chen gasped and ran to the window, craning her neck out and risking a glance up at the dark clouds above. Just as she had suspected, three To’raz-class bioships were circling in the air overhead, looking for a place to land.

  “W'-exùn een bij’uh kurrap’tl,” she said, then turned back to Cris.

  He frowned, looking worried. “What is it?”

  “They’re here. The Sentinels are here.”

  Cris followed Chen down the corridor. “We’re going to need weapons,” she said, “if we’re going to stand any chance of resisting these Sentinels. Otherwise, we may as well just surrender to them.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To find Paramo, of course. We stand a much better chance if we all stick together here.” She was holding her little organic scanning device in her right hand. “According to my Vei’nl, he should be in the audience chamber, up ahead.”

  Cris gritted his teeth. He had a lot on his mind; he was emotionally confused over the loss of his wife and daughter and his newfound feelings of love for Lora, coupled with the shocking revelations about her own marriage… but he had no trouble buying into this new scenario. If what Lora told him about these Sentinels was true, he didn’t particularly fancy getting into a confrontation with them, but at the same time he didn’t want to just be captured and taken into custody as a criminal without some kind of fight. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and didn’t deserve this shit…

  Chen’s confidence reassured him. As usual when faced with a dangerous situation, she seemed to be keeping things cool and under control, but he could still sense a certain unease about her. After all, she’d been running from Einek for the past two years, and if she were captured now… the consequences for her would surely be unthinkable.

  They went through a door into the audience chamber, where Paramo had gathered his men together. There had to be around thirty of them, all armed now with what looked like automatic plasma rifles, dressed in Rãvier suits. Paramo looked as if he were about to try to climb a wall, Cris thought, watching the man pace. His hands shook, he was pale, sweat beaded at his hairline and on his upper lip. There were a dozen more rifles side by side on a table in the room, with boxes of energy cells stacked next to them. While Chen went to talk with Paramo, Cris moved towards the weapons. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going to be standing around helplessly.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Paramo said, watching him. “The Sentinels are enhanced with plasma-absorption armour, which means that nearly all energy weapons directed against them have no effect. What we really need are some projectile weapons, but as we’ve been discussing here, there are none available to us at the present time…”

  “This is all you have? What can we do?” Chen said, looking flustered. The confidence she had displayed just moments ago had all but vanished, replaced with despair, as her hopes of them defending themselves against the interlopers crumbled before her. Cris suddenly realised that this meant they were effectively defenceless, and he began to feel his heart thunder against his ribs, adrenaline coursing through his body, preparing him for a violent reaction: the fight-or-flight response.

  “There must be something we can do,” he muttered.

  One of Paramo’s men barked something in their native dialect, and Paramo seemed to lose his temper. They started shouting at each other in desperation. Then Paramo seemed to relax a little. “We can try barricading ourselves in this room, to buy a little more time, but that is all I can suggest…”

  “It’s too late,” Chen said. Her Vei’nl was emitting a high-pitched sound, a rhythmic bleeping. “They’re here - ”

  Sure enough, the door to the chamber blasted open before Chen could finish her sentence, and dozens upon dozens of large, obsidian-armoured robotic automatons marched in, taking up positions around the room, surrounding the comparatively small group of humans. Cris swallowed dryly, terrified, unable to move. There had to be a hundred of them, maybe more. They looked like statues; easily eight-feet tall, constructed from some seamless material, a single piece of what could only be described as “flexible metal”, with a single, red glowing eye dominating the ‘face’ of each robot, giving them an almost monstrous, cycloptic appearance.

  “Oh, Jesus…”

  Scared out of his wits and acting purely on instinct, Cris ran, launching himself for the open doorway, desperate, wanting nothing more than to escape the terrifying scene. But the next thing he knew he was being dragged back into the room. He tried to struggle, but his arms were pinned in an iron grip behind his back. There was a crackling sound, and an excruciating pain jolted through his kidneys. He doubled up, retching, and as he tried feebly to straighten he lost control of his bladder, warm piss coursing down his leg.

  Dizzy with pain and shame, his throat stinging with bile, Cris sank to a sitting position on the cold stone floor. He looked up, and to his astonishment saw one of the Sentinels looking down at him through its single, unreadable eye.

  “Tar ees nA is’capen,” the Sentinel said, its voice reverberating with a gruff electronic tone. “W'-exùn wa-tAgan fir Anacksu’namon.”

  Cris blinked, unable to move. He hadn’t been more terrified in his whole life. His eyes flooded with tears which rolled instantly down his cheeks, and he felt his lower lip quiver. Somewhere out of his field of vision, he heard Paramo speak:

  “W'-exùn w’iel hark’en tA yA, but you’ll have to address us in this older dialect, I’m afraid, so we can all understand the words being spoken.”

  The Sentinel that was gazing down at Cris straightened, and turned in the direction of Paramo in one swift motion. The older man was s
tanding by the table, beside Lora, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “As you wish, criminal,” was the robot’s stark reply.

  One of the other Sentinels took a step forward. “Subject’s name is Ammold Paramo. A known terrorist, wanted for crimes against the Silver City. Founder of the Neodisestablishmentarianist Movement.”

  “Confirmed,” was the first Sentinel’s reply. “In the name of Queen Anacksu’namon of the Seventh Faction, I am authorised to place you under arrest. You will be taken to the City of Einek, where your fate will be decided.”

  Paramo grimaced.

  “No!” Chen roared. “You can’t do that!”

  “Lorelei Chen of Einek,” was the robot’s cold reply. “Reported missing for seven-hundred-eighty-four days. Conclusion: abducted by terrorist Paramo. She must be returned to the city.”

  “Wait…” Cris blurted. His feelings for Lora had taken over, overpowering his fear. “She can’t go back there…” He got to his feet, struggling for breath.

  The Sentinel turned back to him. “Anomaly. No biological profile found for subject.”

  Cris blinked, and swallowed dryly. The second Sentinel took another step forward. “Confirmed. This human has no record.”

  What happened next took Cris completely by surprise, and it was over before he had a chance to blink. Any normal man would have screamed at the scorching agony unleashed by the shockwhip. Instead, Cris seemed to whimper slightly, continuing to stare up at the Sentinels around him as though nothing had happened. His mind was spinning, almost numbed to the pain that thundered through his system.

  The Sentinel brandishing the weapon stared at the fresh wounds on the man’s back and considered delivering a second blow. A human numbed to pain was difficult to control. The robot wound its arm back and struck again. Sparks exploded from Cris’ back, and this time he crumpled to the ground in a heap. The cauterised wounds intersected the previous marks, popping and smouldering.

  Paramo winced. “This really isn’t necessary,” he said.

  “Silence, criminal,” the Sentinel said. “Any human without biological records is in contravene of Article Seven Point Nine of the Holy Law. This must be punishable by death.”

  “Wait,” Chen pleaded. “His name is Cristian, Cristian Stefánsson. He has no records because he comes from the twenty-first century. He was cryogenically frozen until recently…”

  The Sentinel seemed to consider this for a moment. Just as its arm drew back to strike for a third time, a signal in its biomechanical mind squawked. It looked downwards at Cris, now crawling along the dusty floor. Sheathing the shockwhip, the Sentinel turned and started back towards the doorway. “Place them all under arrest,” it ordered, not bothering to look back.

  Reaching against the chamber walls for support, Cris struggled to pull himself back onto his feet. Waves of excruciating pain pulsed through his exhausted frame. As the nausea rose inside him, he fought to remain awake, rapidly losing any sense of what was happening. He became aware of being lifted into the air and carried a great distance, before darkness enveloped him.

  10

  The To’raz-class bioship was essentially a powerful, bioengineered combat vessel; not constructed from raw materials, but grown: from the same synthetic genetic material as its extra-terrestrial creators, the Nommos people of Sirius III-2. Effectively, the ship had been made sentient by the Nommos, a bioengineered race themselves. It was biomechanoid in design, and had a thick outer ‘skin’ capable of keeping a pressurised atmosphere inside, which also generated a bioelectric field that could keep small openings in the hull from venting atmosphere. Holes in the hull were repaired by symbiotic organisms requiring very little maintenance – a marvel of biological technology.

  Inside, the ship consisted of countless corridors and compartments, mostly pristine bright white walls and black metallic floors. The hallways formed a loosely circular path around a central conference room. The ship also housed living quarters, various function rooms, prisoner holding cells, and an engine room. Each class of bioship was grown differently depending on the needs of its particular crew, and the To’raz-class ship had been clearly designed without much thought for human comfort: it was crewed by a host of Sentinel robots, after all.

  Ammold Paramo stood in a holding cell, alone with his thoughts, reflecting on what was going to happen next. This room was shaped like a cylinder with transparent walls, and was bare except for an uncomfortable-looking chair at one end. He was prevented from escaping by a powerful force-field, which would fry anything bigger than an insect foolish enough to try and do so. Paramo was well aware of this and had his back turned, arms folded, watching silently from a large port hole window as the bioship passed across the reddish Plains of Cerbion, and finally, into the sweeping skyline of Einek.

  It was a magnificent sight this evening, as usual, and it served to distract Paramo from his growing fears about his fate. The sun had just set, and the moon was visible, hanging in the dusk sky. The dimming light revealed an immense, grandiose metropolis, with titanic clusters of abstract-shaped, curling metallic skyscrapers rising from a vast plain of rooftops, public squares, and spaceports. At the rooftop level, the narrow spaces between buildings looked like long roads from where Paramo stood, but were actually dim canyons where windows and travel tubes were aglow, descending into darkness like the light starved lower levels of a dense forest.

  The city extended far into the horizon; densely packed, sleek megastructures that seemed to blend into each other from the vantage point of Paramo’s holding cell, way above the surface. The buildings that stood out from that height were the colossi, structures that rose above the rest like cosmic castles, incalculably majestic in their size and scope, shaped like gigantic, twirling ribbons that reached up in the gathering dark, wonders of twenty-fifth century engineering. Equally impressive were the many statues of the Einekian Queen, Anacksu’namon, depicted with her hands raised to the Heavens in a welcoming gesture.

  Paramo’s gaze also fell on the Parliamentary building, with its carved stone pillars. Once, it had been the tallest structure in Einek, but now the Queen’s Palace cast its shadow completely over it. He moved on, his gaze passing over the sprawling University of Einek with its millions of students, all studying subjects that had been approved by the Silver City. Paramo grimaced, shaking his head slightly. There was the Holy Justice Court, where the laws of Lord Damarus were enforced, and the giant cube of the Holy Embassy building, where the various ambassadors and agents of Damarus congregated in this city, representing his interests from afar. It was the only large edifice without a multitude of surface lights. Despite the ominous presence of such things, Paramo took in the city glow that arose from everywhere else, smiling with admiration. It had been decades since he had last visited this place, and it had lost none of its splendour.

  His eyes tracked upwards, to the constant stream of ships flying all around against the shimmering green and red night sky auroras. It was a beautiful sight, but it still paled in comparison to where they were headed, the bioship’s apparent destination. He took a step closer to the window. Looking straight down, he could see the architectural masterpiece below him: the Queen’s Palace. It was a hybrid cathedral and pyramid, made of polished grey-green rock and sparkling mirror crystals, beautified with marble and carvings based on the emblem of the Seventh Faction. The structure was never dark, and at night, it was lit up as if the sun had been trapped in a hollow glass mountain, a fortress of light with tapered spires and fragile looking towers rising from every conceivable surface.

  Sure enough, the bioship was turning about now, descending toward the Palace at an increasing rate of speed. The bioship’s engines were whining as they prepared to land. Paramo took a deep breath, watching as a brightly-lit landing pad below came into view, preparing himself for whatever tortures may lay ahead. In all the thirty-six years he’d been living in exile from the Twelve Factions, he had never been captured like this before. In fact, he’d almost become complacent in his u
ncanny ability to outrun the various law enforcement agencies, and bounty hunters, who’d attempted to bring him down in the name of Damarus over the years. Yet here he was, about to be taken before the Queen of Einek, seemingly at the end of the road.

  He gritted his teeth silently. There was still so much work to be done. And what would happen to Cristian Stefánsson now? He hoped that no harm would come to him. Certainly, the man would be in a lot of trouble now, without Lorelei Chen to help him…

  Within moments, the bioship had touched down. He heard commotion from the corridor outside his cell, and the door slid open. A Sentinel marched in, barking at him in the modern tongue:

  “Criminal! You will come with me.”

  Paramo swallowed dryly, and nodded. “Where are you taking me?”

  The Sentinel’s single red eye glimmered as it moved. “You are to be taken before Queen Anacksu’namon immediately. Her Majesty will decide your fate.”

  Paramo was led silently down a series of grand corridors, bound in electronic wrist restraints, by a company of four Sentinel guards. The interior of the Palace displayed a high level of contemporary architectural style, bathed in expensive gold and diamonds, and was clearly the work of highly accomplished craftsmen. Paramo had heard much about the Queen’s appetite for expensive jewels and fine things – how appropriate, then, that her Palace should be as grand and as beautiful as wealth and skill could make it.

  When they reached the Queen’s audience chamber, they stopped at the foot of a small flight of lavishly carpeted stairs. Paramo blinked, gazing up at the cathedral-like ceiling here. It had been designed to provide an intense source of light in the centre of the room, making the Queen appear heavenly whenever she emerged from her private chambers to address her audience. One of the Sentinels struck the back of Paramo’s legs hard, taking him by surprise, causing him to lose balance and collapse to his knees.