by Tom Julian
He struggled for breath, hoping his suit wouldn’t crack open. The readings in his heads-up were off the charts, but the integrity held. He let the cable go and it spun away. He’d pushed his rig way beyond its tolerances and he could feel the internal coolant system losing the battle against everything else. He was sweating buckets now and condensation was building up inside his visor. He struggled to hang onto the hull and could hear the servos in the shoulders screaming. He pulled himself hand over hand, the G-forces wrenching him. The alarms in the rig howled, but he was almost there. There was an airlock just twenty feet away, but every time he pulled himself closer the rig threatened to shut down.
Finally, he was at the airlock and got the external door open. He was crawling inside when everything went dark. He pressed with all his might against the servos, but they were frozen. Hey, this is a lot like that time over Enceladus. He recalled the training exercise from years ago: the hulk of Cairo Sunrise breaking apart over the icy moon of Saturn…his rig out of juice and stuck to the hull of the old freighter…Gray ordering him not to, but Michael diving down and hauling him out…
His heads-up flickered back on for a second and then went out for good. He felt the first whiffs of carbon dioxide as the recyclers started to fail, and his head spun. His legs were blocking the external door and there was no way to close it. That meant the internal door couldn’t be opened.
He searched his mind for the grinding—the presence of Kizik in his consciousness—but it seemed like Kizik was sitting this one out. Okay old friend; let’s see you get me out of this one.
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
Drogel crawled across Cargo Bay 4 on his belly, pulling himself with his arms, his legs useless behind him. Just ten yards ahead of him was his goal, a small, pressurized control booth. A repeating computer voice called out along with the alarms, “Structural integrity is poor. Bay release will commence if pressure is lost.”
Drogel pulled himself into the control booth. Looking back, he saw the trail of blood he’d left on the deck. Gray hadn’t gotten all of his men back aboard Nemesis yet. What Drogel was about to do would save The Outpost from tearing itself apart any further, and maybe catch Gray as well.
Drogel opened the panel marked Emergency Bay Release and input his codes. “Structural integrity is poor. Bay release will commence if pressure is lost,” the computer repeated again.
“Can’t have that,” Drogel said bitterly as he pulled the lever—just as Gray finally disappeared into the airlock. There were bursts as explosive bolts went off everywhere and suddenly everything was twisting. The whole of Cargo Bay 4, the size of an iceberg, with Nemesis attached, cartwheeled away from The Outpost. Drogel rested his head against the window of the booth and grinned. He looked for Gray’s body in the debris. He maybe saw it but couldn’t be sure. “Can’t have that,” he said to himself again as he blacked out.
Gray and Izabeck ran through the airlock as Cargo Bay 4 lifted away. A computer voice droned calmly, “Pressure is lost. Bay release commencing. Please secure all items.” The walls spun, Gray and Izabeck hurtling in the sudden weightlessness as the pressure doors slammed shut in front and behind them. As the lights went out, all was silent except for their breathing and the slap of their bodies against the walls of the airlock. Gray hit a wall hard, twisting his ankle. He managed to find a handhold and hunker down. “Izabeck, curl up and hang onto something!”
But Izabeck still floated free, the airlock spinning around him. Then something caught on him and he was thrown around like he was a rock in a tumbler. Finally, he had a grip and hung on. Gray could hear him chanting in the darkness, only the dim glow of starlight coming in through the portholes. “There is no god but God and I heed his judgment…”
“That’s good. Pray for both of us,” Gray said.
UNMASKED
D.P.E. Archangel
Dr. Tier was trying to enjoy dinner for once. She’d been in the field enough to know how to combine different varieties of rations into a decent meal. Take a little of what appears to be chicken, find something like tomatoes and cheese, toast a roll with the barrel of your plasma rifle and turn it into bread crumbs. She pulled the chicken casserole with green tomatillo sauce out of the toaster oven in her private quarters. Everything in the pan was synthetic, but it smelled edible. She planned to call her daughter, Camille, during dinner and catch up. There hadn’t been any word from Timberwolf yet, but there was a lot of chatter cycling out of Tach-One and she’d set Conrad on figuring out what it was. She was just about to dial up her daughter when her smart-device buzzed.
Samar1483: Dr. Tier. I have to drop pretense and ask for your aid.
TheaTier965: Who is this?
Samar1483: Cardinal Jacob Bin Cavill.
Dr. Tier lost her breath and her smart-device slipped from her hand and onto the floor. She retrieved it and held it tightly for a moment, trying to center herself before responding. Cardinal Jacob guided the beliefs of several million Believers and though he was no longer prime cardinal, the D.P.E. believed he was jockeying to regain that position.
TheaTier965: Dear Cardinal, it’s my honor to serve you.
Samar1483: Thank you. There’s been a terrible confrontation. The Outpost is nearly destroyed. Bishop Gray and Timberwolf. The St. Francis is adrift. We’re transmitting.
TheaTier965: We’ll ping you when we get close.
Samar1483: Please hurry. There is a Glox ship scavenging.
TheaTier965: Of course, Cardinal.
Dr. Tier pushed her dinner away. She was in the blind here. A profoundly delicate situation had just gotten more complicated by spades. The Outpost was destroyed…The Clergy was involved…was Timberwolf even alive?
She pinged Conrad immediately and his face appeared on her screen. The young man had just woken up, but he pretended not to have been sleeping. She didn’t blame him for trying to catch a rest. She’d had him up for the last thirty-six hours. “I know something you don’t for once,” she said. He nodded, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “We’re going to The Outpost.”
COMMITMENT TO THE FATES
Gray somehow fell asleep in the airlock. Nemesis had used its powerful maneuvering thrusters to stabilize the rotation of Cargo Bay 4, like a tugboat that couldn’t get away. The violent spinning had subsided and the gentle rolling and the darkness had been soothing. Gray blinked awake after a short while and assessed the situation. They were in the airlock between Nemesis and Cargo Bay 4, which had floated free from The Outpost and was still connected to the ship. Gray floated back and looked into the cargo bay. Boxes and containers drifted weightless and he could feel metal groaning and snapping. This was not a place they could stay for much longer. The airlock was a natural breaking point between the cargo bay and Nemesis. If anyplace was about to snap, it was right where he and Izabeck were trapped.
He assumed that Michael was working on a plan to get them out of there, but then reconsidered that. Michael might be planning to just shake me off the hull. But, soon enough, he heard scratching from the Nemesis side of the airlock. Gray found an emergency flare and turned it on, its orange glow summoning Izabeck from his fetal position. The airlock spread open an inch and light and fresh air spilled in. Hands reached in and helped spread the opening further, pulling Gray and Izabeck through to Nemesis. “You’ve had some spins in the dryer!” Michael gave Gray his hand. Standing behind him was Wrath.
“How did Wrath get back? I assume he opened the door.”
“He held on!” Thomas said. “He crawled into the breaching tube.”
Gray staggered forward on his injured ankle as Izabeck steadied him. As he hobbled towards the galley, he heard the rest of the men praying. He paid it no mind at first, but then it became clear what they were saying. “I am an unworthy vessel. A dry leaf longing to be burned…”
“The Commitment to the Fates.” Izabeck nodded.
Gray shook him off, throwing him against the wall. Gray’s lip trembled and Izabeck cowered. The Commitment to th
e Fates?! That was a prayer of failure, and worse, it had suggestions of self-pity. It was an offering to God when someone wished to make excuses for themselves. It had undertones of persecution and woe is me! After Cardinal Jacob had been deposed as prime cardinal, he had sat in the main courtyard on Haven chanting The Commitment to the Fates and whipping himself for two days. It had been a big, public fuck you to the other cardinals and to Gray.
In the galley, Gray’s remaining able-bodied soldiers flogged themselves with small barbed whips as they chanted. They had their shirts off and kneeled on prayer mats, their backs covered with long red bruises. The wounded lay in heaps. The dead were covered with blankets. At the sight of Gray in the doorway, the whipping and the chanting stopped. Gray stalked the silent room, nostrils flaring. He took a canteen of water from a man named Ahmed, who stared at him vacantly.
From the corner of the room, Windwhistle whimpered. “I am an unworthy vessel…”
“Glad you men are focusing on your failures!” Gray shoved Ahmed out of the way and stood in the middle of them. “You think God’s smiling on you? He’s pissed off like I am!” Gray turned on Windwhistle. “Nice display of panic back there! Your confession!”
The man was a wreck. He’d been in the first wave of each attack since the assault on Noel. He searched for words, not able to meet Gray’s gaze. “I did not heed God’s judgment…”
Gray kicked him in the hip and he splashed into the tables pushed to the side of the galley. “Heed God’s judgment? For fuck, seriously?! You failed to lay down suppressive fire and cover your squad. God won’t help you follow my goddamned orders!”
Michael appeared beside Gray, hair bedraggled and caked with blood. “Five new saints, ten wounded.”
“I’ve lost more than half of you! Weak, pitiful!”
“I am an unworthy vessel…” Windwhistle continued.
“Shut. Up.” Gray sneered. “None of you believe in God. None of you follow His commands.” The men blinked in disbelief. Izabeck had his electronic notebook out again. Gray usually tried to choose his words carefully in front of Izabeck, knowing every sentence was getting back to The Clergy and to Cardinal Jacob, but right then he refused to give a damn.
Gray continued calmly, holding in his anger. “You know how I know that? That none of you are faithful? That none of you are Believers?” He paused, letting that question sink in. “It’s because I am part of God. I am his sword. I am the Angel of the Alchemy, falling to my knees.” Gray slowly dropped to the floor, arms at his side. Someone backed away, knocking a chair over in a clatter.
“I’m the Angel of the Alchemy,” he said again. He told the story every one of them knew by heart. “The Alchemy. One of our first long-range recon ships. A hundred years ago over Kiyata-916 the angel appeared in the drop-lifter bay, dressed like a corpsman, gilded with light. He told them it was God’s will to destroy all the Kiyata on the planet below. And all of them were cleansed.” He found the gaze of every one of them as he kneeled. “And all of them were cleansed!” Gray repeated, finding a pause between each word. “Can you close your eyes and listen?”
He paused for a long time and then continued without ire, “You are not permitted to pray, to try to know God in any way. You’re as bad as the lowest alien. You’re Tiaski or Szykul or some godless Glox.” He rose to his feet, his ankle hobbling him, but he refused offers to help him rise. “It doesn’t matter to me. To me you’re shadows. You have no souls left to offer up to God.”
“Blasphemer!” Izabeck shouted, unable to take anymore.
Gray approached him calmly. “You are goddamned right. And it’s going to get a lot worse too, friend. We need a new testament and I’m going to show it to you.” Gray turned back to the men. “Give every religious item to Izabeck. He’s the only one who can even pretend to believe. Izabeck, burn everything and blast the ashes into God’s space. We’ll trail God’s Word from here to Golgotha!”
The men cowered, but began to drop their barbs and beads into a pile in the middle of the room. Small, leather-bound holy books joined the heap. Gray nodded approvingly. He walked to the adjoining cargo bay, with Michael following. He muttered loudly so the men could hear as he left the galley. “We’ll drop the wounded at Golgotha. Let charity have them.”
“Our Sabatin’s found his way back. At least Wrath can fight,” Michael said. Gray nodded. “We’ll need professional mercs. Golgotha’s a good place for that. Our crew’s full of veterans from the supply lines! No hardened men.” Without waiting for a reply, Michael stalked off. At the door he turned back. “And Timberwolf won’t follow us there. I know that. Going to Golgotha is too high a price for him.”
Gray steadied himself against a container, feeling the nausea rise through him. They’d just been wrecked. Part of him wanted to take a barb and kneel on a mat as well, but he was too far into this now. He would do what he always did in times like this—press forward, raise the stakes, embrace the chaos. He’d already done so with the men, declaring himself God’s sword. He shook his head and laughed at his own arrogance. If anything, these beliefs were useful, but he clutched the beads around his neck and a prayer came silently from between his lips without him realizing it. There is no god but God and I heed his judgment.
In the bay, one of the men drove a front-end loader and stacked the crates and boxes that had fallen during the action. The cryogenic chamber holding Ivan Dacha had slid to the middle of the floor. Sergey Dacha sat on a crate, his legs dangling, childlike. He watched Wrath sitting in the corner, licking the vacuum burns on his front claws. The Sabatin would be out of the fight for a while, but Wrath was a hardy beast. Thomas stood nearby, having a smoke.
Sergey turned to Gray and handed him a canteen of water. “You’re disappointed in their fighting armor? The rigs did their job. They were Highland rigs, but it’s more the men than the machines anyway. It always is.”
“He tore us apart. Like a pig, from snout to tail.” Gray uncorked the water and gulped down all of it. “You built what Timberwolf was wearing?”
“The Sabatin armor?”
“Yes, that. Oh, your sins. I can’t count them.”
“I can! I count them every day. Bless me Father for I’ve been bad.”
“You sure have been. I always wondered…the Arnock didn’t have planetary defenses or those snail-shell command ships. Hardly any ships at all. Then one day they just did.”
“They were highly motivated by…I don’t know, their impending extermination?”
“And the Phaelon during their war. They knew exactly where our men were whenever we landed. It was uncanny.”
“Oh that? Yes, guilty. Heartbeat monitors. Configured to humans. I’ve got some on sale now if you want a bunch.”
“I don’t think you’re afraid.”
Sergey searched the air. “No, I don’t think I am. People like you come and go, Emmanuel. Highland will go on and on. You’ll see.”
“Why?” Gray asked. “The Phaelon couldn’t pay you. The Arnock, what did they give you?”
“What did the Arnock give us? You have no idea of their sacrifice. No idea. We do what we do to make things even. To hold you back. And we don’t know what to do with our money. Would you like some? Would you like a few billion dollars? If you call off this stupidity, I’ll make you the richest man alive.”
“You should talk to my friend Jacob. Don’t mock me. Don’t mock this.”
Sergey made eye contact with Wrath and flicked his fingers, similar to the way Achilles did earlier when he put Wrath to sleep. Wrath stirred and rose, snapping at the forklift driver. The driver adjusted to keep his grip on the cryogenic chamber. Thomas leaped up, pounding on Wrath’s snout, and the beast cowered.
“But still, you pay and pay and never learn your lessons,” Sergey said.
“We couldn’t destroy the Arnock from orbit, so we landed and found out about their mind-bending. Legions of men reduced to madness, cutting out their own eyeballs and worse.”
“Some lessons are
tough. This ship is a knockoff of an Intruder X-K-9. Not bad, but a knockoff.”
“We can’t afford your prices anymore! You armed them. Forced us to fight on their terms! You are going to take me to Highland to atone for what you’ve done.”
“Atone? Like you believe in any of this Believer rubbish. Think what you want. I can’t help you get there.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not yours. You can’t have it. You know why we don’t sell Sabatin in more than a trickle? Because we can’t even hold them back! You think he’s tame?”
“Enough!” Gray barked.
Wrath snapped at the forklift again. The cryogenic chamber holding Ivan Dacha fell to the deck and the innards broke apart, steam and coolant mixing together. The impact of the fall left Ivan’s body cracked almost in two. Sergey leaped down and uselessly tried to help. Ivan started to melt instantly, blood pooling and boiling on the deck at the same time. Ivan’s mouth exhaled once as his face flushed. Then his head drooped and he didn’t move; the life monitors flat lining.
“Ivan, I’m sorry little brother!” Sergey gave up, rubbed his eyes with his palms.
“Well, some failures move us forward,” Gray said with some pity.
A frantic energy riveted Sergey’s body and he shook like he was about to explode. Gray thumbed his sidearm. Instead of leaping to his feet, though, Sergey rested his head next to Ivan a moment. “I’m so sorry, little brother,” he repeated. He lifted his head and motioned to Wrath. “Fine, see if you can control them. You’ll go where you want, but it won’t do you any good.”
“You’ll give me a tactical briefing, security ring codes, etcetera. It will be top notch. I am sorry for your loss.” Gray turned to Thomas. “Organize a proper burial for Ivan Dacha. But save his arm for the DNA.” Gray nodded and walked off.