'It is true I feared to face you. But not because I lacked the power, only because I feared to kill my own son. I beg you to turn away from bloodshed. Let me help you! Let me show you another way. I can see you are in torment.'
Kivric's eyes glowed with fury as Mael continued.
'Has this endless quest for power given you anything but pain, Kivric? Let me lead you out of the prison of hate. Let me show you a path to Joy.'
'Silence! I will not hear these lies! Your faith is nothing but a way to dull the minds of sheep! It is merely a different path to power.'
Mael shook his head sadly. ‘No, Kivric, true joy comes from letting your hatred go. Think! Have you no care for your immortal soul?'
'Soul?’ spat Kivric, ‘I have never found mine, old man. I had hoped ...’ Kivric bit back his words with a supreme effort. ‘I have heard enough. Seize him!'
Now protected by Kivric's power, the men dived for Mael. The ancient warrior's reflexes took over. Mael threw one of the men across the church into the far wall, pushing another back into a pillar with so much force his collarbone snapped at the impact. But they kept on coming. Instinctively Mael backed toward the altar, to within reach of the sword. He suddenly realised what he was doing and stopped. Mael closed his eyes, tears of frustration falling across his face. Aibheel! Please God you spoke truly. He opened his eyes and saw Kivric raise a gun. The weapon fired with a dull concussion, and a tranquillizer dart thudded into his chest.
Mael gasped as his body went into painful spasms. The dart was no tranquillizer; it was filled with nerve poison! He sank to his knees. There was enough in his system to kill thousands, but focusing his power he repaired the massive damage as it occurred. Left alone he would survive, after days of battling the chemical, but for now it took all his power and concentration. He felt a heavy blow to his head, which stunned him, then felt hands gripping him as the drug filled his mind. He tried to rally his strength and throw them off, but they were alert to his physical power and gripped him tightly.
Kivric spat viciously on his vestments
'It sickens me to see you like this. Dressed in the robes of priest. You have become nothing more than a coward, father. One who has hidden in the shadows too long. A weakling trembling on his knees. You betrayed me, father. And now is the time to pay the price.'
Mael looked at Kivric calmly. What he saw saddened him. Hatred. A deep core of hurt and rage that had twisted his mind. Even so he had always believed no man was beyond redemption, no matter how far gone into darkness.
'My sacrifice will change you as I was changed by Aibheel,’ said Mael. ‘Your evil will be ended.'
Kivric laughed. ‘Is that what you believe? If so you are even more deluded than I thought.'
Mael's heart tore with fear. Kivric's casual dismissal shook his belief. What if he was wrong? With a supreme effort of will, he forced his doubt away. It was too late. His eyes fell on the hilt of his sword, concealed beneath the altar, and he smiled. A sense of peace filled him.
'What, no last words holy-man?’ said Kivric.
'Let me say a prayer for you,’ said Mael. The poison was drawing a dark shroud across his vision, but he could still see them.
'A prayer?’ said Kivric. ‘I need no prayer. But I will take your power.’ Kivric drew a long-bladed assassin's knife from his coat and rammed it up under Mael's ribs, into his heart. Life, so long preserved within him, fled.
With a soft sigh, Mael's body slid to the stone.
All sound ceased. The bustle of Dublin faded to nothing. Everything grew still and the bands of time slowed. The pressure of the air itself grew painfully intense. They could smell grass, and taste the salt of the distant sea. Across the church, Kivric watched as a smashed chair began to topple in slow motion, then paused at in impossible angle. Time had ceased. Kivric opened his mind to accept the power, but there was nothing. He felt it flowing away like a rushing stream, flowing to another!
For a brief moment Mael followed the path of rushing power into the alley behind the church, to an old Vauxhall waiting on the curb. Inside were Padraig and Aine and the child.
Aine lifted up the child and smiled. The little baby opened her eyes—which were a startling honey-gold—and cried.
'Oh,’ said Aine, smiling through tears that glistened on her cheeks, ‘she is so full of life!'
Mael heard the voice of Aibheel and understood. The circle was closed.
A great Silence awaited.
* * *
THE WHITE ROOM
Robert N Stephenson
Tiny voices whispered. Darkness closed in, swallowing everything, yet nothing. In the darkness formed a light, a tiny light. In the darkness shone a way out.
—Start assimilation protocol—
Strat Ruth ran through her mind, ran towards the distant glow, but darkness held her in its grip. Perception struggled through the shadows about her and she found dampness, a wetness that was out of place with the light. She pushed forward, on toward the light. Was this the afterlife or the gateway into hell? Was this the punishment she had to pay for murder?
Her eyes snapped open. Ruth sucked canned air and remembered the blow to the back of her head; the moment of panic, the flash of a warning in her helmet, the rush of gas, then nothing; nothing but the haze and the light.
She smelt the repellent odour of sulphurous water. It assaulted her senses. Smell? Reality. Her face was cold but beyond that and the damp sensations in her scalp she could feel nothing else. I'm soaked in the vile smelling liquid and my helmet is off, she thought, as she tried to move. The vacuum shielding must have released, otherwise I'd be sucking poisoned air. Maybe I have and now I'm dead.
Distant voices called to her, pulled at the fine strands of her mind's awareness—annoying, persistent. Whispers brushed across her thoughts, many voices. Yes, yes she remembered. My support team. She could hear her Sendec implants arguing, waiting to be called into action. If she were dead they'd be silent.
The Sendec team could wait; she had to first check things out for herself. Clenching her eyes in concentration, she attempted to restore movement to any part of her body that could still receive the mind's signals. Nothing. There was no sensation below her chin. In the silence of the black spotted void behind her eyelids she murmured a plea for salvation. There was only one thing worse than waking up in a broken body—and that was waking up to find yourself just another ghostly figure amongst the many that were contained in a Sendec Imager, an addition to your own neural management core.
As she forced her eyes open, spotted blackness met spotted blackness. A sigh of despair became a dry wind through her mind. Am I dying? I don't want to die. She cried and felt real tears on her cheeks. The whispers in her head were like mist, light, unreal. Ruth was too distraught to call on her Dec team. She didn't want to die; she didn't want to become a ghost in her own systems.
Staring up at the spotted blackness, thinking of all the things she had yet to do with her short life, her planned military career, Ruth slowly realised she was lying beneath the heavy shroud of an alien night and not drifting into the eternal abyss of death. She could see bright stars through the subtle flicker of her vacuum survival dome.
Ruth fled from her anguish and fell back on her training; the years of implanted aspect meshing, the neural web construction, the hard slog through mud, the swim through vacuum and the abuse she endured from her Commander. A bio-chart appeared in her left eye, the distraction timely. A stab of pain behind the eyes caused her to snap her eyes closed. One of the receptor lines must have come loose. She winced, opening her eyes again, as she scanned the diagnostics that marched down the retina. The bio readings were strange, distant. She felt far more detached than usual while reading the life charts. It felt as if she were watching someone else's biological read-out.
Tell her. Tell her now. Let her make the choice. Tell her. Tell her.
Ruth shuddered as the strong whisper flooded her mind. It was time to use the team. As she reached back into
the artificial locker room in her head she knew what they might want to tell her, it was in the diagnostic but she wanted confirmation, professional confirmation. She ordered forward the Medic.
Her vision flickered, a tell-tale of a Sendec image's arrival. The Medic, in reality, appeared in her mind, in the space where dreams were born. To her eyes an image of the Medic stood before her, it was an apparition designed to calm.
'I've been trying to contact you for several hours, Strat.'
'What won't you tell me?’ she asked, without hesitation. She was, after all, the commander of the team.
'I don't understand your question,’ the Medic offered, his head tilted to one side.
'I heard you whispering,’ she said, hoping the Sendec wasn't damaged. ‘What is it you have to tell me?'
The image flicked briefly before the Medic answered. ‘I cannot tell you what you wish to know.’ He looked up at the dome. A distraction. ‘I've been fighting against your emotional impulses since you woke up, why didn't you act sooner?’ The Medic didn't sound happy.
Emotionless eyes stared at her as he knelt down beside her in the mud. She knew he was only a vision in her mind but she found it hard to dismiss the image's hard realism. ‘I ... thought I was dead or dying,’ she said softly.
'Leave those kinds of assumptions to the experts in future,’ he said, as he examined her. ‘No broken bones. No major ligament damage.’ The short Medic's mellow voice rolled over her senses like a warm bath. The name Medic was stencilled in bold red letters on the left pocket of his blue and white checked tunic.
'Part of the right eye's retinal projector has dislodged and will require System Surgery to reconnect it. I'm afraid the vision magnification is impaired. To save you from future irritation I will disconnect this function from the system completely, Strat.'
'Why are you using my job title instead of my name?’ Ruth asked, feeling a sinking sensation in her gut. Again the flicker, this time prolonged.
'We are in a code red situation,’ the Medic said in way of explanation.
An image flashed through Ruth's mind. She saw a place. People sat against a wall on chrome and red upholstered chairs. A clock, red with flashing numbers, counted down.
—Stage Two Mediator—
The pain ceased and she hoped the Medic could also repair the sounds escaping from her implant, or at least find out what they were whispering about. The bio chart flickered, stabilized. She closed her eyes and tried to think of who had struck her down. Who would have wanted her dead? Commander Be'Lean, maybe? Had he finished with his sexual blackmail and decided it was time to be rid of her? The Medic moved about her slowly, deliberately an action not too dissimilar to a real Medic.
'Fix the whispers while you're at it,’ she asked. She closed her eyes and dared to shift her mind away from her broken body. A face appeared in her thoughts, a handsome face, a soft face; a face that hid the doings of evil. It was the face of pain and shame. The dark face of her tormentor.
Ruth felt none of the Medic's ghostly touches. The examination was carried out internally through the bio management processor. Soldiers found a visionary presence did a lot to ease anxiety. Right now the Medic did a lot to ease her feelings of loneliness under an alien night.
'Why can't I move?’ she asked. There was no need to speak aloud to a Sendec image, but she felt less alone by voicing the question. She attempted to wriggle her fingers; she felt nothing. The memory of a little girl stuck up a tree seeped into her growing anxiety, only her mother wasn't here to help her now.
'Auto system shut down,’ he said. She sighed, thankful. ‘I've managed to locate a weakness just below the fourth vertebrae. It is...'
'Fuck!’ Ruth cried, shutting out the Medic's analysis. ‘A broken neck. How long have I got? Can you perform euthanasia?’ The Medic winked out for a moment. He returned when she had calmed slightly.
The Medic laughed. ‘You're not going to die, Strat. At this very moment I ...’ The image flickered yet again. ‘...I am redirecting several surrounding muscle impulses to the weakened area. Your neck is not broken but there has been minor disc displacement. I am keeping you immobilized until it is safe to move. The support I'm creating around the area is a nano construction web building within the muscles; it will give the discs time to recover while restoring some mobility. Pain suppressors are now easing any discomfort.'
'How long?’ She felt relief in the Medic's clinical diagnosis. Maybe the small prayer for salvation worked after all. Silently she thanked the God in which she didn't believe. Just in case.
'In another hour the nerve block will dissipate and you will begin to recover some feeling in your extremities. Two hours will enable you to sit up and by four you'll have moderate mobility. Enough to get you back to Sweeper base for servicing.’ He stood and surveyed the area. ‘Much of your mechanical systems are still interacting with your organic self, so repairs should not be too traumatic.'
The Medic winked out, leaving her to gaze up at the night. Sendecs lacked grace. As she stared at the distant stars she thought of the Commander again, felt his hands on her naked skin and the pain of his doing. She shuddered with cold and knew, for certain, who had hit her. She lay thinking for ten minutes before she called forward the Environmental Adjustment Officer. A Hul. She grimaced. The Hul reminded her of her father; his coldness, his distant affection and stolid idea of duty to the service.
Again the tell-tale flicker in her mind before the naked image of a hairless woman solidified, kneeling over her.
'Yes?’ she said solidly. Her voice hit Ruth like a clap of thunder.
'Situation?’ Ruth replied, equally as short.
'The emergency survival dome was deployed the instant your shielding released,’ the Envo said. ‘The dome is stable, your power supply is weakening and air will become a problem if the situation does not change soon.'
The nakedness and thin physique marked the woman as a distant relative of humans, one that usually did not travel in the wastes of space. But the Hul were experts at survival and their inclusion in Sendecs was now compulsory. Despite the Hul's skills, Ruth still felt that total nakedness in space wasn't natural—even if the Hul was only a projection.
'What am I breathing? I feel a little light-headed.'
'Oxygen within the dome is a conservative mix giving you twelve hours supply at your current rate of use. The external atmosphere is toxic and cannot be utilized.’ The voice thudded against Ruth's brain while the system's screen displayed all the relevant information across her retina. ‘CO2 is high, but not at dangerous levels.'
'How much have I got in the suit reserves?’ Ruth's heart was racing.
The Hul's lips twitched in what was known to be a smile. ‘There is less than two hours in your suit reserve tank. You are breathing all that remains of your main suit supply.'
Dampness began to instil a deep ache in Ruth's legs. She shivered. Feeling was returning. ‘Can you do something about getting me up and about faster?’ Ruth asked, noticing her body temperature was a bit low.
'The Medic is in charge of body management,’ the Hul said. ‘I would suggest...'
'Don't you suggest anything,’ Ruth snapped. The Hul was always suggesting, always telling her what to do with her life. ‘When I need information I will ask you, you got that? Remember when you suggested I turn off a dome during a storm so you could judge wind speeds? You damn nearly got me killed. So don't you go suggesting anything, you got that?'
The Hul nodded once but said nothing.
Ruth began to feel a warm tingle through her body. The Medic was altering her body temperature. It was obvious the suit wasn't functioning properly, but she'd deal with that later. She closed her eyes and soaked up the warmth. How she longed for her mother's thick-armed embrace again, to be safe and wanted. It had been ten years since she felt her arms around her. She wallowed in the memory.
'Strat,’ the Hul said, as she stood. ‘Medic has shared its report and I concur with its findings. On evaluation
and cross-referencing with my data your survival at this very moment is zero point four percent. In two hours, after nano intervention, it will be better than fifteen percent. I have altered your nutrient usage for maximum efficiency and have begun serotonin feeds to ease inevitable depressive moods. You will reach an acceptable level of function in two hours and twenty seven minutes. With more data, more could be assessed.'
The image blinked out, this time to Ruth's relief. With minimal movement returning she shifted her hand to a sensor point on her neck. One firm press and she tensed, as a surge of power rushed into the cranial com-link.
'Stra ...’ Ruth halted and coughed up phlegm. The painful two minute exercise caused her neck to ache. ‘Yep, I'm definitely alive,’ she moaned.
Ruth tried the com-link again. ‘Strat bravo, niner, ace relay twelve, to field Sweeper. Do you read?’ She spoke in a flat tone, the radio taking the sound directly from her voice box. ‘Strat down. Sweeper, do you read?’ she spoke again after the roaring static ceased tumbling around between her cranial pickups. The reply was static—then silence.
Leaning with her back against a rock, eating her last ration bar, Ruth considered the last three hours she had laid in the slush. Moving now, being careful not to overstress the deep muscular nano brace, she paced in a three-step square, under her glimmering dome. The stars had been replaced by a thick yellow fog, the usual atmosphere on A4K. She had recovered her badly damaged helmet with its indestructible monitoring system, which didn't work. As she studied the dented helmet she wondered at the logic of her even being on A4K. There hadn't been a war in three generations, but here she was performing mock battles, only this time something went wrong. The man of her nightmares had seen to it, she felt it in her stomach. ‘Why did it have to be here?’ She felt tears flow again. ‘Why here?’ She looked through the cloud cover to a close, high cliff and rocky hills, their tops hidden. The shimmer of the dome made the deadly atmosphere look appealing.
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