by Barry Kirwan
"We trusted you," he said; although he knew he hadn’t really, not yet, he’d just let his guard down a little. But he saw it hit home. Rashid was flustered.
"You can still trust me, Captain. You will see, I just need you to not over-react when it arrives."
Blake decided another approach. He leant back, smiled, and put his hands behind his head, though his abdominals inside his suit were rigid, tensed like a spring to propel him upwards if Rashid reciprocated.
"Now, why on Earth would I over-react? It’s not as if you just overcame my corporal and had a pistol pointing at my chest, and were talking of an ‘it’ arriving without telling me what the hell ‘it’ is." He stopped smiling, and made his decision.
"To hell with this, Rashid. One of the mottos of my platoon was ‘Never be taken prisoner’. Part of our code. So if you’re going to shoot me, then go right ahead and shoot." He got up, calmly, as if going to take a walk. He bent over Kat, not approaching Rashid just two meters away.
"What did you do to her?’ Kat’s face twitched beneath her visor. He spoke quietly to Rashid. "What the hell is going on, Rashid? Talk to me."
Before Rashid could answer, the door opened, and a pulsing electric blue light washed into the room. Blake gaped as an oval object, half a meter in diameter, and about Rashid’s height, drifted into the compartment. Its surface at first reminded him of the purple and blue ripples sometimes seen on an oil film stretched across a circular wire frame. Rashid kept his pistol trained on him, his arm not quite steady.
To Blake, the intruder resembled a mirror, but with a fluidic surface, fractal images swirling, almost taking shape, but not quite. He was unable to focus properly on it. Around its circumference was what appeared to be a tube of gold-colored metal, about the same diameter as a handrail. It hung thirty centimeters above the floor, all the time emitting a faint sound of water trickling, like a small fountain. It stopped next to Rashid, and then oriented itself towards Kat. He realized this had to be alien in origin: not even IVS had anti-grav technology. The implications were overwhelming, but he pushed them aside for the moment, focusing on gathering information, and protecting Kat. But then he saw her body and face reflected in the object’s mirror surface.
Just as he reached for his pulse pistol, Rashid spoke up.
"Don’t. It won’t hurt her. It is trying to communicate with her."
Blake kept his hand on the butt of the pistol. "Did it make her black out?"
Rashid nodded. "It has already been in communication with Kat before, for some weeks now."
"Wait. You’re telling me this thing has been reaching across light years of space to my ship?" The nightmares! He glared at it, wondering if it had any defenses.
"Yes. Because she has a node. That is right, is it not?"
Blake flared. "How the hell do you know that? Not even my first officer…" He stopped. Could it be true – that this thing was interfacing with Kat’s internal multimedia bio-chip?
Rashid spoke as if reciting from a list. "Your first officer is named Zack. Broken right leg. Utters profanities far more than is necessary. Sits on the port side. Pierre is science officer, sits behind you."
Blake’s face didn’t hide his surprise or outrage. "How in hell’s name…?" He felt that his ship, his command had been violated. But as he was about to ask, he saw Rashid nod to the mirror-like object, which turned toward him. Dumbfounded, he saw on its surface a moving image of him and his crew as seen from Kat’s position in the Ulysses. He sat down, reeling from the security implications. The critical question was whether it was hostile or not. As if knowing that this question would arrive soonest, Rashid began to talk, his voice adopting its previous calm, amicable tone.
"I have asked it its name, but communication is very difficult. It does not speak and can only show pictures of what it has seen itself, or via someone or something it can communicate with. I noticed it, that is, it found me, when I was burying my colleague, Azil. It appeared at the top of the nearest dune, and my immediate reaction was to run inside, get out my rifle and shoot it."
"You missed?"
Rashid laughed, a little too loud. "Oh no, I never miss. But it was close – for me, that is. You see it looks like a mirror, and in many senses it is one. My high powered bullet ricocheted off it. So I tried the laser rifle. As I fired, it turned a fraction, and bounced the pulse straight back at a piece of wreckage just beside me, burning a hole right through it. It was our first meaningful communication, looking back on it. I communicated fear, and it taught me respect."
Blake studied Rashid’s eyes; he seemed to be telling the truth. Rashid had not actually lied about anything – yet.
"What about Kat? Why has it done this to her? What does it want?"
Rashid got to his feet. Blake wanted to floor him; Rashid seemed to understand that too, as he approached cautiously.
"I am human, like you," he said, eyes wide with almost religious fervor. "There is a great threat to all of us. But not from this." He indicated the alien mirror. "It has helped me survive, to stay alive, against…" He trailed off. Blake noticed him clenching and unclenching his fist, one of his own habits. His anger at Rashid checked itself. There was something about this man that made him difficult to dislike for very long. He was a tortured soul, a poet forced to be a commando and an astronaut. Blake had seen it before, men like this had been in his ranks during the war, but in his experience they never survived in battles, because they always ended up making the ultimate heroic sacrifice. So, Blake thought, I don’t need to kill you, your days are numbered. And then he wished he hadn’t thought it at all.
Rashid picked up again. "It helped me survive against… the others. There are beings here. Guardians. Tall, impervious to our weapons, very fast, very dangerous." His hands trembled. He laid his pistol on the floor. Despite Blake’s face of stone, Rashid gingerly laid a hand upon his shoulder, which tensed immediately. There were tears barely held back in Rashid’s eyes, and his voice was unsteady.
"They mean to kill us all, Captain Alexander. All of us. All humanity. Eden is a trap." He raised his hand to Blake’s other shoulder, gripping him hard, and stared wildly into Blake’s eyes. "We have to stop them. No matter what it takes. We have to stop them."
The mirror’s picture changed, and Blake was shown the enemy. His anger at Rashid dissolved. He recognized true evil when he saw it.
Chapter 26
Choices
Gabriel took a sling-jet, boarding as a business passenger – staff asked fewer questions of first class clients. His fake ret-scan passed flawlessly. The jet arrived early morning in Old Denver, slicing through anvil-shaped clouds, accompanied by lightning cords and strong winds which buffeted the twelve-seater.
A reliable source had told him Sister Esma was due to hold a Chapter meeting at noon. After a short deviation to pick up some gear, he located the once famous Country Club in the oldest part of town, more recently used as a school. The streets were deserted. This quarter of Denver was known for being ultra-religious, full of fanatics, so the Chorazin, civic police and all non-Fundie up-standing folk stayed away.
The dilapidated building, grey and crumbling with age, was no longer in use: all children in the area attended the huge state boarding schools further up in the low-rad Rockies. He entered via an unlocked side door.
Gabriel studied the dust on the furniture-less floor – he stroked some onto his finger and smelt it – synthetic, sprayed liberally to give the impression no one had been here for months. He scanned the interior until he discerned a faded symbol above a wooden floor-boarded stage – three outstretched olive branches, representing neo-fundamentalist aligned Islamic, Hindu and Judeo-Christian faiths. He scoped the floor again, and the beamed ceiling. He needed to get across without leaving any trace.
He fished in his rucksack for the two knife-hooks, then fastened a lanyard around each wrist. Crouching down, he sprung into the air, stabbing both blades into the first wooden beam with a resounding thunk. As soon as they p
enetrated the wood, he twisted the handles and microscopic barbs speared outwards from the blade. Gabriel hung there like a trapeze artist, swinging his legs. He twisted the right hand hilt the other way, and the knife released. He swung twice more, then pulled sharply on his left arm as he propelled forward and upward, twisting the hilt, releasing the second knife. A fraction of a second later his right hand stabbed its knife into the next beam, and continued, gathering speed as he’d seen macaques do in Uganda years ago.
When he arrived at the final beam next to the symbol, he stalled his swinging, and pressed on the two lower branches simultaneously with his feet. A click beneath him revealed the outline of a trap-door. He lifted his knees up to his chest and waited. As the door rose automatically, a crossbow bolt shot out firing straight ahead to where an uninitiated would have normally stood. It thudded into the wall beneath his feet. He angled himself, still hanging by his left arm, and wrestled the bolt out of the stone. It left a small hole, but there were others already there. He smeared as much of the surrounding chalk over it as he could, twisted his knife-hook and dropped down through the trap door onto the first rung of a spiral staircase.
He primed the bolt back into its firing mechanism, and descended into the darkness below. One way in, one way out: he felt like a man walking into a cage – but the bait was worth the price.
Depositing trip-sensors on the trap-door, he closed it after him, then waited at the bottom, kneeling on the damp concrete in the musty basement devoid of furniture or fittings – nowhere to hide. Pale light strobed through the floorboards above.
Ten o’clock– ample time to reflect, to purify his mind. Important to die with clear thoughts: he’d seen so many, almost everyone he’d cleansed, die screaming, pleading for their lives or wetting themselves with fear. He slowed his breathing, and slipped into a meditative trance.
He intended to consider the events of the past few days, but as he relaxed, his mind reached further back. He remembered playing with his sister so many years ago, back in the outskirts of Shannon, on the cliffs of Mohar. In his mind he saw the lush greens that were all but gone from that radioactive wasteland, the tragic remnant of the last major nuclear battle of the war – a jewel of an island raked and scorched by a desperate last venting of rage, an attempt at mutual annihilation. The only limiting factor that had stopped both sides unleashing their complete arsenal, had been the unanticipated EMP harmonic shockwave that destroyed all the missiles’ and air attack squadrons’ guidance systems. It had shut down both armies, even with their supposedly EMP-proof technology. If they’d have continued, the resulting fallout would have breached the Kudoly threshold, triggering a radiation spike, annihilating most living creatures on the planet within six months. Earth wouldn’t have recovered.
His mind travelled back to Jenny, his sister, to a time almost in their teens. She was on the swing in the garden. She cajoled him into pushing harder, and he’d worried she’d fall off. Each time she flew a little higher, she shrieked, and her shrill laughing scream merged with the labored creaking of the mechanical joints. He stopped pushing, and after she realized that no matter what she had said he would push no more, she let her head fall back, eyes closed, the sun on her face, waiting for the swing to drift to a stop. He watched her a long time until she came to rest.
"Why’d you stop pushing?" she asked, eyes still closed, head still back.
He was leaning on the swing-set frame. "I was worried you’d fly off and hurt yourself, stupid."
She opened her eyes and smiled at him in a way that made him uncomfortable.
"I’m invincible, Gabe. Don’t you know that?"
He didn’t reply. He envied her free spirit, compared to his own dark thoughts. But he worried he would hurt her in other ways. His body was undergoing changes and he found himself looking at his coquettish sister in ways he didn’t understand, and didn’t trust. Later, as his maturation took its course, he sought refuge from the onslaught of his hormones in other girls at school – his dark looks and somber moods found him no shortage of willing playmates.
Even at that early age, though, he’d become concerned about world affairs. While other kids talked about the latest music holos, he wanted to discuss politics. At home at supper time he listened to his father rant about the corrupt politicians and the religious clerics, how it was all going to hell, and how Jeannie and Joe Average would pay for it all, as always. His sister and mother managed to rise above it, but to Gabriel, the eldest, it all really mattered, so much so that it twisted his stomach, and people’s willful ignorance and lassitude made him ball his fists and occasionally punch them into doors, and later on, straight through them.
Gabriel surfaced from his reverie and checked his breathing. It was long, deep and smooth, his body perfectly still. Satisfied, he resumed his train of thought, moving forward to when war had loomed across their lives, three years later. He signed up, barely seventeen years old. After psychometric examination he was taken out of his platoon and trained by the fledgling Chorazin Corps – at first shock-troop tactics, later on, graduating to advanced psychological techniques. As the War got longer and dirtier, and the threat of protracted nuclear theater became more tangible, he was sent deep cover to infiltrate an Alician training center.
He remembered the school, hidden in the Nepalese foothills. Most of the students had been religious maniacs, as full of fervor as their minds were closed. They were used by the Alician order as martyrs: cannon-fodder, suicide bomber pawns laying out a carpet of blood following the Alician strategists’ goals. But Gabriel, like a few others, was seen as less dispensable, more useful than a simple weapon or bomb carrier whose sole aim was indiscriminate carnage. Gabriel undertook full Cleanser training, including Alician religious training and mind discipline techniques.
At first he only paid lip service to the teachers. But after six months without Chorazin contact, he realized he was on his own, for whatever reason – lost, forgotten, cut-off. His Alician watchers began to suspect his motives, so he threw himself into the training. He’d never swallowed the Alician hype, but he found peace in Cleansing. Both sides had trained him to kill, and he surrendered to it, becoming an adept assassin. His skills didn’t go unnoticed.
Just before the end of the War, he was sent to Tibet: he and nine other Cleansers, already blooded numerous times, were each to receive one-to-one instruction from a Master. It was an incredible honor. He’d never been so proud.
He met his Master, Cheveyo, and immediately recognized him as the most enlightened person he’d ever encountered. He worshipped the man, did everything he was asked, no matter how difficult, no matter how seemingly pointless, including standing naked, blindfolded atop a mountain overnight.
Then came the shock. Cheveyo took him on an arduous seven day trek into the mountains. After three days they descended inside a glacier, hacking through thick ice for hours in conditions of thirty below, with blinding winds so cold that any exposed flesh was frost-bitten in minutes. For a whole day they ferreted deeper into the glacier’s treacherous tunnels. They used head torches as there was no natural light, only the occasional muffled shade of blue, but eventually they arrived inside a gargantuan chamber. Gabriel recognized he was standing on something that was not ice – more like metal. In the distance he saw a squat tower. Shaking with cold and exhaustion, he was led by his Master to the tower’s foot and a large hatchway held open by a log of frozen, ancient wood.
The stench from the two rotting corpses made Gabriel recoil even though he should have been used to it. One of them he recognized: a former acolyte he had met a year earlier, whom he’d heard had been killed in training.
Cheveyo led him a short distance inside to what seemed to be a control room, and sat down cross-legged. Gabriel reciprocated so as not to be standing over his Master, who spoke as always: quiet, calm, authoritative. Gabriel listened, intuiting that his life depended on it.
"Before you now is a choice, Gabriel. Choice is man’s constant companion. Choices def
ine who we are, what we are, how we live – and whether we continue to live."
The last part hung in the crisp air, within the small cloud of freezing mist that formed from his Master’s breath. Gabriel knew better than to interrupt.
"A thousand years ago, a small band of visitors came from another world. They are called Q’Roth." He never took his eyes off Gabriel. ‘They fed on many humans, though not the way most humans eat the meat of dead animals. They do not consume the flesh – they draw the neural energy, the bio-electric life force from their victims."
Gabriel stared downward. Only in the past decade had Eastern and Western medicines finally met on even ground, confirming with Western techniques the essential bioelectric meridians that Chinese doctors had charted for millennia. This had spawned new research directions into the neural energy signature of the human brain. Although electricity is electricity, as some physicists had put it, whether biological or chemically induced, there were subtle differences related to human, cetacean and primate consciousness. But it was hard to conceive that there were other beings out there, and that this was what nourished them.
"The Q’Roth curried favor with a group of humans they found useful, and set up an Order to await their return. They left ships, like this one here, behind them. They also left certain humans who they genetically altered. The genome persists in very few people. These people have become very powerful, physically and politically, through careful, deep, and very long-term strategies. They are the inner circle of the Alicians, called the Protectors, and they are the vassals of the Q’Roth. Most Alicians, even those higher up, do not realize who they really serve."
Cheveyo drew his Cleanser knife, and laid it before him, the blade pointing at Gabriel. "Even the name, Alicians, is far older than people know. The Protector Regent, their leader for six hundred years, was a genetically-enhanced woman named Alessia. The Q’Roth are dominated by a female queen, and so the Protectors have always been led by a female. This Alessia was formidable – it took five Master Sentinels to kill her, and she took four of them down with her in hand to hand combat. After this famous battle, the Protectors secretly adopted the name Alessians, in reverence to her."