by Simon Kewin
‘Are you armed?’ she asked. She sounded wary.
‘I run a bar on Möbius Strip. What do you think, Tia?’
‘I’d like you to leave your weapons on the shuttle.’
‘Why?’
‘Please.’
He thought about it. Part of him wanted to refuse. Tell her to turn around and take him home. She intrigued him though. She had always intrigued him.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But the mech comes.’
They had docked now, the seals on both sides spiralling open. Still they hadn’t moved from their couches. She stared up at the machine, thinking, calculating.
‘You control it don’t you?’
‘More or less. It’s semiautonomous. Imprinted to act as I would without being instructed.’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But please remember. You’re both perfectly safe here, I guarantee.’
He nodded. But he instructed the mech to remain vigilant for threats. It was unnecessary but it made him feel a little better. He slipped out his blasters and touchzapper and laid them on his couch.
The ship was just as he expected. Simulated gravity and everything. Clean. He began to think about buying a ship like this, drifting the solar system in it. It was an appealing idea. Perhaps he had been stuck in the Space Bar too long.
They stopped at a doorway: probably, he calculated, the Con. Or whatever you called it on a civilian vessel.
‘Magnus, the person I need to get out of the system is in here.’
She looked very nervous.
‘OK,’ he said, his voice thick with sarcasm. ‘Let’s go in and meet them then.’
Tia stepped towards the door to open it. Inside, waiting for them, was a Basilisk. The first he had seen since the day of the massacre four years earlier.
Magnus grasped his blaster, the micro one camouflaged on his left forearm that he hadn’t left behind. He pointed it at the alien.
‘No!’ shouted Tia. The Basilisk held up its ten-fingered hands but didn’t move, didn’t attack or attempt to flee. Magnus thought about where to hit it, military training kicking in. This close a head-shot would be most effective. But in the confines of the ship, a blast to its shining, green body might be safer.
He aimed for the creature’s chest and fired.
A blue stat field blossomed around the alien, shielding it from the blast. A ship this expensive. It was inevitable, really.
The alien turned away from him, one hand waving in a gesture that meant, Magnus knew, indifference or boredom. It was, he could see now, already badly injured. It moved on a wheeled carriage, its muscular legs useless. Perhaps it was a veteran too, injured in the war. Perhaps they had met before, in battle.
‘We need to be away from here,’ the alien said. ‘This wrecked soldier can’t help us. There are three Solar System Police cruisers docked at Möbius and sooner or later they’ll find us.’ The alien’s voice was a thin, piping sound, always comical coming from such a powerful creature.
Tia gave Magnus a look as deadly as a zapper shot. She walked towards the alien.
‘And I still think Magnus can help us. I explained about him. He is a survivor of the armistice massacre.’
‘I am not going to help you!’ shouted Magnus. Fury pumped through him. He thought about instructing the mech to attack the alien but knew its civilian protection rules would prevent it doing any real harm, even to a Basilisk.
Tia turned towards him.
‘Tell me, Magnus, do you want to know what really happened to you that day?’
‘I know very well what happened to me, Tia.’
‘I don’t think you do.’
‘Do you want to see for yourself? Do you?’
Fingers trembling, he reached round the back of his head and pressed the shallow pits at the base of his neck in the sequence the medics had shown him. The back of his skull came away, swinging around on a hinge behind his left ear. He turned round to show them. He had never shown anyone else. The few remaining chunks of brain they had managed to salvage neatly enfolded in biostrip capsules. The chips filling in for all the lost tissue. The empty spaces in between.
He locked his skull back into place and turned to look at them. He was breathing deeply. The skin on his scalp tingled as the joins fused back together.
‘They had to reconstruct me. My memories, my personality, everything. Interpolate was the word they used. All thanks to your friends here. Now you want me to help one of them?’
Tia looked shocked, swallowing as if she couldn’t get her voice to work. The Basilisk’s head was lowered, an expression of regret.
‘Magnus, I’m sorry,’ said Tia. ‘I’m sorry you went through that. But you can’t blame the Basilions. It wasn’t them. Don’t you see? You can’t trust your memories of that day. The High Command invented the story they wanted everyone to hear and filled your brain with it.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘It’s true, Magnus.’
‘And why would I believe that?’
‘Because someone who was there that day can show you what really happened.’
‘The Basilisk? He wasn’t there. You told me yourself I’ve never met it before.’
‘No. Not him. I mean the mech.’
‘The mech?’
The mech had been there, of course. They were part of the Terran guard, assigned to protecting the High Command at the signing ceremony. An honourable settlement to the war that had raged for years. Then the Basilisks had shown their true colours. The Terran High Command wiped out in a single act of slaughter. Magnus, trying to protect them, had received the point-blank blaster shot right through his brain. The mech had seen it all.
‘They wiped the mech’s brain and filled it back up with the same false memories,’ said Tia. ‘But we believe there will still be ghosts of the true images locked deep inside it. We think we can bring them out.’
‘We? Who’s we?’
‘The people trying to bring the Basilion war to an end. To stop all the slaughter. On both sides.’
‘He’s not going to help us, Tia,’ said the Basilisk. ‘Forget him.’
‘Please?’ she said, pleading with Magnus now. ‘It won’t take long. If the true memories are really gone we’ll leave you alone. But if we can retrieve the story of what happened that day it would be invaluable. Things would have to change then.’
Magnus looked from her to the Basilisk. The alien stood calmly waiting.
‘Who is he?’ Magnus asked, nodding at the Basilisk. ‘Why are you so keen for him to get away?’
‘He leads the antiwar movement on Basilion. With luck he may become their Rex one day. He came to a high-level conference on Earth. But the Solar System infiltrated. We fled but the flipship was damaged and we only made it this far. This was two months ago now. They know he’s here somewhere. They’re looking for him on every planet, moon and ship in the system. That’s why we need your help.’
He said nothing. He still held the blaster in his hand, pointing at the alien.
‘Magnus, if we’re right these deleted memories will change everything, show you a different story of what happened. But I promised to help you. If we’re wrong, we’ll do what we can to track down the Basilions responsible.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘If they really did what you think they deserve all they get.’
He took a step forward into the room, unsure what to do. The mech stayed close behind him. Transparent bulkheads showed the distant Strip against the greeny-brown disc of Mars. There weren’t as many controls as on a military vehicle, he thought. The ship probably did all the work for you.
‘What’s to stop you planting your own images into the mech?’
‘Because you’ll do all the communication,’ said Tia. ‘We’ll give you the commands you need to send it. Really they’re just some decryption keys we’ve recently acquired. Keys that five people died getting hold of. But there won’t be enough data to contain video.’
He didn’t kn
ow what to do. He tried to think what the original Magnus would have done. The true Magnus.
‘This is as far as I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ll do this because it’s you asking and then that’s it. Understood?’
‘Thank you.’
The ship relayed the code to him on his public tPath channel. He examined it carefully. It was as she said: a small amount of data, commands and keys. Opening his private channel to the mech he relayed the instructions.
The mech stood in the centre of the room. It did nothing for a moment after he communicated with it. Then it began to shake and teeter. It dropped to its knees and slumped to the floor. Tia had to dodge out of its way as it collapsed. The floor shook with its fall. Magnus stood in amazement. Nothing had ever even touched the mech before, through all the battles. Was it all just a trick? Had they persuaded him to neutralize the mech so they could finally get to him? Had he just fallen into their trap after all?
He raised his blaster again. He pointed it first at the Basilisk then at Tia, unsure which he should shoot first. Even a stat field couldn’t protect someone from a point-blank shot.
Wait … wait …
It was the mech, talking to him over the tPath link.
What is it? He replied. What’s happening?
Wait … wait …
He watched as the mech began to twitch and flex once more. It found its knees, its feet and stood back up, swaying slightly.
‘Ask it,’ said the Basilisk. ‘Hurry. Ask it for its memories of that day. Relay them to the ship for us all to see.’
‘Please, Magnus,’ said Tia.
He felt suddenly sick at the thought of what he might see. But he had to know. He sent the instructions to the mech.
The images filled one of the transparent bulkheads. There was the familiar scene Magnus recalled so well. The three generals of the High Command: Chang, Jackson and Umwe. Opposite them at the table, the three Basilisks whose names he never learned. Behind each a guard, green skin polished to iridescence, armed and watchful. Three human guards and their mechs, himself included, in the foreground. The angle of the mech’s perspectives was unusual but the scene was completely familiar.
He watched as the leaders of the two races reached across the table to shake hands. Everything was as he recalled. But there, suddenly, he could see the join. Events on the screen began to diverge from his memories, changing as if they were happening in front of him.
It was subtle at first, a different hand movement, different words spoken. Then blaster streaks strobed out from somewhere he couldn’t see. One of the Terran High Command. The six Basilisks were struck simultaneously. The died before any of them could react. The human commanders stood and turned. Magnus had a clear impression of a well-rehearsed plan. Each general carried a hand blaster. Magnus watched as Jackson raised his weapon to the chin of the Magnus on the screen and fired. The back and top of his head exploded, the blaster shot emerging undimmed from the top of his skull. He collapsed from view. He heard one of the others, Chang, speak.
‘Shall we finish them off?’
‘No. We need at least one witness. We’ll bring this one back to tell the world.’
He kicked at Magnus’ body, somewhere on the floor near his feet.
When the pictures stopped, Magnus watched them again. His mind was a blank, trying to take it in. He watched over and over. Each time he picked out new detail. The choreographed explosions of green blood from the Basilisks. The look on Jackson’s face as he fired: business-like, inexpressive. The mechs twitching, caught between protecting their bonded human and obeying a superior office.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, standing near him. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry it’s all been for nothing. Not just you, but everyone that’s died or been injured. You weren’t out there defending us at all. I’m sorry you had to see what really happened. It might have been kinder to let you believe what they wanted.’
‘They’re still alive,’ he said. ‘The martyrs of the armistice. Jackson and Chang and Umwe. They weren’t killed after all.’
‘We’ve had one recent report of a sighting of Umwe. We’ve no idea where the other two are.’
He watched the scene yet again. He thought about how he always went out of his way to recount his story to any customer who’d listen. Was that all part of his programming?
‘The Solar System cruisers are leaving the station,’ he heard the Basilisk say. ‘Three of them. I think they might be on to us.’
‘The pictures,’ replied Tia. ‘They’re all that matter now. Put them on the wires.’
There was a moment’s pause.
‘They’re sent,’ the alien said.
‘Then we’ve done all we can.’
‘We could fight,’ said the alien.
‘In this ship? Not worth it,’ said Tia. ‘We can outrun them for a time but they’ll catch us now.’
‘No,’ Magnus heard himself say to them. ‘No, we can fight. I have a ship. The flipship I used to get home from Basilion. With the mech. We can at least get outsystem in it.’
‘Magnus, you’ve done enough,’ she replied. ‘Take a shuttle. Go back to your life on the Strip.’
‘Go back? I can’t go back, Tia. Not after this.’
‘Ordnance-range in thirty seconds,’ said the Basilisk.
‘Magnus, you’ve had your revenge,’ she said. ‘The pictures are enough. You don’t need to do this.’
‘I do. Don’t you see, Tia? What you said about me in the bar. I don’t know who I am anymore. They just made me up. Filled my head with this worn out spacewreck. But that isn’t me. I don’t know what is me any more.’
‘The war changed you,’ she said. ‘It was inevitable. You’re still you.’
‘No! There’s more of me in the mech, the image of my brain implanted into it. And there’s more of me in you, too, Tia. In all the memories you have of what I was. Everything we shared. That’s why we’re coming with you. Between you and me and the mech perhaps I more or less make up a complete person again.’
He looked at the lights outside. The specks that were stars and those that were ships jostling around Möbius Strip. The base looked so small. He could also see, clearly, the phalanx of three Solar System cruisers heading towards them.
‘You’re sure about this, Mag?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘What about the bar?
‘Donal will look after it until I return. If I don’t he’s welcome to it.’
‘Five seconds,’ said the Basilisk.
Magnus sent the co-ordinates of his ship. They lurched into motion, the star-field swirling outside as they headed away from the sun. The disc of Mars and the loop of Möbius Strip flashed across the screen and out of sight.
‘Where are we heading?’ asked Tia.
‘The flipship is under a veil on a rock in the asteroid belt.’
‘We’ll arrive in eighteen days,’ said the Basilisk. ‘Just ahead of the SS. We won’t have long to power the ship up. Are you sure it’s functional, human?’
‘It’s functional, Basilion.’
Tia stood with him in front of the transparent bulkhead. He looked at the blaster he still carried, then let it clatter to the floor.
It came to him, then, what it was he had said to her all those years ago. The day he left for the war. He had promised to return to her, no matter what.
In the end, she’d had to come and find him. Well. It was, he thought, good enough.
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