Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  Keiko sat back down, her hair shimmering blue.

  “All my life I was told who I was. I wanted to find out who I really was.”

  “And who are you?” Nariko demanded.

  Keiko did not respond for several minutes. Tired of waiting, Nariko moved to stand up.

  “I am who I choose to be,” Keiko finally said.

  Nariko floated there silently, unsure of what to do. Keiko knew that if Nariko threw herself over the side, she would not have the strength to stop her. In her heart, Keiko said a silent prayer for her friend.

  “By the way, how did you know where I was?” Nariko asked as she ran her taloned hands along the handrail.

  “A voice told me where you were during my morning-prayer session,” Keiko said softly. Nariko’s red lips parted, but she did not know what to say. Nariko’s eyes trembled and she backed away from the handrail.

  “You fought for our freedom, now let us fight for yours, Nari. Just hang on a little longer. We’ll end this curse. Just don’t give up.”

  “Do...” Nariko began weakly.

  “Go on,” Keiko urged.

  “Do you think they would let me bring some things into my cell? Some books, perhaps?”

  Keiko smiled and wiped a tear from her eye. “Even if they don’t, I’ll bring them to you anyway.”

  Keiko took Nariko by the arm and slowly they walked away from the catwalk.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The Weaknesses That Make Us Strong

  A true disciple will do his master’s will even when no one is watching and even when there is no chance of being punished or rewarded.

  Those who obey only when compelled are parasites, feeding from a foundation that they never add to, undermining those around them, and weakening the whole with their lack of character.

  -Book of Cerinţǎ, Chapter 22, verses 3-4

  Mai stretched lazily as she tapped the temperature controls of the whirlpool tub with one of her big toes. She may have considered it unforgivably wasteful of Inami to install private baths in every living space onboard the Onikano, but it sure did feel nice to lie in the hot water and relax.

  She needed to relax right now. They had finally slipped back into ether space and were making good time. As far as they could tell, no one had detected their escape. Beyond exhausted, Mai planned on doing nothing but bathing and sleeping for the next three days.

  She stretched again, enjoying the sensation of the warm water and the bubbles. Working under Inami was often nothing short of bizarre. It was difficult to depict to people who had not been near it. They never quite understood. Mai pondered on different ways to describe it and settled on the one she felt fit best. Working for Inami felt like being shot at by a sniper. You would just be walking along and then all of the sudden, BAM, something would catch you off guard. You didn’t know where it was going to come from, or when it was going to happen, but after a while you just kind of grew to live with this constant apprehension of the next shot. It could come from anywhere at any time, but you knew it was coming.

  Mai opened her eyes again and looked over at the pair of pink shampoo bottles Keiko had given her. She wondered what they smelled like, but then thought better of it and instead put her hand under the cleansing dispenser and began working the clear soap wash into her hair. She didn’t really care for fruity scents.

  She slid down into the water to rinse her hair out. As the bubbles of air popped out of her ears, she began picking up faint noises that she had not heard before. She turned he head sideways and pressed her ear and cheek against the bottom of the tub, explosions and gunfire, distant but distinct. For a brief second she assumed it was from the live-fire range. After all, if there was any real fighting going on in the ship she’d be the first to be notified of it.

  Then she realized that the live-fire range was three decks above her and this sound was definitely coming from below.

  Before she could think on this any longer, the water in her tub began sloshing over the side. Mai could feel herself moving. She tried to sit up and see what was happening, but her head struck something at the surface of the water. Rolling over onto her back, she could see the underside of the counter.

  The tub had slid back into its recess in the wall with her still in it.

  Mai fought the growing panic building up inside of her and forced her heart rate to slow down, giving her a few more precious seconds. There was little light entering in from the outside, giving her a shadowy outline of the features inside of the tub. There were a few small bubbles of air trapped between the surface of the water and the underside of the counter, but they were small enough that trying to suck them up would make her lose more air than she would get out of it.

  Mai tucked her body into the fetal position and turned herself around so that her head was at the foot of the tub. Shoving her fingers into the drain, she realized that the drain valve was too far down in the pipe for her to reach manually and the controls for it were on the side of the counter outside her watery prison.

  Mai felt her lungs burning and fear began to set in. She braced her arms against the sides of the tub and placed her foot against the faucet nozzle. Pulling her foot back, she kicked the nozzle with the heel of her foot, but the strength of her kick was blunted by the water.

  The need to inhale was almost unbearable. Mai kicked a second time and then a third. She could feel the pressure building inside her chest. The instinctive desire to gasp for breath was nearly overriding her rational knowledge that there was no air to breathe.

  Mai felt panic overtaking her and she began kicking wildly. Over and over again she kicked at the faucet, a poorly-aimed kick connecting with the corner of her foot instead of the ball, cracking two of her smaller toes with a snap.

  Mai’s mouth opened of its own accord to let out a scream and a large bubble of precious air escaped her mouth before she was able to snap it shut again. Her lungs burned as the mouthful of water poured down into them. The pain turned to rage and she kicked again, finally hearing the crack of adhesive as the faucet bent sideways. Mai began feeling weak. Her world rocked lazily from side to side around her as she forced herself to tuck and turn around. She wrapped her slim fingers around the faucet nozzle and tore it free from its mounting. Reaching inside the faucet, she pulled out the rod that connected the shower knob to the valve inside the faucet and rammed it down the drain, forcing it open. The water began slowly flowing out of the tub, air streaming in from the seams in the panels above it. Mai rolled herself onto her back, gasping at the small layer of air that was growing above her, breathing in both air and water and hacking painfully as her body tried to keep itself alive.

  It took Mai more than an hour, but she finally managed to use the nozzle of the faucet like a pry-bar and peeled back enough of the counter bottom to get access to the back of the tub control and yank out the network connections, allowing her to manually override the tub and force it to extend back into the bathroom. When she sat up she immediately detected the bitter scent of dylasine in the air and wrapped a wet washcloth around her mouth and nose to dilute its poisonous effects. She knew that something was very, very wrong here.

  Wrapping a towel around herself, she eyed the automatic door that led to her bedroom quarters, sitting innocently open. Suspiciously, she pulled off the towel rack and extended it out through the door, which slammed shut onto the rack, snapping it in half.

  “Someone must have sliced into the Onikano’s controls and is using the automatic functions of the ship to attack the crew,” she thought as she jammed the end of the snapped towel rack into the door seam at the base of the floor, wedging one side open. She quickly ducked through as the other side of the door snapped open and shut repeatedly, unable to crush her without its companion.

  Mai donned her null suit and grabbed her pistol off the bed, using it to blow the lock off of the closet, where she found an emergency environmental suit that would protect her from the toxic fumes being vented into the air.

 
“This is what I get for taking some time for myself,” she thought as she turned on the suit’s comm-line and switched it over to an encrypted emergency frequency. Gunfire and screaming comm-chatter filled her ears.

  “This is Takaya online,” Mai yelled over the noise. “Is anyone else able to transmit?”

  “This is Shimizu,” Sakurako responded. “I’m trapped in the level C cafeteria and I...” There was an energy blast.

  “Can you tell me what is going on?”

  “It’s the Onikano. She’s purging everyone on board and tossing them out into space.” There was a harsh metallic shriek.

  “What about the other squads?”

  “It’s calling to them...It’s calling to them so loud I can barely stand it.”

  “Who is calling?”

  “They are coming...”

  “Who? Who is coming?”

  A sharp trill overwhelmed the comm line and Mai winced in pain as she switched it off. Their encrypted line had already been sliced and the signals were being jammed. It wasn’t a slicer, it was the ship itself. Sentient logic engines like the Onikano were not Mai’s area of expertise, but even she could tell that the ship had gone mad. The very walls pulsated with anger.

  Mai ran over to her porthole and looked outside. The structure of the Onikano had bent even further, now curved like a shrimp with long silver tendrils hanging out all along its bottom surface.

  It looked like a Kuldrizi.

  “Could the ship be changing into a Kuldrizi? How is that even possible?”

  Mai blew the lock off of her nightstand and pulled out the emergency communicator, the one Inami always used to wake her up at odd hours of the night to tell her about her latest bizarre idea. It operated on its own special frequency and linked only with its duplicate. With any luck it would still work.

  Mai tapped the runes and prayed as the device attempted to establish a connection. To her delight, the light turned green.

  “Taisa, are you there?”

  “Mai! Why the frak haven’t you been picking up? I called you like 47 times!”

  “I was...taking a bath.”

  “The whole place has gone screwy,” Inami said.

  “I can see that. This may sound crazy, but I think the ship is turning itself into a queen.”

  “I just got attacked by my own washing machine, so I wouldn’t call anything crazy at this point.”

  “I think it might be calling the hive to us. What are we going to do?” Mai asked, trying to control herself.

  “Alright, calm down, Mai. I know this looks bad...”

  Mai waited for Inami to finish.

  “And?”

  “And nothing, it looks bad because it is bad.”

  Mai groaned with frustration.

  “I sent Nori to the forge, but she never checked in and the place is now locked tight. I believe that is the source of this.”

  “We’ll have to get in there,” Mai surmised. “How many Senshi can we round up?”

  “Quite a few, but they’re spread all over the ship. That’s not the problem. The problem is the entrance to the forge. Do we have anything that can break through a nutronite door?

  “Just one,” Mai answered.

  Mai didn’t even try to test the outer door. Instead, she guessed where the piston motors would be and plunged her naginata into the wall alongside the door, satisfied when a rush of hydraulic fluid spilled out onto her.

  Mai jumped out into the hallway and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Mechanical creations crept along the walls, as large as dogs. They looked like miniature Kuldrizi, their red eyes glowing in the yellow mists of the poisonous air. The walls themselves were twisting and warping, given life and energy by some unseen power.

  Mai held the long polearm in front of her in salute and sprinted toward the twisted robots.

  With a horrible artificial screech, three of the insects leapt at her face. She turned sideways and spun her weapon around, once in front of her, slicing one in two and once behind her, bisecting a second. Without looking back, Mai jabbed her blade backward, stabbing the third robot just as it touched the ground.

  With four quick slashes Mai opened up a hole in the wall, revealing a service shaft with ladder rungs. Slinging her naginata on her back, she stepped in and climbed down.

  Three levels down, Mai kicked out a service hatch and jumped into the corridor. Down the hall a wall exploded. Through the spraying rubble and mechanical fluids, she could make out the outline of a raging Kuldrizi robot, much larger than the others.

  As Mai drew her weapon the machine charged recklessly down the hallway, it’s metallic carapace scraping and gouging into the walls.

  A large metal tentacle was raised, twice the thickness of Mai’s shoulders and came down at her with frightening speed.

  Mai dropped to her knees and planted the hilt of her weapon into the ground. The tentacle came down directly on the curved blade, impaling itself then splitting in two, each half falling to one side of Mai, spitting out fluids and bits of shredded metal environmental suit. Mai pulled a grenade off her belt and punched it into the split at the base of the body. She released the firing pin just as the robot reacted to the damage, pulling its wounded tentacle back and withdrawing it within its armored shell as it shrilled and shrieked mechanically.

  Mai leapt forward, dodging a second sweeping blow from another tentacle that flew beneath her feet and ran past it down the hallway. The grenade detonated, shredding the delicate innards of the machine within its armored shell. The robot slumped to the ground, black fluid gushing out from its shell onto the floor.

  Mai reached a blast door and plunged her weapon into it. The metal melted and gave way to the humming blade as she curved it around. A circular piece of the door fell out like a plug and Mai stepped into the confinement center.

  The barriers hummed brightly as Mai approached, but she could see nothing within it. The cell was filled with a white mist, obscuring everything inside. Cautiously, Mai placed her face against the surface of the barrier and peered in. All she could make out were pieces of paper scattered all over the floor, as if dozens of books had been shredded and tossed around.

  Mai took a couple of steps sideways, trying to get a better look. Besides the paper all she could see inside was white fog. Suddenly bright red eyes opened directly in front of her. Mai let out a start and stepped backwards. With all the mist she didn’t realize she had been looking right at her.

  There was a deep chuckle and the eyes rotated over and dropped. It was then that Mai realized that Nariko had been hanging upside down.

  Nariko stepped forward, fanning out her massive white wings. The seal that ran all over her body pulsed with her heartbeat.

  Nariko, looked at her hungrily. “You’ve come to let me out, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. How did you know that?”

  Nariko inhaled deeply with her eyes closed. “I can smell it on you. But, you’re afraid.”

  “Of course I’m afraid. Look at you. You’re a hideous seven foot tall monster with wings and a tail.”

  “Hideous?” Nariko asked, looking sincerely insulted.

  “Sorry,” Mai said scratching her hand. “Being around Inami so long has left me a little acerbic. I don’t say things as delicately as I should sometimes.”

  “I’m not hideous,” Nariko cooed, wagging her tail back and forth like a puppy. “In fact, I think my tail is kind of cute.”

  “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. We have a problem.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “It’s serious, but it’s not hopeless...” Mai began

  “Mmm, I disagree,” Nariko said, running her fingers through her great mane of white hair. “It looks to me like it’s hopeless, but it’s not serious.”

  “Of course it’s serious; the ship is out of control. If we don’t do something everyone in the Seventh Division will be lost.”

  “Why should I care?” Nariko asked, her red eyes on fire.

  “Becau
se they are your friends.”

  Nariko laughed and twisted around, pacing back and forth on all fours like a predator. “Let me ask you something, then. If they are my friends, then why am I in here?”

  “Because they’re afraid that you might kill them as soon as the barrier comes down.”

  Nariko leapt forward, pressing her face against the barrier, baring her needle-like teeth. “And how do you know I won’t?”

  Mai held her ground. “I don’t.”

  “Boy, you are acerbic, aren’t you?” Nariko said flirtatiously.

  “Please, will you help them?”

  “I’m tired of friends that send me on suicide missions and do nothing as the man I love gets killed.”

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Says who? Your Luminarch? I’m tired of serving a god who offers me nothing in return.”

  “Fine, then do it for yourself. I’ll make you a deal.”

  “And what can you offer?” Nariko said, becoming interested.

  “Well, I can get you out of this cell for one.”

  Nariko laughed and rolled around on the floor, her wings wrapping around her like a cape.

  “You really are the worst at making deals. The second you let down the barrier you’ve expended all your leverage. I could just take off and you’d be left empty-handed. Oh, it’s no wonder the Seventh is always getting taken advantage of. It’s like that time you sold all those new power cables to Heinreich Verräter.”

  “Actually, we knew he would betray us,” Mai defended. “We wanted him to.”

  Nariko stopped rolling. “Then why did you sell it to him?”

  The ship rocked from side to side from a distant explosion. Lights flickered.

  “Look, I am out of time,” Mai said, pulling a silver ring off of her finger and slamming it against the barrier. “Do you see this?”

  Nariko looked up at the ring, with the crest of the Amano family.

  “You once offered me this ring because you felt you could trust me. Well, Nariko, if this Hyaki means anything to you then please help us. You’re the only one who can do it.”