She considered staying put, but there wasn’t much point. Acts of rebellion only went so far, and she had already displayed her disdain for the man to an adequate degree. She planted herself in the chair and looked at his unremarkable face.
He sat next to her, set the case on his lap and opened it so they could both see the contents. Three objects were embedded in a tight black spongy material that, like so many other materials in this world, Saeliko didn’t recognize. Nor did she comprehend the objects.
Mr. Toad pulled out the first one, a shiny flat device the size of a small block of Maelian summer cheese. The top surface lit up in the man’s hand as if by magic, displaying strings of tiny letters and numbers. Two long cords extended out either side of the device and ended in flat, delicate-looking metal apparatuses.
“I need to attach these to the back of your neck,” he told her, his voice tinged with flecks of apology. Saeliko glanced at Eliska, who nodded and said, “It’s okay; he already did the three of us while you were sleeping.”
The Saffisheen turned her back to the Sage man, lifted her untied hair and exposed the nape of her neck. She heard him fiddle with the cords, and a moment later she felt the cool touch of the metal bits on her skin. They stuck to her neck like suction cups, which she thought odd.
“This will just take a minute.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m re-coding your decoder.” She had no idea what that meant, but after a few seconds of silence, he amended his statement. “I’m giving the implant in your neck some new instructions. I think Dr. Tannishoy already explained to you that the decoders have tracking systems built in. Zodo can locate you almost anywhere on the planet. Obviously, that’s not a good thing for us right now. Earlier, when you left ARCOB, my employers used their technical skills to break into Zodo’s surveillance systems, and we created a ghost signal for the Kye-shiv you traveled on, making it look like it was flying directly to the Zodo science facility rather than to its actual rendezvous point. We had to do the same thing for your decoders to make it appear that you were safely aboard the ghost signal.
“However, the Zodo personnel at the science facility have by now realized that the Kye-shiv didn’t arrive, a mystery that will be solved when ARCOB informs them that the Kye-shiv returned to base with two pilots reporting a hijacking. There’s no longer any point in us creating ghost signals, so the next step for us is to cut the signal off completely.”
“Zodo won’t be able to track me anymore?” she asked Eliska.
The doctor nodded. “That’s right.”
“There,” Mr. Toad said with satisfaction. “You’re off the grid. Ahhh, sorry, that’s an expression we use. It means that you’re invisible again.” He pulled the metal components off her neck.
Saeliko let her hair drop and returned her attention to the case. The device was back in its bed of foam, and Mr. Toad was now pulling out a small clear plastic case. He opened it, careful not to pop it open too quickly and drop its contents. Inside was a tiny plastic syringe with a silver liquid inside, as well as a square piece of paper with tiny beige dots on its surface.
“This is going to be very weird for you, I’m afraid.” He plucked out the syringe first and took the protective cap off the pointy end. “There’s some very advanced technology inside here,” he told her. “It’s something we call nano-tech, which is a fancy way of saying that right here in this liquid, there are some machines that are so small, they’re invisible to the human eye. With your permission, I’m going to very carefully squirt it into your right ear.” He paused, and Saeliko could see he was trying to gauge her response.
“Eliska?”
“It’s fine,” the doctor confirmed. “It’ll feel strange for twenty or thirty seconds, but it’s totally harmless.”
“And very useful,” Mr. Toad added. “The nano-tech will let us communicate with you when you’re off the Cloudrunner. You’ll be able to hear our voices in your ear. We’ll feed you directions and give you updates on the location of your friends and possible enemy combatants.”
“Oh, good, more voices in my head.”
Mr. Toad chuckled. “I promise we’ll keep it to a minimum.” He then lifted the syringe and raised his eyebrows hopefully.
Saeliko considered the liquid trapped in plastic. She was out of her element here. As dangerous as life under a red banner in the Sollian Sea had been, at least she had understood where the danger might come from. On this new world, the world they called Okin, danger could come in new forms that she didn’t have the capacity to comprehend. Nano-tech? On Erain, she would have rolled her eyes and dismissed the idea as the drivel of a sailor suffering a sun stroke. Here, she had to admit that it might be true. Then again, maybe they were going to pour poison in her ear. How was she to know?
But why in the Five would they have dragged her out of the brig on ARCOB, flown her for hours on end in two different flying machines and prepped her for a rescue mission only to jam liquid death in her right ear?
Oh, why not? she muttered to herself and once more held her hair back and out of the way.
“Like I said, this is going to be weird. You’re most likely going to want to try to shake it out as soon as I squirt it in. Try to resist that urge. You have to stay still until the nano-tech does its thing.”
Saeliko didn’t respond, which Mr. Toad was becoming accustomed to. He reached for her ear with his left hand and gently tugged her earlobe downward to widen her ear cavity and make more room for the syringe in his right hand. “Here goes,” he said just loud enough for her to hear.
She almost whipped her head back in surprise at the sensation. The substance was ice cold, and even worse, it fizzed and crackled in her ear like a living thing. Her muscles in her arms twitched; the base instincts in her brain were commanding her hands to reach up and dig the stuff out with her fingers.
The repulsive feeling began to subside. The liquid warmed and gradually dissipated, and the writhing dulled to a few brief pops and kicks before disappearing altogether. After that, there was nothing.
“These are next,” Mr. Toad told her. He was holding the paper square peppered with beige dots. Once he was satisfied that he had her full attention again, he launched into another explanation. “Voice pods. I’m going to stick one of these little guys on each side of your neck, right here and here.” He pointed to his own neck to demonstrate. “They’ll allow you to talk to us while you’re out there.”
Again, he could have just said he was going to do a two-step voodoo dance and summon a magic three-legged swamp monster to cast a magic spell on her for all the good it would have done.
She acquiesced and let him put the dots on her neck. They pinched when he attached them, though that could have been due to the previous bruising courtesy of Dallas.
That done, the man replaced the paper in the plastic case and returned it to the briefcase before pulling out the third and final object. This one was tubular and very small, about the same size as the strike plate on a flintlock pistol. On one circular end, there was a red button. He handed it over to Saeliko.
“You need to use this when you find your two friends. It’s what we call a decoder-killer. You have to be within 10 meters of them when you press the button. When you do press it, you need to keep holding it. You’ll see a series of green lights appear up the side of the device starting from the bottom and moving toward the button. It should take five or six seconds for all the lights to appear. After that, they’ll turn red all at once. When that happens, you’ll know it worked. Now, this device is coded specifically for Mr. Kettle and Ms. Yoon, and it’s actually a clever bit of technology. It tricks their decoders into reporting death signals back to Zodo Corp, so the Zodo surveillance guys who are monitoring the signals will think that your friends have just been killed.”
Saeliko examined the cylinder in her hand and contented herself with the fact that at least this one wasn’t being jabbed into her or poured in her ear. She pocketed it.
“Now we better get you armed up,” Mr. Toad said. “As certain as I am that you could take down a small army with a butter knife and a hairpin, we don’t need to make things more difficult than they have to be, do we?”
Her curiosity peaked. She had only recently been granted freedom from wrist restraints. Now it appeared Mr. Toad was prepared to give her a weapon. She noted that Dallas was looking at her, though she wasn’t sure what the soldier was thinking.
Mr. Toad spoke while he walked toward the cockpit. “We’ll give you a gun, of course, but I have a surprise for you.” He reached down and lifted the lid of a foot locker at the base of the stubby metal divide that separated the passenger hold from the pilot’s chair. “I hope you like it.” His hands pulled out a bundle of dark grey cloth that was wrapped around something long and slender.
Mr. Toad unwound the cloth and tossed it back in the foot locker. Then he walked forward and presented Saeliko with a scimitar sheathed in a dark green canvas scabbard with black straps. A set of longer pale grey straps were attached to the sheath to allow it to be strapped to the wearer’s back.
Saeliko stood up, wrapped her right hand around the leather-bound hilt and took the scimitar out of Mr. Toad’s hands. She then slid the blade out of the sheath and studied the clean, polished blade. After a moment, she twisted and turned the scimitar in her hand, feeling the weight and balance of the weapon.
“I hope it’s suitable,” Mr. Toad said. “The Zodo report on your activities in the Sollian said you preferred a scimitar over a cutlass. We had our R&D team study all of our available information on Maelian weaponry so we could get the specifications as close to the original as possible.”
It was lighter than her last blade, but the length was about the same. The steel was well forged with a subtle ridgeline running up the center, and the curve was elegant but effective, gentle at first and more severe near the tip. The more she analyzed the details, the more impressed she became.
“Do you like it?” Mr. Toad asked, still searching for feedback.
Saeliko turned to look at Eliska. It’s perfect, she thought. “It’ll do,” she said.
2.8 KETTLE
Kettle leaned back in the plastic beach chair and basked in endless, soul-lifting, skin-tingling, glorious sunshine. He had a cold beer in his right hand. Beside him on the left, on top of a cooler, a juicy cheeseburger and a basket of french fries waited for him on a wide plate. In front of him, the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean gently lapped up against the island’s coastline.
This was Diego Garcia at its finest. Countless miles from civilization, a blip of land surrounded by nothing but empty ocean, tropical resort weather, lots of beer and other necessities of life, and the comfort of knowing that time moved at a different pace. Let the fat cats on Wall Street make buckets full of money each and every day while they screamed and yelled at each other from cubicles and cramped offices. Let them sit in their expensive luxury cars while they tried to navigate bumper-to-bumper New York traffic. Kettle knew that until those idiots spent lengthy amounts of time in a place like DG, they didn’t understand what true wealth was.
Kettle fought off the urge to descend into siesta mode and tilted his gaze to the right. Two figures were strolling through the sand at a pace that could only be described as unhurried. They were chatting, laughing and gradually moving towards him. Jay, the taller of the two, wore his usual warm grin. The (Quebecois) Frenchman radiated kindness and amiability. That’s just who he was. Jay was naturally magnanimous; he couldn’t help putting others before himself. Spend an hour with Jay, and you’d come away feeling better about life in general.
Walking on Jay’s left, Haley let loose a long, lighthearted giggle. This was Haley before the doomed flight to the Sollian. This was Haley the innocent ornithologist, lured to DG by a generous academic grant. Sunlight filtered through her bangs to light up portions of her round face and highlight the dimples at the corners of her mouth. Her navy polo shirt didn’t quite conceal the chubbiness around her midsection, and her movements through the sand betrayed a slight awkwardness that testified to life navigating the concrete of urban Seoul rather than sand-covered paradises. But there was an honesty in the way she moved. She wasn’t trying to conceal her background or pretend to be anyone other than who she was. This made her appealing to Kettle.
He took a long pull of beer and dwelled on how good the liquid felt as it slid down his throat. That done, he reached out languidly to grab a pair of french fries.
This is perfect, he concluded. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
These thoughts were perforated by the knowledge that he was, in fact, not on Diego Garcia enjoying a beer and good friends, nor was he anywhere else on Earth for that matter. He knew full well that he was on Okin running for his life. Nevertheless, after so many grueling hours on the move, and after the relentless pulverizing of the muscles in his legs into a gelatinous mush, he was content to allow his brain to continue taking comfort in the pleasures of an idyllic daydream.
It’s not like he needed to concentrate on the present anyway. Dawn was just beginning to light up the sky around them, making it easier to navigate over the occasional roots and sharp rocks on the trail. It was only a sliver of brainpower that had to be devoted to keeping his body moving forward, following in Vasper’s footsteps as he had been for hours. And it was only another small sliver that had to be devoted to making sure that the sounds of Haley’s footsteps were right behind him.
Other than that, he stopped caring about everything else going on around him. He was too exhausted to care. He was half certain that without the pleasant daydream putting on a show in his head, he would have collapsed in agony somewhere on the trail behind them. He was beyond exhausted.
From time to time, Kettle pushed pause on his DG scenario and felt a wave of pity for Vasper. Unlike his two wards, the Zodo sergeant did have to pay full attention to his surroundings. His orienteering skills were going to make or break their last-ditch effort to reach the Zero site before capture. Kettle admired the man; few humans could have come so far and still remained alert.
It was during one of these moments of empathy that gunfire sprayed into the rocks and trees on the left side of the trail, snapping Kettle into full alertness and sending him crashing into a clump of dense shrubbery beside the trail. A half-second later, he heard Haley fall behind him and grunt as the wind punched out of her lungs.
Kettle twisted his torso around to look at her, fearing that she had been shot, but his jolt of panic subsided when he saw her look back with her dark brown eyes and nod, indicating that she was all in one piece.
Their eyes broke contact, and they both scanned the landscape to the right of the path to see where the gunfire had come from. A wide gulch separated the section of trail they stood on from a rising rocky hillside speckled with stunted trees and mottled foliage. It took all of two seconds to spot two, three and then four figures squatting amidst a group of boulders, rifles lifted to their shoulders glinting in the early morning light.
Shit! His mind raced in a frantic effort to determine the best course of action to take. They were sitting ducks where they were, but there was nowhere obvious to run to and no large trees to take cover behind. God dammit! Not knowing what else to do, he pulled out his pistol.
Vasper had unslung his own rifle and was aiming it across the gulch. The sergeant got off two quick shots before Kettle heard a loud, aspirated thwok erupt from the Yenshian side, which sounded all at once familiar and fear-inducing.
In the next panic-fractured moment, Kettle’s brain registered three consecutive thoughts. First, the reason the thwok sounded familiar was because it was nearly identical to the sound Radovan’s rifles made on the Skag when they fired grenades, which gave Kettle a pretty good idea as to what was about to happen next. Second, if they were about to be hit by an explosive blast, there was nowhere to take shelter. Hiding behind a shrub was going to do bugger all. This led to the third and decisive thought. Starting from his
prone position in the dirt, Kettle clambered laterally as fast as his limbs could coordinate themselves and launched himself on top of Haley. He noted that she had also been trying to lift herself into a running position, but he got to her before she could get her legs underneath her and pushed her back down onto the ground, doing his best to make sure that her face and torso were covered.
The air all around them erupted in a sudden, explosive crack! It was as if lightning had struck the hill not ten feet from where they stood. And even with his eyes closed shut, he sensed a blinding white flash through his eyelids. This was followed by a blast wave that felt a lot like being hit in the back with a broad sheet of plywood, smacking him further into Haley’s squished body.
Kettle opened his eyes and took stock. He was alive and breathing, two facts that were frankly a little surprising. But he couldn’t hear a damn thing other than a loud ringing sound that reverberated across his eardrums.
He pushed himself up so that his head and chest lifted off of Haley, who was just opening her own eyes. Kettle noticed a small splotch of blood on her cheeks, and then another appeared. He realized it was coming from his nose, dripping down onto her face.
Her lips moved. She was saying something, but Kettle didn’t know what. She pushed against him, trying to free herself from his sheltering pose
Loud reports penetrated the ringing sensation in his ears, which his brain soon interpreted for him as more gunshots. They were still in mortal danger. Kettle marked it down as a minor miracle that they hadn’t already been mowed down by bullets.
Fuck this! He rolled over and pointed his gun in the general direction of where the grenade had come from, only to realize that the weapon wasn’t in his hand anymore. He must have dropped it when the grenade went off.
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