Another flash of blue light lashed out, would have hit him had not Constantine jerked him out of the way.
Winter – Shipwreck Bay, The Library
Gotobed, with an assist from Lord Brigand, pulled Keeler across the ledge. Tyronius helped up Ziang.
“You old fool,” he said.
“You knew of this place,” Ziang said angrily. He whipped out his sword. “I should cut you to pieces, feed your meat to the sea and fertilize my figs with the dust of your bones!” Brigand waved him down. “Oh, Ziang, do blow it out your manhole. Do you really think any secrets survive thousands of years on a planet where gossip is currency.”
“Where did you come from?” Keeler asked.
“Tyronius heard you were coming here, and insisted we leave immediately. We took a rocket-sled to the village over there,” Gotobed jerked her head toward the shoreline. “Scariest thing I’ve ever been in, except for love. When we got to the village, they wanted us to solve a challenging series of puzzles, each one more diabolical than the next,” Gotobed went on to explain. “We humored them for a while. Then, we figured, what the Hell, let’s just go. If they try to stop us, we’ll just shoot them. And here we are.”
“You’re going to share our secrets with outsiders,” said Brigand, angrily to Ziang. “No one gives you that right.”
“Okay, that’s enough small talk,” Keeler said, his speech was excited, jittery. “Bring on that library.” Gotobed had never seen Keeler like this, excited and aroused like a dog at a bacon festival. “Maybe, I should scan for lifeforms,” Gotobed offered.
“Okay, just scan quickly,” Keeler twittered. “Where do you keep the stash?”
“Most of the Galleries are in the mid-levels.” Ziang said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Brigand said, raising a leather-clad arm. “Are we so sure we want the Outsiders to know these secrets. These have been kept secret for a reason.”
“It is their legacy,” Ziang protested. “It is part of their history, and they have every right to it.”
“I have to agree,” said Tyronius. “There are things that you are not going to want to see in there, things you don’t want to know. But it is the truth of your human heritage, and you should know it.”
“There are terrible secrets among them,” Brigand said. “Things better left forgotten and buried.”
“How would you know?” Ziang demanded. “You never took an interest before.” Brigand answered by scowling at him from beneath his mask. Gotobed was standing apart, scanning the interior of the colony pod with her tracker. “I’m detecting life forms?”
“Head-biters?” Keeler asked.
She shook her head. “Human.”
“I thought the library was uninhabited,” Keeler said.
“The seven visit occasionally, but they are all accounted for.”
“Well, somebody’s in there, I’m detecting two lifeforms 210 meters above us… no, wait… 205
meters… 202… 198…192…” She shook the tracker. “They seem to be falling.” Winter – The Library
Redfire landed on top of Mercuria, slamming her against another steel deck and knocking the wind out of her. He rolled off of her as she lay gasping, blood beginning to trickle from the side of her mouth.
He pulled himself up by a handhold found in the metal nearby. He was shaking, but didn’t feel any serious damage. His mind issued an imperative. “Get away from her. Run!” He obeyed, stumbling at first, then breaking into a run. He could feel a cold breeze on his face, and the smell of the sea over the stench of very old metal and oil.
He ran toward it.
Cardinal
Alkema was wrong. The damage looked at least as bad from the outside as it had seemed from the inside.
There was a huge gouge on the port side of the forward section, and several more gouges along the port wingblade… as though a giant monster had clawed the ship. The port Accipiter was a mangled ruin.
Trajan Lear looked at this and screamed. “Arrrrrrrrrgh!”
Which was probably not a great thing to do while wearing a space helmet.
Trajan’s head dropped and he cradled it in his helmet. He could not scream again. He could not cry. He really wanted to, but he had reached that nadir at which none of the body’s physical outlets would balance his emotions of horror and remorse. Involuntarily, he fell to his knees, impacting in the powdery red dust of Cardinal’s surface.
Alkema caught him on the way down. “Trajan, are you okay? Speak to me?” Trajan said nothing.
“Don’t worry about the ship. Just tell them I did it,” Alkema offered.
Trajan shook his head. The flight recorder would show who was in command, anyway. However, he found he just wanted to take whatever punishment he had coming. “Nay, nay, I’ll tell him. We’ll talk about it. It will be all right. I can probably forget Flight Core, but it will be all right.” Alkema clapped his shoulder. He feared for whatever Trajan was going to be in for, and yet somehow felt that the kid was going to be all right.
Just as he might have planned it.
Pieta was taking in the landscape. Red on Red as far as the eye could see, a crimson desert ringed by wine-colored mountains as tall, as thin, as sharp as needles and all of it washed in bloody red sunshine.
The valley itself cut down in steps and its grounds were littered with strangely shaped rocks.
“Surreal,” said Alkema. Then, he began walking toward Basil, knowing the others would follow him.
“How could two big planets share such a close orbit with smashing into each other?” Pieta asked.
“There must be some gravitational effect or something that cancels out the attraction of two big objects for one another. It’s the same principle that lets Lear, Keeler, and Redfire all fit their egos onto the Command Deck at the same time.” He gasped sharply. “Did I say that over an open channel?”
“You did,” Pieta affirmed.
“Sorry, Traj.”
Trajan grunted. He knew what his mother was like, and was aware of what people thought of her.
They saw Max Jordan before they reached his ship. He was sitting on a rock, about a hundred meters from where Basil had set down. His visor was set for 100% opacity, so his face could not be seen, but instead reflected the red sky and stars. As they got closer, something looked wrong about him. There was something missing from his suit.
Alkema figured it out first. “He’s not wearing a rebreather pack.” Without the air-recyclers, the suits contained only about an hour’s worth of breathable air. How long had he been out already?
The answer, when they saw how much oxygen was remaining on his wrist readout, was ninety-one minutes. He stood when they approached, and began backing away from them, toward the edge of the cliff near which he had landed. “Don’t rescue me!” He insisted.
Alkema held out an arm to halt the others. “Okay, Max. We just came to see what was bothering you.
We were very worried. Your mother is worried, too.”
“Max, why don’t we get back and the ship and just… talk about things,” Pieta said.
“I’m sorry you came here,” Max told them. “I just wanted to be by myself.”
“Why, Max?” Alkema asked.
“I don’t deserve to live.”
“Max,” Alkema said in his best, best friend voice. “This is us, okay. We know some nasty man on the planet wanted to get into your flight suit, but that’s because he is a piece of human debris, not you.”
“He’s dead,” Max said. “It doesn’t matter.” He raised one foot over the ledge.
“Max!” Alkema shouted.
“Leave me alone,” Max said. “I can’t expect.”
“Max,” Alkema was trying to sound soothing. “Come on, get back in the ship.”
“Hey, you tomhead,” came a voice over the commlink. It was Trajan. “I did not steal a ship, throw away my chance at Flight Core, and smash land on this planet just to hear you cry about being molested again. Get the Phunk over it!”
“Trajan!” Alkema and Pieta said at once.
“I’m sorry Max had a tough life!” Trajan screamed back. “I’m sorry some old pervert tried to grab him, but nothing can be this bad! It can’t be worth killing yourself over! By Vesta’s Grace, Max, you think you’re life is ruined because some old pervert makes a grab at you? What about me? I’m a terrible pilot.
My mom is always screwing up my life, and nobody likes me. Matthew’s going to marry Lt. Change. Lt.
Alkema’s going to marry Pieta, and I’m going to be by myself… probably for the rest of my life, but everybody loves you, you stink-hog. If you’re life isn’t worth living, what does that say about mine? Well, you got everybody’s attention, now. So just tell me, what makes a guy like you, who has everything, want to run off and die, because I really want to know.”
There was silence, as four people in space suits stared at each other against the grotesque backdrop of sand-blasted rocks and absurdly pointed mountain ranges.
“Forget all of you!” Trajan said. “I’m going back to what’s left of my ship.” He turned.
Before Trajan had begun walking, Max began speaking. “It happened about a year before Pegasus came back to rescue us,” he said, in a shaking and uncertain voice. “We, my mother, me, and some other women, we were… we had gone into a city to get supplies. We thought it was safe, or they wouldn’t have brought me, but we needed some medicines very badly.
“I was at the supply point, with Mother Jordan, getting medicine using fake authority. She told me to stay with her, but there was a big shout, and people said the Swords were coming. I wanted to see them because I knew they were the enemy. I think I might have even wanted to do something, like fight them.
So, I snuck away, just a little bit away. I just wanted to see them.
“Before I got there, some men saw me. They grabbed me and took me away. They weren’t swords, they were… wands. They were looking for kids, but I was the only one they found, and they wanted to take me to the Echelon Director.
“The Echelon Director was an Aurelian named Equelor. They brought me to him. He lived in this big, white house behind walls and guards. When I walked through the gates, I saw that there were other children there. I wondered if I would get to play with them later, but they weren’t playing.
“They took me to him, his guards did. And one of them brought one of those things… one of those things the Aurelians stick in your head to drink your brain chemicals. But he didn’t want to just kill me, and suck the juice out of my brain. He …” Max’s agony was palpable. There were details here that he just couldn’t bring himself to go into. “You guys… just go. Take the ship back to my mom, and tell her I’m sorry.”
“Max…” Alkema began, and tried to move closer.
“Stop!” Max called at him, and took another step closer to the edge. “Take another step and I’ll jump.
I’ll open my helmet and I’ll jump.”
“Easy guy,” Alkema repeated. “We just want to know.”
Beneath the faceless helmet, some sort of wretched anguish was happening, but all they could sense of it was in the chokes and cries of his tormented voice.
“He took me into his sleep chamber with him,” Max said. “There was another boy there. He was asleep. He was my age, a little older. He had curly dark hair. He was sleeping, and he looked really happy.
And the Aurelian woke him up and said, ‘I don’t need you any more.’ And he stuck a needle into his head and he sucked out his brain juices.
“And then he turned to me, and he said, ‘The longer you keep me happy, the longer you can live.’” Alkema felt a sudden weight on his shoulder, and realized Pieta was leaning on him. He tried to give her comfort, hard to do through nine layers of space gear.
“Okay,” Alkema said. “I get it. An Aurelian did something really really terrible to you, and that guy Manchester, he also tried to do something terrible to you, and you’re really, really… angry about it, but it’s not you, Max. It’s not you who deserves to suffer for it, it’s them.” Max said something that was incoherent through his sobbing. Alkema had the impression it was something about he wished Equelor had just sucked out his brains and killed him on the spot.
Alkema looked at Max’s wrist. Less than three minutes of oxygen remained. “Max, let’s talk about this inside the ship.”
“You don’t understand!” Max shouted, loudly, accelerating his oxygen depletion. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Hey, Max, easy guy. You’re alive. The Aurelians tried to kill you, but you’re alive. You’re alive and you’re free. You beat him.”
“You don’t understand!” Max screamed again. “I was in his house for sixty days, and every night he
… the Aurelian… he forced me… he … it hurt so much.
“Then, one night, we were alone. And he was touching me all over, like he always did, but it was different. He was saying to me that I wasn’t… I wasn’t just … He said I could be like them. He thought I could be one of his Wands. And he stroked my hair, and he sang to me. And all the time, I wondered if he was going to kill me, or if he … if he saw that inside, I was terrible like he was… and that was why he wanted to make me like him.
“And while he did that to me, there was a flash of light… like lightning… like thousands and thousands of lightnings hitting the same spot at once, and the thunder knocked me down. I couldn’t hear, and I couldn’t see, but all around me, I could sense people running and screaming. Somebody grabbed me, pulled me away.
“I woke up back in one of our camps. I could see again, but my ears rang for days. I could not hear anything. My father, Tobias, had found out where I was. He had led the raid to save me. They killed Equelor, most of his men, and they destroyed the whole compound. They burned his house to the ground.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Tobias lost six of his men just to save me.”
“Max,” Alkema said softly. “I can’t imagine how this feels for you, but … but those men who died to save you… do you think they did it just so you could come back to this ugly red planet… and die.” At that point, his oxygen meter hit 0:00:00. He still had enough air in his helmet to go on, a few more breaths, gasp out a few more words. “They… are… Aurelian. They… can … never… stop.” With that, his body fell limply to the ground, kicking up a puff of lavender dust. There was no sound.
There was no alarm. Alkema reached over to Pieta and quickly decoupled her spare oxygen tank. In seconds, he had it clipped to Max’s suit.
“Let’s get him into the ship,” Alkema said, quietly.
Pegasus – The Hatcheries
Hunter and Constantine skirted around in back of a Nemesis missile, taking shelter from a barrage of fire from the intruder. Constantine’s mind raced. He reviewed the Intruder Alert protocols for the ship’s weapons areas. First, the area should decompress, depriving the intruder of oxygen and heat. The lights should fail, putting the area into complete darkness. Loud noise would activate to deafen the intruder, and then, in the event the intruder was wearing a rebreather, lights, and ear-guards, ‘stun-pops’ tiny automated generators would deploy, filling the area with a strong electromagnetic field that disrupted nervous functions, leaving the intruder lying on the ground, twitching and soiled.
Constantine had a hunch all but one of these defenses had been disabled. The air was getting thin, however. “Hunter, pay attention. Ignore the shooting, just get with me to a space gear locker, fast. He’s going to blow the hatch.”
“How do you know?”
The speech was punctuated by four sharp blasts from the intruder’s weapon. Constantine ripped the locker open. “Hurry…”
“Why?”
“Because an Aurelian won’t commit suicide. He picked this hatchery because it was the closest one with escape pods in it. Believe me, he wants to be as far from the ship as possible when the Nemesis goes up.”
“Krishna, Constantine, I almost think you might care.”
“I don’t th
ink you’ll be much use stopping him with your skin boiled off and your lungs on the outside of your body.” Constantine was squeezing into his gear. These were emergency suits, just enough to keep you alive for a little while when the chamber depressurized. This would allow you to get out of the chamber, or into an escape pod if necessary.
The lance got off several more blasts. Constantine made some mental calculations, and determined that the intruder was just behind the missile on the launch platform. Hm, too bad he couldn’t initiate a launch cycle. He could have put intruder and missile outside the ship in .02 seconds.
On the bulkhead opposite, behind the intruder, were three emergency escape pods. If only he had a weapon. He quickly scanned the dock behind him to no avail. The maintenance crew was very picky about not leaving loose tools laying around antimatter missiles. Also, without his ID Sliver, none of the control consoles would activate. No hope of opening the hatch and blowing the Intruder out into space.
This, Constantine reflected, must be why the Notorium made you spend so many years working out the logic puzzles where five people live in five habitats with five wives and which one is married to Maxia and has a red couch and all that nonsense. Although none of that seemed useful in resolving the current dillemma.
Hunter finished putting on his space gear. “Now what?” he said, as two more wild blasts from the lance burst above and to the side of their hiding place.
“Can you move out from behind the missile and flank her while I keep her distracted?”
“That’s it?” Hunter said. “That’s your brilliant plan? You distract her while I try to tackle her from the side. That’s your brilliant plan?”
Constantine grunted, and began undoing the latches on his heavy black Centurion boots.
“Don’t you at least have something heavy to hit him in the head with?”
“I don’t have much left, but what I have, I’m going to need. When you get to the back of this missile, take a good long look at the Intruder. Memorize exactly where he is.”
“What are you going to do?”
Hunter looked him right in the eye. “I’m going to throw my boots at him.”
Winter Page 33