Tesla Evolution Box Set

by Mark Lingane

  “I’ve never seen a bear with an arm that big. Aren’t bears furry, not scaly?”

  “Parker, return to the Academy,” Nikola said. His voice barely carried to his colonel. “You, sir, are allowed to go with him and be our guest.”

  “Where are you going?” Parker replied.

  “I’m going to get the boy back.” With that, Nikola leaped onto the back of his horse and charged into the haze.

  Parker turned to the man and smiled.

  “So, what was your name?”

  “Prevaricator. Prevaricator Oakley. Negotiator and rapscallion, at your disposal.”

  Isaac was sitting on his bed reading a letter when Sebastian flopped on his own bed. He groaned. Isaac was engrossed in his letter and paid no attention. Sebastian groaned louder. Still no attention was forthcoming. He threw his pillow at Isaac, who finally noticed.

  “Is everything okay?” Isaac said.

  “Oh, it’s this thinking I’ve had to do. It’s so tiring.”

  Isaac returned to his letter. “I thought you liked that kind of stuff.”

  Sebastian gave up trying to get sympathy. “Who’s the letter from?”

  “It’s from home. I’ve only heard from my mother once since I got here, even though I’ve been writing every week.” Isaac sighed and lay back on his bed. “No one seems to write at all back home. I hope it’s because they’re too busy.”

  Another of the boys wandered between the beds, throwing red envelopes on each one.

  “It’s an official letter for teslas,” explained Isaac, as Sebastian gave him a quizzical look. “They usually hand these out at the end of the semester, with a bill for services and food. But it’s a bit early for all that.”

  Isaac ripped open his envelope, extracted a small card with gold edging, and wordlessly mouthed the contents.

  “What’s it say?”

  “A dinner’s being held to ‘celebrate the students’ excellent work,’ and there’ll be a special announcement at the end of the semester. How dull. That’ll mean we have to use the right knife and fork. And just to make us feel really special, we’re allowed to bring a guest. As if we know anyone here.”

  “I have a friend,” Sebastian said. “I don’t know if she’ll come, though. She’s not into getting along.”

  “You’re not going to believe this. No Bearing is playing.”

  “That’s it, she definitely won’t come.”

  “Looks like they’re going to a lot of effort.” Isaac threw the invitation under his bed and lay back with his hands behind his head. He looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I wonder why.”

  19

  SEBASTIAN AND MELANIE were sitting in their usual place above Oliver’s quarters. The terrace with its magnificent view over the distant hills and the boiling sun crawling down behind them rarely failed to impress, but at the moment it was failing to impress Melanie. She was lying flat on her back, looking up at the sky and shouting in agony. And occasionally swearing.

  “Can’t you say no?” Sebastian said.

  She swore at him.

  “Oh, look over there at those fruit bats taking off. There must be thousands of them.”

  “I can’t move,” Melanie shouted.

  “It’s majestic the way they soar into the air, twirling together. It’s like a tornado of black, leathery death.”

  “I can’t move,” Melanie shouted, again. She grimaced as her muscles throbbed.

  He threw a stone into the street below and watched it arc away until it bounced on the ground and was lost to his sight.

  “I can’t move,” Melanie shouted. She whimpered as she tried to bend her leg. Then swore again.

  She struggled up, inching her way forward on her elbows. Melanie flailed until Sebastian reached out for her and pulled her into a sitting position. She grimaced all the way.

  “Every inch of me hurts. Even the places I never knew had muscles hurt.”

  “You wait until tomorrow. First day of the harvest season was always like that.”

  “You know what I said yesterday about looking forward to the sun rising on a new day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m feeling less optimistic. Wake me in a couple of months.”

  “There’s a dinner at the tesla school at the end of the semester. I was just wondering if … if you’re not busy … if you wanted to be my guest.”

  She groaned. “I thought I’d be beyond school dances by now.”

  “No Bearing will be there.”

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “I guess it has been awhile. I doubt they’ll recognize me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Last time they came through New Toowoomba, Candice, one of my gang, managed to get into their changing rooms for a ‘special’ meeting. I was worried. It was a bit unpleasant. Some things were broken. And I was banned from ever coming within fifty feet of them. Ever.”

  “What did you do?”

  She sighed. “I might have punched them, broken some of the band’s musical instruments, nothing much. But it was totally their fault.”

  “I understand. It’s probably for the best that we don’t go. To tell the truth, I wasn’t really looking forward to it anyway.”

  She sat there in quiet contemplation as the day’s dying rays reflected off her eyes, then looked up at Sebastian. “One thing you need to learn, one thing I thought you’d have noticed by now, is that no one tells me what to do.” She thought back to her recent training with Thrown. “Unless it involves actual death. Damn it, I shall go to the ball. Dust off those dancing shoes, boy.”

  “You’d better make yours running shoes.”

  They both laughed.

  “I think I’ll head back to the dorm for the night,” Sebastian said. “My head’s spinning with what I learned today.”

  “I think I need some help getting up. And you might have to help me to my room.”

  “Isn’t it a bit early for you?”

  “If I have to do this training again tomorrow I need all the sleep I can get.”

  “Where is she? She’s even later than yesterday,” Thrown shouted. He checked his watch. “Bernhardt, go fetch her.”

  As he waited, he watched the sun rise above the city. The clouds were still on the horizon, giving them until early afternoon before the rains hit.

  Bernhardt reappeared fifteen minutes later with a drooping Melanie over his shoulder. “I had to carry her here,” he rumbled.

  “I can’t move. My legs won’t bend,” she shouted.

  Bernhardt dropped her and she rolled onto her back with her arms and legs out in a star, grimacing at the pain.

  “You should’ve had a bath like I told you,” Thrown said.

  “I did. And I won’t go into the intense embarrassment I felt when I couldn’t even lift myself out of it.”

  “It’s just a bit of stiffness from your training. A quick run will get you going.”

  “There’s no way I can run. It’ll take me weeks to recover. And I’ll need a whole team of experts to help me with my rehabilitation.”

  “I note your mouth is still working, princess. When I was your age, I never had the luxury of complaining. The sergeant would hit us until we did our training. These days we’re all soft and caring, so Bernhardt will dump you in the water until you decide your legs can bend.”

  Bernhardt reached out for her.

  Running wasn’t an option, so she relented. “All right, all right,” she shrieked. “Do I have to lift the stupid sack again?” She glared at Thrown, implying he was the stupid sack.

  He chuckled. “Not today.”

  She brightened.

  “Lift it, run across the yard and put it down. And do it one hundred times.”

  She darkened. She staggered over to the sack, her muscles complaining at each tiny movement. Occasionally, a leg would twitch and she would nearly fall over.

  Bernhardt and Thrown watched her struggle.

  “That’s four,” Throw
n shouted.

  “It’s five.”

  “You don’t count the first one. And I can hear you swearing. Even my dear old grandmother wouldn’t use language like that.”

  She swore at him.

  He smiled back at her.

  “One day she’ll find out about you lying about the old sergeant. He was a total soft touch,” Bernhardt rumbled.

  “She doesn’t need to know.” Thrown shrugged off the potential threat.

  “She won’t be happy when she finds out.”

  “She’s not going to find out unless someone tells her.” He looked at Bernhardt.

  Bernhardt scratched his throat and watched Melanie as she toiled away, swearing profusely. “I hear there might be a promotion going for me.” He gave Thrown a sly glance.

  Thrown cleared his throat and shouted to Melanie, “I suppose you’ve done all right, for someone of your …”

  “Of my what? Gender? Age?”

  “I was thinking about, er, weight.”

  “Are you calling me fat?” Melanie shook her finger at him, which was the only part of her body that didn’t ache.

  “Well, your arse is so large it eclipses the sun,” Thrown said. “If you bend over, we’ll be able to see the whole of the moon.”

  “Liar. I’m so not fat. I’m just a whole lot of woman.”

  “Who would have thought that would be worse? We’ll do some chin-ups. Whoever does the most is telling the truth. You go first.”

  “In the rain?” she said.

  “It’ll keep you cool.”

  She glared at him. “Okay.” She limped over to the bar suspended ten feet off the ground.

  After a minute of futile attempts to reach it, Thrown nodded to Bernhardt. “Give her a leg up.”

  Bernhardt rumbled over. “Do you need some help?”

  “No,” she shouted. “I can do this.”

  She struggled and twisted and did her best to pull herself up above the bar. She eventually put in a Herculean effort and managed to crest it. She giggled deliriously, and then slowly lowered herself. She tried again, but her strength failed. She collapsed, landing heavily in the mud.

  “One,” shouted Thrown. “I think we can call it a win to me.”

  “You haven’t even done one.”

  “I could argue the same with your effort. The technique was terrible. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll do two.”

  He ran up to the bar and leaped up, grabbing the crossbeam and easily lifting himself up repeatedly.

  “All right, I concede. You don’t need to do it one armed as well. That’s just showing off.”

  Thrown dropped lightly to the ground, smoothed back his wet hair, and gave her a wink. “Okay, lardarse, no more pies for you. It’s salad for the next three years.”

  She turned on him with her finger dangerously close to his nose. “We’re coming back and doing this again tomorrow.”

  “Really?” He was surprised at her determination.

  “Oh, yes, don’t think you’re getting away with calling me fat that easily. I’ll show you, old man.”

  Parker jumped to attention, raised his binoculars, and peered over the battlements into the hazy western horizon. The morning sunlight reflected off the brass casing. He focused the lenses on a distant figure carrying another body. The figure staggered, then collapsed onto one knee, before recovering and trekking onward toward the city gate.

  “Nikola!” Parker shouted, and ran to the gate, organizing the duty guards into a team.

  They charged out to the commander. In his arms lay Gavin, battered and covered in cuts and bruises. The color had drained from Nikola’s face, his lips were chapped, and his hair unruly. Parker grabbed him around the waist as two guards grabbed Gavin. Parker offered him his water flask, and Nikola took small sips until his throat could open properly.

  “Get him to the army medical center,” he rasped. “He’ll be all right.”

  “Not the hospital?” the guard said.

  “Has the sentiment of the general population to teslas changed?”

  “No.”

  “Medical center.”

  They entered through the gate and the guards took Gavin off to the medical center. Nikola had a seat for a few minutes, where he continued to sip the water.

  “Parker, update me.”

  “There’ve been more sightings out in the east. The city is getting tense. You were right about Trade; he wanted to come, so he was furious when we returned, then not so furious after we told him it was a trap.”

  Nikola slowly stood, wincing. Sand fell from his clothes. He headed toward his office, signaling for Parker to follow.

  “They’re up to something.”

  “They’re always up to something.”

  “Not like this. They’re planning something big, building something big. And they need plenty of steel for it.”

  “Any clues?”

  “Not yet. I took some notes. I’ll try to piece it together. How did you go with that strange fellow who turned up?”

  “Ah, yes. His name, get this, is Prevaricator Oakley. He’s fit right in, he has, been getting cozy with the general council. Has a way with the words that they love.”

  Nikola laughed. “Glad he found more of his kind.”

  They arrived at the city center with the shadow of Old Benjamin falling across the quadrangle. Nikola slowly climbed the stairs to his office. A piece of paper was stuck to his door. He pulled it free and read it.

  “Parker, do me a favor and get Sebastian to come up here, urgently.”

  He unstrapped his sword and let it fall to the floor. The scabbard was useless now. The leather fell away to reveal the badly scarred and notched blade. A new one would need to be forged. He picked it up and rested it against the corner with his other bent and broken weapons, representing decades of battles and death. He’d been lucky.

  Nikola grabbed a bottle of water and poured it down his throat. He could feel his body responding, exhaustion flushing in. He lowered his head and sat against the edge of his desk.

  The door creaked open and Sebastian peered in.

  “Nikola, where have you been?”

  “I had to get Gavin. He was captured by, well, I don’t know what it was.”

  “I wondered where he’d gone. It’s been really peaceful in the school dorm. But, you said he was captured?”

  “The creature took him back to the cyborg hive.”

  “You’ve been to the hive, on your own?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it yet, but I have learned plenty.” He paused and read the yellow piece of paper. “Things are going to be different,” he said, as his eyes flicked over the information.

  “What’s going to be different?”

  “Hmm?” he replied distractedly. “What people think about teslas for one. Your mother, I have news!” He folded the sheet and held it up.

  Sebastian noticed the lack of the word “good” from the sentence.

  “We’ve been in contact with the Toowoomba hospital, and there’s no record of your mother being there. Nor the surrounding hospitals.”

  “That can’t be right. The doctor said he would take her there. I paid him to take her there.”

  Nikola pursed his lips tightly and was briefly lost in thought. Eventually, he spoke. “What was the doctor’s name?”

  Sebastian told him and Nikola wrote it down. He collapsed into his chair with a determined look on his face.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  “I have driven a horse to its death, fought and killed more than I’d care to remember, and been without food and water for the last two days. The next step needs to be planned.”

  Sebastian’s face fell. “If you’re not going to do something, then I will.” He turned to leave.

  “Sebastian, don’t be ridiculous. You are one small boy. The outback is an unimaginably vast and hostile area that claims lives every day. And with cyb
orgs now running around, looking for teslas, it’s beyond any flight of fancy. You will stay here and you will stay within the protective reach of the Academy.”

  “But it is driving me crazy not being able to do anything.”

  “Leave it with me; I can find people. I found Gavin. I will find Isabelle.”

  After Sebastian had left, Nikola pulled out the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He smoothed out the creases. It showed Sebastian’s face with CAPTURE OR TERMINATE stamped across it.

  The weeks began to blur as Sebastian and Melanie endured their own painful regimes. Every day, Melanie turned up in all kinds of weather to take on the daily challenge, often with support from Bernhardt. And every day, just before she crawled back to her room, ended with a chin-up battle with Thrown. Every day, they increased the chin-ups by one, but he could always do more.

  Each day, Sebastian would venture to the train station to see if anything was running, but as the days went past they became increasingly infrequent, and he would turn away defeated. And each evening, Melanie would watch the sun set with Sebastian, with him either waking her up afterward or helping her to her room. He could see and feel how her body was changing. And she could see the desperation continuing to claw away at him, and the frustration as he struggled to understand the complex lessons from Albert. And they sat side by side, telling each other that tomorrow would be better. Something had to change.

  Then one day, as Melanie was running around the exercise yard with her newly increased bag of gravel above her head, Thrown called her over. He told her to put down the bag. She tried to drop it on either his head or foot, but as usual, he was too quick.

  “As you actually have some strength now, just, we might as well put it to some use.” He threw a long stick at her.

  “Ow!”

  “You’re meant to catch it.”

  “How should I know that?”

  He rolled his eyes. She picked up the stick and swung it at him. He caught it effortlessly and gave her a smile. He whistled and a young boy in his early teens appeared. He was wearing light armor and carried a similar pole.

  “Meet … what’s your name, son?”

  “Les Patterson, sir.”

  “You’re a boy?”