by Jamie Sawyer
“The Greater Asiatic Directorate does not have a Simulant Operations Programme,” Kwan said. “The technology was withheld from us, by your Command. By your masters.”
“You stole enough of it,” I muttered. I glared at Kwan, and he continued pacing.
“The Alliance,” he said, rolling the word around his mouth with obvious distaste, “is so eager to think of the Directorate as broken. As a spent force. There you are, with your superior technology and your Core Worlds, and your Shard Gates. And here we are, with our decimated prison worlds, our ragtag fleet of starships, our shattered military.
“But we are not the spent force that your government would have you believe. We are simply biding our time. And your arrival here, in my system, makes me think that this time is now. I am the man to make it happen.”
I sniggered. “You’re nothing, and no one!”
Kwan exhaled slowly. He radiated danger. “I have power,” he said. He spread his hands in a gesture that encompassed the world beyond the chamber. “This is real power.”
“This is a shithole of a prison, Kwan.”
He gave a world-weary grimace. “On the surface it might look like that. But I can assure you that the reality is very different. Having something that others want: that’s power. Having the ability to change the universe, to influence galactic destiny: that’s power.
“The Bureau of Shadow Affairs was once the premier intelligence agency in the Directorate. I could reel off the names of the many Alliance personnel we are responsible for assassinating. We were the Director-General’s right hand, the agency that he turned to when all others failed.”
Kwan looked to Fire and Ice, and they shone with pride at the commander’s words. He clasped each by the shoulder.
“But all of that changed when the Directorate collapsed. Now we are an organisation without purpose. A body without a head.”
Tang’s eyes flared at that expression. Kwan was giving her ideas.
“I can change that, though. The other candidates for the Directorate’s leadership are nothing more than pretenders, charlatans. I am different. I can see the long game, and I can reforge the Asiatic Directorate into something great. Into something better than it once was.”
“And how are you going to do that?” I asked.
“We know that something is happening to the Krell. We know that something is happening in the Maelstrom. And now, thanks to our interrogation of your starship’s data-stacks, we know that you have recently been into Krell territory. We know that there is a war going on. Reports had already started to reach us, but your intelligence confirms it.
“Where there is war, there is opportunity. I believe that your ship was sent into the Maelstrom to investigate a weapon. A weapon that your Alliance intends to use against the Directorate. I want you to tell me what you were searching for in the Maelstrom, and I want you to tell me right now.”
Carmine laughed. It was a wet, bedraggled sound, but it was a laugh nonetheless.
“Same old Directorate,” she managed. “You haven’t changed at all. You won’t get a damned thing from this old girl, that’s for sure.”
Kwan nodded, as though he had expected that reaction.
“This one—Prisoner X-567—speaks often,” Tang said. She stood behind Carmine. “Too much, in fact. It is a shame that none of what she says is important.”
“They call me Carmine the Carbine,” she answered. “And that’s for two reasons. One is that I talk a lot. I ever get a chance to break out of these bonds, lady, I’ll show you the other.”
“Quiet, Carmine,” I ordered.
“I’m Navy,” she said, looking up at me. “You can’t give me orders, Jenkins. When you’ve served for as long as I have, you get to understand people like this.”
“Quiet!” Kwan roared.
“I’ve seen enough of them. Small men, with big ideas—”
“I said, shut up!”
But instead of focusing his wrath on Carmine, Kwan stopped behind Zero. He looked down at her with such malice that Carmine actually stopped talking. An even colder sensation settled deep in the pit of my stomach.
“I am told that what makes a true operator of simulants is the capacity to take suffering,” he said. “That is what differentiates you from the average Army trooper. You have a much higher pain threshold.”
Tang nodded. “Your flesh-puppets—your simulants—have an admirable capacity to take injury, to absorb damage. It is quite something.”
“But these two are different,” Kwan said, indicating Zero and Carmine. “Neither prisoner carries the data-ports.”
Feng gave a sharp intake of breath. His jaw worked angrily, but the words wouldn’t come. Not this time.
Tang moved forward, on cue, and tugged at Zero’s overalls. Revealed her forearms, the back of her neck, where the data-ports necessary to interface with the simulant technology had once been. There were scars there, tiny reminders of Zero’s abortive field career.
“Don’t touch her,” Carmine said. “I’m old. I can take it. Kill me instead.”
But the Shadow agents were focusing their attentions on Zero.
“She is your intelligence officer,” Tang said. “Yes?”
I watched Zero for a moment. I couldn’t bring myself to reply.
“Answer the Honoured Surgeon,” Kwan said.
With grim reluctance, I nodded. “Yes. She is.”
“See how easy that was?” Kwan remarked. “Hands behind your head, Prisoner X-233.”
“I said, stop this!” Carmine complained. “I’m growing fed up of this prison. It’s cold, and my knees ache. Well, my real knee, anyway.”
“Carmine, whatever you’re trying to do, please be quiet!” I said.
The old captain nodded at me. Went to wink. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” she said. “Tough as old boots, me. We’ll have quite the story when we—”
Carmine’s head exploded.
I couldn’t compute what had just happened. Fire stirred behind Carmine’s body, his gun at his hip. The old captain’s corpse collapsed forward.
Oh shit. Carmine was dead. Actually fucking dead. Rage and horror and pure, unadulterated hate flooded my system.
Lopez immediately burst into scream. “No! No! No!”
“You bastards!” I shouted.
“Hands behind your head, Prisoner X-233!” Kwan repeated.
Carmine’s execution had the desired effect, and Zero complied immediately. Despite her obvious efforts to hide it, she was shaking. Zero’s head was blood-spattered. Not just any blood: Carmine’s blood. It matted her hair, flecked the side of her face.
“Prisoner X-233 is what you call a ‘negative,’ as I understand it,” Kwan said, carrying on as if nothing had happened.
“She’s a Jackal,” Feng shouted. “Just like the rest of us!”
“For all her faults,” Kwan said, “she is quite brave, this one. You can all hide inside your flesh-puppets, but she has no such armour.”
“Don’t touch her,” Feng said. His voice dropped, cracked with emotion. “Don’t even think about it.”
Kwan ignored him though, and fixed his eyes on mine. “What is happening in the Maelstrom?”
When I didn’t immediately answer, he flipped the catch on his pistol holster. Drew his weapon in the same fluid motion. He raised it, showed it to the chamber. The sidearm was bulky and multi-chambered, of a type I didn’t recognise. That alone set off warning bells. There were very few weapons in current use that I didn’t know …
Kwan aimed the pistol at the back of Zero’s head. Jammed the muzzle against her skull, through the tangle of auburn hair. Zero froze, eyes wide, still staring at the patch of floor in front of her.
“Do you know what this is, Prisoner X-233?”
“N-no,” Zero stammered.
“Address the commander with his proper title!” Tang said.
“No, Honoured Commander,” Zero said.
“This,” Kwan said, indicating the weapon, “is
a redactor.”
The muzzle of Kwan’s pistol transformed, peeled open like a metal flower: became a dozen thin probes. Each was tipped with a needle.
“I warned you that it would come to this,” Kwan explained, “and now you leave me no choice. The redactor will extract the prisoner’s memories. Each probe”—and the silver-tipped implements that made up the gun’s muzzle quivered at that, as though they had a life of their own—“burrows deep into the subject’s brain. The process is extremely painful, and extremely dangerous.” Kwan shrugged. “There will not be much left of her when the procedure is complete.”
“Nothing, really,” Tang added. “Less than nothing. Less than Zero.”
Kwan said, “We’ve tried this on meat puppets but it does not have the desired effect. The redactor only functions on original test subjects.”
“Don’t do this!” I said. “It doesn’t have to happen!”
“No!” Feng shouted.
“Shut him up for good,” Kwan ordered.
Fire and Ice descended on Feng, their shock-batons at full charge. The assault was short-lived but brutally effective. Blood spattered the floor and the table on which Feng was restrained. He hung there, barely conscious.
“I will ask again,” Kwan said. “What is happening in the Maelstrom?”
“We don’t know anything!” Lopez wailed.
“You actually expect me to believe that?” Kwan said. “You were sent out there to find a weapon. I want to know what happened in Krell space. I want to know why you were carrying a Krell bio-form—a talking Krell bio-form—on your starship!”
Kwan’s arm was rigid, the pistol held firm. The arming stud on the side of the redactor flickered, taunting me. What choice do we have? I asked myself. I couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t let Zero die like this.
“We … we were on a mission,” I started. It was hard to find the words, to explain myself. I fought my natural instinct to remain silent in the face of interrogation. “A mission to find a missing starship. Please, the rest of my squad knows nothing. I’m their commanding officer. I’m responsible.”
A glare around the room told the others not to dissent from that. Lopez remained frozen in place. Feng just lay against the medical table, his body plastered with fresh blood. His brow was so damned swollen that he was struggling to see out of his eyes.
“Go on,” Kwan said, weapon arm unfaltering. The redactor’s probes shivered in a horribly organic way.
“We were searching for the Euro-Confed starship Hannover. It went missing inside the Maelstrom, in the Gyre.”
“While searching for a weapon?” Tang pressed.
I went to shake my head, but found that I couldn’t do it under the field created by the gravity-plate. “No. It … It was on an exploratory mission,” I managed. “But we never found the ship.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Kwan said.
“It’s the truth,” Lopez chimed in.
“Leave this to me, Lopez,” I ordered. “We didn’t find the Hannover, but we discovered her black box, her flight data.”
“Where is this flight data?” Kwan barked. “Tell me everything.”
“It’s gone.”
“Lies!” Tang exclaimed. “Tell the Honoured Commander the truth!”
“There was a traitor onboard the Santa Fe,” I said. “The fifth member of my squad. You saw his simulator. He Q-jumped us here, and then escaped with the data.”
Kwan slammed the body of his pistol into the side of Zero’s head with shocking abruptness. The noise was startlingly loud in the closed space, gut-churningly so. Zero folded without a sound, kept her hands on her head.
“This is your final chance,” Kwan said. “Tell me everything, Lieutenant Keira Jenkins, of the Jackals, formerly of the Lazarus Legion, sworn enemy of the Asiatic Directorate.”
“The traitor’s name was Corporal Daneb Riggs!” I implored. “His callsign was Jockey, and he was a Marine aviator before he joined Sim Ops. He left the ship in a Warhawk shuttle! He must’ve had accomplices nearby, maybe in your organisation!”
Kwan smiled grimly. “Now you accuse my men of disloyalty?”
“Check the Santa Fe’s log!” Lopez said. “You’ll see that the shuttle left the Santa Fe after we jumped here. He could’ve been working for someone else—maybe the Black Spiral!”
“Lies! Lies! Lies!” Kwan snarled.
The pistol went to Zero’s head again. She closed her eyes: tight, so tight.
It’s okay, honey. You’re going to be okay. Be brave for me.
“Kwan! No! Don’t do this!”
“Her blood will be on your hands—”
A deafening boom spread throughout the facility. The quake drummed right through me, made the entire room shake. Tang’s torture implements rattled on their tray. It was like the last time I’d heard the noise, but much, much louder. Closer, I decided.
The Directorate paused. Kwan’s eyes became unfocused, lights twinkling beneath the skin of his cheek. That was the result of in-head comms: someone was communicating with him from outside of the room. He nodded, back becoming ramrod straight. At the same time, Tang began to wring her hands uncomfortably: her attention decisively diverted from the room.
The quake wasn’t the only disruption. There were other noises, coming from all around us. Voices, yelled shouts from somewhere outside of the room.
“What’s happening?” Lopez asked. “What’s making the sound?”
“Be quiet,” Kwan said.
The expression on his face told me enough. I was more chilled by that than anything I’d seen or heard so far. He’s scared, I realised. Kwan and Tang were frightened by whatever had caused the noise …
Kwan shifted his attention back to Zero, still kneeling on the floor in front of him.
“Let her go, Kwan,” I said. “We’ve told you everything. Killing her won’t achieve a damned thing!”
“I don’t believe you,” Kwan said through gritted teeth. “What is the Aeon? Where can we find it?”
“Aeon? I have no idea.”
“They know more,” Tang said. “They must know more!”
Lopez intervened, “We don’t! You have to believe us!”
Fire and Ice were shouting something in Korean, speaking fast. Kwan’s face was alight with activity. He was close enough that I could see much of the in-face circuitry was damaged. He looked like a particularly bad alcoholic, with a network of burst capillaries beneath the skin. But whatever he was being told did nothing to change his mind, and the redactor remained aimed at Zero’s head.
We made eye contact, Zero and I. Her lips were pursed. She looked so tired.
“You’re going to be fine,” I mouthed slowly. “I’ll get us out of this.”
Zero tried to smile but she was a smart girl. She knew my words were empty, and that made it hurt all the more.
Back to Kwan, I screamed, “Don’t do this!”
Another quake hit the chamber. The glow-globes in the ceiling winked, throwing the room into dark, then light.
“Go from here,” Tang ordered Fire and Ice. They reluctantly did as they were told, retreating out of the chamber through a side door.
“As commander-in-chief of the Bureau of Shadow Affairs,” Kwan began, “and by the authority vested in me by the Greater Asiatic Directorate, I hereby declare you all enemies of the state.”
“Let her go!” Lopez shouted.
Feng was yelling too, but he wasn’t making much sense.
“We need to go, Honoured Commander,” Tang said, drawing back towards the door of the chamber. “Now.”
Kwan stared up at me.
“I hereby authorise use of the redactor mind-probe. Commencing procedure.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DISGUSTING PRISONERS
The lights went out again, and this time the blackout lasted longer. Several seconds passed.
When the lights came back, Zero, Carmine’s body, the Directorate and the drones were gone. All gone. The space
where Zero had been kneeling, where Kwan had held the redactor against her head, was empty.
“Zero?” Feng managed. His speech was slurred, so unclear that I could barely understand him. I guessed he’d bitten his tongue during the beating. “Where … is she?”
There was a grinding noise, the sound of a mechanism being forced. Some shouting in a language I didn’t understand. Then part of the wall came away, revealing a secret door out of the room.
“You’re fucking kidding me …” Lopez said.
“Why would I be kidding?” came a Russian accent. “Is not funny at all.”
Novak stood there, framed by light from the chamber beyond. Dressed in a grubby worker-gang uniform, he carried a powered cutting tool in both hands. A dozen prisoners were lined up behind him, all wearing the same overalls, peering back with tattoo-covered faces.
“We are disgusting prisoners,” Novak explained.
“You mean this is a prison revolt?” I asked.
“Exactly. Just like I said. Hurry; is not much time.”
With a blunt exchange in what I took to be Russian, the other prisoners moved on Novak’s word.
“What’s happened to … to Zero …?” Feng said.
Novak nodded. “Was hologram. Hard light. Very realistic.”
“Very realistic,” Lopez agreed. “Then where is she?”
“Not here,” Novak said. “We go now, find her.”
“The thing with the redactor wasn’t real then?”
“Probably was real, but not happening here.”
“Does that mean Carmine is okay too?” I asked. There was hope here, fleeting, but possible. We could rescue both Zero and Carmine …
But Novak put paid to that idea. “I doubt it. They execute her for real. She was no use to them. We must go; must find Vali.”
“Vali? Who’s Vali?” Lopez asked.
Novak flinched at mention of the name, but recovered fast. He set his jaw. “I said Zero. Must act now, yes?”
Fire and Ice had been for real. Feng’s injuries were testament to that. Kwan and Tang had kept themselves safe, while risking their subordinates.
“Need to … get her out …” Feng tried to say.