Shedding the Demon

by Bill Denise

  Renard Trueblood spoke into the charged silence, “Well, that was not what any of us expected. However, let us focus on the positive points first, before we begin criticism.”

  “That shouldn't take long,” Jonathan Kline said cynically.

  “I'll say,” Stacey Magourik added.

  “Please, let us be fair. This was the Demon's first mission, and no one really knows the extent of his abilities.” Why am I defending him? Renard wondered. “To state the obvious, Krych is dead; much of his leadership is dead; many of his weapons have been destroyed. Any other good points?”

  Into the silence, Alexander Pryke snorted his derision. “You people are missing the most obvious points. That idiot walked directly into the teeth of the toughest rebel group out there and came back to talk about it. Sure he got knocked around for being stupid, but he finished the job and proved himself a bad-ass!”

  “He caused a planet-wide uproar with his methods!” Stacey nearly yelled, standing up and pressing her hands onto the table. “He may have taken out the leadership, but he turned them into martyrs. He just increased their recruitment by the thousands! Due to the evidence of such heavy firepower, we can’t deny involvement, but on the other hand we can't admit to sending in our new super-powered super-soldier assassin!”

  The room descended into yelling and accusations. Renard put his head into his hands, resting his elbows on the table. Alexander was simply laughing.

  “Renard, we need to shut down this project immediately,” Jonathan said during a short lull in the discussion. The statement caused the room to become quiet as each person contemplated the finality of their decision. “The kid’s reckless and out of control. How can we trust him to be a reasonable representative of the Council?”

  The silence that followed was long, but eventually broken by Alexander. “If the Council doesn’t want the Demon, let me have him. I’ll handle his missions and take responsibility for his actions. I’m not afraid of public opinion.”

  “I second that,” Esme Burdekin replied.

  “Now wait just a minute,” Renard spoke quickly. “We cannot give such a powerful weapon to one dynasty. It would cause a huge imbalance among us.” He hoped his fear didn't show too obviously.

  “I believe we have a motion and a second, Mr. Chairman,” Alexander said “and I call for a vote.”

  “Seconded,” Esme said again.

  “I hardly think this is appropriate,” Renard said.

  “You really have no choice,” Stacey replied quietly.

  Renard stewed for a moment, his thoughts racing. He had no intention of giving Demon to the Prykes, but he could not avoid the formality of a vote.

  Ideas and half-formed plans spun though his mind as he tried to find the best way out of this situation. He looked at Jeffrey across the room, who was busy tapping away on his screen. Renard realized that Jeffrey was taking precautions right now to protect against the transfer, no matter how the vote proceeded.

  “Fine, all those in favor of turning the Demon project over to the Pryke dynasty?” Only Alexander and Esme raised their hands.

  “The Nays take it,” Renard said with disdain. “Now can we continue with legitimate business? I will discuss the Council's concerns about the Demon with Dr. Baksa.”

  **** ****

  Damon sat in the cheap hotel room where he was instructed to await further instructions. Gregor had been silent for hours, and Damon was forced to occupy his time watching old movies on a horrible wall-mounted screen.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Shrigauri Krych said in his long-winded speech—at least those things he understood. The statements about being a pawn to the Council and killing his own people really cut him deep, and he couldn’t shake the guilty feelings. Wrapped in his thoughts, it took him a few minutes to realize a new icon blinking in the corner of his HUD. Curious, he opened it and found a message from Joann. The thought of hearing her voice made him feel better.

  The message was not what he expected. There was no voice, just cryptic instructions to contact her using a secret untraceable code. Is she playing some kind of game with me? he wondered, although that didn’t really make any sense. After a few minutes of debate with himself he decided to give it a try. The note said that he should not use his built in comm system, since he was being tracked by the Demon project team. He thought about using it anyway, since he didn’t really take the whole thing seriously, but finally he decided to do as she requested.

  “Fine,” he said to himself as he reached for the complimentary screen on the nightstand. He followed her instructions and soon was watching a small red blinking light next to the word “connecting.” Finally, when he was about to give up the light turned green and stopped blinking. A black box popped up on the screen announcing that no video was available, only audio and he banished the message with a wave of his hand.

  “Damon!”

  Her voice sounded a little strange over the connection, but it was definitely her.

  “What are you doing—” he started to ask, but she cut him off.

  “We don’t have much time on this connection and it’s a one-time use only. I’m sending you another code, but we have to use them wisely—I don’t have many left. Please just listen for now and trust. The team is gone. They have all disappeared, but I got out of there just in time. I’m going to see some friends, and I’ll contact you again when I know more.”

  “Joann, I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t really know, but I’m trying to find out. You need to be careful, your entire system is insecure. They monitor it and control it. Don’t use the comm system for anything important. We need to learn more about the system and how it works. I’ll try to get someone who can help. I’ll be in contact again.” She paused for a second, “Thirty seconds left on this code, do you have any questions?”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “Who am I working for?”

  “Good question. On the surface it’s the Council, but their motives are varied and certainly not philanthropic. It looks like anyone involved with you or this project tends to disappear. Gotta go, talk to you again soon.”

  The connection cut out and Damon felt worse than he did before. If everyone associated with me and this project is in danger, did I jeopardize the Family’s safety? Worry began to eat away at him, but there was nothing he could do right now but wait.

  I’m going to need that help she mentioned, Damon thought, I don’t know what I’m doing here.

  Shortly thereafter, he received a call from Gregor. The feedback regarding his mission was not good, and apparently the destruction from his attack was being covered on the local news. The Council was very unhappy, and they wanted to express their dissatisfaction with his overall performance. Damon took most of the criticism in stride, but after a few minutes decided he needed to defend himself.

  “What about the lousy power generation?” he asked when he got the chance to interject. “If I’d had a decent amount of power I could have finished that mission much quicker.”

  “If you hadn’t walked in there like an idiot daring them to attack you with all their heavy weapons, you would have been fine.”

  Damon didn’t reply; Gregor was right, and he already knew it. He knew it as soon as he left the scene that night.

  After a long pause, Gregor spoke again, “Look, I know it’s hard, I really just want to help, but you’ve got to be smarter about this whole situation. Now you know that you’re not invincible, and you’ve learned some tough lessons on power management. Also, now we both know that you need to be stealthier, which I understand is something you were good at before you came here.”

  Damon nodded, then realized Gregor couldn’t see him and said, “Yes, that’s true, I know how to be stealthy. The armor and the weapons give a false sense of security. In fact, when I was growing up, we weren’t allowed to use armor or weapons until we were considered veterans. My trainer always warned us about the dangers of relying on them too mu
ch because they can make you sloppy and careless. And that’s exactly what I did.”

  Gregor finished, “all right, we’ve been through it enough times. Move on, get to your flight out of there, head to the safe house, and enjoy a few weeks of rest. I’ll contact you with your next mission,” and he cut the connection.

  Damon heard Andrea’s voice speaking the words that he said to Gregor almost verbatim, and tears came to his eyes. He was lonely, tired, and despite his armor and all his weapons, he felt like a scared little kid.

  After sitting for a few minutes in self-pity, he took a deep breath, and tried to put it behind him. Then a thought occurred to him. He had a suspicion about Shrigauri Krych that he really wanted to pursue. With a little luck, he might be able to find better transportation than the public flight.

  He sat back down on the bed and fired up his comm unit with all of its military-grade Decrypto software and began digging through non-public records. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for, and with a little experimentation with his clearances and authorizations, he soon had what he wanted.

  He walked out of the hotel, signaled his account to pay the bill and hailed a cab, which pulled up to the curb as he approached the loading lane. Once inside, he directed it to take him to the yacht club on the other side of the city. On the way he reviewed his research to see what else he could learn.

  When he arrived, he paid for the cab and casually approached the gate at the entrance to the club. He showed his ID to the guard who checked against his screen and let him in with a friendly greeting. Damon wandered through the building, taking in the ambiance of the rich and famous. He had used Shrigauri Krych’s membership at the club to get in, so apparently, Mr. Krych was not quite the socialist he claimed to be. He probably claimed he needed the membership to gather funds and such for the cause. I can’t wait to see what his ship looks like. Sure enough when Damon arrived at the ship’s berth he was shocked at the size and luxury that he found.

  The ship was larger than Damon could have imagined, it rivaled the commercial carriers he had seen. Instead of a utilitarian tube, this ship was dominated by an oblong dome-shaped upper half on top of the more conventional cylinder below. Every line and curve blended smoothly into the others, giving the impression that it had been carved out of a single piece of metal. Damon stood and gawked despite his intention not to.

  Yacht club employees were making final preparations to the ship and detaching a number of umbilical cords along with other preflight checks. One of the men stood on the dock supervising the others. When he saw Damon approaching, we walked over to greet him.

  “Welcome, Mr. Baird, will Mr. Krych be joining us today?”

  Damon had to smile at the man’s greeting, “No, I’m afraid he will not. I believe he will be joining me later, but he’s asked me to move the ship. I don’t ask, I only do what I’m told.”

  “Oh of course, Mr Baird, I certainly understand that!”

  Damon laughed. “Is she ready to go?”

  “It will be only a minute, she’s all packed and ready per your instructions, only a few final twice-overs to go!”

  “May I go aboard?”

  “Certainly, sir. Please await clearance from the tower to power up and take off.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The man stepped to the side of the gangplank with his back to the railing, stood stiffly and said “Mr. Baird, welcome aboard The Abyss.”

  “Thank you,” Damon said again, nodding his head to the man as he passed to go quickly up and into the ship.

  The entryway was at the base of the dome-shaped upper half of the ship. He stepped into a large common room and gasped. It’s huge, he thought, and luxurious! He couldn’t resist bringing up his sensors to measure the space. It was thirty feet wide at the center, fifty feet long, and twenty feet high at its peak. One side of the room curved up and in gracefully, following the dome shape of the ship. A vertical wall on the other side split the dome in two. There were couches and chairs throughout, arranged in neat conversation circles. He knew from his research that they could all be moved or removed as needed, and neatly stowed in the floor compartments. Powerful magnets would hold them in place in case of artificial gravity failure.

  He connected his control system to the ship’s central core and was immediately granted Guest status.

  “That just won’t do,” he said out loud while releasing his Decrypto into the ship and letting it loose to do whatever it felt necessary to gain control.

  Satisfied that the software would get everything in order, he began a physical tour of the ship. He could have reviewed it all in his HUD, but it was more fun and much more interesting to see it with his own eyes.

  On the other side of the vertical wall was an observation deck only slightly smaller than the common room. The deck below housed three large cabins and four smaller ones. Farther below the cabins, in the cylinder-shaped section, could be found the ‘business’ parts of the ship: instrumentation, propulsion, fuel tanks, storage, and such.

  A huge galley, with storerooms to accommodate fifteen guests for an extended stay, filled the rear of the ship and was accessible from all levels. The storerooms were completely filled, compliments of Mr. Krych’s account.

  The Decrypto reported back that he now had full access to all ship’s systems, records, and logs. He pulled it back and sent in an Artificial Intelligence control system to closely integrate with his own control system. It took less than a minute to come online, but it informed him that it would take another thirty minutes to evaluate all of the historical data in the main core. Damon directed it to proceed, but to leave plenty of capacity for running the ship without his intervention.

  He rode the lift to the top level and the doors opened to reveal, not surprisingly, extravagant captain’s quarters. The rooms filled the entire upper portion of the dome and the curving wall/ceiling could be made transparent or opaque upon command. There was a large bedroom, a bathroom with a soaking tub, and a small private mess in case the captain didn’t want to eat with the others.

  Damon could not believe his good fortune, and he felt like a kid with a new toy—a big new toy.

  The tower called, indicating that he was free to start engines and takeoff at will. He instructed the AI to handle all of the standard procedures while he decided to familiarize himself with the soaking tub.

  Twenty minutes later, Damon was drying off and feeling great. The AI had asked for destination instructions, and Damon told it to find an uninhabited system, centrally located, with some awesome scenery. The AI came back ten seconds later with a destination and informed Damon it would take approximately twenty-eight hours to arrive.

  Damon decided to run through a ship diagnostic in order to become familiar with it inside and out. He was slightly surprised to find some military-grade hardware on board in both offensive and defensive weaponry as well as the sensor suite which included a sophisticated Wormhole Energy Reflection Analysis (WERA) system.

  Damon had to look up information on the WERA system, which was all new to him. Although he couldn’t work out the technical details, it was a sensor system based upon the reflected returns of wormhole energy. The range was astronomical (literally), and it could penetrate almost anything while providing feedback on everything it encountered. Such systems were supposedly only employed by the government and the military. Why Mr. Krych, you are just full of surprises! Damon thought.

  The Kline drive was fairly standard, although it did perform slightly better than average. The Debar reactor was oversized to accommodate the weapons and sensors, but otherwise normal. Overall the ship was incredible, and Damon congratulated himself on the idea of checking the registry for any ships belonging to Krych. After all, he won’t be looking for it any time soon!

  As the ship moved to a safe distance for tunneling, Damon placed a call to Gregor. “We’re about to go into the tunnel, I’ll be out again in a little over a day.”

  “Sounds good, contact me agai
n when you get there.”

  Damon cut the connection without responding. He settled back into the bed, instructed the AI to rotate away from the sun, turn off the lights, and clear the roof. He was greeted with an enormous panoramic view of the stars. Due to the curve of the ship and the location of the captain’s quarters, the view filled his entire vision, nearly taking his breath away.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Krych,” Damon said to the view overhead, “you sure can pick a nice ship!”

  The AI interrupted his reverie. “One minute to wormhole creation and entry.”

  “Thank you, can you fire up the galley and make me—what time is it?”

  “We can set ship’s time to any convenient reference.”

  “Well then, I feel like it’s dinner time, set the clock to six PM, and fire up some dinner!”

  “What would you like to eat?”

  “Surprise me!”

  “Wormhole creation and entry in thirty seconds.”

  “Excellent, how long until we eat?”

  “Approximately thirty minutes.”

  “What? Why so long?”

  “This ship has the capacity to prepare real food, rather than preprocessed rations. I assumed that would be your preference, and part of the surprise.”

  “Sounds good, I like it, thanks,” Damon felt foolish talking to the AI like this, but it was surprisingly real.

  “You’re welcome. Wormhole creation complete.” Damon looked forward expecting to see something, but the stars looked the same. The AI continued, “Wormhole entry underway.”

  Damon’s comm system flashed an icon that an encrypted message was coming through from Joann. He mentally stabbed at the icon, but it was too late. The sky outside had gone completely dark and they were in the tunnel. No communication could come through, so he’d have to wait a day to see what she wanted to say. He growled in frustration and decided to get ready for dinner.