Ten Thousand Thunders

by Brian Trent

  Jack actually blushed. It took Celeste a moment to appreciate the comment, and when the reality sunk in, she gently punched the security chief’s arm. “You are descended from the colossi? That’s why you sport that purple tattoo on your belly?”

  “Out of the past,” he quipped.

  Gethin said, “Just remind your son and daughter of that, Jack. Tell them how the Saylor clan ascended and…” He grinned. “Your daughter is going to Venus, right?”

  Jack looked stunned. “Yeah. I mean, we don’t know yet, she has to apply, but she wants to go.” He frowned. “You looked up my family file?”

  “I like to know things.” Gethin smiled in a way that bordered on pleasant. “Up to the stars indeed,” he added, and the big man smiled appreciatively.

  * * *

  Doctor Tiptree looked more like a frazzled, exhausted butcher than a health care professional. He had a trollish body, squat and powerful, with broad shoulders and huge hands. A swirl of black, wiry hair sprouted from a cancerously mottled scalp. His gourd-shaped face was scarred by what might have been a bear’s claw but, more likely, had been a long-nailed human patient. His chubby fingers trembled as he examined his new patients.

  The clinic was a rusted shed that had once been a gas station. Corrugated steel sheets welded over the windows, the interior holding six beds; Keiko eyed the filthy mattresses with open distaste.

  “One medkit.” Celeste let him examine it. The other one she decided to keep for herself. Aside from Gethin’s broken foot, the group’s injuries could be treated in more traditional ways. No point in wasting arky magic on what amounted to bruises, gashes, and splinters.

  Tiptree carefully extracted the glass from Keiko’s face. He frowned when he saw Gethin’s forehead gash, and sewed it up with black thread. He prodded Gethin’s cracked wrist and wrapped it.

  Celeste watched the proceedings in silence. As the doctor finished dressing their wounds, she said, “The medkit will buy us a room too. Siyanda gave his word.”

  Tiptree locked the medkit in a metal cabinet and nodded solemnly. “I’ll radio ahead and tell ’em.”

  Most Wastetowns had commonhouses. This one was a fugitive’s dream. Down from the main square in a sunken patch of earth, overhung by a half circle of maples. The innkeeper was a matronly creature listening to a radio via headset when they entered, and she handed them a brass key without a word.

  The room was on the fourth floor. Two bunk beds crammed into square accommodations like an old college dormitory. It had a cloying stench and the nose-tickling aroma of mold. There were black streaks on the walls that made Gethin think of striated fossil shales.

  He took the lower bunk, nestling himself into a shadowy corner. Celeste lay above him, her bed pressed against the room’s single window. His foot throbbed with warmth, the nanites industriously toiling on his bone and tendons. Like a tiny construction crew, working in calcium instead of concrete.

  Lying awake in the darkness, Celeste reflected on their situation. If there wasn’t a way to contact the Mantid – and she figured it was lying low because the IPC was scouring the entire region – then Cappadocia really was the only reasonable option. The Turkish metropolis was an autonomous state. Among the Folk, she’d lie low. Wait. The IPC wanted her companions, not her. When the heat cooled, she could call the Mantid for evac.

  She contemplated the peeling plaster ceiling. And then what?

  Celeste rolled onto her side. Beyond the streaked window, Haventown was a dark, rainy blur. Barrel fires twinkled in the night.

  War was brewing.

  The arky factions seemed ready to go at it, gladiator-style. StrikeDown could sit back and wait. Hide in the cracks of the world like rodents in the age of dinosaurs, unseen and forgotten, while the mighty toppled. Then they could more easily storm the fortresses, haul out vitals, erase the borders.

  And then what?

  Celeste realized her heart was pounding like a lead drum.

  King D. seemed to think that he could bring the Repbublic and IPC to the negotiating table. She believed in his cause. But what if they were all wrong? What if open war meant total global collapse, as Gethin Bryce had described in Athens? Then Outlanders would literally move underground, and what remained of the IPC would duke it out with every other scavenger in the solar system. Belters and Prometheans and Frontieriests, brightworlds and deepworlds. Such was life. Hiding from sabertooths, or from conquering legions, or from nuclear fallout. Each time the human race burrowed deeper like moles. Deeper, deeper, clawing their way blind, like maggots squirming to the still-warm center of a corpse. Some fifty million years from now, when human civilization wasn’t even a rusted stain, the next dominant species might discover five-fingered, albino, eyeless parasites gnawing at their garden roots.

  An anguished howl pierced the night beyond Haventown.

  Celeste shivered.

  Maybe it had already begun.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Apophis and the IPC

  Dark drop.

  Twenty-eight men and women fell through inky blackness, landed easily on the powdery Lunar surface, and scampered into position around the Williams Sports Dome. Their obsidian-colored transport drifted high above them, poised on the periphery of Luna’s gravitational web, running cold and unseen.

  IPC Mission Commander Michelle Hyde crouched by a loading crate, fixing the dome in her binocular sights. It was the largest stadium on Luna, enclosed in a concrete shell fifty meters north-west of her position. It sat on the remote borders of Luna City. Hyde was thankful for that. Most traffic arrived here by subway, but the dome wasn’t a regularly scheduled stop on the main lines, and the route had already been shut down by local police. Air traffic was also being diverted.

  Hyde’s optics crowded with data overlays. In her left eye, she saw her attack squad represented by twenty-eight green dots. The other overlays were a veritable Rolodex of the dome’s blueprints, list of personnel, fire escapes, and garage. She also kept several radio frequencies open on her codex. The comlinks from inside the building were silent.

  Maybe the terrorist was gone?

  Hyde was eighty-one-years old, tall and auburn, built like a Valkyrie. Earthborn but now a proud Lunar, she privately held out hope for the overturn of the colonization ban. She had, after all, always entertained fantasies of working on a frontier colony like some sci-fi holostar. Maybe be the first to discover intelligent extraterrestrial life.

  The voice of First Scout Mikhail Popova sounded in her ear: “Readings are clear. No sniff of explosives.”

  Hyde nodded, tense and excited. Luna had been a frenzy of activity these past few days. The IPC was working closely with Lunar authorities, who demonstrated a level of cooperation only fear could engender.

  Because it wasn’t just the shuttle or base explosions any more. An hour ago, Club Nadsat was attacked. The culprit was caught on camera: a Caucasian male of unregistered identity. He had killed everyone in the place using an unknown Promethean weapon. Then he’d hijacked a moon buggy and driven to the Sports Dome. The dome’s seating capacity was forty thousand; mercifully, no games were scheduled today.

  But there were employees there. Some two dozen maintenance workers and security guards. The security station was hit first; a guard managed to squeeze off one panicked emergency call before the dome went entirely silent.

  Hyde had the Nadsat footage stored in her sensorium. She had studied the terrifying footage during the flight here. The IPC’s best and brightest were analyzing it, but presently no one could give her anything better to go on other than a generic “Be careful, Michelle.” They would all be watching through her eyes as she conducted this mission. So, too, would IPC Lt. Donna McCallister.

  I’m a television station today, Hyde thought grimly.

  “Alpha Team, move up.”

  Six soldiers rocketed up the dome on controlled bursts
of pressurized air. They landed with precision on the building’s hull, a few meters above the row of glasstic windows. Each took a window, covering as much of the interior as they could. Then they shifted into CAMO.

  “I’ve got eyes on,” an Alpha Team sniper said a few seconds later. “Main floor lobby, sitting down near the ticket booths. He’s still armed.”

  Alpha Team worked quickly, placing sealed sniper mounts over the windows to maintain dome pressure when the nanoblades set to work on the glasstic. You couldn’t just shoot through glasstic.

  Hyde was tempted to give a kill order when the window was breached. She wanted a clean mission, over and done. A bright jewel on her corporate résumé. But McCallister had comlinked her on the transport, made it clear that IPC brass wanted the man taken alive.

  Priority One: Non-lethal takedown.

  Priority Two: Recovery of subject’s armaments.

  Hyde skipped in the low gravity to the dome doorway. There she hesitated, her tech specialist overriding the door locks.

  How had the terrorist gained entry to the dome in the first place? You couldn’t just drive up in a moon buggy and waltz past security.

  “Alpha Team,” she said, “let’s see him.”

  A signal crackled in her head. She linked to a sniper’s optics. There! The terrorist was slouched against a ticket booth, legs splayed out. The blue metal weapon still encased the subject’s right arm, showing bright red through the creases and joints. Analyst chatter had been a confused mess about its capabilities. It appeared to fire a plasma-based discharge, though there were no visible storage tanks. It could also immolate people from a distance of at least three and a half meters, if the Club Nadsat footage was any indication. And then there was that eerie business of floating around the club like a goddamn phantom. The analysts didn’t know what to say. Magnetism? Nanowires? Was the terrorist himself an aerostat construct?

  No visible powerpack or ammo clips. The unknown weapon looked grafted to his flesh.

  “Let’s see the rest.”

  Feeds flowed in from the other snipers. Gradually the interior of the dome assembled itself to her optics. The Sports Dome lobby was a grisly sight. Human carcasses strewn about, still wearing orange maintenance coveralls. One poor woman draped over the ceiling pipes. Topical damage on the walls, but hull integrity was not compromised.

  “What do we make of the weapon?” she asked.

  “No heat. Looks powered down.”

  The dome doors popped open, making Hyde jump. She motioned to her forward team and they rushed in through the gap, fanning out in the lobby interior.

  “What about the subject?” she whispered, imagining she could feel the weight of so many people watching through her sensorium. This mission was being watched in real time by the universe’s elite. Leon Tanner, Donna McCallister…and almost certainly IPC President Song in his situation room.

  Alpha Team’s report came in. “No wetware, commander.”

  Hyde frowned. No wetware?

  She went through the airlock and switched to infravision. The darkened interior snapped into green focus. She stepped carefully around the bodies. She stopped at the corner, sightjacking with the Alpha Team sniper above her for a visual on the target.

  “My name is Commander Michelle Hyde,” she called out. “I am a negotiator for the IPC. Can we talk?”

  The target spoke in a soft, dejected tone. “Are you here to kill me?”

  “No,” she said, instantly running the voice against the Nadsat recording. Positive ID. “I’m here to talk with you. But you have caused a great deal of suffering and death. I am prepared to use deadly force against you if necessary. If necessary. Do you understand? We can either have a conversation, or you can die.”

  “I would very much like to talk,” the man said brokenly. “I’m a bad thing. You must understand that I can’t help myself.”

  “May I approach?”

  “You may.”

  “Would you consider removing your weapon?”

  “It’s part of me. I can’t take it off, as much as I want to.”

  That certainly seemed to be true. Whoever had done this to him must have surgically melded the weapon to his limb. Ridiculous! Why do that? Hyde’s mouth felt dry. She licked her lips.

  She turned the corner, seeing him with her own eyes for the first time. He was dressed in loose-fitting brown slacks and a matching long-sleeve shirt. It gave the impression of being a monastic garment. The man himself was lank and unspectacular. His eyes were dazed. He was sprawled out as if he’d been shot. His hair was plastered to his forehead.

  “What is your name?”

  “You can call me Apophis.”

  An instant list of possible etymologies sprang to her optics:

  No citizen in the IPC database of registered voting planetary bodies goes by the name of Apophis.

  There are 121 avatars named Apophis in Arcadia.

  Apophis is the name of a fictional laboratory in Sloan Goodman’s Reynard Pond series.

  Apophis is the name of a defunct Persian Jazz band from last century.

  Apophis is a comet discovered in the Old Calendar, long since harvested by the Ashoka.

  39 references to Apophis occur in films and television.

  In Egyptian mythology, Apophis is the God of Chaos.

  “Apophis,” she repeated.

  “Michelle Hyde,” he said with a wink.

  She held his gaze, while peripherally studying the damage to the room and the dead bodies. No burned corpses this time. No energy burns. Unlike the club, the damage here looked strictly mechanical; blood spatters, necks twisted at odd angles, toppled chairs. It was as if the perp had run out of ammo, and been forced to bludgeon his victims to death. Maybe that’s why the weapon was cool. Even the woman’s body hanging from the ceiling pipes…a strong enough assailant might easily fling a person up there in the low-G.

  But why do it at all?

  In the club’s video, he had insisted he couldn’t help himself. It was conceivable. There were lots of ways to induce behavior.

  But it was also possible he was purely psychotic.

  In fact, this was one of the few points the analysts were in agreement on. Nothing in his behavior suggested a man struggling against programmed instincts. The analysts likened it to watching an obsessive-compulsive trying to resist the ritual of handwashing. OCD sufferers were angry, even furious, as they indulged the hated compulsion. They scrubbed their hands raw and hated doing it, though they couldn’t stop. You could see the anguish in their eyes.

  Not with Apophis. He clearly enjoyed his destructive appetites, regardless of what he said.

  “You wanted to talk,” she prompted.

  Apophis nodded. “Quite right. I’m sure you want to know who blew up Base 59.”

  Hyde’s heart skipped a beat, seeing the moment of revelation – with her name attached to it – about to unfold.

  “I would.”

  “Prometheus Industries made a nasty little plaything. They built it, groomed it, and it blew up in their faces.”

  “What did they make?”

  “Me.”

  She took another couple steps into the room. There was another ticket booth, and she hesitated beside it, maintaining eye contact with the target. “You destroyed Base 59? How?”

  “‘How?’ Wouldn’t the better question be why?”

  “Agreed. Why?”

  “An empire’s ambitions are nothing without the power of its soldiers. Was it Caesar alone who conquered Gaul? Or was it the Roman legions, whipped into seamless military perfection, clad in the best armor, and protected by the best shields?”

  Hyde nodded, but her senses were attuning to his right arm. If he jerked that weapon up, she decided, she would simply blur away from him.

  She said, “I agree, but that doesn’t an
swer my question. Why did you destroy the base?”

  “Destroying is what I am good at, madam. It’s how they made me. I am an experimental prototype shock trooper. Prometheus Industries plans to annex one world at a time. They can do it too, if they develop others like me. A technological edge without rival.”

  Hyde steadied her breathing. She tried to imagine what the people back at HQ were going to make of all this.

  “Was it revenge? Is that why you attacked the base?”

  “‘Cursed, cursed creator!’” He looked forlornly at the ceiling. “‘Why did I live?’”

  Hyde was considering what to say next when a signal flashed from command. Donna McCallister.

  “By all means and at all costs,” McCallister said through her audio, “take him alive, Michelle.”

  Hyde saw the wisdom in this. She could be regenerated, while this Apophis was invaluable.

  Then she glanced at the bodies around her. Her heart gave a long, agonized pang of fear.

  “Where did Prometheus Industries make you?” she asked, aware of her audience listening in.

  “‘In a secret lab,’” he said miserably. “‘It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived.’”

  “Tell me about the lab.”

  “‘Conceive an enormous cylindrical space, a quarter of a mile across, perhaps, very dimly lit at first and then brighter, with big platforms twisting down its sides in a spiral.’”

  “Were you the only one? Or did Prometheus create others?”

  “I’m the prototype,” Apophis said. “Others will follow. ‘Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs of mighty Cherubim!’”

  From her helmet, a voice crackled. McCallister again.

  “Watch yourself, Michelle. He’s quoting from various books. Frankenstein. H.G. Wells. Wait a minute…John Milton was that last one.”

  Keeping the man in her targeting reticle, Hyde asked subvocally, “What the hell for?”

  “No idea. Just keep him talking, and take him alive.”