by Barry Kirwan
Blake faced him. “Can I help you? You look lost. I don’t recall seeing you before.”
Vasquez moved to one side, his right fingertips making contact with the hilt on his pulse pistol.
“You’re Blake, aren’t you?” Gabriel said.
“You have the advantage, son. What’s your name?”
Gabriel didn’t squint or shade his eyes, despite the simulated late afternoon sun shining on his face. “Gabriel.”
Vasquez spoke while his fingers slipped around the pistol’s hilt. “Nobody of that name lives here. Gabriel was a hero, revered by us all, his acts in the last days of Earth –”
“That was me.” He inspected the ground for a moment, then looked back up at Blake. “I am Gabriel.”
As he finished the sentence his left foot whipped out and snapped Vasquez’ wrist, his fist ramming at the same time into Blake’s solar plexus. As Blake doubled over, trying to grab his own weapon, Gabriel snatched it and fired at Vasquez without looking at him, catching the white-haired Colonel with a blast to the face that punched him off his feet, dead before he hit the floor. Gabriel’s right arm wrapped around Blake’s throat, then he dropped to his knees, snapping Blake’s neck with a sickening crunch.
Louise watched. This was basic, not yet a real test. Any Alician warrior would have gotten this far.
Gabriel crouched behind Blake’s crumpled corpse and fired six times at the militia men and women running towards the scene. For a moment everything stilled as their bodies skidded into the dust. Then Gabriel walked calmly to the nearest house, where a family stood watching, too bewildered to run inside. Knocking the father down, Gabriel dragged the woman and daughter into the house, slamming the door shut behind him. A monitor to Louise’s left lit up, showing the view inside the room. She watched as he signalled to the woman and girl to stay quiet, placing a forefinger across his lips.
The door burst open, a tattooed warrior stripped to the waist framed in the smashed doorway, holding a thin metal rod in his hand.
Louise stood; this would be a good test. She wondered if the nanosword was real, then decided it couldn’t be, it must be a simulation – no Alician, not even Sister Esma, had managed to capture one.
Gabriel touched the girl’s forehead with the barrel of the pistol and nodded his head toward the nanosword.
Ramires frowned, and tossed the sword to the floor. “Gabriel, if that’s really you… what the hell are you doing? You fought to save these people. We’re on the same side. You and I had the same Master, Cheveyo. You’re a Sentinel!”
Gabriel tossed the pistol towards the nanosword. He approached Ramires, stood in a loose boxing stance, and held up his right fist.
Ramires shook his head, but followed suit. Their wrists touched lightly.
“This is madness, Gabriel. What have they done to you?”
Louise stilled her breathing, and didn’t blink.
For several seconds neither man moved, then Ramires’ fist blurred forward like a piston, but Gabriel deflected it and his left fist pummelled into Ramires’ stretched ribs. A monitor to Louise’s left showed that Gabriel had just driven two of Ramires’ ribs into his lung. Ramires tried to counter with a savage back-hand strike to Gabriel’s temple, but Gabriel ducked low, as he spun around, sweeping his leg into Ramires’ ankles, sending him crashing onto the floor. Gabriel’s open hand axed into Ramires’ windpipe, crushing his Adam’s apple. He then pinned Ramires to the floor while Ramires simultaneously choked to death and drowned as his lungs filled with blood.
“They showed me the truth,” Gabriel answered.
Louise doubted it would be so easy to kill the real Ramires; she’d seen a vid of him dispatching two Q’Roth warriors back on Esperia. Still, the clone was good.
The woman and girl ran shouting and screaming outside, and were joined by many voices, including one Gabriel should have recognised from his childhood.
Louise sat back down again. Now she understood why Jennifer was there. “If he fails to kill his sister?”
Lexa didn’t take her eyes off the scene. “Then the conditioning has failed, and we will terminate him.”
Louise watched.
“Gabe,” Jennifer shouted, “they’re going to kill you. There’s no way out. For God’s sake come out and surrender. Gabe, let me see you at least. They told me you were dead. Whatever has happened –”
Lexa touched a pad and studied a Q’Roth display, speaking softly. “We implanted a reader in him, to know what he’s thinking more or less – he doesn’t know it’s there, by the way. It wouldn’t work on a normal subject, Alician or human, but we built the infrastructure into his brain while he was being grown.”
Louise smiled. Just like Sister Esma: insurance on the insurance.
Lexa continued. “Right now he’s remembering playing with Jen when they were children. But he judges that she picked the wrong side, killed thousands of the Chosen Ones. He does care for her, but considers it’s better to end her confusion before she can do more damage. She’s been seduced by Micah and the others.” Lexa frowned.
“What?”
“He’s struggling with the decision. This is Jen, his sister, his one true soul mate.” Lexa sighed.
“He’s not the first clone, is he?”
Lexa shook her head. “The first four failed here or earlier. He is the last, there’s not enough original DNA left to fashion another clone.” She brightened. “His confusion has passed. There!” Lexa pointed at a display of his physiology – his breathing deepened. Louise recognised it: Sentinel breath, long, deep and slender. He waited behind the door. A crowd had gathered outside.
“Is Micah there?” he said, not bothering to shout.
“I’m here Gabriel.” There was a pause. “It’s been a long time.”
Lexa nodded to Louise and pointed to a line on the thought monitor, confirming that Gabriel remembered their brief encounter back on Earth.
He picked up the nanosword, activated a control to make the hilt more pliable, anchored it inside his left sleeve against his bicep, where it stuck and moulded to his flesh.
“I’m coming out, Micah.”
Louise stood up.
Lexa joined her this time. “He’s almost there,” she said, not concealing her excitement.
As soon as he was though the door, heavy arms took hold of him, bent him to the floor, cuffed his hands behind his back, and clamped his feet together. He was dragged in front of Micah. Jennifer was there as well, a picture of anguish. She started to say something to Micah, pleading for her brother’s life.
Lexa zoomed in on Gabriel. He flexed his bicep and straightened his left arm a little, and the hilt of the nanosword detached and slid down into his left palm. The cuffs looked tight, but he activated the nanoblade, and with a flick of his wrist he sliced through the wire chaining his hands and feet, then whipped around and flashed the blade in front of Micah, who stared a moment, trying to work out what had just happened, before his head and body separated, both toppling to the ground. Jennifer’s eyes went wide as Gabriel sunk the blade into her heart, then rushed forward to catch her collapsing body.
“Lexa,” Louise said.
A dozen pulse barrels pressed against Gabriel’s head, their tell-tale whines rising as they charged...
“LEXA!”
The scene froze, all except for Gabriel, who let go of his sister and stood up, searching. Lexa touched another control and Gabriel staggered a few steps before falling to the floor, unconscious.
“Apologies, I was caught up –”
“Never mind. You’ve done well. Debrief him. Tell him everything, then bring him to me.” After a moment she called after Lexa. “I can’t call him Gabriel. Does he have another name, or do you have one for him?”
“You honour me… Louise. We could call him Toran,” Lexa said. “My father’s name. He was killed during the Liberation.”
Louise had almost forgotten the Alician name given to the sacking of Earth, since for them it had meant the f
reeing of Alicians after centuries of living in the shadows, hunted down by Sentinels.
“So be it. Tell Toran his new name. And you are no longer part of my Achillia.”
Lexa bowed her head. “I have disappointed you.”
“Not at all. I need someone as a personal aide. I’ve been away too long. You see, I don’t even know what title you should have.”
Lexa bowed deeper, then stood straight. “I will be your Hara.”
Louise watched Lexa depart, then leant forwards, her fingertips on the glass as she gazed down at the frozen scene, focusing on the corpses. Micah would come to Savange, probably Ramires, too. After they’d been dealt with, she would send Toran to Esperia. Insurance was a waste of money unless one day you cashed it in.
Jen felt a trickle of sweat run down her spine inside her spacesuit. She panted, her re-circulated air hot from all the running. She leaned against the smooth wall for a moment’s respite and glanced at Dimitri. He was bent double, large hands planted on his knees, chest and shoulders heaving; he wasn’t cut out for this. But the husk was closing on them. She checked the pad again: two choices as always, now that they were in the bottom layer of the maze of tunnels left by the Tla Beth caretaker: left or right. It had been thirty-five minutes since they’d woken the Machine remnant, and now it was hunting them down.
Left or right? She had to decide quickly, the maze wasn’t infinite, and they mustn’t get caught in a dead end. But it could move faster than them – it didn’t have to choose at each juncture, merely follow their path. Luckily, two of Jen’s drones were still working, and were tracking it from a safe distance. She didn’t know what it looked like now, but from the blip on the pad she could see that it had grown in size, larger than her and Dimitri put together.
She checked the map on the pad, planning the next five turns ahead. It was tricky, because according to the drones, the husk was leaving some kind of residue behind it, and she didn’t want to risk entering any tunnels it had already been down. She could almost laugh; it was as if they were stuck in a child’s cheap holo-game, trying to stay ahead of a monster eating the path as it chased them. And now they were on the last, deepest layer in the game, and she couldn’t see a way out, except to keep running.
Without warning, the ground shook, knocking her to the floor, Dimitri just managing to stay on his feet. She assumed it was another hit from Qorall; the strikes were arriving more frequently. Ukrull had said the planet had unusual properties, making it hard to destroy using ‘conventional’ weapons, whatever that meant in Level Fifteen parlance. But Qorall was Level Nineteen; so it was only a matter of time. She hoped Ukrull and Pierre had made it out of the system.
She got to her feet. “Left,” she said, and they sprinted down the tunnel. They came to an open chamber, and she slid to a halt. Before them was an array of upright, shiny cigar-shaped objects, each one about six metres in length. She recognised them as the weapons the Tla Beth had used against the Level Sixteen attackers. There was no obvious means of propulsion, nor any device to launch them, nor hatches leading to the planet’s surface. Level Seventeen, she reminded herself; why should she understand how they worked? And in any case it wasn’t her priority.
“Do you think it might prefer these to us?” She doubted it; in her experience good fortune usually slid downhill out of her grasp.
“No, if… I am right… it is… hunting organic material,” Dimitri said, between pained gasps, as he blinked hard and tried to catch his breath.
He didn’t complain, nor did he look at her. Yet she knew him well. He would be feeling ashamed he had never kept fit, that he was endangering her. She kept expecting him to tell her to go on without him, which was exactly when she would tell him to go to hell and keep moving. But he said nothing.
“Let’s go,” she said, and set off at a slightly slower trot.
She knew he was right about the husk. It wanted them: the only organic material on this dead planet. They’d passed other stashes of Tla Beth equipment earlier and it hadn’t even slowed down to take a look. Pierre had briefed them before their descent that it would need an energy source to re-awaken, and Jen’s nanosword had provided that. But the power of the Machine race was in their ability to replicate, and the planet was ten kilometres deep with inert metal residue. So, given that the planet was under attack from Qorall, she’d assumed the husk would simply replicate and engage in battle. Wrong. And now she and her lover were running out of both time and tunnels.
Next junction. She glanced at the pad. The husk had just entered the section behind them. “Right!” she shouted, and dashed down the tunnel. Dimitri’s wheezing rattled over the intercom. Just keep running, Dimitri, please.
Jen tried to reason it out for herself; she was sure Dimitri already knew, but he needed all his oxygen for his muscles, not speech. The Machines were based on organic metal; she didn’t really know what that was, presuming it was a metal that was literally alive and grew. But what if it needed a small amount of living organic material, either as a base or as a catalyst in order to replicate? If it took one strand of DNA per replication, then she and Dimitri would offer the husk the chance to replicate billions of times.
Her helmet torch-beams lit up a cathedral-like chamber ahead. But she skidded to a stop as the floor disappeared. Cave-in. Shit. She glanced at the pad; the husk was in the tunnel behind. Dimitri bumped into her, almost sending her over the edge, and peered over her shoulder. The floor had collapsed, no doubt due to Qorall’s bombing, and she couldn’t see the bottom. Her mind raced.
“Thrusters, Dimitri. We have to go down now. Are you ready?”
“Always, my love.”
She should have heard it in his voice – the way he said it like an epitaph – before she leapt downwards. But no sooner had she started falling, her thrusters almost depleted from the initial descent to the planet, than she knew Dimitri was not following.
Panic seized her. She flipped around and stared upwards. “Dimitri, don’t you fucking dare! Come on, we can still escape!”
She saw his helmet peering over the ledge as she tried to flare her thrusters to ascend again, but it was no use.
He gasped a few more urgent words. “Tla Beth… must… have…”
No. Not like this. No, no, NO! She tapped her visor to zoom in as she fell, not caring where the floor was, her thrusters sputtering. Something was behind him. His body stilled. Shadows of black dust grew up his legs, over his torso, creeping towards his helmet. On maximum zoom she could just make out his large eyes, baleful, remaining open until dust encrusted his helmet and took on a shinier, metallic form. Through the intercom, she heard his last breath being sucked out of him, and she knew the Machine had taken him.
Jen screamed, an anguished, deafening cry inside her helmet. She couldn’t believe it; the one thing about Dimitri was that he was always so full of life. A flood of memories of their life together skated across her mind: seeing him for the first time lecturing in Athens University when he captured her heart; seducing him a week later in his office; cramped together in a submersible in the depths of the Mariana Trench where they located the first Q’Roth ship; finding Dimitri looking so ragged and alone in the caves on Esperia after she’d sent him away; and in Kalaran’s vast ship where they’d spent the past year, a year she’d never wanted to end. The galaxy had just stupidly thrown away a brilliant, vibrant mind. It didn’t make sense.
She called out to him again, somehow hoping he would reply, knowing it was futile. Jen found it hard to breathe. She wanted more than anything to get out of her damned suit.
And then she decided.
Still falling, barely able to see Dimitri up on the ledge, Jen’s hands moved to her helmet seals. She’d never been religious, but she’d always believed that if your lover died, there was a short moment when maybe, just maybe, you could go with him, be with him forever. The time with Dimitri eclipsed everything else. Besides, the husk would get her soon. Better to go this way. She knew he’d stayed above to give
her a chance, but it was her life, hers to do with as she pleased. She hooked her index fingers under the release catches and took a breath, just as the ground slammed into her, knocking her out cold.
When Jen roused, she lay there, not moving, as if dead on the rocks. For a moment she forgot what had happened, and turned left and right searching for her lover. Then she remembered, waking fully into her nightmare. Her breathing became ragged, and a wave of pure grief rose through her chest and up into her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, as her gloved fingers clawed at the ground, her body trembling.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there. Eventually three thoughts seeped into her mind; first, that the window of opportunity to join Dimitri had closed. He would be glad of that, and would have chided her for even considering suicide. Second, the husk had not come to harvest her as it had her lover. Third, Qorall’s shelling of the planet had stopped. She reckoned the last two were linked; the husk had enough genetic material – for now – to begin its defence against Qorall. But if the legends of the Machine race were true, its appetite for replication was insatiable, so it would return for her.
Jen got up slowly, and checked herself over: bruised, but nothing broken. She’d been lucky. But her one remaining torch beam faltered. A passageway far across the field of rubble beckoned. Memorising the rock pattern between her and the opening, she turned off her torch to conserve power and began making her way across the boulders. She had no plan, but Dimitri had sacrificed himself so she could live a little longer. After several slips, trips and falls, she reached the mouth of the tunnel, and glanced back upwards to the cliff edge. All was dark.
Her drones hadn’t entered this hidden fifth level, so she had no map, and her pad was smashed from the fall so there was no way to call them. She paused, recalling Dimitri’s last words. He’d been trying to tell her something, something about the Tla Beth. It had built these tunnels. Why had this level been sealed off from the others? What was down here? She played back Dimitri’s words in her head. The Tla Beth must have… And then it came to her: a ship.