by Barry Kirwan
The woman in the image walked closer, staring at them through the Hohash connection. Her eyes were pure grey, the colour of slate. She opened her mouth, then the image vanished, the Hohash resuming its oil-film colouring. Pierre was relieved she was gone, but suspected the worst.
“What did she say, Jen?”
Jen stared at the mirror, her voice quiet. “We’re alone on this ship, Pierre. It doesn’t matter what we do. We’re a decoy. We’re…”
A sacrificial pawn. He placed a hand on Jen’s shoulder, knowing this could tip her over the edge. But inside, he felt something boiling up into his chest. All his life, he’d been manipulated by others: first his father had genetically engineered him to be smarter and less emotional, then he’d been altered by the Ossyrians, and last time he’d met Hellera she had changed him yet again. But he was living proof of the fallibility of Grid Society’s founding principle, that species stayed within their assigned Level. He was a Level Ten variant of a Level Three race. He was the scientist’s infamous black swan.
“Come on,” Pierre said. “We have to make our way back to the cockpit.”
“What for?” Jen looked as if she was ready to crack.
Pierre held her by the shoulders. “We’re going to make some chaos, Jen.”
She stared at him a while, then a smile dawned across her face. “Finally, something in which I excel.”
They swam back to the far end of the ship. Pierre felt lighter. Glancing downwards, he noticed the Hohash following. He’d often wondered about them; servants of the Kalarash, yes; but they also seemed to have an independent existence, perhaps even their own agenda. He didn’t understand their role, and considered that they might simply watch from the sidelines as the war unfolded, recording everything no matter who won. But he reckoned they would act decisively at some point. Like him, they would stop being played, stop being pawns. He hoped he would be around to see it.
Ramires paced up and down like a caged animal in the glass-fronted cell, while Sandy and Antonia sat close together. An explosion rocked the ground, but he remained standing.
“How deep are we?” Sandy asked.
“A kilometre, more or less.” He waved a hand dismissively. Not a problem for Shiva; she could sink a hole that deep in seconds. He resumed pacing, counting down the seconds based on the estimates Ash had made back on the ship.
The hiss of gas canisters venting made him pause. Sandy came to his side, put her arms around him. He should tell her. No secrets, ever; that had been their agreement. A single lie and it was all over. A secret was a lie by another name.
He turned, took her wrists. “They have fashioned another Gabriel, like the original one back on Earth.” There, he’d said it. It sounded like an epitaph. His.
She tensed, her sandstone eyes transmuting from soft to hard in an instant. Still he held her wrists. A look of comprehension dawned across her face. It wasn’t the prettiest face he’d seen in his lifetime, but it was the only one he cared to gaze upon.
“Clone?” She mouthed it rather than saying it aloud, in case the Alicians were still monitoring, though Ramires knew it didn’t matter anymore. Micah’s assault had begun, and Kat should arrive at any second, which was why he had to prepare her.
“He’s on their side, so it isn’t really Gabriel, just a shadow.”
Her wrists slipped from his grip using the Bagwa move he’d shown her years ago, making him smile, and she put her hands on his waist. “Is he a Sentinel?”
Ramires’ smile vanished. It was the only question that mattered. No secrets, no lies.
“Not yet,” he said.
Sandy’s breathing quickened, and she embraced him, just as Kat arrived. Antonia leapt up from the bench and dashed to the side of the glass closest to her.
Sandy didn’t let him go, so he watched as Kat bent down and used something that looked like a pencil to scrape a door-sized arched groove in the glass. Kat stood back, but Antonia didn’t wait, intuiting what the pencil did, and shouldered the impromptu glass doorway outwards, where it fell as if in slow motion and smacked onto the floor. In a second Kat and Antonia were locked in an embrace, too. Ramires unpeeled himself from Sandy.
“Seconds count,” he said, another Sentinel phrase he’d taught Sandy. She let go, and nodded. She placed two fingertips to her lips, then to his. It almost made Ramires crack; Sandy knew, guessed what he foresaw. No secrets was a two-way street.
Sandy touched Antonia’s shoulder. “You have to go now, deactivate the chemical weapon planted in our brains. Give me that device, Kat, I’ll find and release the other captives.”
Kat looked first at Sandy, then Ramires. “All the Alicians in the complex are down; nerve gas tailored to their physiology, based on the two we captured on Esperia.”
Ramires nodded. “Go quickly. Remember that Louise is hybrid; it may not work on her.” He watched Sandy depart, followed her spring-like gait, her hair bobbing up and down as she moved. She didn’t turn around. He touched his fingertips to his lips, and then held them out in her direction. Then he lowered his arm, and stepped through the archway, and spoke to the person he sensed was just around the corner.
“They are gone, Clone.”
“My name is Toran,” he said as he emerged, carrying a staff, a sword and a knife in each hand. He tossed one set onto the floor in front of Ramires.
“The Alicians haven’t been able to teach me anything useful for some time. Perhaps Louise could. But you can hone my Sentinel fighting skills.”
Ramires surveyed his opponent. Know your enemy. The clone of Gabriel – this Toran, since he preferred that name to the one of a warrior he respected – had the eagerness of any avid student. But it was more than that; unlike Louise, also a clone but with her original identity and assuredness intact, Toran acted as if he’d been born yesterday, unsure of who or what he was. It was as if he craved anything to make him feel like true flesh and blood, to make him feel like a real person, not something engineered in a lab. Ramires guessed that whereas Louise had kept topping up her clone’s memory frequently until she needed it, Toran had been grown years after the loss of the original Gabriel. Added to that, the Alicians had interfered with his values and morals, disrupting the original personality construct. It wasn’t Gabriel. Yet the way Toran moved and held both himself and the sword, Ramires had no doubt that the martial arts memories were mature and coherent.
Ramires picked up the sword, hefted it in his hand, gauged its weight, and then picked up the knife, holding it so the blade pointed behind, its sharpest edge down.
“I will teach you how to die. You should never have been brought into this world. You are a shadow, nothing more. You have no soul.”
Toran dropped the staff and held onto the sword and dagger, mirroring Ramires.
“We shall see. But you forget how much I know, how many memories I have, things Sister Esma downloaded from the real Gabriel before he died. That gesture you just performed with that woman, it is the final goodbye of the Sentinel. It is you who will die, Ramires, you know it already. But not before you teach me your fighting secrets.”
Ramires reflected a moment. Toran didn’t know who ‘that woman’ was, what she had meant to the original Gabriel. It didn’t matter. Clearing his mind, he held both weapons, making them extensions of his arms, and circled to the right, pointing the sword’s blade at Toran’s eyes so its length could not be gauged.
“Knowledge is not the same as skill, Toran. But either way, today I’ll teach you how to die.”
Ramires attacked.
Micah held a small ball in his right hand, one of Shiva’s more gruesome devices. A surprise for Louise. He walked along the corridor, stepping over inert bodies of Alician guards – unconscious rather than dead, despite Vashta’s recommendation. He paused at each intersection, ready for an attack, but none came. His resident had been feeding him telemetry from Ash’s vision, relayed via the Hohash, until Louise had used a laser scalpel to blind him. Micah heard voices up ahead, and sped up.<
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As he rounded a corner, he was confronted by the sight of Ash inside a large lab, strapped to a chair, his eyes slit, black streaks down his face. He looked like a nightmarish clown. Sonja talked softly beside him. Two Alicians lay prone on the floor.
Micah didn’t enter. His resident detected a shimmer in the air in front of him, just inside the chamber, and enhanced the image: humaniform mostly, except for one arm; female; advanced stealth camouflage. Micah tossed the ball towards the image.
Louise cried out as a silver net wrapped itself around her. Her stealth field stuttered then failed, and she came into full view, in black one-piece coveralls. Micah didn’t move. He watched Louise struggle to break free of the mesh, her Q’Roth claw snapping uselessly at the tightening fibres. Micah wrested the pistol from her grip as some of the fibres slid across her face, sealing her lips and forcing her eyelids closed. She staggered forward a pace then froze, locked down, barely able to breathe, an ungainly statue.
Micah’s resident reminded him that if he didn’t stop the process, it would begin to cut into her flesh, then her bones, then her organs. It would dice her. He watched its progress a few seconds longer, recalling all his encounters with Louise, flashbacks that usually ended with many people dead, people Micah had cared for, had sworn to protect, until the first thin traces of blood etched across her forehead and hands, then he sent the command for it to halt; at least until Kat confirmed that the device linking Louise’s survival to the fate of the captives had been deactivated. Then they would decide, though he had no doubt how Kat would vote; it was his own vote that was in question. Sandy had been right about him. It was difficult to kill someone in cold blood, no matter what they’d done. Despite that, he vowed to do it when the time came. She was too dangerous to stay alive.
Micah had thought many times of all the things he would say to Louise when he next saw her, when he fulfilled his promise to kill her, but he said nothing. Instead he walked past her to Ash and Sonja.
“I’m sorry it came to this, Ash.” He placed a hand on Sonja’s shoulder. “We’ll fix him, don’t worry.” He sliced through Ash’s restraints with the same bloodied laser scalpel Louise had used earlier.
Sonja drew aside to look at Micah’s handiwork on Louise. “Don’t worry, Micah. I’ll describe every aspect of that bitch’s death to him in intricate detail.”
Ash sat up. “Thank you, but I have witnessed more than enough death. Micah, we are not out of this yet. I have a bad feeling.”
“Vashta will patch you up, Ash, and then we’ll get you some new eyes, human ones this time.”
Micah smiled, and for the first time in a long while felt a lightness, that humanity had turned a corner, had won an important victory, shown the Alicians they had met their match.
Shiva tapped into Micah’s resident. We have an incoming enemy ship, Micah; we must move fast. Micah glanced back at Louise, blood welling in a line across her brow, a single drop threading its way over silver threads down her cheek. Enemy ship? Shiva sounded concerned. It couldn’t be Alician, or even Q’Roth, they were no match for Shiva; in fact no ship for light years around posed a threat. For an instant he went into denial. He was tempted to allow the mesh to resume its work on Louise, but at that moment Shiva supplied more information: a Level Sixteen Nchkani warship is nearing the planet. It is far more powerful than I, Micah, and we have used our only gravitic weapon. I will be destroyed on detection. I am also sorry to inform you that it has already destroyed the space station we cut loose; there were no survivors. We have five minutes, Micah. Where are the captives?
Micah was still trying to process the sudden turn of events, when Kat and Antonia dashed in, nearly knocking Louise over.
Kat regained her breath first. “It’s deactivated, Micah, the captives are coming. You can kill her, and we can all get the hell out of here.”
He raised his wristcom to his mouth. “Aramisk, bring the Rapier as quick as you can.”
Micah weighed things up. He guessed why the Nchkani had arrived: the Spider. They had come for it, to take it back to Qorall. But he still didn’t know where it was, and the Nchkani clearly meant business and would turn the planet inside out to find it. He stared at Louise; she knew its location.
His eyes met with Antonia’s, knowing she belonged to Kat again. “It’s really good to see you,” he said. “You look well.”
Antonia nodded, her face taut, as if something else had happened, something he needed to know. But now wasn’t the time. Aramisk’s shouts echoed down the corridor.
“Sonja,” he said, “Get everyone to safety, including Ash. You too,” he said to Kat and Antonia.
Kat stood her ground. “She’s going, I’m staying till we locate the Spider.” She held up both hands. “No arguments from either of you, there’s no time. I met Qorall once, remember? If he gets the Spider, dead or alive, the war is lost.”
While Kat and Antonia embraced one last time, Micah turned away and spoke to Aramisk and Shiva.
“Captives en route. Shiva, once they’re aboard, get them out of the system; that’s an order. We’ll take care of the Spider.”
He turned back to see Antonia departing. Micah stepped out into the corridor to watch them go, and to catch sight of someone. But she wasn’t there. He came back in and walked up to Kat.
“Where’s Sandy?” he asked. “And where’s Ramires?”
Sandy watched from a distance, barely breathing. Ramires fought like a dervish, but each time he appeared to be about to kill the clone, the Gabriel dop-pelganger managed to escape by a hair’s breadth.
Earlier she’d run to each of the cells holding the captives, carving out doors as quickly as she could, all the time hearing the clangs of sword on sword in the background. At one point it had stopped, and she almost crumbled, fearing the worst. But then the sound of wood striking wood reverberated down the corridor. She’d released the last of the captives, told them which way to go, then double-backed to her cell. The two swords, daggers and staves lay on the ground; it was down to hands, feet, elbows and knees. She didn’t care if Micah left without her, didn’t care if Louise’s device released a toxin inside her head. She just wanted Ramires to survive. But it wasn’t looking good. No human, even a Sentinel, could keep up this pace. But an Alician could. No doubt Sister Esma had been unable to resist upgrading the clone with a few adjustments.
Sandy hung back only out of fear of distracting her husband at some critical moment. He’d fight better if he believed her to be safe. She’d been biting her lip for some time, realised it was bleeding, and forced herself to stop. She glanced toward the nearest sword. Back on Earth she’d been a competitive fencer. If Ramires lost she could attack the clone… It probably wouldn’t make much difference, she wouldn’t last more than a second, but… for so long now she had allied herself to Ramires. He’d once told her that Sentinels almost never took wives, because usually they also died fighting Alicians. She edged closer.
She’d watched Ramires train the Genner Youngbloods often enough to know which way it was going, and her breathing became heavy. The clone had one hand around Ramires’ throat. They were both on the floor, Ramires’ face away from her. The clone was choking him, pinning him down in a wrestling grip. Ramires’ legs thrashed around but the clone was well-anchored behind him. Ramires’ one semi-free hand tried to reach backwards to the clone’s face, but it was no use.
Sandy darted forwards, sprinting for the closest sword. Ramires’ legs were slowing down, his free hand clawing at air. She snatched up the sword and flung herself forwards, raising the blade high as Ramires had trained her years ago, and brought it downwards, aiming to decapitate the clone.
But the clone moved with incredible speed, simultaneously dodging the cut and tugging Ramires throat into harm’s way.
The blade sliced through Ramires’ neck and thwacked into the stone floor and lodged there, a sound like a bell ringing loud in the air, before fading into silence.
The sword’s hilt slid from Sandy
’s fingers as she knelt next to her dead husband, his blood soaking her knees and shins.
The clone got up.
“He was already defeated. You hastened his departure by a few seconds, nothing more.” He walked off a few paces.
Sandy stared, unbelieving. Dead words escaped her mouth. “Kill me. Now.”
The clone walked towards her, then knelt next to Ramires’ corpse.
“He was an extraordinary fighter, like nothing I’ve ever encountered.” He prised the sword from the stone floor and flung it away. “There is a Tibetan prayer for the fall of warriors. We must honour him, but my memory is not perfect on such things.”
Sandy placed three unsteady fingers on Ramires’ bloody, cooling brow, closed her eyes and began the chant, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The clone joined in as best he could.
Micah tried to contact Shiva for the tenth time, with no luck. He had to believe they had made it. In the last few minutes a loud, pulsing hum could be heard everywhere. He had no idea what it meant, only that it couldn’t be good. Kat was head down, jade light reflecting off her brow as she interrogated the Alician main computer, trying to locate the Spider.
“Do you know anything of these Nchkani, Kat?”
Kat shook her head, and pointed without looking. “She might.”
Micah turned to the locked-down figure of Louise. He closed his eyes a second and gave his resident the command to release the wires around her head, so she could speak.
Louise gasped for a few breaths. She wasn’t facing Micah, but spoke as if he was in front of her. “Nasty toys you have these days, Micah. Release me and I’ll tell you –”
“Tell me in the next five seconds or I’ll silence you forever. Don’t think I won’t do it, Louise.”
“What’s in it for me, Micah?”
“I know you, Louise. You still believe you can somehow turn this situation around, get free, re-capture the hostages and kill me into the bargain.”