by Barry Kirwan
“I’m on my way.” She rushed outside, her eyes sweeping the area for Brandt, but he was gone.
Petra didn’t know Xenic well. He was a Mannekhi commander Kilaney had teamed up with during Sister Esma’s attack on Esperia. He was tall, not an ounce of fat on his tanned body, with all-black eyes, a zero-nonsense manner. Xenic looked as if he’d come out of his mother’s womb issuing orders.
“The enemy is inbound,” he said, after a cursory nod of introduction. “No Orb this time, because of the Shrell wires, but fifty enemy ships are about to transit to this system. The black Orb was a decoy to give you a false sense of how much time you had; it has already attacked another system.”
Petra didn’t yet trust the Mannekhi; until a month ago they had all been working for Qorall.
“How did you get here without us detecting you?”
“Mannekhi can navigate through Shrell-fields. We also recently acquired Level Eight stealth-tech from an evacuating race.”
“Evidently it works.” It came out more aggressively than she’d intended.
Kilaney held up a hand. “Petra – Madam President – you need to hear him out.”
Petra pulled up a chair and sat in it. “Please, Commander Xenic, you’ve come a long way. Tell me.”
“The Mannekhi homeworlds – all twelve of them – were recently hit by Orbs in an unprecedented coordinated attack. It seems Qorall learned we had changed sides, and lost no time in absorbing us into his obedient ranks.”
It was as she and Kilaney had feared. She stared into those black pits of eyes. “Then the fifty ships inbound are –”
“Mannekhi. Ten thousand soldiers, all gold.”
“The Shrell field. It won’t stop them, will it?”
Xenic shook his head.
Petra looked to both men. “I’m open to options, gentlemen.”
Kilaney and Xenic exchanged a glance.
“There is one tactic that might help,” Xenic said. “Mannekhi smugglers, when being chased by police vessels would use unorthodox tactics to nudge the ships giving chase into the wires, disabling them. I can show Kilaney how to do this. Together we can stop ten of their ships getting through.”
“Leaving only eight thousand troops, any one of whom can turn us.” Petra didn’t bother to rinse the bitterness from her words.
“I can leave if you prefer,” Xenic said.
She gazed up at him again. “I’m sorry, commander.” She stood up. “Did any of your people escape the Orbs?”
“Some ships, here and there. Not many, and not nearly enough.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way; I’m glad you came. But why did you come here? You could be trying to find surviving Mannekhi vessels, or joining other allies.”
Xenic turned to Kilaney, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “In the last battle in this system, we learned that Mannekhi and humans have an ancestral link. You are as precious to us as our own kind, though I don’t expect you to understand. Strategically you are important. Qorall’s latest offensive is marshalling significant resources to take Esperia. There are battles going on in a hundred systems right now, but this is the one that matters.”
Petra smiled. “We should feel flattered.” Her smile faded. “But the truth is, we don’t stand a chance, do we?”
Xenic laughed, causing Petra to frown.
“We have two sayings – had two sayings – back on Mannekhi Prime. The first is that the only certainty in battle is uncertainty.”
Petra waited. “And the second?”
Xenic grew serious. “When you are convinced you will lose, the gods will desert you.”
Petra nodded. “Understood. I will leave you two to make preparations. How long do we have?”
“They will be here tomorrow, by noon.”
“Then I wish us all the luck your gods can spare.”
Xenic tilted his head slightly. “Wait.” He walked up to her and placed his fingers under her chin. Her mother Kat had told her of this gesture, and she knew she had to stay quiet and listen.
“Mannekhi eyes see more than human ones, and I read people. You have something eating away inside you. Make peace with your soul tonight.”
She made to speak but he lifted his fingers, and shook his head.
“I am telling you, one commander to another. You need to be diamond clear tomorrow. My men, Kilaney’s men, and everyone else need you to be one hundred per cent focused. Do you understand me? Whatever it is, fix it.”
He removed his hand. Petra felt her cheeks flush, but Xenic had already turned away and called up a holo of the Shrell field, pointing out particular junctures to Kilaney, who glanced at her once or twice but said nothing. She left the Rapier, and marched back towards her office near the Dome. The light was beginning to fade.
Vasquez met her halfway, driving a skimmer.
“You’d better get aboard,” he said.
Petra didn’t conceal mounting frustration. “What now?”
Vasquez’ face, with its cheekbones that normally looked as if they’d been chiselled out of marble, softened. “Would ‘please’ or ‘Madam President’ help?”
She climbed aboard, sitting behind him. He accelerated so fast she had to put her arms around him. He sped towards Hazzards Ridge, hit the incline and rocketed up the slope. Above the rushing wind, she heard two ships lifting off; Kilaney’s and Xenic’s. She had no idea what could be so urgent up here, but as they reached the crest, she saw. He slewed the skimmer to a halt, and she leapt off, unable to believe her eyes.
“The Spiders are leaving.”
Vasquez passed her a viewer, but with her Genner eyesight she didn’t need it. Small ellipsoids, like flattened pearls, were rising from Shimsha, piercing the shield and zipping straight up into the sky.
“Where the hell did they get those ships? They have barely any technology.”
“Kalaran, most likely,” Vasquez said.
It was dusk, and Petra lifted the viewer to her eyes. “They’re not all leaving,” she said, lowering the viewer. “Some are headed this way.”
As she’d expected, Kilaney called in. “Petra, are you seeing this?”
“Unfortunately I am. Vasquez is with me. Most are airborne but a small group appears to be staying here. Make me happy, Bill. Tell me these ships are going to join you in defending Esperia.”
“No such luck. They’re heading clean out of the system, zig-zagging through the Shrell field like nothing Xenic has ever seen, accelerating all the way. They’re gone, Petra.”
And not coming back. She spoke to Vasquez, while watching the small procession of Spiders wind their way up the hill. “Ironic, isn’t it? Qorall is coming here for the Spiders, and they’ll be long gone by morning. Any chance the recoded Mannekhi will leave us be?”
But she guessed the answer.
Petra and Vasquez waited for the Spiders. There were fifteen of them. Four at the back steered two broad levi-panels stacked with short, stubby cylinders. She wondered what they were for, they looked oddly familiar. Then she remembered. They’d been at the top of the new towers surrounding the Spider city. She glanced back toward deserted Shimsha.
“The shield is down,” she said.
Vasquez took another look. It was nearly dark. “I guess they don’t need it anymore, they seem to be abandoning their home. Unless…”
But Petra had already set off down the hill to meet the Spiders. At last, some good news.
It took several hours to set up the shield emitters, get everyone inside Esperantia, and power up the shield. For the first time in weeks, Petra was cautiously optimistic. Vasquez was busy trying to find the Spiders somewhere to spend the night, what was left of it.
She wandered the streets a while. Xenic’s rebuke played heavily on her mind. Whatever it is, fix it, he’d said. Most lights were still on. Few could sleep knowing what the morning would bring. She found herself in the Genner part of town, in the street where Brandt lived. She walked up and down it a few times, then approached his
door. She lifted her hand, made a loose fist, then knocked gently, half hoping for no reply, or to hear another female voice inside mixed with Brandt’s, laughing or worse. Instead she heard his heavy footsteps. He opened the door, saw her, and opened it wider, inviting her in. Petra looked down at her feet, poised at the threshold of the doorway in front of her. She took a breath, and stepped across it.
He awoke, not knowing who he was, where he was, or how he had come there. He couldn’t move or feel any part of his body. All he could do was see, and remember. He had killed someone.
“She deserved to die.”
The woman’s voice was cold, synthetic, like a discordant choir. But she was beautiful, tawny hair cascading over tanned shoulders, sitting in a high-backed metal chair like a throne. They were outside, on an emerald sea whose ripples faded as it stretched in all directions towards a blue horizon. The legs of the throne made dimples in the water, but it didn’t sink. Her toes dipped into the emerald fluid but no drops clung to them; not water then. Two suns hung in the sky, the higher one blood red, the smaller one purple. But the light was white and grainy, like twilight, so they weren’t suns. Nothing was as it should be. He turned his attention back towards her, and realised she was naked, her knees slightly apart. He looked away.
“Ah, I forgot.”
She was suddenly clothed, a pale blue wrap barely disguising the contours of her body.
“Better?”
He knew the body before him intimately. His mate, his lover. But he could not remember her name. The persona was all wrong. This was not his mate, this was someone else. Something else.
“She died in battle. So did you. But your memories were salvaged. Most of them. Perhaps not those that mattered to you most. We are having this discussion to see how much you remember. If there is enough, I will reconstruct you. If not…” She shrugged.
His mind flooded with an urgent jumble of images and facts at the ready, his survival instinct strong. But then he stopped this information avalanche, as if pressing ‘pause’ on a vid. He knew he should be afraid of the implied threat, but he realised he cared less about his own survival than his dignity. He would not be intimidated. His mind emptied, then filled again, this time brimming with questions, one overriding all others. Who am I?
“Later. I respect your lack of fear. That alone may make you worth saving.”
He knew he should feel anger at her complete power over him, but something about being disembodied was affecting him.
“Correct. You have no organs at present, no flesh, no hormonal systems. You are not visceral, so you are more detached.” She cocked her head. “Your mind is clearer than it has ever been. Would you like to remain this way?”
He recoiled from the idea.
“I didn’t think so.”
He wondered if he was being ‘stored’ in some kind of computer.
She laughed. It was a grating noise, as if she was out of practice, or didn’t know how it was really done. “Nothing so primitive. Here.”
A gold-rimmed oval mirror approached across the wavelets, taking up position a few metres to the right of her throne. A Hohash. He’d been with one just before he’d died, before he’d killed and been killed. Who was his interrogator, then?
“Hellera.”
The name meant nothing to him.
“I am the same species as Kalaran.”
There was something off about the way she said ‘Kalaran’, an emotion he couldn’t discern, but at least he recognised the name. One of the Kalarash, allegedly the most intelligent and powerful beings in the galaxy. They owned the Hohash. He remembered something else: Kalaran was at war with Qorall, the invader ravaging the galaxy, whose armies would soon reach Esperia, where the last human survivors lived.
“Kalaran asked me to resurrect you, but I haven’t decided yet. If you are too incomplete, you will be of no help to anyone, a burden even to yourself.”
He sensed a callousness about her, an indifference to killing. But his memories were degraded. He tried to recall the people he had grown up with, but it was like seeing a crowd from a distance; he couldn’t make out their faces.
“How did your people arrive on Esperia?”
Her voice was sharper; the real test had begun. He recalled his lessons. It had started with the Alicians, a human tribe in the Himalayas who met visitors from another world – the Q’Roth – back in the eleventh century. They agreed to prepare humanity for culling over the next thousand years while the Q’Roth hibernated. Another group – the Sentinels, learned of this pact and tried to stop them, but failed. Then it all came to a head, Earth and Eden were lost, except for twelve thousand refugees who escaped to the planet Esperia, where they’d been protected by a quarantine while all human children – including himself, he remembered – underwent genetic advancement. He was a Genner.
“Factual memory usually fares best. Recent events now.”
That was like trying to see through smoke. He had taken control of a ship, an Ossyrian pyramid vessel. The Alicians – they had come to Esperia to finish the job they had started, waiting for the quarantine barrier to come down. He’d tried to launch a pre-emptive strike. It had all gone badly wrong. Images reared up in his mind of dead Ossyrians and fellow Genners scattered across the battered ship’s floor. He’d screwed up badly.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you had not acted Esperia would have been lost, Kalaran’s secret along with it.”
Secret? Ah yes, the human population wasn’t alone on Esperia. The Spiders. Nobody really knew anything about them, except they mattered to Kalaran a great deal.
“Now, enough of your history. What do you know of ours?”
He stared, his mind blank. Almost nothing. Then he recalled a school lesson. Two billion years ago, the Kalarash had welcomed Qorall into their territory – the Jannahi galaxy – but Qorall had risen up against the Kalarash. A war had ensued, and as the Kalarash were about to win it, Qorall unleashed a terrible weapon, one that destroyed the galaxy itself. The Kalarash, all seven of them, fled to this galaxy, believing Qorall dead.
She let her head fall back, laughing again, doing a better job of it this time. Watching her, he recalled the name of the girl he had loved – Virginia. He wished he could somehow give his life to bring her back. The laughing ceased.
“No,” she said, her voice cold steel. “Not possible.”
He felt – organs or no organs – a deep well of sadness. He stared at the floor.
Her voice softened. “Kalaran’s little lie.”
That got his attention. The legend of the battle with Qorall was known by every race in the Grid. It was a lie?
She stood, then paced a little, tracing a small circle around the throne, hands clasped behind her back. “After all this time, perhaps someone should know the truth.” She returned to her throne and sat down, once again facing him.
“We Kalarash number seven. We cannot procreate. We took Qorall in because he was Level Eighteen, the last of his kind, bordering on becoming Level Nineteen.”
He understood. They had adopted him. But that meant…
“Qorall for us was… well, you would say ‘a breath of fresh air’. We were on the verge of becoming obsolescent. He gave us new hope, our little project, and for the first time in aeons it bound us together again. And then he did something remarkable.”
He waited, but he had a suspicion.
“Yes. He learned how to procreate, to make others of his kind.” She looked away. “But he needed our help. In particular, he needed mine.”
The skin on her face grew taut, and he understood. Hellera was female, whatever that meant in Level Nineteen terms.
She nodded, staring into the emerald depths at her feet. “Kalaran and the others didn’t like the plan.” She laughed, for the first time sounding right, but tinged with regret. “I considered it, but we were a democracy back then, and I was out-voted. They banished him, or tried to.” She stared back at him again. “Qorall – there was a viciousness to hi
s character we’d never perceived. His rage erupted in a war against us, the likes of which no being had ever imagined… and he was winning.”
She stood. “Qorall didn’t destroy the Jannahi galaxy. We did.”
The Hohash moved closer to her, its silver mirror surface darkening to show an image. Seven ships shaped like elongated crossbows, each one a pair of rippling colours; sleek and beautiful, hurtled through space, leaving behind them a swirl of stars around a pure white central ball.
He heard a plaintive voice – Hellera’s, he realised – from one of the ships.
“We cannot do this!”
A choir of voices from the others: harsh, definitive. “We must.”
In the image, Hellera did not reply.
Glancing briefly away from the Hohash, he saw the present-day Hellera facing away from him and the record of the past.
He turned back to the history lesson. The central core of what he guessed was the Jannahi galaxy began to shrink as the seven ships vanished into the inter-galactic void. As the white hot ball shrank it turned red, then grey, then black.
The view shifted so he was ‘above’ the galactic centre, which continued to shrink. He could almost feel the unimaginable power building. It seemed to disappear, and for a second he hoped… But then stars closest to the centre began to flash and wink out, and a radial wave swept outwards, extinguishing the galaxy from inside out. When it was done – he had the impression it had been speeded up for him – he witnessed the remains: ash, space dust, unrecognisable shreds of scorched tech and debris floating in space. Nothing left alive.
“So we thought,” Hellera said, turning back to face him.
His mind freefell as the enormity of it sank in. Qorall’s lust for revenge was in some ways a just cause. Qorall could have come all this way to exact revenge on Kalaran, and that would be more than understandable. But Level Nineteen beings were ultra-advanced, and it was just as likely Qorall had come here for another reason: Hellera. To breed. But if Hellera could fashion a human clone…
“It is not so simple with higher Levels, and almost impossible above Level Fourteen. But Qorall originated from a galaxy where understanding of organic science far exceeded our own, and he found a way. Still, he needs a specimen. He would kill me afterwards, of course; in fact he does not even need me alive to procreate, just a sufficient sample of my DNA. Unlike all the other Kalarash, except Darkur, I never fully merged with my ship. I am Qorall’s best chance.”