Birthright: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  The shot followed the tower to its impact, caught the dust cloud as it struck before panning away to a group of panic-stricken civilians running desperately through the streets. It took me a second to realize that they were Resscharr and not humans, and I wondered if that subtle uncertain haziness of their figures was intentional.

  The camera view focused in on a particular couple---what seemed to be a male and a female, though the difference might have been in my mind alone. Their colored tunics were ripped and burned, and their feathered manes were darkened by soot, but they didn't appear to be injured. The one I had judged a female carried something in her hand that might have been a weapon, and seemed to be searching for something to point it at as they ran.

  She led the male into an alley between two of the very few intact buildings, trying to get away from the fires and the falling debris on the street they had occupied. They jogged cautiously through the alleyway, glancing back over their shoulders to make sure they hadn't been followed.

  As they emerged from the corridor, however, they froze, the expressions on their faces changing suddenly, their gaze frozen on whatever horror lay before them, unrevealed by the camera. Raising her hand weapon, the female pressed a touch pad on the back of its handle. The gun issued a pale, crackling beam of what seemed to be charged particles, but the discharge had lasted only a fraction of a second before some invisible energy bolt struck her in the midsection and severed her at the waist in an explosion of boiling blood.

  Her companion turned in a panic, trying to run, but a large, black pincer snapped out with incredible speed to seize him by the right arm. He screamed, a curiously inhuman warbling sound that sent a shiver up my back, as the pincer lifted him high in the air, and his assailant finally came into view.

  I guess, more than anything else, the thing reminded me of a huge insect. Not that I would say it was insectoid, at least not in the way that we and the Tahni are humanoid---it was actually built more like some kind of monstrous crustacean, as much as it resembled any form of life I was familiar with. Yet the impression I was left with as it held the screaming Predecessor up by his bloody arm was that of an oversized scorpion.

  Its head was a flattened oblong of obsidian, inlaid with a pair of deeply-recessed red orbs that I assumed were its eyes, with a pair of horizontally-hinged jaws that clicked together almost unceasingly, creating a castanet-like rhythm. What there was of its neck was nearly swallowed up by a thick plating of what seemed to be biological armor that grew out of its shoulders, covering the joints of its smaller, upper set of arms. These limbs ended in long, multijointed fingers, made for complex manipulation, while the lower set of arms were heavy, load-bearing appendages that terminated in wicked-looking pincers. Mounted to one of the load-bearing arms, in such a manner as to be operated by the same-side manipulative limb, was the energy weapon the creature had used to cut down the female---if I had to guess, I'd say it was some kind of laser.

  The thing's chitin-plated torso curved down into a complex, well-protected double-hip joint that was supported by two sets of motive limbs---I hesitated to call them legs, because they seemed to be just as dexterous as the upper sets. The forward pair were short, with well-defined digits, as if they could be used as auxiliary arms in a pinch; while the rear set were stouter and longer, curved digitigrade and clearly meant for high-speed bursts of running. The scorpion image I'd received was only enhanced by the flexible tail that waved back and forth threateningly from behind the rear set of legs, but the more dangerously threatening sting was the heavy assault cannon riding the creature's right hip.

  The castanet sound grew louder as the creature grasped the struggling Predecessor male by his other arm, then yanked sharply with both pincers. The male's arms ripped out of their sockets in a spray of blood and he fell face-first to the street, shaking in fatal shock.

  "We have come to know these beings," Choss continued, taking up his monologue once again, "as the Skrela. What you have just witnessed was a Skrela warrior, a subspecies that has been their fighting class for millions of years. They are hive beings, with no real sense of individuality as you or I experience it, and the various forms their race takes are so diverse you might wonder if they were of the same evolutionary tree. Our researchers, in fact, believe that they may have been a bioengineered species, but that is no longer important. What is crucial is that they are coming this way, and unless halted, will sweep through your Commonwealth in less than five years.

  "We are hopeful that, together, we may be able to conquer these abominations once more and save you, our children, from the fate that befell us. I will allow your President to outline our plan of action."

  Chapter Six

  Mitchell:

  Belial had started out as one man’s dream. Back when the only road to the stars had been the wormhole jumpgates left for us by the Predecessors, you couldn’t afford to ignore a system just because it lacked habitable planets; there simply weren’t enough systems to discount a rich asteroid field simply because it didn’t have a handy Earth-like planet for a political base.

  Alpha Centauri had a mineral-rich field but no habitables---not as much as a good-sized moon for the mining community to enjoy some gravity and a thick atmosphere. So Rachid Amrouche, whose family had amassed a fortune pawning worthless South African real estate to greedy Australians, had cashed out all his assets and built Belial. He’d taken a basically spherical, nickel-iron asteroid, drilled a narrow hole down its center, filled it with water and then exposed the thing to sunlight amplified by large mirrors. The resultant steam pressure produced a hollow tube of compressed ore, in this case nearly thirty meters thick. Spin was imparted to produce near one gravity at the lowest levels. The "open" ends were sealed by transplas, with reflectors mounted to provide natural sunlight, and a pair of huge docking rings were connected through the core with a non-spinning transport tube.

  Amrouche had named the station Carcassonne after some landmark on Earth and had hopes it would become a cultural beacon lighting the way into a new era of planet-independent society. He imagined that hundreds of thousands of families would live and work in the massive space structure and that it would serve as a cultural and governmental headquarters for the mining communities in the Centauri Belt.

  Maybe it would have worked if the Transition Drive hadn’t been discovered; but with habitable planets now much more readily available, Carcassonne had become a home without a family. Amrouche had been bought out for a fraction of what he’d invested in the place and Carcassonne had become Belial, a pleasure station where miners and travelers could enjoy a wide variety of quasi-legal debaucheries and those who lived outside the law could do business without interference.

  Watching it floating in space in the reflected light of Alpha Centauri A, the starshine winking off its solar panels, I could picture it as Amrouche had: as the embodiment of his ideal of a better society. He’d just forgotten about human nature, like so many utopian idealists before him.

  “Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” Kara McIntire’s voice came over the Ariel’s cockpit speakers from where the Dutchman cruised a few hundred kilometers away.

  “We’ve only gone over it twenty times,” Pete muttered from his seat behind mine.

  “And we’ll go over it another twenty if we need to,” I said to him, putting an edge on my voice. Pete worried me. He’d seen combat, but he’d never been in the military and wasn’t used to following orders. I turned in my seat to look him in the eye. “Clear?”

  He looked like he wanted to argue, but after a moment, he blew a breath out and nodded. “Clear, bro. Trint and I are supposed to head to Murdock’s usual hangouts---the Wanderer’s Home, the Serenity Inn and the Glass Fountain Casino---and find out if anyone has seen him.”

  “Are you certain I should be the one to go with Pete?” Trint asked. “After all, I am not what you would call…unobtrusive.” I had to agree. Even in loose-fitting casual clothes, Trint was a hulking figure and his internals woul
d be picked up by every sensor in the station.

  “That’s part of the reason we do want you along with him,” Deke’s voice explained, and I could hear the grin in its tone. “You two are a distraction for the rest of us. If anyone is expecting someone to check on Murdock, you’ll attract their undivided attention.”

  “Especially from Rachel and me,” I put in. “We’re going to check out the berth where Murdock’s ship docked. The transponder has it still there, so it’s going to be watched.” I shook my head. “I still don’t think we should bother trying to get anything out of Belial’s security office though, Deke. You and Kara are wasting your time: those guys are hardcore about privacy.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Kara said. “General Murdock has a better…working relationship…with the management of Belial than I did. Just make sure that Pete and Trint leave a good twenty or thirty minutes before the rest of us.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I acknowledged, fighting down a smirk. Our roles had reversed since the last time we’d met. Then, she’d been coming to me for help and I’d been in charge. Now, she was the commanding officer and it didn’t look as if she was about to let any of us forget it.

  “We can’t carry any ranged weapons inside the station,” Kara went on didactically, “but everything else is fair game.”

  She left off there, but I could tell she wanted to say more. I looked between Pete and Rachel. “She wants to tell you to stick close to your handler,” I told them, grinning to take the edge off of it, “but she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “I will be sure to watch out for your brother, Caleb,” Trint told me solemnly.

  Pete’s face reddened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Seriously though,” I said, reaching out to slap him on the shoulder, “grab a stun baton from the weapons locker, and make sure you wear one of the armored jackets we brought along. This place can be pretty rough.”

  “What about me?” Rachel asked in a challenging tone. “Do I get a kitchen knife and a house frock?”

  I laughed at that---I couldn’t help it. “No, Rache,” I assured her. “I think we can come up with something better than that.”

  I checked the navigation screen and saw that we were getting close to the line where we’d have to shut down the impellers.

  “Everyone make sure you’re strapped in,” I warned them. “We’re transitioning to conventional drives in thirty seconds.”

  Rachel looked as out of place walking through the broad, brightly-lit streets of Belial’s central entertainment district as I had the first time I’d been to the station. She rubber-necked like a tourist, eyes flitting back and forth from one shop to another, from the ubiquitous casinos to the even more ubiquitous pleasure shops. Holographic projections filled the space above us, partially shutting out the vertigo-inducing sight of the station’s multilayered stacks of habitation modules arrayed one within another. The ads promised live prostitutes, ViR sex, and pleasure dolls of all varieties.

  I was grateful that Belial was so protective of privacy; otherwise, we’d both have been bombarded with those ads via our personal comlinks or, in my case, my neurolink straight into my brain.

  I saw Rachel gawking at promises of sadomasochism and robotic bestiality, snuff fantasies, rape fantasies, pleasure dolls that appeared to be pre-pubescent children and things that even I didn’t understand despite my years in the military.

  “People really need this sort of thing just to have sex?” she asked me, her voice incredulous.

  I chuckled at that, which earned me a dirty look.

  “It’s kind of like how when you get more money, your expenses expand until it’s all gone,” I tried to explain it to her. “People have all kinds of fantasies, and for most of them they can just act them out in their head. But when you have the tech available to make it more real, well…” I shrugged. “Then I guess you need it to be more real to make it work.”

  “Some of this stuff is just sick,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief as her eyes flickered to another ad, this one somehow involving live squid. I didn’t disagree.

  “Come on,” I urged her, hand on the small of her back, “let’s keep moving. It’s quite a walk to the counterpolar lift banks.”

  “Why isn’t there some sort of transport to take you directly from one docking pole to the other?” she complained, shifting her shoulders awkwardly under her jacket. She still hadn’t gotten used to the Reflex armor. I knew it felt weird at first---the electrically active byomer was pretty much a living thing, after all. But it would give her an edge if we ran into trouble. I wished we had more of the suits, but Murdock had only provided one with the Ariel, and he’d intended it for me. Thankfully the suits adjusted to fit the wearer.

  “Because the people who pay so much money to rent space for these businesses,” I indicated the shops, casinos, bars and…other establishments all around us, “don’t want people to be able to zip right by without having a chance to spend money. Everything about this place is designed to separate visitors from their credit accounts.”

  She stopped looking at the advertisements for a moment and I saw her eyes glance at the people instead. I knew what she was seeing because they drew my eyes as well. Every variety of human passed through those corridors: from Belters---towering at over two meters tall, laboring at even the half a standard gravity generated by the spin of this level of the station, and walking with an exaggerated awkwardness like gigantic toddlers---to heavy-worlder shorties like us and everything in-between. But that wasn’t the half of it.

  Body mods were common among commercial spacers and even more common among the quasi-outlaws that frequented Belial. The tamest had holographic facial art that shifted with the light and the angle, using their faces and often their depilated heads as an ever-changing canvas. ‘Face jacks were de rigeur among pilots and riggers, since neurolinks like mine were still insanely expensive and involved dangerous surgery, so nearly everyone had a pair behind each ear to allow them to interface with their ships’ computers even while under a heavy-g burn. You couldn’t use impellers much for prospecting or mining; most of the ships out here still used old fusion drives.

  What made Rachel stare were the ones who’d taken things beyond the practical, beyond the decorative and well into the “I don’t want to be human anymore” territory. Skinners---men and women who had willingly discarded some of their biological parts in favor of mechanical ones, voluntary cyborgs---we had some experience with, and they were represented here, though not in the greater numbers you’d find them on some colony worlds.

  But Skinners were nothing compared to what had come to be known as Evolutionists. Three of them were passing us on the broad thoroughfare, the first of them towering over us with the height of a man born and raised in low gravity but with muscles that bulged through his tight skinsuit. His torso was elongated to make room for an extra set of arms, and his hands---all four of them---had extra fingers, some of them apparently on bionic mounts that would allow them to be replaced by various tools. His legs were tree trunks that ended in broad pads that didn’t look like something that had even started as a human foot. His head…Good God, his head. He had extra brain tissue and the expanded skull to hold it and an extra eye sat wide on his skull to either side of his two natural ones. How he processed the data from the two extra eyes I had no idea. His mouth and nose were fairly normal, which made everything else seem more horrible somehow.

  The other two were modified differently, though equally drastic. One had been re-engineered for zero gravity and couldn’t walk at all, instead rolling along in a powered cart; while the other stalked on four legs like a centaur built low to the ground with arms that could rotate 360 degrees.

  “Why the hell do people do that to themselves?” Rachel asked softly, trying not to stare and failing badly.

  One of the three, the centaur, glanced back, giving Rache what might have been a dirty look---how can you tell when someone’s face is that heavily modified?
---but then caught sight of me and kept hoofing it. I can be intimidating that way sometimes.

  “They want to be different,” I said, cynicism heavy in my tone, “just like everyone else. Some of them, I think they do it just because they can.” I shrugged. I’d spent years conflicted about the modifications the military had made to me during the war, and those weren’t even visible on the outside. I worried they somehow made me less human. That was before I met all the people who didn’t even want to be human anymore.

  And speaking of not human…

  Trint, I broadcast over my neurolink, what’s the sit-rep?

  We have discovered nothing, Trint responded, using the neurolink that General Murdock’s people had installed for him back when he was being patched up after the battle at Petra. Other than a gentleman in one establishment who had very negative feelings towards Tahni.

  I chuckled softly. I bet that didn’t work out very well for him.

  I endeavored to exercise self-control, Trint assured me, however your brother was not so forgiving.

  Shit. Oh well, they were there to distract, and I guess Pete was being pretty distracting.

  Is he okay?

  He’s fine other than bruised knuckles. The other gentleman…not as fine.

  Keep an eye on him and keep me updated.

  Of course. It wasn’t really possible to convey dry humor via a neurolinked conversation, but somehow Trint managed it, despite the fact that he was not only an alien but an artificial alien construct.

  “How are Pete and Trint?” Rachel asked me. I had to grin at that. After all these years, she could tell when I was communicating with my implant.

  “Fine,” I told her. “Being nice and distracting.”

  “It was a good call sending Pete for that,” she told me, eyes still darting around, taking everything in. “I’m still not sure if I shouldn’t have gone with him, though.”