by Ivan Ertlov
The Professor shook her head.
"What exactly can this be? A gun?"
The astrotelepath made a face.
"A weapon, of course, albeit one I've never seen before. There you have your missing resources, at least most of them."
Suspicion rose in Frank, a suspicion that was so horrible, so abysmal, so obscene that he forced himself to suppress it again. It could not; no, it simply could not be true. No human being was insane enough.
At least he hoped so.
Mariella swallowed, staring stunned at the image before her eyes as her worldview slowly crumbled.
"But - why?"
"Because survival alone is not enough. Because this world here is only the beginning of something new, great, glorious. Because it is time to make the arrogant peoples of the Council, the descendants and children of these mass murderers, pay for what they have done to our race! Our superior race whose God-given mission it is to rule this galaxy!"
A cold shiver ran down Frank's spine as he looked up, just like Dilara and Mariella, across the table, through the projection.
There he stood, the mayor, dropping his mask.
And they had fallen into his trap.
Gonzales' eyes flickered, one corner of his mouth twitched, his shoulders shook. But his hands remained steady, keeping the carbine pointed at the Professor.
She no longer understood the world.
Her world.
"What - what have you done?"
The mayor chuckled.
"Nothing yet. The question is - what are we going to do?"
Dilara snorted, and Frank could feel her muscles tense, getting ready to jump.
No, Dila, don't, it's hopeless.
Indeed. There were at least four metres between them and Gonzales, plus the table and two armchairs. Too much distance, too many obstacles.
The Professor's voice almost broke, but she still kept her composure.
"You - you and Freezemayer? What about my father? He would never have ..."
"No, he wouldn't have. Because he was as naive a dreamer as you are. Look around you! We live at the ass end of the spiral arm, at the very edge of useless worlds! So this is supposed to be our future? NO! We must take back what is ours! Every single world that was taken from us, every sector that we once dominated! And vengeance is mine, says the Lord! We will make Creesh and Borsht burn in the Fire that consumed our Earth! We shall fall upon the remnant like the Last Judgement! We will build hunters and send them forth until the heavens darken upon the worlds of our enemies, and their birds must creep upon the ground!"
This sounded familiar to Frank, but not in a good way. Gonzales talked himself into a frenzy, becoming louder, more fanatical, more insane with each word.
A movement at the edge of Frank's field of vision, a slow, creeping shadow.
The mayor did not notice it, calmed down a shade and enjoyed his triumph over Mariella. Years of restraint, an endless game of hide and seek, a diabolical charade came to an end.
"Stupid bitch did you really believe that your old man died in a diving accident? You delusional moron, he had more than a thousand hours in his log! No, he had to die because he was in our way!"
The Professor trembled, white as a sheet, staggered half a step back.
The muzzle of the gun followed her mercilessly.
Her lips moved, breathed more than spoke.
"And now you want to kill me."
Gonzales laughed, shook his head - but not violently enough to be distracted, not so much that he snapped the barrel, not enough to lose sight of his goal.
"No. Yes, I'll make a martyr of you, an icon of the New Earth, but I won't take the blame."
His gaze oscillated between Frank and Dilara.
"This honour is due to you. You are the missing piece, sent by Divine Providence. We need you to make all the dolts and fools, satisfied and satiated out there, hungry. Hungry for war, hungry for victory, hungry for the revenge of humanity!"
Holding the gun in front of him with only his right hand, he brought his left up, tapped his chin on the transponder of his hand unit.
In a split second, his pitch, his voice, his habitus changed. He looked shaken, disturbed, deeply affected when he activated the radio.
"To all police units! Emergency operation at the spaceport, planetary space defence!"
A tear flowed down his left cheek as he forced a sob from himself. What a talent for acting!
"Men! Women! Our Professor is dead, murdered by the strangers who lured her into a barbaric trap. The Protectorate has sent us spies, spies and assassins! This - this is a declaration of war!"
Frank understood what was going on.
From one moment to the next.
He understood why Gonzales so readily believed Florbsh's theories, why he personally drove them here, what he hoped for. They had handed him the beginning of the end on a platter, given him a way not only to get rid of Mariella but to instrumentalise her death.
The Professor, murdered by the Protectorate's henchmen, unmistakable proof that there could be no peace with the Council's peoples.
No peace was allowed!
The population would rally around him and Freezemayer, give them unconditional backing for a campaign, a first strike, for whatever the military-industrial complex was planning.
The sector would burn, and they were the torch.
The fuse for the inevitable explosion of violence.
Frank understood it all, saw it and the coming events with a merciless, strangely detached clarity.
But it was too late.
Gonzales raised the gun a little more, put it down for good, first on Mariella - but he only needed one volley, two, three bursts, a slight swing back and forth to kill them all.
The Professor, Dilara and himself.
He shot a moment after Florbsh dropped from the ceiling.
Thirty kilograms of Durash hit the head, flowing down over it, covering Gonzales up to above the ribcage.
Mucus enters his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils, mercilessly robbing him of sight and breath.
But his hands are still free.
He fires the first salvo!
A hiss, the smell of ozone, burning heat gliding past Frank's cheek, Old Fritz's wrinkled visage ablaze behind him.
Mariella is alive.
Frank jumps up into the air, pushes himself off the leather chair with his left hand, screws his body over the desk.
The leg, pulled up to the stop, steps through, sends the terminal across the room.
Polymers and metal, glass and sparking electronics hit the mayor, still under Florbsh's elastic stranglehold, sending him staggering back to the wall.
His back hits it hard, driving the air out of his lungs - into Florbsh.
No new ones are pouring in.
No oxygen.
No mercy!
Another burst of fire, finally untargeted, a panicked, final volley.
A biting pain on Frank's calf, the pilot suit's smart fabric immediately begins to doctor him.
He ignores the burning and stinging, leaps forward, throws himself at Gonzales.
Once more, the gun comes up, points at Frank's stomach, trembles towards his chest ...
A flash of silver flies through the air, a movement too fast for human eyes.
The severed hand falls to the ground, along with the weapon, which no longer fires a shot.
Dilara jumps over it, spinning like a top, pulling the second sickle-blade through in the rotation.
The mayor's guts fall to the floor, hitting the carpet with a ghastly, wet clap.
Florbsh lets go of his victim, slides with lightning speed into the corner next to the door.
Dila is no more than a shadow, a leaping, bouncing, spinning fury. A living legend, the Raging Beauty, takes the forfeited life with merciless precision.
The final scream of terror, more surprise than pain, dies away in a bubbling, liquid gurgle, and the mayor's head rolls across the floor.
The Professor screams.
*
"That was - that was a cruel slaughter. An unnecessary, cruel slaughter!"
Admittedly, Frank had expected different first words from Mariella after the Professor had recovered from the shock. Something like a "thank you", maybe even a "well done!".
Not an indirect reproach. Dilara pedantically licked her blades clean and put them back into the sheaths.
"What do you mean, unnecessary? He would have shot you! And, even worse, me too! If that wasn't self-defence, I don't know what is."
Frank nodded in agreement - and turned to Florbsh.
"Good work. I mean, really good work. If it wasn't for you, we'd all be fucked now. I know this isn't what you signed up for, and I'm sorry you had to see something like this in your first week on the job."
The Durash's pseudopodia trembled - but for very different reasons than Frank suspected.
"Are you kidding me? That was my best day in a long time! Boy, I feel more alive than ever! Is it always like this with you guys?"
Frank suppressed the instinctive "No, not really", resolved not to anger the goddess of truth any further.
"Not always, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. That's why we have really good health insurance for our employees. And one of the best paramedics in the Protectorate."
"He means himself, Florbsh, but he's even right about that. We may need one, too, because our problems here are just beginning."
Dilara pointed to the door, behind which the sounds swelled into a surging sea of noise. Rage and anger, scared and confused questions from dozens of throats, shouting matches between soldiers and civilians.
Civilians?
Yes, civilians.
If a policeman is no longer seen as such, marches up and behaves like a soldier in enemy territory, society is screwed.
An iron law as old as mankind, founded in times when the first armed beadles in settlements considered themselves more powerful and important than their fellow citizens.
Did it also apply here and now?
That was the question.
Mariella shook her head, swallowed hard - and changed. Her trembling faded, her shoulders tightened, and an iron determination returned to her gaze.
Dignified, she strode over the organic heap that had once been a mayor, made a beeline for the door console - and stood, arms raised, in front of the metal sliding apart, revealing a view into the corridor.
A handful of forlorn-looking soldiers stood as black spots between two dozen policewomen and policemen, most with a stunner at the ready, kneeling and standing in tactical formation.
At their head, a slim, well-toned man around forty, with dark brown skin, a clearly lethal weapon in his hand and three stars on his shoulder stripes. Black frizzy hair curved the cap of his uniform upwards, wide hazel eyes stared in confusion at the dead woman in front of him.
Mariella seized the moment, projecting prudent authority into the corridor.
"Take it easy, Chief Commissioner, take it easy. As you can see, the rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. And yet, the situation is more dramatic than any of you can imagine. Mayor Gonzales has just attempted to assassinate me - and it was our visitors who saved my life."
The policeman's hand lowered, the barrel now aimed at the ground - but the weapon was still ready for use, his posture trimmed for combat.
Time for the second strike.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is thanks to Frank Gazer and his companions that an outrageous conspiracy has been uncovered, involving both the top echelons of our military and our politics. Hephaestus harbours a secret that has forfeited all our lives - in the eyes of the Protectorate, in the eyes of the Council peoples. Our aspirations for a new beginning and peaceful coexistence have been shattered by the military-industrial complex's ruthless and murderous solo effort. My father was also a victim. While we were working on a future for our children and grandchildren, on a new homeland for our entire species, preparations were secretly being made for war. A war that we can only lose."
A few horrified cries in the last rows, an affected, desperate groan somewhere to the left, two soldiers stealthily trying to push their way out - and being pinned down by swiftly gripping police hands. The stage was set, the drama at its peak and the fat lady ready to sing. Even though, in this case, she was a well-proportioned beauty with plenty of charisma and even more rage in her belly.
"We are at a crossroads. Perhaps we still have one final, very last chance to end the madness before it has begun. For that, I need you - each and every one of you. You served Gonzales, and he was a traitor to our ideals. The question now is - whose side are you on?"
Frank held his breath, felt his pulse quicken mercilessly, as did Dilara's, whose ears trembled at his side, the left one beating against his shoulder like a steel-reinforced butterfly wing.
Mariella had dropped her trousers, and above all, asked the most critical of questions - who was involved in the conspiracy?
Freezemayer and his senior officers, of course, probably even most of the soldiers of New Earth, plus the mayor as one of the ringleaders.
But who else? How far did the tentacles of this octopus reach? If the police were in on it, it was the end of the road. None of them would leave the planetary defences alive. Game over, in the short term for Frank and his friends, in the medium term for humanity.
The chief commissioner put his gun away for good.
"Professor, what are our orders?"
*
"We must assume that Troshk and Bettsy were not killed after arriving on Hephaestus, but that they are very much alive."
Frank tried to put as much conviction as he could into his voice - and still met with healthy scepticism.
"Why would that be? Wouldn't that be too much of a risk? A veteran and army commander of the Borsht and a Creesh mechanic are about the last things I would bring into a secret, illegal weapons factory."
Chief Inspector Tidam Napaltjarri, their new and best ally - after the Professor, of course - was not wrong. From the perspective of a police officer, which was very different from that of an angry Tarjah.
"Because in any other scenario, I'll bite out Freezemayer's throat."
Dilara had snorted the words more than spoken them, an expression of the anger she used to mask her concern for her comrades. Frank could not blame her; he felt the same as she did - but tried to remain pragmatic.
Keeping a cool head.
"Because an interrogation makes more sense. They'll try to squeeze everything out of the two of them - the Protectorate fleet deployments, how we were able to jump into your jamming field with Yrsha, how much we know about you. They won't kill the two of them until there are no more questions left."
That was only partly comforting because interrogation meant torture, and even if Frank did not say so, it was clear to everyone in the room.
Tidam nodded thoughtfully, and it was amazing how quickly the policeman had digested his initial shock, had shifted into a strategic planning mode. The mayor's remains had been disposed of, the few soldiers on the planet's surface in custody. The lower ranks seemed surprised and horrified as everyone else was privy, but that could be deceptive; no one wanted to take a chance.
And that is precisely why they had decided to keep the planning staff as small as possible.
Florbsh was one of them.
"So we must first go to Hephaestus to free the Stormcommander and the Metaltaster."
Dilara bobbed her ears, paced back and forth with a grim expression on her face.
"Yes, that's the top priority here. We have Yrsha, and even if the enemy fighters are damn fast and agile - our armour and firepower give us an advantage."
Frank reluctantly contradicted his co-pilot, but this time he couldn't avoid it.
"Yes, against ten or twenty of them, but not against two or three hundred. They will outmaneuver and hunt us to death, keep harassing us until our energy reserves run out or the armour is shot away. What
else do we have?"
Florbsh bubbled up.
"The element of surprise. No radio message was sent towards Hephaestus; the Rear Admiral probably has no idea that his plan has been blown and his ally here is dead."
Mariella, who had taken a seat in Freezemayer's leather chair and started a new terminal brought to her, interlaced her fingers and leaned forward over the table.
"The planetary defence ground-space guns and their fighter squadron. If I understand it correctly, ten of the fighters are operational?"
Tidam hesitated, and his head movement was more a lateral sway than a nod.
"Yes, Professor, but at that range, with Hephaestus in opposition, our stationary guns don't help much. We can lay down barrages, cut off sectors, but real fire protection? Impossible. And even my most skilled glider pilots aren't military aviators. Of course, they will do their best; they have also clocked some space combat hours in the simulator, but ultimately ..."
He didn't have to finish the sentence; they all knew what it meant. The chances of survival for anyone joining their mission were vanishingly small, especially against such a superior force. Frank loathed the thought of sending people to a needless death, of pointlessly wasting lives to prolong his, to marginally improve their chances.
But did they have a choice?
Numbers and time played in a close alliance against them. Even if Freezemayer had no idea what was happening on the New Earth right now, he had led the first move, luring Bettsy and Troshk into his realm with no intention of letting them return.
Whatever the Rear Admiral and his allies had originally planned for the seizure of power and the start of the war - it would be accelerated, had to happen in the next few days. And no matter what weapons they had built, how many ships they had launched - in the long run, they would lose.
And with them, humanity.
For the second time, and this time for good.
Mariella felt the mood shift, the fierce determination giving way to defeatist resignation that suppressed any urge to act. And she reacted as one might expect from a sovereign.
"Then we limit the damage - to New Earth, to the people here. Frank, take your ship, jump back to the Protectorate and deliver the message. With an unconditional surrender if you like, signed by me. Make it clear to them that the military is the enemy here, not the civilian population. We will do what we can, but we need a relief army, a fleet to finish off Freezemayer and his henchmen."