by Sean Allen
“Shit,” Abalias said under his breath, “talk about your goddam tragic irony!” He paused to collect his thoughts and then something occurred to him. “But you—you’re just as much a risk as any other Guardian—you didn’t know if the Serum would work, and the Durax could’ve easily ravaged your mind to find others!”
“It was a risk the king was willing to take,” Graale said as he looked down and gripped the empty sheath on his belt between his thumb and forefinger, “and he left me with a way out…”
Abalias was a little quicker to understand this time despite the carnival of thoughts, questions, and emotions that cartwheeled through his mind, but he still couldn’t help his mouth as it fell open in disbelief. “You mean kill yourself? So that’s what the dagger was for!”
“Yes,” said Graale softly. “You see, Colonel, it’s a hard thing—to wonder if the universe might stand a better chance of surviving if you and your kind were…dead.”
“Sorry, Sarge,” Abalias said after an awkward silence. “Sorry I thought you might’ve been a traitor—it’s just to set something up like the ambush on Talfus and Malo using the Serum as a cover story and then attack the base, it has to be somebody who knows our operation in detail and knows how to get at sensitive information”
“Like passwords for a Serum drop?”
“Yeah,” Abalias hissed with contempt, “like the damn passwords for a goddam Serum drop! Point is, I doubt it’s some grunt—has to be someone with some pull, not to mention a smart sonofabitch…” Abalias was staring at the floor again, deep in thought.
“Then who?” Graale broke the melancholy silence.
“I don’t know, exactly, but yours wasn’t the only answer that struck me as odd when I asked about the Serum.” Graale cocked his head in fascination and leaned forward.
“Blink has been the chief medical officer in this man’s army for as long as I’ve been in—and that’s a long time. I know Artie better than anyone—well, maybe not as good as that machine of his, but anyone alive anyway—and for as long as we’ve known each other we’ve always butted heads when it comes to the Serum.”
Graale, anxious to see where this was going, scooted across the floor to get closer.
“You see, Artie doesn’t believe that medical officers should be given the Serum when there’s not enough to go around to front-line soldiers.”
“He’s got a good point there.” Graale was nodding his head in agreement and Colonel Abalias glared at him.
“We’ll stow that debate,” Abalias said with a twinge of irritation, “for a more casual conversation in a friendlier environment, Sergeant. My point is that Artie Blink has been an outspoken pain-in-my-ass about this every chance he gets. He’s even disobeyed a direct order—on several occasions—to get inoculated!”
“And he replied in the affirmative when you asked if everyone had taken the Serum?”
“Well…he didn’t agree exactly,” Abalias said, squinting and trying hard to picture precisely what happened in the shipyard, “but he didn’t disagree either, and that’s not his style when it comes to the Serum!”
“Colonel, with all due respect, I don’t think that proves much except that Blink isn’t a soldier, and he was scared senseless after being thrown into a scrape with Berzerkers.”
Abalias took a deep breath and exhaled noisily, puffing his stark white cheeks into swollen lumps on either side of his blue lips. “I know…you’re right. That man has pretty much held this army together single-handedly—working around the clock, patching up soldiers, and getting them back into action. I’ve never seen anyone with as much dedication to the cause. Ah, hell, it could be Malo for all I know!”
“Malo?” Graale said skeptically.
“I know it sounds crazy, but Talfus dies on the ridge and he survives? I mean, it’s obvious that this Mewlatai—if he even exists—could’ve easily killed him, so why didn’t he? Why did he just smash his arm and then leave him alive?”
“You think the injury to Malo’s arm was a trick to throw us off?”
Abalias didn’t answer, but he arched his brow and lifted his hands with his palms up in a ‘think about it’ gesture. Graale mulled over the theory for a moment and then returned the colonel’s look with an unconvinced frown.
“Okay, then—how about his strange behavior? He drifted off into la-la land when I was laying out the plan in the vent shaft. It was like he wasn’t listening or, worse, talking to the Durax with his mind.”
Graale’s polite frown retreated and was replaced by a look of complete bewilderment that transformed quickly into concern. “You feeling okay, Colonel?” Graale asked earnestly. “I mean, did that drug they used to knock us out scramble something upstairs?”
Abalias shot him a look that would have cut a flesh and blood soldier in half.
“Seriously, you know as well as anyone the Durax can’t use their powers unless they’re close by—like in the same room—and I didn’t see any Durax in that vent shaft, did you?”
“No,” Abalias said as he hung his head in frustration. He sat there on the floor quietly for the next several minutes and, except for the occasional shake of his head, he didn’t move.
“While we’re considering the crew that escaped for master spy of the millennium, what about Otto?”
“Major Von Holt?” said Abalias, looking up at Graale like the very question was grounds for a court martial. “He never gave me the slightest indication he could be a spy!”
“Well, that’s what a great spy is supposed to do, isn’t it? Make the enemy trust you completely so they’ll give up their secrets without ever suspecting that you’re a traitor?”
Abalias thought about this last statement from the sergeant and he felt sick to his stomach. A storm of hurt and confusion raged in his mind and the room became noticeably colder. “Shit, Graale, for all I know, I’m the damn spy and I just don’t know it!”
Chapter 25: Damnation
The center of the room was filled with stone markers, and Dezmara knew exactly what they were. Each gravestone had four sides measuring six inches wide and extending from the ground so as to form a three-dimensional rectangle. The sides of the little monuments rose just passed Dezmara’s knees before abruptly tapering inward and culminating in a point. The markers stood piously as the horrifying scenes on the walls gushed violent color on their numbers—one thousand souls in a perfect geometric sea of silent stone as waves of frantic red, sky blue, brilliant green, and feverish yellow washed over them with taunting brightness. Dezmara was mesmerized by the contradiction. She swept her solemn gaze over the consortium of death stretched out before her and was just about to say something resembling a prayer—or at least some words of sympathy for the poor bastards for whom the stones kept their eternal vigil beneath the maddening colors of the windows—but something struck her as unusual about the display, and she paused before her impromptu benediction. “Where’s the dedication?” she thought. “The words that tell you how these people died and who paid for all this?”
WHHHIIIIIRRRRR!
Her hands flew up and under her flight-coat as the mechanical crescendo of whining gears and spinning wheels announced something charging straight for her from the far end of the room. The kranos barely had time to identify the object rushing toward Dezmara’s position as it streaked down the narrow chase between the two columns of graves where she was standing. The readout in the helmet identified it as a bot of indistinguishable make and purpose and confirmed that it wasn’t carrying any ordnance just as the catches on Dezmara’s blades gave way with a smooth click-click. She eased her weapons back into their sheaths and prayed the cameras that the bot was undoubtedly carrying didn’t tip off its master to the cache of destruction strapped to her back.
The whirring buzz of the bot’s single track of narrow treads died instantly as the machine came to an abrupt stop just inches from Dezmara’s shielded face. It wore a long, black coat with a high collar that buttoned down the front. The inky frock swayed back
and forth at its bottom from the abrupt change in acceleration before finally coming to rest just above the machine’s treads. Its head was like an ovoid-wedge that tapered to a vertical, curved edge in front. A single eye was centered at the apex of the ridge and glowed green beneath a curved lens as it scanned the figure standing before it with mechanical efficiency. Three dark slits crested the ridge horizontally from one side of its ‘face’ to the other just below its optics. “Great, this one talks,” Dezmara mumbled beneath her helmet as the machine pulled its head away from the viewports on the kranos and presented its arms from behind its back. The bot’s hands, constructed of long, narrow wires attached to flat disks that acted as joints, were the only things visible outside of its heavy, draped sleeves. Each finger had six joints, making the spindly protrusions eerily long and quite lethal in appearance. A slow succession of ticking sounds crept from just below the cuffs of its coat as it interlaced its needle-like fingers and tapped each on the back of the opposite hand.
“Welcome, brother traveler!” the bot’s voice boomed through the chamber. “What you see before you is a monument to the good people of Trinity Major who lost their lives as a result of the Great Invasion!” The bot was overly enthusiastic and hung on the last syllable in almost every word as his hands, now unclasped, gestured vigorously through the air.
“How many graves are there?” Dezmara asked as she turned to her left and walked along the front row of stones.
“One thousand, dear brother!” the bot said. The sound of grinding gears knocked from below its coat as it turned its treads to follow her. It rolled along, matching Dezmara’s pace, but still faced forward and was now talking and gesturing to the side of her helmet.
“And are there actually bodies buried here?” she asked in an uninterested tone as she turned right along the outside column of graves and started down the path toward the opening at the back of the chamber. Based on what Lilietha had said about the scam for supplies and her encounter with the pickpocket, she very seriously doubted there were any dead beneath the plaza. Dezmara figured the cavern and the overzealous bot were just a cover for the portmaster to get a good look at his unsuspecting victims.
“The architects of the great gate and the port of Luxon found the remains of several thousands of Trinitons in the bore that now leads down to the station,” it said as it turned its lower half ninety degrees to navigate between the two outermost columns of gravestones and then turned its head and torso so it could continue talking in Dezmara’s right ear as she crested the corner marker. “Of course, very few whole bodies could be recovered and the vessels beneath your feet were mostly bone and ash. Rather than reflecting an estimation of the actual dead found on the remains of the planet, the markers are a symbol of the great loss of life on the Trinity planets at the hands of the Durax!
“The colored panes are hand-crafted and back-lit around the clock, and each column depicts the enslavement and struggle of the many different settlers of the Trinities.”
“Oh man, here it comes,” Dezmara thought to herself.
“The maintenance of the chamber as well as my systems is all afforded by donation, brother. Will you find it in your heart to give so the fate of the Trinitons will not be forgotten?” The bot reached up with his wiry fingers and plucked his head from his neck with a clunk. He lowered it down to Dezmara’s waist and she could see that the top was convex like a smooth bowl. The green eye peered up at her expectantly as the decapitated bot held out the appendage in his wicked-looking hands. “Give unto the lord of Luxon, dear brother, and set yourself free!”
Dezmara stopped walking and turned to face the proselytizing contraption. “Tell your lord portmaster that he’ll make plenty of profit by overcharging me for supplies, and that I’ll set myself free—by any means necessary.”
The mechanical preacher stood still for a moment, head in hand, and then, without another word, reattached his cap and quickly reversed down the back row of gravestones. Dezmara watched with curiosity as it retreated. Once it had reached the line that bisected The Boneyard, its tracks rotated—with the same clicks and winding noises as before—to face the entrance, and after a momentary pause, its torso twisted to face forward again as well. But the bot’s oddly shaped head remained turned, with its gaze fixed on Dezmara. It folded its arms behind its back, bowed its head slightly and appeared to deactivate. But despite the fading sound of the bot’s power core discharging and the diminishing glow of its green eye, Dezmara was certain that someone was still watching her.
As she walked through the adit at the back of The Boneyard, the strange colorful light of the chamber behind her dimmed with each step until it was finally choked out by the suffocating black inside the new passage. Dezmara strode quickly through the darkness. She thought she heard something up ahead, and she tapped the controls on the right side of the kranos to enhance the sounds. A faint pulse rose in her ears that steadily grew into a pounding beat—music. But the song blasting through the tunnel was quite different than the lofty, chorused chants in The Boneyard. This was dark; interlaced with heavy electronic melodies. She liked it more and more as the intricate riffs built upon each other and rattled deeper into her helmet as she drew closer to the source.
She emerged from the drift, and it was immediately obvious that she was standing in a space quite different than the two previous domed structures of the port. The walkway she was on widened considerably and was flanked on each side by vertical walls that curved to the left for some length before jogging back to the right, disappearing around the bend. The walls were lined with entrances and windows, lights and signs. Dezmara was standing on a city street that bustled with the comings and goings of sailors and pilots, travelers and merchants alike. Unlike the dire passageways that led her here, the street was awash with light. Signs buzzed as shops and lodges tried to lure patrons into their establishments, and strange, green flames flickered in the outstretched palms of more Triniton statues dotting both sides of The Boulevard.
The sculptures here were quite different from those supporting the big dome over the bazaar—these were much smaller and they stood upright with very little emotion, if any, on their faces. Dezmara was amazed at the level of detail in the lampposts: everything was meticulously rendered, from the intricate folds of a cloak on one statue to the ornate weaponry on another. Emerald fires licked the air in front of each stone sentinel as they looked stoically out over the avenue, and Dezmara thought that this representation was much more fitting the memory of a fallen world. Here the Trinitons looked dignified—regal.
In the glow of the streetlights, she could make out a machine shop a few yards away on her right and smell the tang of freshly ground metal and fuel escaping from its raised, hangar-style door. Several grease-stained mechanics were sharing a smoke and diligently rubbing their hands with filthy rags as they talked to a pilot looking for parts. She leaned to her left and peered down the curving street. Everything a traveler could need that wasn’t available in the bazaar, by decree of the portmaster, no doubt, was present somewhere on the avenue. Bulk food supplies, eateries, lodging, gambling and entertainment establishments lined both sides of the street, and Dezmara wondered what percentage of the daily take was earmarked for the sleazy fellow that ran the show. With so few free ports in the universe left, the portmaster had a regular monopoly in this part of the galaxy, and people had very little choice if they wanted to partake in even the smallest indulgence.
Although Dezmara would be considered quite wealthy by almost any standard in the universe, the thought of paying any price above fair, thereby helping perpetuate the crooked scheme that was running at Luxon, made her want to puke. She had already made a mental note, after her run-in with the young thug in the market, to pay a personal visit to the portmaster when she had more time, and she was certain that her visit here on The Boulevard would only add a shiny star of exclamation. After her cursory glance down the street, Dezmara continued along the path in the direction of the roaring music, split
ting the distance between the lighted statues to either side so she stayed in the shadows.
The kranos flashed an estimated distance to the source of the music and Dezmara looked over her shoulder. She had gone around the bend in the street far enough to be out of sight of the entrance. As she passed another Triniton statue, this one winged with an amazing helmet of its own, flashes of pale blue and white light pulsed in time with the music through an excavated entrance a few yards to her right. Two Triniton statues, set back off the street and flanking the elegant archway hanging over the portal, stretched their opposing hands out toward one another; however, the flames spouting from these two guardians did not take on the orbital glow of the other spheres lining the street. These green infernos lept into the air and spelled ‘Buego’s’ in flaming letters between the outstretched fingertips.
A large creature with an upturned nose that was flanked by small, bony spines stood in the doorway. He had short legs and massive arms that were folded across his powerful chest. She consulted the kranos and it reported that the doorman wasn’t armed, but Dezmara knew that didn’t make him any less dangerous. He looked quite capable of tearing someone apart with his bare hands, and if the look on his face were any indication of his mood, he might be inclined to do so if some wise-cracking Human happened to aggravate him.
“Sy, do you copy?”
“Bloody hell, luv,” Simon said after a few seconds delay, “I’m tryin’ to get done with my assigned duties so I can catch up and have a pint!”
“You might want to rethink that plan. I don’t think this place is quite your… style.” Dezmara zoomed the view so Simon could get a closer look at the melee of lights and get an earful of the music that blared from the pub’s entrance.
“Aw, bugger! What is it with the free people in the universe these days? Can’t they run a respectable place of ill repute without all that bloody racket? Well, I s’pose it’s right down your alley, then, idn’it? ‘Cept for that large bloke in the doorway there. Be careful, luv, he looks like a nasty fellow.”