by Adam Carter
“I don’t care about my chances, I’m just not letting you go out there.”
She rose from where she was perched on the console and I grabbed her by the arms, just beneath her shoulders, to keep her there. Her eyes were angry – she had always been the strong one – yet they were also frightened. “I’m not having you die for me,” she said.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t want that on my gravestone. I’ll take the case and bargain with it.”
“No.”
“It’s the case they want, Iris. So long as they get that, they might be willing to leave happy.”
“Gordon, I think I should probably tell you something. I …”
“Aha!” Wraith said. “That’s got ‘em.”
We looked at the monitors. Wraith had been playing with the lights, running them for the security guards as he had run them for me. It was an obvious trap, but it was too tempting to refuse; and besides, people with guns tended to think they could handle any form of trap. The lights had taken the security guards to the basement entrance. There they paused, and I watched the lead guard raise his fist and point two fingers forward, as though he was in the army. It was pathetic watching such people play-act as soldiers, although I did feel sorry for what was about to happen.
The guards set themselves into position and tossed a smoke grenade in through the torn wire mesh. Instantly a cloud of grey smoke blew out of the hole and the guards hung back a moment, waiting to see what would happen.
Enraged citipati poured through the hole, the unexpected creatures throwing the guards into shock. That was the difference between the security guards and soldiers: true soldiers would have reacted. Instead, I could only imagine the screams through the silent monitor as the guards were set upon by the dinosaurs. By the time they shot back, their commander’s throat had been ripped out by a tremendously powerful beak and the squad was suddenly leaderless.
“They’ll recover,” I said, “but it’ll take them a while. Wraith, see what you can do about keeping them contained in the lower levels.”
“At this rate, we’ll take care of them all before they even get here. Whoa, that’s not good.”
I looked at the monitor he was indicating. It showed an image of a woman half-running, half-stumbling down the corridor. My heart stopped in panic.
“Iris.”
Running from the room, I tripped over the metal case and went sprawling. She had left it behind. Whatever she was going to do, she had left behind whatever it was she had stolen. It made no sense, but I did not have the time to think about it. Scrabbling to my feet, I hastened down the corridor, trusting that this time Wraith might actually help defend the people he was with.
I was two corridors down before I realised I had no idea where I was going. I was standing at an intersection and Arowana could well have gone any of three ways.
“Left,” Wraith’s voice announced. It was likely the whole tower could hear him, but that single word did no one else any good. Without hesitation I ran left, following the man’s every instruction. Before long I could hear voices ahead of me and hung back. I could see several armed figures down the corridor. Some were kneeling, some standing, all with guns held at the ready. At their head was a woman in security black, her own assault rifle held against her chest since she was backed up by so many of her unit. Standing before them, with her torn back to me, was Arowana. She remained several paces from the security force, with her arms at her side, her hands balled into trembling fists.
“Private Arowana,” the security woman said, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Captain Taylor and her wingmen.”
“I didn’t kill Erin, General Garland.”
“That’s not what my report’s going to say. With Taylor gone, you have no friends in Securitarn. She was the only one who protected you, the only one who treated you as a human being.” She smirked. “Have you figured out yet she was the reason you escaped?”
“Erin? She was hunting me.”
“And she let you out of your cage. How else do you think she managed to shoot you down without you being killed? She wanted to make it look good, but she always intended for you to get away. Now you’re coming back with me and we can carry on where we left off.”
The news came as a shock to Arowana, but I was only understanding portions of the conversation. Wishing I had a gun, I patted myself down and remembered the knife in my boot, but doubted it would do me much good. Still, it was all I had. They seemed to want Arowana alive, and it was the only card I had left to play.
Taking a deep breath, I threw myself around the corner and launched myself at Arowana. I encircled her with one arm, holding her tightly to me, while I used the other to hold my knife to her throat. “Don’t move,” I told General Garland. “Get those guns lowered.”
Garland reacted with genuine shock. “I would have thought you’d have been dead by now. You do realise you could have just stayed hidden and you would have survived this?”
“Shut up. I have your case. I’ve hidden it. You want it back, you let me leave here with Private Arowana.”
“Case? What case?”
“That briefcase,” I said. “The one with the stolen bio-tech.”
“Uh, Gordon?” Arowana whispered. “That’s what I was going to tell you.”
Garland laughed. “You didn’t tell him, did you, Arowana? There’s no bio-tech in any case, Mr Hawthorn. The bio-tech is in there.”
I frowned. Garland was pointing at Arowana.
“I was right,” I said, “you are a robot.”
Garland frowned.
“Sorry,” Arowana said, “he has a thing for robots.”
“Private Arowana,” Garland said, “is a test subject. The only subject to have survived the implants. The future of the human race, Mr Hawthorn, is bio-technology. Implants in the brain which allow data transfer and storage at an incomprehensible level. Stored within Arowana’s cerebral processors is information so complex it’s a wonder her brain hasn’t fried. That’s what happened to all the other test subjects. Arowana not only survived, but she also didn’t suffer mental collapse. She’s been able to store all that information and access it only when necessary, which is precisely the result we were looking for.”
I knew I should have been surprised, but it all made sense. She knew everything about every dinosaur we came upon, had a homing instinct which likely used the position of the sun or scents or something, and was even knowledgeable enough to avoid my sweep for heat sensors. She was able to think ahead so efficiently that it all suddenly made sense.
Also, I could hardly be blamed for thinking she was a robot.
On another note, it helped my situation immensely. “All you’ve done is tell me she’s valuable,” I said. “You won’t shoot through her.”
“I don’t have to shoot through her.” With her spare hand Garland drew a pistol and the corridor exploded with a single shot. I cried aloud as the bullet tore through my shoulder, hurling me to the floor and sending my knife clattering away.
“No,” Arowana said, dropping beside me. “Garland, no.”
“Out of the way, Private.”
Garland had taken a few steps towards us, her gun wavering as it sought me out. Arowana had flung herself across me, though, spoiling her aim. My shoulder was burning with pain and I feared shock was going to seize me, for then it would be all over.
“Private, get out of the way.”
“Leave him alone.”
“He just tried to slit your throat.”
“No, he didn’t. He tried to save my life.” Arowana was pressing down on my injury, trying to keep the blood from spreading. There was the promise of tears to her eyes, but tears would help neither of us. Promises, however, would not go amiss.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with him,” Garland said. “You’re not allowed to do things like that. Your brain is the property of Securitarn and we can’t have you compromising it with emotions we haven’t told you to have.”
/> “General, please don’t make me choose between you.”
“It’s not about choice, Private, it’s about duty.”
Arowana’s face hardened. “The crew of this place knew all about duty, General. Wraith, now!”
Arowana grabbed me under both armpits and dragged. It hurt like hell, but I did not mind at all, for I heard an electronic click and realised then Arowana’s plan. As forward-thinking as she was, she had made sure her confrontation with General Garland would take place directly outside the dining area.
With a frown, Garland trained her gun on me, but did not get to fire, for the door crashed open and an angry citipati hurled itself out into the corridor. Garland gave the order to fire and the creature was shredded by bullets; but the remaining two beasts were already emerging. Even as Arowana hauled me to my feet, I saw an incredible beak shear through the general’s eye, tearing off half her face.
We ran all the way back to Wraith’s monitor room. Once we arrived, we both collapsed in pained exhaustion. My shoulder pumped blood, but the bullet had gone through and even I knew that was a good thing. Arowana’s own injury had reopened, and I could see blood on the floor where she lay against the wall.
“That went well,” Wraith said.
“How many are left?” I asked.
“Enough to cause us trouble.”
“Patch me through.”
Wraith flipped the appropriate switch and I hauled myself to the microphone. He gave me a nod and I fought through the pain to get my message across.
“Attention, Securitarn force,” I said. “General Garland is dead. Captain Taylor is dead. Private Arowana is dead. You have no leaders and no mission. What you do have is a whole lot of dinosaurs running about this place. I suggest you get out. Now.”
I watched them on the monitors. They were talking to each other, radioing to any soldiers in other corridors. It did not take them long to decide what I was saying made sense, for they broke away and fled for the ground level. There was nothing of soldier mentality about them, nothing at all.
Before long, Wraith whirled ecstatically in his chair. “They’ve gone: they’ve all gone. I’ve no idea how we did that.”
“And the dinosaurs?”
“Returning to the basement.” He flipped some more switches. “Don’t worry, I’ve just detached it.”
“Detached what? The basement? What does that mean?”
“What do you mean, what does it mean? We’re lifting off, and we’re leaving the basement behind.”
“Lifting off? We haven’t even reached the ship yet.”
“There you go talking about boats again.”
The tower shuddered and for a moment I thought more security guards were blasting their way through the doors. But this was a different kind of motion and things began to click into place, like why there were no windows in the tower.
“This tower,” I said. “It’s a spacecraft.”
“Of course it’s a spacecraft.”
It seemed obvious now it was said aloud. The people of Carpo were a warrior people who constructed their space vessels to look like swords, and then landed them by plunging them into the ground. It was efficient since it negated the need to construct buildings.
“Move over,” I said, taking the seat. Wraith needed me to pilot the vessel away from Ceres, and the sooner I did that the better off we would all be.
Breaking the atmosphere, I noticed the Securitarn craft, but they could not possibly have received a report yet from the surface. Nor would they be able to make sense of a sword flying past them.
The communicator buzzed far too quickly for my liking.
“Ignore it,” I said, my hands on the flight controls.
“We can’t ignore it,” Arowana said. “They’ll shoot us down.”
“Well we sure can’t answer it.”
“Allow me,” Wraith said. He cleared his throat and flipped the toggle. “How dare you contact my boat?” he shouted so fiercely he could have taken up a career in a hardcore punk band. “This is a Carpoan gunboat, do you have any idea how many capital offences you’re committing just by contacting us?”
“Carpoan gunboat,” the voice on the other end said, “this is a Securitarn vessel. We have reason to believe …”
“Gunners, load tubes seven through fifteen. These idiots are still talking to us. And you! You Securitarn people, you have twenty seconds to apologise before we blow you out of the sky.”
“Carpoan gunboat, we …”
“Eighteen.”
Another voice came on, then: that of a superior. “Carpoan gunboat, we respect your ways but must insist upon …”
“Insist? Did you say you insist? Gunner, load every tube. Yes, every tube. Every tube, all of them. Even the nuclear tube? Especially the nuclear tube. And someone get me the Securitarn home world. We’re going after that next, once we’ve made bacon out of these pigs.”
“Carpoan gunboat, I …”
“Eleven … ten … nine …”
There was a lot of hurried whispering on the other end.
“Eight … seven …”
“Carpoan gunboat, we respectfully apologise and withdraw any and all insistence. Have a … nice day?”
Wraith winked at me and purposefully waited until after he would have hit zero. Then he said, “Securitarn vessel … our law says we must begrudgingly accept your apology. Have a nice day, also.” He cut the communications and said, “Go. Get us out of here.”
Twisting the controls, I steered the sword-ship in no direction other than away. We had escaped Ceres, we had somehow escaped Securitarn and it did not matter where we went, so long as it was away from everything.
“Is this us making it out alive?” Wraith asked.
“You know,” I said, “I think it might be. So, this sword-ship of yours have a name?”
“A name? Of course it has a name. Death-dealing Bomb Dropper – Take That, Enemy Scum.”
I blinked, exchanged a glance with Arowana. “That’s not a name,” I said, “that’s evidence of a serious mental disorder. No, we’re renaming this thing.”
Wraith’s face lit up. “I have an idea. The Wraithmobile.”
“Uh, no.”
“How about,” Arowana said slowly, thinking, “the Heart’s Desire.”
“Nice,” I said, “but girly. No, we’re going to have to go with something grand, something amazing.”
“And what would that be?”
“No idea. But I’ll know it when I see …” Just then something appeared to the side of the sword-ship. A riotous beauty of orange and red gases blazed beside us, reminding me of the one thing which united us all. Wraith, Arowana and I may have come from entirely different backgrounds, but we were all from the same system. “Jupiter’s Glory,” I said.
“Gordon, that’s awful.”
“Stick it, Iris. This time around it’s going to be the pilot calling the shots.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I had set the sword-ship to drift. Carpo’s civilisation considered every individual to be of vital importance, and as such they had never developed anything like an autopilot, but having escaped Ceres it did not need someone flying it all the time. Space was big, and having come to a dead stop there was little chance of anything hitting us. This had allowed Wraith the opportunity to patch up my shoulder wound and re-close Arowana’s back. He had proved himself a good doctor and was possessed of a surprisingly amiable bedside manner. Once he finished with us, he left us to rest, lying in beds beside one another in the infirmary while he returned to the monitor room.
“I’m surprising myself by saying this,” I said, staring at the ceiling, “but I like that guy.”
“He does have a certain charm, doesn’t he?”
I glanced over to find Arowana was propped up on her elbow. She was looking at me with a wry smile and I found myself returning her expression.
“You should be resting,” I said.
“After everything we’ve been through, I think th
is counts as resting.”
“Iris, what’s in the case?”
“4706. Take a look.”
Startled by her simple answer, I reached down and picked it up, rolling the numbers until they were in position. There came a click and I pulled open the lid. I could not believe what I was looking at, what I had been carrying around all that time, what I had used to smash against the side of a sabre-tooth’s head.
I lifted the thing out of the solid foam which prevented it rattling around. “Iris, this is a fluid capacitor for a D-97. This is … this is all I’ve ever wanted. My whole life, this is all I ever dreamed of.”
“It was a thank you. I figured after this you wouldn’t be able to go back to work, so I stole it for you before I kidnapped you. I thought it might go some way to making amends. That it might help you forgive me.”
“Forgive you? You could have just offered me this and I would have come willingly.”
She laughed shortly. “I should have thought of that. All that forward-planning capacity and I still don’t understand men.”
“That’s fine, because I don’t understand women.” I paused. “Iris, why didn’t you tell me? About the implants?”
Her expression darkened but she did not look away. “I didn’t volunteer for the procedure. They chose the likeliest candidates themselves, didn’t give us any choice. I was abducted one night out of my bed. One moment I was asleep, the next I felt something go into my arm and a dozen hands were grabbing hold of me. What they did to me … by the end of it I wasn’t human. I won’t ever be entirely human again. I know too much, about everything, and that scares me. I know it scares men, too, when women know more than they do.”
“Only if they’re on a date.”
She said nothing, but looked away uncomfortably.
“Really?” I asked. “You didn’t tell me because you were interested in me? But we’d never even met.”
“No. But one thing having so much data in my head does for me is make me a remarkably good judge of character.”