by Tobias Roote
He began trudging over to the corner where the dead guards would be.
Shrilla was dumbfounded. Even researching the banned cult could land him on a prison planet. She shouted out after him. “What on Grell were you doing researching those misguided fools ?”
He responded with his back towards her so she couldn't see the reaction on his face, although his body language gave her cause to hesitate.
“I was interested in the possibility of an alternative history of our species. I'm not 100% sure I can follow the current teachings. Can you, when you really stop and think about it ?”
She turned and followed him, thinking as she walked. What was he saying, that he follows the teachings of a banned cult ? That he's sympathetic to their beliefs ? Is he a Dissie ? She knew that she needed to know more, but she needed to be careful, this was dangerous territory.
“So, you think these mutants are actually humans that were ‘seeded’ ?” her voice rose in pitch incredulously, trying to catch up with his thinking, but the tension in her voice was actually her hostility beginning to show.
She thought hard. Shrilla wasn’t one of AW’s top agents for nothing. She could extrapolate information from the smallest clues and this was telling her heaps. She quickly guessed that Grady knew that and was deliberately feeding her data - testing her. His knowledge of the Dispersal, human seed – she’d never heard of that before. An in-depth knowledge of an organisation that had taught him to recognise....
She had her hand on her pistol almost without thinking. “You were an agent for the Dispersalistas ?” she accused, her own spoken revelation stopping her dead in her tracks.
He turned and smiled earnestly. “No, as I said I did some research,” he admitted, deliberately not telling her any more than necessary.
Shrilla wasn't stupid and got that he wasn't going to admit anything to her. He knew as well as she did that the Universal Dispersalistas were a forbidden cult. To even admit to belonging to it could get you shot. Yet, here was Grady practically admitting he had researched it – extensively as far as she could tell. What part of stupid didn’t he understand. The bit about avoiding banned cults, or the bit about admitting that he had been 'involved' to another AW agent trained to kill enemies of the Alliance on sight, and who was following him with a loaded weapon.
She considered shooting him there and then, but her hesitation must have shown because he was looking at her - weighing her up. He turned away and carried on walking, ignoring her as he went behind the rock that hid the other guards that she presumed were dead.
As she turned the corner he was rolling over the bodies, removing ID’s and weapons. It was standard SOP to remove all potential intelligence and weapons when on a hostile or inhabited planet. There would need to be identification of the deceased and due diligence done on their reasons for being here and their subsequent demise. Both Grady and Shrilla wore body recorders. Everything said and done here would be a matter of record.
Records... Holy Grell ! He’d practically admitted to being a Dispersalista on record. He would be doomed. If the Core found out about this, he would be....and then she realised something else ; something important.
“Fuego !”
He looked up at her, and nodded coldly.
“FUCK !” was all she could say.
Fuego believed he was a ‘Dissie’ too and that was why she was trying to have him sent to a prison planet, or worse killed, and Kildark wanted an explanation when they got back.
“Kildark’s going to fucking love you,” she said. Which was more than she did at that moment, she realised.
The Core Navy Research vessel ‘CNR Persipis’, Archon Sector Orbit.
“Wendrill, where the fuck did those idiots go ?”
“I don’t know Captain, their ID’s stopped registering over thirty minutes ago and we’re not absolutely sure what happened. Their passive pings were last recorded at 02:40LT and something must have happened between then and now. We’re hunting for sensor readings in that sector ; the ground scans are not picking them up physically.”
Captain Pritchart wasn’t happy. They had been losing small teams regularly and whilst he knew it was the mutants, he had no visual sighting of them to give him location or numbers. He had to report to ENCIO in an hour and with another four man security crew missing they might consider replacing him and the ship. He didn’t want to lose a cushy number, but things were beginning to get out of hand.
“Send out a shuttle and get them down there for a physical inspection at their last known location,” he ordered.
“Also, get a message to land base and advise them their security patrol is missing and to carry out a headcount. I want to know if any more personnel are AWOL.”
“I have Phang on the secure comms for you, sir,” the ensign warned him softening his voice so it didn’t carry across the bridge.
“Thanks, Gerry, I’ll take it in the back. Patch it through will you ?” the captain responded gratefully. Gerry Corbeth was the captain’s ‘man on the inside’, the one that every captain needed to give him the heads-up when things were going down. Gerry had protected his back for several years now, but it wasn’t all business. Nobody knew they were also bunkmates.
Pritchart scurried into his den at the back of the bridge, it was a bit of a mess, but he wasn’t worried about that. He pinged the vidscreen and it lit up. The focus settled on a severe looking old man who had seen the better side of life a long time ago, but was somehow still kicking.
“Hi, Mr Phang. What can I do for you ?” He gulped nervously when he saw the resultant glare staring back at him.
“You can tell me my planet is clear of them rodents so I can begin hauling down the mining equipment. It’s all stacked up here in the hangars and head office is giving me grief over the storage costs. Do you think you can you do that, Pritchart ?”
“We’re close to resolving it, sir. There are six hunters inbound as I speak and their ETA is latest tomorrow 15:00hrs LT. I’ll have them straight out on elimination missions just as soon as they touchdown.” Pritchart crossed his fingers behind his back. Old ways were sometimes all a person had to fall back on, he thought miserably.
“You’d best be quick about it Pritchart. They didn’t put a stop to the AW attention and the rumours are they have a team inbound. We’re sending in a small force to deal with them, they will rendezvous with you late tomorrow. If the AW turn up, monitor them and pass the information to them to deal with. Don’t ask questions and when they tell you, switch off your planet-side monitoring. We don’t want anything being accidentally recorded. Understand ?” The thin-lipped grizzled face actually closed in on the screen giving Pritchart a frightening close-up of the man’s eyeball.
“Yes, I understand. Don’t worry, sir. We’ll deal with it and clean up the logs,” he responded.
“Good ! See you do just that” he growled as the screen went black.
Pritchart gnawed pensively at his knuckle. Taking out AW agents was big trouble. He wasn’t happy about that. He knew that as captain he would be held accountable and there was no way the Alliance would countenance an elimination of a neutral agency. There would be an investigation and he would be its primary target. He wasn’t stupid. Lazy and corrupt, yes, but this was going to be an unhappy ending and his retirement was only eighteen months away. He’d already laid down a hefty deposit on a piece of real estate on Gamma and he fully intended to pay off the balance and move in on the first day he left.
He removed the memchip he kept in the recorder and walked over to his safe. His thumbprint and bio-scan opened it. He carelessly placed the memchip inside along with dozens of others. Pritchart was a pragmatic man, he knew that ENCIO cut more than just corners and he had been sitting on top of many worlds while they did so. In all that time he had been privy to virtually every illegal act and a few really bad decisions. He wasn’t risking his retirement just to provide plush seats for those has-beens up there in their ivory tower. He
had more of these chips in safe places. Some people up there had their suspicions, which was why he was left alone. He didn’t think Phang was one of them, if he was he’d be more circumspect with his orders.
Chapter Fifteen
Archon-5, The Rescue
They always said life could change on a single turn of events. That’s exactly what happened when Grady crossed over the ridge and met with the guards on the other side. Taking in everything in the seconds it took him to crest the ridge and slide down the other side, he swept into the first guard who had his back to him. Before they even realised he was there, he brought his ceramic knife out of its sheath and swept it across the man’s lower back, distracting him with the immediate pain. As he arched backwards in response to the agony of the deep cut, Grady reversed the knife and punched it deep into the man’s throat.
The second man was just turning to respond to the disturbance, unaware they were under attack, when Grady’s outstretched arm with hardened finger tips on the end of it, stabbed him directly in the throat. The sound of his trachea crunching as his throat collapsed inwards cutting off his air supply with a gurgling noise, caused both the girl and the remaining guard to turn towards Grady. Her eyes flashed strangely in alarm, not yet understanding what was occurring and thinking he was coming for her. His mind registered something peculiar, but he carried through as the third man lifted himself off the woman in a futile attempt to defend himself. With a sucking noise he pulled the knife from the first guard’s throat and swept past the second guard who was writhing on the ground face contorted in a silent blue and purple parody of death. Reversing the blade as he swept it forward and taking the third man in the gut, he pushed the blade upward into the chest cavity. A quick twitch of the wrist and the heart cleaved in two, another twitch and a lung was sliced. He pulled out the blade, pushing the man away from both him and the woman as he fell, dead.
Grady crouched and wiped the knife on the leg of the guards trouser while checking the ground around him for any new threat. When he thought them clear, he looked more closely at the woman. Despite the fear and the bruising on her face, she was beautiful, her eyes, pools of darkness with no whites showing, her features refined and delicate. Her mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing came, her throat swallowed painfully as though she had been hit there.
“It’s okay, your safe now. I am here to stop this happening to your people,” he soothed her as he pulled her off the ground. He could see that either from shock or lack of understanding she didn’t respond to his reassuring words and she still looked panicked. He gestured that they should walk back to the beach, but she hesitated as if not sure what he meant.
Grady couldn’t take his eyes off her even as he responded to Shrilla’s comment.
“Correction, four down,” he said.
Then, a flicker in her eyes confirmed what he had subconsciously noted earlier, again they flicked. Nictating membranes, he realised. He’d never come across the variation before, but it wasn’t an unlikely mutation.
Was she a mutant ? A reptilian splice ? His instincts warned him this was something unusual and so he paid close attention. He noticed subtle almost transparent webbing between her fingers, and there were other minor difference in her skin tones. They weren’t immediately obvious yet she looked perfectly formed as if the result of well-matched DNA.
Her streamlined attire consisted of a single piece garment that hugged her figure. It looked peculiar, not a material that he was familiar with. It was badly torn at the front but the girl seemed oblivious to her exposed condition and after a cursory glance to ensure she wasn’t injured, Grady ignored it. Continuing to examine her visually as they walked, he noted her skin tone had a translucent quality, as if unused to the sunlight. He continued to assess his findings and didn't recognise any of the atypical signs of mutancy he’d been trained to observe. He did note other things about her, and for some reason these stirred strong feelings of anxiety.
He was distracted from his thoughts when they rounded the corner and she saw her friends and ran. All Grady could do was marvel at the perfection of her body and the hidden strength beneath the supple firm skin that indicated deep muscle tone. Continuing to watch as she released her friends, he kept his eyes on their actions, hearing a clicking sound. At first thinking it was a weapon he looked around, but was drawn immediately back to the mutants when the clicking continued from their direction. The noise was accompanied by subtle hand gestures. He realised they were communicating non-vocally. Strange, if they were mutants they would speak Standard, or one of the Empire’s many local derivatives, but this was a totally alien speech-mode. A thought clicked into place, but he had no time to dwell on it because he was reminded of something else.
He realised the relevance of Shrilla calling him about the other male going off into the sea. Suddenly he understood - the webbed fingers. He also noticed the toes then, webbed and flatter than normal. Perfectly formed musculature wasn’t designed for walking or running, although the actions themselves were swift, assured and no wasted movement, they were still as if practised, unnatural to their normal movement.
He tried to keep up as they moved off towards the shoreline, continuing to record everything, knowing now what was going to occur and waiting for visual confirmation. The girl walking backwards into the surf glanced away from him briefly before submerging in the sea, he saw the gills open ready to take over the role of breathing. The body sheen, consisting of minute scales barely distinguishable close up on land, now raised themselves above the skin just before entering the water, the body’s automatic reaction. That level of efficiency didn’t come with a few years of mutation. Not even a few hundred. He realised that his buried memories had been pulling him to this conclusion all along.
This was evolution in action and instantly all of the old teachings he had followed were there again as though he had briefly stepped out of the room and come back. He wanted to get close to her to confirm everything once again, but she was gone, with not a splash or a ripple to show she was ever there. He sighed, the recordings would have to do.
He returned to the bodies, his mind racing through everything that had occurred. As if a veil had been lifted, his objective changed and he knew now what he had to do, but he couldn’t do it alone. Out here one man might, but his chances - no, their chances were better if he could keep the other AW agent on-side. Absently, he realised he was referring to her differently, but he knew without a doubt what he was, and she might now be the enemy. He was careful with his explanation, but kept his eyes on her body movements to gauge her reaction to his words.
Shrilla was looking at him as he removed the ID’s and weapons. He made no move that would be wrongly interpreted. She could shoot him where he stood, she should - it was standing orders throughout the Alliance, Core and the AW.
He had been gauging her carefully, wondering how far he could push it. If he told her who he was she might hear him out. He badly needed her to, but as he evaluated her negative reaction and her hand hovering indecisively over her weapon, the more he realised that wasn't going to be possible.
Until the moment of realisation that the rescued woman wasn’t mutant, he’d been an Alliance World Agent. The second he knew they were possibly something else, his sleeper status activated and with it a mass of training and intelligence that had remained dormant within him for years. He was instantly an active Dispersalista Agent again and at all costs he must prevail and get the word out.
He smiled at her reassuringly. He may have to kill her, but that wasn’t on his mind at the moment. They had a mission to finish and it was more important now than ever. Also, he was still committed to keeping the AW free of Core influence which left him straddling two diverging walkways.
As she followed his findings her unexpected outburst told him she had pieced it together about Fuego.
He reflected briefly on the incident at AWC. Now there was a bundle of trouble. He’d got drunk with her one night and fallen for one of those sess
ions where you explore truths about each other. They’d been together a while, and he’d got comfortable with her. Too comfortable. So, when he’d said he'd once been a member of the ‘Dissies,' she laughed thinking he was being stupid and lying. Then she’d seen the truth in his eyes and the next morning when he woke, she’d gone.
The next thing he knew he was being arrested, carted to the Core’s interrogation cells where they’d tried to get him to admit his membership of the forbidden cult. When he laughed and told them it was drunken lies trying to get into Fuego’s knickers, her venomous retaliation split his lip, blacked his eye and left him with a painful groin for weeks. She concocted a story of how she had discovered him trying to contact other cult members, and he was tried and found guilty. None of his allies, or so-called friends were anywhere to be found. He was totally isolated and was on the brink of being sentenced.
Instead of execution the new policy was to send dissidents to a prison planet on a one-way ticket. It was only when they were putting him on the ship, fettered and battered black and blue from their manhandling, that he got an armed rescue from potential hell in the shape of a DIA assassination team led by Dalt Vargo who took him and kept him safely undercover until his counsel representatives had a chance to unravel the conspiracy.
It took months, but in the end it was proven that Fuego had lied, and he was acquitted. Grady suspected Fuego had a good idea that the Cult had rescued him and also been responsible for clipping her claws. She’d never forgotten it and would probably hound him to his grave.
Now Shrilla had guessed the truth from just the little clues he gave her. He had to admit she was very good at what she did. He realised that up until the attack on the AWC, she was being groomed for senior management. Once they got back, if the AW survived, she would be forced into that promotion quicker than they planned. Could he keep her on-side ? He didn’t know.
Between them they silently buried the four guards, then commandeered two of the GNams and hid the other two in the jungle. Grady intended to backtrack and get close to the land-base, then enter the camp on foot for some discreet surveillance. He believed that the first part of their mission had been achieved, the indigents probably weren’t mutants and therefore were not the property of the corporations. The planet would need to be annexed while their investigations proceeded and Alliance protection of the new species put in place. Getting them to agree to that was going to be an uphill battle.