by Ashanti Luke
Once again, Dr. Chamberlain was full of surprises. Even being dragged along as a hostage, Winberg could not help but admire the man. He was brash and insubordinate, but he was cut from a much sterner ore than any of the men Winberg had come across in his short tenure in the Eurydician military. He wondered what was left in Dr. Chamberlain’s bag of tricks as Cyrus ushered him around a corner to face another phalanx and it became apparent Dr. Chamberlain was not the only member of this team with tricks.
The bald green man kicked the floating bier around the corner as soon as they rounded it. He then ran behind the bier toward the five closely packed men before they could spread out. Winberg was yanked to the side by his collar as two men fired and Chamberlain ducked behind him. As they fired, the bald man dropped and slid beneath the bier as it moved into them. Their bullets trailed across the floor and ricocheted off the top of the bier and around the sides. The man sliding under the bier extended one arm and fired at the ankles of the two men, sweeping their legs from under them. Suddenly, the bier flipped upright, and the bald man hopped off his shoulders behind it. As he landed, he fired the guns in both his hands, but Denali’s men were quick and dodged behind the flipping bier. The bald man fired at the flipping bier and it sparked as the bullets tore into the top. He must have hit something vital because the bier landed on the two men who had fallen to the floor and a third who was sheltering himself from the impact. Then, as the bald man’s guns began to click ineffectually, the two at the rear of the phalanx moved to either side of the pile. But the bald man was already running across the metal slab that now rested its full weight on the three men. He yelled, “Go! Now!”
Cyrus pushed Winberg along the wall by pressing the barrel of his gun into the back of his skull. Winberg saw the bald man dive from the bier and grab a man to his left by his collar who was trying to lift a gun. The bald man then stretched his body out and whipped his legs around to catch the other soldier in the face. He landed behind the man he had grabbed and brought his elbow forcefully down on the soldier’s collarbone. Winberg was pushed even more forcefully from behind and could only make out the muzzle flashes as the bald man fired the gaffed soldiers assault rifle into the soldier who stumbled from under the bier trying to raise his gun.
Heinrick Euston had requested a transfer to the J.L. Orbital after the fiasco in the Eurydice Gamma base. From what little he had been told, he understood that the men they had been overwhelmed by had not even been real espions. They had merely been a group of scientists. Scientists. Not trained Earth soldiers. They had been nothing more than a bunch of poindexters on a badly timed colonization mission. And they had somehow coordinated an attack with no obvious way of communicating, and with no weapons, had taken out two battalions in less than twenty minutes.
It was embarrassing. Especially since the dexter they called Milliken had separated Euston’s shoulder and broken a bone in his forearm in the process. They had given him a medal for his supposed valor, and one for being injured in combat, but those medals had been so much of an insult to him that he had merely left them in his storage cubby to collect dust. His injuries had afforded him priority when he had requested to be reassigned to the J.L., which was the safest duty on Asha. Along with the transfer had come a promotion to Pentangle. One of the punty scientists that had somehow helped the Torus sort the whole mess out had been promoted to Hexad, all the way to Hexad, just because he knew too much. The sunfried manpunter didn’t even have any combat training.
…which was probably why he was being dragged down the hall by his neck. But Euston had his own problems. A bald, green madman was single-handedly carving up his crew. Even as Euston reeled from the awkward kick that had caught him in his jaw and sent him stumbling, he saw Genly Washburn go down beneath the sparking and sputtering lev-gurney he had been trying to climb from under. Euston caught himself with his right foot, regained his balance, and was faced with a decision—turn and help the pathetic, feist-hound of a Hexad, or take aim at the bald lunatic. Euston realized it was not much of a decision at all. He had only spent the last twenty-three Dhekads with the men of his phalanx, but even if he had spent twenty-three gyres with the Hexad, the Hexad would never truly be a part of his crew.
Euston lifted his gun as the Hexad was shuffled away. Anno Moony collapsed, his head twisted like a mistreated doll, and Euston looked up to see an auto-pistol, slide in the open, empty position, filling his field of vision. He felt his head snap back, and before his mind could fully register what had happened, he felt the back of his head smack hard against something as his consciousness seemed to leave his body on the wave of air that escaped his lungs.
Cyrus could see the Paracelsus through the window of the hallway. There was a jetway leading to it from the main body of the Orbital. Mooring spires held it against a backing plate, and it was aimed toward the planet as it had already been prepared for descent by the Ashans. But he couldn’t go now because there would be too many soldiers in the way, and he still had his promise to fulfill.
“I have good news and bad news,” Jang’s voice reported over the earwig. “The bad news is an Echelon ship is docking as we speak. The good news is there’s a stellar access point ahead, two doors to your right.”
Winberg made a good shield, but moving with him was slow as he was neither light nor agile. Cyrus forced him around another corner and saw the door Jang had mentioned. He ushered Winberg forward, keeping his collar twisted in his left hand so he could not scream for help. Perhaps if Cyrus loosened his grip and allowed him to breathe they would make better progress, but as Cyrus reached the second door, more footsteps than Cyrus could count came from down the hall. Cyrus stopped, keeping Winberg between himself and the hall as at least four men on each side formed a fan in front of him.
“Make another move and your precious officer gets finished!” Cyrus yelled, cranking on Winberg’s collar even more.
“You have three seconds or we finish you both!” one of the men yelled back, which was not the response Cyrus had been looking for.
And then gunfire came from elsewhere in the hall, putting at least three of the men on the ground. Cyrus fired off a volley of his own and yanked Winberg backward through the door that Jang had offered to open through the earwig.
Cyrus fell and pushed himself clear of the opening, and he pulled Winberg down with him as gunfire rang out in every direction. The door was lit up in a cascade of sparks as it closed, and they both fell in a confused heap. Then, suddenly, Winberg was standing with newfound agility, his own sidearm rising to Cyrus’s face as Cyrus stood and raised his own weapon. For a moment they held each other in their sights as a concerto of gunfire and screams played in the hall. There were retreating footfalls and a banging on the door.
Finally, Cyrus spoke, “You don’t have the heart.”
“Perhaps not, but I do have the ambition, and shooting you will add another vertex to my badge.” There was that smirk again, but his hand was shaky. He had probably never held a gun in his life unless it was to attach it to his belt, and that was probably only in the few month cycles since he had been adopted into this mockery of a military. Jang should have spoofed the fly-eyes in this room by now, but as Winberg spoke, Cyrus subvoced to leave them on for just a moment.
If you don’t sell it, they won’t buy it. That is what Winberg had told him after he had made his request. Standing here face to face with the man that, despite Cyrus’s own inclination, he was gaining more respect for with each passing moment, Cyrus found it much harder to follow through with his promise.
And then something Cyrus had not expected happened. Winberg swung his gun inward into Cyrus’s wrist and sidestepped. Cyrus fired off a round but missed as the butt of Winberg’s gun buried into his wrist. Cyrus’s hand went numb and his pistol fell to the floor. But Cyrus did not let his shock get the best of him. Winberg had startled him, but before Winberg could raise his gun again, Cyrus moved his leg up in a crescent and kicked the back of Winberg’s wrist. Winberg’s gun flew ag
ainst the wall, and he stumbled. Cyrus moved toward him, but he realized Winberg had not stumbled at all. Winberg turned, pulled a hold-out pistol from behind his back, made a full rotation, and then fired.
The gun went off, but Cyrus did not wait to see if he had been shot. He lunged, grabbing the gun, and as Winberg went to fire again, the trigger stopped against the safety catch that had been engaged by Cyrus’s finger. Cyrus brought his elbow across Winberg’s face, spreading a splatter of blood from his right nostril to the left corner of his mouth. Cyrus snatched the gun from Winberg’s hands as he fell back against the wall. The banging on the door increased, and Cyrus heard a cranking sound that meant the Archons were trying to manually open the door. Winberg slumped to the floor and Cyrus flipped the gun in his hand. He disengaged the safety, but as his vision adjusted, he saw Winberg, still slumped against the wall, but with his original gun in his hand—and he was raising it.
Pentangle Thurgood Sturgess had pulled the trigger on the speed-driver to rotate the bolt that manually opened the door that had slid down between them and the Knight of Wands. Control in Eurydice had been belting frantically in the earwig for him to get the door open, but he could not make the tool go any faster. The bald man wearing the strange green make-up of the Apostates had retreated back down the hall, drawing the full attention of an entire phalanx of men. Sturgess and two other Pentangles had been left to deal with the hostage situation. The door had only raised half a hand-length above the ground when the indiscernible screaming rising to a crescendo in the earwig was drowned out by a gunshot from the other side of the door. Pentangle Carlsbad had dropped to the floor as another shot rang out. He had yelled that he could not see anything even as the door continued to rise and the earwig chatter became scoffs of disbelief claiming the fly-eyes had failed. Then there were two more shots.
When the door was open high enough, Carlsbad scrambled inside gun-first and radioed that the Hexad was down. When Sturgess had finally crawled inside himself, he saw the strange Hexad from Earth slumped against the wall. The Hexad held a smoking gun limply in his hand and his upper chest was covered in blood.
…but it didn’t make any sense.
The only reason they had orders to shoot them both was the Hexad had been ordered to wear a dual layer Synthlar vest before even coming up to the Orbital. Synthlar was much heavier than Comptex, but neither the ordinance on the Hexad’s person nor that in the possession of his attacker could have penetrated it—and there was no way his attacker would have known that.
Then, Hexad Winberg lolled his mouth open, and it became obvious where the blood had come from as a rivulet of blood and a spec that could only have been a tooth oozed from his mouth and dribbled in a thick globule onto his chest, darkening the stain that had already begun to lighten as it seeped through the weave of his uniform. The Hexad feebly lifted his hand and pointed above his own head. There was a panel there that led to a vent. It was set firmly in place, but there seemed, upon closer inspection, to have been ruptures in the metal where the screws should have been.
“Disengage the laser grids,” Cyrus subvoced, moving through the vent as quickly as he could.
“They are coming in behind you,” Jang’s voice reported over the earwig. The laser grid that impeded Cyrus’s progress though the vent disappeared and he was immersed in complete darkness. The lenses on his eyes automatically adjusted, and as he moved forward, he realized that what had just happened bothered him more than he could have ever imagined.
They won’t believe me unless you shoot me, Winberg had told him inside the observation hall, and if you don’t sell it, they won’t buy it. Cyrus hadn’t expected the pompous professor to put up such a fight, but for some reason, whatever comfort Winberg enjoyed in being in charge, even on this horribly mixed up wasteland of a planet, was impetus enough for him to put up a fight like an uberhound on the fritz. He had made Cyrus shoot him, even when Cyrus had second thoughts about it. He tried to shake off the image of Winberg’s body launched backward by two bullets to the chest at point blank range. At that range, chunks of flesh should have flown from the wound, and exit wounds should have splattered the wall behind him as he lurched away with each shot—but they hadn’t. He had asked Cyrus to shoot him, but hadn’t let Cyrus know he was wearing a vest. Even in an admirable gesture, he still left enough doubt in Cyrus’s mind to make guilt an issue. But that was Winberg’s gift wasn’t it? Manipulating people. It wasn’t much different than the gift Cyrus himself seemed to have—only Cyrus did not use it for self-service. Or did he? At that very moment, he was scrambling through an airway like a vent-monkey, hurrying away from the echoes that pursued him—and for what? Was it really for the Apostates? Was it really to find out what link this place had to human history? Or did he only want to know what was happening on this miserable rock so he could, at least in his own mind, absolve his son of that monstrous deed? Was it all just so he himself did not have to feel like he had failed as a father?
The thought weighed heavily on his mind, but when Jang radioed he was reactivating the laser grids to trap Cyrus’s pursuers, Cyrus realized that whatever guilt he had in shooting Winberg, whatever self-serving notions might have brought him to this point, didn’t matter because Jang, Paeryl, Tanner, and even Six believed in him. Darius believed in him. Villichez, although Cyrus realized it all too late, had believed in him. Men and women put their livelihoods on the line because somehow, to them, even to the notorious Dr. Windbag, scourge of the Los Angeles Arcology, Cyrus represented a means to an end. And whatever those ends were, whether he felt he deserved the attention or not, he felt compelled, in defiance of his own shortcomings, to oblige them. Cyrus set the timed smoke charge that Aerik had given him, and used the miniature speed-drive to grab the backsides of the bolts that held the vent cover in place. As the vent cover fell, Cyrus dropped into the hallway, which Jang assured him would be empty.
Cyrus hoped that whatever ends Winberg sought, that he had helped facilitate them for no other reason than Winberg trusted him. And if his five-year long enemy could trust him with his own life, what man or woman couldn’t? The idea, as burdensome as it could have been, dispelled any guilt that could have settled in Cyrus’s mind.
twenty-six
• • • • •
—How was school today Dari?
—It was kinda interesting today, Dada.
—Another side-track on astrophysics today?
—Nah, not today, but it still made me think about you.
—Was it about grumpy old monsters that erase their kids’ deckwork when they make more than three mistakes and get in trouble with their wives for treating their children like grown men?
—Ha. Nah Dada, nothing like that. Miss Hasabe talked about great leaders. You know, like George Washington, President Truman from World War Two, Martin Luther King, and that Alphonse Johnston guy from the Uni War. You know, a bunch of people that everybody loves. But then Sergio brought up guys like Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin, then some guy named Yosef Purse he said was in the Near East Fringe War—a bunch of guys his dad told him about. He said they were mean guys, but they were good at beating other countries, and the people they ruled over loved them, and he said even though they did some bad stuff, good things came out of what they did.
—What did Miss Hasabe say?
—She seemed like she got kinda bent, then she just said those guys were all monsters and were not what she was talking about and she just kept going, but Sergio wouldn’t let it go. He said he was sure George Washington was a monster to the British, Truman in World War Two was a monster to the Japanese, and the Uni must have been monsters to the Fringers that wanted automousy.
—Autonomy.
—Yeah, that’s it. Well, Miss Hasabe got so fritzed up she almost sent Sergio to the Disciplinarian. She said the Uni represented justice and safety, but what Sergio said made me think. I mean, you’re like the leader of this family, and you care about justice and safety, but sometimes you seem like a monster t
o me, but then later I understand and get over it. But sometimes, I think even you might make mistakes. I’m not saying you aren’t a good leader and Dada, but I guess even good leaders make mistakes sometimes. It’s just that when you do, you can just apologize, cuz your mistakes don’t make people dead.
—I think you do have a point there, Dari. You know what I think? I think the worst monsters we have to fight aren’t people at all but misplaced ideas. Monsters that don’t have bodies are the hardest to fight because even the best of us can help create them ourselves without even knowing it. Leaders like Martin Luther King and Yosef Purse at the beginning of the Fringe War fight the hardest battles against oppression and human selfishness. But the problem is, sometimes it’s hard for even the strongest of us to fight monsters. Hercules and Perseus were both half-gods, and I’m sure the Hydra and Medusa didn’t think they were too stellar when they showed up in their houses to get rowdy. A man named Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who fights monsters must see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.” I think Nietzsche had it wrong though. I don’t think you can truly fight evil unless evil itself sees you as such. If those you see as evil can abide by you in any way, then why should they listen to you? Your true enemies should hate you—even if you don’t hate them. And sometimes that makes you look like a monster.
—What about the abyss part? The abyss is like Hell right?