“Teacher!?” he screamed at the thing. His scream reverberated around the cell walls as the door clanged shut behind the missionary. “Torturer!”
“Now, now. Don’t you remember when you were young and I taught you well?”
“Taught me?! With the whip you mean.”
“Is not your hide stronger for the teaching?”
“No it bloody well isn’t. The god you spoke of is no longer my god.”
“Did you think I came from god dear boy? I came from Baal and Baal’em and Asroth. I told you once boy, the holy trinity is more powerful than your god.” The missionary bot’s smooth shell gleamed wickedly at Kyle. It spun and threw Kyle against a wall, where he slid down stunned but far from insensible.
“My god needs no torturing to make the faithful.” He shouted at the bot, his captor, a figure from his youth sent to taunt him. “My god needs no sentibitors to hold back the tide of learning, to hold back the enlightenment. Your kind fights now against the Lore at the side of the Enlightened. How do you justify that? Is that god’s will?” he asked, expecting no answer. Just the sight of the bot had him cringing back against the wall in fear. But he would not bow. He was no longer the child.
The missionary drew back his arm. Its electrowhip whirred as it powered up.
“Blasphemy will not be tolerated young man.”
“I am not afraid of you.” Kyle said with more force than he felt.
The lash swept up.
“I am not afraid,” he repeated as the lash fell.
Just then, the door opened and a whirling dervish barged through, with a blade in each hand. The bot span to face the only threat in the room. The lash fell and rebounded from Cetee’s armour as she plunged her stiletto into the caracass.
There was no ceremony. When Cetee fought it was as the assassin fights, to the death with no gaudy movements, just purity in motion.
The bot fell, dead to the floor.
Kyle sat still, propped against the wall. He was still stunned by the appearance of his childhood demon. Cetee knelt beside him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Come on, it’s time you got out of here.”
“Cetee? I thought they’d frozen you.” Kyle looked at her as though he was dazed. The revelation of the bot had shaken him. He wanted to believe that Cetee was here to save him, but part of him thought it just another trick.
“There’s no time to explain. Here’s your gun.” She took his gun from her bulging handbag and thrust it into his hand.
Kyle’s scarred arm slipped into it like it was home.
“You must go.”
Cetee held the door open to him, her armour shone in the light from the hall.
“Are you just a trick, an illusion sent to taunt me from the Ecentrists? Already you have me trussed in your religion.”
Cetee smiled sadly. “No, Kyle, I am no trick. I came to set you free of the Ecentrists. You are the only one that can set you free of your religion.”
“Then it is true. My religion is false. I have been worshipping the god of the Ecentrists, a bot construction.”
“Yes, Kyle, it was ever so. The creator was always a bot construction.” Softly she repeated, “you must go. It is time for you to leave. Archeon and Orpal await you.”
Kyle’s sense, slowly returning, made him speed up. His thoughts came faster and quicker as the adrenaline rushed through his system.
“You must come with me,” he said to Cetee, in a tone that brooked no argument.
“I cannot,” replied the thief. This time around, there were parting tears in Cetee’s feline eyes. “There’s always a price to pay for freedom. You go. Trust me, I’ll find another way out. Down the hall there, you’ll find Archeon. Take him with you and you’ll find Orpal waiting for you. Here’s an eargen. Just follow his directions.” She passed him the last piece of the emitter she held. “Here, you’ll need this,” she said.
She turned to go.
“No, wait!”
“I have to go back, Kyle. There’s someone here I cannot leave.”
Gently she stroked his unscared face with the smooth back of her hand. The touch of her skin on his was like electric.
“Go now. Go on!”
*
Archeon’s torture had turned into a scene from the inquisition. He was laid out in his smallest components, each phenomenally dense, on the floor around the apparatus of torture.
Kyle gagged as he pushed the door open. The reek of Lore effluent filled his nostrils. Archeon had suffered at the hands of an inquisitor. His right arm whirring, Kyle looked around for something to vent his growing rage upon, but the Inquisitor had left the room.
Kyle entered. There was no one there but Archeon. He stuffed the parts of Archeon, and the Lu’s eyes, into a sack on the table and left for Orpal. The sack was preternaturally heavy. Kyle turned another corner. Now he was completely lost, and he was sweating from carrying the package with him. He passed other captives where they were screaming in their cells, obviously undergoing questioning, but fortunately saw no inquisitors and no missionaries along the way.
“Orpal, can you hear me?” he thought, as he stuffed the eargen into place. His footsteps echoed hollowly down the prison sector’s halls. He could hear the muffled screams of other subjects as he walked. He knew there was no time. He stood no chance against the Ecentrist’s might in their home. His and Archeon’s only hope for survival was to find Orpal and escape. Even his rage would avail him little in a battle with the odds so heavily stacked against him. He saw no gargoyles, but he had no doubts they would be called the moment it was discovered that he was missing.
No reply from Orpal came. He walked on, reasoning that Orpal would be downward, in the docking bay. He took an elevator down.
“Orpal, Orpal, can you hear me?” he called again. They would never escape if they could not find Orpal.
“Yes hunter, I hear you. I never thought I’d be so glad to hear from you. What of Cetee and Archeon?”
“Oh, thank god!” said Kyle into his eargen. “Orpal, I never thought I’d be so glad to hear from you.”
“Alright hunter, calm down.”
“If I calm down my gun won’t work. Archeon’s in a bad way and I’m carrying him.”
“OK, then hurry up and get to me. You’re going in the right direction. Get off at floor 345. That’s where I am.”
“OK, I’m on my way. Look, I’m happy now, say something to annoy me.”
“Haahha. Can’t you get Cetee to do that? I’m busy enough trying to reroute the Ecentrist’s search parties. They know you’ve escaped.”
“Cetee isn’t coming, Orpal. She refuses. It’s just me and Archeon, but I think he’s dead.”
“Get back to me then. It’s time we left.”
“Without the pieces of the emitter? Without Cetee?”
“Don’t worry about that, I have the emitter with me. The whole thing. Cetee gave me the fifth part when she freed me. What the Ecentrists have is just a fake.”
“A fake? What about Cetee?” Kyle looked at the floor indicator. It read 345.
“Some things are more important than love. Keeping us alive is one of them.”
Kyle snuck down the corridor and followed Orpal’s instructions, until he was at the hatch.
He finally made it to the docking bay. He got into Orpal. Beside Orpal in the docking bay sits a ship, like a egg. Kyle slapped the compan to close the hatch behind him.
“Go, go!” he said.
Orpal blasted way out. Huna, spinning torporously behind them, faded to nothing in the blink of an eye.
Kyle cried this time. He had no choice but to leave her behind. She had given him no choice.
On his arm, his gun finally spoke.
“Boohoo. Quit blubbling tribeboy,” said the gun.
*
Hablasaem stood before Baal, Baal’em and Asroth. He had brought the weapon that the Ecentrists asked for, bought from the Tradition. It was a perfect fit in his hand, built by the Tra
dition for Enlightened use in the last war. The weapon worked by hunting down frequencies, and would have to be modified for the Ecentrists to use.
It would make the difference to their war effort. Allow them to shoot, if not travel, under space.
“This weapon will make all the difference in the final battle,” he told them.
“How can this tiny thing make a difference?”
Habla’saem stood before the triumvirate as a hologen. His shell ship protected him from the worst of their grating lilt as they spoke. His hologen carried the real genesis weapon.
“It may be a tiny thing, but if your ships modify this prototype and take it into battle with them the gun will enable your ships to fire under space. There will be no place for the Lore to hide.”
“Bah, the Lore cannot hide from us now. The Enlightened, thanks to you, chase them down for us.” Asroth sniffed. “We do not need your Tradition toy.”
“Believe me, mighty Asroth, this is no toy.”
“We have no need of it.”
“Please, I understand your reluctance to rely on that which you do not understand, but without this the Lore will never be wiped out. The Enlightened simply do not have the stomach to hunt the last of the Lore down, and now you have openly attacked the Lore, the remainder of the Tradition, those not allied to the Enlightened, will enter the war. Before that happens, with this weapon, you can finish the war. In the last war this weapon all but finished off the Ecentrists. You remember, surely, losing?”
The socioassassin was taking a big chance in reminding the Ecentrists of their failure in the last war.
“We lost nothing.” Baal stated. It was a fact, as far as the triumvirate were concerned.
They certainly were stubborn. “Well then,” said Habla’saem, “I understand your reluctance, but perhaps a demonstration?”
Baal, Asroth and Baal’em conferred.
“Very well, we will permit you to demonstrate…”
Orpal flew free underneath them just as Habla’saem spoke.
The three rulers roared as one, and even with his shell ship interpreting for him Habla’saem’s ears bled, back in his real incarnation in the ship.
“He escapes!”
“Perhaps, mighty Baal, you will permit me…?”
“No, our zealots will track him.”
“Your zealots cannot track Orpal, he can step outside of time, but if you will permit me a demonstration of the weapon’s power?”
“Very well,” said Baal’em, begrudgingly. “Use your weapon.”
Habla’saem smiled. “Then, with your permission…” he said, and pointed the weapon out the holowindow at the swiftly receding profile of Orpal. And pulled the trigger.
On the shell ship the real weapon fired.
Cetee ran back to where her lover waited. To Cetee, he looked like Um’lael Sabreme. She had been married to Harna Gurn, but she had only ever loved one man…
The man before her spoke with the triumvirate of the Ecentrists and Cetee looked on in astonishment. She had always known her lover was something special, but talking to the trinity! Her heart pounded as she watched him deep in conversation. Kyle could never make her feel this way. She looked upon Harna Gurn’s last student and her one true love and felt giddy.
The triumvirate’s voices were aimed purely at Habla’saem’s shell ship and she could not hear them, but she could hear whom she thought was Um’lael Sabreme talking.
“You remember, surely, losing?” he said. And drew a bead on Orpal who could be seen fleeing through the open space under the triumvirate where they looked out upon their white hole. Cetee watched in horror as her lover fired the weapon.
She could see the ship flee, but she could also see the blast from the weapon in her lover’s hand.
Something was wrong. Um’lael would never take up arms…
Then, wham. The weapon fired and Cetee was knocked over backward.
She saw the blast of the weapon and what it was chasing.
“No, no, no!” she cried. Cetee look after Orpal longingly, in her head, crying ‘go!’
Then she passed out.
*
The socioassassin didn’t want to stop what he has set in place – the destruction of robots would be complete. It was a matter of professional pride. He was ahead of the game.
Habla’saem thought about Harna’ Gurn’s theory of the universe as he watched them go. Nature dictated that there should be movement. He too, would not be idle. He handed the weapon, the real weapon (by a simple trick of manipulation, akin to the tricks magicians performed back in the age of alchemy) to Asroth.
Harna Gurn’s theory of the universe explained how the universe works. In earlier theories he predicted the end of the universe, but the universe does not end, it just branches off elsewhere. Harna Gurn realised this later in his life. It could not stay stationary, like some would think, because of fundamental rules of nature – a force will move unless there is something to oppose it – so if there are other universes outside of this one, then there’s something for the universe to bump up against. It was the only way the theory would work.
Cetee lay passed out on the floor beside Habla’saem, who looked like Um’lael.
“Now, here. This works on the same frequency as the Lore live and breath. It is electricity, simple and profound and ever moving that is the answer to your problems. Take a shot, go ahead. It does not matter where the Lore go, they cannot hide from this weapon.”
Cetee awoke from where she was passed out, and looked up at what looked and felt like Um’lael Sabreme.
“My love,” she said. “What have you done?”
Um’lael Sabreme laughed at her.
“Why do you laugh?” she asked,
“Because, my love, I am not him!”
Habla’saem reverted to true form.
Cetee cried, “No, no, that wasn’t the deal! You set me free to free them!” she pointed to the triumvirate, watching her with amusement. “I stayed behind to be with you!”
She pummelled Um’lael’s chest as he changed becoming fatter, wider. His chins grew.
“This is my true form.” Sheltered, so that the three could not hear him, he added, “I only set you free so that the triumvirate would not get the emitter. Don’t you understand, my love?” His voice dripped mockingly.
She swiped the sinblade at him, “Nonono! It cannot be!”
But the sinblade just made him laugh.
“You cannot hurt what isn’t here, my dear.”
Cetee had only stayed behind because she thought Um’lael was here, but when the Um’lael had let her out she had thought she’d found her love after all the intervening years. It did not matter how long it had been since she’d last seen him. That first sight of her one true love again had awakened in her something she had long thought forgotten.
Habla’saem had played on her desire. Habla’saem knew the woman the Ecentrists had brought back from captivitiy was Um’lael’s lover and Harna Gurn’s former wife. He had taken the form to trick her into helping the others flee. Orpal, he thought. The perfect demonstration and an end to the myth of the emitter. Two for one.
Even when he didn’t have a plan the socioassassin came out on top.
“Foolish girl,” smirked Baal.
Habla’saem laughed again. The Cascade emitter would never fall into his employer’s hands, and the triumvirate would never know of his part in events to come. He, unlike the triumvirate who were too trusting to work out Orpal’s complicity, knew the piece they held was a fake. Orpal would die for it, but the socioassassin’s war would continue to its conclusion.
*
Orpal dipped and headed under space.
The journey was long. The eyes promised it was the closest place to go to, it was where they would find the answer, finally figure out how to assemble the emitter.
Orpal sailed around pulsars and Cepheid variables and star hatcheries, and the hypernova, from supermassive suns. Nothing deviated him from his path.
>
Each star relied on one thing to live. Electricity. So do the Lore, who mimic all living things, even robots.
Orpal headed for a planet called Torpa, and the bolt from the Tradition’s genesis weapon follow him across space.
Two days later he emerged.
The blast from the weapon followed him like an unshakeable omen.
*
Chapter Thirteen
Torpa – sect. 34. cartid space. Enlightened. Orbit
Orpal sailed across the surface of space until he finally slowed to what could be called a trot.
Their arrival at the Enlightened’s homeworld of Torpa was a sombre affair. Their mood lightened not at all as the planet came into view.
Most tourists and visitors to Torpa felt the glow of the planet and its moon deep in their bones, washing away fatigue and boredom from the long journeys and closed spaces where there was little room to move. The planet welcomed all – those in the cheap seats, too. The sight was usually enough to breathe new life into all but the weariest of travellers. Orpal, Kyle and Archeon were wearier than most.
Each available surface upon the planet, wherever the sun’s rays alighted, was covered with solar panels. The reflective surfaces were so prevalent that the planet looked like one gigantic glitterball. Even the huge structures beneath the sea – every available space was utilised – reflected the sun’s glory back to the heavens. The planet elicited excited gasps from most travellers, but today Kyle was the only one to react at all.
“Nnn,” he said.
His gun, having had its sentibitor removed spoke for him with the gnarly language of weapons everywhere.
“It’s not much to look at, is it?” it said.
The planet was comparatively small, but weighed more than it had at birth. Most planets begin to weigh less, through bastardisation of its core for the first of their vast interstellar ships, the changing of its precious fossil fuels into gases and inevitable radiation leak. Torpa was a rarity. It had been a small baby but it weighed heavy in its middle ages.
Um’lael Sabreme once theorised long before his untimely death that knowledgable races searched for heavier elements, those which were only available in older solar systems. Younger solar systems haven’t had the chance to create heavier atoms. This meant that the solar system matured together with its sentient races.
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