by Dorian Dawes
Nergal smiled down at him. “Corporal Melanson, delighted you could make it.”
“You treacherous mercs!” Melanson roared, stumbling toward them. “Ya filthy flapjacks! I ought to skin you alive!”
Nergal dangled Jefferson’s skinny body over the edge of the spyder. Melanson froze. His expression shifted into wide-eyed terror.
“Easy,” Nergal soothed, then chuckled. “Your boy here could wind up injured if a fight broke out. I’ll take care of him though.” His voice lowered to a threatening octave. “I’m a doctor.”
Melanson threw his rifle to the ground. “What do you want?”
“The key to the Valran Temple,” Nergal spat. “Where is it?”
Melanson’s shoulders shook. “Should have never taken the damn thing in the first place. It’s in my tent. Now give me back my boy and leave us in peace.”
“Liar!” Nergal’s tongue passed over his teeth. “My associates have lain waste to your entire camp and its nowhere to be found. Tell us the truth.”
Melanson’s eyes widened. He was actually pleading this time. “I’m telling you the truth. I left it there, thinking it’d be guarded.”
Nergal bit his lip, clearly in deep thought. Talisha stared nervously. She thought about how much Nergal was desperate to get off this planet. Melanson could be telling the truth, but that didn’t get him what he wanted. He wouldn’t want to believe that. Getting into this temple was his last chance to escape, and he wasn’t about to let his only lead go without a fight. Nergal removed one of his gloves.
Talisha’s eyes widened. She threw off her helmet and flew to meet him. It was too late. Nergal had a bare, green finger hovering just inches over the boy’s neck.
“Cool your jets, Miss Artul,” Nergal said in a threatening voice. “You’ve led us well enough, but I’m taking over for now. These negotiations are going my way.”
“This is ridiculous, Nergal. Please!” Talisha yelled.
Nergal smiled.
“Cool your jets, Miss Artul.” Nergal warned. “Want to further compound your guilt by getting this boy killed? Back away.”
Bluebird glared at the both of them. “Do as he says, bounty hunter.”
Talisha complied, even as her stomach churned. She slowly drifted to the ground. Her shoulders shook as she stared, open-mouthed and sweating.
Nergal turned to Melanson and called out. “Do you know why I was quarantined on this planet? They were going to have me executed but couldn’t safely dispense of my corpse. I’m a carrier for just about every nasty virus and pathogen in the galaxy. It’d take but a single touch to kill your boy. A gruesome fate, but you can save him. Give me the key.”
Tears ran into Melanson’s beard. His large hands shook as he fell to his knees, crying. “I don’t know where it is. Maybe Ching Shih took it. I don’t know. Please, don’t hurt my boy.”
“And why should I believe you?” Nergal said.
“Because,” Melanson sputtered through his tears. “He is all I have left.”
Nergal stared. His expression was full of pain. Talisha recognized that look, one of pure loneliness. How many years had Nergal spent here, isolated, cut off from anyone who might have loved him? She’d undergone a similar transformation, one that had killed off every relationship she’d ever valued. Her heart quaked with fear as she recognized with that loneliness came desperation and the ability to do the unthinkable.
Don’t do it. I know you’re hurting, but don’t do it. For all that’s inside you that’s still good, don’t hurt this boy.
“I believe you, Melanson.” Nergal pulled his hand away from Jefferson’s neck.
“I’m certain Ching Shih has the bloody key,” Melanson said “I’ll help you find her. Just let me have him back.”
Nergal took a deep breath and lowered his eyelids.
“I’m going to give you a gift,” he said. “The freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose.”
Melanson’s eyes bulged. “No!”
Talisha screamed, knowing what was coming next but powerless to stop it. Nergal clamped his fingers over Jefferson’s face and shoved him from the spyder. All watched as Jefferson fell, the telltale green marks of the infection already spreading across his face where Nergal had touched him. Melanson rushed to catch him. Jefferson fell into his arms, coughing and sputtering. Melanson brushed his hair aside, shaking and quivering in horror.
“No, no, no,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave me alone.”
Boils appeared alongside the areas where Jefferson had been touched. A black and green discoloration spread from his face quickly overtaking the rest of his body. Blood trickled from the sides of his mouth. His body went into ugly, violent spasms. All the while, Melanson held him close.
“I’m scared,” Jefferson said, his voice weak and hoarse. “Make it stop.”
Melanson raised his machete high over his head. “Go. Be with the Mother.”
With a painful roar, Melanson brought it down on Jefferson’s neck, decapitating him. It was a better fate than leaving him to suffer Nergal’s disease. Melanson’s shoulders heaved and with a mighty sob he grabbed his assault rifle and aimed at Nergal, showering him with a spray of bullets. Several shots pierced Nergal through the chest and shoulders and he fell back into the spyder vehicle, full of holes and covered in blood. Cyrus marched forward, gunning down Melanson before anyone had a chance to react.
His body riddled with bullets, Melanson took a slow step in front of Jefferson’s corpse. He’d barely the energy to kneel down and cup the boy’s head in his hands. He fixed Talisha with a pained, weary look before collapsing into the dust. Nergal’s spyder rose on its legs and retreated into the night. Talisha almost flew after him. Bluebird stopped her, placing a strong hand on her shoulder.
“He’s critically wounded,” Bluebird said. “He will not get far. There has been enough killing today.”
Talisha turned her back on the dead bodies in the sand. “I’m going to check on Snidely. He wasn’t doing so well when I last left him.”
“You do that.”
Bluebird’s face was still as stone. It was the only sign that the events had left any impact on her. Her large boisterous smile had been replaced by a frightening stillness. Talisha placed her helmet back on her head and flew toward the tank. She wouldn’t let the others see the horror in her eyes.
Rogers knelt in front Melanson’s corpse. He removed his hat and pressed it against his chest.
“We should bury the dead,” he said. “Least we can do.”
“No.” Bluebird stepped close behind him. “I am just as responsible for this. Melanson died like a warrior. We will erect a funeral pyre.”
Talisha returned, shoulders stiff. Bluebird and Rogers stared as she approached. Her fists were clenched.
Bluebird’s brow furrowed. “Now what?”
Talisha looked at them, and said in a tight voice, “Snidely’s gone.”
BLAKE SNIDELY HAD been due to check in with Plymouth for the past three hours. Per his assignment, failure to comply with this arrangement would mean he had died or failed in his mission. Madame Inspector elected to give him another three hours before considering his position terminated.
She’d not managed to pinpoint his allies aboard the Mayflower. That annoyed her more than anything else. She wasn’t accustomed to having her authority challenged. Someone on this satellite had balls. It was her every intention to rip them from their scrotum.
Still, with Snidely out of the picture she no longer had to waste time indulging his ambitions. Madame Inspector could focus on rooting out this mole and getting inside the Valran Temple. Her spidery fingers tapped quickly over the console in her office. She leaned back and took a drag from her long cigarette, the gears turning behind her eyes.
There were many who wanted to know the name of the Inspector. They dared not ask. She preferred to be represented by her title. A name meant she could be seen as a person, and not the face of everything her position of pow
er presented. A person can be usurped, thwarted. Faceless power represented so much more.
Truth was, Madame Inspector had gone so long without so much as hearing her name uttered or using it in any conversation that it was almost lost to her. She was certain she hadn’t forgotten it completely and that if compelled, could restore it from the buried cobwebs of her mind. She had no need of it, and so it remained buried, just beyond reach.
Memories of her childhood were beyond her grasp, as well as any personal relationships she might have had. She was certain at one time she had been loved, but what was the point in thinking on it? Even memories were useless to her now.
A face appeared before her in lights hovering over her desk. It was the Chinese pirate. Madame Inspector made no attempt to mask her disgust.
“Madame Inspector,” Ching Shih said, tonelessly. “I’m impressed you were able to contact me.”
“We reversed the tracking on your little virus. There’s a chink in your armor.”
“I see. What do you want?”
“A chance to negotiate peacefully. I’ve no reason to destroy you just yet.”
“Negotiations that begin with threats are far from peaceful,” Ching Shih said. Her stoic expression never faltered. It was the ultimate sign of contempt.
Madame Inspector leaned forward. “Just assuring you of the parameters of the dialogue.”
“They’re noted.”
“Good.”
“You want access to the Valran Temple.”
“You’re very astute,” Madame Inspector said. “If my people are correct about what lies inside, there’s no reason for us to fight.”
“If my people are correct, you have every reason.” Ching Shih smirked. “I’d be a fool to treat you as anything other than hostile.”
“So there’ll be no negotiating, I take it.”
“Once upon a time, I was the type to cut deals. I was the best of them,” Ching said. “Then everything I loved was taken from me and I realized the true nature of diplomacy.”
“And that is?”
“It’s used by those who don’t have the means to take what they want.” Ching smiled, revealing a set of yellow and blackened teeth. “Madame Inspector, if you could truly take what you need from me, there would be no contact. Only death.”
Madame Inspector stood from her chair. She placed both hands flat on her desk. Her eyes were cold and vicious.
“I will give you a chance to back away from an otherwise fatal mistake,” Madame Inspector snarled. “I’m interested in one thing and one thing only, profit. Minimizing loss, while maximizing gain, that is profit. Don’t let your pride lead you into doing something foolish.”
Ching Shih actually laughed at her. No one had ever laughed at her before. She wasn’t entirely sure how to react. All she knew was an unpleasant sickness boiling deep inside of her, and a desire to make that laughter stop at any cost.
“I am familiar with profit,” Ching Shih’s voice was drenched in malice. “I would never negotiate with you. Eat shit and die, Madame Inspector. When we meet face to face, I will cut your tongue from your mouth.”
The line went dead. Madame Inspector had a second of staring at the old pirate’s face, frozen in laughter before it and the screen turned to black. She dug her fingernails into her desk and dragged them across the surface. It would be better to delegate these next steps to someone less emotionally compromised. If they failed, she could terminate them and keep moving down the line until she finally got what she wanted. That’d be the smart thing to do.
But no one had ever laughed at her before.
Madame Inspector had put her entire life into this company. Those who managed to climb so far didn’t just retire. They knew too much. They vanished. She had no intention of vanishing.
She leaned back in her chair and took a long deep drag of her cigarette. Every potential year left of her life flashed before her eyes as she exhaled. Clouds of smoke billowed around her head. She’d allowed herself so few indulgences. The thought that she might be willing to throw her entire life away both frightened and excited her.
She called for her secretary. “Make an announcement to ready the fleet. We’re going to war.”
Never before had Plymouth declared open war on a planet. Never before had the entirety of their fleet been summoned. Such a colossal disregard for protocol would bring down the fury of her superiors. She smiled. Her career and her life were over. She was free to kick-start the apocalypse.
No one would laugh at her again.
CHING SHIH STOOD at the port bow, face stern and calculating. One of her crewmen approached her holding a datapad. She retrieved it from him wordlessly.
“It’s just as you said, Captain,” he said. “Plymouth cruisers are flying in from all across the galaxy. The full fleet should be here in a day or two.”
“And the others?”
“The IGF military have already been contacted about a heavily armed presence heading toward Archimedes IV. We expect their arrival shortly.”
Ching Shih’s lips curled into a terrifying smile. “Everyone should be proud of their hard work. Bring out the flagons of Aurelian Whiskey. The revenge of the Red Fleet is at hand. Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we kill.”
TONIGHT, WHEN BLUEBIRD sang, nobody stopped her. Her voice was loud, guttural, and full of pain. She stood in front of a pyre erected for Melanson and his fallen raiders, her tears glistening in the light of the flickering flames.
Talisha sat several feet away, legs curled to her chest. She idly flicked through Snidely’s datapad, idly scanning the contents into her helmet’s database. Her knowledge of how to hack systems like the IGF’s hadn’t been enough to crack the encryption codes so Rogers helped get her into its files.
Plymouth had kept Snidely’s information access to a bare minimum. Most of what she’d been able to uncover were coordinates leading to the actual location of the temple. If it was true that the Red Fleet had taken the key, she doubted their fragmented team could do anything about it now.
“Mind if I pick your brain about a few things?” Rogers said, sitting next to her.
“Go right ahead.”
“Electromagnetic blast, huh?”
“Yeah. Disrupts psychic feedback.”
“How many types of blasts you capable of?”
“Depends. I don’t really understand how the technology works, but there’re sequences that manufacture the generation of different energy types.”
“All right.” Rogers nodded. “Weird alien shit, I get it. What I wanna know is why you didn’t do the same thing with the wyverns the other day?”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” Talisha said. “Wyverns were commissioned specifically to embark on a planet constantly covered in electromagnetic storms. Needed something that wouldn’t short out. Anyway, it might have damaged your systems.”
“So you’re not an uncaring person normally,” Rogers said. “You actually give a damn about who’s in a squad with you.”
Talisha looked at him. Her eyes were sad. “Always.”
Rogers turned his face to the sky. “So what was different with Melanson’s Raiders?”
“Melanson was no innocent.” Talisha turned her attention back to the datapad, pursing her lips. “The IGF are responsible for the destruction of this planet. Melanson orchestrated the whole damn thing.”
Bluebird turned to face her, stopping mid-song. She moved toward Talisha with a perplexed expression. “What?”
Talisha nodded. “Yup. They knew about the Valran Temple but were afraid the megacorps would discover it if they launched an expedition. They worked to destabilize the governments here on Archimedes IV. Funneling weapons to rebel insurgents, staging a coup, eventually inciting the war that tore this planet apart.”
Rogers whistled. “Ain’t that beat all. So, when the dust settled and they finally came back to claim their prize, it gobbled them up.”
Talisha stared into the flames. “They destroyed this planet. I thought i
t’d be fitting that it destroy them. Melanson especially.”
“You dealt justice as you saw fit,” Bluebird said, folding her arms over her chest. “And innocents got swallowed by it.”
“I’m sorry,” Talisha said, her voice low. “I was so angry I couldn’t think.”
Bluebird sat between them. She then surprised both Rogers and Talisha by wrapping her arms around them, pulling them close. She squeezed gently.
“I cannot discourage violence as a solution to injustice,” she said. “But it’s powerful, and once you start, you cannot stop. Be sure it’s channeled in the right direction.”
“You don’t hate me?” Talisha sniffed.
“I have little use for hate,” Bluebird said. “It takes too much energy.”
“Don’t you hate them Ingle fellas?” Rogers asked.
Bluebird’s face turned to stone. “That is different.”
They fell silent for the next several minutes. Bluebird kept their bodies warm in the harsh cold of the night air, occasionally rubbing their shoulders affectionately. No one had ever been so readily familial with Talisha, not even her own mother. It was nice.
“Cyrus has, uh, really taken to that body, hasn’t he?” Rogers said after a minute, watching the wyvern patrol the edges of the camp.
“I am certain he appreciates not having to share for once,” Bluebird said with a smile.
Rogers shook his head. His voice had a twinge of concern. “Cyrus never liked sharing much of anything if I’m perfectly honest. He’s more the type to take what he likes. Giving him a body like that, damn. Might lead to trouble.”
“He didn’t seem so bad when I talked to him.” Talisha shrugged. “A sentient wyvern though? Not sure the galaxy’s ready for that.”
“He wouldn’t have to keep the wyvern,” Rogers murmured. “Not really. I didn’t think about it at the time, but we could inhabit any piece of technology we wanted.”
“No wonder Snidely was so eager to get his hands on you,” Talisha said. “You’re something completely new, cowboy. What are your plans?”
“Pardon?”
Talisha sighed and leaned forward, rubbing her shoulders. “Snidely’s gone. Likely dead or gone full mutant-bug-thing by this point. That’s our only contact with Plymouth. I know missions like this. No liaison, no paycheck.”