Wave Mandate

by Schneider, A. C.

  “Creator have mercy,” Bar-Kas whispered, panic setting in. He looked at his brother who was still looking at his hand. Bar-Kan’s breathing had intensified, his teeth were clenched and he was seething. “What do we do?”

  Shifting his gaze from his impaled hand to face his blabbering brother, the breathing, the gritted teeth, the fire in his eyes - he knew! He was accusing him. Sentencing him right then and there. ‘You’re a coward,’ those eyes declared. ‘A traitor to your own blood!’

  “I’m so sorry, Bar-Kan. I tried to stop you… please don’t look at me like that...”

  ‘Coward!’

  “Please, brother… I’m sorry!”

  ‘TRAITOR!’

  “I’M SORRY!”

  *****

  Bar-Kas was sitting bolt upright in his cot. It was dark. Echoes of his scream were still reverberating off of the Habitat’s walls. His sheets were soaked through with sweat and his speeding heartbeat matched the ferocious pounding of the hurricane winds on the slopes of their mountain hideaway.

  The same dream. No matter how much he changed from who he was that day, what he was, that same dream haunted him on and off ever after. Lately, since the attack on the liner, when his Aberrations had found the medallion, it had turned into a nightly affair.

  His brother never actually did accuse him, dreams have a way of distorting emotions from the past the way a warped mirror distorts a reflection, at least that’s what he told himself. Most of what he said in the dream was true, minus the screaming apology part at the end of it. What actually happened was Bar-Kan answered his earlier question of What do we do now? by announcing, in typical Bar-Kan fashion, “Now we beat the mountain.”

  He had pulled his hand off the spike and they ripped off one of Bar-Kas’ shirtsleeves to use as a tourniquet. Before continuing to scale the mountain, Bar-Kas remembered how his brother made him break off the piece of Ipsidian that stabbed him using a loose rock lying nearby. He remembered giving it to his brother who then stuffed it in his pocket. At the time he thought it a little strange for his brother to be so insistent on the souvenir but he wasn’t about to start asking questions and directing any more unwanted attention his way from an uncharacteristically quiet Bar-Kan.

  They eventually made it to the summit taking the detour. Even years later it was clear to Bar-Kas his brother begrudged the fact that he was forced to take the easier route that day, more than he did the permanent damage done to his right hand.

  When they’d reached the top of the mountain they were lucky enough to run into a Clansman who owed their father a favor. The story the Clansman told them dated back to the Patriarch’s unification conquest, when resisting Clans were overrun, adult males were Pulsed and women forced upon as a matter of course. Male children, having been innocent of knowingly rebelling against the Patriarch, were given an honorable death by knife. The man who’d found them had been one of those children. He had seen his father Pulsed and his mother shamed, but for some unknown reason, the Patriarch, their father, had spared him that day.

  “Perhaps he was thinking of you, his own future children?” the Clansman had said.

  For that reason the Clansman offered to help them as payment of his debt, smuggling them back to the border of their own Clan instead of turning them over to his Clan Father, as his own Clan law most certainly demanded. Just so that his sentiments were clear, though, with his parting words he informed the two First Family members that if he ever met the Patriarch in person, he wouldn’t hesitate to slit their father’s throat.

  Back at home Bar-Kas recalled going out of his way to avoid his brother for days. He took his meals in his room, pretended to be sick to avoid private lessons together and skipped mandatory workouts. Those first few weeks back he was a wreck. Straining his ears every time he heard footsteps pass by his door, dreading to turn corners on the few occasions necessity forced him to venture from his room.

  Then, one day without warning, his door creaked opened and Bar-Kan stood at the threshold. Before he could react, his brother tossed something at his chest. It was small and light glinted off its surface as it flew through the air. Reflexively, he’d brought his hands up to catch the object, fumbling the thing before his fingers entangled themselves in a cord attached to it.

  He recalled looking questioningly at his Brother who remained expressionless. Realizing he wasn’t going to get any answers that way, he’d trained his attention on what he’d caught, dangling it from the cord with his right hand and resting it on the palm of his left. It was round. A disk made of glossy-black Ipsidian. “This is from the piece that stabbed you!” he’d said, astonished. Bar-Kan remained silent so he went back to studying the disk.

  The surface was sanded down to a smooth and shiny finish. Its insides were slightly opaque and he could see blood-red flecks speckled and splattered throughout its mass, preserved inside, frozen in time, like that day.

  “I had a refiner melt it down.” The sudden break of silence caught Bar-Kas by surprise. “My blood was dried all over it when he did. It’s what gives it its coloring.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  “It’s for you.”

  Bar-Kas remembered not being sure how to react to that. He didn’t known when it appeared but at some point a pained look had taken hold of his brother’s eyes. “Don’t ever forget, brother,” Bar-Kan had implored, his meaning not needing to be spelled out: Remember your blood. Don’t be a coward.

  Now, years later, Bar-Kas sat on his cot in his featureless quarters, his back propped up against the metallic hull of the Habitat much the same way he’d sat on his bed in the House of the Patriarch, all those years ago. His breathing had settled down. Feeling his chest he found the rhythm of his heart had slowed to normal levels. He also felt the cord of the medallion, its shape pronounced from beneath the cloth of his shirt. Reaching inside his neckline, he pulled the medallion free, holding it out admiringly. It had been two years since he’d seen it. He’d given it back to his brother before Bar-Kan left for the Mandate Race. When he handed it over Bar-Kan told him to keep it safe for him. He’d replied that he didn’t need it anymore. That he wasn’t ever going to forget again.

 

  All at once Bar-Kan was yanked from his reverie. The red warning lights of the Habitat were flashing, alarm blaring. The raging storm outside was unpredictable. Sometimes it gave several minutes of warning, sometimes seconds.

  Bar-Kas leaped from his cot and grabbed the pressure suit off its hook where it hung on the wall just above his head. In the Habitat if you weren’t already wearing your pressure suit it was never more than an arm’s length away. Zipping up the one-piece he paused when he got to his chest, wanting to sneak one last peak at the medallion before sealing it up.

  <30 SECONDS TO ZERO THRESHOLD>

  Stuffing the memento back into his suit, he zipped up all the way, donned his helmet and twisted the pressure seal knob on the side of his facemask. His eyes closed and he stood in the middle of his metal shell of a room waiting for the dagger like pain that, despite the special resistant suits, still struck behind the eyes, ears and sinuses - waiting for it to purge his mind of his demons.

  I will not betray your blood again, brother.

  Chapter 17: Metal

  Near-orbit, Caras 4

  The sound of foil wrapper crackling in his hand cut into the crunching noise that otherwise filled the entirety of his cranial cavity while he chewed. Everything was louder now, amplified somehow.

  He’d been here many times before, inside his own head. Couldn’t tell you what he was doing all those other times he retreated into himself but he could tell you what it was that brought him to this familiar place. Extended periods of solitude - this much he knew.

  He knew it because he knew the brain was designed to handle huge loads of information, a continuous bombardment of stimuli. The brain took it all in, processed it, filtered it and informed him of what was important based on qua
litative and quantitative categorical hierarchies.

  Incoming stimuli pertaining to things that he liked or was interested in, a nice fat payday for instance, were brought to his attention. As were things maintaining attention demanding quantities of excess; things coming at him of excess size, for example, or moving at excessive speeds, or presenting some other danger or challenge requiring excess concentration on his part - say a punch on its way to his gut followed up by another looking for a slice of his face. For all these things the brain had its way of suggesting, Hey, you might wanna come take a look at this?

  But solitude severely cuts down on stimuli and extended periods of it leaves the brain with its own excess. A brain doesn’t like being idle. The same quality that makes it so impressive in handling massive amounts of information also prevents it from changing its nature in ways that would allow it to tone down this processing capacity, at least while awake. And so, unable to find the stimuli it craved in his outer surroundings, his brain had turned to the world within.

  Over the last few days there were times when he felt each and every one of his heartbeats so clearly he began wondering whether the organ might be knocking on his rib cage, demanding to be let out. There were times he became so in tune with his pulse he could follow a section of his blood as it traveled the entire course of his body. He’d even had entire conversations with his Self, temporarily disassociating himself, from himself.

  But whenever meal times rolled around, these conversations ceased for the simple reason that he wasn’t able to hear himself think. The noise of his chewing filled his head, loud and cacophonous, like one of those massive concert halls rich Islanders liked to frequent for the chance to flaunt their money in each other’s faces.

  Crumbs fell onto his shirt from the ration bar he chewed and he brushed them off mechanically, his eyes following them down to the floor where numerous other foil wrappers could be seen littered about the ship in various states of twisted deformity, like silver carcasses hunted down, feasted upon and discarded, left to the elements, which in this case were the cold metallic insides of a Life Pod, so they wouldn’t be biodegrading anytime soon. He figured he should probably try finding the trash at some point and start throwing those things away. It was just that he never expected to be cooped up in this metal can for so long. In all honesty, he didn’t know what to expect. He was just doing what he always did - waiting for an opportunity to collect a payday.

  After destroying the Nebulous, the Raider and the Life Pods made their way back to Osmos, taking a rather circuitous route before drifting into a micro orbit above the Mainland. The Raider broke ranks with the rest of the pods, re-entering Osmos’ atmosphere and forcing him to make a decision. He chose to hang back, continuing to shadow the four pods. It was risky not following the Raider. If one of those hijackers had discovered the medallion’s actual worth they may have been heading down to the Mainland to cash it in. It was certainly possible. But he doubted it. There was no reason to believe anyone else knew of its true value, or more accurately, who it was truly valuable to.

  Eventually the Raider returned with several other transports in tow. They seemed to be making drop offs of some sort to the Life Pods. Food? Supplies? It was unclear. After the deposits the Raider and the pods used a Mainland Slingshot to enter deep orbit, once again presenting him with a dilemma; risk following and getting caught by Mainland authorities or give up any chance of getting back his payday for good. He decided to risk it. Local operators of the Slingshot were either bought off or ordered to stand down for some unknown reason, because clearly they were looking the other way when the Raider and the pods passed through, nary a pause between them. It was possible that he could slip through unnoticed as well, if he didn’t lag too far behind. Just one more pod in the pack, nothing to see here, keep it moving.

  The gamble paid off.

  His pod decelerated from its Slingshot run near Caras 4. The Raider and the other pods had already disappeared from view but he was able to track them fairly easily, despite their having disabled emergency beacons on the Life Pods to prevent the Island Guard from honing in on their signal. Pods from the same liner always came with a redundancy system built in; connecting them all in a closed tracking/communications net and ensuring survivors would be able to stick together in the event of an evacuation while adrift.

  Throughout his countless stints into deep orbit he’d been subjected to an anthology of lectures about redundancy systems. The kind of precautionary, routine-prep, checklist type stuff crews either mock or moan about depending on the day. But he wasn’t mocking them anymore. He felt like looking up each and every one of those crew managers he’d given a hard time to after this was all over, finding them and buying them all a drink. His education taught him how to turn off his own redundancy beacon, rendering him effectively invisible to the other pods while they remained as clear as day to him, little numbered blips moving across his holographic display toward Caras 4.

  The probability one of those blips carried the skug who beat on his face wasn’t lost on him, either. Over the last couple of days and amidst endless boredom, he would sometimes stare at those blips, pinching his thumb and forefinger together over one of them, imagining he were squashing the life out of it and the skug inside who’d decked him. He would start off with an imperceptible amount of pressure and slowly build until he was squeezing with as much power as anyone could possibly jam into a thumb and forefinger. It was small and petty of him, he knew, but regressing into smaller and pettier versions of oneself comes with the territory of isolation, the flip side to the amplification of all other things. However, even that game lost its appeal over the long and uneventful days that followed, not that he would have been able to continue his self-indulgence even if he’d wanted to after those blips entered Caras 4’s atmosphere.

  The storm wreaked havoc on the redundancy beacon’s signal. Numerous passes over the pods’ last broadcasting site brought echoes of a pod signal here or there and with the obsessive patience of a man with infinite time on his hands and nothing better to do, he’d managed to narrow down the location of the pods to what appeared to be a single section of mountainous peaks. It was difficult to tell with all the interference but if the readings were correct the formation he believed he was looking at made sense. Of course, having an outpost on Caras 4 itself made no sense; perpetual super-hurricane force winds, random, deadly pressure bursts and all, but still, if one were going to sidestep rational logic and insist on setting up shop on the murderous moon, the area he’d zeroed in on was as good a place as one would get. So he kept his pod in a holding pattern above the general vicinity and waited for opportunity to present itself.

  His biggest challenge since had been keeping boredom at bay. Most days were spent staring at the wall. Even now, the metallic inner hull filled his entire view. It was all there was, all the world had become, everything metal. The world even tasted metallic. He could see the sound of metal, pinging, reverberating off the wall in concentric rings, as if the hull had liquefied and pebbles were being thrown into the middle of it, one after the other in timed sequence, waves rippling out from the origin points.

  The sound was also familiar. He’d heard it somewhere before. Slowly he began waking from his stupor, the waves in the wall receding and the rest of the ship coming into focus: The cot he was sitting on, one of twenty folding into the wall throughout the pod to accommodate a full load capacity of survivors; a storage locker for medical supplies and food ration cartons all the way at the aft of the ship, the door left ajar and one box of rations torn open, foil wrapped bars littering the floor around it like silver rain drops; a Slingshot booster syringe strewn among the rations, hastily discarded after its one time use.

  But the sound wasn’t coming from the back.

  At the fore of the ship the two-seat flight bridge was empty. A pale glow emanating from the controls of the overhead holographic display created a ghostly vision, surreal, like a poorly lit memory lying pristine and untouche
d for years somewhere in the back recesses of his mind.

  And then there was the briefest of flashes timed perfectly with the next ping. It only took a second for him to snap completely back to the present. The pinging, the flashes, it was the redundancy beacon the entire time. The Life Pods were active again!

  He scooted off the cot and ran over to the bridge, not daring to believe his endless monotony over just yet before having proof. He checked the holographic display and much to his relief the blips had reappeared, their signals strong. From this distance the signals would have been registering for the entire time since the pods had become active. He believed he could trace their flight paths backward and determine the exact location of their launch site.

  A silent celebration kicked off inside him, silent because he’d been quiet for so long it would have felt weird to express his joy out loud. Analyzing the display more carefully he realized the Life Pods were going to pass relatively close to his position, flying back in the direction of Osmos. He wasn’t concerned. His pod was mostly powered down and there was little that could give him away to anyone passing by on the outside - but he would be able to see them. Quickly, he leaned over to the porthole on his right, pulled back the shutter and there they were. Tiny, distinct points of light shining like a small star cluster observed over a time laps, streaking across the sky.

  There were only four blips on the holograph but the Raider that traveled with them didn’t have a redundancy beacon, so the number four didn’t necessarily mean anything. However, in the porthole there were also only four points of light, and that did mean something. The Raider had stayed behind.