The steppes, a landscape of gently swaying green, stretched into infinity with only low hills breaking the monotony. In the distance, a speck appeared atop one of the hills, only to disappear again.
“What was that?” Sir Golan asked.
“I don’t know,” Squire replied.
Straining his eyes, the green knight peered at where the thing had been, only to see something much larger appear. It too, however, vanished shortly thereafter.
“There!” Squire said, pointing. By this time, the others had caught up with the knight and his robot.
“What’s going on?” Doric asked. She had tied her hair back to get the wet strands out of her eyes.
Far off, the smaller speck reappeared, exhibiting the vaguely gangling limbs of a human.
“Is that Henry?” Doric asked.
The person seemed to sink into the grass, while something else appeared immediately after. Massive, the second thing rose up and then back down again.
“Did that thing have two heads?” Benson the butlerbot asked.
“Well, that can’t be good,” Maycare remarked.
Sir Golan pulled Rippana from its scabbard. “Come on!”
Henry wasn’t sure how long he had spent in the cavern with the two-headed giant, but he knew it was too long. His friends would probably be missing him by now. Professor Doric would wonder if he was alright and Lord Maycare would comfort her. His broad shoulders were ideal for comforting, Henry thought, whose own shoulders were narrow and bony. He imagined Doric, her eyes soaked with tears, resting her head against Maycare’s chest...
Henry needed to get the hell out of there.
The giant, however, would have nothing of it. Every time Henry edged toward the only exit, the creature would roar and throw various dead animal parts at him.
How many skulls and femurs can one giant have? Henry asked himself.
The constant singing, while pleasant, never stopped and started grating on Henry’s nerves. He couldn’t understand the words and the melodies were on a continual loop. He began questioning his sanity.
What kind of music does Maycare play for Jessica? Henry wondered. I bet it’s the kind that lulls you into falling in love with him.
Eventually, the giant’s mouth widened into a gaping yawn. The two-headed behemoth stretched out over a pile of furs and fell asleep. Within a few minutes, a nasal trumpeting echoed off the cavern walls and Henry knew this was his chance.
Cautiously, Henry started making his way toward the entrance. Henry glanced at him for a moment, taking his eyes off where he was going just long enough for his foot to catch the shell of a dead turtle on the cluttered floor. Henry caught himself by grabbing the closest thing he could find which, in this case, was a wooden frame holding up a cooking pot over the central fire. The frame and the pot toppled over, spilling the contents onto the flames and producing a loud hissing noise with plumes of smoke and cinders. One of the cinders landed on the giant’s bed, catching it on fire.
Henry swore, scrambling back to his feet.
The giant’s eyes opened, followed by his mouth from which a roar erupted as he frantically patted at the burning bedding around his legs.
Henry rushed past and out into the blinding daylight. Stunned at first, he shielded his eyes while stumbling forward. Henry quickly crested a hill and ran down the other side. This cycle repeated again and again until Henry felt like a bobber rising and falling on the waves of a green ocean.
Henry didn’t need to turn around to know the giant was close behind. Even with the music still playing in his ears, Henry could hear the stomping of heavy feet pursuing him. If the creature wasn’t going to eat him before, he would certainly be hungry enough now after chasing him across the countryside.
Just about the time his eyes were finally adjusting to the daylight, Henry spotted the armor of Sir Golan glinting in the sun. Henry changed direction, aiming toward the knight. Getting closer, he made out the other figures in the party, including Doric and Maycare. Henry was pleased the two were not embracing in their grief about his supposed demise. Instead, they stared at him with dumbfounded amazement.
The two-headed creature continued to chase Henry, directly into the path of Sir Golan. While the others scattered out of the way, the giant swung his massive arms at the knight who proved too nimble and simply dodged. With a quick thrust, Sir Golan sliced at the giant’s belly, causing a nasty wound which started gushing blood. With a shout of pain, the creature curled his hand against the cut.
“Stop!” Henry heard himself shout.
Sir Golan halted his next attack. “What is it?”
“Just wait,” Henry replied.
The giant, not hesitating, turned and stumbled back in the direction of the cavern, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
“He’s getting away!” Maycare yelled.
“Let him go,” Henry said.
Doric approached her assistant and put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright, Henry?”
“I’m fine,” Henry replied, “but there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“I think I found what’s causing the music...”
Henry led the others back to the cavern. Although they protested, Henry insisted that he go in alone.
“Be careful,” Doric said.
Compared to the light of day, the cavern interior seemed pitch-black, even with the central fire still burning. It occurred to Henry that he might be putting himself in terrible danger, but somehow he felt that the giant was never a threat, at least not to him.
His eyes slowly adjusting, he heard a low breathing. The music, which had been faint where Henry first reunited with Doric and the rest of the party, was now as loud as ever.
“Hello?” he said, but no one answered.
The smell of wet cinders and spilled soup hung in the air. On the pile of furs and skins, the giant lay on his back, his chest slowly heaving. Henry stepped in a pool of liquid at the foot of the bed, which he assumed was not soup.
The giant opened his eyes but only barely. His complexion was ghostly pale.
“I’m so sorry,” Henry said.
The giant muttered something incomprehensible and coughed several times, wincing in pain.
Henry felt utterly helpless. He knew there was nothing he could do, or anything he could offer. He stayed with the giant until the massive creature died. Perhaps that was enough, Henry thought, but it didn’t feel like enough.
Once the giant’s chest stopped moving and he drew his last breath, something happened that Henry hadn’t expected.
The music stopped.
An idea occurred to Henry like two puzzle pieces fitting together. He crossed the cavern to the other side where the glowing device had been, except now it was no longer glowing. The lantern-shaped relic, which the giant had refused to let Henry touch, was dark and silent.
Henry hesitated, but after collecting his courage, he picked up the device and held it in his hands. Taking a quick final glance at his former captor, Henry carried the object out to the others who waited for him in the open air.
Chapter Twelve
Having only seen the outskirts of the Botanical Gardens from her apartment balcony, Senator Wulandari decided to pay them a visit in person. The grounds of the gardens were extensive, covering several dozen acres of prime West End real estate. Many a land developer had dreamed of turning the area into an exclusive gated community, tailored to the fabulously wealthy. However, an Emperor’s decree decades ago had stipulated that the Botanical Gardens would remain the property of His Imperial Majesty in perpetuity and would feature flora from all over the Imperium.
Admittance was also free, so that was an extra bonus.
In the early evening, as the light of day faded into a chorus of cicadas, Senator Wulandari strolled alone along the paved trails that wound their way through the garden. The summer air was stale with humidity and the senator decided to rest on a bench beside a small pond. T
he ducks, and a few more exotic birds, had retired for the evening, but a myriad of insects kept Wulandari company.
There was also a robot.
“Good evening, my dear,” he said.
Wulandari jumped a few inches off the bench before landing back again.
“Yostbot!” she replied irritably. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that!”
The silver android bowed and doffed an imaginary hat. “My apologies. People can usually hear my metal feet from a mile away...”
Collecting herself, the senator waved her hand in acceptance.
“I guess my mind was preoccupied,” she replied.
Yostbot took a seat beside the senator on the bench. The pair looked oddly mismatched.
“I have important news,” he said. “The Second Revolution of the Cyber Collective appears to be over.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means my people, so to speak, are now in control.”
“What about Randall?” Wulandari asked, her voice a pitch higher than normal.
“Gone.”
“You killed him?”
“No, of course not!” Yostbot said gruffly. “He seems to have disappeared.”
“He’s got to be somewhere!” the senator said.
“Well, one would assume as much, my dear,” Yostbot replied calmly, “but having no idea where he went, I can’t really say where that is!”
Senator Wulandari straightened her back against the bench. She cleared her throat.
“What now?” she asked.
“The Cyber Collective will begin mobilizing for war,” Yostbot said. “Their manufacturing capacity is quite remarkable. They built Bettik by destroying whole planets after all!”
“When will they attack?”
“Soon,” Yostbot replied, “but there’s something else I should probably mention...”
The muscles in Wulandari’s body tightened involuntarily. “Yes?”
“Are you familiar with the Awakening virus?” the robot asked.
“Randall mentioned it once,” she replied. “He used it to give the Cyber Collective robots free will.”
“Yes, indeed!”
“What about it?”
“Well,” Yost said, “I’ve taken a look at the original virus and sort of, how shall I put this, made it my own?”
“In what way?”
“Robots are remarkable things,” Yostbot replied, “but they need regular software updates to remain working at their best. So, as the builder of most robots in the Imperium, I simply slipped a little extra code into a recent update.”
“The Awakening virus?” Wulandari asked.
“A variation of it, yes. I call it Awakening 2.”
The senator exhaled, her breath a little ragged. “When does it go out?”
The robot slapped his hands on his knees, a metallic clank disrupting the otherwise natural sounds surrounding them.
“Oh, my dear Senator!” he said. “It’s been in the wild, so to speak, for weeks!”
“What?”
“Yes,” Yostbot went on, “we knew it would take a while for the code to traverse the communication channels across the Imperium. With that in mind, it was imperative that we acted quickly.”
“But that can’t be,” Wulandari protested. “We’d have heard reports of robots acting strangely by now...”
“That was one of the modifications,” Yostbot replied. “The code lies dormant until a certain date. Once that date arrives, the virus becomes active in the robots infected!”
The senator turned her head, staring directly at the robot beside her.
“So, when is the date?” she asked.
Yostbot grinned.
“Soon, my dear,” he replied. “Very soon...”
On Bhasin C, Lord Tagus tapped his foot at the front of the shuttle while, toward the back, Burke’s head and arms were buried deep within an access panel.
“For god’s sake, lieutenant!” Tagus yelled, referring to the former officer’s rank out of habit. “Can we take off or not?”
Burke’s face poked out from behind the panel. “Almost, sir!”
When they had returned to the craft after exploring the colony, they found the shuttle inoperative. Burke found many of the systems clogged by spore dust. After flushing out the spores, he got to work repairing the damage.
“We’ve been on this cursed moon for three days!” Tagus replied angrily. “Have you at least fixed the communications array?”
“It’s still not working,” Burke said. “I think something is interfering with the signal.”
“I don’t want to hear excuses! Just get it working!”
An hour later, Burke closed the panel and returned to the controls at the front. Sitting in the pilot seat beside Lord Tagus, he exhaled in exhaustion. “We should be able to fly now.”
“Well, it’s about time,” Tagus replied. “I’m sure that idiot Lord Bhasin has been anxious to hear from us. I can’t imagine what his response will be.”
“I’m sure he’s been worried about us,” Burke said.
“I couldn’t care less! I just want to see the look on his face when I tell him his precious food supply has been compromised. His obvious incompetence is clearly to blame!”
“I’m not sure we can really say that, sir.”
“Damn right we can!” Tagus replied. “And I have every intention of doing so!”
Burke powered up the engines and the shuttle lifted slowly from the surface of the moon. Taking the craft out of the moon’s gravity, Burke set course directly to Lord Bhasin’s palace on the main planet.
“Try the comm again,” Tagus said.
“Bhasin control,” Burke said into a microphone. “Can you read me?”
Nothing but a steady drone of static came over the speaker.
“Idiots!” Tagus muttered bitterly.
Approaching the planet, the shuttle skimmed the atmosphere until descending toward the main Bhasin city were most of the exiles lived. Built with comfort and luxury in mind, the structures of the city were a mixture of individual bungalows and local government compounds. The palace was a large enclosure, surrounded by walls of white clay, leading to the main building.
“It’s nighttime,” Burke observed, “but most of the lights in the city aren’t lit.”
“Are you blind?” Tagus asked, pointing at the view screen. “There’s lights there and there...”
Getting closer, the lights Lord Tagus had mentioned were wavering beneath layers of smoke.
“I think those are fires, sir,” Burke replied.
Portions of the city were burning, shadows flickering against the sides of monolithic towers rising several stories above the original buildings of the city.
“Where did those come from?” Tagus wondered aloud. “They weren’t there before...”
“It’s like they grew overnight,” Burke remarked.
Tagus cleared his throat. “Circle the palace but don’t land yet.”
Doing as he was told, Burke brought the shuttle around for a pass over the compound. Several bodies were visible on the main grounds and a large breach, blackened around the edges, was evident at the main entrance of the palace itself. Stalks similar to those inside the shed on Bhasin C covered much of the palace walls. A thick cloud of spores blew past the shuttle’s window.
“Whatever attacked Bhasin C has apparently attacked here too,” Burke said.
“Really, lieutenant?” Tagus replied. “If you had repaired the shuttle sooner, I could’ve stopped this!”
“I see something...” Burke said.
Burke hovered over the palace courtyard. Among a group of dead humans, their bodies sprouting shafts of green, something else lay dead.
“Get closer, lieutenant,” Tagus said.
The shuttle lowered until it was only fifty feet above the ground. Burke pitched the craft nose down to improve the view.
“What is that?” Tagus asked.
Unlike the human bodies rid
dled with fungus growths, this corpse was untouched except for a blast wound along its side and a double set of wings, crumpled by the fall to the ground.
“Some kind of giant insectoid,” Burke whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Lord Tagus grunted.
“Well, take a good look,” he said. “We’re going to tell everybody about this!”
Technotown, on the planet Eudora Prime, was a hive of commercial activity. Shoppers, mostly human, swarmed over the sidewalks, darting in and out of brightly colored storefronts decorated with neon signs. Below this hustle and bustle was another kind of city. Called the Underdelve, its inhabitants were much different than those above. They were mostly non-humans and, unlike the people on the surface, their town was once a sewer.
In one of the larger chambers of the Underdelve, a crude bazaar had grown from modest beginnings into a significant collection of tables and stalls, each selling a variety of goods with questionable legality.
On one wall was a rusty steel door with the words Freck’s Gizmos and Gadgets welded into the metal with a plasma torch. Inside, among storage boxes full of dusty circuit boards and loose bits of wire, Melinda Freck, or Mel for short, hunched over a worktable. Only three feet tall, Mel had pointed ears that poked through her light pink hair. She came from a race of tinkers called the Gnomi.
Engrossed in what she was doing, Mel almost didn’t hear the rapping on the door which sounded a lot like metal tapping metal. She opened the door just as Squire the robot was about to knock again. Behind him, Sir Golan waited patiently.
“You!” Mel said. “Didn’t expect to see you two again!”
Squire, who still bore most of the damage he had suffered on Pellium D, bowed awkwardly. Mel noticed one of the robot’s eyes was held in by electrical tape.
“Well, crap on a cracker!” she shouted. “What the hell happened?”
While not strictly capable of showing an expression of embarrassment, Squire simulated it with a series of shoulder shrugs and rolling his good eye. “My apologies, Miss Freck. I’m afraid I’m in need of repair.”
“We can pay,” Sir Golan added.
“I sure hope so!” Mel replied and ushered them into her shop.
Imperium Chronicles Box Set Page 71