Fulcrum

by Doug Rickaway

  Thresha launched one of Jim’s blades at the camera. Her image on Alastor’s screen dissolved into black.

  “FOOL! You will die then!” Alastor snarled, running a fist through the screen.

  “Alastor!” Abraxas shouted.

  Alastor remembered his place. He bowed his head slightly, and fought to compose himself. The girl had stirred emotions in him that had long been dormant, and he took a moment to savor them. He remembered the feeling of tears, sticky and salty as they brimmed in his eyes and slipped down his cheek.

  “Yes, Lord Abraxas, I am ready. They will die by fire, a better fate than they deserve.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Letho watched the female Mendraga with great care.

  The woman had saved his life, but he did not know what her intentions were, and she had made no move yet to announce them. The Tarsi had returned to Deacon’s ship to tend to their wounded; only Letho, Maka, Bayorn, and Thresha now remained in the ship’s long central corridor.

  Letho looked upon the ruin that was Crimson Jim. Jim’s left boot twitched as if to acknowledge Letho’s thoughts.

  “What is your name?” Letho asked.

  “Thresha.” She paused. “Thresha Wheatley.”

  “Letho Ferron,” he said.

  “I know.”

  She looked at him, and he felt his insides knit with a strange anxiety. Shoulders slumped, eyes swollen and red, Thresha looked as if her will to fight had been spent on Jim. That eased Letho’s mind a little, but still he didn’t let down his guard.

  “So now what?” Letho asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I have betrayed Alastor and Abraxas.”

  “He is here?” Bayorn shouted.

  He grimaced, clutching the knife wounds in his belly. The blood flow had staunched itself, but Letho could still see trickles of gold blood coursing down Bayorn’s coat.

  “Yes. Alastor used the blood of the Elder called Fintran to awaken him from his long slumber,” she said with the flatness of someone reciting a multiplication table.

  “Letho, we must go! Abraxas! The Fulcrum citizens!” Bayorn interrupted.

  His body tried to go one hundred directions all at once.

  “They’re all dead,” Thresha said. “Abraxas consumed them all.”

  Her eyes turned to Letho and he expected laughter, yet she did not mock him. He saw only sadness there.

  You failed, Letho. They’re all dead because you failed.

  In the back of his mind, Letho could see the copilot smiling. Rage turned his vision a sharp red.

  “I am going to kill you, and then I am going to kill Alastor,” he said through a clenched jaw.

  “I will not fight you. You might be able to kill Alastor, but you won’t kill Abraxas. He is too powerful,” Thresha replied.

  “She is right, Letho,” Bayorn said. For the first time in his life, Letho saw true fear grace the visage of a Tarsi. “ Abraxas is here. We must go!”

  “And just who in the hell is Abraxas?” Letho asked. His rage was fading at the sight of Bayorn’s enormous body shivering with fear.

  “Abraxas: a solar deity from early Eursan civilization. Traditional form is a figure with the head of a lion, body of a man, and legs made of serpents and scorpions. Abraxas has the virtues of wisdom and strength, but is typically referred to as a demon, or deity of ruin,” Saladin announced to them all.

  “Thanks for that,” Letho said.

  “You’re most welcome, sir.”

  A speaker crackled to life. “WARNING. SYSTEM PURGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. ALL PERSONNEL MUST REPORT TO A SAFE LOCATION IMMEDIATELY. SYSTEMWIDE CONFLAGRATION WILL COMMENCE IN THIRTY SECONDS.”

  The warnings came through loud and clear through various intercoms throughout the ship. Red flashing lights began to spin as an ear-shattering klaxon ripped through the silence.

  “What’s a conflagration?” Letho asked.

  “It means he is going to kill us all with fire,” Thresha answered, again in that monotone voice.

  “Letho, we must go now!” shouted Bayorn.

  Letho hesitated for one moment, looked at Thresha, then back at Bayorn. He made his decision.

  Letho grabbed Thresha’s arm and hauled her off the floor. She resisted at first, but in that moment his strength superseded hers.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Saving you,” he said.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Within seconds they were back inside Deacon’s ship. Tarsi rose up, hackles bristling at the sight of Thresha, who had since given up any form of resistance.

  “What is the Mendraga doing here?” one of them asked.

  “No time to explain! Deacon, disengage the airlock!”

  “Already done, good buddy.” There was a sound of decompression and hydraulic whines as the bay receded back into the side of Deacon’s ship. Moments later a huge fireball erupted from the hole in the enemy ship. Deacon’s ship eased out of range just as the explosion reached its apex.

  “Where are the citizens?” Deacon asked. He blanched when he saw Letho, covered in blood. Letho was attempting to wipe the blood from his body with antiseptic wipes he had taken from a medkit. His attempts only made the mess worse, smearing the black blood but not removing it.

  “Holy shit, Letho.”

  “I know.”

  “Where are the citizens?”

  “All dead,” Letho answered.

  Deacon slumped back into his seat. “What about Sila?”

  Letho shook his head, lips tight from fresh pain.

  Goes to rescue Eursans, brings back one of the Mendraga. Good one, Letho, his copilot said.

  “Deacon, let’s blow those bastards to pieces,” Letho said.

  “Right,” Deacon said.

  Deacon gripped the glowing nav-orbs and the ship’s nose came around hard. He placed the ship in a holding pattern and began to manipulate a pair of twin sticks. A smaller screen just above the sticks glowed with a representation of the alien ship. Deacon tweaked the alignment, and the representation went from red to a bright green.

  “Locked and loaded,” Deacon said in a low voice.

  A spectacular barrage of energy blasts rained forth from Deacon’s ship in a surge of brilliant plasma. To Letho’s horror, the alien ship deflected all of the blasts.

  “Wait. What? Try again,” Letho said.

  Deacon fired again—with the same results.

  “Again!” Letho shouted.

  “If we keep this up we won’t have enough energy to get back to the Fulcrum,” Deacon said.

  “Well, don’t you have anything bigger?” Letho asked.

  “Letho, this is a transport ship, remember? All I have are the breaching dock and some repulsor blasts for minor incursions.”

  “Oh,” Letho said, feeling the familiar burning sensation as his cheeks reddened. “Well, get us out of here then!”

  “Right. That I can do. Setting a course for the Centennial Fulcrum.”

  A bright flash erupted, blinding those who had been looking in its direction. A massive red cloud of swirling energy had appeared in front of Alastor’s ship.

  “The red star…” said Maka.

  The enemy ship surged forward and began to disappear into the red miasma. With dawning horror, Letho felt their ship moving in the direction of the red star as well.

  “We’re getting sucked into their wake!” Deacon shouted.

  “Spaceships don’t create wake!” Letho answered.

  “You got a better explanation for what’s happening?” Deacon muttered. “Thrusters at full power—no dice! We’re going in!”

  EPILOGUE – Out of the Rabbit Hole

  Letho awoke with the insides of his skull hammering to get out. He looked around the cabin; it appeared as though everyone found themselves in a similar state. The ship’s control panels were still and silent: no radar, no heads-up display, no anything. The lack of blinking displays or whirs of machinery cast a tomb-like pallor over everything.
>
  Letho decided that it might be a good idea to take a breath, and was quite relieved to find that the atmospheric systems were still running.

  “Okay, okay,” said Deacon, “what the hell just happened… and where the hell are we?”

  Little by little members of the crew were coming back to the realm of consciousness. Letho was surprised to see Thresha sitting next to him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Don’t you remember? System-wide conflagration? You dragged me back to your ship!” she said.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Well, I mean… what about you? How about a little thank-you?” he said, indignant.

  Thresha favored him with a sulking glare.

  Deacon kicked the control panel hard, and the lights came back on.

  “Okay, now we’re talking. Let’s see, where are we?” Deacon muttered to himself as the onboard navigation systems reached out to find their location.

  “Okay! You’re not going to believe this, but according to my navigation systems we are very near the planet Eursus.”

  “What? How is that even possible?” Letho asked.

  “Alastor’s ship is equipped with a nexus gate drive,” said Thresha.

  “What’s a nexus gate?” Letho asked.

  “I don’t understand how it works, but it allows him to travel large distances in space in an instant. There are nexus gates spread out across the galaxy, and you can only open them with technology like Alastor’s,” Thresha said.

  “Nexus gate: theoretical topological waypoint in space-time that creates a shortcut in both time and distance. Commonly known as a wormhole. Wormholes are theoretical: there is no observational evidence for their existence, however the theory of general relativity hints at their existence in some equations. No man-made technology exists that is capable of opening or traversing wormholes,” said Saladin.

  “Oh, by the way, I’d like to introduce you to my talking sword, Saladin,” said Letho. No one was surprised, considering all they had seen in the last few days.

  Thresha’s eyes widened. “That was supposed to be a gift for the Lord Father. He’s going to be very angry when he finds out that it’s gone.”

  “Well, maybe when I’m done with it, I’ll give it back to him,” Letho answered.

  “Easy there, killer,” said Deacon. “Hey—wait a minute, there are other Fulcrum stations nearby as well.”

  “What?” Letho asked, “How many?”

  “Uh… all of them?” Deacon answered. “See for yourself.” He gestured to a heads-up screen.

  Letho saw a bluish orb streaked with white. The continents were a dull brown. Deacon’s scans indicated that the planet that was eighty percent water, twenty percent exposed terrain. Eursus. In orbit around Eursus were fifty of the surviving Fulcrum stations.

  “He did it,” Thresha said.

  “Did what?” Letho asked.

  “Don’t you get it?” Thresha asked. “The codes. Your Elder’s blood. He was trying to call the Fulcrum stations back to Eursus.”

  “Looks like mission accomplished,” Deacon said.

  Letho punched him in the shoulder.

  “This isn’t a bad thing, right?” Deacon said, massaging his shoulder. “I mean, no more going nowhere out in the middle of space. We’re home!”

  “If this is the result of plans laid by Alastor and Abraxas, then nothing good can come of it,” Bayorn said.

  “He’s right,” Thresha added.

  “You do not speak to him, trash!” Maka said, rising to his feet and banging his thick skull into a rack of conduit above.

  Sparks showered them all, and the light cast by readout panels blinked twice, then returned. Bayorn placed a hand on Maka’s.

  “It is well, Maka,” Bayorn said.

  But Maka did not take his seat. “Her kind destroyed our planet, killed our forefathers. Made us slaves!” he shouted.

  “Yeah, great! Let’s just re-start the civil war right here on our little ship. Good idea!” Letho shouted back.

  Maka took a step back and lowered his head. The look of mistrust in Maka’s eyes caused Letho’s stomach to lurch ,and his chest became a size too small for his hammering heart. The other Tarsi began to converse in a low, dulcet song-speak. Letho and Bayorn met eyes for a moment, and Letho didn’t like the darkness he saw there, nor the furrow of his brow. Maka glowered at Thresha, who was staring at the floor, a habit she had picked up from a former friend.

  “Deacon, how far away is the Centennial Fulcrum?” Letho asked.

  “We are well within reach of the Centennial Fulcrum. I’m happy to report that we have just enough fuel left to get us there,” Deacon said, smiling at the crew.

  His smile dropped as no one cheered or even acknowledged him. The Tarsi were still speaking in low voices, occasionally casting burning gazes at Thresha, who was sitting next to Letho. Letho appeared to be lost in thought, deep furrows carved in his brow, a habit that would etch them in his skin as he grew older.

  “Right. I’ll get us home then.”

  Deacon placed his hands in the guidance orbs, and with a few deft manipulations they were speeding toward the Centennial Fulcrum.

  From the outside, the ship looked quite normal. But when they approached the port/docking area beneath the ship, no one was there to drop the shields and open up a docking bay for them.

  “This is really weird,” Deacon said. “Where’s all the chatter?”

  “This is Deacon Shipke on the transport ship Centennial Five, designation Red. Can I get an approach vector?”

  Deacon keyed the com two more times, but only silence. Sighing in frustration, he keyed in a few numbers on his console, and was able to access the docking system via manual override.

  “I’m going to give these guys a piece of my mind. Lazy-ass dockers,” he muttered.

  Two massive metal-toothed doors yawned open, and Deacon guided the ship into one of the docking bays, extended the landing struts and brought his ship to a soft landing.

  “All right, here were are,” said Deacon. “This really is strange. Where’s the welcome party?”

  There were no other ships, no workers, no crewmen.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Alastor placed the head on the medical table. The scent of antiseptic overpowered the odor of burnt flesh the head brought with it. He reached for a set of clippers and began to shave away the remaining wisps of silver hair that clung to the unburnt swatches of skin. They were like sparse islands in a sea of bone white, the shorelines black, charred.

  He turned the skull over so that lifeless eye sockets faced harsh light radiating from fixtures in the ceiling.

  Don’t go toward the light, Alastor thought.

  The eyes and the skin that once covered them were completely gone. He turned the head side to side, examining the skull for fractures or contusions.

  Seems to be intact. Let’s hope the brain inside wasn’t boiled.

  Alastor reached for a small bone saw. Its small, toothed blade glinted with silver sterility in the light. He placed the blade in the center of the head’s charred brow, just above the origin point of a series of swirling black and red tattoos that once adorned the head’s entire face.

  Sawing through a skull was not a job for the faint of heart. The blade itself was a fine tool, but it required a delicate but firm touch to crack the nut that held all sentient life’s greatest treasure.

  The scent of burnt bone filled Alastor’s nostrils. It took him back to days when he had used much cruder apparatuses to open men’s heads.

  When he’d sawed the circumference of the deceased man’s skull, he reached for another tool, which he imbedded into the skullcap. Grasping the tool, he pulled ever so gently, feeling the wetness inside give way as the top of the skull separated. Alastor tossed the skullcap into an opening in the wall that led directly to an incinerator somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

  The next par
t was done entirely by machinery. Alastor stepped back as arms in white and sterile silver descended from the ceiling like insect appendages, clutching, probing, removing. He watched as one of the robotic arms scooped the intact brain from the open skull.

  It’s like a melon baller, he thought.

  He watched with fascination as the scoop deposited the brain into a small tank full of viscous, translucent liquid.

  This is my favorite part.

  Tiny wires like parasitic worms began to unfurl from the bottom of the tank. The wires glimmered blue and red as tiny metallic mouths opened and sank themselves into the brain.

  “Extraction complete. Brain matter is damaged but functional. Attempting to reinstate consciousness,” said a voice from a mechanical brain that was somewhere deep in the core of the ship.

  “Very good. Please continue,” Alastor said.

  Little flashes of electricity filled the fluid in which the brain floated. They began to spark and ripple between the small wires attached to the brain at various points.

  “Consciousness has been restored,” said the disembodied female.

  “Very good,” Alastor said. “Jim, can you hear me?”

  An interminable pause. The whir of machinery and HVAC equipment. Alastor thought he saw Jim’s brain throb; but that was foolish, a trick of the eye misinforming the brain.

  “Yes,” Jim’s voice said, uncertain. It sounded false—degraded and metallic from the mechanical system that actualized impulses from Crimson Jim’s naked brain. “Master. Alastor! What is the meaning of this? I feel nothing, see nothing. I am dead!”

  “Yes Jim, you were dead. But I have brought you back from the void. To live again, to fight alongside me,” Alastor said.

  It was strange speaking to a man when all that was left of him was his brain. Alastor never knew quite where to place his eyes, where to direct his voice.

  “I shall give you a choice, just as I gave Cantus,” Alastor began. “Do you wish to serve me again? Will you take the place of my standard bearer?”