by G J Ogden
Cutler didn’t acknowledge Tory, and finished activating the weapons systems. Griff watched as the targeting reticule appeared overlaid on the cockpit glass. A blue triangle materialized, flashed and then remained solid. Griff glanced over at the monitor to the side of his seat, scanning the tactical information. The ship was small, roughly equivalent to a large taxi flyer or two-person shuttlecraft. While he was studying the monitor, Griff noticed a strange glow coming from below. He glanced down and saw that the window in the scendar device he’d stolen from Hudson’s ship was glowing brightly again. What the hell? he asked himself, leaning over to get a better look. He was about to highlight the discovery to Cutler, but then he felt two solid thuds punch through the ship.
“Forward cannons fired,” said Cutler. “Their trajectory looks good.”
Griff frowned down at the scendar again, but then concentrated on the tactical overlay on the cockpit glass. Although he would have preferred to turn around and run, he was also eager to see the effect of Cutler’s attack. If the alien ship was destroyed then all was well, other than him needing to suffer Tory’s inevitable gloating.
“Impact in ten seconds…” said Cutler. No-one else spoke. Griff counted down in his head, then there was a brief flash of light ahead.
“Did you get it?” Griff blurted out, realizing he hadn’t taken a breath the whole time he was counting.
Cutler again didn’t respond. Griff’s own sense of powerlessness, combined with Cutler’s infuriating lack of communication, was driving him crazy. “Cutler, damn it, did you destroy the thing or not?!” he growled.
“No… the shells appear to have had no effect,” replied Cutler, sounding anxious. Then he again turned to Tory, “Can you outrun it?” The question was asked timidly, because, like Griff, Cutler already knew the answer.
Tory shook her head, “Like I told you, it’s too late for that now,” the mercenary replied, severely. “If running was the plan, we should have turned back when it first appeared.”
“Shit!” Cutler swore, in a rare display of emotion. It was yet another unusual reaction from the typically unflappable mercenary. “Turn around anyway. If we pull a high-g burn, it might give up its pursuit.”
“It’s too late, damn it!” snarled Tory, her own voice finally showing some signs of stress. “The burn would kill us. I told you if you stayed the course then we were committed. So, I say let’s find out if this alien bastard wants to play chicken!” Tory locked in her course, and stared out ahead, her eyes wild.
“Tory, what are you doing?!” yelled Cutler, “Turn away, now, that is an order!”
“I’m done following your orders!” Tory hit back, refusing to alter course. “I’m not leaving this system with nothing, and I’m never going back to the Council! I’d rather die here. So, we’re going to find out who breaks first.”
Griff was speechless, but then the engines of the FS-31 suddenly cut out, and it spun one hundred and eighty degrees. The rapid and unexpected movement would have thrown Griff from his seat, had he not still been strapped in. He steadied himself against the console to his side and saw that Cutler had overridden Tory’s controls, and was now flying the ship himself.
Heart pounding in his chest, Griff checked his monitor again, and saw that the alien ship was still coming for them. They had less than a minute.
“Damn it, Cutler, we can’t outrun it!” Tory snarled, hammering her fists onto the flight deck. “At least go down fighting, not running away like a coward!”
Cutler ignored her and continued frantically preparing to initiate a hard burn away from the alien ship. Griff’s eyes flicked nervously from Tory to Cutler and back again. The female mercenary was incensed.
“To hell with all this,” said Tory, unclipping her harness and darting across to the center of the console. She then grabbed the FS-31’s ID fob and yanked it clear. Immediately, the ship’s drive systems went offline; it was like switching off the ignition of a car.
“Tory!” yelled Cutler, trying to grab the fob back off her, but he was still strapped into his seat, and he merely flailed his arms at her helplessly.
Tory then walked up to Griff, and drew her revolver, “And to hell with you,” she growled.
Griff stared at the weapon, immobilized by fear. Then he peered up into Tory’s cold, resentful eyes, as the mercenary clicked back the hammer of the six-shooter and aimed the barrel at his head.
CHAPTER 3
Griff squirmed in his seat as Tory slid her finger onto the trigger of the six-shooter. However, with the harness still fastened tightly, he was trapped and helpless.
“Tory, come on, think about what you’re doing!” Griff yelled at her, now fixing his eyes onto the barrel of the revolver.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” replied Tory, “It’s something I should have done a long time ago. But, since we’re all going to die now anyway, I’ll be damned if some alien thing gets to be the one who takes you out.”
There was the sound of another weapon being loaded. Griff glanced behind Tory to see that Cutler was aiming his pistol at Tory’s back. He was still in his seat, but he’d swiveled it to face them.
“Tory, sit down,” growled Cutler. “We still have a chance, but not if you put a hole in the hull!”
Tory glanced back at Cutler, and then at his pistol. “I’m going to put a hole in this asshole, not the ship. But shoot me if you want. I don’t give a shit anymore.”
With Tory’s head turned, Griff saw his chance. With seconds to act, he unclipped his harness and threw himself at Tory, tackling her to the deck. There was a sudden, deafening crack as the revolver fired, and for a second, Griff thought he was hit. Then the console behind him erupted into sparks and flames, and alarms rang out inside the cockpit.
Griff clambered off the deck, with Tory still lying stunned beneath him. He grabbed the ID fob that had fallen out of Tory’s hand when she fell, and staggered between the two main seats.
“Go, quickly!” Griff yelled, holding the ID fob to the initiator. The device snapped into place, and he heard the drive systems begin to cycle online. However, Cutler was just scowling down at the navigation scanner. “Cutler, what the hell are you waiting for?!” Griff cried again, shaking the mercenary’s shoulders, “the drives are online. Go!”
Cutler brushed Griff’s hands away angrily, “Wait… the alien vessel is no longer tracking us,” he yelled back, before pulsing the thrusters to push them into a subtly different trajectory. “It now appears to be merely drifting towards us.”
Griff peered down at the navigation scanner, and saw that Cutler was right. The alien vessel was no longer tracking their movements. “What did you do?” Griff asked, feeling the grip of terror relax its hold on him slightly.
Cutler shook his head, then leveled off the controls and throttled back. The alien ship continued on, making no further attempts to match their course. “I don’t know. I did nothing, at least nothing I am aware of. But it appears that the danger is past.”
“The danger is past?” repeated Griff, sounding incredulous. “We don’t know that!”
“Control yourself, Inspector,” Cutler hit back. His disdain was clear, just as it had been when Cutler had lost his cool on the alien station. Cutler then removed his harness and moved out in front of Tory. She had landed hard, but was now sitting up, back pressed against the bulkhead, looking at Cutler.
“Did you hear that, Tory?” said Cutler. He was aiming his pistol carefully at Tory’s head, to avoid the protection offered by her armored jacket. “We’re in the clear. So, everyone can relax.”
Tory stood up slowly, with Cutler tracking her all the way. She glanced over at the navigation scanner on Cutler’s console, which confirmed his statement, then met Cutler’s eyes again. “I meant what I said, Cutler. I’m never going back to the Council. If I have to take you all down with me, I will, believe me.”
“I believe you,” replied Cutler. Then he turned his head fractionally towards Griff, and said, “Inspector G
riff, please set us back on a course towards the moon. We have work to do.”
Griff couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After what had just happened, he had no intention of steering the ship back towards the moon. “Are you insane? There could be more of those things out there!” he said, looking back into the mercenary’s eyes. However, Cutler had again placed a tight lid on his emotions, and all Griff saw was calm determination. Still, Cutler wasn’t the one calling the shots, and it pissed him off that he again had to remind the mercenary of that fact.
“This is my mission, Cutler,” Griff said, jabbing a nicotine-stained finger at him. “And I order you to head back through the portal! Let the RGF fleet check out this system first. We can always find another portal, and another wreck!”
Cutler’s eyes narrowed fractionally, before he pointed back to the console next to Griff’s seat. It was still crackling and smoldering gently, as a result of Tory’s wayward shot. “I’m afraid that isn’t going to be possible anymore, Inspector,” Cutler added.
Griff frowned and looked back at the console. “Shit!” he cursed, while dropping down on his knees in front of the damaged device. Tory had put a hole directly through the glass window. “This thing is ruined,” he said, digging out the fractured glass so he could get a clearer look inside. Then he shook his head despairingly. “And the bullet has cracked the crystal in half too.” His head fell forward. His temples were throbbing, and it felt like needles were being pushed into his eyeballs. Wash was going to kill him when she found out, he realized. However, one system under RGF control was still better than nothing. And maybe the RGF techs could repair the device. Maybe he could still salvage something from this mess.
“Ironically, perhaps the destruction of the device is what saved us,” said Cutler.
“How do you figure that, genius?” snapped Griff, pulling himself up into the more comfortable pilot’s seat, while still massaging his temples.
“The alien vessel broke off its pursuit the moment the device went offline. Perhaps it was drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.”
Tory huffed a laugh, “So, what you’re saying is that I just saved everyone’s life?” Then she cocked her head towards Cutler. “Maybe you should be thanking me, rather than pointing that little pea shooter at my head?”
Cutler’s expression remained serious, “Without that device, we can’t open another portal,” he continued, fixing Tory with an unblinking stare. “Which means that the moon out there is our only chance to score something worthwhile.”
Griff shook his head again. “Our percentage of all claims from this system will dwarf anything we can grab before the RGF fleet arrives. We head back while we still can. That’s an order!”
“I think we are all past the point of taking orders from you, Inspector,” said Cutler. He was much calmer now, and his surly, monotone delivery had returned. “Our situation is bleak. And I cannot risk that your precious Superintendent Wash will renege on our agreement,” Cutler went on, though he was still aiming the pistol at Tory. “And even if she honors the bargain, it could be months before those payments reach us. The Council will have found us all long before then.”
Griff silently cursed. From Cutler’s perspective, what he’d said was true. He couldn’t be sure that Wash would honor her agreement, even to him. However, the difference with Cutler and Tory was that they weren’t RGF, and he was. The RGF failed at many things, but taking care of their own was not one of them. He needed to get back to the portal, and back to safety. Even without a score from the new portal world, his best chance of survival was to get back to Wash, and spin it as best he could. Yet he also knew that Cutler was laying out these facts not for his benefit, but for Tory’s. Despite being held at gunpoint, if Tory agreed to follow Cutler, he’d be outnumbered and outvoted.
“So, what’s it to be, Tory?” asked Cutler, after an anxious silence. “Will you join with me for one last hunt? Then we shall both be rich enough to part ways, amicably. Or shall we go back and face the Council with nothing?”
Tory folded her arms. She was still wild, but she no longer looked like a hungry wolf that was being dragged away from its kill. “Okay, so we go to the moon and take what we can,” said Tory. Then she bent down and picked up her antique Colt Frontier Six-Shooter. Griff held his breath again as she grasped the weapon, but let it out slowly as the mercenary slid it back into her holster. “But after this, you and me are done. Understood?”
“Understood,” replied Cutler, flatly. He then also holstered his weapon, before turning to Griff. “And what about you, Inspector Griff? Will you join the hunt, or would you prefer to continue barking pointless orders and wasting our time?”
Griff shook his head, “I think you’re both crazy. But it doesn’t look like I have a choice.”
“No, you don’t,” replied Cutler, before dropping into the second seat and unlocking the controls.
Tory paced up in front of Griff, who was still in the pilot’s seat, and stared down at him. Griff felt his heart start to pound in his chest again. His eyes flicked nervously to the revolver on Tory’s belt. However, Tory just raised her eyebrows, and gestured towards the third seat. “Are you going to get the hell out of my way, or am I going to have to drag you out of my chair?”
CHAPTER 4
Morphus came back online. For a few moments, as its core reinitiated, it was disorientated and unsure of where it was. Then its memories flooded in, repopulating its circuits like water filling a dried-up river. It was back at the Corporeals’ home world, docked at one of the few orbital repair docks that had survived Goliath’s assault.
Morphus ran a quick diagnostic and discovered that the damage to its systems had been repaired. Its power reserves were depleted, and it would take time to recharge them, but otherwise it was functioning normally. However, it also felt strange, and somehow different to how it remembered. Then it realized why; it was no longer in its humanoid form, but stored inside its processing capsule, shapeless and indistinct. Despite this being its default form, and despite the entirely inorganic nature of its construction, this state felt unnatural to Morphus.
Removing itself from the capsule, Morphus began to cycle through its many previous forms. It again chose to settle on the middle-aged female identity that it had adopted for most of its time with Hudson Powell. It immediately felt ‘better’. This may have been a human emotional construct, but Morphus had gotten used to the human corporeals’ idiosyncrasies, as well as their spoken vocabulary. Despite its limitations, the simplicity of their language was its virtue. It forced Morphus to think about what it wanted to say, and how best to express it. There was much about the human strand of the Corporeals’ experiment that still required evolution. However, Morphus had already seen enough within the Hudson Powell entity to know it – and the human race – was capable of such change. It was worth saving from Goliath.
Morphus walked up to the front of its ship and touched the surface of the wall. Its hand became smooth and shimmered softly, before it sank slowly into the alien metal, as if it were made of a soft putty. “Reconfigure to corporeal-human piloting configuration,” it said out loud. It didn’t need to speak the words in order to issue the command, but it chose to. This felt more real to it.
The ship began to change. Bulkheads shifted and previously shapeless sections of the vessel reconfigured to display the sort of apparatus normally seen on human ships. There were two seats at the front, positioned in front of flight controls designed for corporeal beings with two hands and two legs. Meanwhile, the exterior of the ship adopted a shape that would be more familiar to human eyes, though its appearance was still unique.
Morphus sat down in the left seat, and held the controls. “Show me outside,” said Morphus, and immediately the front section of the ship became transparent. It was like a narrow, panoramic glass window, except with glass so clear that it was as if a hole had been carved through the hull. Morphus looked through the new window at the remains of the Corporeals’ homeworld. Th
e carcasses of space stations and battleships still littered its orbit; the aftermath of Goliath’s vengeance. The surface of the planet also lay in ruin, sterilized of all sentient organic life. In the millennia since its destruction, nature had largely reclaimed it. In its own way it was still beautiful, Morphus thought, like a withered autumn leaf. Yet it was also desperately sad. Billions of lives were wiped out in the equivalent of just a few Earth days. The first sentient corporeal race to have evolved in the entire galaxy, snuffed out, as if it had never existed at all.
Powering up the ship’s engines, Morphus maneuvered out of the repair dock and set a course for the Telescope. Positioned in a high orbit above the planet’s north pole, the Telescope looked like a small moon. Unlike the planet’s two natural satellites, it was made from metal, rather than rock. However, although it was inorganic, it was alive. Morphus wondered how the passage of time had affected it, and hoped that it had not warped and twisted its circuits, as it had done to Goliath.
Goliath had left the Telescope intact as a monument to the Corporeals' demise. It had been the object through which they had witnessed their failure. Goliath had derived a perverse amusement in allowing it to remain, even after it had exterminated the Corporeals themselves.
Morphus approached the Telescope and signaled its intention to enter; the Revocater version of saying hello. A hexagonal door opened to allow the ship inside, and Morphus eased its vessel through and into the cavernous interior. The telescope was largely hollow, though its internal structure was covered in a complex array of crystals. It was beautiful and unique, like the center of an amethyst geode the size of a small moon.
Immediately Morphus was in contact with the Telescope’s AI. Ordinarily, Morphus would merely communicate directly with the AI through its own digital language, but Morphus preferred to remain in its human form. The Telescope was intrigued and began to analyze Morphus’ shape, the language it was using, and the complexities of its physical movements. Then a projection of a human male appeared in the second seat.