by Neil Clarke
Jay and DeBrun could be brothers. Same smile. Though you’re not sure. You don’t look at people that much anymore. Not since Susan. You don’t care anymore. You can explore the fleshy side of what remains of you after you get the memories back.
Because they will make you whole again.
The ship’s cat adopts you. It hangs in the air just above the nape of your neck, and whenever the ship adjusts its flight patch claws dig into the nape of your neck.
Claws, it seems, are a benefit in zero gravity.
No matter how many times you toss the furball off down the corridor it finds its way back into your room.
How many wormholes between Earth and Nova Terra? You lose track of the stomach-lurching transits as the cylindrical ship burns its way upstream through the network.
You dream about the one memory you still have. The palm tree, sand in your toes.
It could have been a vacation, that beach. But the aquamarine colors just inside the reef feel like home. It’s why, when you heard the shipboard accents, you followed the crew back to this ship and chose it. The oil-cooked johnny cakes, pate, curry, rice . . . muscle memory and habit leave you thinking you came from the islands.
You don’t know them. But they are your people.
At Nova Terra, slipping out via an airlock and a liberated spacesuit, you look back at the pockmarked outer shell of the ship. It’s nestled against the massive, goblet-shaped alien habitat orbiting Nova Terra’s purplish atmosphere, itself circling the gas giant Medea. The few hundred free humans who live here call the glass and steel cup-shaped orbital Hope’s End.
You’re a long way from home now. Hundreds of wormholes away, each of them many lightyears of jumps. Each wormhole a transit point in a vast network that patch together the various worlds the Satrapy rules over.
Too far to stop now. You only were able to come one way. This wasn’t a round-trip ticket. You’ll have to figure out how to get back home later.
Once you have memories. Once you know exactly where that palm tree was, you’ll have something to actually go back for.
The woman who sits at the table across from you a week later does so stiffly, and yet with such a sense of implied ownership that your back tenses. There’s something puppet-like, and you know the strings are digital. Hardware buried into this one’s neuro-cortex allow something else to ride shotgun.
Something.
She’s in full thrall, eyes glinting with an alien intelligence behind them. The Satrap of Hope’s End has noticed your arrival and walked one of his human ROVs out to have a chat. That it took it two days for it to notice you, when you’ve just been sitting out in the open all this time, demonstrates a level of amateurishness for its kind.
Then again, Hope’s End is sort of the Satrapy’s equivalent of a deadend position. A small assignment on a small habitat in orbit. The real players live down the gravity well, on the juicy planets.
“I know who you are,” the woman says. Around you free humans in gray paper suits stream to work in the distant crevices of the station. Life is hard on Hope’s End, you can tell just by their posture. The guarded faces, the invisible heaviness on the shoulders.
You say nothing to the woman across from you.
“You are here without permission. Do you know I could have you killed for that?”
“You could try that,” you say. “The cost would be high.”
“Oh, I imagine.” She leans back, and flails an arm in what must be some far-off alien physical expression badly translated. There is a pit, a cavern, somewhere deep in the bowels of Hope’s End. Somewhere with three quarter’s gravity, and a dirt pit, and a massive recreation pool. And slopping around is a giant wormy trilobite of an alien. “I know a lot about you. More than you know about yourself.”
Indeed.
The thing you need is that cavern’s location.
Until you get that, everything is a dance. A game. A series of feints and jabs. Your life is the price of a single misstep.
But what do you have to lose? You don’t know. Because you can’t remember. It was taken from you. The Satrap owns everything you would lose by dying. You’re already dead, you think.
“So why haven’t you killed me?” you ask the Satrap.
“The Xaymaca Pride,” it says. “They’re sneaking people around my habitat. As if I wouldn’t notice. And they’re hoping to leave . . . for a new world.”
“You believe deBrun’s propaganda?” you ask. Because even you don’t half believe it. The man is slightly messianic. He’s probably going to lead them all to their deaths, so far from Earth. Alone among uncaring, hard aliens the likes of which haven’t even bothered to make it to Earth.
The Satrapy is vast. Hundreds of wormhole junctions between each habitable world, and dozens and dozens of those linked up. And the Satraps hold the navigation routes to themselves. The few individual ships out there blunder around and retrace their steps and are lucky they’re not shot down by the Satrapy’s gun banks in the process.
“DeBrun destroyed his own ship upon return from the Fringes,” the woman says. “He has memorized the location in his head.”
“Ah. So you believe it is true.” A ship. There were corporations on Earth that couldn’t afford an interstellar ship. Not a small act, destroying one.
“Many people raised funds to create this . . . Black Starliner Corporation’s fleet,” the Satrap’s thrall says. “I believe the world he found is real. Unspoiled and real. And I want it for myself.” That last bit is lashed out. There is hunger in that statement, and a hint of frustration.
This Satrap is trapped up here, while its siblings cavort on the surface of Nova Terra. They have thousands of humans and aliens in thrall at their disposal, chipped with neurotech that let them create an army of servants they can remote control around with mere thought.
“I am stuck in this boring, metal cage. But I have great plans. Would you like to know how you got that scar above your left inner thigh? The jagged one, that is faded because you’ve had it since you were a teenager?”
You stop breathing for a second. Unconsciously you run a hand down and trace the zig-zag pattern with your thumb.
“You were climbing a fence. Barbed wire curled around the top, and you were trying to get over it into a field. You slipped. You were so scared, for a split second, as it ripped open your leg. The blood was so bright in the sun, and the ground tumbled up toward you as fell, in shock.”
When you break the stare, you’ve lost a little battle of the wills. “So you do have them.”
“I love collecting the strangest things,” the Satrap said through the woman. Now that you are paying attention, you see that her hair is unwashed, and that there are sores above her clavicle. “I have two thousand humans, in thrall to me. Many other species as well. And I’ve used these eyes to pry, sneak, and attempt my way on board. I want John deBrun. I’m tired of watching these free humans skulk about.”
“So go pick him up,” you say.
“Oh, yes. I want to sink my tendrils into deBrun’s fleshy little mind and suck those coordinates out. But he remains on that damn ship, with guards ever at the airlocks. I’ve learned he has protocols for an attack, and anything I can do leaves me too high a risk of him dying in a large attack. So I want you to bring me John deBrun. It is the sort of thing, I’m told, you are good at.”
“And in exchange you give me my memories back?”
“You’re every bit as sharp as your memories indicate you ever were,” the woman says, and stands up.
“What if I refuse? What if I go after the memories myself?” you smile.
“You are alone, on a station, where only a few hold their own freedom. Every other eye in here is in thrall to me. Most of the time, they are free to engage in their petty lives, but the moment I desire, I could command them all to rip you from limb to limb with their bare hands. I considered it. But I think instead, we will both be happier if you bring John deBrun to level A7. Portal fourteen. My security force
s will be waiting.”
And there is your way in.
You wait in the shadows.
You’ve often been something that goes bump in the night.
The Satraps consider themselves gods to the species they rule over. But sometimes, gods want other gods killed. In theory their reasons are arcane and unknowable. But as far as you can tell they are the usual: jealousy. Covetousness. A desire for more power.
Sometimes gods want other gods to die, and you decided you didn’t just want to go bump in the night and scare people. You decided you could aim higher than being just a human assassin. And when the Satrap of Mars decided it wanted the blue jewel of Earth, you let it sharpen you into a weapon the likes of which few wished to imagine.
All that gooey alien nanotechnology that burrowed through your pores, all that power . . .
Behold the giant slayer, you once thought, looking in the mirror.
You weren’t supposed to live, but even jealous alien eyes from the dusty red ruin of Mars couldn’t imagine the hells you would face to continue feeding your quest. It had no idea the depths of your anger. The strength of your resolve.
It didn’t know you had such a cold, cold heart, and that it had helped make it so much colder. You were already steel, and artificial sinew. It only furthered a transformation that had begun long ago.
·
The gun that John deBrun points at your head when he comes into his quarters is capable of doing much more than give you a headache. He’s good. Knew you were in the room. Maybe considered flushing out this part of the ship, but instead comes in to talk.
He’s keeping his distance though.
“You’re here for the coordinates, aren’t you?” he asks.
You nod. “I am.”
You keep your hands in the air and sit down. You want John as comfortable as possible.
“If it’s not me, someone else will come. They’ll cut your head off and run it back to the Satrap. What I have in mind is a little different.”
John shakes his head sadly. He lifts up his shirt to show several puckered scars. “You’re not the first to try. We have systems in place to deal with this. Every possible variable. I have to assume that everyone is trying to stop me. Other humans, my own crew, people at Hope’s End. I’m tougher than they realize.”
“You’ll want to do this my way,” you say.
“And why is that?”
“Because it is happening, John. This right now is happening: I will take you to the Satrap. Because I have come too far, and done too many things, to not go there and get my memories back. Nothing else matters to me. Not you, your ships, your cause, the people in this habitat. There is nothing for me there. There is everything in the Satrap’s den.”
John shakes his head. “Do you know how much they’ve taken from us? You think your memories are the worst of it? Let me lay down some history on you: there’s always been someone taking it away. They took it away from people like us when we were transported across an ocean. Taken away when aliens landed and ripped our countries away from us. Claimed our planets. There’s a long, long list of things ripped away from people in history. You are not alone.”
“Unlike them,” you say, “what was taken from me is just within reach now.”
“At a price,” John says.
“Everything has a price,” you say, moving toward him.
John blinks, surprised. He’s been thinking we were having a dialogue, but you were waiting for the gun to dip slightly. For his attention to waver.
He’s a good shot. Hits you right in the chest. A killing shot. One that would have stopped anyone else. The round penetrates, explodes. Shrapnel shreds the place a heart usually rests.
But that is just one small part. One bloodstream.
That faint hiccup of backup pumps dizzies you slightly as your blood pressure shifts and adapts. You cough blood, and grab John. You break his hand as you disarm him and knock him out.
For a while you sit next to him, the horrible feeling in your chest filling you with waves of pain.
Eventually that ebbs. You evaluate the damage, glyphs and messages ghosting across your eyeballs as your body, more alien machine than human, begins to process the damage and heal itself.
You won’t be facing the Satrap in optimal fighting condition.
But you’re so close. And if you delay, you invite the risk of the Satrap sending someone for John. That could be messy. And it won’t give you the one thing you really want out of all this: an invitation into the Satrap’s personal cavern, deep past its layers of defenses.
Hello there you slimy alien shit, you’re thinking. I’ve got a treat for you.
Just come a little closer, and don’t mind the big teeth behind this smile.
You snap the ammonia capsule apart under John’s nose and he jerks awake. You’re both in a loading bay near the rim of Hope’s End. Water drips off in a corner, and the industrial grit on the walls is old and faded. A section of the habitat that has fallen into disuse.
“Don’t do this. You should join us, Pepper. Leave all this behind. Start something fresh.”
“That’s not what’s happening right now,” you say. “The direction of this journey was set a long time ago.” The door at the far end of the bay creaks open.
“You can’t kill a Satrap,” he says.
You lean next to him. “Your ships, they were never going to leave Hope’s End. The Satrap here gave you enough fuel to bring those people here. But right now, you’re being given dribs and drabs of antimatter. Enough to go back and forth to Earth. But not enough to make it back where you want to go with a whole fleet, right?”
John is silent.
You laugh. “The creature strings you along, until it can get what it wants. And then every single person who came here, well, they’ll truly understand the name the few hundred free humans scraping by here gave it. Won’t they? Hope’s End. Because even if you’re free, you’re not free of the Satrap’s long arm. And you’ll be the one who lured them here with tales of a free world.”
John lets out a deep breath, and slumps forward.
“But listen to me. Work with me, and I’ll help you get what you need. Do you understand?”
“Neither of us will walk away alive from this,” John says. “We are both dead men. We’re talking, but we are dead men.”
The empty-eyed vassals of the Satrap encircle you, a watchful, coordinated crowd that sighs happily as their eyes confirm that you have indeed delivered John deBrun.
“I want my memories, now,” you say, holding tight to John.
“Come with us.”
Somewhere deep inside, hope stirs. Anticipation builds.
Caution, you warn.
You’re both herded deep into Hope’s End by ten humans in thrall to the Satrap. Away from the green commons, below the corridors, below the subways and utility pipes, out of storage, and into the core ballast in the heart of the structure. The shadows are everywhere, and fluids drip slowly in the reduced gravity.
Muck oozes from grates, and biological mists hang in the air, thick on the lungs.
The Satrap’s subterranean cavern is dim, and the wormy trilobite itself slouched in a dust pit at the center. The long tendrils around its maw socketed into machines, and from those machines, controlled anyone unfortunate enough to be in thrall.
A curious adaptation. You imagine the Satrap evolved somewhere deep underground, where it could lie in wait and plunge its neuro-ten-drils into a prey’s spine. And then what? It could use predators to grab prey, without harm to itself? Use prey as lures, dangling around that eager, gaping mouth.
“Finally,” all ten voices around you say in unison.
John is shoved to the floor in front of you, and you move into the next section of your plan. You reach up to your back and use carbon-fibre fingernails to rip into the scars on your back.
This hurts.
But pain doesn’t last forever. Not the pain of your skin ripping apart, or your fingers pulli
ng. The pain of grabbing the handle just underneath as you pull the modified machete of your shoulder blade with a wet tearing and hiss.
Memory strata reforms the blade’s handle to fit your grasp, and the black edge of the blade sucks the light into it. The molecular surface is hydrophobic, the viscera and blood on it slide off and splash to the floor.
The Satrap’s thralls move toward you, but you put the edge of the short blade against the back of John’s skull. “Don’t.”
As one, they all pull back.
You could have killed John with your bare hands, you don’t need the sword. This is part statement. Theater to help the Satrap realize that you’re far more dangerous than it has realized. Because, if it can get away with it, the Satrap will have both its prize and keep your memories.
And that isn’t going to be happening.
“Give me my memories,” you tell it.
“Let me have my new world,” it replies in ten voices.
Ten. That’s all it has surrounding you.
But you want those memories, so the standoff continues. You broadcast your implacability. You will not be moving until you are given those memories. And first.
“Tell it half the coordinates,” you order John. You push the edge of the machete against his neck. Let’s dangle the prize a little, you think.
“No,” John says firmly.
“John,” You kneel next to him. And you whisper, “it will die with those coordinates in its head. Trust me. Don’t hold it to just yourself now, let it go. Let go of the burden. Let me help you. And then this will be all over.”
But you notice something in his response.
He has been sharing the burden. Someone else knows the coordinates. Who? His first mate. Jay. There was a bond there, you remember.
John stumbles to his feet. “If you want the coordinates, you’ll have to rip them out of my head yourself,” he says to the Satrap.
And why would he do that?
His body is warm, near feverish. A Satrap wouldn’t notice. Not a Satrap that had people under thrall to it with sores on their skin. But you notice.
You’re not the only player in this game. John has a different plan. A plan to protect the coordinates. A plan to give his people time to grab what they need: fuel. He’s got a bomb in him. Hidden, like your machete.