by Paul Barrett
“Don’t be angry with me,” he told her. “I applaud your tenacity, but you need to learn to accept defeat gracefully. Don’t worry; this will all be over soon.” He offered her a bitter smile. Jonak, standing nearby, chuckled until a baleful glance from Moran silenced him. “We’ll discuss your punishment later.”
Jonak swallowed, and his lips pressed tight.
Moran returned his attention to the executives. They spoke to each other in animated gestures, some pointing at Laura. Salakon had spread the word about the imminent arrival of the vessel that would bring their dreams of conquest within reach.
With a stride of supreme confidence, Moran returned to the front of the room. The talking died as everyone turned to him. Several of them squinted at the brightness of the windows behind him. He turned on the light dampeners. It put a gloomy cast on the room and allowed the gathered executives to open their eyes fully as they watched him. Moran smiled at the unintended metaphor. This was twice he had made sure they had their eyes opened.
“My fellow compatriots,” he said, favoring them with the same cold smile he had shown to Laura. “Two years ago I came to you and told you I had a plan to make you all not just rich, but rich and powerful. That day is at hand.” He paused and pointed to Laura. “That is Laura Benzing, a member of Force 13 and also of the Knights of The Flaming Star. Her captain, Sean Grey, also known as Hawk, is bringing his starcraft in exchange for her life. When he lands, we will take him prisoner, take over his ship, and execute both of them.”
“What about the Council?” one of the executives asked. “When they get the information she sent off, they’ll be all over us.”
Moran threw Salakon a hard glare, causing the small man to wince.
“Don’t let that disturb you,” he told the executive. “We have planned too well to be stopped at this point. The soonest the Council will be able to bring a force to bear is at least a week. By that time, we will have a thousand sentient ships under our control capable of performing without human crews. Within a month, we will have ten thousand. Then the Council will be ours!”
The executives cheered, roaring Moran’s name and pounding the table with their fists.
“Your faith in my vision shall pay off handsomely. We shall rule our corner of the known universe!” Moran shouted over the cacophony.
The cheering grew louder. The large double doors to the conference room swung open.
Hawk’s voice cut through the celebration. “Your megalomaniac routine is getting really boring, Moran. You’re all under arrest.”
The startled board members turned to him. He wore his full Knight raiment; his cape flowed behind him gracefully as he stepped into the room.
“How did you get in here?” Wekeit asked in his gravelly voice.
“Walked in.”
“That’s impossible,” the short alien sputtered. “This place is heavily guarded.”
“I doubt that’s true anymore,” Moran told the man. He turned to Hawk. “I apologize for underestimating you. You haven’t grown as soft as I thought. Coming to rescue the woman was a courageous gesture, but useless I’m afraid.” He looked at Jonak and another guard. “Kill him.”
The men brought their weapons to bear. A whirring flash of black streaked across the room. Two bone-crunching thunks followed in rapid succession. The men crumpled to the floor.
A humming black sphere floated back to Hawk and settled on his right side about a meter off the floor. Gerard stepped into the room, followed by the hovering ROMANCE.
“That was a neat toy you had at your house,” Hawk told Salakon. He pointed at the sphere. “Gerard made me one last night.”
“I wish I had thought of it,” Gerard said.
One of the female board members jumped to her feet, mouth open ready to protest, but the same sickening thud cut her short. The others watched wide-eyed as she fell into her chair and slid under the table. The sphere settled back at Hawk’s shoulder.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Hawk told them. “Make any sudden moves, that is. Gerard hasn’t had time to work out all the bugs. Just be nice and calm and save yourself a nasty headache.”
All of them eyed the globe warily, and no one seemed inclined to move. Hawk noticed another female sitting at the end of the table. She frantically pushed at something beneath the table. Hawk expected as much, so it didn’t surprise him when he heard running feet in the hallway.
“Gerard, the thought of turning my back on Moran makes the area between my shoulders itch. Would you mind taking care of the welcoming committee?”
Gerard turned as a large and angry group of soldiers ran down the hall toward them, weapons drawn. He muttered an equation and waved his golden hand. The large double doors slammed shut. Another equation and the doors glowed a faint green.
He turned back to the executives. A moment later pounding could be heard outside.
Then the faint sound of firing weapons. Then screams of agony followed by silence.
Hawk smiled. “That deflection equation surprises them every time. That should buy us some time until they regroup and figure out another way.”
Moran slowly crossed his arms. “Now what?”
Hawk strolled over and grabbed the empty chair that once held the unconscious executive. He rolled it to the head of the table, sat down, and propped his feet up. At the same time, Gerard untied Laura and handed her a medkit.
“Thanks,” she told him.
“This is how I see it,” Hawk produced a cigar from his vest pocket and took his time lighting it. “All of you got power hungry and greedy. This lunatic across the table from me convinced you that you could accomplish the impossible. To whit, overthrowing the Planetary Council. What were you thinking? Although having a sentient being for a spaceship has its advantages, it also has its problems.”
“Hrumph,” Ship said in his ear.
Smiling, Hawk continued. “I’ll grant you it’s invaluable in an organization such as mine, but did you stop to consider what you were doing? You look at a sentient spacecraft and see a molded piece of metal and machinery. However, that “ship” sees itself quite differently. That metal hull is her skin. She doesn’t like getting holes punched in it any more than you would like someone stabbing you with a fork. You also have to remember that these ships would be smarter than you are. Just because you create them doesn’t mean they’ll follow you. Your agenda may not be theirs. Didn’t you guys ever hear the story of Frankenstein? What makes you think these beings will follow an inferior race?
“As soon as they become aware, they plug into the net and know everything. How do you control that, Moran? With a virus like you injected in Laura, only modified for computers? I can tell by Laura’s condition that this approach hasn’t worked well for you.”
The board members glanced around at each other and then at Moran. Their mood had darkened considerably.
“Never crossed your minds, did it?” Hawk shook his head.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Moran reached for his belt. He stopped short as he found the black sphere hovering two centimeters from his nose and giving off an ominous humming. ROMANCE had also moved between Hawk and Moran. For a long moment, Moran held his stance, and then slowly pulled his arm away. The sphere backed up until it occupied a position near the middle of the table.
Hawk looked at ROMANCE. “And here I thought that thing didn’t like me.”
“That’s its only field of fire,” Gerard said.
“Thanks,” Hawk replied dryly.
Moran stood, fuming, and Hawk could almost see his mind racing.
“As your friend Laura says, get to the point,” Moran told him.
“This is my party, I’ll ramble if I want to,” Hawk took a long pull from his cigar before continuing. A high whine outside the room told him that the soldiers had returned to the door with laser-powered cutting tools.
Moran smiled. “You better hurry. The party’s almost over.”
Hawk looked back at the door. “Yeah, right.�
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“What is the point?” Salakon asked. “Do you plan to hold us here for a week until the Council arrives?”
“It had crossed my mind, but no. If you sleep with dogs, you’re going to get fleas, and I don’t like to scratch.”
“I don’t particularly care for your insulting tone, Sir,” Salakon said, his voice haughty.
Hawk sat up and laughed. “You’re going to have more important things to concern you before too long. A detachment from the Council fleet will arrive in the next five to ten minutes.”
Nervous glances passed among the executives. Moran’s face remained expressionless.
“That’s impossible,” Salakon said. “You’re bluffing.”
“Hardly. You see, I’m not as stupid or drunk as Moran probably told you I was. Although, to give him credit, he had us going for a while.
“Moran knows a lot about the Knights and Force Thirteen, and I assume he told all of you most of what he knows. However, what he didn’t know was that Force 13 declassified him as a Product Sixty-Six two years before he left the organization.”
“What does that mean?” Salakon asked.
“Why don’t you tell them?” Hawk asked Moran.
Moran glared at him, his good eye glittering with malice while his green cybernetic eye dimmed, as if narrowing in hatred.
Hawk shook off the strangely unnerving sight, “Guess not. A Product Sixty-Six is someone the organization feels is no longer mentally stable. You see, Moran’s behavior grew erratic. The more cybernetics he got, the more unpredictable he became. Force Thirteen wanted to decommission him; I asked them to reconsider.” He turned to Moran again. “I thought you could be saved.”
“From what?” Moran asked, his voice filled with ice.
“From your madness,” Hawk told him. “From yourself. I tried to help you. We all tried to help you. I wish you would have let us,” Hawk said wistfully.
Moran didn’t speak for a long moment; Hawk thought he saw a glimmer of remorse in his old friend’s expression that quickly disappeared. “I didn’t need your help,” he spat out at them. Pointing at Gerard, he said, “I wanted none of his help.”
“I’m sorry you hated me so much,” Gerard said. “I certainly never meant for you to.”
Moran said nothing.
“Anyway,” Hawk turned his attention back to Salakon. “Force Thirteen agreed that if we put Moran on a strictly need to know basis and a short leash. We could try and pull him from the brink. But they didn’t want him on missions where his instability could endanger the outcome. So he was sent on lower-priority assignments, always with one of us backing him up and watching him.”
Realization dawned, and both of Moran’s eyes grew brighter. “So that’s why my talent and time were wasted on such trivial matters. You thought I was insane.”
“You are insane!” Gerard said. Hawk looked at him, surprised.
“You’re so obsessed with becoming a machine that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human.” Gerard held up his cybernetic arm. “You never could understand that you control this, not the other way around.”
“And you never could understand that I want to become more than human,” Moran said. “What is so great about being human? We’re weak, short-lived creatures. We would have been better off if we had never crawled out of the slime.” Moran’s eyes bore into Hawk. “Sara was human. Where did it get her?”
Hawk stood up, his jaws clenched. “It got her killed by a gutless son-of-a-bitch that she trusted.”
Moran started to speak but stopped when a distant rumbling shook the air, rattling the room’s windows.
“What’s that?” one of the executives asked.
“That’s the Council,” Hawk said. “I’m sure Moran told you about Gerard being a manipulator. He probably neglected to tell you about Gerard’s brotherhood The Sterling Arch.”
Another boom reverberated through the building.
Hawk continued. “They have this incredibly complex and draining equation they can invoke which allows them to… well, I guess ‘bridge ripspace’ would be the easiest way to explain it. It allows them to distort time and cut distances by a tenth. So instead of taking a week, we got the fleet here in a day, as you can hear.”
“I don’t believe you,” Salakon said.
“Then you’re really, really stupid,” Hawk told him. “Don’t take my word for it. Turn on your screen. But only your screen.”
Salakon opened a hidden panel on the table and pushed a button. A large wall painting went opaque. He tapped a keypad, and a tactical space map appeared, filled with blue and yellow dots. The blue blips easily outnumbered the yellow by a twenty-to-one margin.
“That’s all you could muster,” Moran said contemptuously. “We’ll wipe them up without even thinking about it.”
Hawk’s mustache twitched as he offered his own cold smile. “Watch.”
At first, the blue dots, representing the UCT fleet, reacted randomly and scattered, obviously surprised by the sudden appearance of the Council fleet. However, they quickly organized a solid front and started a flanking maneuver.
Hawk sat down and rocked back in the chair, impressed. “Very nice,” Hawk said, noting Salakon’s smug expression. “Sir, I commend you on your troop’s discipline. You must have an outstanding fleet commander.”
Salakon’s grin stopped below his nose. “Watch.”
“It will be a shame to lose such a fine force,” Hawk said. “I hope they die well.”
“I’m sure the Council can replace the ships and men,” Salakon said, his voice mocking.
“That’s not quite what I meant. If your man’s worth his salt, he’ll attack from the front, using the flanks in a raking maneuver. Shortly after that, you’ll hear the Commander of the Council fleet asking for your man’s surrender.”
As if on cue, the blue dots started forward. Shortly thereafter, several of the yellow blips disappeared. Salakon’s smile broadened even as his eyes glared at Hawk. Hawk returned the smile and pointed to the monitor.
Salakon turned his gaze back. His expression turned to puzzlement as all of the yellow dots disappeared and reappeared at a different location, behind UCT’s fleet. Salakon’s mouth dropped.
“You see,” Hawk said, “the fewer the ships, the greater control Gerard’s Order has over them. Even your sensors can’t keep up with the accelerated time.”
“That’s impossible,” stammered the same executive who had spoken when Hawk first entered.
“You seem fond of that word. With enough manipulators, nothing is impossible. Some things are extraordinarily difficult, but never impossible.” Hawk’s face turned thoughtful a moment. “And some things have unexpected repercussions.
“Your troops should rally this one time and then scatter,” Hawk told Salakon, “with a few rallying around the command ship and forced to capitulate.”
As if Hawk spoke prophecy, the blue dots reformed and attacked to no avail. The Council ships, using the accelerated time, had the UCT fleet in shambles within a matter of minutes. The Council had lost two ships.
Salakon’s face grew ashen. His force, assembled over five years, reduced to a few fleeing or surrendering ships in the equivalent of an eye blink. They had other fleets scattered and waiting around other planets, but Salakon knew it was over. The backbone of their plan had been broken. He looked at Hawk’s somber face. “What, no room to gloat?”
Hawk stood. “You’re a fool. Good beings just lost their lives following the whim of a madman. What’s to gloat about? You and Moran are under arrest for sedition against the Planetary Council. The penalty is death. The rest of you will be tried as accessories, which means life with hard labor.”
Moran had no intention of dying at Hawk’s hands. “I don’t think so,” he said. His cybernetic eye flashed, and Hawk fell back in his chair, a laser beam slamming into his chest. The sphere buzzed toward Moran, aiming for his head. He snatched it from the air with his inhuman arm and crushed it in his hand, whil
e he drew a pistol with his other hand. Laura leaped from her chair and ran toward Hawk. Gerard had thrown a golden glow around all of them and was muttering and gesturing. Moran had lost his chance to kill the freak magician. Firing at them would be a waste of effort. So he did something he had wanted to do ever since he discovered his partner’s dirty little secret.
“Die, you fucking pedophile!” He screamed, and turned his pistol on Salakon.
Gerard fired a bolt of energy. It smashed into Moran’s metal arm, knocking him a meter sideways and ruining his aim. The blast passed harmlessly, half a meter wide of Salakon’s head. The old man dropped to the floor as if he had been struck.
With a snarl of frustration, Moran recovered and dashed toward the windows. He swung his cybernetic arm at the glass. It shattered, and light poured in as Moran crashed through the broken shards. Gerard fired another energy bolt. Glass fragments turned to slag as the bolt passed over the falling Moran’s head.
Gerard moved to give chase; a bright flash and loud noise sent him flying backward, stunned and blinded. Several of the board members collapsed to the ground. One screamed as the grenade’s detonation ignited his clothing. He doused it with a pitcher of water.
Salakon crawled across the floor, trying to reach the doors. Gerard recovered, his eyes watering, and intercepted Salakon’s flight. Cutting tools still whirred behind Gerard, but the magically sealed doors showed no sign of giving way.
Salakon, seeing any hope of escape disappear, sprawled on the floor and wept.
Gerard’s golden arm glowed blue with contained aether. He watched the other executives, daring any of them to move while Laura helped Hawk sit up.
“Son of a bitch ruined my uniform,” Hawk said as he poked at the large hole in the fabric. The absorption armor underneath was still intact, though scorched black. Assisted by Laura, he stood up, wincing at the pain in his chest.
Gerard walked over to Hawk. “You were right. I owe you 20 credits.”