Now, I was still unarmed, but I see that as an advantage in intimidation. Less experienced people would want to point a gun at someone while threatening him or her, but I don’t like that. It implies I need the gun to be a threat. And I don’t. If you encounter me naked with my hands tied behind my back, all you should dare hope is that it will give you a head start in running away from me.
I locked eyes with Cheri. “Go ahead, dear. Go for it. A whole auditorium full of trained killers on Nar Valdum couldn’t take me down, but you probably had a couple sessions of target practice, though, so I’m sure you’ll do better.” I started backing up. “So how many yards away are the targets you usually practice on? Just tell me where to stand to make this easiest.” And the funny thing is, once I was a few feet away from her, she could have drawn her gun and had me dead to rights. There was no way I could make the distance and stop her in time — especially since I was still a little coma-dizzy. But pulling a gun and firing on someone isn’t a simple act for most people. You need the will to take a life. You need to overcome the fear of what happens if you miss or are too slow.
For me, though, it’s never been more than a twitch of a finger.
Cheri was now so frozen she was barely breathing. I safely turned my back on the two soldiers and walked away as the sirens blared all around me. And walking away — not running — was important, as again, that shows my lack of fear. But as soon as I was out of view, I picked up the pace, as this ship, with its hull breach and unresponsive bridge, was about to jump to safety, and I wanted it to go without me.
I could hear people shouting in reaction to the alarm, but they were too preoccupied to notice me as I slipped back through the maintenance door I had entered from. I headed to the soft airlock, put my helmet back on, and accessed the panel next to it to deactivate it. Disabling the soft airlock would take a few seconds as it fully sealed the door behind me, so I slipped through it back into zero gravity and pushed myself to the missile port. I hit the button to clear the missile currently in it and got into the port. Soon the soft airlock deactivated, and the rush of air on the other side pushed me out of the missile port, ejecting me out into space, getting some distance between me and the gunship. I felt the small, odd twinge of gravity suddenly shifting near me, and I looked behind me to see that the gunship was gone.
I enjoyed a moment in the silence of space. Then I activated the homing beacon on my suit. “They see that the gunship is gone, right?” I asked Dip out loud. “Are they going to come and get me?”
“There’s a lot of chatter to sift through,” Dip answered, “though I see lots of mentions of an evac now. A computer virus is almost done taking down all their missile defenses, and they expect an attack as soon as that happens.”
“From what, I wonder?” Well, I had done all the heroism I was currently capable of, and all I could do now was float and wait. Minutes passed, and then the stars started disappearing.
Something massive and black had appeared in space near me. With this planet’s sun on the other side, I could barely see anything of it. It was just a dark mass — but moving. Something like tentacles flailed around it. I had heard stories about this — the only thing anyone ever saw of the Fathom were these things. A ship, presumably, but it appeared more like a creature from a nightmare. I had thought those stories were mainly nonsense, but there apparently had been a lot of nonsense going on while I was having my long sleep.
“Any update?” I asked Dip.
“All I hear now is panic.”
I could finally make out more of the thing, as something red glowed at its center. The red glow flew away from the thing toward the planet, moving faster and faster. It flew through the planet’s atmosphere and soon impacted with the ground. But there was no explosion, no anything. It just disappeared into the ground.
And then the planet erupted. For what had to be miles around the area of impact, it all burst out like a giant volcano. Everything was destroyed, down through an entire layer of the planet. And where the hospital had been was now a crater so massive that the planet looked like an apple with a bite taken out of it.
“This seems like an overreaction.”
CHAPTER 4
I stared awhile at the broken planet below and then turned to the massive thing that had broken it, but it was gone. That was two interstellar jumps within minutes of each other — something that massive was usually not capable of such a thing. That was interesting but not as interesting as the fact that it looked likely I was going to float here until I ran out of air.
“So is this it now? Are they all dead?” I asked.
“I can’t hear any chatter,” Dip answered. “It’s possible the attack has knocked out all communications.”
“That happens when you obliterate everyone.” I went limp and just drifted. I was still very achy and very tired. I considered just taking a long nap until the O2 monitors woke me. “This was all rather pointless, wasn’t it?”
“It was heroism because you knew there was a chance you’d die,” Dip said. “And there was also a chance you wouldn’t succeed in saving them. If you want to rationally analyze it, you could call it pointless, but I thought this exercise was to avoid such pragmatism.”
“Well, if I die now, I certainly learned something.” My thoughts drifted to her. Would she hear about my attempted heroism? Considering there was some sort of big conflict going on, and from what I knew about Diane, she was entangled in it somehow, there was a good chance she was already dead and would never hear anything. And was that what this was all about? Impressing her? If so, I felt I deserved the pointless death. So I could take comfort in that.
“I hear something,” Dip said. “Your distress beacon has been detected.”
I looked around and spotted a ship heading my way. It was a large transport, and as it neared, some sort of magnetism activated on my suit and pulled me toward it. Soon, I was pulled right into an airlock underneath it that sealed me inside. I dropped to the floor as the artificial gravity engaged, and a green light on my suit indicated breathable air. I took off my helmet and stepped out of the airlock into the ship.
A loud sound erupted. I was startled at first and nearly readied myself for combat. I soon realized what the sound was, though: It was hands smacking against each other. Hundreds of hands. I was in the passenger area of a very large transport, and everyone there was making that sound. Applause. These were the people from the hospital I had saved. They were applauding their hero. Me.
The faces were smiling. Some had tears in their eyes. These were the people alive because I’d intervened. A bunch of random people I didn’t know or care about.
This is where I’m supposed to get the warm fuzzy feeling for successfully saving all these people, right?
“Traditionally, yes,” Dip answered.
All that’s going through my mind right now is that I’m worried they’re going to try talking to me.
It was a justified worry. Immediately, some of the smiling faces came at me to tell me how much what I did meant to them or their family. I hate talking to people and finding out about their lives — it’s all so boring and useless to me. And there are all the little rules of peaceful conversation, such as polite responses and appropriate facial expressions, that just take so much mental power for me. So I am not good in social situations beyond shooting and threatening people. I had worked on being more social as part of my job — making it easier to blend in and infiltrate — but I didn’t have a job anymore. And it seemed like saving a bunch of people should earn me a bit of being rude.
“I’m sorry; I’m very tired,” I told all of them, and it was quite truthful. I never got instructions from the doctor on how to conduct myself, having just woken from a coma, and it probably wasn’t combat and espionage. “I just need a place to lie down, and please don’t talk to me right now.”
“Whatever you need,” said a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform. “We just want to thank you so —”
“Thanking
me is talking to me.”
“You really need to work on your socializing,” Dip told me.
I think it would literally kill me right now.
Wade approached me and pointed to a door nearby. “We secured an area on this ship. You can get some peace and quiet there.” I nodded to him and quickly headed there as people smacked their hands together some more. Inside was some sort of luxury suite where Sylvia was sitting on a couch, while the blonde Messenger girl appeared to be bound to a chair. Wade came in behind me and closed the door. I really needed to ditch my government agent friends; I only went where Wade had directed me because I was so desperate to get away from all the smiling people.
“You did it,” Sylvia said. “You got the gunship to leave. How?”
I found a comfy-looking seat to plop down in. I unzipped the spacesuit and took the top half off, as the thing was pretty stuffy. I didn’t want to relax too much around these people, though. “Secret Angel of Death magic.” Though now it wasn’t a secret, since I’d left those people on the gunship alive. Stupid mercy.
Wade sat down across from me. “It was impressive. You saved everyone.”
“So obviously you aren’t the accountant Laurence Dunn,” Sylvia said. “I think now we can take your word you are the ... um ... ‘Angel of Death.’ So how did you end up in coma on Lavaria?”
She kept her expression friendly enough, but I did not trust these two. I did not know their intentions, and since they were government, they probably imagined some authority over me. “Skiing accident. You want to catch me up on what I missed these past couple months? From what I last recall happening, with the corruption of the Galactic Alliance exposed and so many government officials dead —”
“By you,” Sylvia pointed out.
I shrugged. “Allegedly. Anyway, with that having happened, I figured there was going to be a bit of a political upheaval. But now I guess the Fathom have gone from urban legend to blowing planets up?”
“Since ... um ... Nar Valdum,” Wade said, glancing cautiously at me, “the Fathom have been trying to seize power in the midst of the political crisis. We still know nearly nothing about them — they claim to be an advanced species we have never encountered but that has long been watching us, and they have ships like nothing anyone has ever seen. They have a quite a carrot-and-stick approach.” He motioned to the Messenger, who watched us silently. “The only contact anyone has had is through their Messengers. For whatever species they’re dealing with, they get Messengers who are non-threatening to them. For humans, it’s always young women.”
“And their message from the Fathom is all puppies and sunshine,” Sylvia added as she rubbed a bruise on her face. “They tell everyone how things will be quickly back to normal — better than normal — if they rally behind their new Galactic Alliance. But standing with the Messengers are always the worst killers out there — like the ones you dealt with on Lavaria. The Fathom basically have all the criminal syndicates already behind them, and now they’re working on adding legitimate militaries. And if anyone lifts even a finger against them, they respond with overwhelming force. So many are dead already.”
Wade and Sylvia were two people who obviously knew how to handle themselves, so I was a bit struck by how shaken up they seemed as they described things. Theirs was not the winning side.
“So people are really okay with being led by some unknown boogeymen?” I asked. I took another look at the Messenger. Her expression was hard to read, but she didn’t look afraid.
Wade got up and took some bottles of water from a cabinet. “Everyone feels like the universe is ending.” He handed one to me and sat back down. “Or we’re on the verge of another intergalactic war.” He shook his head and took a few sips of water.
I drank some too. I was still not in great shape and wanted some sleep, but I really didn’t want to let my guard down around these two. “So what’s Mountain Fall?”
Both their mouths shut, they looked at each other and back at me, and after a moment of uncomfortable silence, I said, “So it’s a secret.” I glanced at the Messenger. “Or do you not want to talk about it in front of her because she’s somehow in communication with the Fathom?”
“We have a signal damper active in here,” Wade explained. “She should be cut off. They already know all about Mountain Fall, anyway.”
I turned to the Messenger. “Then do you want to tell me what it is?”
She remained quiet and stoic.
“It’s something that if the Fathom get it,” Wade said, “that’s pretty much the end of things.”
I rolled my eyes. “So it’s like a weapon or something. Whatever. I don’t care. And I guess you guys want it, too, but instead of using it for evil, you’ll use it to enrich the lives of orphans or something.”
Sylvia leaned toward me, a look of determination on her face. “We’re part of what’s left of the Galactic Alliance — the part that wasn’t corrupted by the criminal syndicates.”
I laughed. “So the imaginary part.”
Wade shrugged it off. “This is serious. You seem like someone who wants to help people, and we are definitely looking for help from whoever will give it. Even the ... Angel of Death, who I guess is the impetus for all this. You’re sort of a folk hero — even though things have not been good since.”
I drank some more water, as my throat was getting dry and I was just generally getting tired. I guess I was doing okay for having just woken up from a coma, but it was my first coma, so I didn’t have a comparison. “Not really big on governments, you guys, so I’m not committing to anything. Still, you’ve got this pretty little Messenger here” — I motioned to the blonde girl — “so you go ahead and beat her with a hose until she tells you something about the Fathom that will help you save the known universe or whatever. And I’ll chip in if it suits me.”
Sylvia frowned. “Thanks for your support. I would think, based on what you’d just done, you’d want to help us save people.”
Wade shook his head at her. “He doesn’t know enough about who we are and what’s going on to trust us yet. He’s just being cautious.” He turned back to me. “The captured Messenger is going to help, and we only have her because of you. We want to thank you for that. We don’t even really know how the Fathom keep in contact with their Messengers, so hopefully we can finally learn something.” He looked at the young blonde woman, and she looked back with a neutral expression. “You want to tell us something about yourself? What’s your name? Where are you from? How did the Fathom approach you? As far as we know, you’re just another victim in all this.”
A crooked smirk crossed her face, one that, despite her being tied to a chair, made it look like she was in charge of the whole situation. She said, “Anthony Burke.”
Both Wade and Sylvia just looked at the woman in confusion. Sylvia got up and approached her. “Who is that? What does that mean?”
I felt a phantom twinge of pain where I had been shot in the back. “She’s not talking to you. She’s talking to me.”
CHAPTER 5
“So who is Anthony Burke?” Sylvia demanded, looking between the Messenger and me.
“I’ve heard the name,” Wade said. “He was big in one of the crime syndicates — Nystrom, I believe. Sort of legendary.”
I got up from my very comfy seat and approached the bound woman. “Yeah, that’s a word for him.” I squatted down to look the Messenger in the face, which was a little difficult, as I was still kind of dizzy. “What do you know about him?”
She met my eyes. Pretty blue eyes but not scared eyes. And she still had that smirk. A little bit of a chill ran through me; something about her was very wrong. “Just someone we’re interested in. The Fathom figured he might be of interest to you as well. Maybe we can work out an arrangement.”
“I don’t think you should join the Fathom for the sake of revenge,” Dip said.
Obviously. I wasn’t the revenge type anyway. I was curious how he fit into all this, though, as he had to
be a part of it somehow. What happened on Nar Valdum was in a way his plan, though at the time I didn’t know it.
“What does Anthony Burke mean to you?” Sylvia asked me, studying me so carefully that it was making me uncomfortable.
I sat back down and drank some more water. “Again, that’s personal.”
The blonde woman looked at Wade and Sylvia, her smirk somehow gaining even more potency. “Better question is, what does he mean to you two?”
“What do you mean?” Sylvia demanded. “I only heard of him just now.” She looked at Wade for help, but he just shrugged.
I understood the implication, though.
I sat up a little. I had a feeling I shouldn’t get relaxed. “So you two ... um ... special agents, you work for what you claim are the remains of the previous Galactic Alliance? How did that organize after I” — I made finger-gun motions — “upset the current power structure?”
“Everything was in chaos,” Wade explained. “So many of the leaders were dead, and of those left, no one trusted them now that everyone understood that the criminal syndicates had infested the government. Luckily someone people could trust stepped in to take charge: Lowell Redden.”
I knew the name. “Military leader.”
“Hero of Roshiri,” Sylvia said. “About the only part of the Galactic Alliance that people knew was free from corruption.”
Wade studied the Messenger carefully. “He happened to be on Jeuruta when the ... uh ... incident at Nar Valdum occurred.”
“You can call it a slaughter,” I interrupted. “I won’t be offended.”
“Well, anyway,” Wade continued, “when it all went down, he was away at a conference on military coordination within the Alliance. When it looked like everything was out of control, he took charge. There were a number of other prominent officials at the conference with him, and he carefully vetted them to find those with no syndicate connections so he could use them to begin to rebuild the government.”
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