by KT Belt
“And since we don’t know what the starship is, there are multiple needles that aren’t the right one,” Carmen said, thinking it through herself.
Inertia nodded slowly. “Determining the sector is like trying to find a needle in a country instead of a whole planet—difficult but vaguely possible.”
She looked away to think. “Maybe we could just let Gungnir…and Widget know,” she said, stopping herself from rolling her eyes as she thought of her. “They can check it out while we just stay here. Both places would be covered.”
“Sure, great plan. Only a few problems with it,” he began, his tone even and factual. “The only long-range transmitters that we know of are in the comm room or The Lady. I quite doubt they’d let us use the comm room. Considering their response to you stumbling upon it, I think it’s safe to say we weren’t supposed to even know it existed. As for The Lady, we could either ask them to let us make a transmission, which I doubt they’d oblige, or we could sneak aboard and transmit, which they’d detect. Besides, Gungnir needs to be ready in case Charon makes another attack.”
“Do you think Charon will attack again? Do you think he already has?” she asked, slightly changing her attention.
“No, I don’t think he has,” he said. “If he abducted any Clairvoyants, it probably would have gotten very busy here.” He took a deep breath and let it go pointedly before he continued. “Unfortunately, we’re completely in the dark about everything. Any intel Gungnir has can’t get to us here, and everything we know can’t find its way to him.” Now I know why the sortens call this place Solitary, Carmen reflected. “It’s part of the job. Nothing I haven’t experienced before, but it is damn annoying,” Inertia continued.
She nodded and then rested her head on her outstretched hand. She thought of all the death to come and wondered why it still gave her pause, considering the trajectory of her life thus far. Everything seemed almost laughably inevitable, despite her best attempts. Different circumstances and different choices, yet the same outcomes. What was the bother?
She put any further reflection on hold, though, and turned toward the door. Inertia looked at it as well. Someone was coming. Caelus walked into the room a moment later. Mugal and Rauon were right behind him. Caelus’s expression of arrogant, smug superiority was as unabated as ever. Mugal had the look of someone grinding diamonds to dust between his teeth. But Rauon seemed oddly pleased. He gave her the sorten equivalent of a smile, and Carmen looked at him curiously. She could only guess he’d managed to dissuade any possible negative consequence from their little trip to the comm room. At least, that was what she hoped. If so, she was sure he’d tell her about it later.
Caelus walked directly toward her and stopped right in front of her. Carmen, still sitting, looked up at the sorten. He said nothing, just stood and stared, which made her feel like a child about to be scolded. For some reason, she thought of Janus and Kali, and even how Phaethon acted around her. She looked back at Caelus expectantly, but nothing came forth. She gave Rauon a curious look, who returned it with the same expression. Then she turned to look at Inertia.
“No mind of your own, beast?” Caelus asked. “Don’t look to another. What I need from you is very simple. I trust you’ll accommodate me.”
Carmen looked at him again, but once again he said nothing. She’d just accepted that there were levels of odd depravity Caelus was capable of descending to, but this was a new one.
“So…what do you—” she tried to ask, but she was cut short when the sorten slapped her hard across the face with his artificial hand.
The shock of the action stung more than the actual pain. Carmen’s hand went to her face by reflex while she tried to process what had just happened.
“Our dear Rauon says I may have lost perspective,” Caelus said. “It is hard to know with certainty. What say you, creature?”
“What do I do?” she asked Inertia hurriedly.
“I have no idea.”
Caelus looked down at her. Her hair was mussed, her lip was bleeding, and her cheek was red. She still cradled it. The animal looked up at him. Her manner supported the ruse that had beguiled so many. She looked actually hurt—not physically, not completely. No, the affront seemed to sap her so much that a passerby would think he could stamp her out like so many flowers. He wouldn’t be fooled by it. He’d been in this situation before with so many of her kind.
“What, no comment? I expected more out of a Clairvoyant.”
Carmen stared at the madman with no idea of what he was looking for. He suddenly slapped her again, this time on the other side of her face. Both Mugal and Rauon flinched in surprise when it happened. She even saw Inertia take a quick step forward to intervene before he stopped himself. She didn’t know what Caelus wanted—seemingly no one in the room did—but she did know she wasn’t going to be slapped again.
He moved to hit her once more, and she grabbed his hand before it could make contact. She glared at him and squeezed as hard as she could. Caelus made no reaction. Perhaps he couldn’t feel pain through his artificial limb. Strangely enough, he seemed pleased.
“Yes, it’s there. I always knew it was there,” he said softly to himself. “You see, Rauon? You see the hate in her eyes?” Caelus asked, turning to his colleague before returning his attention to Carmen. Rauon said nothing. “Tell me. Surely you see it now?”
Carmen glanced at Rauon. Her expression didn’t change, despite that she harbored no ill will toward him. She’d been disgusted since she’d been here. She’d been horrified, terrified, and many other things. But, for the first time in a long time, she was truly angry. The feeling surged within her, and it was shockingly difficult to contain. It wasn’t from the pain of being slapped; she’d suffered far worse. It wasn’t from the knowledge that this psycho had probably butchered her charge without a shred of remorse. No, it was simpler. He thought her an animal, a beast, a monster, and she had given in to his presumption after his crude provocation. She hated that he was able to do that. More important, she hated herself for the fact that it had happened so easily.
“Yes, I see it,” Rauon muttered, but he sounded like he just wanted the experience to be over.
Carmen looked at Caelus then. The sorten stared her in the eye. She couldn’t remember the last time a non-clairvoyant had done so without wavering.
“Why don’t you kill me?” he asked, though it seemed like he was talking more to himself than to her. “You would like to. Yes, you would very much like to. Even now, you try to harm me despite your restraint.”
It was then that she realized she was still squeezing his hand. She let go by practically throwing his hand away. Caelus laughed lightly and took a couple of steps back. Carmen pressed her lips together. She looked at Inertia, silently voicing her displeasure. His face was serious, but it was obvious he was thinking four moves ahead. She cared about none of that, though, not at the moment. She glared at Caelus again. He was right. She did hate him, and there was no point in hiding that. He laughed again before he turned to leave the room.
Then he stopped next to Rauon. “I hope this experiment was instructive,” he said.
He left the room after that. Carmen glared at him the entire way.
19
Monster
Carmen rested an arm on the padded, heat resistant wall of the fight room and then leaned her head against it. She tried to forget about the dead Constructs littered about the room. Rauon was presently overseeing their removal, allowing some time for her mind to wander.
She closed her eyes. “Why are we here?” she asked Inertia telepathically after a sigh. He was overseeing everything in the observation booth with Caelus and Mugal.
“To find out why the sortens are seeking Clairvoyant mercenaries,” he answered.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed there was still blood on her hand. She rubbed it against the wall and then turned around, still feeling unclean.
“Sorry for the delay, Psyche. We’ll be able to begin again shortly,�
�� Rauon said.
Carmen glanced at him. “Take your time,” she said softly. As soon as the room was clean, there would just be another battle. It was constant battle.
“Thank you,” he said before getting back to the cleanup.
Sorten thoroughness was certainly in full display. They didn’t simply remove the bodies so she could slaughter a fresh batch. No, they took pictures and recorded the exact cause of death before each dead Construct was removed. Presumably, just “death by kick to the face” or “death by heat beam” wouldn’t do. She ignored their mechanizations and looked at the observation booth as she took a deep breath.
“I know that,” she spoke. “But what’s the point anymore? This place is a dead-end.”
“This place isn’t a dead-end. It’s death,” Inertia replied.
Carmen agreed at first, but her eyes dropped as she considered the whole of her time here. Her thoughts eventually coalesced on one true description for the perpetual despair of Solitary. “It’s not death, it’s lifeless. All of it, all the people who work here, lifeless.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t really see a difference,” Inertia responded. She even saw him visibly shrug in the observation booth.
“There is,” she spoke. “This place is lifeless, sure as the planetoid itself. No one realizes it. It’s normal to them. I don’t know how that can be, but it is. That scares me.”
There was a long pause before Inertia said anything else. She looked at him, and he stared right back. She was well aware that he was evaluating the status of his partner, and it was then that she realized she actually was his partner. She’d been too focused on Phaethon, Charon, and everything else to really consider Inertia. He was always so professional, so confident in everything he did, that the idea that he was just as trapped here and dependent on her as she was on him had never crossed her mind. She looked away and swallowed hard as the thought took on its full weight.
“You aren’t going to crack, are you?” he asked.
Carmen looked at him again. “No. No, I won’t.”
“Good,” he responded.
Nothing else was said for a moment. The relaxed but ready poise that carried through Inertia’s entire person was heartening. Carmen, however, couldn’t pull herself from her distraction. Her mind reflected over and over on long-buried memories as it had since she first arrived at this place. As always, there was no one image or thought when her subconscious went on this seemingly circuitous journey. She dimly remembered Mikayla’s fur and what it felt like to run her hands through it. She had to remind herself of the confusion she had felt when she first met Kali. Janus’s harsh words echoed in her skull every day but were barely heard. And then there was Michael. He seemed as forgotten as the ghostly image of her parents.
“Are you all right?” Inertia asked.
Carmen glanced at him. She guessed she looked uncomfortable. She looked away to think. “It’s just…” she began. “When I was girl, I used to go to a bluff and just sit. Mostly alone, just sitting, watching the clouds and the waves crashing. Just…still, I miss that peace. I’ve spent almost three quarters of my life fighting, constantly fighting. Can’t really win and can’t really be defeated either. Only loss,” she concluded. She looked at the blood stains all around her from the dead constructs. Then her gaze dropped, putting a silent exclamation point on her thoughts.
Inertia watched her but said nothing.
“I’m fine,” she spoke, feeling prompted to reassure him in some way. “But—”
“I know you’re fine,” he spoke. “Unfortunately, Caelus seems to have taken some perverse interest in you. I don’t know why.” Carmen felt her cheek when he said that. “He knows you don’t like fighting. I think he’s trying to provoke you.”
“Why?”
“As I said, I don’t know.”
She looked away and took a deep breath. “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s just attack.”
“Not yet. Soon, but not yet.”
“What are we waiting for?” she asked again.
“I still haven’t figured out how their computer system works. I’m hoping we can use it to find the comm room. From there, we can track down their other base. Maybe there will be other details of their operation in the computers as well. It’s quite obvious that neither Charon nor the captured Clairvoyants have been here for some time. There’s nothing really to be gained on that lead.”
Carmen gave a sharp nod. “Right.”
Rauon turned to face her. “Psyche, if you’re ready, we may begin.”
“Sure. Just a moment,” she said. “Anything else?” she asked Inertia.
“Nothing I can think of right now,” he replied.
She nodded, though she was no longer looking at him. Two Constructs entered the room, and she got ready. The ones she fought today were stronger than any of the other Clairvoyant Constructs she had fought before. She guessed that all the data collecting and cataloging the sortens were doing was already paying off. These Constructs were armed with swords similar in construction to hers. She was bare-fisted, as had been the case with all of her fights up to this point. One day, every day.
“Psyche, we’d like it if you’d please use your weapon for this test,” Rauon said.
She didn’t need to be told twice. Her sword rested against the wall on the other side of the room. A mere thought caused it to fly to her waiting hand.
“You may begin,” he said.
Inertia watched the battle with visible intent but only casual interest. Caelus and Mugal stood near him, as did a contingent of Clairvoyant Construct guards. The guards were new additions for today. He figured it wouldn’t take too long before Mugal realized sorten-only security was a waste of time against a Clairvoyant.
The guards were not Inertia’s chief concern, though. They were simply one complication among many. The status of his partner wasn’t much of a worry either. Despite Edge’s reluctance for fighting and killing, she was quite capable of it when she needed to be. No, his concern was the computers, always the blasted computers. Reading the sortens’ minds to obtain passcodes and the like was the expected child’s play. Large databases, which were probably secured by allowing only certain terminals access, could be sifted through for hours before anything relevant was found. He doubted he’d have that kind of time when they finally made their move.
Caelus looked at him. “Our copies seem to be making a better show of themselves,” he said proudly.
Inertia turned his attention to Edge. She was quite the actress, and the battle was certainly spectacular. Each move and counter, from both sides, seemed to flow like a grand opera. The stress and strain on her face was painfully palpable. Death appeared entirely likely and even imminent for any of the participants at any time. But all that was only for the untrained eye. Somehow, the Clairvoyant always seemed to be in the perfect position to just barely avoid an attack. It was also curious that her opposition was never able to get any real momentum. Any attempt to crowd her or put her completely on the defensive only summoned a swift but not deadly reprisal that simply maintained the status quo.
He had always asked her to be herself, and she was doing just that. It was ironic that reluctance to kill meant prolonged battle, but if she was comfortable, he had no complaint. He didn’t want the sortens to know how powerful she actually was anyway. He had never told her as much, but she seemed to intuitively understand that it was prudent to hold some of her raw potential in reserve.
“Yes, it seems that way,” Inertia said.
“And you said never,” Caelus replied dismissively.
Inertia pursed his lips nervously as Edge took a rather obvious step back in lieu of a killing stroke. Mugal watched the scene with his usual intensity, and when the moment came and went, he glanced in Inertia’s direction before watching the battle once more. No comment was made, and the Clairvoyant hoped her little misstep went unnoticed.
“Yes, I did,” he said, turning his attention back to Caelus. “You still have yet
to change my mind.”
“I haven’t? Well, in short order, we’ll have the results of her bioelectric field compared to archived data and our predictive model. We’ll see how changed your mind is then.”
Inertia looked directly at the sorten. “I’ll save you the suspense. Not at all,” he said.
“How do you know this?” Mugal asked pointedly.
“…I’m a Clairvoyant,” Inertia said simply.
Caelus laughed at that. Mugal only narrowed his eyes.
“I admit I find your humor at the security director’s expense entertaining. I hope you enjoyed it, as I doubt there will be many opportunities for it in the future. The universe is reason, utterly and completely. All that is needed to understand its machinations is to observe its ways long enough. Clairvoyants are no different,” Caelus said. “They play at being mysterious and unknowable, but all that is needed is the proper insight.”
“I wasn’t joking,” Inertia said, though he truly had been. The vexed annoyance currently on Caelus’s face made the minor effort worth it. “After all I’ve taught you, you still don’t understand the basics.” The project leader’s face transitioned from annoyance to disdain, and Inertia wished Edge was here to see it. “Clairvoyants are servants, slaves even, of the Dark. The Dark isn’t some mystery that can be explored and charted. The Dark is mystery itself. There is nothing wholly rational about its whims. It is any and everything, formless and omnipresent, unstoppable but barely heard. It simply…is.”
“Utter nonsense,” Mugal muttered.
Caelus silenced him by raising his artificial arm. “We will see, Inertia. We will see.” Inertia noted it was one of the few times Caelus had referred to him by name instead of beast or monster. “Do we have a cross-correlation ready?” he asked one of the technicians.
“Yes, Project Leader, momentarily,” one of the technicians said. “Results coming in now.” He paused for a few seconds. “Correlation for our copies is at ninety-three percent.”