by KT Belt
“How long have you been studying the data?” 1227231 asked.
Inertia looked at the Eternal and then back at Mugal and tried his best to divide his attention between them. “Not long. It took quite a while for the sortens to trust us,” he said loudly enough for the security director to hear.
Mugal made no reply. It didn’t even seem like he heard him. Instead, he moved to the center of the room and faced Inertia and 1227231. The sorten guards slowly moved to either side of the room until all of them had a clear line of fire. The Clairvoyant Constructs were now at Inertia’s flanks. He glanced at the binders and then looked at Mugal again, who stared at him like a waiting viper. They’re going to attack, he realized.
“That is understandable,” 1227231 remarked. “Surely you can understand that Clairvoyant-sorten cooperation will always be circumspect.”
“Yes, that seems obvious now,” Inertia said.
“That is a very reasonable view from you,” the oblivious Eternal said. Mugal flashed 1227231 an annoyed look. “I hope this is the first of many such cooperations,” 1227231 continued.
“It is difficult to be optimistic,” Inertia said to the machine, though he looked at Mugal. He placed a silent bet with himself that the sortens wouldn’t attack while the Eternal was still in the room. “What about yourself? Why are you here?” he asked.
“This is a joint Eternal-sorten project,” 1227231 said matter-of-factly. “Development of an effective counter against your kind is existentially prudent.”
“But the sortens aren’t at war with us. At least not now,” Inertia pointed out.
“That is true. However, even after surrendering, the threat persists. Terrans are the most violent and destructive species in the galaxy. Sortens have the most advanced research on Clairvoyants. It is perfectly logical for us to partner with them. Moreover, our kind and yours are at war,” 1227231 responded.
Inertia nodded and noted to himself that, despite how violent and destructive terrans were perceived, they weren’t exactly winning the war. The Eternal continued.
“Thus why I was curious as to why Clairvoyants would assist such an effort,” it said. “I would like to see your mate to get her perspective.”
“As would I,” Inertia concurred. He looked at Mugal. “I’m done here for now. I wish to see Psyche. I’d like to take 1227231 with me.”
If the sortens were stupid enough to put the Clairvoyants together, the odds of them getting out of here alive increased by several orders of magnitude. The only real question was how badly the sortens wished to avoid a fight with 1227231 as a bystander. The damage or destruction of an Eternal by sorten guards would certainly be an undesirable outcome, given their alliance.
Mugal’s eyes narrowed. “That is not possible,” he said.
“Why is that?” 1227231 asked.
“As the Clairvoyant no doubt guessed by now, she has her own company to attend to,” Mugal said. The Eternal began to protest, but the sorten cut him off. “Enough of this prattle. 1227231, go to the project leader in the comm room. He will explain all that’s going on. Go quickly,” he snapped.
1227231 stood still. The machine, emotionless and driven by algorithms and numbers, seemed gripped by indecision. It made no response until, boom, boom, boom, it slowly walked to the door. The Clairvoyant and the security director stared at each other the whole time; they didn’t even move. Numerous calculations and wheels within wheels played through their minds. Meanwhile, 1227231’s gears whirred and hydraulics hissed, and eventually it fit back through the door.
Nothing happened after the Eternal’s departure. The only change was the fainter and fainter sound of its booming weight as it continued down the hall. All were still. Nevertheless, Mugal’s muscles were taut. Several of the sorten guards focused on the sights of the weapons mounted on their backs. The Clairvoyant Constructs reasonably aped the subjects they were copies of, betraying nothing other than the ready calm of a Clairvoyant.
Boom, boom, boom. 1227231 almost couldn’t be heard now. Inertia took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he opened his eyes and let his breath go slowly. The Eternal could no longer be heard.
The sortens’ first shot destroyed the workstation Inertia was sitting behind. By that point, however, he had already tipped out of his chair and onto the ground. Instinct drove him more than any conscious thought. Even diminished as he was by the binders, a Clairvoyant was still a monster of the Dark. The connection could never be completely severed.
He rolled under the table to the center of the room and stood. The sortens’ bullets still tore through where he had been in a shower of sparks and noise. No one noticed the lights in the room flickering wildly. Just then, the Clairvoyant’s eyes glowed, and all stood transfixed as they bore witness to the impossible. Inertia’s binders shattered like glass. The sorten guards were impaled by the telekinetically-propelled fragments an instant later.
The two Clairvoyant Constructs leapt into the fray. Their offensive of wild punches and kicks forced Inertia to retreat, but his face betrayed no stress or worry. His movements were crisp, direct, and seemingly gaining in energy. One of the Constructs managed to catch his counterpunch and threw him across the room for the mistake. Inertia landed painfully but regained himself in fractions of a second.
Something changed in that moment. He seemed annoyed. The Constructs came at him again and, seconds later, one was tumbling across the room, dead. The second Construct fared little better. It was only a matter of time before an attack from Inertia, definite and clean, made the Construct fall to the ground, never to get up again. He turned to face Mugal.
“It’s impossible,” the sorten said, his lips trembling. “One of our copies bested you with one blow… And those binders were calibrated for your mate. She’s more powerful than you are!”
“Is she?” Inertia let the question hang.
Mugal’s eyes grew wide until the Clairvoyant telekinetically snapped his neck. Inertia took a second to look at the body at his feet. He brushed it aside after a second or so and made for the door. But before he could even leave the room, red lights began to flash and an alarm sounded. He cursed under his breath. An alert status was probably tied to Mugal’s bio-med readings. He could already feel sorten security members approaching. That, however, wasn’t Inertia’s biggest concern. He couldn’t sense his partner.
“Edge! Do you hear me, Edge?” he shouted blindly, but with nothing to focus on, he may as well have been trying to scream underwater. He hoped with all that was in him that she was just too far away to get any sort of read. It was just as likely, though, that she was dead.
He was out of time either way. The sortens were mere moments away. He bolted out of the room with the knowledge that he had only one real option. He had to assume Edge was dead, which meant he needed to somehow get to the comm room. There was too much to risk otherwise.
“Fire!” the leader of the approaching sorten contingent yelled.
Gunfire ripped through the corridor, ricocheting off the bare metal to destroy all in its path. Inertia, however, had already escaped through one of the hidden hatches. There wasn’t much to gain by risking an engagement. Just then, he ran into another security team.
A foam cannon trapped one of his legs to the corridor wall. A Clairvoyant Construct kept him occupied with a furious attack. Blow after blow came raining down. Despite his best efforts to block or move his body out of the way, trapped as he was, there were times he saw stars. The sorten security members moved precisely. Their well-drilled coordination made it seemed like they too could communicate through telepathy. A second shot from them encased the Clairvoyant in foam, except for a hand, which he shook about in a futile effort to free himself. The security team from the previous corridor joined them.
One of them keyed his communicator. “Project Leader, the male Clairvoyant has been neutralized.”
“Excellent,” Caelus said. “Is his body intact enough for study?”
The sorten security member loo
ked at the foam tomb existing on the corridor wall like a cancer. Inertia’s hand still fought but appeared weak and desperate in its feeble grasps for freedom.
“Yes, Project Leader,” he said.
“Good. A medical team is en route to your position.”
The sorten security member looked at the other team. “Team 6, you stand relieved. Thank you for the assistance.”
Yet the members of team 6 didn’t move off. “He should have suffocated by now,” one of them said.
“Just a little more fire in this one. He’ll be dead soon enough,” a member of the other team remarked.
That truth seemed more and more likely with each passing second. Eventually, Inertia’s hand fell limp, and both security teams breathed sighs of relief as the medical team approached.
“He’s all yours,” one of the security members said.
“No, he’s not!” one of them screamed.
The foam mass quivered and bulged. Lights flickered wildly, several of which outright blew out. The medical team took flight down the corridor while the security teams took several cautious steps back. All of a sudden, half of the foam mass encasing the Clairvoyant blew away. The unbelievably bright light that was the cause was directed to the rest of the foam, and the assembled sortens watched in horror as it melted away. Inertia eventually emerged, down on his hands and knees, gasping for air.
“He’s loose!”
The sortens with the foam cannons opened fire first. The foam was specifically designed to combat Clairvoyants. Heat resistant and capable of suppressing a bioelectric field, it was almost perfectly suited for the task. Inertia didn’t attempt to resist the spray rushing toward him outright but instead subtly redirected the mass with telekinesis. It was enough to make the foam miss and impact on either side of him. Just then, a gunshot hit him square in the chest. His body armor, however, reduced the potentially lethal impact to nothing more than a dull ache. Inertia’s response was immediate.
One of his heat beams cut a sorten armed with a foam cannon in half. Telekinetically redirecting the aim of another sorten encased half the security team in foam. One unlucky enough to only be hit in the face by the foam gave a muffled scream as he fell to the ground. His doom-filled cry, however, was unheeded by his comrades. A punch from Inertia ended a sorten that was only partially trapped. Another, also only partially trapped, was felled by a heat beam that left the remaining half of his body on fire. Inertia dodged out of the way of more gunfire before telekinetically snapping the offending sorten’s neck. Then, at last, all that remained was the Clairvoyant Constructs. All five of them.
Clairvoyants, even crude copies of Clairvoyants, didn’t fight in the expedient manner of overwhelming force like disciplined soldiers. There was a long pause in which nothing happened. Inertia breathed heavily for a moment, having yet fully regained his breath from his trial with the foam. The Constructs simply looked at him. What was to come wouldn’t be a duel. There were, however, rules—unspoken codes of conduct that even these dim creatures had to be aware of in some vestigial way.
Inertia turned his head slightly to look at the Constructs at his back before focusing again at those to his front. No one assumed a guard, yet all were tensely ready. Time seemed to slow, seconds becoming minutes and even hours. Yet, the lights that weren’t blown out in the corridor pulsated madly. In the background, the sounds of the suffocating sorten reverberated up everyone’s spine until, at last, he stopped moving.
The two Constructs at Inertia’s front flew toward him like a shot. He responded deftly, leaping toward them and short-circuiting their attack with a punch that cratered a Construct’s jaw. The blow was enough to render him not much of a threat anymore, but a second punch doubled the Construct over, and a third crumpled him to the floor, dead. It was good to be sure.
Inertia had enough time to duck out of the way of a kick from behind him, but he suffered the full force of a heat beam. It ablated his heat-resistant body suit and left his arm and shoulder smoking but no worse for wear. His own heat beam ripped through the Construct and practically exploded against the corridor wall. Fiery, molten metal rained throughout the passageway. The pieces bounced off Inertia to no effect, as Clairvoyants couldn’t be hurt by their own energy. Three opponents remained.
They came at him again. A few quick steps were all it took to place the Constructs on one side of him. The narrow corridor hindered their movement, and they got in the way of each other, stumbling and wavering, while Inertia only grew stronger. After each breath and each beat of his heart, he became more efficient, more direct, and more deadly. Every action he made seemed to have a destined finality about it. A series of punches bounced harmlessly off his shoulders, and each led to the almost effortless counterpunch that spun the Construct like a top as his lifeless body fell uncoordinatedly to the ground.
The natural Clairvoyant pirouetted away from an attack in that brief moment of vulnerability. An elbow at the end of his maneuver sent the attacking Construct staggering toward the corridor wall. Inertia extended his arm, and fire and smoke from the point-blank hit of his heat beam encased him. The smoke billowed and rolled around him, redirected by his bioelectric field, and he looked at his remaining opponent, who backed away slightly.
Inertia assumed a guard. The Construct remained ready and waiting. The next few seconds passed in a flash. The servants of the Dark wielded their power like the frightening forces of nature they were. This time, it ended with the Clairvoyant Construct dead at Inertia’s feet.
Taking a deep breath, he surveyed the carnage all around him. His breathing was calm and his skin was cool. He had only one concern. I need to get to the comm room. He had a general idea of where it was, as impossible as that was to believe in the maze that was Solitary.
He moved quickly, nearly at a full run down the corridor. But he slid to a stop before he went through a hatch into the next. He could sense a sorten patrol passing by. They came and went, and Inertia made his way down the new corridor. If there was only one problem in getting to the comm room, it was that it was a floor below him. Undoubtedly, the elevator would be heavily guarded. Mugal had drilled his security teams too thoroughly to miss such an obvious oversight. Inertia went through another hatch. The elevator would be at the end of the hall, if he navigated correctly.
He flew, loaded for bear, but even so he was unprepared for what waited for him. A mere two sortens guarded the elevator. The Clairvoyant, for one of the few times in his life, felt surprise. The feeling passed quickly. He snapped their necks before they could even take aim, and then he entered the elevator. After selecting the proper deck, the elevator began on its way. Then it stopped moving. It didn’t just stop, though. The lights shut off and dim emergency lights activated.
They cut the power, Inertia thought. He frowned. It hadn’t taken long for the sortens to cover their lapse in guarding the elevator. He cursed loudly when he wasn’t able to open the doors again, rendering him effectively trapped. Several solutions went through his mind, and the least sensible appeared to be the most prudent. He pointed his hands at the floor and melted a hole through it. Another heat blast blew a hole through the elevator doors on the deck below.
The comm room wasn’t far. He dispatched another group of sortens with little care and less fanfare. His destination was in sight now, even in the dim corridor. It was unguarded. He entered the room. Power cut or not, the sounds and lights of the computers and communication systems were quite apparent.
Inertia went deeper. Sorten technicians were busy throughout the room as they carried out their tasks. Caelus was in the center of it, giving orders. 1227231 stood silently by. Just then, a Clairvoyant Construct leapt in front of Inertia from an unseen corner. Everyone turned to watch the battle.
Furious and violent though the assault was, the Construct never stood a chance. A quick punch slipped through Inertia’s defense and he spat a curse, but that pain was brief. The tide turned in short order when he buckled the Construct’s knee with a kick.
The contest ended a moment later with a clubbing punch that dropped the Construct and produced a pool of blood where he lay. Inertia looked at Caelus and took a step forward.
“Halt, Clairvoyant!” 1227231 called.
Inertia looked at the Eternal, who placed itself between him and the project leader. Gears whirred, hydraulic hissed, and 1227231 produced an impressive host of various firearms mounted on various places all over its body.
“I have been designed and hardened for the explicit purpose of combating Clairvoyants! Surrender, or you will be destroyed,” 1227231 said.
Inertia couldn’t help rolling his eyes. The Eternal’s end began first as a shudder that started at its feet. The shudder moved up the machine, growing in intensity until 1227231 shook with such force that the entire room vibrated. Gears whirred as they were ejected from its body. Hydraulic fluid puddled at its feet. In less than a minute, 1227231 collapsed in a pile of parts.
The Clairvoyant looked at Caelus again. “You know why I’m here,” he said.
The sorten stared back. “Yes, yes… I’ve long known I was destined to meet destruction by your kind.”
He rose to his full height, crossing his arms. Caelus stared the Clairvoyant in the eye for one long, solitary moment, his fiery intelligence blazing bright for all to see. What realization he came to in his quiet resignation could only be guessed at.
Caelus calmly stroked his artificial arm. “Do it,” he said.
After casually raising a hand, Inertia burned the scientist down where he stood. Several of the sorten technicians screamed. Killing Caelus, however, was never his mission, nor even a secondary objective. He gave a quick snort and then sat at one of the computers.