LotS/The Story/Puny Human Birthdays II
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"Zone Intro"= Zone Intro
Adrian Zanfran, formerly a freelance editor but now, apparently, a freelance human, stared at the screen. There was a lot of text there. A veritable wall of green characters assaulted his bleary eyes, interspersed by fusillades of bullet-points and stalwart chunks of illustration. This was somewhat reassuring. Since Adrian's continued integration relied on the contents of that screen, along with the rest of the research which waited to scroll into existence from above and below, having a large amount of material could only be a good thing. However, it was hard to judge its worth when it throbbed before his exhausted gaze like a radioactive green mass.
He sighed and pressed the ends of his tentacles to his face. Their coolness was soothing. And the suckers did a good job of massaging his eyelids. After a few moments of blessed darkness he lowered them. His ocular weariness had lessened. Now he could look at the screen without feeling that it was bludgeoning his eyeballs in an attempt to break through to his brain and splatter it across the inside of his skull. But the deeper tiredness, the mental fatigue which had brought an end to his typing, still hung around his head in a thick fog.
Adrian gazed around the room. The other workstations, which had formerly held glowering Rylattu, were now empty. It was late, and the Mighty Rylattu Publishing House of Ultimate Might's other employees weren't -- as far as he knew, at least -- facing destruction if their work wasn't up to scratch. Hence they'd gone home, or to whatever pastimes such people engaged in to relax after a day at the office. Possibly the evisceration of humans for sport, he mused.
He knew he should do more work. There was still a lot he could dig up about the subject of human birthdays, to increase his chances of appeasing Barp Sek Bul and make the supreme editing overlord less inclined to obliterate him. But he was tired. Perhaps a little break would give him his second wind...
The freelance human looked at the clock in the corner of his screen, and carried out a quick mental calculation. His favorite thugby team, the Warlords of Mars, had been scheduled to play Niflung Storm that day. And unless Adrian was mistaken, the match must already have taken place. He sighed. His multimedia wristband was still wrapped around his right arm. And since that limb was somewhere else, having been blown clean off his body during the unfortunate misunderstanding with the receptionist, his wristband was beyond his reach. In retrospect, he should have taken it off the detached arm and put it on his new tentacle. However, Adrian couldn't quite blame himself for overlooking the device. He'd had other things to think about at the time.
So like generations of workers before him, and probably untold generations yet to come, Adrian Zanfran decided to appropriate his terminal for a little personal use. He opened a fresh browser window, then directed its cyberspatial path to the Novocastrian News Network's site. He was greeted by a grinning picture of Edmund Rochester, the leader of the opposition on Novocastria, beneath a headline proclaiming that party's victory in a by-election. But Adrian didn't concern himself with such things. As long as no one was trying to conscript him or blow up a planet he happened to be on, he rather felt that politics could take care of itself. Or themselves... Whatever. He wasn't editing now, damn it.
He reached out and tapped the button for sports news. This brought up a fresh page, dominated by the image of a cricket ball destroying a wicket. The bails were frozen in mid-flight, the stumps just beginning to splay in different directions like a collection of haphazard teeth. Accompanying that picture was text concerning the results of an interstellar test match. This too held no interest for Adrian Zanfran. Cricket bored him even more than politics. But the button for thugby news was now at hand, so the tip of his tentacle darted towards it.
Something angry and red burst through the screen. Adrian flinched from the scarlet apparition with such sudden force that both he and his chair went over backwards. They crashed on the floor, sending a jarring pain through his spine which evoked a groan. The chair bore its own suffering, if any, with silent fortitude.
"Adnan Zebra!" yelled the holographic visage of Barp Sek Bul.
"Yes, overlord?" he gasped, as he scrambled to his feet.
"I have uncovered your wretched plot! You came to the Mighty Rylattu Publishing House of Ultimate Might so you could steal our superior bandwidth like a worthless parasite! Security have been alerted and are on their way to blast you with their mighty weapons!"
The distant din of stomping boots came through the doorway, heralding the promised blasting.
"Wait! I was just taking a break! A break!"
"You aren't being paid to take breaks, puny human!"
The stomping drew nearer.
"I was tired! I'm sorry! I'll work harder! I'll work harder!"
Barp glared at him for a long moment. Adrian glanced at the doorway. The boots sounded very, very close...
"Very well! I shall allow you to live! Thank me for my mighty magnanimity, stink-beast!"
"Thank you! Thank you, overlord!"
The stomping ceased. Then it recommenced, but grew quieter instead of louder as the doom-promising boots went back to wherever they lurked when not inflicting said doom.
"I must make allowances, since your foul-smelling human physiology is weak and laughable. Go to the break room and ingest stimulants."
A floor plan appeared, superimposed on Barp's prodigious forehead. There were two arrows on the map. The yellow one presumably denoted Adrian's location, since the word 'Stink-Beast!' was written above it. Hence by process of elimination, the red arrow was the break room.
"Then you will return here," the supreme editing overlord continued, "and complete your task."
With that, the red holographic head sank into the screen like an alligator slipping back into the murky waters of its swamp. Adrian sighed. This job was-
"Proceed to the room immediately!" Barp's voice screamed.
"Yes, overlord!"
Adrian Zanfran went out into the corridor. The map had been simple enough to follow, so he headed towards the location the red arrow had marked. But he stopped when he came to a pair of doors each emblazoned with a featureless silhouette of a Rylattu head. The fullness of his bladder made itself known, as if it had been waiting for an appropriate opportunity to do so. Like Adrian himself, his bladder was polite. He approached the door marked with a hairless head, reasoning that the one with lengths of ropey hair denoted females of the alien species.
Like most humans, he'd never urinated with the aid of tentacles rather than hands before. Thus there was a moment's trepidation as he stood in front of a gleaming purple urinal, wondering how exactly this was going to work. But his bladder became somewhat less polite in its insistence, and forced his tentacle, as it were. Fortunately, the appendage proved equal to the task. In fact, the suckers actually felt rather...
Adrian decided to explore that line of thought later. For now, he had things to do. So he placed the ends of his tentacles into the disinfection unit, then continued his odyssey.
A female Rylattu was the small break room's sole other tenant when he entered. Adrian only saw the back of her head as she fiddled with a strange device that seemed to dispense beverages. However, there was something familiar about it...
"Kwix?"
The receptionist whirled round. Her eyes widened.
"Die, human!"
Kwix screamed. Adrian screamed. She reached for the bizarre beverage-dispensing contraption. A barrel telescoped from one end.
"It's me! Adrian! Adrian Zanfran!"
"Oh." Kwix put the curious doomsday drinks machine back on the counter. "All you stink-beasts look the same."
"I have tentacles!"
"Ah, yes. You do have tentacles. What do you want?"
"The supreme editing overlord told me to get a simulant. Got any coffee?"
"Coffee is an inferior human liquid! But if the overlord wishes your disgusting stink-beast body to be filled with energy, I shall obey his mighty commands." She turned round, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a long green packet. "Come here."
"What is that?"
"You will do as I command!"
Adrian tried to look over her shoulder as he complied, but he couldn't see what Kwix was removing from the plastic packet.
"Turn around," the Rylattu said.
"But-"
"Turn around or I'll destroy you with our superior refreshment-weapon technology!"
Adrian turned. Then he cried out. Something sharp had penetrated his left buttock. He whirled round, to find the receptionist holding an empty syringe.
"Express your sniveling gratitude, puny human!"
He snatched it from her hand, ignoring her hiss of protest. Politeness was important, but so was the pain rushing through his ass. Adrian held the spent syringe in front of his face and read the label:
---
Rylattu Ultimate Energy Booster
Disintegrate your tiredness and fill your body with ultimate might!
This product was tested on puny humans. Most of them survived.
---
Adrian glared at the receptionist. He opened his mouth to unleash the torrent of abuse which had been building up in his intestines ever since she'd opened fire on him in the lobby. But he stopped. His vision... It was sharpening. The fatigue was clearing. Something hot and burning coursed through his body, as though it were flowing down each vein and artery. Everywhere it went, it brought fire, wakefulness, and an explosion of energetic euphoria.
"That's... amazing!" he gasped.
"Of course it's amazing, stink-beast! Our mighty Rylattu chemistry is-"
He didn't hear the rest. By then he was sprinting down the corridor, back towards his terminal -- eager to hurl that hurricane of a second wind at his work.
|-|
"Beneath the Temple"= Bethany closed her eyes and let the warm air currents wash over her. For a long moment she hovered there, suspended in the heavens, listening to the workings of the wind and the soft burn of her thrusters. In battle, or when she led her soldiers through their drills, there was no time to savor such things. But in her private training sessions she could revel in the sensations.
She'd been flying for decades now. But no matter how many times she took to the air, the feeling never lost a mote of its magic. The second baptism. That's what some of the other Archangels had called it, in the days before she'd risen up the ranks and loose talk had begun to die in her presence only to be resurrected in her absence. The experience of your first winged flight, of the ground relinquishing your body and soul to the heavens so that their currents might wash you clean of fear and folly -- leave you pure in the eyes of Lord and man and self.
"To touch the face of God," she whispered. It was a popular phrase among the Archangels, but no less potent and meaningful for the frequency of its utterance.
Her eyes opened. She drew her weapons. The sword locked itself into her right gauntlet and ignited in a blaze of celestial fire. The pistol found its berth in her left hand's grasp, and it too attached itself. They were fixed in place until she chose to release them, as unyielding as the justice and righteousness they'd been forged to deliver.
Bethany whispered a prayer. It drifted into the surrounding sky, which had received many thousands from her lips over the years and untold billions more from Jerusalem Maior's other inhabitants and its legions of visiting pilgrims. She levitated in a sea of piety, imagined sacred words flowing around her armor, wings, and weapons -- sanctifying each of them in turn.
Then she swooped.
There was fire below. Burning buildings and wrecked vehicles, devoured by flames, cast their smoke into the air like departing souls. Amongst the infernal pyres, lending their voices to the pandemonium, men, women, and children in pilgrims' robes screamed. And perished.
Soldiers wearing black armor poured into the square, emerging from nothingness as the holographic systems spawned them into existence at the edge of the training area. Their lashing whips of gunfire raked the crowds, bringing terror and death. Simulation or not, the sight made Bethany's eyes blaze.
Her pistol flashed. One of the soldiers fell, both head and helmet pierced by the blast. A second flash, and another lay beside him -- until the ether reclaimed them both.
Some of the soldiers aimed upwards and sprayed their fire at the avenging angel. Bethany weaved between their streams, reveling in the freedom afforded her by the heavens and her winged cuirass. Bright lances passed her on the left and right, above and below. She slipped past them in turn. Then, when the concentration of fire became too great, she brought her wings round. Their metal feathers met and locked in place, forming a bulwark. Holographic shots hissed and plinked against it, their sounds and impacts rendered lifelike by the training armor's systems.
A screen opened in the middle of the shield like a waking eye. It showed the scene below, the soldiers whose weapons zapped against her aegis in impotent fury. They grew larger and larger as she continued to plummet, until she could make out the details of their garb and the glares behind their visors.
Then her wings opened, and her sword flashed. Its burning edge swept through limbs and torsos, marking its passage with neat, cauterized wounds. Her pistol fired through the gaps created by the dismemberment, returning more soulless holograms to oblivion.
She sprang high into the air, her thrusters carrying her above the battle, and launched herself at the next group of soldiers. Their guns blazed, but the fire plinked off her sweeping wings. And when she was in range, the sword-wrought carnage repeated itself -- while her pistol picked away at the enemies whose weapons were still turned on the pilgrims, claiming their existence or at least drawing their attention.
A new arrow, this one gold, appeared on her visor's display. Another Archangel, their armor recognized by hers and depicted as friend rather than foe. She gave a start when she saw the symbol emblazed upon the marker. It upset her final stroke, which left a messy, jagged wound through a soldier's body. He fell apart like a sundered jigsaw puzzle.
"Greetings, Sky Commander Raphael," Bethany said.
She paused the exercise. Fleeing pilgrims froze in mid-run. Blaster fire hung in the air. Columns of flowing smoke became stagnant black-grey spires.
"Greetings, sister." The voice came into her ear through her communicator. Then he landed in front of her, and his next words passed through the air between them. "Forgive me for disturbing your training."
Bethany gazed at the sky commander's armor and tried not to betray her emotions. He wore a resplendent gold and crimson panoply, its aureate wings like the rays of a dawning sun. His ceremonial attire. That meant... When she met his gaze, his blue eyes twinkled. It made his aged face seem decades younger.
"Congratulations, Bethany."
"Thank you, sky commander. But the smugglers were careless. Tracking them down was simple." She spoke the words, but she didn't believe Raphael had come to congratulate her for the mission she'd completed earlier in the day.
"I meant your birthday."
Bethany's heart pounded. He'd wished her a happy birthday many times over the years, whenever the two of them happened to meet on that date. But he'd never sought her out for the purpose. That was confirmation enough, if his attire wasn't.
"Thank you," she repeated.
"Forty... An important number."
"Yes."
There was no need to elaborate. Both of them knew their Biblical numerology. Forty ran through both Old and New Testaments, marking periods of days or nights or years.
"Come with me."
Sky Commander Raphael's thrusters took him heavenward. Bethany stowed her weapons and followed.
They flew towards the distant majesty of the Grand Temple in silence, as peaceful as the soft cyan sky around them. But a thousand thoughts and anticipations filled her mind -- born of rumors heard long ago, now lent fresh credence. They swirled around her head in such an all-consuming haze that the magnificent structure seemed to lie below them a moment later.
Raphael descended towards his private balcony, gesturing for her to do the same. Bethany touched down beside him at the same moment the scanner flashed and the doors opened in recognition of his authorized DNA.
She'd been in the sky commander's office a few times before. It was there that she'd been interviewed prior to her most recent promotion. But like the glory of flight, the chamber was as wondrous as when she'd first laid eyes on it. The walls and ceilings were sumptuous, covered in frescos painted in the styles of different masters from Earth's Renaissance -- each depicting a Biblical scene. On one panel, a larger than life blinded Samson toppled the pillars of the Philistines' temple. Nearby, Jacob grappled with the angel. Across the room, Jesus fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. These and dozens of other fine illustrations drew her eye and awe.
"Did you know I'd come to you today?" the sky commander asked.
"I..." Bethany's gaze fell upon a picture of Ananias and Sapphira meeting their fate. Perhaps that urged her towards veracity. "I suspected. I've heard the rumors."
"Tell me."
"They say that on their fortieth birthdays, senior officers who might..."
"One day become the sky commander? Yes. Go on."
The breath caught in her throat at that confirmation. She gave a small cough before she continued.
"They're taken somewhere. And when they come back, they're..." Her tongue groped for some way to explain it. "I saw Flight Commander Esther on the night she turned forty. She looked... happy."
The sky commander chuckled.
"Unusual behavior for Esther," he agreed.
"But they don't always come back. Host Leader Paulus didn't."
The humor drained from Raphael's face.
"No. They don't. That's why they're given a choice. Why I'm giving you a choice. I can't tell you where I'll take you or what you'll have to do there. But I promise it will be either the greatest experience of your life or the most terrible."
"How many have failed?"
"Only a handful have ever died during the trial. We promote people we believe will come through it unscathed. But we can't see into their souls."
"If I refuse?"
"You'll leave the Archangels tonight, with full honors. And I should tell you that not everyone who passes the trial chooses to remain. Some are so changed by it that they find their callings elsewhere."
"Has anyone ever declined?"
A faint smile crossed his lips.
"No. It isn't in our nature."
"It isn't. I accept."
"This way."
He approached one of the frescos. It depicted a verdant tree bearing strange blue fruit. Raphael reached up and pressed his hand against the lowermost of the azure pear-shaped objects, as though he intended to snatch it from the painting. Both fruit and hand flashed with green light. Then the painting slid inwards, retreating from his touch, before rising upwards and disappearing from sight.
An elevator was revealed behind where the fresco had stood. The sky commander entered it. Bethany followed him.
They didn't pass any doors as they descended. The smooth metal of the shaft continued unbroken until the journey ended. Then Bethany found herself at the end of a long, broad, brightly lit corridor. Its walls were plated with a metallic substance she recognized. It was heavy duty armor, the same kind that adorned the hulls of their combat vehicles. Equally familiar objects floated along the passage, coming towards them.
"Flaming swords," she murmured.
"The more obvious of the defenses," he said. "Others are hidden. But this isn't part of the test. None of them will trigger while you're with me."
Sure enough, the flaming swords hovered in the air before the two of them, then parted to form an escort on either side. The burning blades flanked them as they continued down the corridor.
At its end was a round door, almost the same dimensions as the passage itself. Like the corridor's walls, it too was armored. And a force field throbbed across it in translucent golden waves.
Raphael touched the wall on his right. A small doorway slid open, revealing a room no bigger than the elevator.
"Step inside here while I open the vault," he said.
Bethany did as bidden. The door closed behind her.
A few minutes passed, the chamber's quietness unbroken. When the portal reopened, and the sky commander beckoned her into the corridor, the vault was likewise unsealed -- revealing the impressive multilayered thickness of its door and the even more impressive spectacle beyond.
Raphael took her hand before they walked inside. He only released it when they were well clear of the threshold. Bethany barely even noticed. Her eyes were on the treasures.
There were marble statues, paintings in gilded frames, piles of gold coins, jewels beyond number, ornate suits of armor, weapons both exotic and archaic. Wealth and luxury glittered at her from every direction, arranged on shelves and pedestals, ensconced in display cases, mounted on the walls.
"Antiquities and relics from Earth. And from other worlds besides. Would you like to inspect them?"
"Are they why we're here?"
"No."
"Then perhaps later."
The sky commander nodded. He crossed the room and stopped in front of the far wall. A heater shield was mounted there. Bethany had seen such armaments both in depictions of warriors from Earth's Middle Ages and about the persons of present-day Novocastrian knights. But this one was decorated with a curious design. It showed a blue dragon standing side-on, above a pitchfork in the same azure hue.
Raphael pressed his hand against it, as he'd done with the painted fruit in his study. Once again a doorway opened, when the shield and the entire section of wall displaced themselves to reveal the gaping blackness of a smaller, unlit chamber.
"This is what we came for," he said.
He took her hand again, and drew her into the room. The section of wall sealed itself in their wake, plunging them into pitch blackness. The sky commander relinquished Bethany's hand for the second time and clapped both of his together.
A small spotlight came to life on the ceiling. Its cone of illumination fell in the center of the room, creating an island within the sea of shadow and disclosing the object which rested on a large, rectangular pedestal.
Bethany gasped.
"That's..."
"Yes."
The sky commander approached it from the side, leaving the space between it and Bethany empty. He placed his hand on its lid.
"Do you want to pray first?" he asked.
She nodded and dropped to one knee.
"Lord," she whispered, "if I'm unworthy of this test, please forgive me and take my soul to your side."
Bethany stood.
"I'm ready," she said.
Sky Commander Raphael opened the lid. A powerful wave of golden light surged forth. It washed over Bethany and engulfed her.
|-|
"Mr. Forsyth's Cake"= "A germ!"
Vernon Forsyth stabbed his accusing finger towards the dining room table. His eyes were wild behind his thick visor, made bizarre and alien by glowing green lights reflected from its display.
Nurse Hatchet inspected the table.
"My sensors indicate that this surface is clean, Mr. Forsyth."
"Damn your stupid sensors! I see a germ! Do something!"
The robot nurse raised her right hand, palm outwards, and doused the table's gleaming surface with a stream of disinfectant from her internal reservoir. The liquid foamed and bubbled like a lake of cleansing hellfire.
"It's still there!" he said.
"Mr. Forsyth, this product kills 99.99999999999999999% of all known germs."
"Then this one's part of that 0.00000000000000001%! I can still see it!"
"Your GermFinder Visor may be unreliable."
"Ridiculous! It's made by TermGerm! Who knows more about germs -- them, or some stupid metal whore?"
"As I've stated before, Mr. Forsyth, I'm not a pleasure bot. And my voluptuous chassis was engineered at your personal request. Furthermore, since TermGerm is the biggest manufacturer of disinfectant products in-"
"Get rid of that germ!"
Nurse Hatchet sprayed another barrage onto the table. Vernon Forsyth leaned his head towards it, whilst still maintaining a safe distance, and scrutinized it with his emerald glare.
"Finally!" he said. "Bomb the room to make sure there aren't any more lurking around here."
"That's quite unnecessary. I cleaned this room an hour-"
"Do it!"
Mr. Forsyth stormed towards the doorway. Or at least it began as a storm, then had its momentum ruined when he paused to inspect the floor, walls, and ceiling for any signs of his nemeses. After satisfying himself that no germs were lying in ambush, ready to pounce on him, he departed.
The robot nurse pulled a TermGerm Terminator from her belt, pressed the green button on the sphere's surface, made for the same exit as her master, and tossed it over her shoulder. The door closed behind her just before the whoosh of the grenade's detonation and the eruption of germicidal fog in all directions.
"Is the incinerator fired up?" Mr. Forsyth demanded.
"Yes."
"You know what you have to do."
"Yes, Mr. Forsyth."
But just like every year, she waited to receive superfluous instructions.
"Kill every last one of them. I don't care if they're a paparazzo, a journalist, or a pizza delivery boy who's got lost. Kill them all, and throw them in the incinerator. And do it quickly! Last year you left one of the corpses on the grass for a minute! A minute! Do you know how many germs a corpse has?"
"No, Mr. Forsyth."
"When's my cake coming?"
"It should be here any minute now."
As if on cue, the nearest intercom terminal bleeped. Nurse Hatchet pressed a button. A woman's face appeared on its screen.
"Pandora Bakery," she said. "We have a delivery for Mr. Vernon Forsyth."
"And in lighter news..." Chad Delran's 'serious face' vanished along with the images of the UHW Assembly on the big screen behind him. He flashed a broad smile at the camera. "...today marks the seventieth birthday of former actor and socialite Vernon Forsyth."
The picture of a young, handsome man in a tuxedo appeared on the screen. He was standing at a glass podium, brandishing a gold statuette of a spiral galaxy, his mouth open in a cry of elation.
"Forsyth, seen here accepting a Galactic Academy of Film and Television Award for his starring role in Hyperspace Hoplite, was one of the most popular celebrities in all of human space."
That triumphant image disappeared. It was replaced by one showing the same individual, still wearing a tuxedo and standing near a similar transparent podium. But this incarnation was a few decades older. His hair was an elegant shade of silver, and his face bore lines that might have given him a more rugged handsomeness -- if he hadn't been wearing an expression of murderous fury and firing a pistol down at an unseen target.
"But his career hit the rocks on the night he co-hosted that same award show. After the winner of the 'best supporting actress' category kissed him on the cheek, Forsyth had what his agent would later describe as 'an unfortunate psychological episode'. He screamed about germs, threw the young lady off the stage, drew a pistol, and shot her seventeen times."
Chad shook his head from side to side, though he continued to beam at the camera.
"He was tried for murder, though he was acquitted when his lawyer controversially but successfully argued that an unsolicited kiss was an act of biological warfare, and that Forsyth had therefore acted in self-defense."
The actor's picture was usurped by an aerial shot of sprawling verdant countryside and a white-walled mansion.
"Since then, Vernon Forsyth has lived the life of a recluse in his home on Berundus Prime -- and has never been filmed or photographed, despite the many paparazzi and journalists who've tried to infiltrate the building for a look at the galaxy's former brightest star. But maybe that'll all change tonight! Let's take you to our reporter on the ground!"
Chad Delran rotated his chair and looked up at the screen, which flashed to a feed showing a platinum blonde woman in a low-cut blouse. Thick bushes filled the backdrop of the shot.
"This is Melina Richards, reporting for the Perseid Entertainment Network," she whispered. "I'm just a hundred yards or so from Vernon Forsyth's mansion."
"Speak up, Melina!" Chad said. "So the people at home can hear you!"
"I'd love to, Chad..." Her mouth continued to smile even as her eyes glared bloody murder at him. "...but since Forsyth has all trespassers killed, I have to be very quiet."
"Ah, of course."
The host turned back to the studio's main camera, and favored it with the same exaggerated rictus.
"Every year, Vernon Forsyth orders a birthday cake from his favorite store. It's brought onto his property in a Pandora Bakery hovercar, which his robotic maidservant goes out to meet -- because Forsyth doesn't allow vehicles or delivery people to get too close to his home. And since she's the mansion's only other occupant, that gives brave journalists like Maria a chance to get inside the building and film the man himself."
"Melina!" she hissed.
Chad's chair revolved.
"What was what, Maria?"
"Melina!"
Chad leaned towards the screen and made a show of cupping his ear.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't quite-"
"My name's Melina, you grinning jackass!"
She stamped her foot. Then her chest exploded, splattering the screen with blood. Melina Richards looked down at the hole in her torso. The viewers were treated to the sight of bushes rustling on the other side of the gaping wound.
"Maria? Is everything okay?"
She looked up at the bloody camera.
"Chad, you fuc-"
Then she collapsed.
A voluptuous robot, wearing a white nurse's uniform on her gleaming blue body, stepped through the bushes. She held a pistol in her hand.
Nurse Hatchet looked down at the reporter's body. Then she stared straight into the camera, raised her weapon, and fired.
"Here's your cake! Thank you for choosing Pandora Bakery!"
The woman placed the large, round object into Nurse Hatchet's arms. Its box was transparent, displaying the delectable piece of confectionary in all its sugary splendor.
"Thank you."
The robot trotted back towards the mansion. But she stopped, and her eyes flashed. Movement in the bushes again! She balanced the cake on one arm, drew her pistol, and went over to investigate.
"...and we're going to secure the first interview with Vernon Forsyth in decades!"
A man's voice, just on the other side of the foliage. She took aim.
"As we all know," the voice continued, "Mr. Forsyth refuses to-"
Nurse Hatchet fired. The blast seared and charred its way through the leaves.
"...grant interviews. But we-"
This puzzled her. She'd aimed for the source of the sound, as she'd done when she dispatched the female reporter.
"...might be able to get inside while his bodyguard accepts delivery of his birthday cake."
She pushed her way through the bushes, holding the cake close to her body so it wouldn't fall.
"Ah, and here she is right now!" The holographic face of a man with a goatee and floppy hair smiled at her. "Happy birthday, robo-bitch!"
Something glowed at the bottom of her field of vision. She glanced down at the pulsing blue light. Then she turned and thrust her way back through the bushes.
The explosion was more of a crackle than a boom. Blue and white tendrils of electricity flashed across Nurse Hatchet's blurring vision. She staggered. The pistol fell out of her hand. But she somehow managed to keep hold of the cake.
Garbled warning sirens and illegible strings of characters swirled around her computerized brain. The cake... That was important. Her primary mission. She secured it with both arms. Mission accomplished. But there was... was more. Something... Something else. Other objectives. She had to... had to...
In the middle of her deranged, vibrating, blurry optical display, she saw a man running towards the house. From the back she could only see the floppy hair. But the image of his goatee pushed its way through her scattered mental impulses.
"Bastard!" she said. The word came out unaccented, in her default hardware voice.
She ran across the grass, stumbling and zigzagging as she tried to compensate for her haywire systems. Warning lights exploded before her electronic eyes. She ignored them.
The man looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened. His goatee parted.
"Oh, hell!" he said.
He put on a burst of speed. But Nurse Hatchet's legs pumped like pistons. He had time to begin a shriek. It ended when her metal fingers burst through his chest.
"Trespassers will be germinated," she said.
That didn't sound right... Her language systems must have been damaged. And she was sure some of her protocols had been knocked offline. She'd have to plug herself into the diagnostic unit when she got back inside, and get them all fixed. But first, Mr. Forsyth needed his cake.
Nurse Hatchet entered the mansion, went down the corridor, and headed into the living room.
"Happy birthday, Mr. Forsyth."
She held the cake out towards him. Her master stared at her, his eyes flashing green behind his visor. His jaw dangled open. He pointed at her blood-splattered body with one trembling finger.
"Germs!"
He pressed his hands to his chest, moaned, and fell out of his chair.
"Medical analysis..." she said, as she watched him writhe on the floor. "Mr. Forsyth is experiencing a cardiac arrest. Accessing... accessing medical files..."
More incomprehensible words of warning blared across her display.
"Treatment found: cake."
Nurse Hatchet tore the top off the transparent box, pulled out the cake, and smashed it onto Vernon Forsyth's face.
"Treatment administered."
The robot pivoted on her heel, then trotted off in search of her diagnostic and repair station.
|-|
"Mazel Tov"= "This is Captain Atter of the Centurian vessel Hammerstrike. You will surrender immediately and submit to boarding."
"Screw you, captain."
Atter's entire countenance seemed to twitch. The young woman on the screen in front of his chair laughed. It was a girlish, musical sound. The Chinese dragons tattooed on either side of her face, one red and the other green, joined in. Their mouths moved in harmony with hers as their long, sinuous bodies swam and danced on her pale skin.
"Surrender or we'll destroy your vessel!"
"Oh, yeah? Go ahead."
Atter glared.
"I'm waiting!" she said. The tattooed dragons turned to one another, then turned towards Atter and giggled. "We both know you won't blow us up. Not when we've got your nerds onboard."
"You admit to kidnapping our scientists!"
"Damn straight. But hey, the Black Hole Buccaneers are reasonable people. Just offer us more than anyone else does, and we'll sell them right back to you."
"Your actions are illegal under-"
"Duh! We're space pirates!" Her dragons rolled their eyes along with her. The effect was almost disorientating. "Illegal's kind of what we do!"
Captain Atter slashed his hand through the holo-screen as though it were a blade slicing through the pirate's neck. The image vanished, the connection severed even if her head wasn't. He made another gesture and a new one replaced it. This time it showed the grim grey face of a heavily armored helmet.
"Storm Sergeant Veck," Atter said, "is your squad in position?"
"Yes, captain."
"The pirates' leader refuses to surrender. Commence the rescue operation."
Stealth and subtlety were important. Veck understood this. He was no fool. Without those essential tools of war, his squad's craft wouldn't have made it into position undetected -- relying on the Hammerstrike to mask the far smaller ship's presence.
But they weren't a storm squad's natural element. So when the tremor announced impact, a thrill ran through his powerful body. The subtlety was over. It was time to do what they'd been trained for.
The exit hatch flew open and Storm Sergeant Veck strode out into the enemy vessel, purple-blue energy crackling around the multi-bladed claw at the end of his left arm. His squadmates followed. Behind them the boarding craft's body and projected field plugged the gap in the pirate ship's hull, securing their foothold and providing an avenue of retreat. None of them expected to require it.
A four-man storm unit against perhaps two dozen space pirates. Acceptable odds for the Collective.
A man sporting a foot-high green mohawk appeared in the doorway ahead of them. He didn't even manage to raise his rifle before Veck's pistol blew the top of his head off -- removing half his brain and all of his hairstyle.
"Storm!" the four of them chorused when they reached the corridor.
Then they separated. Krall remained in the corridor, protecting their exit point. Tuller and Plask headed towards the rear of the ship. Veck made for the flight cabin.
A brawny Snuuth appeared in front of the sergeant, blocking the doorway to the room beyond. The alien brandished a big, bulky minigun -- a weapon that promised to flood the corridor with streams of gunfire. Veck shot him through the heart before he could pull its trigger.
He stepped over the Snuuth's body, into the ship's recreation room. Two pirates were crouching behind one of the pool tables. They rose at the same moment, rifles in their hands. The sergeant fired twice and dropped them both. Then he span round, in time to see a third pirate leap off another table and fly through the air towards him -- a laser-edged axe in her hands, raised high above her head.
Veck's claw slashed a savage arc, each blade leaving a glowing trail in its wake. The axe fell from the pirate's hands. Her shredded intestines hit the floor an instant before the rest of her.
"We've found the scientists," Plask said over his helmet's communicator. "Facing heavy resistance."
"Do you need assistance?" he asked.
"No, sergeant."
He heard her weapon roar.
"The hostages will be secured shortly," she said.
"Understood."
Storm Sergeant Veck entered the stretch of corridor between the recreation room and the flight cabin. Two pirates, a human man and a Piscarian woman, opened fire with their blasters, trying to keep him from his goal. A swipe from his claw opened the former's ribcage. His pistol split the other's head.
The door suffered no better when it tried to bar his path. His blades penetrated it in a series of parallel diagonal lines, burning and tearing their way through its entire thickness. Then he drove his heavy armored frame at the damaged portal. Slabs of mutilated metal gave way with a long, drawn-out screech.
There was only one person in the flight cabin -- a young woman with a stylish mop of short pink hair, and a Chinese dragon tattooed on each cheek. She stood between Veck and the pilot's chair she'd just vacated, her arms raised to display empty palms.
"I surrender," she said.
The dragon tattoos stretched themselves vertically on either side of her face as though standing upright, nodded, and raised their forelegs -- mimicking the placatory gesture.
"Order your men to stand down," he replied.
"Green or purple?"
"What?"
The sergeant tried to level his pistol at her, recognizing the question for what it was in the next instant. A distraction, something to engage his mind for a second and lower his defenses. But by then it was too late. Her eyes glowed like twin purple stars, and psionic fingers stroked his thoughts.
"There are three more of you on my ship." Her voice echoed in the middle of his head, as though his brain had evaporated and left the inside of his skull hollow. "Kill them."
Images flowed around him. His claw buried in his Plask's chest, the crackling blades piercing her armor and her heart. His pistol's blast smashing through the eye of Krall's helmet. Tuller dead on the floor, a mass of bloody metal and flesh.
Veck tried to focus, to push back against her and shove her out of his mind. He'd been trained for this, trained to-
Purple eyes blazed in his consciousness. Two oriental dragons -- one green, one red -- danced around them, their sinuous bodies twirling and coiling.
"Struggle if you want," the purple eyes said. The dragons echoed each word, forming a chorus. "In here we have all the time in the universe."
The dragons giggled. Then they dived.
Her fingers clawed deeper, reached further. Veck knew what that meant. They were groping for the roots, trying to dislodge his mind at its core.
"Ah..." Her musical laughter and the dragons' guffaws encircled him. "Today's your birthday."
The storm sergeant tensed. Birthdays... anniversaries... Occasions that linked to strings of memories, provided pathways which ran through a person's life -- streams for psionic intruders to navigate.
"Veck... No, you weren't always Veck..." The purple eyes flashed. The dragons licked their lips and salivated as they tasted the suppressed remembrances. "Liveckstein."
The dragons swam on. The eyes probed deeper. Veck was drawn along in their currents. Or they in his. All of them splashed and tumbled through his memory, until something solidified around them.
Another birthday. He sensed that even before he comprehended the confusing scene.
A woman is sitting in a chair, next to her baby's crib. There's a book in her hands. Not a datapad -- a true book, an old thing with a solid, leather-bound cover and pages yellowed by age. The text on those pages is strange, its characters both alien and hauntingly familiar. An ancient language that tells ancient stories.
The woman speaks, reading from the book. She knows her infant son is too young to understand, but these stories are important. And in time they'll have to be hidden from him, when intelligence and comprehension grow but are accompanied by a careless childish tongue. So now she reads and speaks and tells, wondering how long it will be before she can do the same to an understanding ear, secure in the knowledge that he'll keep their secret.
Those stories, which had once slipped uncomprehended into Veck's infantile brain, now burst into existence on all sides. A great flood drowning the wicked... A nation wandering in the desert... Kings living and warring and coveting and sinning and dying...
Purple eyes widened. Draconic mouths gasped -- overwhelmed either by the unexpected torrent or in psychic sympathy with the man whose mind they touched and thoughts they shared.
Then something else flowed, a dark river which swept all that aside and crashed around them.
A man and a woman are being dragged from their home by callous hands, yanked away to face punishment for traditions and practices that are now crimes. For the books of strange script and ancient tales. The woman shrieks and cries, but not for herself. Her red, wet eyes are fastened on a boy who stands some distance away. He's sobbing as well, though the man standing next to him in a steel-grey uniform tells him that no harm will come to him -- that his parents have done a very bad thing, and must be taken away.
The psionic fingers trembled. The purple orbs were weeping too, just like the boy's and his mother's.
Veck blinked. Reality returned.
The pink-haired woman's eyes weren't purple now. But they were still crying. Tears streaked her cheeks, glistening over the dragons' scaly bodies. Those mythical monsters were weeping as well, afflicted by the long-forgotten sorrow they'd shared and experienced as a fresh wound.
"I'm sorry..." she said. "I'm so sorry..."
Then it was her turn to blink, to see a big armored man standing where a weeping child had been. Their gazes met.
Her eyes flashed. Psionic fingers groped to reestablish the severed connection.
Storm Sergeant Veck raised his pistol and fired. Crimson erupted from her chest, burst from her ruptured heart. Red, wet eyes stared into his as she crumpled.
He looked at her body for a long moment. Then a voice came over his communicator.
"The hostages are safe. Do you have the flight cabin, sergeant?"
A second drifted by.
"Sergeant?" Plask repeated.
"Yes. The flight cabin has been secured. I'll contact Captain Atter."
Veck looked away from the corpse and opened a channel to the Hammerstrike, so he could report the victory.
|-|
"Barracuda's Birthday Song"= I was sitting in the bar, smashed right off my head,
Wondering where the creds'd gone, wishing I was dead,
Felt like I'd bashed my skull and knocked out half my brain,
Or snorted a Sussurra like he was cocaine.
That's when he walked over, wearing a cheap blue suit,
Thought he was some douchebag pimp looking to recruit.
Soon as he sat down, he acted like a tosser,
Pulled his gun and said, "I'm from Drekchester, prosser."
He worked for 'Blood and Guts' Lars, leader of Green Gash,
Lars wanted Barracuda for his birthday bash.
If I went along I'd be swimming deep in creds,
If I didn't, they'd go and cut my face to shreds.
So we went to his ship and flew off to the bash,
Better than them finding me cut up in the trash.
He took me to this club with needles on the floor,
The kind of place they stab you right inside the door.
I jumped up on the stage, ready to start my song,
Then old Lars barged over and said that I was wrong.
He liked Black Barracuda, not this Screaming lass,
So took a knife and shoved it right in blue suit's ass.
Then he looked at me, said he'd have them break my back,
Unless I did the job as good as Barra Black.
Well happy goddamn birthday, Lars you douchebag prat,
Wasn't going to let him get away with that.
I slipped in both my earplugs, shut the noise right out,
Then turned up Wailing Doom and let my lady shout.
The tossers started screaming, then they ran amok,
Lars dashed into the street, got run down by a truck.
Not my finest gig, the reviews were really bad,
But they weren't the worst Barracuda's ever had.
|-|
"Vlarg Relic Hunter"= Atreyu's eyes found the opening before his scanner did. Perhaps that meant his senses were sharp, or maybe that destiny's hand was grasping his and leading him onward. Either of those things would have been both gratifying and appropriate to the purpose which had brought him there. But when the scanner then reported that he was standing within three meters of a black hole, he decided the device might simply be faulty.
He tried to quell the eagerness that rose in his breast, lest it go unfulfilled yet again. The first two discoveries had filled him with similar anticipation, but it had transpired that they were only weather-worn channels in the rock face, yielding nothing but dust and stone before they terminated in frustrating barriers. However, the deep shadows within this latest gap buffeted his caution. And when drew nearer, it was shredded altogether.
There were groves in the stone, too regular to have been the work of nature's whims. Someone had once carved designs around the opening, their effort recognizable even if time had rendered its fruits illegible. He'd found it. That realization hammered in his chest and exploded in his brain. It left his mouth in a strong, euphoric exhalation.
He clambered over a fallen chunk of rock. And there too his hands found markings. He glanced upwards, at the place where it must once have rested -- part of an arched entrance.
Broken scanner or not, he felt destiny's hand ushering him onwards.
He'd have a story to tell.
Stories...
"They call it the eternal tale, because each generation adds to it."
Atreyu sat and blinked at the teacher. If her words had any effect on him, he gave no sign. The little boy's face was inscrutable, as it so often was. But she continued nevertheless. They'd all agreed this was important -- that the child should be raised to know about his parents' heritage alongside the ways of the empire which had adopted him after their deaths.
"On a boy or girl's eighteenth birthday..."
There was a slight, almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. She was a veteran enough educator to know the signs of a child carrying out the process of mental arithmetic. He was calculating how far in his future that birthday lay. Maybe this interested him after all...
"...they leave home and go on..." She paused, and remembered Atreyu's reading habits. "...a quest."
Sure enough, the word triggered a change in the boy's face. He was staring at her with renewed intensity, perhaps even eagerness.
"What kind of quest?" he asked.
"It has to be a story. Something they can come back and tell to the others. And it has to have meaning."
"Meaning?"
"A story that brings new knowledge to their community, or inspires them. One worthy of becoming part of the eternal tale."
Atreyu pulled a small oblong object from his belt, flicked a switch on its red metal case, and tossed it into the air. It hovered there, and shone a broad beam of light in front of him. When he moved, the bright flood led the way -- illuminating the path ahead.
More markings adorned the walls on either side, carved or burned into the rock. These had escaped the ravages of time better than the entrance, and the bizarre characters almost screamed the identity of the hands which had wrought them. The inscribed messages were unintelligible to him. But he raised his left bracer and captured an image of each one. Professor Sung might be able to interpret them. And even if he couldn't, the very fact of the pictures' existence -- that he alone in all of academia would possess those fragments of source material until he chose to share them with the galaxy -- would delight him beyond measure. Atreyu smiled as he imagined the broad grin amidst Sung's bushy beard.
The knowledge of his triumph swelled within him. He'd already succeeded in his quest. Even if he left that very moment, and returned to the colony, he'd have a story to tell -- the tale of how he'd evaded Huk-Kral patrol ships to enter Ciaxia's atmosphere, and come to number among perhaps only a handful of humans who'd ever walked upon its dusty surface. The story of finding one of the Quiskerians' ancient subterranean temples, and looking upon carvings likely never glimpsed by the eyes of man.
But he didn't intend to go back. Not until he'd uncovered everything the temple held within its depths.
"First contact, my boy! First contact!" Professor Sung spoke the words with such elation that he might have experienced the event firsthand. "Aliens! Imagine what that meant, to a species which had only dreamed, imagined, and speculated about extraterrestrial life."
"Yes, professor..." Atreyu said.
He led the professor along the path and rolled his eyes. The man was more jovial than ever when he'd been drinking, but also keener to spread his considerable store of knowledge to an uninterested populace. Atreyu had come upon him on the road, and he hadn't wanted Sung to stagger homeward on his own and perhaps tumble into a ditch on the way. So he'd accepted the task of leading him there, even though that meant withstanding the accompanying didactic barrage.
"Ah, when I was a young scholar, I dreamed of visiting the old Quiskerian planets and exploring their ruins. Just think -- all that priceless knowledge, just waiting to be studied! I even wrote to the Huk-Kral's ambassador to ask permission for a research mission. Do you know what he told me? He said that if I went anywhere near those worlds, his people would rip my arms off. Savagery! Barbarism!"
The professor sighed, hiccupped, and moved on to a discussion of Rylattu fishing practices -- not knowing what seeds he'd planted in the young man's mind.
Atreyu laughed, letting the sound of his joy echo down the tunnel and reverberate from the stone walls.
His story would be even more amazing than he'd hoped.
He took one more picture of the relief sculpture before him. There, carved from the rock, was a spheroid. A planet, the shapes of its continents familiar to Atreyu as they were to every other human -- though he'd only ever seen them in images. Earth.
Behind him stretched a long line of similar artworks. He'd scrutinized each of them in turn, though none had held any particular meaning for him. As best he could tell, they chronicled scenes from Quiskerian history. But this one...
He moved onto the next sculpture, almost giddy with anticipation. He wasn't disappointed. It showed a spacecraft, of a design he recognized from history books. It was the type the aliens had used in their mission against Earth. And as though the universe were expressing agreement with that thought, the following relief depicted human beings -- battling against Quiskerians. Billy Stopless, Professor Helios, Aloysius Zeroth... These and other faces he'd been shown on electronic screens or rendered in holographic light stared at him from stone.
A thought slammed its way into his brain, one of such unequivocal importance that he couldn't believe it had only just appeared there. The Quiskerians were supposed to have built the temples on Ciaxia long before their attack on Earth. And these carvings looked ancient. But that was impossible. The stone figures before him couldn't have been made before the events they chronicled. That meant he was looking at proof the Quiskerians had continued to build and adorn their temples in this archaic fashion until near the end of their civilization.
Atreyu took more pictures, and hoped their monumental academic significance wouldn't make Professor Sung burst across the walls of his study.
The next series of graven images meant nothing to him. They were filled with carved letters and symbols that he hadn't the means to translate. But he recorded each one in turn.
It wasn't until he'd passed over a dozen more that he came across another which captured his attention.
A huge reptilian face glared at him, a visage fearsome even through the medium of stone. It looked like...
"A dragon?"
Atreyu frowned. Some of the carvings much further back had depicted vast, grotesque creatures, which he'd taken to be the Quiskerians' archaic deities or else monsters from their mythology -- for they didn't match any true species he'd ever learned about. But all the ones since had illustrated conventional scenes that he'd taken to come from historical events such as the attack on Earth. Hence this one seemed absurdly out of place.
And yet it was unmistakable. The terrible face, the tail, the wings... If it wasn't supposed to be a dragon, the very same creature he'd read about in his childhood stories, the coincidence was remarkable.
He lifted his bracer and took a picture. Atreyu stared into the creature's eyes, and felt a strange shudder pass through his body. He shook his head, wondering if he'd caught an alien infection since landing on the planet. That would be an unpleasant souvenir to take back to the colony...
But he thrust the thought aside. He'd come to the end of the sculpted scenes. Only one more lay to his right, rendered unreadable by the curvature of the tunnel wall -- which presented him with only the edges of the sculpted figures. He moved around in front of it, so he could see what it showed.
His frown deepened. It was...
Something seared its way past his face. The stone exploded.
Atreyu hurled himself aside, just in time to avoid the next blast.
"You're fast, human," said a growling, almost feral voice. "But not fast enough to steal from me!"
Three red eyes, forming a triangle, glared at him from a purple-furred, almost pteropine face. A Vlarg dressed in bulky armor plates stood in the passage, clutching a blaster in his hand.
"The relics here are mine!" he said.
"I don't-"
"Mine!"
The Vlarg fired.
Atreyu slipped the next blast as though it were a clumsy boxer's punch. The first rule of dodging gunfire: watch the arm, not the weapon's maw. No one can move faster than a gunshot. But you don't have to, if you move faster than the person holding the weapon.
The Vlarg snarled. He aimed again. But Atreyu saw where the weapon was pointing. By the time it fired, he was out of the way. The alien wasn't much of a gunslinger. Otherwise Atreyu's head would have exploded instead of the sculpture. And if his adversary couldn't hit him when he was standing there with his back turned, he sure as hell couldn't hit him now.
Atreyu ducked the next blast, and wondered if his kung fu sifu would be proud of his speed and agility or annoyed that he'd allowed himself to be caught unaware in the first place. The mental calmness which allowed such a question under those circumstances was reassuring. So was the heft of his sword...
He lunged. The Vlarg flinched out of instinct. Then confusion crossed his furry purple face. He was well beyond the reach of the human's blade. Epiphany struck a split-second before the weapon, when the handle telescoped into a spear shaft and thrust the point into his hand.
The Vlarg howled. His gun clattered against the tunnel floor.
Atreyu withdrew the weapon and slipped into a combat stance.
"I didn't come here to loot relics," he said. "Why don't we just-"
The alien didn't reply with words. He simply growled, and leapt -- driving the blades on his right vambrace at the human's face. The spear's point was through his neck in the next moment.
Words came to Atreyu's tongue, one saying among many others which belonged to his birth-people.
"This is my story," he whispered. "And you aren't in it."
He slid his weapon out of the Vlarg, and cleaned its blade on the alien's fur. Then he remembered the sculpture.
It was ruined. The blast had ravaged the stone, and obliterated whatever it once depictured. He sighed. He'd only had a single glimpse of the image before its destruction. The dragon had been there, he knew that. The same terrible visage as on the neighboring relief. And though he couldn't be certain, he was almost sure the creature had been battling a human being. A man. That carved figure had had some kind of symbol on him.
Maybe it was mere fancy, a trick of the mind. But it had reminded Atreyu of the Sian emblem.
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