The bulkhead glowed red, then white, then a shower of sparks shot from an incision in the metal. A chainsaw popped out of the rectangular hole in the metal door, and laboriusly cut down through the hinges, sending bits of molten metal skidding along the grav plates on the floor.
Cut from its hinges, the door fell to the floor, and Thresher walked into the hallway. "All right, all clear. Where's the welcoming committee?"
The Eye followed him closely. "Behind the next door, there's a cross hallway. Killotron on the right, Bearcat on the left."
Jolt took up the rear. She pulled a panel off the wall as they stopped in front of the next door. "OK, I can open this from our side. Anyone have any bright ideas what to do about the ambush?"
The Eye smiled, and began pulling flashbangs from her utility belt, and popping them up in the air with her other hand. Soon, she was juggling four of the small grenades with one hand, and she nodded curtly to Jolt as she switched over to a two-handed juggle. "Ready."
Thresher positioned himself just behind the door. "Ready."
Jolt touched the control panel, and the door opened. The Eye expertly tossed two flash-bangs to the left as the door was still half-open. A feral scream echoed through the hallway as the detonated in front of Bearcat. She bounced the second pair of grenades off the door frame, and they detonated in front of Killotron. Once the door was fully open, Thresher charged to the right as Killotron opened fire on him with his arm-mounted plasma blasters.
Jolt peeked around the corner, and aimed for the floor as Bearcat recovered from the flash-bangs. He was in mid-crouch as a lightning bolt struck the floor plate he was standing on, burning out the fuse and disabling the artificial gravity. He was in mid-jump, and suddenly finding his legs in free fall caused his spectacular leap to become a face-plant.
As he struggled to his feet, Jolt aimed carefully, and hit him square in the face with a lightning bolt. Bearcat fell to the ground, unconscious and smouldering.
Killotron's blasters left Thresher's armor pockmarked and smoking, but the cyborg continued his advance on the heavily-armed robot. Thresher's chainsaws were still out, and he gunned the motors as he lunged towards Killotron.
Thresher brought a chainsaw up to the robot's throat and started sawing through his neck, as he chopped off Killotron's left arm at the shoulder. The robot screamed as his mushroom cap shaped head was separated from his body.
As the smoke from the flash grenades began to settle, The Eye poked her head out into the hallway. "All clear?"
Jolt turned to her and gave her the thumbs-up. "All clear."
Killoton's body tried to crawl on its arm and legs, feeling around for its missing head.
The Eye pointed to the left. "This way."
On the other side of the Reyll warship, Demonslayer dragged Red Menace to the forward torpedo bay by her hair. The young girl was crying and sobbing, and tried to get to her feet and run away. Demonslayer slammed her into a bulkhead and beat her savagely with a wire coat hanger.
Red Menace wiped a trickle of blood from her nose, and glared at Demonslayer with hatred in her eyes as the older woman pointed to the torpedo tube. The young girl could have easily snatched the wire hanger from Demonslayer's hand and wrapped it around her neck.
Instead, she obeyed, climbing into the waiting tube, sobbing and crying.
Demonslayer had had a vision, and she saw what was coming. She went to a wall panel and signalled the bridge before stomping out of the room.
Arsenal rose over the curved horizon of the planet, approaching the Reyll warship. The front torpedo tube coughed as Red Menace was launched on an intercept course. Two streaks of light approached each other.
There was a flash of light when they met, and Red Menace's spark fell slowly to the surface of the planet below as Arsenal closed in on the warship.
He stopped abruptly, and a purple beam cut deeply into the right side of the ship, severing one of the engines.
Lights flickered inside as Demonslayer activated her combat pulpit in the port hangar. She swore, closed her eyes, and choked down the rage rising within her.
Jolt, Thresher, and the Eye opened the door on the rear end of the hangar, and the Eye pointed at two large crates of spare parts placed just in front of the door. "Look out -- boss fight!"
Her prediction was confirmed a fraction of a second later. Demonslayer towered over them in her open-frame exoskeleton, and its eldritch transducers converted her words of power into a swarm of homing curses. Jolt and Thresher ducked behind the crate, as the Eye cartwheeled to avoid a swarm of deadly colored lights that followed her into a sunken repair bay.
Demonslayer took a thundering step forward, focussing her attention on the Eye. Behind her, the wall of the hangar began to glow.
In an instant, a crack opened, and the port side of the hangar bay peeled away from the ship, opening the huge chamber into space.
Demonslayer was blown out instantly, as Thresher activated the grippers on his replacement feet and hung on to Jolt. The Eye tried to grab the edge of the repair bay, but her fingers slipped.
Thinking quickly, Thresher shot a tether to her, and she grabbed it and held on for dear life as Arsenal flew in through the hole in the hull.
Arsenal saw the Eye struggle to keep her hold on the tether, and gestured towards the gash he had made in the warship. Like a film running backwards, the hull re-assembled itself, and the Eye fell to the floor, tumbling.
"Sorry about that." He touched down next to his team-mates. The Eye gave him a dirty look.
Jolt squinted at him, smirked, and said, "Be more careful next time. You can keep the new outfit."
The credits roll as the four heroes walk towards the bridge of the captured enemy warship.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Beating the Odds
"Where's the first wave? What happened?"
"Calm down, kid. We all know what happened."
"Hope they got the job done."
"They're dead. They're all dead!"
The voice comms between ships in the cloud of improvised fighters were interrupted by a hail from the Reyll battleship that watched over them. An old woman's voice called out to the panicked pilots.
"It is done. Sedgewick Station's defense batteries are in chaos. Second wave, fall in and pull out!"
There was a moment of silence after Demonslayer spoke, and the first few fighters gathered for the second wave.
Inside Sedgewick Station, a semi-circle of troopers in powered armor aimed their cannon at the ship that just made an unauthorized landing at the air-docks. The commander turned on his suit's public address system and his amplified voice echoed in the hangar.
"COME OUT NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"
A hatch opened beneath the skull-like armored carapace that covered the front compartment of the illegally parked star-ship. Peter and Jinx approached the soldiers, who lowered their weapons.
Peter waved casually at the troopers. "Arsenal, reporting for duty. Take us to the nearest civil defense base! The next wave is coming any moment now!"
Jinx tried to keep Peter between her and the soldiers. She peeked out from behind him as they were led away to the nearest base.
Half of the remaining fighters began their burn down the gravity well towards Sedgewick Station. Bob-Luke was nervous as the small ships crossed over the lowest point of their orbits and the space station rose suddenly over the horizon of the bombed-out planet beneath them.
The defensive batteries on the distant space station began to strobe erratically. A few of the lead fighters exploded violently, sending debris back down the gravity well and into the path of the oncoming fighters. Bob-Luke pulsed the lateral thrusters to avoid a large fragment of one of his comrades' engine pods. He realized that he was hyperventilating, and did his best to calm himself as he approached Sedgewick Station.
It was time to start decelerating, to prepare to land on Sedgewick Station and seek a conduit that would take him and his bug bombs to the core of the vast space station.
The command bunker was lit with red emergency lights. As Peter and Jinx entered the room, a few soldiers looked up from their screens and stared for a moment before returning to their monitors. The commanding officer walked towards Peter and saluted.
"What's the situation, soldier?"
Peter almost didn't let him finish the question. "We think they will attempt to fire a cobalt bomb at the bio-reactor in the middle of Big Rock. Their goal is to contaminate our supply of air and water, and force an evacuation of the Station."
The officer squinted. "So we can expect another wave, and they'll try to land." He paused for a fraction of a second, and turned to the soldiers working the monitors. "Tell the defensive batteries to concentrate fire on ships approaching landing areas or external structures."
Jinx spoke up. "I can remotely detonate the bombs. We can destroy the fighters before they get the chance to come too close, but we need some time to get the right equipment."
The commander gave Jinx an odd look. "Yeah. You guys go work on that."
Jinx seemed uncomfortable. She grabbed Peter's arm, and they teleported out of the cramped bunker into an open marketplace. Peter needed a second to get his bearings. "So, what do we need?"
Jinx narrowed her eyes. "A commerce terminal. Let's go."
She strode off towards a stand selling live snacks, and Peter followed.
Bob-Luke gunned his engines, decelerating rapidly. He had spotted a landing zone. Three of his comrades streaked ahead of him, and were cut down by the gunner protecting the private loading dock on Promenade Five, Sedgewick Station's largest shopping mall. Bob-Luke locked on to the gun emplacement, punched in a four-digit arming code, and fired one of his two missiles.
Dodging debris, he tried to match his vector to the station. Radiation alarms in his cockpit triggered as he passed through the plume of cobalt-contaminated dust rising from the former site of the defense battery. He needed an opening, and he needed it fast. The external door nearest the gun site was open a crack. He ignored the radiation alarms and slipped through the gap into the evacuated loading dock.
He cursed as his fighter suddenly jerked, caught in the acceleration field between a pair of gravity modulation plates. He was inside. He caught his breath, and silenced the radiation alarms. The pressure door to the stock room was directly ahead of him. He closed his eyes and gunned the engine.
The emergency balloons inflated a fraction of a second after he punched through the airlock. Employees scattered, flinging boxes of shoes and knocking over racks of clothing as Bob-Luke guided his fighter towards the store-front. Some future employee of the cycle hit the alarms.
At the other end of Promenade Five, a security guard driving a cart grumbled as he saw his call light flash. He grabbed his communicator, and his supervisor began screaming at him. It took him a second to realize that this was not a reprimand -- this was an emergency. A grin broke out on his face, as he realized that his time had come.
Long ago, he had saved a division head's nephew from a T-room encounter gone bad. In exchange for his discretion, he had been permitted to carry military-grade weaponry in case of grand theft or terrorist attack. He unlocked the gun box beneath the seat of his security cart, and gazed on his arsenal of weaponry -- a plasma assault rifle, a shoulder-fired rail-gun, a selection of 40mm shells.
It was time to lay his life on the line.
Peter and Jinx stood at the live snacks stand. Jinx took a bite of her mouse-in-a-bun and casually flipped over the commerce terminal to examine its card slot. Her eyes widened, and she poked Peter in the ribs with her elbow.
"What?"
Jinx swallowed. "It doesn't have a slot."
Peter looked irritated. "What?"
The man behind the stand grinned. "Everybody does certificate validation on-line. That's what the metro-net is for! Only hicks in the sticks use smart-cards!"
Peter rubbed his forehead. "Oh, crap."
Bob-Luke's fighter blasted through the storefront, scattering dresses and handbags into the main concourse. His vessel plowed through a stand selling sunglasses as it gained speed and hurtled through the shopping mall.
Bob-Luke goosed his engines and struggled to keep his fighter flying straight and level as it accelerated past the speed of sound. Behind him, he left a whirlwind of shattered storefronts, pieces of incautious and unlucky shoppers, and fragments of consumer products. He had covered slightly more than half the length of the concourse, and would be out of the mall in a matter of seconds.
The security guard's heart pounded as faced down the storm of death approaching him. He shouldered his rail-gun and fired a shot into the center of the maelstrom. The shell burst milliseconds later, releasing a cloud of flechettes.
The bow-shock from Bob-Luke's fighter caught them and they tumbled harmlessly into his slipstream. The security guard did not even have time to finish his curse as the shock wave pounded him into red paste and shattered the entrance doors leading to the parking lot.
Jinx and Peter had spent the last moments futilely attempting to find a commerce terminal that would take a smart card for certificate validation. Every newspaper stand, snack bar, and sidewalk musician on Sedgewick Station seemed to be using the metropolitan networks to do their transaction processing. Peter was exasperated as Jinx poked him in the arm.
"Maybe drugs are the answer."
Peter, nervous and irritated, snapped at Jinx. "What?!"
"See that kid on the corner -- the twitchy little punk trying to look cool?"
Peter became a little more thoughtful. "Yeah. Why?"
"He's nervous because he has a pocket full of shrooms and thinks you're going to bust him. I think he just bought them."
Peter looked at Jinx, and then at the kid, who broke into a panicked run. "Got it."
A moment later, Peter grabbed the young man by the lapels of his leather jacket and lifted him up to look him straight in the eyes. Jinx stifled a giggle as Peter growled, "Take me to your dealer!"
Bob-Luke blasted through the toll air-locks leading to the evacuated Number Ten Freeway, and continued his mad dash to the center of Big Rock. Commuters stuck in the chronic traffic jams flipped him off as he streaked past their bubbles of air and warmth.
Bob-Luke didn't notice. His eyes were focused straight ahead, and his reflexes were razor-sharp. He knew now that he was the one, and like a mantra, the phrase "I am Number Seven" ran through his mind. He grinned like a maniac.
Peter and Jinx re-materialized in the civil defense command center. On the big screen, the alarms caused by Bob-Luke's trail of destruction were the focus of attention. A chaos of voices tried to arrange a squad of troopers in hard-suits to erect a road-block.
Peter and Jinx approached a comms console, and were intercepted by a systems administrator. He looked at the offline commerce terminal, covered in psychedelic stickers, with manifest horror. "No. No, I'm not letting you plug that thing into my equipment. Do you know where it's been?"
Jinx looked at him with a cold fire in his eyes, and pulled his gaze into hers. In a deep voice, she muttered "Mind crush". The administrator slumped to the floor, and she turned to Peter. "I think you'd better stop that kid. He's getting close to the target."
Peter looked at the screen, and then at Jinx. "Can I trust you?"
She smiled. "No, not really. But I'll do what I said I'll do."
Peter thought for a moment, then rushed out the door to intercept Bob-Luke.
Demonslayer watched the ships return from the second wave, and with a silent gesture, gave the order to assemble a third wave. The possibility of success flickered on the edges of her perception, and she began to iterate through the stations of her master plan. She realized with a start that her information was incomplete. Her mind reached out.
Jinx was alone in a room filled with soldiers occupied with organizing the defense of Sedgewick Station. Next to her lay an unconscious system administrator, and before her was an open panel. As she reached out to grab a signal cable to a nearby transmitter, she noticed that the voices suddenly stopped, and that her arm was no longer moving.
A voice called to her in this moment of grotesquely dilated time. She smelled incense and heard the whirring of cooling fans.
"Very good, Number Six. You are in their nerve center."
The silence of the technicians behind her irritated Jinx. She plugged the transmission cable into the gaudily decorated commerce terminal. Her mind covered the action with a superficial layer of indignation.
"I see you've deigned to contact me personally. Don't forget your ablutions afterward, you self-righteous old--"
A voice began to enunciate a word behind her. She was relieved to feel some of the passage of time. The connection locked into place, and her hand moved slowly and deliberately towards her jacket pocket.
"You were one of us. You knew their ways and found the means to enact our plan. You are a part of the whole--"
"I've got a hole you can--"
"Spare me your juvenile provocations. We're on the same side, it says so in your contract."
Her hand moved so slowly. More morphemes dribbled out of mouths behind her at a maddeningly slow rate.
Demonslayer continued her mental intrusion. "Think of it. A perfect moment of chaos, and we can win. We'll be winners."
The smart card was in her hand. She looked away from it quickly before its significance entered her stream of consciousness.
Deep inside Jinx's mind, near the boundary between this world and eternity, something growled. Jinx's waking self briefly blinked out of existence, and it's voice boomed across the psychic link joining her with Demonslayer.
"LIFE IS NOT A GAME, YOU ARROGANT OLD BITCH."
Demonslayer's mind recoiled, and Jinx felt her perception of time return to normal. She inserted the smart card and double-checked her connections.
Near the center of Big Rock, Bob-Luke felt like his nerves were singing. The voice in his head had become a chorus. He knew he was the one, and that all the terrible long nights on the streets surrounding the East Pole had a meaning, and that meaning was the bomb that would force the Corporation to abandon its headquarters, all the Corporate big-wigs would get to see how it feels, and--
His thoughts were interrupted by an invisible wall. His fighter skidded along the bottom of the evacuated Freeway, and he wondered if he was dead yet. His canopy was cracked, and the air was leaking out, and something was walking towards him.
It pointed at him, there was a flash of light, and then Bob-Luke was dead.
Peter walked to the shattered star-fighter and looked at the missile beneath the buckled left front canard. He grasped the warhead, and the pins holding it onto the propulsion unit released. He held the bomb in his hand and examined it for a moment.
In the command center, Jinx's usual self looked up from her work. Her mind sent a last message through the fading mental link to Demonslayer. "...and as for our contract -- I resign!"
She typed in the PIN -- zero, eight, one, five.
The third wave was skimming over the atmosphere of the home world, on their way to render Sedgewick Station uninhabitable.
Peter saw a warning light blink on the spherical physics package. For a panicked millisecond, he cursed not knowing where he could get rid of the bomb.
Jinx pressed OK.
Debris and radioactive cobalt rained down into the ash-colored skies of a ruined world.
Peter thought for a moment, and the light went out.
On the bridge of the Reyll warship, Demonslayer was suddenly, unnaturally awake. She bolted up from her captain's chair, and stormed off to her quarters, bellowing.
Behind the warship, the Nightstalker emerged from hyperspace. A ventral airlock opened, and Thresher adjusted his position before firing a tether at the battleship. He reeled it in, pulling himself closer to the nearest airlock on the Reyll warship.
Peter poked his head into the command center, and casually tossed a metal ball to Jinx, who reflexively caught it. She started as soon as she realized that it was the physics package from Bob-Luke's last bug bomb.
He smiled at her. "Nice catch."
Jinx laughed nervously.
He gestured over his shoulder. "I've got to go. We've found Demonslayer's ship."
"Be careful." The words slipped out of Jinx before she knew what she was saying. Peter had already left.
"Calm down, kid. We all know what happened."
"Hope they got the job done."
"They're dead. They're all dead!"
The voice comms between ships in the cloud of improvised fighters were interrupted by a hail from the Reyll battleship that watched over them. An old woman's voice called out to the panicked pilots.
"It is done. Sedgewick Station's defense batteries are in chaos. Second wave, fall in and pull out!"
There was a moment of silence after Demonslayer spoke, and the first few fighters gathered for the second wave.
Inside Sedgewick Station, a semi-circle of troopers in powered armor aimed their cannon at the ship that just made an unauthorized landing at the air-docks. The commander turned on his suit's public address system and his amplified voice echoed in the hangar.
"COME OUT NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"
A hatch opened beneath the skull-like armored carapace that covered the front compartment of the illegally parked star-ship. Peter and Jinx approached the soldiers, who lowered their weapons.
Peter waved casually at the troopers. "Arsenal, reporting for duty. Take us to the nearest civil defense base! The next wave is coming any moment now!"
Jinx tried to keep Peter between her and the soldiers. She peeked out from behind him as they were led away to the nearest base.
Half of the remaining fighters began their burn down the gravity well towards Sedgewick Station. Bob-Luke was nervous as the small ships crossed over the lowest point of their orbits and the space station rose suddenly over the horizon of the bombed-out planet beneath them.
The defensive batteries on the distant space station began to strobe erratically. A few of the lead fighters exploded violently, sending debris back down the gravity well and into the path of the oncoming fighters. Bob-Luke pulsed the lateral thrusters to avoid a large fragment of one of his comrades' engine pods. He realized that he was hyperventilating, and did his best to calm himself as he approached Sedgewick Station.
It was time to start decelerating, to prepare to land on Sedgewick Station and seek a conduit that would take him and his bug bombs to the core of the vast space station.
The command bunker was lit with red emergency lights. As Peter and Jinx entered the room, a few soldiers looked up from their screens and stared for a moment before returning to their monitors. The commanding officer walked towards Peter and saluted.
"What's the situation, soldier?"
Peter almost didn't let him finish the question. "We think they will attempt to fire a cobalt bomb at the bio-reactor in the middle of Big Rock. Their goal is to contaminate our supply of air and water, and force an evacuation of the Station."
The officer squinted. "So we can expect another wave, and they'll try to land." He paused for a fraction of a second, and turned to the soldiers working the monitors. "Tell the defensive batteries to concentrate fire on ships approaching landing areas or external structures."
Jinx spoke up. "I can remotely detonate the bombs. We can destroy the fighters before they get the chance to come too close, but we need some time to get the right equipment."
The commander gave Jinx an odd look. "Yeah. You guys go work on that."
Jinx seemed uncomfortable. She grabbed Peter's arm, and they teleported out of the cramped bunker into an open marketplace. Peter needed a second to get his bearings. "So, what do we need?"
Jinx narrowed her eyes. "A commerce terminal. Let's go."
She strode off towards a stand selling live snacks, and Peter followed.
Bob-Luke gunned his engines, decelerating rapidly. He had spotted a landing zone. Three of his comrades streaked ahead of him, and were cut down by the gunner protecting the private loading dock on Promenade Five, Sedgewick Station's largest shopping mall. Bob-Luke locked on to the gun emplacement, punched in a four-digit arming code, and fired one of his two missiles.
Dodging debris, he tried to match his vector to the station. Radiation alarms in his cockpit triggered as he passed through the plume of cobalt-contaminated dust rising from the former site of the defense battery. He needed an opening, and he needed it fast. The external door nearest the gun site was open a crack. He ignored the radiation alarms and slipped through the gap into the evacuated loading dock.
He cursed as his fighter suddenly jerked, caught in the acceleration field between a pair of gravity modulation plates. He was inside. He caught his breath, and silenced the radiation alarms. The pressure door to the stock room was directly ahead of him. He closed his eyes and gunned the engine.
The emergency balloons inflated a fraction of a second after he punched through the airlock. Employees scattered, flinging boxes of shoes and knocking over racks of clothing as Bob-Luke guided his fighter towards the store-front. Some future employee of the cycle hit the alarms.
At the other end of Promenade Five, a security guard driving a cart grumbled as he saw his call light flash. He grabbed his communicator, and his supervisor began screaming at him. It took him a second to realize that this was not a reprimand -- this was an emergency. A grin broke out on his face, as he realized that his time had come.
Long ago, he had saved a division head's nephew from a T-room encounter gone bad. In exchange for his discretion, he had been permitted to carry military-grade weaponry in case of grand theft or terrorist attack. He unlocked the gun box beneath the seat of his security cart, and gazed on his arsenal of weaponry -- a plasma assault rifle, a shoulder-fired rail-gun, a selection of 40mm shells.
It was time to lay his life on the line.
Peter and Jinx stood at the live snacks stand. Jinx took a bite of her mouse-in-a-bun and casually flipped over the commerce terminal to examine its card slot. Her eyes widened, and she poked Peter in the ribs with her elbow.
"What?"
Jinx swallowed. "It doesn't have a slot."
Peter looked irritated. "What?"
The man behind the stand grinned. "Everybody does certificate validation on-line. That's what the metro-net is for! Only hicks in the sticks use smart-cards!"
Peter rubbed his forehead. "Oh, crap."
Bob-Luke's fighter blasted through the storefront, scattering dresses and handbags into the main concourse. His vessel plowed through a stand selling sunglasses as it gained speed and hurtled through the shopping mall.
Bob-Luke goosed his engines and struggled to keep his fighter flying straight and level as it accelerated past the speed of sound. Behind him, he left a whirlwind of shattered storefronts, pieces of incautious and unlucky shoppers, and fragments of consumer products. He had covered slightly more than half the length of the concourse, and would be out of the mall in a matter of seconds.
The security guard's heart pounded as faced down the storm of death approaching him. He shouldered his rail-gun and fired a shot into the center of the maelstrom. The shell burst milliseconds later, releasing a cloud of flechettes.
The bow-shock from Bob-Luke's fighter caught them and they tumbled harmlessly into his slipstream. The security guard did not even have time to finish his curse as the shock wave pounded him into red paste and shattered the entrance doors leading to the parking lot.
Jinx and Peter had spent the last moments futilely attempting to find a commerce terminal that would take a smart card for certificate validation. Every newspaper stand, snack bar, and sidewalk musician on Sedgewick Station seemed to be using the metropolitan networks to do their transaction processing. Peter was exasperated as Jinx poked him in the arm.
"Maybe drugs are the answer."
Peter, nervous and irritated, snapped at Jinx. "What?!"
"See that kid on the corner -- the twitchy little punk trying to look cool?"
Peter became a little more thoughtful. "Yeah. Why?"
"He's nervous because he has a pocket full of shrooms and thinks you're going to bust him. I think he just bought them."
Peter looked at Jinx, and then at the kid, who broke into a panicked run. "Got it."
A moment later, Peter grabbed the young man by the lapels of his leather jacket and lifted him up to look him straight in the eyes. Jinx stifled a giggle as Peter growled, "Take me to your dealer!"
Bob-Luke blasted through the toll air-locks leading to the evacuated Number Ten Freeway, and continued his mad dash to the center of Big Rock. Commuters stuck in the chronic traffic jams flipped him off as he streaked past their bubbles of air and warmth.
Bob-Luke didn't notice. His eyes were focused straight ahead, and his reflexes were razor-sharp. He knew now that he was the one, and like a mantra, the phrase "I am Number Seven" ran through his mind. He grinned like a maniac.
Peter and Jinx re-materialized in the civil defense command center. On the big screen, the alarms caused by Bob-Luke's trail of destruction were the focus of attention. A chaos of voices tried to arrange a squad of troopers in hard-suits to erect a road-block.
Peter and Jinx approached a comms console, and were intercepted by a systems administrator. He looked at the offline commerce terminal, covered in psychedelic stickers, with manifest horror. "No. No, I'm not letting you plug that thing into my equipment. Do you know where it's been?"
Jinx looked at him with a cold fire in his eyes, and pulled his gaze into hers. In a deep voice, she muttered "Mind crush". The administrator slumped to the floor, and she turned to Peter. "I think you'd better stop that kid. He's getting close to the target."
Peter looked at the screen, and then at Jinx. "Can I trust you?"
She smiled. "No, not really. But I'll do what I said I'll do."
Peter thought for a moment, then rushed out the door to intercept Bob-Luke.
Demonslayer watched the ships return from the second wave, and with a silent gesture, gave the order to assemble a third wave. The possibility of success flickered on the edges of her perception, and she began to iterate through the stations of her master plan. She realized with a start that her information was incomplete. Her mind reached out.
Jinx was alone in a room filled with soldiers occupied with organizing the defense of Sedgewick Station. Next to her lay an unconscious system administrator, and before her was an open panel. As she reached out to grab a signal cable to a nearby transmitter, she noticed that the voices suddenly stopped, and that her arm was no longer moving.
A voice called to her in this moment of grotesquely dilated time. She smelled incense and heard the whirring of cooling fans.
"Very good, Number Six. You are in their nerve center."
The silence of the technicians behind her irritated Jinx. She plugged the transmission cable into the gaudily decorated commerce terminal. Her mind covered the action with a superficial layer of indignation.
"I see you've deigned to contact me personally. Don't forget your ablutions afterward, you self-righteous old--"
A voice began to enunciate a word behind her. She was relieved to feel some of the passage of time. The connection locked into place, and her hand moved slowly and deliberately towards her jacket pocket.
"You were one of us. You knew their ways and found the means to enact our plan. You are a part of the whole--"
"I've got a hole you can--"
"Spare me your juvenile provocations. We're on the same side, it says so in your contract."
Her hand moved so slowly. More morphemes dribbled out of mouths behind her at a maddeningly slow rate.
Demonslayer continued her mental intrusion. "Think of it. A perfect moment of chaos, and we can win. We'll be winners."
The smart card was in her hand. She looked away from it quickly before its significance entered her stream of consciousness.
Deep inside Jinx's mind, near the boundary between this world and eternity, something growled. Jinx's waking self briefly blinked out of existence, and it's voice boomed across the psychic link joining her with Demonslayer.
"LIFE IS NOT A GAME, YOU ARROGANT OLD BITCH."
Demonslayer's mind recoiled, and Jinx felt her perception of time return to normal. She inserted the smart card and double-checked her connections.
Near the center of Big Rock, Bob-Luke felt like his nerves were singing. The voice in his head had become a chorus. He knew he was the one, and that all the terrible long nights on the streets surrounding the East Pole had a meaning, and that meaning was the bomb that would force the Corporation to abandon its headquarters, all the Corporate big-wigs would get to see how it feels, and--
His thoughts were interrupted by an invisible wall. His fighter skidded along the bottom of the evacuated Freeway, and he wondered if he was dead yet. His canopy was cracked, and the air was leaking out, and something was walking towards him.
It pointed at him, there was a flash of light, and then Bob-Luke was dead.
Peter walked to the shattered star-fighter and looked at the missile beneath the buckled left front canard. He grasped the warhead, and the pins holding it onto the propulsion unit released. He held the bomb in his hand and examined it for a moment.
In the command center, Jinx's usual self looked up from her work. Her mind sent a last message through the fading mental link to Demonslayer. "...and as for our contract -- I resign!"
She typed in the PIN -- zero, eight, one, five.
The third wave was skimming over the atmosphere of the home world, on their way to render Sedgewick Station uninhabitable.
Peter saw a warning light blink on the spherical physics package. For a panicked millisecond, he cursed not knowing where he could get rid of the bomb.
Jinx pressed OK.
Debris and radioactive cobalt rained down into the ash-colored skies of a ruined world.
Peter thought for a moment, and the light went out.
On the bridge of the Reyll warship, Demonslayer was suddenly, unnaturally awake. She bolted up from her captain's chair, and stormed off to her quarters, bellowing.
Behind the warship, the Nightstalker emerged from hyperspace. A ventral airlock opened, and Thresher adjusted his position before firing a tether at the battleship. He reeled it in, pulling himself closer to the nearest airlock on the Reyll warship.
Peter poked his head into the command center, and casually tossed a metal ball to Jinx, who reflexively caught it. She started as soon as she realized that it was the physics package from Bob-Luke's last bug bomb.
He smiled at her. "Nice catch."
Jinx laughed nervously.
He gestured over his shoulder. "I've got to go. We've found Demonslayer's ship."
"Be careful." The words slipped out of Jinx before she knew what she was saying. Peter had already left.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Forward to Death
Peter ducked as he entered the cramped state-room turned into an improvised laboratory. Jinx sat at a table, and pulled a plastic card bearing a printed circuit from a lime-green apparatus with a set of various-sized slots and a few indicator lights. She turned to face Peter as he came into the room.
"We're going to be joining the fleet soon." Peter looked around. "What are you doing?"
"Setting up a remote detonator for the bombs they're using." Jinx examined the card carefully.
"A remote detonator? How's that going to work?" Peter was curious.
"Getting the bombs was easy. The hard part was figuring out how to detonate them." Jinx played with the card.
"Right. You need an arming request that the warhead is willing to trust. So, how did you do that?" Peter crossed his arms in front of him.
"The bombs have a hard-wired set of trusted signers for arming requests. Fortunately for us bad guys, many of these signers have been compromised. This card contains a delegated signer signed by one of them."
"I think I understand. Using the signer on the card -- which you control -- you can send a request that references a trusted signer in the warhead."
"Right. This card looks like a delegate of a trusted signer as far as the warhead is concerned. The arming system is a modified commerce terminal that can use the card to construct the arming request. All they have to do is enter a PIN to arm their bombs." Jinx smiled with some satisfaction. "Come on, let's head to the bridge. I'm going to need to do some course adjustments to fit in with the fleet."
Jinx's ship tumbled through hyperspace. It was a heavily modified freighter, with surplus engines and guns retrofitted onto the ends of two wing-like spars. The bridge, in a forward-facing module, was covered by an improvised carapace painted with a fanged skull pattern. A dorsal fin bore M-Seven's ligature, the letter M with a lightning bolt for its right descender.
As space became less twisted and warped, and slowly transitioned to its more familiar pseudo-Euclidean geometry, the bubble of space surrounding the vessel began to merge with the cloud of home brew fighters, escorted and re-fueled by a score of Reyll battleships.
The bridge of the pirate ship was dark. Peter looked up at the monitor and saw that a new async message had been pushed to the makeshift fleet. He looked at the M-Seven logo dancing on his screen with some distaste.
"Mail from Number Two."
Jinx sat at the helm. Her body was tense, but her face was calm and concentrated. She adjusted her trim hyper-thrusters to join the cloud of attacking fighters. There was a long pause before she could answer Peter.
"Oh, joy. Demonslayer wants to inspire the troops. Put it on, we're gonna need a laugh."
Peter brought up the video stream on a secondary monitor. Demonslayer was no longer wearing her mask, and he could not help noticing how sad and worn her eyes looked.
"Comrades! Our moment has come. Now we join to excise the alien cancer. But do not be fooled -- it will be hard and bloody work. I shall not lie to you. Almost none of the first wave will survive the initial assault."
Jinx muttered, "Yeah, no shit," under her breath.
Demonslayer continued. "Cleave to the plan. The first wave will be of the unmarried and the orphaned. Only those whose death will not cause pain to the living. Their sacrifice will enable our victory. Our battleships will draw away any defenders in the system -- we shall then signal all wave leaders to begin the assault. Remain attentive, our time has come!"
Peter raised his eyebrows as the message suddenly ended. "I still can't believe the plan is to fly straight into Sedgewick Station's defensive batteries. Demonslayer's right -- they'll all be wiped out!" He watched a nearby battleship leave hyperspace.
Jinx thought for a moment. "Yeah. Hope your force-field powers are still working."
"Oh yes." Peter smiled, and noticed a new incoming communication, this one a live transmission. "They've sent the beacon for the first wave. Ready?"
Jinx's eye narrowed and she hunkered down in her pilot's chair. "Ready!"
They rematerialized in orbit around their species' former home world. Even from the distance, it was clear that the skies of Fe Arra were still choked with ash from fires that had been burning for over two hundred years. Sedgewick Station was on the opposite side of the planet.
Peter and Jinx followed the thousand fighters of the first wave as they dove down the gravity well. Much of the simulation they had studied had been practice scenarios for this run, an eccentric orbit that would take them down the gravity well to the edge of the home world's exosphere, and then back up, twisting upwards to Sedgewick Station.
They watched the planet turn from a disk to a horizon, with a cloud of fighters in front of them. Jinx turned to Peter. "Force screen?"
Peter nodded. "Way ahead of you." He looked at the comms console. "Message from the leader -- putting it on."
The leader of the first wave was an old man who was missing a good chunk out of his left ear. "All right, girls. Here we go. Close to 1500 klicks and let 'em eat both rockets. Spread out, don't bunch up or we're all dead. Full burn.... now!"
They watched the huge space station slowly rise over the curved horizon. It was far enough away that it still looked like a disk.
It took a second or two for the first bolts to reach the oncoming fighters. The tiny, lop-sided disk, slowly rising in the sky, pulsated with energy discharges. Peter watched as the defense batteries picked off the oncoming fighters. The casualties seemed to fall back -- the rest of the group were accelerating towards the station.
The fire from the station became more intense as the vessels approached. The station, in its current form, was dominated by two asteroids captured a century and a half ago. Silvery strips of superstructure bound the two round rocks together into a structure that resembled a cantaloupe duct-taped to a bowling ball.
Sensors on the surface of the station worked together to coordinate the fire of the defense batteries. The explosions from struck fighters became more frequent; now, dozens of fighters were dropping away from the wave each second, many burning or breaking up.
The old man would had led the charge was long dead, but another pilot crossed the 1500 klick line. He hurriedly punched in a four-digit code into a keyboard, and watched the "armed" indicators come on. He fired. Within seconds, more missiles joined his own, leaving behind steam-like trails of coolant as they approached the surface of the station.
Peter flinched as he watched a ragged cloud of a few hundred warheads approach Sedgewick Station.
The surface of the station was covered with tiny pin-pricks of light that kicked up plumes of debris. Suddenly, the fire from the station's defense batteries seemed to slow a little.
Jinx noticed Peter's discomfort. "There are hundreds of meters of rock between the surface and any residents. The point of the exercise is to gum up the sensor grids with radioactive cobalt long enough for the second and third waves to attempt a landing."
"Yeah." Peter still looked worried.
They came closer to the space station. The silvery bands holding the rocks together became complex structures of pipes and ducts. Jinx guided the ship into the dockyards, nestled between the two captured asteroids. With a few quick moves, she adjusted her ship's vector to match with the station's, and slowly maneuvered towards the disembarking area.
"Looks like Jolt told them about us." Peter seemed to relax a little as they entered the area between two huge artifical gravity plates. The pirate ship jerked, and began to gently fall. Jinx compensated with thrusters, and set down on an empty parking space.
Peter stood up, almost bumping his head on the low ceiling. He turned to Jinx, who seemed to shrink a little into her pilot's chair.
"Come on!"
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Jinx was shaking a little.
Peter took her hand. "But you are. It's time to be a hero. Let's go!"
"We're going to be joining the fleet soon." Peter looked around. "What are you doing?"
"Setting up a remote detonator for the bombs they're using." Jinx examined the card carefully.
"A remote detonator? How's that going to work?" Peter was curious.
"Getting the bombs was easy. The hard part was figuring out how to detonate them." Jinx played with the card.
"Right. You need an arming request that the warhead is willing to trust. So, how did you do that?" Peter crossed his arms in front of him.
"The bombs have a hard-wired set of trusted signers for arming requests. Fortunately for us bad guys, many of these signers have been compromised. This card contains a delegated signer signed by one of them."
"I think I understand. Using the signer on the card -- which you control -- you can send a request that references a trusted signer in the warhead."
"Right. This card looks like a delegate of a trusted signer as far as the warhead is concerned. The arming system is a modified commerce terminal that can use the card to construct the arming request. All they have to do is enter a PIN to arm their bombs." Jinx smiled with some satisfaction. "Come on, let's head to the bridge. I'm going to need to do some course adjustments to fit in with the fleet."
Jinx's ship tumbled through hyperspace. It was a heavily modified freighter, with surplus engines and guns retrofitted onto the ends of two wing-like spars. The bridge, in a forward-facing module, was covered by an improvised carapace painted with a fanged skull pattern. A dorsal fin bore M-Seven's ligature, the letter M with a lightning bolt for its right descender.
As space became less twisted and warped, and slowly transitioned to its more familiar pseudo-Euclidean geometry, the bubble of space surrounding the vessel began to merge with the cloud of home brew fighters, escorted and re-fueled by a score of Reyll battleships.
The bridge of the pirate ship was dark. Peter looked up at the monitor and saw that a new async message had been pushed to the makeshift fleet. He looked at the M-Seven logo dancing on his screen with some distaste.
"Mail from Number Two."
Jinx sat at the helm. Her body was tense, but her face was calm and concentrated. She adjusted her trim hyper-thrusters to join the cloud of attacking fighters. There was a long pause before she could answer Peter.
"Oh, joy. Demonslayer wants to inspire the troops. Put it on, we're gonna need a laugh."
Peter brought up the video stream on a secondary monitor. Demonslayer was no longer wearing her mask, and he could not help noticing how sad and worn her eyes looked.
"Comrades! Our moment has come. Now we join to excise the alien cancer. But do not be fooled -- it will be hard and bloody work. I shall not lie to you. Almost none of the first wave will survive the initial assault."
Jinx muttered, "Yeah, no shit," under her breath.
Demonslayer continued. "Cleave to the plan. The first wave will be of the unmarried and the orphaned. Only those whose death will not cause pain to the living. Their sacrifice will enable our victory. Our battleships will draw away any defenders in the system -- we shall then signal all wave leaders to begin the assault. Remain attentive, our time has come!"
Peter raised his eyebrows as the message suddenly ended. "I still can't believe the plan is to fly straight into Sedgewick Station's defensive batteries. Demonslayer's right -- they'll all be wiped out!" He watched a nearby battleship leave hyperspace.
Jinx thought for a moment. "Yeah. Hope your force-field powers are still working."
"Oh yes." Peter smiled, and noticed a new incoming communication, this one a live transmission. "They've sent the beacon for the first wave. Ready?"
Jinx's eye narrowed and she hunkered down in her pilot's chair. "Ready!"
They rematerialized in orbit around their species' former home world. Even from the distance, it was clear that the skies of Fe Arra were still choked with ash from fires that had been burning for over two hundred years. Sedgewick Station was on the opposite side of the planet.
Peter and Jinx followed the thousand fighters of the first wave as they dove down the gravity well. Much of the simulation they had studied had been practice scenarios for this run, an eccentric orbit that would take them down the gravity well to the edge of the home world's exosphere, and then back up, twisting upwards to Sedgewick Station.
They watched the planet turn from a disk to a horizon, with a cloud of fighters in front of them. Jinx turned to Peter. "Force screen?"
Peter nodded. "Way ahead of you." He looked at the comms console. "Message from the leader -- putting it on."
The leader of the first wave was an old man who was missing a good chunk out of his left ear. "All right, girls. Here we go. Close to 1500 klicks and let 'em eat both rockets. Spread out, don't bunch up or we're all dead. Full burn.... now!"
They watched the huge space station slowly rise over the curved horizon. It was far enough away that it still looked like a disk.
It took a second or two for the first bolts to reach the oncoming fighters. The tiny, lop-sided disk, slowly rising in the sky, pulsated with energy discharges. Peter watched as the defense batteries picked off the oncoming fighters. The casualties seemed to fall back -- the rest of the group were accelerating towards the station.
The fire from the station became more intense as the vessels approached. The station, in its current form, was dominated by two asteroids captured a century and a half ago. Silvery strips of superstructure bound the two round rocks together into a structure that resembled a cantaloupe duct-taped to a bowling ball.
Sensors on the surface of the station worked together to coordinate the fire of the defense batteries. The explosions from struck fighters became more frequent; now, dozens of fighters were dropping away from the wave each second, many burning or breaking up.
The old man would had led the charge was long dead, but another pilot crossed the 1500 klick line. He hurriedly punched in a four-digit code into a keyboard, and watched the "armed" indicators come on. He fired. Within seconds, more missiles joined his own, leaving behind steam-like trails of coolant as they approached the surface of the station.
Peter flinched as he watched a ragged cloud of a few hundred warheads approach Sedgewick Station.
The surface of the station was covered with tiny pin-pricks of light that kicked up plumes of debris. Suddenly, the fire from the station's defense batteries seemed to slow a little.
Jinx noticed Peter's discomfort. "There are hundreds of meters of rock between the surface and any residents. The point of the exercise is to gum up the sensor grids with radioactive cobalt long enough for the second and third waves to attempt a landing."
"Yeah." Peter still looked worried.
They came closer to the space station. The silvery bands holding the rocks together became complex structures of pipes and ducts. Jinx guided the ship into the dockyards, nestled between the two captured asteroids. With a few quick moves, she adjusted her ship's vector to match with the station's, and slowly maneuvered towards the disembarking area.
"Looks like Jolt told them about us." Peter seemed to relax a little as they entered the area between two huge artifical gravity plates. The pirate ship jerked, and began to gently fall. Jinx compensated with thrusters, and set down on an empty parking space.
Peter stood up, almost bumping his head on the low ceiling. He turned to Jinx, who seemed to shrink a little into her pilot's chair.
"Come on!"
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Jinx was shaking a little.
Peter took her hand. "But you are. It's time to be a hero. Let's go!"
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Duty Calls
The bridge of the Nightstalker was quiet.
The bridge crew sat at their stations. Jolt sat in the command chair, following the event journals as they prepared to free themselves from the thin layer of radioactive cobalt coating the hull. Thresher's torso was duct-taped to a chair in front of the engineering station. Although he seemed to be grievously injured and unconscious, he had patched his robotic voluntary nervous system to his station's command interface. He was rerouting electrical power in the maze of conduits beneath the hull to align their magnetic fields precisely.
The Eye kept watch at the helm. The star-ship's short range sensors were almost useless due to the intensely radioactive film of metal that clung to the outside of the ship, but she was able to use the interrociter to get usable data to feed the fire control and tactical maneuver systems. This allowed the Nightstalker a zone of control covering 10,000 cubic kilometers of space. Since the Nightstalker was quite literally going nowhere anytime soon, this was enough to ensure that they didn't run into anything or anyone until the crisis was resolved.
The First Mate stood next to Jolt's command chair, and reviewed the project checklist on an overhead monitor.
Behind him, Thresher lifted his head and said, "Electrical conduits aligned."
The First Mate gave the cyborg a curt, telegenic nod, and checked the box on the touch-screen with grace and élan.
Executive Officer Benito Franco was the youngest officer ever commissioned by the Corporate Drama Academy. He and Jolt turned to each other, and Jolt gave the order.
"Energize." Powerful electrical currents created a powerful magnetic field that enveloped the entire hull. The cobalt was strongly magnetically permeable. Magnetic domains aligned, and the thin film was quickly magnetized.
Jolt turned around the other way to face Thresher. "How long will we need to magnetize the film?"
"Not very long at all. I think it will be ready in a few minutes." Despite missing the lower half of his cyborg body, Thresher seemed surprisingly lively. "Once it's magnetized, we can reverse the polarity and send pulses of current down the conduits in the opposite direction. The magnetic fields will repel, blasting the metal off the hull."
Jolt smiled at Thresher. "Great work! I'm proud of you guys."
The First Mate peered at the overhead monitor. "Captain, there's an incoming transmission, encrypted." He poked at the comms interface. "Key signature matches Arsenal."
Jolt turned towards the static-filled view-screen. "What? Didn't they find a body? Put this on the main screen."
Peter lay face-down on a bed, partially covered with a thin sheet. Jinx, dressed in a robe, sat down next to him and touched a spot on his back. Peter lifted his head, grinned and began to hum.
Jinx giggled and then gestured towards the end of the bed. "Hey, your encryption thingy finally finished handshaking. I think you have a connection to the Nightstalker."
Peter looked directly into the camera, and quickly leaped up. Thinking quickly, he just managed to cover himself a little with the sheet.
Jinx leaned back and waved at the camera. "Hiya, Sparky!"
Peter put himself together as best he could. He looked straight into the camera with an air of forced disinterest and saluted.
Jolt was not impressed. She sank into her captain's chair and rubbed her temples. The Eye and the First Mate gazed into the view-screen. The Eye's expression was a mixture of amusement and disgust. Thresher seemed consumed by vicarious embarrassment. The First Mate was simply dumbstruck.
"Arsenal here. Did you receive my message? We have a second image from a fighter simulator -- with a little luck, we should be able to reconstruct the attack plan by analyzing M-Seven's simulations."
Jolt looked at the view-screen through the corner of her eye. "What, that huge message that crashed my Inbox?"
"Yeah. That was an executable image of the simulators they used to train the fleet. I've lost my copy, but if you guys could sync with us, we might be able to re-construct the entire attack plan."
"We calculated where the fleet might re-materialize. Sedgewick Station is within the first standard deviation of the target distribution, so we're pretty sure they're going there." Jolt studiously avoided looking at the view-screen.
She turned to the slack-jawed First Mate. "Ben, open a data session."
"Yes, ma'am."
The sync operation quickly compared the images. Streams of data flowed to and from the Nightstalker and Jinx's ship. Jinx looked straight into the camera. "So, our ship has M-Seven livery. We can join up with the attackers--"
Jolt looked at Jinx with a withering glance, and interrupted her. "Did I ask you to speak? I don't remember asking you anything."
Peter spoke up. "It's a good idea. Once we know what they have planned, we might be able to disrupt their operations at a critical point. Attacking from surprise--"
"Yeah, that's not bad. We'll be there. You should try to land on the first wave and assist the defenders."
"Understood, Captain." Peter nodded. "We'll be in touch in a few hours once we've analyzed the composite image."
Jolt scowled at the screen. "Good. Put some clothes on next time. Close transmission."
The crew of the Nightstalker paused for a moment. Jolt then got out of the command chair and turned to her First Mate.
"Ben, you take over. I'm going to go soak my brain in warm soapy water."
The bridge crew sat at their stations. Jolt sat in the command chair, following the event journals as they prepared to free themselves from the thin layer of radioactive cobalt coating the hull. Thresher's torso was duct-taped to a chair in front of the engineering station. Although he seemed to be grievously injured and unconscious, he had patched his robotic voluntary nervous system to his station's command interface. He was rerouting electrical power in the maze of conduits beneath the hull to align their magnetic fields precisely.
The Eye kept watch at the helm. The star-ship's short range sensors were almost useless due to the intensely radioactive film of metal that clung to the outside of the ship, but she was able to use the interrociter to get usable data to feed the fire control and tactical maneuver systems. This allowed the Nightstalker a zone of control covering 10,000 cubic kilometers of space. Since the Nightstalker was quite literally going nowhere anytime soon, this was enough to ensure that they didn't run into anything or anyone until the crisis was resolved.
The First Mate stood next to Jolt's command chair, and reviewed the project checklist on an overhead monitor.
Behind him, Thresher lifted his head and said, "Electrical conduits aligned."
The First Mate gave the cyborg a curt, telegenic nod, and checked the box on the touch-screen with grace and élan.
Executive Officer Benito Franco was the youngest officer ever commissioned by the Corporate Drama Academy. He and Jolt turned to each other, and Jolt gave the order.
"Energize." Powerful electrical currents created a powerful magnetic field that enveloped the entire hull. The cobalt was strongly magnetically permeable. Magnetic domains aligned, and the thin film was quickly magnetized.
Jolt turned around the other way to face Thresher. "How long will we need to magnetize the film?"
"Not very long at all. I think it will be ready in a few minutes." Despite missing the lower half of his cyborg body, Thresher seemed surprisingly lively. "Once it's magnetized, we can reverse the polarity and send pulses of current down the conduits in the opposite direction. The magnetic fields will repel, blasting the metal off the hull."
Jolt smiled at Thresher. "Great work! I'm proud of you guys."
The First Mate peered at the overhead monitor. "Captain, there's an incoming transmission, encrypted." He poked at the comms interface. "Key signature matches Arsenal."
Jolt turned towards the static-filled view-screen. "What? Didn't they find a body? Put this on the main screen."
Peter lay face-down on a bed, partially covered with a thin sheet. Jinx, dressed in a robe, sat down next to him and touched a spot on his back. Peter lifted his head, grinned and began to hum.
Jinx giggled and then gestured towards the end of the bed. "Hey, your encryption thingy finally finished handshaking. I think you have a connection to the Nightstalker."
Peter looked directly into the camera, and quickly leaped up. Thinking quickly, he just managed to cover himself a little with the sheet.
Jinx leaned back and waved at the camera. "Hiya, Sparky!"
Peter put himself together as best he could. He looked straight into the camera with an air of forced disinterest and saluted.
Jolt was not impressed. She sank into her captain's chair and rubbed her temples. The Eye and the First Mate gazed into the view-screen. The Eye's expression was a mixture of amusement and disgust. Thresher seemed consumed by vicarious embarrassment. The First Mate was simply dumbstruck.
"Arsenal here. Did you receive my message? We have a second image from a fighter simulator -- with a little luck, we should be able to reconstruct the attack plan by analyzing M-Seven's simulations."
Jolt looked at the view-screen through the corner of her eye. "What, that huge message that crashed my Inbox?"
"Yeah. That was an executable image of the simulators they used to train the fleet. I've lost my copy, but if you guys could sync with us, we might be able to re-construct the entire attack plan."
"We calculated where the fleet might re-materialize. Sedgewick Station is within the first standard deviation of the target distribution, so we're pretty sure they're going there." Jolt studiously avoided looking at the view-screen.
She turned to the slack-jawed First Mate. "Ben, open a data session."
"Yes, ma'am."
The sync operation quickly compared the images. Streams of data flowed to and from the Nightstalker and Jinx's ship. Jinx looked straight into the camera. "So, our ship has M-Seven livery. We can join up with the attackers--"
Jolt looked at Jinx with a withering glance, and interrupted her. "Did I ask you to speak? I don't remember asking you anything."
Peter spoke up. "It's a good idea. Once we know what they have planned, we might be able to disrupt their operations at a critical point. Attacking from surprise--"
"Yeah, that's not bad. We'll be there. You should try to land on the first wave and assist the defenders."
"Understood, Captain." Peter nodded. "We'll be in touch in a few hours once we've analyzed the composite image."
Jolt scowled at the screen. "Good. Put some clothes on next time. Close transmission."
The crew of the Nightstalker paused for a moment. Jolt then got out of the command chair and turned to her First Mate.
"Ben, you take over. I'm going to go soak my brain in warm soapy water."
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Beyond Belief
Jinx looked down at her fists and laughed a little.
"Huh. You tagged out."
"Yep." Peter stood in front of her with his arms folded.
"It must be my charming personality." Jinx smiled at Peter in mock flirtation.
"I'm immune. Type 350 clones have extraordinarily low sex drives. Anyway, you ripped out my larynx with your -- uh -- sharp thing." Peter was a little taken aback, and rubbed his throat.
"It's a war spork. A weapon developed from a very old tool for skinning fresh kills." Jinx pulled the war spork from the inside of her jacket, and pointed to the parts of the weapon as she continued. "The spike penetrates the carcass, then you run it along the side to separate the skin and fat from the meat. You can then use the spoon part to scrape fat and muscle off the skin for curing."
"That was totally educational. Creepy, too."
"M-Seven, at your service. We're all about the old creepy stuff. There are some neat sword and spear-breaking techniques you can do with it." Jinx demonstrated a few quick strokes with the weapon. Peter kept his arms folded in front of him as Jinx stabbed the air.
Peter looked at Jinx. "Would you put that thing away?"
"Don't be scared -- it's just a tool. I put a whammy on it that attacked your nervous system. It's hard to defend yourself when you can't think or move -- not that that stopped you from trying."
"I did my best. It's hard to keep your balance when you can't feel anything."
"That's what I told the judge at my last drunk and disorderly trial." Jinx nodded towards the exit of the living area, and tucked her weapon back into her inside jacket pocket. "Let's take a look while we still have some time."
"Yeah, let's do that. I'm curious."
They walked into the courtyard, where a hole filled with ashes marked the location of a former fire pit. Peter looked into the hole filled with ashes as Jinx picked up a battered piece of colorful cardboard from the ground.
Jinx gestured to Peter. "Come here! They must be shutting down the training program -- this is one of the lottery cards they used to select new recruits."
Peter looked over Jinx's shoulder at the battered piece of cardboard marked with purple numbers. "A lottery?"
Classical lotteries, where prizes are simply given to those who had the dumb luck to have a certain number of matches to the randomly drawn numbers, were extremely uncommon. The most popular games were cumulative lotteries, where players collected matches from daily drawings and tried to place them in winning "hands" to claim prizes from the pot.
The lottery card was printed with a gaudy holographic pattern to discourage forgery and changing made bets. Based on a small section of the card, a lottery operator could uniquely identify it and its corresponding series of bets.
Jinx looked at Peter as he examined the matrix of numbers marked with stamps. She found that she could still read his face and imagine what was going on in his head simply by examining his expression. Discovering that she could, she did -- until she realized with a start that he was now looking at her with the same probing gaze.
They broke eye contact, and each took half-a-step away from the other in an attempt to re-assert their personal spaces. There was an awkward moment. Jinx's gaze sank to the dusty ground as she imagined for a moment what Peter must be thinking. Peter briefly seemed stunned, uncertain what to say or do next.
When he broke his silence, Jinx felt suddenly sad and ashamed. "Were you trying to do something to my mind?"
"No. Not anything paranormal, anyway." She stopped for a moment to push the shame from her mind. "I fed on your essence. I took into myself what makes you the person you are. This has some side effects. Right now, I feel a connection to you because we are looking at the same things, and responding to them in similar ways. This creates a context of shared feelings that--"
Jinx stopped, and was relieved when Peter continued her thought. "That enable us to connect emotionally? Have a relationship?"
The absurdity of what Peter said made her laugh a little inside. "Yeah. That's what normals feel when they fall in love. I told you that you shouldn't have come back."
"It's not voluntary, and that wasn't the first time." Peter seemed to relax a little. "I've been coming back from the dead pretty regularly since I discovered I had powers."
Jinx briefly considered the implications of what Peter said. "Does anyone know you're an immortal?"
"They must know. No one has ever asked me about it, though."
"Immortality really screws with people's heads. With a savings account and a couple of millennia you could end up owning the Corporation."
Peter looked at Jinx carefully. "What about you? You must be older than you look."
"It's complicated. This body was born about a century before the Last War on the Home-world."
"That's... three hundred years?"
"As long as I find souls to consume, I won't age or weaken." She felt ashamed. "It's not the same as immortality. Demons are parasites. As soon as the last sapient species goes extinct, our kind will perish."
Peter looked at Jinx's face and his mind wrestled with unaccustomed concepts. "Why do you look so sad?"
"This isn't how things are supposed to work. I hurt you and exploited you and--" Jinx discovered that talking about it made it worse.
Peter walked to her and took her hands. She looked into his eyes, and felt... something. She was having trouble giving it a name.
"They grew me in a vat, Jinx. I've been exploited since I was an embryo. It stopped hurting a long time ago."
His words comforted her, and she wondered why that was so. "We should go back to my ship, get drunk, and have meaningless sex. It's the only way to nip this in the bud. Discover the idol has feet of clay..."
"I have a better idea. Let's figure out where the fleet is going to attack, lay in a course, and then have drunken, meaningless sex."
She looked at him and they both smiled. "Gold star for robot boy..."
"Huh. You tagged out."
"Yep." Peter stood in front of her with his arms folded.
"It must be my charming personality." Jinx smiled at Peter in mock flirtation.
"I'm immune. Type 350 clones have extraordinarily low sex drives. Anyway, you ripped out my larynx with your -- uh -- sharp thing." Peter was a little taken aback, and rubbed his throat.
"It's a war spork. A weapon developed from a very old tool for skinning fresh kills." Jinx pulled the war spork from the inside of her jacket, and pointed to the parts of the weapon as she continued. "The spike penetrates the carcass, then you run it along the side to separate the skin and fat from the meat. You can then use the spoon part to scrape fat and muscle off the skin for curing."
"That was totally educational. Creepy, too."
"M-Seven, at your service. We're all about the old creepy stuff. There are some neat sword and spear-breaking techniques you can do with it." Jinx demonstrated a few quick strokes with the weapon. Peter kept his arms folded in front of him as Jinx stabbed the air.
Peter looked at Jinx. "Would you put that thing away?"
"Don't be scared -- it's just a tool. I put a whammy on it that attacked your nervous system. It's hard to defend yourself when you can't think or move -- not that that stopped you from trying."
"I did my best. It's hard to keep your balance when you can't feel anything."
"That's what I told the judge at my last drunk and disorderly trial." Jinx nodded towards the exit of the living area, and tucked her weapon back into her inside jacket pocket. "Let's take a look while we still have some time."
"Yeah, let's do that. I'm curious."
They walked into the courtyard, where a hole filled with ashes marked the location of a former fire pit. Peter looked into the hole filled with ashes as Jinx picked up a battered piece of colorful cardboard from the ground.
Jinx gestured to Peter. "Come here! They must be shutting down the training program -- this is one of the lottery cards they used to select new recruits."
Peter looked over Jinx's shoulder at the battered piece of cardboard marked with purple numbers. "A lottery?"
Classical lotteries, where prizes are simply given to those who had the dumb luck to have a certain number of matches to the randomly drawn numbers, were extremely uncommon. The most popular games were cumulative lotteries, where players collected matches from daily drawings and tried to place them in winning "hands" to claim prizes from the pot.
The lottery card was printed with a gaudy holographic pattern to discourage forgery and changing made bets. Based on a small section of the card, a lottery operator could uniquely identify it and its corresponding series of bets.
Jinx looked at Peter as he examined the matrix of numbers marked with stamps. She found that she could still read his face and imagine what was going on in his head simply by examining his expression. Discovering that she could, she did -- until she realized with a start that he was now looking at her with the same probing gaze.
They broke eye contact, and each took half-a-step away from the other in an attempt to re-assert their personal spaces. There was an awkward moment. Jinx's gaze sank to the dusty ground as she imagined for a moment what Peter must be thinking. Peter briefly seemed stunned, uncertain what to say or do next.
When he broke his silence, Jinx felt suddenly sad and ashamed. "Were you trying to do something to my mind?"
"No. Not anything paranormal, anyway." She stopped for a moment to push the shame from her mind. "I fed on your essence. I took into myself what makes you the person you are. This has some side effects. Right now, I feel a connection to you because we are looking at the same things, and responding to them in similar ways. This creates a context of shared feelings that--"
Jinx stopped, and was relieved when Peter continued her thought. "That enable us to connect emotionally? Have a relationship?"
The absurdity of what Peter said made her laugh a little inside. "Yeah. That's what normals feel when they fall in love. I told you that you shouldn't have come back."
"It's not voluntary, and that wasn't the first time." Peter seemed to relax a little. "I've been coming back from the dead pretty regularly since I discovered I had powers."
Jinx briefly considered the implications of what Peter said. "Does anyone know you're an immortal?"
"They must know. No one has ever asked me about it, though."
"Immortality really screws with people's heads. With a savings account and a couple of millennia you could end up owning the Corporation."
Peter looked at Jinx carefully. "What about you? You must be older than you look."
"It's complicated. This body was born about a century before the Last War on the Home-world."
"That's... three hundred years?"
"As long as I find souls to consume, I won't age or weaken." She felt ashamed. "It's not the same as immortality. Demons are parasites. As soon as the last sapient species goes extinct, our kind will perish."
Peter looked at Jinx's face and his mind wrestled with unaccustomed concepts. "Why do you look so sad?"
"This isn't how things are supposed to work. I hurt you and exploited you and--" Jinx discovered that talking about it made it worse.
Peter walked to her and took her hands. She looked into his eyes, and felt... something. She was having trouble giving it a name.
"They grew me in a vat, Jinx. I've been exploited since I was an embryo. It stopped hurting a long time ago."
His words comforted her, and she wondered why that was so. "We should go back to my ship, get drunk, and have meaningless sex. It's the only way to nip this in the bud. Discover the idol has feet of clay..."
"I have a better idea. Let's figure out where the fleet is going to attack, lay in a course, and then have drunken, meaningless sex."
She looked at him and they both smiled. "Gold star for robot boy..."
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Silver Rocket
Jinx looked at the figure unexpectedly standing beside her. He was dressed in a nearly featureless slate grey unitard with a prominent insignia on his chest -- a stylized capital letter A in silver that vaguely resembled an old-style rocket with fins. His white furred face smiled at her, but his green eyes seemed to have trouble focussing.
"How the HELL did you just--"
"Woah. That was the edge of the freaking Universe! I fell off reality, and patched my state before I drifted into the void..." Arsenal paused for a moment, then gathered his wits and looked at Jinx. "...sorry if I'm rambling. I'm still adapting to time being all linear again."
"Listen, lady -- who is this dude?" A young man waved his plasma rifle in an unmistakable pantomine of taking aim.
Jinx stared the young man with the gun down. "It's a new ultra-realistic, semi-autonomous illusion spell I'm working on. This is supposed to be Arsenal --"
The young man looked at Arsenal. He let his rifle hang on its strap over his shoulder and rubbed his chin. "You messed up his costume. The real Arsenal doesn't have a chrome dick on his chest."
"That's not a penis! It's a silver rocket!" Arsenal was defensive, and pointed at his chest insignia.
"It totally looks like an erection, dude."
Jinx teleported inconspicuously beside the young man and squinted at Arsenal's chest. "That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"
"Howcum it can talk?" The young man smiled.
"That's what I meant by semi-autonomous. I can use it to infiltrate Honor Guard." Peter seemed to understand what Jinx was playing at, and stood quietly in front of the other two.
"Cool." The soldier seemed impressed.
They both laughed, and Jinx's eyes locked for a fraction of a second with the young soldier's. This was enough for her mind to touch his with a numbing warmth. "You should lay off the paint fumes, son -- remember that one time you totally forgot you met me and I showed you this neat illusion?"
"Yeah, totally. I gotta get back on patrol."
"You do that." Jinx smiled sweetly at him, and closed the telepathic link. "Be seeing you!"
The soldier walked away. Jinx's face became hard as she swung back to face Peter.
"You can't do that! You SHOULDN'T do that --"
"Time comes all unravelled. I found an eigenstate before you beat me up and replicated it here."
"In a lame new costume with a stylized boner on your chest."
Peter rubbed the spot on the back of his neck where his communications implant used to be. "Stupid! I forgot my implants."
"Considering that you're deep in enemy territory, that's probably for the best. Let's get out of here!" Jinx turned to leave, peering back over her shoulder to see if Peter was following her.
He wasn't. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jinx. "Wait a minute. I think I might want to beat you up and trash this terrorist base."
Jinx turned around and walked towards him. She held her fists in front of her.
"No, you won't. Tag me."
"What?"
"I want you to tag out. I can stop the operation in about a minute if I get in close enough to the fleet. Tag out -- this is my job."
"You're kidding me!"
"I'm serious. I promised you that before you died."
"But I came back!"
"I don't share your cavalier attitude towards death. Tag out."
Peter looked at Jinx's fists, hesitated for a moment, and tagged out.
"How the HELL did you just--"
"Woah. That was the edge of the freaking Universe! I fell off reality, and patched my state before I drifted into the void..." Arsenal paused for a moment, then gathered his wits and looked at Jinx. "...sorry if I'm rambling. I'm still adapting to time being all linear again."
"Listen, lady -- who is this dude?" A young man waved his plasma rifle in an unmistakable pantomine of taking aim.
Jinx stared the young man with the gun down. "It's a new ultra-realistic, semi-autonomous illusion spell I'm working on. This is supposed to be Arsenal --"
The young man looked at Arsenal. He let his rifle hang on its strap over his shoulder and rubbed his chin. "You messed up his costume. The real Arsenal doesn't have a chrome dick on his chest."
"That's not a penis! It's a silver rocket!" Arsenal was defensive, and pointed at his chest insignia.
"It totally looks like an erection, dude."
Jinx teleported inconspicuously beside the young man and squinted at Arsenal's chest. "That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"
"Howcum it can talk?" The young man smiled.
"That's what I meant by semi-autonomous. I can use it to infiltrate Honor Guard." Peter seemed to understand what Jinx was playing at, and stood quietly in front of the other two.
"Cool." The soldier seemed impressed.
They both laughed, and Jinx's eyes locked for a fraction of a second with the young soldier's. This was enough for her mind to touch his with a numbing warmth. "You should lay off the paint fumes, son -- remember that one time you totally forgot you met me and I showed you this neat illusion?"
"Yeah, totally. I gotta get back on patrol."
"You do that." Jinx smiled sweetly at him, and closed the telepathic link. "Be seeing you!"
The soldier walked away. Jinx's face became hard as she swung back to face Peter.
"You can't do that! You SHOULDN'T do that --"
"Time comes all unravelled. I found an eigenstate before you beat me up and replicated it here."
"In a lame new costume with a stylized boner on your chest."
Peter rubbed the spot on the back of his neck where his communications implant used to be. "Stupid! I forgot my implants."
"Considering that you're deep in enemy territory, that's probably for the best. Let's get out of here!" Jinx turned to leave, peering back over her shoulder to see if Peter was following her.
He wasn't. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jinx. "Wait a minute. I think I might want to beat you up and trash this terrorist base."
Jinx turned around and walked towards him. She held her fists in front of her.
"No, you won't. Tag me."
"What?"
"I want you to tag out. I can stop the operation in about a minute if I get in close enough to the fleet. Tag out -- this is my job."
"You're kidding me!"
"I'm serious. I promised you that before you died."
"But I came back!"
"I don't share your cavalier attitude towards death. Tag out."
Peter looked at Jinx's fists, hesitated for a moment, and tagged out.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Who Is Number Seven?
ONE is ALL, EACH and EVERY one
TWO has the DREAM that LEADS US ON
THREE is the BEAST that FIGHTS to SURVIVE
FOUR is the MACHINE that KEEPS US ALIVE
FIVE is the ANGEL that SEES US THROUGH
SIX is the DEVIL that GIVES HER DUE
WHO is NUMBER SEVEN?
Two minds shared one skull, looking at a garish, cheaply printed promotional poster for M-Seven. Jinx seized the moment when Peter weakened and began to feed on him. His thoughts and instinctual reactions began to flow into her. Pushing her psychic advantage, she dissolved the borders delimiting her inner world. His personality, stunned and dazed, could see what she saw, and feel what she felt.
The flow of energy never seemed to end. She felt intoxicated.
She walked into the common area of the refugee camp wearing a giddy smile. The residents ignored her, although a few of them gave her fearful looks and hurried away, carrying bundles full of their few personal possessions on their backs. One old-looking woman, mane streaked with grey, held her scrawny baby closer, and turned away to shield him from Jinx's gaze.
Jinx felt a surge of sentimental warmth as she realized that that woman and her child would likely have died were it not for the food and medicine secured by her recent raids on cargo ships. Her mind toyed with the unaccustomed emotion, and as she grasped it, she felt a certain sadness that the woman was afraid of her benefactor.
Everyone had left. She was -- or, more exactly, they were -- alone.
Peter's voice in her mental ear sounded drowsy, almost sedated. "Why are they scared of you?"
"They think I'm the devil."
"You aren't? I'm having trouble concentrating..." Peter's mental voice was weak.
"Don't be. I promised I'd prove you wrong, and I keep my promises." Jinx, on the other hand, seemed stronger than ever. She was animated -- she paced, pointed, and seemed enchanted by the world and the things in it.
"How's that coming?" Peter was tired, and seemed to be fading away.
"Poorly. Did you see how that poster just sort of jumped out at us when we walked into the living quarters? "
"Yeah. It was impossible to ignore."
"Well, look in the corners of the room." Jinx pointed to the tent poles holding up the walls to the sleeping area. Each had a polished circle carved into their shafts. "Little stylized eyes, watching everything you do. No dividing walls, no privacy." Jinx was agitated.
"I don't think I follow you."
"It's a conditioning chamber. The subject is either given a positive stimulus, or has a negative stimulus removed, and is placed in a controlled environment where they know they're being watched. In this case, by providing food and shelter, we lessen survival pressures. Then the subject is exposed to a stimulus -- like that poster. The result is a sensitization, an enhanced response."
"To what?"
"The poster asks, 'Who is Number Seven?'. The answer, implicitly, is 'You are'. Given a population that's already being selected by a hostile environment --"
"--you mean people who are used to starving on the street --"
"--you have a pretty good chance of finding people who can beat the odds, who have a little edge. Feed them, and tell them a story where they may be the hero, and you've got an organized mob, the nucleus of an army."
"So you agree with me? You agree that this operation is a real threat?" Peter was obviously weary, but seemed to recover a little strength as he saw his idea validated.
"I need to understand what you are thinking before I can tear it apart. There's some superficial evidence to support your point of view. In fact, I see evidence that Demonslayer is trying to sensitize people with unusual survival skills -- stuff like precognition and probability manipulation. Most people who have abilities like that never notice them, and they're common powers in the general population." Jinx twitched a little. An observer could be forgiven for thinking that she was high on cocaine or in the middle of a powerful manic episode.
"The idea that bad guys care about the truth is a new one on me."
"I do, and the buzz I'm getting from your life energy makes it easy and fun!"
"You suck." Peter paused for a little. "What about the consequences of your actions? Do you ever seek the truth about them?"
"Cognitive dissonance is a girls' best friend." Jinx was flippant.
"Cognitive dissonance isn't just for bad people. We're cops, and we're supposed to protect and help the innocent, right? Except actually doing the job means giving people a hard time -- even if they didn't do anything wrong." Peter's ebbing strength made him become reflective.
This carried over to Jinx, who paused her pacing for a moment of thought. "I don't think the problem is thinking social norms don't apply to you. I think the problem is thinking they don't apply to anyone."
"Anomie is a pretty word." Peter seemed to be falling asleep.
"Yes, but a terrible concept. I have to deal with people like that all the damned time, and it's tiring always having to watch your back." The thoughtful moment was persisting longer than Jinx had expected.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
"Oh really?"
"No. You can choose to deal with people who aren't like that."
This stopped Jinx cold. She suddenly felt very uncomfortable with herself.
"I'm a lion, seeking whom I may devour. How should someone like me survive in polite society?" Jinx's inner voice was sad.
"The same way the animal does -- by consuming the sick and the weak."
"You're not thinking clearly."
"No, I'm not. I'm just trying to understand what you are." They both paused for a long moment. "I can't hold on anymore. I think I'm ready to go."
"Just a minute. I'll help."
Inside Jinx's mindscape, the light had faded. Peter lay, emaciated and trembling, on the undefined ground. Jinx walked to him, and he struggled to lift his head to look at her.
Jinx's eyes glowed with a brilliant blue light. She knelt down to look at him. Peter was trembling. "I'm very weak. I'm not sure I can make it."
"You can. It's not that far." She felt sad, and did not know why.
Peter lay his head back on the ground. "I'm scared."
"It will be over soon."
"Promise me you'll stop Demonslayer's plan." Peter did not look at Jinx. He was trembling.
"I will. I swear it."
Peter rolled into a ball, and with great effort rolled over on all fours. He lifted his head and looked at the threshold into the eternal darkness.
"Thank you." His jaw set, and he dragged himself on his hands and knees over the threshold.
Jinx remained for a long moment, kneeling and looking into the abyss. She shook her head, rose to her feet, and re-entered the world of the living.
She opened her eyes, and saw a young man in ragged clothes point a plasma rifle at her. Jinx scowled at him. "Put that thing down."
"I heard voices." The young man was obviously nervous. "Who were you talking to?"
"Oh, that was just a magical excercise. It's like meditation, but out loud."
"Uh-huh. And who's that guy standing next to you?" The young man was suspicious.
Jinx looked to her left, and could not contain her shock.
"Please don't kill him." The man who shouldn't be there was whispering to her. Jinx recovered her composure.
"Oh, you SUCK!"
TWO has the DREAM that LEADS US ON
THREE is the BEAST that FIGHTS to SURVIVE
FOUR is the MACHINE that KEEPS US ALIVE
FIVE is the ANGEL that SEES US THROUGH
SIX is the DEVIL that GIVES HER DUE
WHO is NUMBER SEVEN?
Two minds shared one skull, looking at a garish, cheaply printed promotional poster for M-Seven. Jinx seized the moment when Peter weakened and began to feed on him. His thoughts and instinctual reactions began to flow into her. Pushing her psychic advantage, she dissolved the borders delimiting her inner world. His personality, stunned and dazed, could see what she saw, and feel what she felt.
The flow of energy never seemed to end. She felt intoxicated.
She walked into the common area of the refugee camp wearing a giddy smile. The residents ignored her, although a few of them gave her fearful looks and hurried away, carrying bundles full of their few personal possessions on their backs. One old-looking woman, mane streaked with grey, held her scrawny baby closer, and turned away to shield him from Jinx's gaze.
Jinx felt a surge of sentimental warmth as she realized that that woman and her child would likely have died were it not for the food and medicine secured by her recent raids on cargo ships. Her mind toyed with the unaccustomed emotion, and as she grasped it, she felt a certain sadness that the woman was afraid of her benefactor.
Everyone had left. She was -- or, more exactly, they were -- alone.
Peter's voice in her mental ear sounded drowsy, almost sedated. "Why are they scared of you?"
"They think I'm the devil."
"You aren't? I'm having trouble concentrating..." Peter's mental voice was weak.
"Don't be. I promised I'd prove you wrong, and I keep my promises." Jinx, on the other hand, seemed stronger than ever. She was animated -- she paced, pointed, and seemed enchanted by the world and the things in it.
"How's that coming?" Peter was tired, and seemed to be fading away.
"Poorly. Did you see how that poster just sort of jumped out at us when we walked into the living quarters? "
"Yeah. It was impossible to ignore."
"Well, look in the corners of the room." Jinx pointed to the tent poles holding up the walls to the sleeping area. Each had a polished circle carved into their shafts. "Little stylized eyes, watching everything you do. No dividing walls, no privacy." Jinx was agitated.
"I don't think I follow you."
"It's a conditioning chamber. The subject is either given a positive stimulus, or has a negative stimulus removed, and is placed in a controlled environment where they know they're being watched. In this case, by providing food and shelter, we lessen survival pressures. Then the subject is exposed to a stimulus -- like that poster. The result is a sensitization, an enhanced response."
"To what?"
"The poster asks, 'Who is Number Seven?'. The answer, implicitly, is 'You are'. Given a population that's already being selected by a hostile environment --"
"--you mean people who are used to starving on the street --"
"--you have a pretty good chance of finding people who can beat the odds, who have a little edge. Feed them, and tell them a story where they may be the hero, and you've got an organized mob, the nucleus of an army."
"So you agree with me? You agree that this operation is a real threat?" Peter was obviously weary, but seemed to recover a little strength as he saw his idea validated.
"I need to understand what you are thinking before I can tear it apart. There's some superficial evidence to support your point of view. In fact, I see evidence that Demonslayer is trying to sensitize people with unusual survival skills -- stuff like precognition and probability manipulation. Most people who have abilities like that never notice them, and they're common powers in the general population." Jinx twitched a little. An observer could be forgiven for thinking that she was high on cocaine or in the middle of a powerful manic episode.
"The idea that bad guys care about the truth is a new one on me."
"I do, and the buzz I'm getting from your life energy makes it easy and fun!"
"You suck." Peter paused for a little. "What about the consequences of your actions? Do you ever seek the truth about them?"
"Cognitive dissonance is a girls' best friend." Jinx was flippant.
"Cognitive dissonance isn't just for bad people. We're cops, and we're supposed to protect and help the innocent, right? Except actually doing the job means giving people a hard time -- even if they didn't do anything wrong." Peter's ebbing strength made him become reflective.
This carried over to Jinx, who paused her pacing for a moment of thought. "I don't think the problem is thinking social norms don't apply to you. I think the problem is thinking they don't apply to anyone."
"Anomie is a pretty word." Peter seemed to be falling asleep.
"Yes, but a terrible concept. I have to deal with people like that all the damned time, and it's tiring always having to watch your back." The thoughtful moment was persisting longer than Jinx had expected.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
"Oh really?"
"No. You can choose to deal with people who aren't like that."
This stopped Jinx cold. She suddenly felt very uncomfortable with herself.
"I'm a lion, seeking whom I may devour. How should someone like me survive in polite society?" Jinx's inner voice was sad.
"The same way the animal does -- by consuming the sick and the weak."
"You're not thinking clearly."
"No, I'm not. I'm just trying to understand what you are." They both paused for a long moment. "I can't hold on anymore. I think I'm ready to go."
"Just a minute. I'll help."
Inside Jinx's mindscape, the light had faded. Peter lay, emaciated and trembling, on the undefined ground. Jinx walked to him, and he struggled to lift his head to look at her.
Jinx's eyes glowed with a brilliant blue light. She knelt down to look at him. Peter was trembling. "I'm very weak. I'm not sure I can make it."
"You can. It's not that far." She felt sad, and did not know why.
Peter lay his head back on the ground. "I'm scared."
"It will be over soon."
"Promise me you'll stop Demonslayer's plan." Peter did not look at Jinx. He was trembling.
"I will. I swear it."
Peter rolled into a ball, and with great effort rolled over on all fours. He lifted his head and looked at the threshold into the eternal darkness.
"Thank you." His jaw set, and he dragged himself on his hands and knees over the threshold.
Jinx remained for a long moment, kneeling and looking into the abyss. She shook her head, rose to her feet, and re-entered the world of the living.
She opened her eyes, and saw a young man in ragged clothes point a plasma rifle at her. Jinx scowled at him. "Put that thing down."
"I heard voices." The young man was obviously nervous. "Who were you talking to?"
"Oh, that was just a magical excercise. It's like meditation, but out loud."
"Uh-huh. And who's that guy standing next to you?" The young man was suspicious.
Jinx looked to her left, and could not contain her shock.
"Please don't kill him." The man who shouldn't be there was whispering to her. Jinx recovered her composure.
"Oh, you SUCK!"
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