The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Page 20

  “They have gravity fields set up around the ship,” said Cahill as she eased the skiff into a berth. “But it’s not as comprehensive as something that you’d find on a military boat. So be aware of that. This docking bay has a light one—enough to keep you from floating into space. They have to conserve energy.”

  Docking clamps latched onto the skiff, and traffic control cleared them to disembark. . Darius climbed out into the lowest gee he’d ever experienced, outside of a full-on EVA. An Asian woman in a light-colored spacesuit was there to meet them.

  “Howdy, Darius,” she said over the radio. “I’m Greta Lin, chief aide to the Council of the Federation.”

  “How do you do, ma’am.”

  “Greta will do fine. Welcome aboard. Come with me, and we can get you out of this vacuum and into somewhere you can walk regularly. Step lightly until then. Take your time, or else you’ll tumble.”

  It did take a few strides until he got a handle on landing on his feet instead of his hands and knees. He was glad there was no hurry.

  After about 100 meters, they made it to an airlock and cycled through it into a pressurized corridor. Lin took her helmet off. “The air is fine in here,” she said.

  Darius unlatched his helmet and took a sniff. “This actually smells better than a Navy ship.”

  “Wouldn’t take much,” said Cahill.

  Lin smiled. “We have the advantage of a sizable natural biosphere on the Pegasus. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You need to meet with the Council for a debrief before I can give you the nickel tour. Suffice to say, there’s plenty of air and gravity throughout the populated sections of the ship.”

  Unlike the imperial military’s shades of gray and dark red, the corridors of the Pegasus were off-white, with bright green and blue accents. The doors here also had rounded edges instead of angular ones, and most of them had windows.

  “Okay, but...at least tell me where all this power is coming from,” said Darius. “You couldn’t possibly have a nuclear reactor still onboard. Not an original one, anyway.”

  “It’s true, we don’t. Most of our power is collected from bioreactors. One type, anyway. Depending on the design, those can be used for either generating clean biofuel or for scrubbing CO2 and other gases. Algae is an amazing resource if you can keep its growth rate under control.”

  “Interesting.”

  Every guard they went past stiffened at the sight of him. It took Darius few minute to realize it was because he was wandering around their ship in the empire’s iconic dark gray combat armor with its cross-hatched nano-lattice fiber mesh, while they were dressed in light-colored and minimally plated pressure suits. He tried not to think what might have happened if he’d been armed.

  They came to a T-junction, and Cahill said, “This is where I break off, private. I’m gonna restock some inventory, maybe grab a bite, and then I’m back in the black.”

  Darius turned and gave her a proper salute. “You saved my life back there, lieutenant. I owe you a debt.”

  She chuckled. “Just shake my hand and pay it forward, son.”

  “I hope we meet again under better circumstances.”

  Cahill returned his salute. “For the Federation.” She turned and disappeared down the corridor.

  Lin gestured in the other direction. “This way, Darius. Follow me.”

  After a few more twists and turns, they came to a set of double doors marked “Council Chambers.”

  Darius looked at Greta. “Any words of advice?”

  “These are smart and capable people. The more information you give them, the better they can aid all of humanity.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Greta pressed a button to the right of the door, and the doors slid open. Darius stepped through into the chambers.

  The dimly lit room was about 40 meters square and 20 meters high. It was dominated by a dark, circular table that was ringed with important-looking and mostly occupied chairs. A large holo emitter at the center of the table currently displayed a live view of Jupiter and its many moons. A short woman stood with her back to him, gazing at the projection. She turned to meet him as he came in.

  “Greetings, Darius.” She shook his hand. “I’m Augusta Van Chen, President of the Federation.” She had a mixture of Latin and Asiatic features, and she projected a quiet strength. Darius had seen this same type of backbone in his mother.

  He still fondly recalled the times when a patriarchal man had tried to posture his way into getting his mother to do what he wanted, whether it was accepting the first price offered for a shipment of gift shop souvenirs, or giving up ownership of the shop in the wake of his father’s death.

  Zara Bakari often gave people the rope to show her who they were, then she calmly asserted herself. Darius suspected that it was the same with Van Chen. He had a hunch.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” she said. “Have a seat.” She gestured to two empty chairs at the table.

  “The president herself wants to talk to me?” he asked her as he sat down. “And who are these other people?”

  “This is the Council. They are mostly members of the Pegasus, voted into office by the members of the Federation. They’re scientists, engineers, school teachers, doctors, you name it.” Van Chen took the chair next to him.

  “But no one from the military?”

  “We have a liaison. In our system of government, the military answers to the civilians. To the people.”

  This presented a problem. “Ma’am, that’s all well and good, but if you want a debrief, my intel is...extremely sensitive. Given that one of your top field agents was recently burned, don’t you have concerns about information leakage?”

  “We have been doing a thorough review of our people from the moment we got word of her capture,” said Van Chen. “We have specialists who can sniff out moles, and we have custom-crafted AI designed to help them. As near as we can tell, the information did not come from within our ranks.”

  “Then where the hell did it come from? I mean, uh...Where did it come from, ma’am?”

  “We were hoping that you could help us piece that together. It’s our understanding that you were present with Nadira...with Agent Markosian at Baloneth. You and your brother.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Nadira and I went into the structure.” Darius glanced around the room. “But I’m not sure if anyone will believe what we found inside. I’m not sure I believe it. And I have no proof. All of our data was confiscated.”

  “Your brother didn’t go?”

  “No ma’am, he...he died before we got that far.”

  “I’m so sorry, Darius.”

  “Thank you. He...he gave his life to save Nadira’s.”

  Van Chen’s eyes widened. “I’m...we’re very grateful, Darius. The Federation owes a debt to you and your family.” She looked around the room. In the dim lighting, he couldn’t see the expression on her face. She cleared her throat.

  “Well, no need to pay any debt, ma’am. At least, not while the empire still has her locked up.”

  “Yes, we believe we have some good intel on her location. We were actually waiting for your debrief to decide how to move forward. So please, start from the beginning.”

  Darius sighed and put his helmet down on the table. “Well, ma’am...it all began with a phone call from my brother a few months ago, when I was still working at my mom’s gift shop...”

  ✽✽✽

  Van Chen was quiet for a long time after Darius had finished his debrief.

  One of the Council members spoke up. “Hi, Darius. Saul Portman here. I run the ship’s gravity systems. Did you see any writing in that space station that you appeared to portal into?”

  “You mean the place I went to when I sat in that chair? Not that I could see. No distinctive markings.”

  “What about the seats you saw at the station? Do you think you could draw them?” asked another member. “I’m Cynthia Dolan, by the way. I'm in charge of the docking bay.” She look
ed around the room. “Do we have an artist on board who could help with that?”

  “I think we can find someone,” said a portly bald man to Darius’s left. “We have an architect who can draft.”

  “That might do,” said Dolan.

  Darius turned to Van Chen. “So what happens next? Can we do an extraction on Nadira?”

  “First things first, Darius. The Council has to go over the details of your report to see if there are more questions they need to ask you, and...” She put his hand on Darius’s wrist. “You need to speak with your mother. She’s here on board the Pegasus.”

  Darius pulled his hand back. “What? You brought her here? Why?”

  “We felt it was necessary to pull her and your uncle out for their own safety. We’ll be setting them up with a safe house once we’ve done more research on who burned agent Markosian. But until then...you need to go to her. You need to tell her about your brother. She needs to hear it from you.”

  -12-

  What does one say about the impossible agony of a mother who has lost her first-born child?

  “Just be with her,” Greta had told him. “Be with her for as long as she needs you.”

  What do you do for a mother when she cannot contain her overwhelming pain? There is no combat armor in all the galaxy that can absorb it. There is no mindworm sim that can prepare you. Darius did not feel like a battle-hardened soldier as she sat next to her in her quarters and tried to quietly absorb her grief. He felt only like a man.

  In times like this, the room you are in falls away, save for the floor when you fall to your knees.

  “No, this cannot be,” she says. There must be some mistake. Not my Rali. Not my Rali...

  Eventually, the dam of denial can hold no longer, and the agony of the truth bursts through.

  Perhaps the only thing that eventually pulled her to the surface of the torrent was that Rali had played with fire. It had not been the unexpected death of a pillar of the community. It was not a truly shocking tragedy for someone living out their dreams or on the verge of doing so.

  But he was still her son, and he always would be.

  Eventually, she wanted to know how it happened. He was a hero, Darius was quick to say. “He might have had his problems, but he turned himself around in that jungle. He made the ultimate sacrifice to save the life of another. He died so that the Federation could continue fighting. So that stories like this never need to be told again. You should be proud of him.”

  It had sounded right in his head. It was the kind of thing they said in the army. It would have to do.

  But at that moment, he was prouder of Rali than he was of himself. He looked at his own accomplishments and beheld a mess. He’d ragged on his older brother mercilessly, destroyed his mother’s means of income, and now he’d driven her and his uncle out of her own homes.

  Yet she embraced him. They sat on her bed, in her room on the Pegasus, and she leaned against him as she lowered her head and quietly cried. In that moment, this room became the smallest place in the universe. It had shrunk to himself, his mother, and their shared pain.

  She held his arm, still in its imperial combat armor, still showing the glinting field welding that had closed the gaps where a giant lizard had tried to crush him with jaws like a trash compactor full of razor blades.

  He didn’t tell her about that part. He just told her about her son. Anything she wanted to know. Did he look healthy? she asked. Had he been eating? Did he mind his manners around the lady?

  Yes, Mama. All those things.

  “What is this big glove on your hand?” she asked.

  “It’s just a cast for my hand, Mama. I hurt it. It’s okay now, it just needs to heal.” This was not true yet, but it would at least be true in due time.

  As the size of his world slowly restored itself to the point where it could encompass the idea of the ship he was on, he remembered that his watch had not ended. Oh yes, there was still an empire. It was on the hunt for him. There was a woman who needed his help. There were many people who needed his help. And he was a soldier now. Soldiers go to war.

  He told her gently of the duties he was still responsible for.

  She remembered that he was wearing combat armor. “I cannot lose you both,” she said.

  “Mom, I can’t stay here. The Empire is looking for me now. Wherever I stay, they will come to me. I am a magnet.”

  “Don’t go out there again," she said. "I can't take it.”

  How do you explain that you saw aliens in a dream who spoke a key to only you and two others? One of whom was now dead, and another of whom was now in an imperial prison cell? How do you explain that you are the only person free and alive who even knows the shape of the locks? How do you explain that you don’t even know why?

  “Mama, the Federation needs all the help it can get right now, and I know things about the empire that can stop pain like this from happening any more. I have to use that knowledge out there. It’s no good in a safe house.”

  He got up and went to the door. “Come,” he told her, “let me get Uncle Omar. Let’s talk to him about this.”

  Let me get a fellow soldier in here who will understand my perspective.

  Soon, she was outnumbered. Soon, Darius was walking back out into the corridor. Her pain had become his vengeance. Her pain was his sin. There was a lot of blame to go around, and he wasn’t sure whose blood needed to be spilled more. There was no choice now but to find out.

  ✽✽✽

  Darius had been told to go to the clinic before returning to the council chambers. He assumed it was about that killswitch.

  He sat in the waiting room, still in his imperial combat armor and with the huge black mitt around his right hand. He tried to ignore the looks people were giving him. It had been easier when he was getting escorted around by the ship by Greta Lin. Everyone recognized her.

  “Darius Bakari?”

  He looked up, and a nurse was standing there with a clipboard.

  “That’s me.”

  “Come on back this way.”

  She ushered him into an examination room and told him the doctor would see him in a few minutes. The only sound was the faint hum of the ship’s air circulation, and of coolers that maintained the ice in the hull that absorbed cosmic rays. Without that ice, Greta had explained, the occupants of the ship could suffer damage to their DNA, plus cancer, brain disorders, and vision problems. Space was not friendly to flesh or bone.

  “So why have a base out in space?” he had asked her. “Why not a habitable planet? Aren’t there any to choose from that are too much trouble for the empire to investigate?”

  “Probably,” she had said. “But the nice thing about a ship is that you can move it if people find it. You can’t move a planet or moon. Not on our budget, anyway.”

  An elderly Black woman came into the examination room dressed in a medical jumpsuit and introduced herself as Dr. Kilpatrick. She moved with the confidence of someone much younger, and she looked him over with a cool eye that indicated decades of analytical experience. “I see you’ve got a security glove on,” she said. “Apparently someone installed a military killswitch?”

  “There are other kinds?”

  “It’s a big galaxy out there, son. Now, here’s the thing. This tech is very complicated.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “We’ve made great strides in recent years with our understanding of it, but...” Kilpatrick spread her hands apologetically. “There are still gaps.”

  “Ah, shit...”

  Kilpatrick leaned against the counter. “They work hard to stay ahead of people like us, son. The soldiers they put these on could be dangerous to the empire if they took their military training and turned it against the power structure. And as former member of a PMU, you’re exactly the type of soldier that’s most likely to turn on them. Statistically speaking.”

  Darius shook his head ruefully. “Just give it to me straight. How fragged am I?” />
  “Well, if you’re willing to make one moderate change, not fragged at all.”

  Darius grimaced. “Define ‘moderate change.’”

  “Well...we would have to replace the hand.”

  “With what? You got spares in the fridge or something?” Darius got up from the examination table and sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room. He didn’t like that table anymore.

  Kilpatrick walked over to him. “Well, we have been working on a tissue cloning module, but that’s still a ways off. No, I’m talking about a biomech prosthetic. Now, before you say anything, I actually have a few in stock that are at least as good as the ones you’ve seen in the field. They were recently...liberated. We were going to disassemble and study all of them, since they’re a generation ahead of the stuff we’ve gotten so far, but...”

  She squatted to look Darius directly in the eyes. “You’re important to the cause, son. That’s what they tell me. So you should have the best tools that we can provide. As the head of the ship’s medical team, I have the authority to make that decision unilaterally in a time of need. And you, we need. You just stay right here for a minute, and I’ll go get it. I’ll be right back.”

  He liked his hand, useless as it was inside the security glove. He was rather attached to it.

  Kilpatrick came back a few minutes later. “All right, I’ve got one of the new units here. Have a look.”

  It was indeed a fancy-looking one. Much less skeletal than he was used to, so there was less to get snagged on.

  “Unlike the old ones,” said Kilpatrick, “The whole frame can expand or contract to accommodate a range of hand sizes. So we can scale it to match the original. Very important for athletes and soldiers. Plus it’s about 80% carbon nano-lattice, so it’s very resistant to both blunt impacts and sharp ones. And it won’t ever rust. Muscle fibers are simulated with a web of micro-woven nanotubes. This thing is basically stronger than a human hand will ever be. Plus...”