Authors: Greg Fish
Pretending to ignore him, Mai turned down a hall and fell out of sight. Behind her, the massive door slid shut leaving Ace along with the Dark Gods’ machines.
After searching through the wreckage of the lunar base, the only part of Leo that could be found was his carbon skull. Dented, cracked and missing the lower mandible, it spoke of the impact’s violence. By the Nation’s traditions, his remains were buried in a remote cave specially prepared for a funeral rite by a high priest. Dot, Nelson, Steve and Christine were present at the solemn ceremony to say a few kind words and leave behind some token of their affection for the deceased.
Leo’s mangled skull was placed on a stone altar with ancient legends carved on its surface in Shadow runes. On the cave walls were stylized depictions of his favorite places including a blue, Earth-like world with three beautiful moons and the City of Ghosts. Placed into a recess on the altar were pyramids containing sulfur, salt and a glowing, red ball of plasma.
Dot added an ancient book into the second recess, a book which Leo always wanted to read but never had enough time. Nelson added his prized watch, a memento from his time as a human astronaut who traveled to Epsilon Eridani. Steve left a rubix cube which Leo found a fascinating toy. Christine added a set of prayer beads she had since she was a little girl. She remembered that Leo liked their deep shade of amber and the floating symbols preserved within.
The Shadow Demon high priest clad in ceremonial robes recited an incantation directing Leo’s soul to the mysterious netherworld of unknown creatures guarding mysteries as old as time.
“May the guardians of the netherworld grant you access to those mysteries we are not entitled to see,” he chanted. “Seek peace in your eternal journey and may your memory live on in each of us.”
After the rite, the cave was sealed by a huge, jagged stone made of black obsidian, just like the huge stones that lined the Nation’s dark temples and stamped with the Nation’s seal. In the cyborgs’ religion, the soul was already on its way into the netherworld and preserving a skull or a skeleton or even the whole mummified body was only for the benefit of friends and loved ones so they would have a place that would let them honor the memory of the dead.
Oddly enough, it was hoped that one day, that the tombs would be a learning experience for alien species who would pay the remains the proper respect and be allowed to examine the tombs to their content. Millions of years later, thought the cyborgs, even our dead will tell of what we are or what we were on hundreds of worlds in museums and libraries.
As they walked back to the lunar base which was being repaired by swarms of machines, their thoughts turned to Ace, wondering if a funerary rite for him would soon be in order. They weren’t sure what the Dark Gods wanted with him or whether he would survive it.
Suddenly, a holographic screen with a Shadow Demon appeared in front of them.
“Councilor Nelson, we found Ace,” she announced.
“Where is he?” asked Nelson.
“He’s on a battle cruiser currently in orbit around Epsilon 09GX, moving to another system soon but we have a probe trailing it.”
“How do you know it’s the right ship?” asked Steve.
“We saw Mai’s transport dock and leave. Since she’s there, we’d make a bet that she was trying to extract information.”
“Or getting payback,” frowned Christine.
“At least we’re one step closer to figuring out what happened to Ace,” noted Steve. “The question is what do we do?”
“We track the ship and get a squadron out there to get him,” said Dot with firm resolve. “If he’s dead, we kill all of them.”
“I highly doubt they’ll kill Ace,” mused Nelson. “He’s not really the thorn in their side per se. After spending so much time, resources and effort on making him what he is, I doubt that they would just kill him and leave it at that. And anyway, if they wanted to do that, they could’ve done it on Epsilon 88G rather than kidnapping him and then doing it hundreds of light years away. No, they need Ace. They need him for something...”
“All the more reason to extract him,” nodded Dot.
“Agreed,” Nelson, Steve and Christine confirmed in unison.
[ chapter _ 037 ]
In the dark liquid of a containment pod, a faint red light appeared. It gently pulsed for a few seconds with a soft glow and a calm, almost hypnotic rhythm. On its final beat, the light froze and exploded into two, overlapping columns of rapidly changing alien runes which had the trademark structure of computer code. The alien code scrolled for almost a minute until it was finally replaced by a steady, clam glow of two eyes. After spending several days in a comatose state, Ace’s body rebooted itself and shook his brain awake with a quick burst of synthetic adrenaline.
Regaining consciousness, Ace stretched and immediately started to inspect his surroundings. He was in a reinforced pod just like the one he used on the Rexx specimen when looking for Rexx Prime and locked down in a small vault. Much of last week was just a faint blur in his memory. He knew that the Dark Gods examined the changes he made to his body and analyzed his genome for mutations and to see how much of it was still human. Using a cybernetic equivalent to a truth serum, they interrogated him only to find out that instead of loosening his tongue, the computer virus simply made him act drunk. With this pod, they hoped to hack directly into his brain and extract the desired information.
Examining the half-finished wire setup, Ace concluded that the process was taking too much time for their patience which was to be expected. After all, the location, type and encryption of the ports that connected his brain to cybernetic components were drastically altered from their original design for his skull and the Dark Gods had to find a new way to plug into his mind. They even tried to plug into some of the access ports hidden under his sensory runes which was likely the reason why they left him in the vat of conductive fluid in just his boxer shorts.
He turned to the other side of the vault to see the massive wall of transparent crystals polished as finely as glass. Outside of this crystal window was a dying star, a giant blue sun able to dwarf almost every other stellar body in the galaxy by comparison. As it loomed closer and closer to its final moments, it spewed jets of white, gray and blue gases into deep space. Over the eons, the gases formed an hourglass shaped nebula made of coalesced spirals of dust and vapor and it was on the very outer reaches of this amazing stellar structure that Ace’s captors chose to anchor their battle cruisers and gunships.
Relaxing and letting his body finish recharging, he watched and waited. He thought about what happened to the rest of the fleet after he was kidnapped on Epsilon 88G and whether the Dark Gods tried to use the draw to reverse the Nation’s momentum. With just over a third of their armada destroyed, the High Command would have to shift the war into defensive while factories crank out replacements as well as extra warships. Dot would have little trouble containing the Dark Gods’ attacks in well-fortified positions. It was pretty likely the Nation would have to give up many of the captured outposts but it was a small price to pay for development and rebuilding time.
Three hours later, Ace was getting impatient. Either something was going on, the Dark Ones wanted to give him the cold shoulder to demonstrate their contempt for him, or they were thinking of what to do with him next. He decided to find out. Turning towards one of the walls, he closed his eyes and focused the energy inside his body into exiting his hull. Excess energy produced by his body ignited into a menacing, chaotic aura of raw energy.
A shower of sparks shot from the pod’s wiring as the electricity flowing across the magnetic fields generated by the cyborg caused power surges. The temperature of the fluid inside soared, turning much of it into vapor within just a few moments. Swirling in convection cells and mixed with contrails of raw plasma, the vapor raised the pressure inside the pod so much, the reinforced glass began to creak.
Arming his claws, Ace struck the weakened glass. A fine spider web of cracks appeared and began to spread at an astonishing rate. Steam shot through the largest of the gashes, splintering the pod and warping its pillars. Finally, the pod burst into a thousand fragments of crystal and carbon which shot through the vault, embedding themselves in the dense walls. Greenish fluid splattered across the floor, shot out by the blast.
As Ace rose from the debris and brushed off stray pieces of glass from his boxers, two enormous, glowing eyes of a Dark God flashed into focus a few feet from the vault’s door. These red, sharp embers of light seemed to fill the chamber, ominously looking at the cyborg. Ace made a sound similar to clearing his throat.
“Hi there,” he said. “Now I don’t want to be a troublemaker and far be it from me to question alien cultures, but usually kidnapping, scanning and trying to probe someone then leaving them in a vat of cold, sticky conductive fluid almost naked is considered pretty rude on my home world. I don’t mean to complain about the service here, but I’ve got conductive fluid in places I’d rather not mention during an official conversation.”
“You’re a prisoner and we can do whatever we want with you,” replied the Dark God in a low pitched growl, his thunderous grumble translated into English by some unseen device.
“Ok, granted. I’m a prisoner. But I’m also a high commander of an alien species with who you’re at war. Maybe you could do a little more than just try to stick a long, pointy needle into my brain?”
“There’s nothing to negotiate. You’re working with an entity we consider a threat and we want to know who it is.”
“Gee, what makes you think that?”
“You know how to manipulate the Guardians and Shape Shifter technology well beyond you and some of it, even beyond us. You’ve been able to establish a huge empire far too quickly and your ability to make weapons technology on par with ours is a little too impressive to be random chance. Not to mention your hurry to go to war with us. Without a major point of support, you’d try to delay it as much as possible. We created you. We know you. We don’t need you to become a proxy for some nefarious entity.”
“Oh no,” Ace raised his finger and pointed it between the Dark God’s eyes. “You made me who I am today. But you did not create me. My parents on Earth created me.”
“Really?” the Dark God sounded amused. “We’ve seen you change over quite some time. Once, you were human. But Ace was born in the Reaper’s temple and grew up on the battlefield. You’re no longer human. You’re a homunculus of human organs in a machine body, infused with alien genes, a bizarre, foreign creature on your own planet. Ace is more like a Shape Shifter or a Dark God than the human he claims to be. I would think this would be very obvious to you by now.”
Ace didn’t respond and the Dark God continued.
“You’ve built yourself an empire and bit the hand that fed you. At first, we could tolerate it, thinking that we could talk some sense into you and leave it at that. We gave you a lot of leeway, seeing as you’re very young and need some guidance. But you’ve managed to become a major pain in the cloacae.”
“Maybe you just need some hemorrhoid cream?” sniped Ace.
“Negotiating with you is not an option for us anymore,” said the Dark God ignoring him. “You’ve managed to inspire the majority of your species to see us as tyrannical, horrible overlords and if we just make a martyr out of you, there would be plenty of creatures left to pick up your crusade. And they would be helped by the same species that’s helping you now. This is why we need to know who it is. I’m going to give you a chance to tell me right now.”
Ace thought for a few moments, never breaking eye contact with the creature. He sighed heavily and gave his reply.
“I’m sure you know that I can’t do that.”
“And that’s a shame,” chuckled the alien. “This is why we have plenty of pods...”
With a tortured groan, the massive, thick door of the vault began to open, raising itself upwards into the ceiling. Behind it, an army of the same spider-like spherical robots who first examined him stood in a wide hallway. They had unlocked their weapons from strangely shaped sections of their bodies and aimed them at Ace with flexible, chrome tentacles attached to sites just above their sharp legs. Their laser panels and particle guns produced an eerie glow, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
“You won’t kill me,” smirked the cyborg. “You need me to tell you what you want to know.”
“True,” agreed the alien. “But we can always find out by force if you refuse to cooperate.”
Ace armed his claws, the metallic sound resonating in the vault. He assumed a defensive stance and flashed his gleaming fangs at the spidery robots. The robots didn’t react for a few moments, but then began to adjust their aim and with a high pitched whine, channeling more power to their weapons. The Dark God also seemed alarmed. Ace maintained his stand.
Behind him there was a brilliant flash and with a terrifying roar exploding overhead, the battle cruiser shook and lurched forwards. The robots lost their aim and struggled to lock onto the cyborg once again. Taking advantage of the confusion, Ace took off, sliding under the vault door and swiping dozens of robots out of his way. He carved his way through the machines, knocking them aside, slashing off their weapons and embedding his claws in their bodies.
A shower of laser fire and particle bursts erupted as one more hit from whatever was attacking the battle cruiser blinded the robots. In this random firefight, Ace deftly used nearby machines as shields, throwing them into the line of fire as he dodged stray shots. Clearing the blockade, he slid to a stop, digging his claws into the dark marble floors and walls and turned around to take a quick look at what was going on outside of the craft’s hull.
Just before another explosion rocked the battle cruiser, he saw a squadron of the Nation’s destroyers with their weapons deployed and firing in all directions, darting from enemy ship to enemy ship. One of the destroyers sent a volley from its main cannon at the very core of the battle cruiser. The wounded craft pitched backwards with an incredibly disturbing groan. Ace was flung back into a wall, hitting it with enough force to crack the outer layer of the alien marble.