Resurrection (The Inherited War) (21 page)

“How?  What could the Kin do that could allow you to penetrate the most well-guarded planet in the galaxy?”

“Simple, he made the Esii not see us.  The Esii only rely on one piece of technology to guard their planet.  A massive planetary shield that only opens to Esii ships.  The Esii are also very advanced in their mental powers and rely on those powers to warn them of unauthorized presences in their system.  The Kin made them not see us.  We tucked ourselves under an Esii freighter as it passed through the shield.  We landed and simply walked out of the ship.  The Esii never looked at us.  No non Esii are allowed free on the planet so we moved freely where we wanted to.  Using his mental abilities, the Kin led us straight to the captured girl.  We freed her and escaped to our ship.  We attached ourselves to a departing ship and fled at top speed form the system.  We turned in the girl and collected our reward.  The Kin was ready to return home so we returned to his planet and again swore to keep it a secret.  We relocated to Pitt and set up shop.  I hid behind my brother and let him be our public face.  I set up an extensive R&D lab while my brother billed himself as the Archon who can get anything, loan sharking and gambling.  Everything was great until a few days ago.  My brother disappeared and left me holding the bag.  We were broke and he had left me many outstanding debts.  That is when we met and you know the rest of the story.”  He heaved a big sigh. That story had been hanging heavily on his conscious.  He appeared relieved to finally gotten it off his chest.

Thalo let out a low whistle and leaned back against the wall.  He could hardly believe what he had heard.  Not only did this guy know where the Kin lived, but knew how to use the Kin to rescue Cole.  The Archon had given away everything.  He had the Archon by his balls.  “Thank you.  That was everything I needed to know.”

“Good, well can you take me somewhere away from Pitt?”  He asked hopefully. 

“Sorry no.  But I can do one thing for you.”  Thalo said.

Dolor looked crestfallen.  “What is that?”

“Well I am afraid you will have to stay with us for a while longer, but on the bright side you are about to meet an actual AI, in fact many AI’s” He said and smiled as he watched the reaction to his words confuse the Archon.

~

Snow and Sky sat quietly talking around the communal table in the crew common area.  “Wow, he has really been there?”  Snow asked with amazement.

“According to him he has.  Been there and returned.”  Sky responded as she absently stirred the steaming drink in front of her.

“The part I still don’t understand is why we broke cover and snatched Dolor?  Things seemed to be going along well.”  Snow was nibbling on a plate of cold dinner.

“Split has a Point to Point with me,”  Thalo’s voice preceded him as he entered the small room, “Every few days he can send me a shot message, four or five words at a time.  I got a message while we were in Dolor’s office.  It said, ‘Come in two days.’  At that point I decided we no longer had time to bargain for the information.”  Thalo sat down next to Snow and leaned back in his chair.  He looked at the small holo unit that was currently showing the Dolor Show.  Dolor was being his boring self and was sleeping on the small cot.  “He done anything yet?”

“Nope, after you dropped him in there he lay down and fell asleep.  What's the plan now?”  Sky looked intently at Thalo.  She noticed how tired and haggard he looked.  She probably looked the same way.  They had been constantly going for the past few weeks on little sleep and cold rations.  Sky mentally berated herself, this is nothing compared to what Cole must be going through.  Suck it up for a few more days.

“Well, we are currently heading back to my homeworld.  I figure we pick up a shuttle that can house an AI and go to Chrysalis.  We take Dolor with us since they supposedly know him and he can tell the AI how to penetrate to the surface.  We should use a human ship to make best possible speed.  Hell the Kin may even recognize the Human design and be more receptive to us.  Other than that we just keep going forward.”  Thalo glanced at both females.  He saw the resolve settle into both and smiled to himself.  “After that we launch against Esii.  Jeth will just have to deal with an abridged training schedule.”

“I hope your people learn fast,” Snow commented offhandedly.  “Because if they don’t know enough yet, this could go badly before it really starts.  By the way, why two days?”

Thalo rubbed at his tired eyes.  “It wasn’t so much of a come in two days as more of you better wait two days.  Now that we know there is a planetary shield protecting the whole world, Split thinks it will take at least two days to bring down.  He has more faith in our abilities than we do it seems.”

“No. There was no way he could know about the political situation back home.  He assumes and rightly so that we should have been preparing weeks ago.”  Sky spoke with a pained look on her face.  She knew full well that there would eventually have to be some kind of reckoning with her people.  Mainly with Fire and his ilk.  It hurt her that her people wouldn’t help with this mission.  It would be a hurt long in healing and she didn’t know if she could ever return home after everything that had happened.  Let alone after she had humiliated Fire on Fury’s ship.

“Regardless,” Thalo interjected, “we strive to make his timetable.  As close as we can anyway.  They have survived this long and knowing those two, I feel sorry for the Esii who get in their way.

CHAPTER 16

“Wait,” Cole hissed through clenched teeth, “turn around.”  Split hesitated for a moment before pivoting around to face the center of the room.  Cole gritted his teeth and fought down the creepy-crawlies that inched along his spine.  He was naked, he had to try.  He looked at the solid mass of what had been his Second Skin.  He felt a tightening in his chest just looking at it.  “Can you fix it?”  He asked absently.  “I think it’s out of juice.”

“Needs moisture too,” added Split.  “Are you sure you want it?  We have another with far fewer bad memories attached to it.”

“No,” he muttered.  “No,” more firmly this time.  “I need to get over this, it wasn’t the stupid suits fault I got buried in that box it was the damn Pyndingum.  Get it running for me.”

Split didn’t answer, he just shifted Cole’s weight to rest on Anastacia.  Split walked forward and stood over the hardened blob of Cole’s suit.  He pulled two things out of his pocket.  One looked like a bottle the other like a power cell for a blaster.  Split opened the bottle and dumped the contents over the suit then he removed the safety from the battery pack.  Split took a step back and knelt down holding the battery over the wet suit with the prongs pointed down.  Split slammed the pack down onto the suit and jumped back as sparks danced over the whole mess.  He stood up and moved back to take Cole onto his shoulder.  It took thirty or so seconds for the battery to fully discharge itself.

Cole watched as the blob slowly lost its rigidity and melted onto the floor.  “Thanks,” he said to Split.  Split grunted his answer and helped Cole walk forward.  Cole stopped and took a deep breath.  Gingerly Cole moved his left foot over the suit.  He steeled himself and placed his foot down on top of it and brought his right foot over too.  Standing directly on top of the suit, Cole closed his eyes and made the connection with his suit.  A shiver crawled up his spine as he felt the suit begin to climb his body.  It was moving slowly but steadily up his body.  He stopped it at his neck, he wasn’t ready to let it cover his face yet. 

Cole opened his eyes and looked down at himself.  He shuddered as he saw the black suit.  Then he sniffed.  He sniffed again.  “God damn it,” Cole said as he turned to look at Split.  “I thought that was water in your bottle, what was it?”

“Heh.  Not water, no.  Definitely not.  Sometimes when we were stuck in here for a while, a mysterious puddle appeared on the floor.  We were out of water and you wanted your suit.  Our suit got damaged and the water recycling function wasn’t working.  We had to go into the bottle.”  Split actually looked slightly embarrassed. 

“Jesus, just get me out of here and somewhere I can clean up.”  Cole kept his breathing to his mouth and tried not to think about what his suit was covered in.  Split and Anastacia slipped their shoulders under Cole’s arms and got him moving to the door.  It was still open and beckoning to the trio.  “Wait, got to do one more thing.”  Cole held out his hands and drew the suit back off of them.  He leaned forward and placed his hands on either side of the door.  He spent several seconds in silence before he opened his eyes and hooked his arms back over his friends.

“What was that about?”  Anastacia asked Cole.

“The room, more accurately, the metallic coating inside the room that shapes and flows is not metal.  It is a living being that the Esii discovered on another planet.  This room and several others hold them as much of prisoners as myself.  I have freed them and promised them a ride home when we leave, if we leave.  Let’s go.”

With Cole’s arms over each of their shoulders, they exited the room Cole had called home for weeks.  He felt a weight lift from his shoulders.  He never imagined he would make it this far.  He assumed he would die during the torture.  It was a short trip down the main hallway to the siding that housed Splits hideout.  They turned left off the main corridor and traveled for a few minutes down the secondary hallway.

Cole could see that this hall didn’t get as much traffic as the main one, in fact it didn’t even look like Split had been this way before.  The hall ended at a blank wall.  Not exactly blank but close enough.  It appeared that whoever was boring this tunnel had just given up and left leaving the tunnel unfinished.

They stopped in front of the rough wall and Cole opened his mouth to ask Split if they had gone the wrong way when there was a slight shimmer in the wall to their front.  Suddenly the wall was not rough and unfinished, there was a crude door into large room on the other side.  Split took all of Cole’s weight and led them through.  The rough passage was too narrow for them to all go through together.

They got through the small passage and into Splits hideout.  Cole let out a low whistle when he saw the contents of the room.  Weapons racks, ammunition, battery packs, and various other military weapons lined one wall.  On the other were hung suits of standard galactic Second Skins.  There were cots with bedding and small makeshift kitchen and bathroom.

“Jesus, well you have at least been busy the last couple of weeks.”  Cole was looking around the room in amazement.  “Get me over to a cot, please.”  Split lowered Cole down to one of the cots and took a step back.

“We know you have some questions for us and will be happy to answer.  But we all are hungry and thirsty, and would like to refresh ourselves first.  We also suggest you get cleaned up.  The waste was ours but it still smells.”  Cole nodded his head in agreement and sat back while Split got them some water and heated up some food.

“Heap it on Split, I haven’t eaten in a while.”  Cole leaned back and sagged against the wall.  He dozed off during the time it took Split to get them food and drink.  Split kicked his foot to wake him up and handed him a plate full of standard space mush.  A glob of crap that tasted like shit but had all the necessary vitamins and minerals a growing boy needed.  Cole didn’t care, his empty stomach rumbled at the sight of the food.  He noticed Anastacia didn’t care either because she dug in just as fast as Cole.  The next few minutes were filled with the sounds of hungry beings eating their fill.  Cole’s nanites were going nuts.  They were keeping a running tally on the nutrients they needed to fully repair his body.  He was suffering from borderline malnutrition and dehydration.  This plate of food and jug of water were going a long way towards refilling his empty tank.

Cole spooned in the last of the space gruel and let loose with a giant belch he set his plate aside and finished the rest of his water.  He hadn’t realized how hungry he had truly been until he had started to eat.  Slowly he pushed himself up and off of the cot.  He fought to retain his balance before he took his first tentative steps on his own.

“I guess living in your own mind for that long has negative effects on your body,” Cole said as he took a step forward and wobbled before catching himself.  He waved off Split as he stood to offer his aid.  With a shuffling gait, he made it over to the bathroom area of the room.  Split had jury rigged a shower and a toilet.  The toilet appeared to be little more than an opening to a small incinerator for waste disposal.  The shower was nothing more than a giant container stuck to the ceiling with a pull cord hanging down. 

Cole pulled the curtain shut separating him from the rest of the room.  He disengaged his smelly suit and let it pool around his feet.  It would clean itself.  He grabbed the pull cord and tugged on it.  Blissfully warm water poured down on his head.  He didn’t know how Split had managed it, but the water got even warmer.  Cole made his shower quick but enjoyed it as much as possible.  Ten minutes after entering the shower, Cole exited feeling like a new man.

He strode confidently across the room and sat back down on his cot.  “Can I ask a few questions yet?”

“Please do,” Split responded.

“Ok first, how long have you been here?”  Cole leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and looked at the Worlder as he answered.

“We followed you out of the airlock of the Retribution to the Esii cruiser.  We have been with or near you the wh
ole time.”  He stated it matter-of-factly.