Upgraded (6 page)

You won’t be facing the Satrap in optimal fighting condition.

But you’re so close. And if you delay, you invite the risk of the Satrap sending someone for John. That could be messy. And it won’t give you the one thing you really want out of all this: an invitation into the Satrap’s personal cavern, deep past its layers of defenses.

Hello there you slimy alien shit,
you’re thinking. I’ve got a treat for you.

Just come a little closer, and don’t mind the big teeth behind this smile.

You snap the ammonia capsule apart under John’s nose and he jerks awake. You’re both in a loading bay near the rim of Hope’s End. Water drips off in a corner, and the industrial grit on the walls is old and faded. A section of the habitat that has fallen into disuse.

“Don’t do this. You should join us, Pepper. Leave all this behind. Start something fresh.”

“That’s not what’s happening right now,” you say. “The direction of this journey was set a long time ago.” The door at the far end of the bay creaks open.

“You can’t kill a Satrap,” he says.

You lean next to him. “Your ships, they were never going to leave Hope’s End. The Satrap here gave you enough fuel to bring those people here. But right now, you’re being given dribs and drabs of antimatter. Enough to go back and from to Earth. But not enough to make it back where you want to go with a whole fleet, right?”

John is silent.

You laugh. “The creature strings you along, until it can get what it wants. And then every single person who came here, well, they’ll truly understand the name the few hundred free humans scraping by here gave it. Won’t they? Hope’s End. Because even if you’re free, you’re not free of the Satrap’s long arm. And you’ll be the one who lured them here with tales of a free world.”

John lets out a deep breath, and slumps forward.

“But listen to me. Work with me, and I’ll help you get what you need. Do you understand?”

“Neither of us will walk away alive from this,” John says. “We are both dead men. We’re talking, but we are dead men.”

The empty-eyed vassals of the Satrap encircle you, a watchful, coordinated crowd that sighs happily as their eyes confirm that you have indeed delivered John deBrun.

“I want my memories, now,” you say, holding tight to John.

“Come with us.”

Somewhere deep inside, hope stirs. Anticipation builds.

Caution, you warn.

You’re both herded deep into Hope’s End by ten humans in thrall to the Satrap. Away from the green commons, below the corridors, below the subways and utility pipes, out of storage, and into the core ballast in the heart of the structure. The shadows are everywhere, and fluids drip slowly in the reduced gravity.

Muck oozes from grates, and biological mists hang in the air, thick on the lungs.

The Satrap’s subterranean cavern is dim, and the wormy trilobite itself slouched in a dust pit at the center. The long tendrils around its maw socketed into machines, and from those machines, controlled anyone unfortunate enough to be in thrall.

A curious adaptation. You imagine the Satrap evolved somewhere deep underground, where it could lie in weight and plunge its neuro-tendrils into a prey’s spine. And then what? It could use predators to grab prey, without harm to itself? Use prey as lures, dangling around that eager, gaping mouth.

“Finally,” all ten voices around you say in unison.

John is shoved to the floor in front of you, and you move into the next section of your plan. You reach up to your back and use carbon-fibre fingernails to rip into the scars on your back.

This hurts.

But pain doesn’t last forever. Not the pain of your skin ripping apart, or your fingers pulling. The pain of grabbing the handle just underneath as you pull the modified machete of your shoulder blade with a wet tearing and hiss.

Memory strata reforms the blade’s handle to fit your grasp, and the black edge of the blade sucks the light into it. The molecular surface is hydrophobic, the viscera and blood on it slide off and splash to the floor.

The Satrap’s thralls move toward you, but you put the edge of the short blade against the back of John’s skull. “Don’t.”

As one, they all pull back.

You could have killed John with your bare hands, you don’t need the sword. This is part statement. Theater to help the Satrap realize that you’re far more dangerous than it has realized. Because, if it can get away with it, the Satrap will have both its prize and keep your memories.

And that isn’t going to be happening.

“Give me my memories,” you tell it.

“Let me have my new world,” it replies in ten voices.

Ten. That’s all it has surrounding you.

But you want those memories, so the standoff continues. You broadcast your implacability. You will not be moving until you are given those memories. And first.

“Tell it half the coordinates,” you order John. You push the edge of the machete against his neck. Let’s dangle the prize a little, you think.

“No,” John says firmly.

“John,” You kneel next to him. And you whisper, “it will die with those coordinates in its head. Trust me. Don’t hold it to just yourself now, let it go. Let go of the burden. Let me help you. And then this will be all over.”

But you notice something in his response.

He has been sharing the burden. Someone else knows the coordinates. Who? His first mate. Jay. There was a bond there, you remember.

John stumbles to his feet. “If you want the coordinates, you’ll have to rip them out of my head yourself,” he says to the Satrap.

And why would he do that?

His body is warm, near feverish. A Satrap wouldn’t notice. Not a Satrap that had people under thrall to it with sores on their skin. But you notice.

You’re not the only player in this game. John has a different plan. A plan to protect the coordinates. A plan to give his people time to grab what they need: fuel. He’s got a bomb in him. Hidden, like your machete.

Well done, Mr. deBrun, you think.

Something moves from in the shadows. A large man with shaggy hair, seven and a half feet tall, muscle and fat and pistoned machine all stitched together like an art show gone wrong. A glimpse of what you could have been, if you’d been designed for strength and strength alone.

In the palm of his oversized hand, a brick that leaked superconducting fluid. ShinnCo logo on the outside and all. The last time you saw it . . . the last time you saw it, you’d woken up in a room and a man in a suit had sat with it in his lap. He’d explained to you that you were in that box. Everything that had once been you, at least. And now they owned it. And by extension, you.

“A copy of your memories,” the Satrap says. “You’ll hand deBrun over. I know you. I have tasted your memories. Partaken of you.”

“You know who I was, know who I
am,
” you say. “That was the me before, I’m the me after they took all that, sliced me apart, rebuilt me, and deployed me.”

You grab John’s head, and before anyone in the cavern can twitch, you slice his head off and hold it up into the air. John’s body slumps forward, blood fountaining out over the rock at your feet.

“How long before the dying neurons are inaccessible in here?” you shout.

Everything in the room is flailing, responding to the movements of the Satrap’s tendrils as they shake in anger.

You ignore all that. “Give me. My memories.”

The Satrap calms. “You are too impertinent,” the mouths around you chorus. “I am near immortal. I know the region the man was in. I will continue hunting for that world, and I will eventually have it. But you . . . ”

The large man crushes the memory box. Hyperdense storage crumples easily under the carbon fiber fingers and steaming coolant bursts from between his knuckles.

Fragments drop to the ground.

You stare at them, lips tight.

“Ah,” the Satrap sighs all around you. “Now those memories only live inside me. They are, once again, unique within flesh. So . . . if you kneel and behave from now on, I’ll tell you all about your life. Every time you complete a task, you will return and bow before me right here, and I will tell you about your life. I will give you your past back. Just hand me the head, and kneel.”

“You actually believe that I will hand you this head, and take a knee?” you ask.

“I do. From here, those are your only two choices. So the question is . . . ”

You throw the head aside and hold the machete in both hands firmly.

As expected, half the men and women in thrall scrabble for the head. There’s a twinge of regret. Maybe John would have been able to hide in his ship if you hadn’t shown up. Maybe he would have been able to sneak enough fuel to his ragged fleet to make for that hidden world.

But you doubt it.

And here you are.

Killing the puppets who are in thrall to the Satrap is a thankless task. They are human. Many of them would not have asked for this life. They are people from the home world who fell on hard times, and were given a promise of future wealth in exchange for service. If they live long enough. Others were prepaid: a line of credit, a burst of wealth for a year, and then thrall. Others are criminals, or harvested from debtor’s prison. Prisoners of war left over from various conflicts.

The Satrapy is “civilized.” So it says. It doesn’t raid for subjects. They have to, nominally, be beings that have lost their rights. Or agreed to lose them.

Doesn’t mean most can’t see what thralldom is.

But you kill anyway. Their blood, sliding down the hydrophobic blade to drench your sleeves. The three nearest, beheaded quickly and cleanly. There’s no reason to make them suffer.

You walk through a mist of their jugular blood settling ever so slowly to the ground in the lower gravity. The Satrap, realizing what’s happening, pulls humans around itself. One of them holds deBrun’s head in their arms covetously.

The big guy is the artillery.

He advances, legs thudding, even here. Dust stirs. You walk calmly at him. He swings, a mass-driver, extinction-level powered punch that grazes you. Because what you have is speed. Mechanical tendons that trigger and snap you deep into his reach.

Just the whiff of his punch catches you in the ribs, though. They all crack, and alloys underneath are bent out of shape.

Warning glyphs cascade down your field of sight.

You ignore it all to bury your blade deep into the giant’s right eye socket, then yank up.

Even as the body falls to the ground, you’re facing the Satrap once more.

“I’ve already called my brothers and sisters down on the ground to come for you,” it says through the remaining puppets. “You are dead.”

“People keep telling me that,” you say.

And maybe they’re right.

The puppets come at you in a wedge. All seven. It’s trying to overwhelm you.

You use the machete to cut through the jungle of flesh, leaving arms and limbs on the ground. And when you stand in front of the Satrap, it wriggles back away from you in fear.

“Let me tell you a memory,” it begs through speakers, using the machines now that it has been shorn of biological toy things.

“It’s too late,” you tell it. “I’m dead.”

You drive the machete deep. And then you keep pushing until you have to use your fingers to rip it apart.

There’s a sense throughout the habitat that something major has shifted. Free humans are bunched together in corners, and others are dazed and wandering around. The rumor is that the Satrap has suddenly disappeared, or died. But what if it comes back? What happens when other Satraps arrive?

You find the docks and a row of deBrun’s crew with guns guarding the lock. They stare at you, and you realize you are still covered in blood and carrying a machete. Everyone on the station has given you a wide, wide berth.

“If you wanted to steal fuel, now’s the time,” you tell them. “The Satrap’s not going to be able to stop you. Everyone out there doesn’t know what to do.”

There are some other alien races sprinkled in throughout the station. But they seem to have locked themselves away, sensing something has gone wrong.

Smart.

“Who did the captain leave in charge, if he died?” you ask. They don’t answer, but take you back into the ship, and the first mate comes up.

“You’re in charge?” you ask.

“Yes,” he nods. “I’m John.”

You frown. “He called you Jay on the bridge, when I came out.”

The first mate smiles sadly. “John deBrun. The junior John deBrun. Jay because we don’t need two Johns on the bridge. Though . . . I guess that won’t happen anymore.”

“He gave you the coordinates, in case he was taken.”

John’s son nods. “You were taken with him, by the Satrap? You were there?”

You pause for a moment, trying to find words that suddenly flee you. You change direction. “You have three hours to steal as much fuel as you can before forces from the planet below arrive. We should both be long gone by then. Understand?”

“Three hours isn’t long enough.”

You shrug. “Take what time you have been given.”

“You don’t understand, we’re taking on extra people. People we didn’t plan to take on. That adds to the mass we need to spin up. We have the other ships docking hard, and we’re taking refugees from Hope’s End. People, who if they stay, will be back in thrall at the end of those few hours. We won’t have enough fuel to get where we need to go. Maybe, three quarters of the way?”

And out there in space, you were either there or not. There was no part way. No one was getting out on foot to push a ship. Those are cold calculations. They come with the job of captain. Air. Food. Water. Carbon filters. Fuel.

“Sounds like you need to shut your locks soon,” you say. “Or you risk throwing away your father’s sacrifice.”

“I will not leave them,” John says calmly. “He may have been able to. You may. But I will not. We are human beings. We should not leave other human beings behind.”

“Then you’d better hope your men hurry on the fuel siphoning.”

You have no use for goodbyes. You leave him in his cockpit. But you stand in the corridor by yourself in the quiet. Your legs buckle slightly. A wound? Overtired muscles sizzling from the performance earlier? You lean against the wall and take a deep breath.