COLONY SHIP 02, UR: ARKS COMMAND TOWER
- 2300 HOURS -
If there was one thing that could be said of Lieutenant Arkon, it’s that he was a model officer. He had, after all, been created for that very purpose. Literally.
His full name, or designation, was R-KON followed by a string of digits that most non-CASTs failed to memorize. Hence the shortened version: Arkon. He was one of no less than sixty identical units employed in various roles within ARKS Command, and one of three aboard
Ur. It was for this reason that Arkon felt compelled to distinguish himself from his brethren. He had the drive, the tenacity, and the persistence needed to succeed. Loyal to a fault and willing to take on any assignment given to him.
Which explained his presence in the Command tower so late at night, long after his shift was supposed to end. His new commanding officer, Colonel Aki01, had given him a special task to complete. Something very hush-hush. Always eager to help, Arkon had accepted without a second thought. Practically jumped at the opportunity, in fact.
Looking at it now, however, the order seemed a bit… excessive. Under normal circumstances it probably would’ve been illegal. But these weren’t normal times. No, not at all. The military was in control now. Martial law had been declared. That meant civilian rules—the entirety of civilian law, actually—no longer applied. The ARKS had the authority to do whatever was necessary to maintain order.
Arkon wasn’t a political man. He had no interest in who controlled the ship. As long as the command structure remained intact, he did what he was told. Period. If that meant issuing a few dozen arrest warrants, so be it. It didn’t matter that the so-called offenders hadn’t committed any crimes. Or that he recognized most of the names on the list, which included various public figures, elected officials, and celebrities. His superior had given the order, so he would carry it out. Simple as that.
Seated at his desk, he called up a holographic computer screen and began typing. His fingers flew over the keys faster than most flesh-and-blood beings could track. Schedules were compiled, teams assembled, instructions given.
Thirty-seven seconds later, he was done. Arkon leaned back in his chair and reviewed his work. In a matter of hours, one hundred and sixty ARKS soldiers would receive the directive given by Colonel Aki. Their orders: to arrest all those deemed a “potential risk” by the administration. In other words, silencing anyone who dared speak out against the status quo.
Arkon felt no remorse over this fact. It wasn’t his job to question, only to obey. And so, without giving the matter any further thought, he stood up and headed for the nearest elevator. His shift was finally over.
* * * * * * * * *
FALLEN COLONY SHIP ORPHEUS
- One day earlier -
They say that when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Loved ones, cherished memories, favorite pets, they all come parading back for one final hurrah.
But that’s not how it happened for him. One moment he was taking a bullet to the chest, the next…
Nothing. Nothing but silence and blackness and eternity.
He floated in that endless void forever. Or at least it seemed that way. In reality it might have been a few seconds, hours, or even days. Impossible to tell when you’re stuck in a place where time has no meaning.
Regardless, he eventually found his way back to the land of the living. It was the pain that brought him back. His finger twitched, his eyes shot open, and he let out a pained gasp. All this happened in less than a second. Immediately his hand grasped for the bullet hole in his chest. Except it wasn’t there.
Of course it wasn’t. The personal photon shield he wore was designed to protect him during just such an occasion. An expensive piece of technology, to be sure, but it had done its job beautifully. Unfortunately the sheer impact of the shot had knocked him out cold. On the bright side, at least he wasn’t dead. Not yet.
Lying on his back in the musty office building, the man in the demon mask began to chuckle. A chuckle that quickly graduated into a full-blown laugh. He laughed until his throat was sore. The masked man couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that. Twenty years ago, maybe. All he could think was:
He beat me. That shit-headed little Newman beat me.
He had been the best sniper in the fleet during his ARKS days. Some considered him the best in all of Oracle. And yet he’d been beaten by some no-name punk in this filthy excuse for a Darker nest.
The masked man could have been angry by that fact, but he wasn’t. He held no grudge against the Newman. Truth was, he’d been beaten. Plain and simple. No point getting upset over it. All he could do was make sure it didn’t happen again.
He picked himself up off the floor, retrieved his fallen rifle, and returned to the open window. Outside, the city below was an infinite, speckled void. A world of silence and tranquility. There were no battles being waged, no struggles for survival. Whatever had happened down there was over and done with. It was possible, he mused, that he’d already failed his mission.
Well, there was a first time for everything.
Okada hired him as an insurance policy. His job was to ensure Shankar’s success—whatever that meant. The masked man still wasn’t clear on that point. In any case, sitting around wasn’t doing him any good. It was time for a little recon…
* * * * * * * * *
The trek to the ground floor was a tedious one. Twenty flights of stairs later, he finally reached the bottom. A spidery Dagan had taken up residence in the main lobby. He stabbed it between the eyes with a photon dagger on his way out.
On the front steps, the man with no name looked to his left, then to his right. He had no idea where everyone ended up after he was shot. The Newman and the red-haired CAST woman were headed towards the ARKS Command tower, which was east of him. The other three—four, if you counted the support partner—had been going the other direction, probably towards the docking bays.
The masked man made up his mind. He headed west. Even if they were still at the Command tower, they would return to their ship eventually. More likely than not, however, they were either long dead or long gone.
If they were gone, so was his ride. He’d stowed away aboard
Rico’s Folly during the trip to
Orpheus. Plenty of places to hide on an old cargo hauler like that.
After arriving, he had followed them halfway across the city, all the way to Naya Kestren’s lab. He considered eliminating them then and there, but had ultimately decided against it. Taking out six targets in quick succession was doable… but generally not advisable. The risk of failure was too high. Better to wait until they split up, which they soon did. He’d gone after the CAST woman first. She looked like the most capable of the bunch. Unfortunately for him, that damn pesky Newman intervened. Somehow, he had sensed it coming. Their duel ended with the masked man taking a bullet to the chest, which brought him back to the present situation.
He made his way across the ruined cityscape, effortlessly killing any Darkers that got in his way. They didn’t frighten him anymore. Nothing did.
Only a few blocks from the docking bay where
Rico’s Folly was housed, the man encountered something unexpected. He heard it before he saw it. The monotonous buzz of insect wings flapping rapidly.
Just a Breeahda, he thought to himself. When he peered around the corner, however, he realized he was wrong. It wasn’t a Breeahda. Yes, it resembled the bulb-shaped, insectoid Darkers, but this one was different. It had a gaggle of spindly tentacles hanging down from both sides.
The masked man had never seen anything quite like it before, and he’d been killing Darkers a long time. He decided this one was worth investigating further. At the moment it was hovering alone in an empty park. He’d never get close without being spotted. Instead, he backtracked a couple blocks and climbed to the roof of a fifteen-story apartment complex. It offered a good view of the surrounding area, including the park.
The man set up his rifle on the lip of the roof, crouched down, and put his eye to the scope. What he saw was another surprise: Shankar, the big man himself, was standing in the clearing next to the Darker. And he had changed. There was a red, bulbous core embedded in the center of his back. A series of black veins radiated outward from it. His forearms were sheathed in jet black, organic-looking armor and his fingers ended in long, bladed claws. A pair of small horns protruded from his forehead. And his eyes… they were glowing softly with a rather inhuman shade of crimson. All in all, the man looked to be half-Darker already.
But that wasn’t all. The Breeahda-like Darker had one of its barbed tentacles stuck in Shankar’s neck! Far from resisting, the copper-skinned Newman stood passively, allowing the creature to do… whatever it was doing. The tentacle itself pulsed with blue light. That light flowed in the direction of the Darker’s body, as though it were feeding on Shankar’s energy. After a few seconds, the tentacle released itself.
Shankar began speaking and gesturing to the Darker, though he was too far from the masked man to be heard. In response, the creature raised its rear end high in the air. Its whole body began to vibrate. And then—
—then a large black egg shot out of it. The egg spiraled gently through the air, eventually coming to rest several meters away. Its thick, vein-like roots burrowed themselves deep into the mossy ground.
Shankar stepped over to the egg and ran a hand along its surface. He said something else to the Darker, then turned and walked away. A tear in the fabric of space—a Darker portal—appeared in front of him. The big man stepped through it and disappeared. The winged Darker remained in the park, looking after the egg alone.
The masked man continued staring through his scope, fascinated. What had he just witnessed? He hoped to see something more but it appeared the bizarre ritual was already complete.
He lowered his weapon. Turned around, expecting to return to the stairwell, when a hint of movement on a nearby building caught his eye. The masked man froze. Slowly, so he wouldn’t attract attention, he eased himself to the floor. Staying as low as possible, he lifted his rifle over the lip of the building. Pointed it in the direction of the movement he’d seen and checked the scope once more.
Beneath his mask, the man with no name grinned. It was the pointy-eared bastard who shot him earlier! Even better, the Newman hadn’t spotted him yet. He was too busy watching the tentacled Darker through his own scope.
After a minute or so, the green-haired Newman gave up his watch and left the building. The masked man trailed him covertly for several blocks. Eventually they ended up exactly where he expected: the docking bay. More specifically,
Rico’s Folly. The beat-up old transport was still resting in the same spot as before.
Looks like I’m not stranded after all, he thought wryly.
Up ahead, Green Hair climbed the boarding ramp. It sealed itself shut behind him. Still in the bay, the masked man snuck up to the side of the ship, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small electronic device. It consisted of two pieces connected by a black cord. The man stuck one piece into his ear. The piece on the other end of the cord, which was shaped like a suction cup, he placed against the transport’s hull.
The device was similar to a high-tech stethoscope. Instead of listening for a heartbeat inside the body, however, this device could pick up sounds from inside the ship. The man waited and listened. He heard four people talking. They were planning something—an attack of some kind. They were going after Shankar and the mysterious egg.
Interesting, he thought. They could have flown out of here, left
Orpheus behind. Instead they decided to stick around and put up a fight. If nothing else, these people weren’t cowards.
One of them—the CAST woman, maybe—was saying they would move out in three hours. Plenty of time for the masked man to set up an ambush. He would kill them all, steal their ship, and fly back to
Ur to collect his bounty. No problem.
* * * * * * * * *
Exactly three hours later, the masked man was seated atop the same building he had ascended earlier that day. He knew the green-haired Newman and his friends were coming back for the egg. That much was certain. The way he figured it, they would pass his building along the way. He’d wait for a shot, then take them out.
They arrived pretty much on schedule. He liked it when his targets were punctual. Very considerate of them—even if they didn’t know it. Not only were they on time, they were also terribly predictable. Green Hair led them up to the same roof he’d been on before.
The masked man adjusted his scope. Rested his trigger finger just outside the trigger guard. He was across the street and three stories up. For a sniper, that was considered easy pickings.
The only problem was their numbers. He wasn’t confident he could get all four at once. If even one of them escaped, tracking them down would be annoying.
While the man debated with himself, the group split into two pairs. Perfect! He could take them out two at a time, no problem. But which pair to target first? Green Hair and the other man took off in the direction of the egg. The CAST and her support partner headed for the cemetery.
He settled on going after Green Hair first. Still owed the little bastard some payback for earlier.
His targets exited the building and jogged along the edge of the deserted street. They were still a couple blocks away from the park where the egg sat alone, seemingly unguarded. Too bad for them, they were never going to make it that far. The masked man lined up his shot.
You’re mine, he thought.
Then his scope went black. Something was blocking his view—something right in front of him!
The man jerked his head back violently, barely dodging the El Ahda’s claw swipe. He rolled to the side and raised his rifle to block. The Darker’s follow-up swing collided with the gun, forcing him back. When the creature came at him a third time, he pivoted away—too late!—and felt a sharp sting as one of its claws tore through his arm. Enraged, the man rushed forward and plunged his dagger deep into its reddish core. The El Ahda groaned. It wobbled drunkenly in mid-air, then crashed down to the roof and died.
The masked man fell back to the asphalt, panting. There was blood gushing from his bicep. It formed a crimson pool on the ground beneath him. Luckily it wasn’t a life-threatening injury. Still, it needed to be treated right away or that could change. He tore off a strip of his tunic and wrapped it tightly around the wound, which stymied the flow of blood.
By then he was feeling woozy and lightheaded. He tried to get up, to grab his gun and take the shot anyway, but it was no good. He couldn’t focus properly. His vision kept fading in and out. Eventually gravity won the battle and he collapsed backwards onto the roof once more.
By the time his world stopped spinning, his targets were nowhere in sight.
* * * * * * * * *
Gone. The transport was gone. When he returned to the docking bay an hour later, he found it completely, utterly empty. Now he really was stranded aboard
Orpheus.
He couldn’t believe his bad luck. He’d been fighting Darkers for twenty long years. Twenty! During that time, they’d been little more than a nuisance to him. Like swatting flies buzzing around his head. Not since his first trip to Naberius—that terrible, character-forging ordeal—had they given him any real trouble. And yet today, of all days, they had managed to get the better of him. To wound him just enough to ruin his mission—and his chances of escaping this forsaken place.
There was probably some poetic irony in all this, he figured. Didn’t matter, though. Didn’t change his situation in the least.
He spent the better part of a day searching every docking bay he could find, looking for a ship, any ship he could use to fly out of there. He came up empty-handed. Any flyable spacecraft was long gone, taken during the evacuation a cycle ago. Anything left had been smashed to bits by the Darkers.
There was still one option left, however. He hated groveling, especially to Okada, but what choice did he have? If he could get a signal back to
Ur—and that was a very big “if,” given his current location—the little prick could send someone to pick him up. That was his only hope now.
The masked man thought long and hard about the best way to get a signal out. He remembered something Okada said to him once, that the ARKS main computer aboard
Orpheus was still transmitting data to Oracle. That terminal was located at the top of the Command tower. It was a long hike from his current location.
Better get started, then.
* * * * * * * * *
During the sixty-story climb up the Command tower, the man in the mask had plenty of time to think. He spent the bulk of his time thinking about circles. Life kept going round and round, never slowing, never stopping. If you lived long enough, sometimes it eventually came around full circle. Once upon a time he had been stranded, left for dead, forced to fight for his very survival. And now here he was, two decades later, once again marooned in the very heart of darkness. It was almost comical in its absurdity.
This ain’t Naberius, though. No, not even close. He had experience now. Skills. These days they called him the Hunter. The man who could take out any target, slay any Darker. Before that they called him the Savage, the beast who couldn’t be tamed. And before that—
It didn’t matter. The name meant nothing to him now. It was something he had discarded long ago like an ill-fitting cloak. Certainly not worth getting sentimental over.
He pressed onward.
When he reached the top floor, the man located the commander’s office and stepped inside. What he found was chaos. There was wreckage strewn everywhere. Most of the furniture had been shredded. One wall was adorned with a gaping hole. It was the remains of battle. And from the look of it, a pretty fierce one.
In the center of it all stood the ruins of a large wooden desk. The computer terminal atop it was smashed to bits. Fucked up beyond all repair. This fact did not discourage the man, however. He knew that unlike most terminals, which accessed data via a wireless signal, the commander’s terminal was hardwired to the main computer. It was more secure that way—theoretically, at least.
The masked man looked for—and found—the wall jack that connected to the terminal. He plugged a personal interface device into it and got to work. Step one was hacking the triple-layered security firewall. That was the easy part. Step two was figuring out how to make an outgoing call to
Ur. That took a bit more time. Fortunately for him, the man had learned a thing or two about computer systems over the years.
Eventually he figured it out. He dialed Lee Okada’s private number and waited. For a full minute, nothing happened. Then—
“You’re alive.” Okada’s silky voice didn’t sound relieved or upset. He was simply stating a fact.
The masked man didn’t ask how he knew who was calling. After all, who else would be contacting him from
Orpheus? “I lost my ride,” he said. “Hurry and send someone to pick me up already.”
Okada was silent for a moment, then said, “You failed me. I told you to protect the Newman. I told you how important this was, yet you were beaten by a single man in a sniper duel.”
The masked man didn’t ask how he knew that, either. He merely waited for his employer to finish.
Okada continued, “You’ve jeopardized my plans. Because of your failure, the Newman was forced to expend too much energy. At this rate the Master Core may consume him. If he ‘turns’ too soon, that could be… problematic for me.”
Truth be told, the man couldn’t care less about those so-called “plans.” Moreover, he was starting to get annoyed by Okada’s incessant lecturing. He knew he’d failed; he didn’t need the little prick rubbing it in. “Fine, I’ll return the service fee if that makes you feel better,” he growled. “Now are you going to come get me or not?”
“I also seem to recall telling you that you were responsible for your own transportation during this mission. Do you remember that conversation? Because I remember it very clearly.”
“I remember saving your sorry ass from that Darker aboard
Feoh. Or does that mean nothing to you?”
“I saved you first. The way I see it, that makes us even. I see no reason to go out of my way for you again.”
“Don’t you even think about leaving me here, Okada! Don’t you fucking dare!”
“All tools eventually outlive their usefulness,” his employer replied coolly. “It’s a fact of life. And if we’re being perfectly candid, you know a bit too much of my personal history. More than I would prefer anyone knowing. Going forward, I can see that being a liability. So, I’m afraid this is where you and I part ways. Consider our contract terminated.”
A
tool? He was being discarded like some kind of household appliance?! After everything he’d done! No… No, he wouldn’t accept that. Never!
“I’ll fucking
murder you!” the masked man bellowed. “Hunt you down, put a bullet through your head, and splatter your brains all over the wall, you
cock-sucking whore!!”
“Farewell, Kolba.”
Click. The line went dead.
“OKADAAAAAAA!!!”
His scream of rage echoed down the hallway, but there was no there to hear it.
No one at all.
CHAPTER 14: END
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