A decently sized two scene slice.
Steve
Chapter 3: The Eye of God
“Scanners active, maximum range. Master.” His AI croaked in the deliberately menacing tone and style of the Max Force vocorder program. He disabled it.
Sector Family Njy. Even the stars, The Fixer thought, felt as if they were silently observing your every move, with the slow malice of immortals. No, he did not like this place but with the delicious irony that the universe specialised in, it was within the confines of The Butcher’s colonial fiefdom that he was most secure. He and the head of the powerful Split clan had an understanding. Services rendered, prices paid. His face tightened against another agonising explosion in his injured arm. The low-dosage analgesic was wearing off and jolts of knife-sharp pain surged through it like the random electric shocks of a torturer. He should take care of it, would do as soon as he was certain his situation was secure. He focused on the Gravidar and Sector Scan.
Like all the other known gates, The Great Expansion, as the gate drift was becoming known, affected the jump-point to Thynn’s Abyss. It now lay some fifty thousand kilometres from the factory complex clustered in high orbit around the agricultural colony. An inconvenience for traders and an opportunity for others, particularly near the jumpgates, whose energy fields disrupted the IP variant of the standard drive systems. The gate environs showed clear, just a pair of the new Iguana passenger haulers some hundred kilometres distant, inbound at normal velocity. No escort despite the prevalence of Xenon activity in the frontier region, hemmed in between a single heavily defended sector west of Thynn’s Abyss and the unknown vastness of Xenon space beyond Getsu Fune and Menelaus Paradise to the north. They didn’t need one.
A Split destroyer lurked on the fringe of scanner range and its interest would no doubt have already been piqued by the arrival of a corvette untracked by the frontier Naval Nav-Sat network. The Fixer transmitted a recognition code to forestall needless questions. Services rendered, prices paid. The assassin gasped through another tortuous surge. He left Slash piloting the Dragon, transported to the docked Pegasus and returned to the Dragon’s cramped living space carrying a small plasteel case. The woman had put up the expected fight and he spent a few moments returning order to the disarray. In the process he remembered.
“Slash. Distribute the record of Delenari’s last moments to the usual places.”
There were dark nodes on the information web binding the Community of Planets. Word would soon leak out and voices self-silenced. Terror. The pain in his arm grew worse, swelling towards the unbearable. The Fixer needed few personal possessions, preferring to travel unencumbered but well prepared. He opened the dull, silver case and methodically laid items out on the small workbench. A portable Medical Diagnostic Scanner, the best that credits could buy of course. Bone-stressor rings. He needed neither a medi-scan nor any of his science and medical doctorates to know they were needed. Nano-Surgical Bot Deployer. Significantly enhanced, beyond state of the art. Or so he thought until he examined the weapon in the limited detail possible outside his lab. Nano-bots that replicated themselves and created a device from whatever resources were available, including the human body. Clever, he thought then and having examined the scans of the device in action, cleverer still. Introducing them to the victim through a drink of Kelp Chi? His genius. From now on everything that crossed his lips would be scanned. Some clients, the foolish ones, were known to succumb to the sin of ingratitude. Ones remembered only in the dark places. He felt light-headed now, from the ripping pain in his arm and imagined the slivered bone slicing flesh and nerve with every small movement. The Fixer forced his mind to look away. It took him places he did not often go.
The weapon. He heard himself sigh. Regret? A missed opportunity? The nano-tech weapon, he belatedly realised, was generations beyond his own work. Target fixation. The Fixer had expected the Boron factotum to dissolve into organic slime, the body destroyed from the inside. He should have looked closer. The old man had been transformed. Into what? The assassin had little interest in the chosen form, it had been effective and no doubt furthered whatever game the client played. All a game. Men died, organisations changed hands and regimes fell. In the long term it meant nothing. Chaff in the wind, noise in the signal. Nothing. The universe held just one single meaning. She.
Regret? A missed opportunity? Yes. He forced his damaged arm to remove a small silver box from the case. Agony, deserved. Blood blossomed on his lower lip. From the box he took a small golden sphere, mounted on a small black wooden plinth, stained with age. The Fixer carefully placed it on the workbench and moved a finger across the touch-sensor switch.
While the device laboriously stepped through a setup program he snapped the tubular Bone Stressor bands around his injured arm. Upper and lower arm. He lay gingerly down on the cot, trying not to jar the limb, and as the golden sphere filled the air with a black holographic void, he activated the Stressor diagnostic routines. A green light flashed on each band, to indicate the completed diagnosis and their readiness to proceed. This was going to hurt enough to demand a serious painkiller. Serious enough to compromise his awareness and judgement. That wasn’t going to happen. No pain, he thought, no pain. He let the words echo in his head, a mantra. No pain.
“Lights, off.”
The cabin lights cut out, leaving him in a darkness fractured only by the emerald glow of the Stressors. He lay back and watched as tiny flecks of light appeared, faint against the stygian dark of the holographic projection filling his sight. No pain. His tightly clenched jaws ached. No pain. It flared viciously when he injected the Surgical-bots directly into the muscle of his damaged upper arm. Blood, metallic and bitter in his mouth. Ants beneath his skin, burrowing. Give yourself over - no pain.
More lights in the holographic sky, multiplying like raindrops on a flyer’s canopy. A sense of movement even, but that might just be an anticipation of the senses. The mind is a wonderful and sensitive thing, easily fooled. So easily broken. He can see her lying there. His weakness, so still. Definite movement now, adrift on a cosmic breeze, floating disembodied in the dark. No pain.
Ikiro Mannheim gives himself to the illusion, lets it grip him as it did the first transfixing time back in the Goner Temple. A relic, a forbidden thing, saved from the fires of the Great Forgetting, the purge of history that birthed the Argon Year Zero. The star-like points resolve to fuzzy smears of light as he drifts on. Music, just an electronic ghost of sound, then a wash, like the gentle swell of the ocean over a pebble beach.
Moving faster now, the closer smears sharpening to defined forms. Clouds of stars. Clouds of clouds. Galaxies in swarms. No pain. The assassin snaps the Stressor Bands active. The constraint fields seize the limb and wrench the fractured bones back into place. As he plunges, headlong, with giant strides of a god through His Creation, the Fixer roars. To kill is god-like. Her face is in these stars, no pain. He lets the transcendent tide sweep him to her, on choral wings.
Into a single cluster, galaxies streaming in a kaleidoscope frenzy. Spiral, Barred Spiral, Elliptical, Irregular, glorious Catherine wheels and ah, the music - swelling glissando strings over a pulsing blood beat. It has him now and he is lost. If angels would only sing. On he flies and one jewelled island grows, swells, looms large in his sight until it is all that he is. Plunging headlong through stars, solar systems, planets blue bright with water and life. Their voices sing their joy, music in the spheres and there is no pain.
On he moves, slowing now through no will of his own as the angels song fades to requiem. Few lights now in the ancient void, stars dimming to red or flaring bright in a final radiant fling. Darkness and the omega point, barely visible in the death of distant stars. He anticipates, braces as time and space flow on, funereal. The point takes form, a slow unfolding of angular lines, a rectangle angled in diamond perspective, a barred cell door window in the black sky. And as the music fades to silence he sees the hands, whiter than chalk, gripping the bars.
The Fixer hears nothing, no near subliminal hum of the drive or comm. channel white noise, just the last fading sigh of strings. For a single perfect moment, as the barred window fills his sight, nothing stirs. Not even a thought. Then, eight descending glacial notes dripping like tears, repeating, an octave higher, an octave lower. Two deep counterpoint chords like the last beats of a breaking heart. If a forsaken god crafted a piano from the ice of man's indifference to give his anguish voice, this, the Fixer believes, would be the sound. Dripping tears, ice fracturing beneath man's feet in a universe shorn of the numinous. There is a face behind the bars, a stylised mask, porcelain smooth and weeping and as he passes through his mind gives it features. A saxophone begins to wail over the metronome piano and the faltering bass. A howling lament into an uncaring void.
And as the God’s Eye crawled past dead stars and cinder planets, tears sting Mannheim’s parched eyes. A weakness, but he lets them fall. Sometimes it was good to feel, feel anything.
*
Jackson’s masked jump to Home of Opportunity went unobserved at either end as far as they could tell but Jack kept his eyes locked on the Gravidar and Sector Scan. Kaitrin, her lips tightened to white and headphones clamped to her head, wrestled with the comm. system. The corpse of Anje Delenari lay suspended in the sub-space hold, but it might as well have been right behind, bleeding over their shoulders. Along with another ghost.
“IP Drive initiating in 5, 4…”
“Just do it Jack, no need for dramatics” Kaitrin snapped but her tone immediately softened. “I’m sorry …”
It was the first words she’d spoken. Jack hit a switch and the Interplanetary Drive slammed on with a kick that tested the inertial dampeners and forced the breath from her lungs.
“Okay, I asked for that,” she said, once she’d sucked in enough of the dry recycled air to speak.
“I keep the dampeners loose so I can feel the ship in a knife fight.” The words came out shorter and sharper than he intended, a cold, over-compensating chill in his tone when all he wanted to do was …
“It’s Max isn’t it?” Kaitrin said softly.
“You’re the comms wizard, you tell me.”
What the hell is wrong with you Jackson? He felt like taking a blade and punching it into his thigh. Guilt, transference? Corrin had been an old friend of Max, from Marteene and his service days. Great time to develop a conscience Jack, yea, real good timing. Yes it was Max.
“Vocorder,” she answered. “Best I can tell with this junk. Threats and scary voice, someone’s messing with your head.”
“Our heads.”
“Okay,” she admitted, “Our heads. There was something – I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“Again.” Jackson said.
She looked at him quizzically and shrugged.
‘I am death made carnate, I am Max Force.’
The hairs on the back of his head bristled, like the touch of a corpse breath breeze. Get a frigging grip. This time he punched his leg. Hard. You’re the big bad Jack. He checked the scanners again. No other ships in range.
“Feeling,” Jack said and rallied his old bravado. I’m the big bad Jack. “You’re the chick of the team, with all that sensitivity and all that other unfair mind-reading women’s stuff.”
“It’s not my fault men can only use the left, hurting people and breaking things side of their brain,” Kaitrin replied with mock scorn. “While we use the right side to be decent human beings.”
She had seen that look in his eyes, as she lay sprawled in his lap. An almost kiss. She could feel his confusion now, irreconcilable needs. Love, honour, duty. And who knows…? She let the thought go, that wasn’t what was needed right now. What the situation required was the old fighter and the new warrior she knew lay underneath. Corrin had a code, that’s why she’d loved him. Max too.
“You should try it some time.” Kaitrin hardened her voice. “I felt it Jack. Despair in a machine. I thought of Xela.”
Xela, the sentient AI ghost of Marteene’s cousin and surrogate mother, Hela, built partly on Xenon neural net technology. The Special Ops agent who’d infiltrated the Pirate Clans as part of the original Max Force’s Raider squadron. Who’d become lovers before they died in the Xenon sector south of Scale Plate Green, their navigation system sabotaged. She nodded. Yes, she’d thought of Xela. Gone now, destroyed by Law in the final battle. Killed while rescuing both Max and Jack from the vacuum death the old monster imposed. She thought of Xela often.
“But Xela was programmed by the real Hela, or at least seeded with deep interactions and psych profiles.” She continued. “We all saw the odds. You waited at the rendezvous point. No-one came out and the Xenon occupied that sector in force.” Kaitrin adjusted the headphones for comfort.
“Maybe he escaped and someone like Skull got hold of him? This is just the sort of psycho stunt that evil bitch would pull and whoever was flying that Dragon was Jack Jackson good.” False bravado, it was a start. “She’s been in the news, on the losing side of the Clan Wars.”
“So now she’s running around in a Split corvette with a Max AI pilot? Can’t see it, that’s not her style. All her sick experiments were to do with youth and longevity. And why is she trying to kill us?”
Jackson conceded the point. It was pretty clear that the court case, the confiscations, the imminent arrest warrant, the assassination attempts, all the deaths were to silence him.
“The battle data - the aliens and the beam technology. Someone doesn’t want it taken seriously even though the Argon Intel people have the original scans.”
“And the copies?” Kaitrin asked.
“All ripped from the computers when the ‘auditors’ trashed my business.”
“Except?”
“You’re very untrusting, for a chick, you know that?”
“I’m just a good judge of character Jack. One brain, two sides, remember?”
“Except for the copy I have stashed somewhere safe.”
“In your boot.”
Jack looked at her, amazed.
“Grief, women really can read minds!”
Kaitrin rolled her eyes and sighed.
“I thought I was joking. How could you be – wait.” She readjusted the headphones and fine-tuned the comm. frequency. “Incoming transmission. Distress call.”
Rogues Return Chapter Three 16.6.05
Moderators: TheElf, Moderators for English X Forum
Rogues Return Chapter Three 16.6.05
Last edited by SteveMill on Fri, 17. Jun 05, 09:48, edited 1 time in total.
Great mate. THe word that springs to mind is "DEEP" and I must beg a delay before I give a more detailed response, as I am in a working frame of mind (yeah right! 
) and thus cannot quite appreciate it to its fullness. 
Still yet another cliff hanger to get the rumour mill going, my vote is on.....
Nah forget it I'll wait and see what other people think
) and thus cannot quite appreciate it to its fullness. Still yet another cliff hanger to get the rumour mill going, my vote is on.....
Nah forget it I'll wait and see what other people think
Graf_Grau wrote:
Still yet another cliff hanger to get the rumour mill going, my vote is on.....
Nah forget it I'll wait and see what other people think
He did mention Daleks in his other post.....so 'who' knows
Seriously...
So the Fixer has a name, plus maybe a surprising past?
Good read, and the distress call ....
Oldman
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Gandalf The White
- Posts: 2185
- Joined: Sat, 9. Nov 02, 12:21
Excellent chapter! Good psyche and very psycadelic description of the Fixer, who at long last has a name. Though, it was almost too much for my today sick stomach
The thought of Xela is indeed one that has substance. Though, that would still leave the question what happened to Max. Mind you, if she had the means to record events then he could well be dead. At least this is easier to imagine than him transferrring his conscience into a computer.
Looking forward to the next chapter!
"Marteene’s sister Hela" - wasn't she cousin?
The thought of Xela is indeed one that has substance. Though, that would still leave the question what happened to Max. Mind you, if she had the means to record events then he could well be dead. At least this is easier to imagine than him transferrring his conscience into a computer.
Looking forward to the next chapter!
"Marteene’s sister Hela" - wasn't she cousin?
Woo hoo and thanks
I got my Creative Writing degree course final mark yesterday and I got a First.
I'm more pleased than I thought I'd be, being such a
dude and all.
The Head of Department suggested that maybe I should consider becoming a Part 1 tutor for first year undergrads. In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king, so to speak. And i'd be cheap.
Anyways - I wouldn't have done any writing at all if it wasn't for the encouragement I've received here over the years, so thanks all.
I'm more pleased than I thought I'd be, being such a
dude and all. The Head of Department suggested that maybe I should consider becoming a Part 1 tutor for first year undergrads. In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king, so to speak. And i'd be cheap.
Anyways - I wouldn't have done any writing at all if it wasn't for the encouragement I've received here over the years, so thanks all.
Re: Woo hoo and thanks
Excellent!! Congratulations! You should definitely make use of your one eye and start teaching. This is the best way to learn!SteveMill wrote:I got my Creative Writing degree course final mark yesterday and I got a First.
I'm more pleased than I thought I'd be, being such a
The Head of Department suggested that maybe I should consider becoming a Part 1 tutor for first year undergrads. In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king, so to speak. And i'd be cheap.
Anyways - I wouldn't have done any writing at all if it wasn't for the encouragement I've received here over the years, so thanks all.
Thanks. I hadn't really thought about it before, particularly as I can be a tiny bit short-tempered and impatient on the odd occasion. 
I'm more likely to put innocent young first years off, I'd have thought, but the HoD thinks my emphasis on learning and applying craft techniques would be valuable. Unfortunately I don't have a Masters degree in English Lit or Creative Writing so rules would have to be bent.
I'm going to do the third year again as its doing different things and then maybe i'll see how I feel. I'd do the Masters but it's just too expensive. A few hundred pounds I'm okay on. Five grand I can't really afford. Back in the Good Old Days the university let staff do degrees free as part of staff development. Now that only applies if you're doing some Management School bull.
Ah well - at least I cottoned on that life wasn't fair a long time ago.
I'm more likely to put innocent young first years off, I'd have thought, but the HoD thinks my emphasis on learning and applying craft techniques would be valuable. Unfortunately I don't have a Masters degree in English Lit or Creative Writing so rules would have to be bent.I'm going to do the third year again as its doing different things and then maybe i'll see how I feel. I'd do the Masters but it's just too expensive. A few hundred pounds I'm okay on. Five grand I can't really afford. Back in the Good Old Days the university let staff do degrees free as part of staff development. Now that only applies if you're doing some Management School bull.
Ah well - at least I cottoned on that life wasn't fair a long time ago.
SteveMill wrote:Thanks GG. Am I sensing bad news, exam-wise?Graf_Grau wrote:Well done buddy, we all knew you deserved it. Glad someone has some good news.
Nah, I am having a bad couple of weeks thats all, I was ill last time i took leave, some "Insert bad word here" person has been stealing my post and my pc died for no good reason on Monday. My PC is way more important to me than it should be but c'est la vie.
Thanks for asking though.