Requiem (26 page)

The Warlord
grabbed hold of Habel’s collar and forced his head against the
wall. His hands slipped around Habel's neck, tightening.

The words
wormed their way through Habel's throat, crawling through the
collapsing rubble of his oesophagus. 'Kill me... and you'll never
get an opportunity like this again.'

Each word was
whispered from the Warlord's lips as if it were his throat caught
between the vice, 'I cannot lose what I did not have to begin
with.'

Habel's skin
was thin and soft. His spine felt brittle beneath his fingers.
Habel's hands grabbed at the Warlord's mask, pushing at it
feebly.

The Warlord
loosened his grip and let Habel drop to the floor. 'Where is the
real serum? The one you showed me?'

'That
is
it,' Habel muttered, clutching his throat. He leaned back on the
wall, resigned to his fate. He knew there was no way out of this.
'I falsified the results I showed you. There is no 'gentle death'.
There is only this.' He pointed at Cain's body.

The Warlord
turned to Daniels. 'Do it. Now,' he ordered.

Daniels stepped
forward and held the gun to Habel's head. Habel looked at the body,
then the floor, then the console, at the body again. He looked
everywhere but Daniels' eyes. The Warlord spoke from behind him,
addressing the doctor.

'You have
robbed humanity of its redemption but not your own.'

Words caught in
the man's damaged throat. Perhaps he was pleading for his life.
Perhaps he was trying to explain something. Not a soul on Earth
would care. A single bullet drove through the centre of his skull
and carved through the pulpy mass held inside. His body slumped to
the floor.

There were
sirens blaring somewhere above. The Corporate defence systems would
be swift. Retreat was the only option but, to the Warlord, the word
hadn't even registered yet.

The Warlord
stared down at Habel's body. The eyes remained open. At first he
denied it, the pleasure of this man's death, the sense of justice
that it brought. But why shouldn't he take pleasure in seeing a
punishment wrought so truly? The only failure here was that Habel's
punishment should have been more severe.

'No,' he told
himself. 'His death is as tragic as any other. There is no pleasure
here, only duty. That's what McCullum warned you against. Do not
attempt to draw pleasure from this betrayal, to draw out that
worming sense of justice.'

Beneath the
mask, his eyes closed. There was a lightness in his head that
pulled him upwards, from the floor, through the weight of the world
above him.

Was he
administering this serum to victims or victimisers? Those who had,
maybe not created but at least contributed to the death of
humanity, not necessarily in body but in terms of mind, of
morality, of everything that mattered. Or was it more acute,
personal? From their corporate ranks they'd betrayed him, shunned
him, condemned him, mocked him, given him so little and then taken
that too. Was this duty nothing more than revenge? Shame endured,
condensed within himself and turned outward, disguised, hidden
beneath something profound so as not to reveal its petty, contrived
nature. Perhaps.

No
.

Perhaps.

Perhaps. But
not here. Not now.

The Warlord
opened his eyes. He could feel the floor again, the weight on his
shoulders. 'The serum is a failure,' he said. 'We need to
evacuate.' The admission was incredibly painful.

Not as painful
as the death endured by Cain.

'Daniels,
contact the other cells. Issue a full retreat.'

Daniels stood
without moving.

'We are not
moving forward with this plan,' asserted the Warlord. He turned to
face Daniels.

'We are here
and we have the means to end it all,' said Daniels. 'It may not be
pretty, it may not be peaceful, but, ultimately, it will be
merciful. I'm not sure we should be so rash to abandon the
plan.'

'The plan was
entirely contingent upon dispensing death without pain. Without the
means to do this, there is no plan.'

'Bu-'

'If I hadn't
put a bullet in Cain's head, how much longer would he had to have
endured that torment? Can you imagine inflicting that upon billions
of souls?'

'We-'

'We are not
idle murderers. We are not sadists. We are
angels
of
death.'

The Warlord
stared into Daniels' eyes through the thick lenses of his mask.
'Are you going to issue the retreat or do I need to step in?'

Daniels looked
at Cain's contorted body on the floor. The cylindrical canister,
lying with a malevolence that he hadn't noticed before. He could
feel the gaze of the others upon him. He knew where their
allegiances would lie. They would – they will – follow the Warlord
to the end of the Earth. They weren't practical enough. They
weren't self-reliant enough. The Warlord desperately wanted them to
be these things but they both knew better. Daniels may be the only
one who knew the way forward. He didn't need this warlord's
guidance.

Finally,
Daniels opened the comm line and ordered the other cells to fall
back.

The Warlord
leaned against the control panel. Years of planning, of careful
manoeuvring, of recruiting, of waiting, and yes, manipulating, and
yes, killing had dissolved in his hands as quickly as the bullet
had passed through Habel's skull. The units that had been
dispatched and coordinated were now in full retreat. He slammed his
fist into the console. He wanted to bite through the flesh of his
tongue, to sever it completely and spit it at the feet of every
worthless soul that had forced this upon him.

'We're
leaving,' he said in disgust.

It was six days
before they arrived in Sceril's system. Seline and Belameir had
spent most of that time in the company of Athene in the training
rooms. Athene had argued that she didn't think Sear would push them
hard enough. Sear agreed so Athene took over the responsibility of
training them. Again and again they conducted evacuation drills and
zero g simulations, flight simulations, simulations of contact with
hostiles, simulations of contact with friendlies; again and again
they went over the access codes and emergency protocols. Seline had
repeated the access code for the cruiser's line of communications
(YC dash 451SM) so many times she has began seeing it in her
dreams. Numbers and letters, a hundred feet tall, bearing down upon
her, chasing her, blood dripping from jagged teeth. Belameir
claimed he wasn't haunted by the same scenes but Seline had heard
him wake up screaming more than once.

Athene's
training sessions were conducted with severity and brutal
efficiency. If they faltered in the simulations, if they hesitated
out of fear she would make sure to remind them: 'Death and the fear
of death are two completely different things. One forces you to
give in and the other only asks you to.'

Punishment was
usually given as a slap on the back of the head or extra sets of
squats and press-ups although she would occasionally lock Seline
and Belameir in one of the storage rooms with a riddle or
arithmetic problem and not let them out until they'd solved it.

Seline welcomed
the distractions. Whenever the thoughts of shooting up or inhaling
dust came calling she would be dragged down to the simulators and
forced through training drills for hours and the need would pass.
Even thoughts of her mother and of the blackbox were pushed aside
when the training was under way. She knew that she shouldn't be
avoiding such thoughts but couldn't help admit to herself the
relief of having a legitimate distraction.

Belameir on the
other hand had tried everything possible to avoid the training
sessions. From eating ten trays worth of paste from the food
dispenser to make himself sick to hiding in the crawl spaces and
ventilation systems but Athene would always find him and would
always get what she wanted.

Belameir was
slouched in his chair with his face buried in his forearms and
resting on the small display desk. He looked up to see who'd come
in.

'Thank god,' he
moaned and dropped his head again.

'What's wrong
with him?' asked Sear.

'Training
drills,' said Seline who was leaning on the table next to Belameir.
'Athene really emphasises the physical stuff and I don't think he's
ever done a single bit of exercise in his life.'

Sear looked
down at Belameir. A trace of pity in his expression. Seline
smiled.

'On second
thought, it's probably just withdrawal symptoms,' said Seline. 'I
think he's detoxing.'

'I believe I
can see the heroin leaking through the pores in his skin,' said
Sear.

'Ha-fucking-ha,' mumbled Belameir into his arms.

'You don't help
yourself by winding her up,' said Sear. 'Comparing her to infamous
human dictators might not have been the right move. It might help
to be a bit more formal with her.'

'Never!'
asserted Belameir.

Sear looked at
Seline. 'In about ten minutes we'll be in orbit over Sceril.'

'Why are we
stopping there anyway?'

'Did you not
read the briefing plans?'

Seline looked
blankly back at Sear. 'Briefing plans?'

'They were
uploaded into your optics over twenty-four hours ago.'

'Are you
sure?'

'I'm sure. I'll
attach bells and whistles to it next time. At any rate, if you had
read the message you would know that we're stopping at Sceril
because the scouting team told us to investigate one of the
merchant traders there. Apparently one of their ships was spotted
well past the Tryil Gate. They may have seen something.'

'Do you two
really have to talk so goddamn loud?' said Belameir.

'I always
thought that Sceril was the Ordonian home-world,' said Seline,
ignoring Belameir.

'Most people do
but Sceril is still just a colony. Granted, a colony that has grown
larger than the home-world itself. A lot of the Ordonian cities
have been built on top of Sceril ruins. That's part of the reason
why it's been so difficult to learn anything more about the Atlas
Gates. Most of the ruins have either been damaged or stolen or
reside beneath Ordonian settlements so we cannot obtain consent to
properly uncover them.'

'They don't
want to charge you for access? They could make a fortune.'

'The previous
Ordonian government granted the Yurrick limited access but in
recent years they've become quite protective of the ruins and
increasingly hostile to outsiders.'

Belameir sat up
in his chair, with his elbows on the desk and propped his head on
his hand. 'Would it help if we taught them to love?'

'Speak to an
Ordonian about love and it will have no idea what you're talking
about,' said Sear

'What?' said
Seline. 'So you mean they don't have a word for it?'

'No. I mean
they simply do not experience it. Their brains did not evolve to
express the emotions associated with love. The emotional spectrum
of the Ordonian people is limited – simplified. As an analogy:
while humans can see in seven colours you could imagine the
Ordonian only seeing in maybe two or three. Anger and pleasure are
the most fundamental aspects of Ordonian culture. There may be
variations and glimpses of more nuanced emotional expression but
they would be small and short lived.'

'So what about
the Yurrick?' asked Seline.

'We share DNA
with humans so we're similar to you in many ways. Although, perhaps
not as extreme. While Ordonians simply lack the physiological
capacity to experience more complex emotions the average Yurrick
can still engage in a relatively wide spectrum of emotions but will
maintain a noticeable distance from them.'

'So do you
think there might be emotions outside of the ones we already
experience?'

'It is
certainly possible although humans seem to have the largest
capacity for emotional expression.'

'And that
theory is based on what?'

'On the
complexity of your brain activity, on behavioural studies carried
out by both humans and Yurrick, on the extensive muscle
manipulation you can exhibit in your facial expressions, and also
on your species' art and culture.'

'That's quite a
list,' said Belameir. 'Although none of that seems to apply to
Seline here.' He turned to Seline. 'I'm pretty sure she isn't even
capable of smiling.'

Seline looked
at Belameir for a moment before smiling sardonically and as
sarcastically as she could.

'You scare me
sometimes, Sel.'

Sear turned
towards the lift. 'We better prep for landing.'

The turbulence
subsided as the ship emerged from the upper reaches of the sky.
Pale clouds of sepia threatened from the distance, arching in
thick, ominous bands along the horizon. They looked to be marching
across the surface of the planet, rolling it flat beneath acidic,
driving rain. The city sprawled out beneath them. A thick, dark
river meandered through its centre with the streets and structures
of civilization and industry hugging its flanks, sucking from it
its life and pumping black death back into it.

To the left of
the concrete bazaar a massive basin had been spooned out of the
skin of Sceril. The ship headed directly towards it, slowed and
climbed down into it, into the depths of the planet's surface.

The scene was
bathed in a kind of murk, pitifully illuminated by the faint orange
glow of the crowded markets and streets, covering the ground like a
filthy mat. Stalagmites protruded from the ground, aged so great
they fused with the cave's ceiling. A series of small landing
platforms protruded from the cave wall. The ship docked upon the
only one that looked serviceable. The engines were cut and the crew
assembled around the central debriefing station.