Shadows of Golstar (82 page)

**As
we have reasserted full control over the Trah-tang elemental transport system,
it will be employed to disassemble your corporeal bodies into their component
atoms and disperse them into the upper atmosphere. You will experience no pain;
you will simply cease to exist. Your five-minute interval begins now.**

Owens
walked back to Sharné and embraced her. He had no words of comfort, no words of
hope, no words of any kind. He tried to think of a way of escape, but the exits
were still effectively blocked and there was nothing he could do to prevent the
transport from operating. He looked into Sharné’s eyes and saw only love and
acceptance. Words were unnecessary. They tightened their arms around each
other. As they waited in silence, he thought it had been one hell of a ride,
but as with all rides, it was finally coming to an end. Drawing comfort from
having Sharné in his arms, he waited.

The
room held half of what it had earlier. Many of the ministers had been assigned
tasks Talin had seen fit to dispense in the emergency. The remainder had broken
off into subgroups and were talking quietly, creating a low buzz of voices in
the background.
 
Lauren sat at one end of
the table and watched as Talin was listening to an aide who was talking to him
in a hushed voice at the other end. She fervently hoped it was good news for a
change, that they had discovered some way of stopping the Controllers. Earlier,
they had been given some hope when the Controllers had seemed to falter in
their inexorable dismantling of the planets’ infrastructures. But the respite
had been short-lived, lasting less than an hour.  

Talin
finally nodded curtly and the aide quickly departed. He looked up and motioned
to her. She excused herself, quickly rose and went over to his side. “I do not
want to give you false hope, but I believe we may have found an answer,” he
said in a low voice.

Relief
flooded her senses, “Wonderful.” At his nod, she sat down next to him.

“From
what my people have determined, it seems our salvation depends on the recovery
of a medallion, a very special medallion.”

Her
eyes widened in surprise. She had expected something a little less esoteric.
She asked, “A medallion? By recovery, do you mean its whereabouts are unknown?”

He
smiled grimly, “No, not at all. We know exactly where it is located.”

 “Where
is it?”

“It
is in the possession of our ex-Grand Patriarch. It is the trinket Geoffrey wore.
I always assumed it was a personal possession. He never gave any indication
otherwise and not having been privy to knowledge only accessible to the royal
lineage, I had no inkling that it was a part of his office. I just now
dispatched an aide to Security. They will dispatch some guards to retrieve it.”

She
asked, “What does it do?”

He
sighed tiredly, “It is yet another damnable key. When it is placed within a
certain receptacle located somewhere in the Sanctum, a powerful coded signal
will be sent to a hidden receiver the Founder, in his wisdom, had placed within
the topmost level of the Prime. It, in turn, sends a signal to a concealed
repeater on the next level. The process replicates itself until it reaches the
lowest level where the Controller’s core resides. There, it will activate a
dormant virus program placed long ago when the Compact was first put into
place. It is designed to attack the Controller’s base program and render it
inoperable. Since all the other planets’ Controllers are linked, the virus
should infect them as well.”

Lauren’s
elation quickly faded at Talin’s words. “But without the Controllers, what will
we do? As their name implies, they control access the Primes. The
Trah-tang
technologies and manufacturing capabilities will be lost to us.”

“No,
their vast stores of knowledge will remain untouched. The automated plants can
be manually controlled by skilled technicians.”

“But
that is not…,” she started to say.

“I
know,” he interrupted her.  “As much as it goes against everything we hold
dear, we will be forced to access the Prime’s vast libraries and give certain
of our people the special knowledge that will be required to control the
Primes. It is the only way we can resurrect our infrastructure and rebuild our
military capability.”

She
looked horrified. “We cannot allow such power to be placed into hands outside
of the ruling families. The Founder determined long ago the wisdom to use the
alien technologies must be limited to members of the Inner Circle. The Founding
Families are the only ones designated to wield such power.”

“Lauren,
I do not see where we have any other real choice. We are far too few and have
neither the inclination nor the background to employ such knowledge. The
Controllers were our servants, our genies in a bottle. Our wishes were their
commands. If we are successful in gaining the medallion, the Controllers will
cease to exist and we will be forced to interface directly with the Primes. But
in order to do that, it will take tens of thousands of technicians.”

“But
think of the implications,” she sputtered in protest. “Such power cannot be
allowed outside of the families. To do so, we risk yet another form of
destruction.”

He
shook his head, “No Lauren, if the Way is to survive, we will be forced to make
necessary, even painful modifications to our hierarchy. I envision the creation
of another caste, a special but tightly managed group of scientists and
technicians under the direct control of the ruling families. Of course, they
will require special conditioning to ensure that the power remains properly
within our hands.” He hesitated before going on, “Frankly, had something
similar been done at the very beginning, when the colony was first established,
we would not be in the position we find ourselves in today.”

It was
an indirect criticism of the Founder, and Lauren found herself reddening in
indignation. But before she could say anything further, she was interrupted
when a woman of high rank rapidly approached their position. Her rumpled
uniform and the dark circles under her eyes testified to lack of sleep. She
bowed stiffly and said, “Forgive the unannounced interruption, your Luminance,
but I must convey more bad news.” She looked at him straight in the eye. “The
former Grand Patriarch has escaped. The original sentries posted to guard him
are missing. They were replaced by loyalists of the ex-Grand Patriarch. They
were killed when they attempted to prevent our entry. As we have no one left to
question, we cannot determine how long ago it was when he escaped.” She looked
up. Fear was plainly etched across her features.

Talin’s
face became white with barely controlled fury. He abruptly stood up and without
warning, he struck the woman across her face. She was staggered by the
unexpected force behind the blow, but she quickly straightened and stood
silently before her leader’s enraged countenance. She waited for him to hit her
again, but he did not. Instead, the acting Grand Patriarch, said in a rasping
voice, “On your life, Colonel, on your very life, find him, find him now!”

● ● ●

Owens
and Sharné held each other in an almost painful embrace. He felt her rapid
heartbeat, his own matching hers, as they waited for dissolution. He glanced
down at his wrist-comp and saw that their time was nearly up. He couldn’t help but
watch as the final seconds ticked down.

● ● ●

His
hands were shaking. The former Grand Patriarch clenched his jaw in
determination, willing the spasms to stop.
 
He was bathed in a cold sweat. His skin seemed numb. He had entered a
private office next to the Sanctum’s master control room. He was standing
beside a plain, rather battered-looking wooden box, which rested on the corner
of a small round table. Unremarkable in appearance, it shared its perch with
equally mundane items, an empty crystal decanter, a tarnished silver tray and a
burnished, unadorned gold ring. He tentatively touched the box. It did not
move; it was firmly attached to the table. With hands now sure, he lifted the
lid on the box.

Inside,
was a ruby-red satin pillow with a round indentation breaking its smooth
surface. He slowly, with ceremony, removed the medallion from around his neck,
undoing the clasp, grasping the medallion firmly while letting the heavy chain
fall to the floor in a small golden heap. Then, with unmistakable reverence, he
gently placed the medallion in the indentation for which it was designed. He
watched as the medallion began to glow and the lid on the innocuous-looking box
smoothly closed of its own accord, snapping shut with a clear audible click.
With this one deceptively simple act, it was done.

He
stood there motionless, staring at the innocuous box that would bring forth so
many changes. An errant thought flashed across his mind, ‘The surgery was
successful, but the patient died.’ For a just moment, he wondered where the
thought had originated. Then he kneaded his forehead, trying to erase the
macabre words that seemed to burn into his brain.

He
reached for and removed the weapon from his waistband, the one Sharné had
dropped. He looked at it. His icy fingers stroked its cold hard surface as if
it was some animal needing to be gentled. Then, with the same reverence in
which he had placed the medallion, he brought the weapon slowly to his temple.
He waited for a few more moments in silence, appearing to pause for some divine
hand to intervene. When no forgiving, heavenly apparition appeared, he said in
a broken voice, “I am sorry.”
 
He
squeezed the trigger.

● ● ●

Owens
and Sharné waited.

● ● ●

A minister was shouting, “Something is happening!
Everyone, listen to me, something is happening!” Every eye in the room turned
toward the video panels lining the walls. The hordes of Sentinels that been
attacking various installations throughout Berralton’s cities stopped their
methodical acts of destruction. They were now flailing about, without apparent
direction. They looked like children’s toys, spinning slowly, winding down,
some already beginning to stop and topple over.

● ● ●

Owens
and Sharné waited. The five minutes had come and gone. Owens continued to stare
at his wrist-comp; the seconds continued to pass. A sudden commotion at the end
of the hall drew his attention away from the flashing numerals. The three
repair robots were gyrating wildly, crashing against the wall and each other.
Overhead, the trolleys were moving on their rails, starting and stopping with
short jerking motions as their arms quivered. It looked like the machines were
having the equivalent of a mental breakdown.

“Owens,
what is happening? Why are they acting like that? And, and how is it we are
still alive?”

Owens
shook his head, “Dammed if I know, but to me, it looks like Hec is back and
fighting for control. It’s probably the only reason we’re still breathing.”

One of
the spherical maintenance-bots chose that moment to break away from the others
still battering themselves, and began to careen wildly down the corridor
towards where Owens and Sharné still embraced. Owens quickly broke his embrace
with Sharné and ran to intercept the out-of-control robot. As he neared it, he
saw it wasn’t the one that he had tackled earlier. All of its limbs were
functional and wildly flailing. There was no intelligence behind its movements
and owing to its spin, he couldn’t anticipate where the limbs might strike
next. He dropped to the floor, sliding feet first, aiming a kick at the
repulser collar at the bottom of the sphere. He lashed out with his leg and his
foot connected solidly. Simultaneously, he felt a flailing, hard metal arm strike
him across the forehead, causing him to throw his head back, forcefully
striking the floor. He barely heard Sharné screaming his name.

Sharné
watched Owens successfully stop the robot. His kick connected forcefully on the
collar. The collar had bent under Owens’ blow and the sphere had halted its
forward progress. It was now drifting backwards, its arms still moving
erratically, but slower than before. But the cost of Owens’ success had been a
dear one. Flat on his back, he lay on the floor, moaning. As she went to his
side, the robots unexpectedly stopped all movements. She reached him and knelt
down. His eyes were a little glassy and he had a large red knot on his
forehead, but he registered her presence.

Before
she could ask how he felt, he said quite unexpectedly, “Ouch. I think I dented
the floor that time.” He moved gingerly to raise himself.

An
involuntary smile curved her lips as she helped him into a sitting position,
“With your hard head, it is entirely possible.”

He winced,
alternating between delicately rubbing the back of his head, and lightly
touching the growing lump on his forehead,  “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for
a painkiller…” He looked down the end of the corridor, at the motionless
repair-bots. He wondered out loud, “Okay, what’s next?”