It was unbelievable that the magbike had gotten so far. Several air support positions had taken shots at the rider as the obvious, loud, bright vehicle moved through the streets at incredible speeds.
Still he came towards the rear of the defensive line down one of the main streets that had been cleared by virus infected bots. “Why don't they just use heavy artillery to destroy him and the bike?” he asked over his proximity radio.
“Haven't you been listening to frequency nine soldier? The high seat doesn't want to see any more unnecessary damage done to the city.” The answer came from one of the sergeants peevishly.
He looked around at the clutch of soldiers dressed in green and brown armour, looking like some carapace shrouded beetle versions of humans in the rally and reserve point. They were just inside the commerce building sitting and standing around benches that were set in the middle of a grand foyer that spanned hundreds of meters. The sounds of small arms fire drifted fitfully up from the subway station entrance at the other end of the Trades and Commodity's main foyer.
The brave soldiers of the West Keepers, or Keepers as the West Watchers called them, were trying to break into the tunnels from either side and to take the main subway station itself to no avail. If there was one thing the refugees and rebels excelled at it was tunnel fighting and for every five meters won there were fifteen lost to a collapse or trap or to the zealous combatants that defended their temporary refuge. Still, there were so many West Keeper soldiers between the entrance of the Commerce building and the subway station inside that it would be impossible for any more rebels to join the group in the tunnels from the outside.
Heeding the advice of his commanding officer, he switched to frequency nine, his eyes focused on the holographic tactical display that noted the dark rider's progress.
The high pitched, enthusiastic voice of a young boy on the frequency was just finishing one thought and about to move on to the next as the audio signal came through his helmet. “… ancestral innocence. As that innocence has gone from us our creations have also lost their innocence. Driven mad by our abuse of this galaxy machines everywhere are taking measures, killing all those who are not chosen by we like minded few. The Holocaust Virus, as the media calls it, is only a result of our greed, a resistance movement like any other. Their violence may seem random, horrifying, but they are only reclaiming that which we have been destroying, abusing. They are taking stewardship of our galaxy so the West Watch can bring the Saved to those places made clean of the consumerist rabble. That terrible mob that demanded more, more, more material wealth!
Who are the Saved you ask? They are those who, with a simple gesture, have declared that they are willing to be made clean of their excesses, their impurities. They aspire to become a West Watcher or a West Keeper; one that is tested, treated and dedicated to the cause of human and machine purity. The Saved need not worry that a machine made pure of purpose will cleanse them. In the end it is their decision to be pure, to undertake the journey of learning and testing to become pure, but you, my dear West Keepers can start them on the journey.
Love can set the ones you hold dear free. As a kindness to you all the Order of Eden has given you the power to choose two loved ones to be Saved. You can also pay to have even more saved if you have the funds. The machines have cleansed entire cities and colonies of the impure, greedy masses and it is time to begin rebuilding those places, to embrace those worthy of survival so we may make those places sacred and pure again. Imagine a galaxy with green, natural, beautiful outposts of the Eden scattered throughout her stars.
Think on it, a coming time of peace where the pure and once again innocent of humanity can be free, harmonious and united. There will be sanctuaries across the galaxy where the Saved can study and aspire for purity under the vigilant guardianship of the Order of Eden and their enlightened machine brethren. Now that you've gotten a picture of that in your mind, imagine this solar system made pure and safe by the West Watch! Pandem will be the crown jewel, a world with hundreds of cities, islands rich and green with beaches and good clean water, air.
The people who once inhabited this place were so unclean, so corrupt that their largest buildings were monuments to greed. Right now the West Keepers fight the last of the resistance beneath their primary commercial complex. The remnants of that corruption are so evil that they tried to destroy the Mount Elbrus Museum Vault where the largest collection of artefacts related to the history of mankind outside of the Sol system were kept. You can all be thankful that the nuclear reactor they detonated did not destroy the contents of the vault and we're doing everything we can to bring the perpetrators of that crime against humanity to justice.
The fight spreads, the first of the rewards are near, and soon we will have a refuge for your loved ones. People you West Keepers and Watchers consider worthy of being amongst the Saved. Your labours not only benefit you, but greatly benefit them as well. So ponder my brothers, my sisters. Is there someone in the Core Systems that you would like to join you in one of these places while they make their spiritual journey? Are they facing a judgement you believe unfit? Do they, by your judgement deserve one-”
He turned the broadcast down as the dark rider approached the outer perimeter of the base established in the first few levels of the Commerce and Trades Building. Perimeter guns and two platoons of soldiers opened fire, riddling the dark helmed rider with holes, tearing the black and red bike and rider to shreds. The light emitted by the rear of the small vessel flickered out and it dropped to the hardened asphalt street, sparking anew as metal ground against stone, concrete and metal.
The wreckage crashed through a charged net barrier and careened up the main southern facing stairs, sending soldiers fleeing in all directions. The fighting in the subway station stopped as the commanders deeper inside the building consulted with the outer perimeter. Both rider and bike had been reduced to a pulp of flesh and metal. Several West Keeper soldiers approached with short scan rods extended. “I'm not picking up any significant energy signatures, the reactor's cooled. Wait, I'm reading explosives!”
It was time to run, even from where he sat twenty meters away from the crash, he knew he had to put more distance between himself and the bike.
“Where are you going?” his commanding officer asked shrilly as he stood and pressed past two soldiers behind him. His mad dash for the subway entrance caught everyone's attention, and before he had taken five hurried steps others had joined him. The West Keepers, though dedicated and well armed, weren't well trained for the most part. Discipline was maintained under the threat of severe punishment, new found zealotry and very little else.
The rush of soldiers putting distance between them and the crash site overcame the commands to remain calm, to retreat from the steps in an orderly fashion and when the explosives on the bike went off dozens of soldiers were killed instantly. Well before sanity returned to the camp in the southern defensive line he was down the ramp leading into the subway station.
The fighting there had quieted, the soldiers actively engaged in the drawn out battle had taken cover from the rebels in the tunnels behind hastily erected energy and dense concrete barriers. “Hold there soldier!” called out someone through the chaos on his proximity radio. “It's a no man's land out there!” added another, less disciplined voice.
Instead of stopping and ducking behind a barrier to join the front line soldiers he unclipped his assault rifle and threw it out in front of him, sending it spinning across the weathered, polished brown and gold floor and over the edge of the main platform ahead.
His eyes darted to the dark corners and he saw exactly what he was hoping for. The tiny tip of a sensor had been placed on the bottom edge of the yawning main tunnel opening. For the benefit of whoever was watching he threw up his hands in surrender, leaving the barriers and soldiers behind. “Don't shoot!” he called out, wishing he could think of something a little more convincing to say.
“Open fire,” commanded the West Watcher Sergeant behind him. “He's changing sides!”
As he jumped off the subway platform he felt three shots strike him in the back. The first two didn't pierce his armour but the third found a weakened chink where gunfire had already weakened the protective suit under the plating and unbelievable pain filled his entire body. The sheer amount of blood that flowed out of his chest and over his back as he lay over a maglev track, out of sight from the soldiers that would kill him as a traitor, was absolutely astonishing.
He couldn't breathe. He twitched and struggled as his throat filled with blood, even his efforts to cough it clear failed as the remnants of his ruined diaphragm struggled to work, only adding to the endless depths of pain and suffering. His vision was first obscured by white spots for long moments before he couldn't see entirely. The world faded as he struggled to stand, to gasp for air and when one hand went to his back, to check the extent of his injury only to find a great gaping hole hope was lost. Losing conciousness scant seconds later was no small mercy.
Iloona was dubious about inspecting the West Keeper soldier, but she wasn't one to argue with her husband. Well, not in front of his rebels, anyway. The service and maintenance storage area they had claimed had become a short term home. Her, her eldest daughter and the two nurses had reserved a corner for treating the wounded and it was lucky for Alaka that there was a patch of floor free.
They laid him face down in front of her and she turned a bright light clipped to her shoulder on. The man was well muscled, in excellent general condition, but his armour had been badly damaged in several places and shot through in one spot. Just by an initial glance she could tell there were massive internal injuries. The damage done to the organs in his upper torso was devastating. “They shot him in the back?” she asked as she took a disposable wipe from the pouch on her hip and wiped the blood away from the four centimetre wide entry wound.
“He was surrendering to us,” Alaka said quietly. “Almost made it too.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“No. Never.”
Iloona paused a moment and rested her hand beside the wound. Something was happening inside the corpse. With a flick of her wrist she opened a scanner and brought it to over the body. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw; “This man's being rebuilt from the inside!”
“What?” Alaka placed a hand firmly on her shoulder and drew her away, putting himself and the old assault rifle he used as a sidearm between her and the body. Several other rebels drew a myriad of personal weaponry and followed his example.
“His heart's not beating, there's no harm in observing.” Iloona objected quietly.
“This could be some kind of trap, can you scan him for explosives?”
“There's nothing of the kind and he's unarmed.”
“We don't know that for sure, he could have knives for fingers for all we know.”
“Tsk, paranoid,” Iloona shook her head. She extended her arm out around Alaka so she could see what was happening from behind him and gasped at what her medical scanner told her. “His lungs, heart and everything else are almost completely regenerated. There's some kind of materializer suite inside him, inside his skeleton maybe. Still no weaponry or explosives.”
“Could he actually be alive?”
“Well, the same technology is keeping his brain in a suspended state so there's no cell death but no neural activity either.”
“So he's brain dead.”
“Right now, maybe not for long. This is amazing,” she whispered. The scanner displayed a pattern of electrification surge across the man's skeletal structure for a moment then he came to life, gasping and turning over.
“Don't move!” Alaka shouted, brandishing his assault rifle in one big armoured hand. The other ragtag soldiers were just as vigilant, making for fifteen barrels pointed at the surrendered West Keeper in all.
“Okay, I'm just going to take off my helmet,” said the man through hurried breaths. He slowly pulled the oval helm from his head and took a long breath of stale air as though glad to be free of its confines. “I'm not a Keeper. I killed one of their people and took their uniform so I could get closer to the fighting and switch sides. That magcycle outside was the distraction I needed to cross the line.”
“Why should I believe you?” Alaka asked, eyeing a resistance fighter to his right who glared at the prisoner with sheer, bare hatred.
“My name is Jacob Valance, I'm the Captain of the Triton and I came here to pick up a couple friends of mine, Jason Everin and Terry McPatrick. Most people call him Oz.”
“I can't believe it. I've always wondered what I'd do if I ever saw you,” said the dark haired fellow to Alaka's right through clenched teeth.
“What's up Vernen? You know him?” Alaka asked.
“He hunted down and killed my brother.”
“I've hunted a lot of people, but I haven't cashed in many death marks. Who was your brother?”
“His name was Barry, Barry Vernen.”
Jake nodded, regarding the man seriously. “I remember. I took his bounty, captured him on Tega Five and delivered him to the Jalara Commonwealth. He was wanted for fraud and murder.”
“They executed him!”
“I'm sorry you lost your brother but I didn't kill him.” was all Jake said, raising his hands and looking the man in the eye.
“Just as good as! I should blast you apart and see if you grow back just so I can do it again!”
Alaka put a hand on Vernen's rifle, forcing it down and away from Jacob. “It sounds to me like he was doing his job, and if your brother was guilty he got what he deserved.”
“He was out of Jalara territory! They had no jurisdiction where he was taken.”
“Did he do what he was accused of?” Alaka asked flatly.
Vernen slung his scratched and dented rifle and stalked away without saying a word, his worn boots clicking across the hard floor.
“That happens. Glad I retired from bounty hunting,” Jake said quietly.
“He's a hothead, self serving. I reattached one of his fingers after a firefight and he didn't so much as say thank you,” Iloona complained as she stepped around her husband and offered a hand to help Jake up.
He took it and was surprised at her strength as she firmly pulled him onto his feet. “Thank you. I understand if your people don't trust me to start, but I'm really here to help,” Jake reassured as he reached into the deep utility pocket on his thigh and retrieved his command and control unit. “I captured a command code transmission chip from one of the Regent Galactic Lieutenants. I was able to install it in my arm unit and tap into their communications.”
“We've been trying to monitor that ourselves. A few minutes ago they re-encrypted the whole system.”
A female voice called; “Fire in the hole!” into the long room and a second later everything rocked with the concussion of a massive explosion nearby. Only a little dust rolled in through the narrow door leading into the large maintenance room.
“You have good timing. We were minutes away from collapsing the tunnel,” The fur covering Alaka's long jaws split in a wide smile.
“Well, here's hoping my luck keeps getting better,” Jake replied as he looked at his command unit. It was true, the command frequencies were re-encrypted and his display only presented a data gate request that said; “The only poem we memorize and recite as children.” He raised his eyebrow and thought for a moment.
“What is it?” Iloona asked, scanning him from head to toe with a sweep of her small medical computer.
“Are Oz and Jason here?” he asked quietly.
Alaka nodded to the nearest of the resistance fighters. “I think Jacob here is looking out for our best interest, you can go back to work.”
“Looks like,” the fighter grinned wryly at Jake before turning away. “Let's get back to the dig boys.” she called over her shoulder.
Alaka returned his attention to Jake. “You're not the only one who came for them. Two others; Ayan and Minh-Chu came. When they saw that we needed their help they put a plan together to get a message out to the government so they could send a fleet. We haven't seen them since they left, but they managed to get a signal out.”
Jake sat down on an empty pallet and stared off into space. The lost expression on his face was plain for all to see, but he was the last to care.
Iloona put a hand on her husband's arm and whispered something in their own gentle language. His hand went up over his eyes and he cursed under his breath. She turned to Jacob and regarded him with sympathy. “I am sorry, sometimes my husband is a conversational blunt instrument. He had forgotten that everyone was under the impression that those two had died. It was something they told us that you were their long time friend, or a copy of their long time friend. The three of you are a confusing bunch. I'm sorry you found out this way regardless.”
Jake looked back at his command unit where the riddle waited to be answered. “Do you know how?” he asked quietly. “How are they alive?”
“Ayan said that she was reborn in a new body while Minh-Chu was only lost, not killed,”
For the first time in his short life Jacob felt a tear on his cheek. He tried to blink it away, but the memory of Ayan's last smile before dying surged back to the fore. The thought of where he was, on a planet that had been turned into a quiet, war stricken graveyard didn't help. He had seen the evidence of the wholesale destruction of thousands of lives personally and all around them that which was once alive and vital stood still. The very circulatory system of the city was a perfect example, how it probably ran every minute of every day shuttling thousands of people from one place to another for decades, perhaps centuries, but as they hid in a dark corner reserved for the maintenance of the city's veins there was an eerie silence.
The city was dead, but somehow, somewhere his best friend and the love of both Jonas' and Jacob's life were out there accompanied by two of the best people he'd ever known. As he began entering the poem that Jonas memorized as a child into his command and control unit he realized that at some time during his violent journey through the corpse of a city that Damshir had become he had stopped trying to control himself, who he was becoming and started to simply be himself. Thinking of himself in terms of what Jonas was and what he was as Jake seemed somehow ridiculous, trivial, and as he cleared his throat, blinked away the few tears that had made it to the surface he set the whole question of who he was aside, replacing it with the realization of who he had become.
“As the wounded go by,
I'll be the one standing.
The stones forget our names as they erode down featureless.
As the innocent go by,
I'll just close my eyes.
As the banner is raised
I dream of a better day.
The battlements know no names as they play host to the defenders
As the fight is joined
I remember my charges.
As the war is waged
I stand tall or fall bravely.
Justice and freedom are given form as we strive to enforce and keep them.
As I dedicate myself
I'll never close my eyes.”
He recited aloud as he punched in the entirety of the poem even though the screen turned green after the first hundred and forty four letters. There was a pause for a moment and then he heard Ayan's voice through his subdermal earpiece. “Jonas?” she asked. “I mean Jacob, I'm sorry, is that you?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “Ayan?”
“Yup, it's me. Well, the second me!” she said with a surprising enthusiasm. Her absolutely ecstatic tone was barely contained. “Where are you?”
Jake looked to Alaka; “Ayan's on the line, it's secure.”
“Go ahead and give her our location. It's not like it's a secret,” Alaka shrugged.
“I'm with a few nafalli and human resistance fighters in the subway system under the Trade and Commerce building. Regent Galactic and the West Keepers have no idea I'm here. I snuck through their line disguised as one of their own.” Jake switched the audio output to his arm command unit to everyone near could hear her.
“We're holed up in a section of the Space port here. A lot of the bots have been software patched so they have free will and they helped free a few hundred humans from their ships. An artificial intelligence created by Alice started it all.”
“Lewis?”
“He calls himself Dementia now, but according to what Jason could learn he was originally called Lewis, he arrived on the Clever Dream. Is there any chance you can make it up the line to us? We're guarding a section of the main tunnel leading through the spaceport.”
Jake looked to Alaka who stepped in a little closer so he could reply. “Hello Ayan, it's Alaka. We're trying to clear an old service tunnel so we can get to the main line now, so it'll be a few hours before we can get moving.”
“How many people made it out of the mountain?”
“Only sixty three of us got away, Roman and many others were killed trying to stop a West Watcher spy from forcing a small fusion reactor to explode inside the mountain.”
“I'm sorry, I wish we could have done something.”
“Don't worry, just try to maintain control of the main tunnel. Do you have a plan beyond that?”
“I think the leadership here wants to eventually leave the planet, but they're not giving us any details. Jason, Oz and I are trying to keep the command channels to ourselves for the time being, they're not making good choices for the group. I can't get into details right now, there's a lot of fighting.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps we could offset things once we arrive.”
“No, the last thing we need is a power struggle. I'll tell them you're coming and that you'll join the fight, but I think our main goal should be escape.”
“You're right, Ayan. What happened to Minh-Chu?” asked Alaka, glancing at Jake as he did so.
“He was injured but he's safe for now. If we can get him to a medical center he'll be fine, especially if Iloona can monitor him until then.”
“I will, he'll be in good hands,” Iloona added with a bright smile.
“I managed to get a message out to the Triton, and I'm overdue by now so unless something gets in the way they'll be on their way here,” Jake said. “Alice is in command with some good people backing her.”
“So she's really human now?” Ayan asked.
“She has been for years, in fact she rescued me and set me up with a ship then set me loose on the galaxy. I can fill you in more later.”
“Wow. Just… wow. I'll authorize your comm ident so you can address Jason and Oz then track you on our secure tactical system. I think it's time we start coordinating.”
Jake could hear Ayan's smile over the communicator and it felt as though the weight of all of Pandem was lifting off his shoulders.