The Dragons of Andromeda Page 5

  Now grown and an experienced insurgent, Ekavir began leading attacks against the invaders. He developed new tactics, too. Instead of waiting in the jungle, he and his agents planted bombs in the places were the humans lived and worked. There were sometimes casualties among his own people, but they were the price that had to be paid for freedom. Their deaths were blood spilled for the revolution. Ekavir was confident they would have laid down their lives willingly if he had merely asked.

  As the years dragged on, he never wavered or lost hope. The words of his father remained in his ears long after his father had died in an Imperial reprisal. The humans could not break Ekavir’s spirit, no matter how many Draconians they lined up to be shot.

  However, not everyone was as strong. Some of his people questioned his methods. They suggested negotiations, even as they lived in chains. This bothered Ekavir even more than the humans. This weakness in the face of the enemy could not be forgotten or forgiven. Those who were not for him were against him and, naturally, his enemy. They, too, must suffer the consequence of their barbarism.

  Squads of his men fanned out into the jungle and the cities alike, looking for collaborators. These traitors were pulled from their homes, sometimes with their families watching. It was only right that they died within view of those they had betrayed. Ekavir took no pleasure in these killings, but he knew in his heart that only the strength of honor could lead to salvation and banishing the human invaders.

  Even so, the bombing of the Green Zone, where the humans kept their spouses and children, was a miscalculation. The videos of the dead, played hourly by the Imperial propaganda machine, weakened Ekavir in the eyes of his people. The friends he knew he could trust suddenly were no longer reliable. The safe places became dangerous and the strikes from the sky became more frequent. All the while, he retreated deeper into the jungle.

  With a machete, Magnus Black hacked at a particularly stubborn vine blocking their path. The jungle had grown ever thicker, slowing their progress. KB-8E considered using his particle beam but doing so, with the associated smoke and possible flames, would ruin any chance of surprising the Jade General. The killbot waited impassively as Magnus made a final swing, severing the vine in two.

  “Have you worked with robots a great deal?” KB-8E asked suddenly.

  Magnus wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “What?”

  “You said you don’t like robots,” the robot went on. “I wondered how much time you’ve actually spent working with them.”

  Magnus turned his eyes toward the machete in his hands as if contemplating something.

  “Machines are everywhere,” he said. “You can’t kick a sweeperbot without hitting another sweeperbot.”

  “No, I meant working together with a robot, as we are.”

  “You mean, like a partner?”

  “Indeed,” KB-8E replied.

  Exasperated, the human shook his head. “We’re not partners!”

  Without a face, KB-8E could not express emotions, provided he had any. However, the robot’s blinking light stared at Magnus without the machine saying anything.

  “Don’t tell me I hurt your feelings?” Magnus said finally.

  “I’m not programmed to have feelings,” KB-8E replied.

  “Good.”

  “In fact,” the killbot added, “I believe humans created killbots to avoid feeling the guilt associated with ending another person’s life.”

  “Is that so?”

  “How do you deal with your emotions after killing?”

  Magnus shrugged. “I don’t think about it.”

  “That seems wise,” KB-8E said. “Most of your kind seem to ruminate endlessly about their actions.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Magnus reared back to strike the next vine with his machete.

  “Perhaps you are what they call a psychopath,” the robot said.

  Magnus missed the vine, narrowly missing his own leg.

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say!” he growled.

  “Or are you a sadist of some kind?”

  Shaking the long blade in his hand, Magnus held it threateningly. “I’m none of those things!”

  The light on KB-8E’s head blinked several times. “If you say so.”

  “I’m a killer, that’s true,” Magnus replied, “but it’s my job and I’m damn good at it.”

  “But you don’t think about those you kill?”

  “Do you?” Magnus asked.

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “On the contrary,” the robot said, “although I assume you would consider it a fault in my programming, I do indeed consider the lives I’ve ended and the consequences of what those lives might have accomplished if I had not ended them.”

  Magnus, both his machete and jaw slacking, stared at the killbot.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Every morning at around 10 AM, when the temperature and the humidity reached the proper mix, the rain began falling and continued for half an hour before stopping again. It was like clockwork, every day. The drops fell from the heavy clouds, the water winding its way through the tops of the trees down to the jungle floor before emptying into streams and rivers. Swollen with the morning shower, one such river plunged as a waterfall into a small lake. A deluge at first but then, the surge past, abating to a trickle, the falling water revealed the entrance to a cave partially flooded by the lake.

  Magnus Black, submerged in the muddy water, swam beneath the surface into the cave. He wore a dark gray bodysuit with black goggles and a breathing device clenched between his teeth. A blaster was holstered on his right leg while a long blade was strapped to his left ankle. He could barely see, but he knew that meant the Draconians couldn’t see him either.

  The robot had scanned the cave, giving Magnus a general idea of its dimensions. The entrance was narrow but widened into a cavern. When Magnus thought he was at the right spot, he risked a look, the top of his head and goggles disturbing the surface. He was beside a boat, woven from palm fibers, partially beached on a parcel of sand. Past the beach, stone steps led up to a level area below the ceiling at least fifty feet above. A few huts crowded the plateau, open fires burning between them, with a larger shack on the other side.

  The air was thick with the scent of wet lizards.

  Hearing someone coming down the steps, Magnus pushed the boat away from the beach.

  A Draconian warrior cursed, seeing the craft floating toward the flooded entrance. Wading out to retrieve it, the warrior got waist deep before Magnus drove a dagger into his heart. The body floated for a moment before sinking.

  Slipping out of the water, Magnus left his goggles at the shoreline and inched across the beach, careful to tread lightly over the sand. At the foot of the steps, he listened. Sure that no one was coming, Magnus climbed the stairs until his eyes peered over the top. Several Draconian warriors, armed mostly with swords or warstaffs, were shuffling around the camp amid the huts. Like the boat, the hovels were constructed from leaves and wood gathered from the jungle outside. Under the domed roof, they looked to be more for privacy than shelter.

  With one hand holding his blaster and the other his knife, Magnus crept from the steps to the back of a hut. Thinking he had made little or no noise in the process, Magnus was surprised when a Draconian came crashing through the hut wall, tackling him to the ground.

  “What the hell?” Magnus said, both hands pinned.

  The Draconian, within inches of Magnus’ face, grinned a mouth full of teeth.

  “I can smell a wet human for miles,” the warrior said.

  “Good to know,” Magnus replied.

  His right arm bent, Magnus extended it, pulling the Drac’s hand out along with it. The warrior’s eyes widened as Magnus contorted his left knee into the Draconian’s leg, knocking him off balance and rolling him over. With their positions reversed and Magnus on top, he fired the blaster, incinerating the warrior’s snout and most of his f
ace. Magnus shook off the dead claws still holding his wrists and turned just as more Dracs came around the side of the hut.

  Magnus burned holes in the first two to reach him. A third leapt over the dead warriors, making a wide swing with his warstaff. Magnus felt a surge of pain in his hand as he watched the blaster sail over the edge of the rocks and into the water below.

  This is not ideal, he thought.

  He dodged the next swing, ducking under it while slicing the warrior’s tendon as he rolled past. Dropping to one knee in agony, the Draconian exposed the back of his neck into which Magnus, jumping back to his feet, drove his blade, severing the spinal column.

  Magnus grabbed the Draconian warstaff and buried it into another warrior’s chest. Using his foot as leverage, he pulled the staff free as memories of Bhadra floated back to mind. The raw smell of their blood filled his nostrils. He killed, as he did then, by taking long swaths like a reaper’s scythe through the ranks of the defenders.

  He was the intruder. He was the invader. He didn’t care.

  Drenched in blood, Magnus stood before the large shack at the end. With both hands, he held the warstaff against his waist.

  The door, driftwood lashed together with fibers, opened. Ekavir stood in the doorway, backlit by the warm flicker of a fire behind him. In his hands he held a blaster rifle.

  Also not ideal, Magnus thought.

  “Drop your weapon,” Ekavir said, gesturing with his rifle.

  The warstaff landed in the dusty ground at Magnus’ feet.

  “Do you know who I am?” the assassin asked.

  The Jade General grinned and nodded. His scales were worn in places, the natural green faded by age.

  “The Butcher of Bhadra,” he said. “I recognize you.”

  “I don’t recall seeing you there,” Magnus replied.

  “I was there.”

  “Hiding while your people died?”

  “My people sacrificed themselves,” Ekavir said, “so I could escape and continue the battle elsewhere.”

  “They paid the price so you could live...”

  “So the revolution could live!”

  “I’m pretty sure the revolution would’ve survived without you.”

  “I am the revolution!”

  Magnus chuckled, eyeing the general with his modern weapon.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Seems like it’s already passed you by.”

  “No,” Ekavir replied, sticking his chest out. “Long after you’re forgotten, my people will sing songs about me. After the worms have spat you out, I will go on.”

  Magnus shook his head.

  “Alright then,” he said. “Anytime now.”

  The Jade General raised the blaster rifle, but Magnus wasn’t speaking to him. The tips of two blades burst from Ekavir’s chest. The Draconian gazed down at them with confusion in his eyes as blood came spilling out. When the tips retracted, only to re-emerge moments later, Ekavir roared in pain and fury. He attempted to point the rifle at Magnus, but the weapon fell from his hands, followed close behind by Ekavir himself, landing on top of it.

  KB-8E stood in the doorway. The robot’s camouflage emitters flickered off.

  “What the hell were you waiting for?” Magnus shouted at the killbot.

  “You seemed to be in the middle of a conversation,” KB-8E replied.

  Magnus kicked the corpse over so the general was facing up. He picked up the blaster rifle.

  “The primary target appears to be eliminated,” the robot said, examining the body.

  “Yeah,” Magnus replied slowly, “but there was always a secondary target, wasn’t there?”

  The killbot looked up. “Sadly, yes.”

  The barrel of the robot’s particle beam lit up, just as Magnus rolled to the side. The material of his bodysuit charred at the shoulder, Magnus fired, a hot bolt of plasma impacting KB-8E’s chest in a shower of sparks and molten plastic. The robot fell backwards, landing halfway inside the shack.

  When Magnus got back to his feet, he wasn’t sure if the robot was destroyed until he saw the red light blinking on his faceplate.

  “Don’t move,” Magnus said.

  “I do not think that will be possible,” KB-8E replied, his voice modulating intermittently.

  Magnus kept the rifle pointed at the disabled robot. “There was never any deal with Colonel Grausman.”

  “Affirmative,” the robot said. “I was to terminate you once the primary target was killed.”

  “Why?”

  “It is my understanding that his superior officers demanded it.”

  The assassin shrugged. “Yeah, that checks out.”

  “I regret that I can no longer work alongside you, Mr. Black,” the robot said. “It was interesting.”

  Magnus didn’t reply.

  “Will you kill Colonel Grausman?” KB-8E asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “He’s going to die.”

  “Before he does,” KB-8E said, “please pass along my apologies for failing in my mission.”

  After a pause, Magnus said, “Sure.”

  “Farewell, Mr. Black.”

  Magnus pulled the trigger and swam out of the cave. He had a long hike ahead of him back to Sucikhata and the Green Zone.

  Chapter Five

  Oscar Skarlander didn’t remember dying, or the person who killed him, for that matter. His last memory, before waking in a cloning vat, was sitting in a chair with electrodes attached to his head. He was in the headquarters of Warlock Industries, getting a neurological scan of his brain, a snapshot of his consciousness. This was a monthly safeguard against the unforeseen, like getting his head cut off on a far-flung asteroid. In case of death, the recording was downloaded into the brain of a clone so Skarlander could live again.

  I’m getting tired of this shit, he thought.

  Hairless and weak, Skarlander rested his arm on the edge of the vat. Technicians and medical staff passed through his cloudy vision of the room. The rest was just bright lights and green wall tiles. He tried to speak, to give an order, but the feeding tube down his throat made him gag. Someone, a woman, he thought, was reaching for the tube and gave it a firm tug, drawing it out. Skarlander choked while his lungs filled with breaths of air.

  “Keep still,” someone said and stuck a syringe into Skarlander’s arm. He recognized the pain. That was a memory he knew well.

  “What happened?” Skarlander asked, fluid gurgling out of his mouth along with the words.

  “You’ll be debriefed in a few hours, Agent Skarlander.”

  Satisfied he was too frail to do much more, he laid back against the warm ooze filling the vat and wondered what else he could remember.

  After the Merope and Sterope left the Cyber Collective where they had been found and entered Imperial space, a task force of military ships escorted the two ark ships to Aldorus. The captains and crews had already disembarked, safely whisked away to a secure location where they could be debriefed and indoctrinated into their new lives as royalty. The vast majority on the ark ships, several thousand colonists in cryogenic hibernation, remained asleep, a slumber that had lasted since leaving Earth approximately fifteen hundred years ago.

  Once the ships reached an orbit high above the capital city of Regalis, specialists began the arduous process of waking the sleepers, in groups of fifty at a time. Not everyone survived the trip. A percentage of the cryo capsules had failed, the people inside turned to desiccated corpses. Some colonists simply died while being revived, their bodies too weak to endure the shock of the waking process. The specialists deemed a mortality rate of twenty percent as acceptable.

  Once unfrozen, the resurrected were kept in a medically induced coma for a week while electrodes stimulated their nervous systems to heal muscular atrophy. When the week was over, each colonist awoke to their new lives in a new time and a new galaxy.

  Most began screaming almost immediately.

  After another two weeks of psychiatric therapy, the screaming stopped and m
ost were considered mentally stable. Those who were not were sent to a different facility, likely for the remainder of their lives, while the rest went to dormitories. This was their temporary home until faculty from the University of Regalis gave them a crash course in Imperial history and the importance of the Emperor in their new lives.

  After more screaming, most came to accept this new reality. Those who didn’t were sent to yet another different facility, also likely for the remainder of their lives.

  Lars Hatcher was a farmer. When he signed on to the great migration to the Andromeda Galaxy, they said he would be using his farming skills to grow food for the new colonies. He expected to wake up and become a valuable part of society, one desperately needed since only a limited supply of food could be brought on the sleeper ships. Instead, Lars woke to find that agriculture was entirely automated, usually by massive robots that planted and maintained all crops until harvest, and then did the harvesting too.

  Waking from a fifteen-hundred-year nap, Lars found himself obsolete before the frost on his cryo capsule had even melted.

  In his infinite generosity, the Emperor endowed each colonist with a free apartment, for up to one year, in the Middleton district of Regalis. After leaving the dormitory, Lars moved into his apartment on the twenty-seventh floor overlooking a row of identical apartment buildings. On the other side were skyscrapers housing the major businesses of the Imperium including dy cybernetics, Warlock Industries, and VOX News. Somewhere beyond those, to the West, was the Regalis river and the West End.

  Instead of looking out the window, Lars spent his free time, which was all of the time he had, sitting on his couch watching the video screen. The programs streaming across it filled his days since he had little else to do.

  Lars, pressed into the material of the couch, was built like a rugby player with thick limbs and a wide neck. In comparison, his head looked a little too small and his eyes a little too close together beneath an overhanging brow. Typical human bias suggested Lars wasn’t entirely bright, but in fact he was of average intelligence. Unfortunately, most of his intelligence focused around farming, which was limited in his one-bedroom apartment. Off the galley kitchen, in front of the window, he had filled the breakfast nook with plants that he faithfully watered. He tried to find seeds for tomatoes and other vegetables, but recreational gardening no longer seemed a common pastime. He had to settle for some potted plants he didn’t recognize.