Blood Betrayal Page 18

  He had just made his thirty third mark and started his thirty fourth rendition of the verse when a voice exploded in his head, “For Christ’s sakes, what?!”

  “Let me in, Doc.”

  “No.”

  “All you need is love!”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “All you need is love!”

  “Go away.”

  “All you need is love! Love!”

  “Fine! God fucking damn it!”

  Paul smiled impishly as the door next to him squealed open just a few inches. He jumped to his feet, admiring his handiwork of evil hash marks for just a moment, and pushed the door open enough to allow himself entry. The Vault appeared as it so often did, as a giant, vacant room with no light to speak of, and he wandered in, knowing that he wouldn’t have to go far. A dim circle of light simply appeared, and there Dahk was, a single drop of blood upon a one meter tall pedestal of wrought iron.

  “Do we have to do this?” Paul asked him, motioning around the Vault. “Can’t we drop the god nonsense and talk like people?”

  “I manifest as I see fit,” Dahk replied.

  “For the love of God,” Paul muttered with a roll of his eyes.

  “Blasphemer!”

  “Jesus Christ,” this time with a slow shake of his head combined with another eye roll.

  “Enough! You will not address me so!” Dahk roared, and the pedestal disappeared to be replaced with a wave of blood at least three times the height. It broke, crashed and reformed all at once, over and over.

  “Very well, I suppose you better enjoy your godhood while you can, since you’re going to lose all of it when Zheng comes to get you.”

  The vitae seemed to calm a bit at this, as if suddenly reminded of something. Dahk’s voice, much calmer than it just a few seconds previously, said, “What do you want that you must disturb me?”

  “I wonder, Doc, if this is all just an ostentatious display for your own benefit or are you really starting to finally believe that you are a god just like your colleagues. It took a long time for you, didn’t it? Has the shielding around your part of the hard drive finally started to fail? That’s why you chose the Vault you did, isn’t that right? You know just enough about the computer sciences to know that, eventually, everyone’s data would start to decay, zeroes would flip to ones and vice versa, and who could know what that would mean for a mind stored within it? So, do you want to tell me?”

  As Paul spoke, Dahk’s undulating wave of blood began to retreat into itself and shrink in height. It condensed into the shape of a man, a short blood ghast standing only a few feet away, and by the time Paul had finished, even the blood had turned to flesh and clothing. Doctor Harold Brown once again faced Paul Chen in all of his understated, unimpressive glory.

  “Tell you what?” Doc asked.

  “What you’re doing with that monster, Zheng. Or more importantly, why?”

  “I’m fulfilling my mission,” Doc replied with a shrug.

  “What mission?” Paul nearly shouted, emphasizing each word. “There is no mission. The war is over!”

  “Oh, I know that!” Doc replied with a half shrug. “Do you think I don’t know that? There never was a mission to end the war with Earth, but it was important that everyone else believe that.”

  “Will you stop being so God damned mysterious?”

  “You’ve been watching me close enough I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now,” Doc replied as he leaned back in a leather recliner that literally appeared out of nowhere.

  “Indulge me.”

  “Zheng,” Doc began slowly, organizing his thoughts, “hates extremism, especially the Islamic extremism that engulfed Earth so long ago. He is an extremist himself in that. He wants Earth back, and he wants all of that gone.”

  “But it’s all over. Earth came to us wanting negotiations, wanting peace. The people got tired of living under those conditions, those ideals. The war is over,” Paul repeated.

  “Zheng believes it won’t stay that way for long, but he also figures he can strike first and take it all back.”

  “What does this have to do with Arcturus? He has ships, guns and nukes.”

  “Nukes would just destroy everything, even he knows that. No, he needs a weapon where he can just destroy anything or anyone he wants with just a thought.”

  “So, that’s the reason you armed Cor with so much understanding of his power,” Paul reasoned, “But Cor didn’t turn out to be psychopathic enough for you, did he?”

  “Ha!” Doc blurted a sudden laugh. “No, not really. His parents’ beliefs and morals were too entrenched. I thought the old saying, ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ would solve the problem for me, but with Cor I was wrong. So, I made sure that his son understood it all from a young age.”

  “Why would you help him with this?” Paul Chen asked, an earnest need to understand pushing him forward.

  “It’s better to be the right hand of the Devil than in his path.”

  Paul immediately dismissed the response, “Rhetorical nonsense, especially from an atheist. Yes, I’ve read your file, along with the others.”

  “Okay, fine. You want to know why? I’m a scientist, but I’m also a lover of women and the arts. Maybe I was never that good at those, but I’ll have plenty of time to practice. I’ll live forever, Paul! Not trapped here or in a vault, but in a real body. Admiral Zheng will make sure of that. Think of it! Think of all the discoveries I’ll make, will see made. Think of the books I’ve never read, the films I’ve never seen, the music I’ll get to hear centuries after you’re gone and even your dust has broken down to its most basic elements.”

  “So that’s it then?” Paul asked after a pause, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s all about you? You don’t care about anyone or anything else?”

  “Hey, I’m still living the American Dream.”

  “You’re not even from Earth, much less America.”

  “Maybe not, but my parents were,” Doc argued.

  “So…” Paul sucked in breath through his teeth, “Admiral Zheng has in fact perfected human cloning.”

  “Of course,” Doc answered with a shrug. “Centuries ago in Earth time.”

  “It’s against the law.”

  Doc shrugged, “So is mass genocide, but whatever.”

  “He stores the mind in a computer?”

  “What do you think I am? Even you standing here right now? I know you’ve got a body out there, but by now you know you can’t return to it. It’s a dried out, emaciated, atrophied, useless husk. It exists more for ceremony than anything.”

  “Once the clone is fully ready -”

  “Yep, grown.”

  “- grown, he downloads the mind to the brain? Essentially?”

  “You got it,” Doc confirmed.

  “Anyone else see the problem here?” Paul asked, feeling mischievous.

  “Not really.”

  “The mind decays over time. Just look at your friends – excuse me, colleagues – even yourself.”

  “Well,” Doc drew out the word as he closed the recliner. He scratched at his belly through his blood red silk button up shirt. “I won’t keep my mind in a Vault. I’ll just move it from one body to the next as I need to.”

  “The damage is already done. It’s too late.”

  “So, I’m eccentric.”

  “Would be terrible if you died accidentally.”

  “I’ll make sure I do a backup from time to time,” Doc shrugged again.

  “Sounds like a lot of work, very time consuming.”

  “I’ll have plenty. Look,” Doc stood from his recliner, which instantly vanished, “this is starting to bore the ever loving shit out of me. Are we quite done here?”

  “You know I can’t allow this to happen.”

  “You can’t stop it, either,” Doc replied. “Sounds like we have an unstoppable force, immovable object kind of problem. The problem is you don’t realize that I’m both and you’re neither.”


  The Vault vanished, and Paul again found himself facing the closed iron doors and their medieval dragon relief. He dismissed the illusion, and he swore that he could almost feel his decrepit body as it sat in the chair, watching the world.

  He stretched his mind beyond the planet’s atmosphere, into space, and there it was. Lin Zexu, Admiral Zheng’s ship, orbited Rumedia like some disgustingly bulbous queen bee, though her drones were not to be seen nearby. She had lost her drone bees, as Zheng had to be on the run on some level for the crimes that surely were becoming public knowledge thanks to Paul. Investigating the ship, he found everything he expected – Zheng in his quarters, Cho in the command center and a crew bustling around doing whatever it was they did.

  Zheng clones himself. He downloads his mind to the clone. How many does he have? Paul thought. How many Lin Zexus are there? Is the entire crew a clone as well, or do they even know if they are or not? What about Cho? The Admiral’s lap dog must be a clone. Where does he grow them? He must do it aboard his ship. If there’s a facility, a station somewhere, the time dilation from moving through Steingartner Space would make it impractical.

  Paul stared at the ship for a long moment as it moved ponderously around Arcturus V. Truthfully, there was nothing slow about it; she moved something to the tune of ten kilometers per second, about the same speed at which Earth’s moon orbited, but relative to the distance she traveled, Lin Zexu seemed to crawl around the planet. She was an old style Ark class, the likes of which they originally used to colonize beyond Earth, but she had been modified heavily over the years. Weaponry – mass driver guns and missile tubes, both conventional and nuclear Paul suspected – bristled across the bottom and top of the hull, allowing her to fire in any direction. The detachable cargo pods that would normally be used to help setup and supply a new colony permanently adorned the hull’s spine, and it was here Paul started his search.

  It didn’t take him long. The five cargo pods on each of the starboard and port sides of the ship were completely integrated into the hull and were in fact connected to each other by multiple access points, except for one. The third pod down on the starboard side had no entry point to the second or fourth, and for that matter had but one door connecting it to the hull itself. This door was marked ominously in both English and Chinese “Authorized Personnel Only”, and two Chinese marines dressed in standard deck fatigues and armed with both rifles and M2074A side arms flanked the door. Firing off either weapon inside a spaceship would likely cause an explosive decompression, probably killing anyone in the immediate area and causing more damage. Something would have to be damned important to defend it so.

  Inside Paul found a two level complex that looked more like a medical center than anything. Three people worked here, all of them Chinese – a bored looking nurse reading something off of a tablet in the lower level, and two all business looking scientists or perhaps medical doctors in the upper. The lower level consisted of four empty beds, I.V. stands, monitors of various kinds, normal diagnostic equipment and cabinets full of various medicinal supplies. Computers filled the upper level, along with four white cylinders almost eight feet long and four feet in diameter. They lay on their sides, stacked in pairs against one wall with what appeared to be a heavy power supply feeding each one. Glass, probably plexi of some kind, was set into the top and the accessible side of each tube. Three lay empty and dark, but the fourth emitted light. It contained something resembling a body, perhaps just a little over five feet in length.

  Paul remembered a similar looking tube in one of the lower levels of the underwater facility in which his body was now interred. They had seen it in their original exploration of the place, back when they had first discovered it so many years ago. I’ll be damned, he whispered in his thoughts.

  Doctor Harold Brown’s words echoed through his mind. You can’t stop it, either. He was correct of course. Paul Chen was nothing more than a watcher of the world, a man put into powerless futility, with nothing more to do than watch it all happen. He could neither stop anything from happening across Rumedia, nor cause anything to happen, but he could watch. But what if… what if there was someone who did have the power to act. Not only the power, but the will to make certain that Zheng and his minions, and anyone else for that matter, never again wronged this world or its people.

  The Chronicler, Paul Chen, quickly located a conduit, a very specific someone that he hadn’t called on in some time. He only hoped that the effort of the connection wouldn’t harm or worse, kill, the aged, yellow skinned scholar.

  Lord Dahken Cor Pelson

  Cor retired early from the company of Keth and his Dahken to return to the blankets he and Thyss had laid out some forty feet away from the center of camp. She said nothing and seemed to do only what she absolutely must. The sun had only been below the horizon a short time when he came back to her, and she slept soundly, soft snores barely audible over the summer insects of Aquis’ countryside.

  He removed his armor and weapons as softly as he could and stripped off his underclothes to lay them out to dry before he slid in between the blankets with her. She opened one eye just slightly before rolling over to resume her snoring. Normally upon finding him naked, Thyss would assault him, a fact of their existence together for a decade and a half, but that had not been the case since… He rolled over the in the same direction, wrapped an arm around her protectively and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would find him soon, but somehow knowing that it would not.

  The lack of a plan, the inability to perform a purposeful action, haunted Cor.

  “Lord Dahken,” a whisper and a hand upon his shoulder brought him out of a doze into which he hadn’t even realized he had fallen. It whispered again, urgently, “Lord Dahken.”

  Cor disentangled himself enough to turn over to face what he believed to be Keth’s form, silhouetted blackly against the faint fire and moonlight. One hand extended toward him, apparently holding a small piece of parchment.

  “Lurana brought me this from Ja’Na,” he whispered, endeavoring not to awaken Thyss who no longer snored.

  “What is it?” Cor asked, taking it. He angled it about until he caught just enough bluish white moonlight to read the two words scrawled urgently in Western. “Need Cor,” they said.

  Cor held his open hand out to his friend, and Keth’s strong arm grasped his to help him to his feet. After dressing himself once again in the clothes he wore under his armor, the clothes that were still damp from a hot summer’s day ride through Aquis, Cor returned to the waning campfire and the few Dahken around it. Ja’Na was there as well, though he’d set up a small tent nearby, and he was surrounded with writing implements and loose parchment scrolls.

  Upon seeing Cor, the Tigolean said, “Thank you for coming, Lord Dahken. I don’t know what’s -”

  He was completely unable to finish his thought, as his entire body seemed to go rigid. The three Dahken sitting around the fire shot to their feet, while Cor rushed to the man’s side to offer whatever help he could. It seemed Ja’Na couldn’t breathe for a long moment, and his eyes gazed at nothing in particular off in the distance. Finally, he lowered himself to the ground and began to write frantically and wild eyed.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Lurana asked, the innocent concern of a small child so plain in her voice that Cor’s heart wanted to break.

  “I think,” Cor paused, “I think the Chronicler has need of him.”

  “The Chronicler’s real?” she asked, her eyes suddenly wide with amazement.

  “Oh, yes. He’s real.”

  He wrote hurriedly, the scratching of a quill pen, that turned into a charcoal pencil when the ink ran out, drowning out even the occasional crack and pop of the dying fire, even the rather vocal insects and the toads and frogs of a nearby stream. Ja’Na filled one side of a scroll, turned it over and continued. The space on one ended, and so he began another, this going on for several minutes. Towards the end of the second such scroll, the furious pace at which he scribed slowed
suddenly and then stopped after the writing of a mere few more words.

  Ja’Na set the second parchment scroll to the side, placing it under the first, set the charcoal pencil down in no particular place and slumped off to his left. Lurana cried out and rushed to his side as Cor knelt down to lay a hand on the scholar’s face. Feeling warmth on his skin and hot air blowing from the man’s nose satisfied Cor that he was in fact very much alive, just likely exhausted from the ordeal.

  Cor gently scooped the man from the ground and into his arms, marveling at his lack of weight. The Tigolean was certainly a short man at about or just over five feet, but he apparently had no meat on his bones whatsoever. Cor had recently carried Thyss quite some distance, and as a warrior, her lithe, muscled frame felt substantially heavier than the old man. Cor thought he could carry Ja’Na forever if needed to, but instead he only took the man to his tent. Lurana crawled inside it as well, snuggling up to the sleeping scholar.

  Cor returned to the campfire to find Thyss standing there amongst the others. In her hands were the scrolls, and she had already progressed to the back side of the first. As she finished it, she dropped it to the ground to start the next. Cor then saw just barely the first hint of emotion that he had seen on her face since discovering her in Byrverus, but it was too minimal or fleeting for him to read. When she finished, her arms dropped to her sides, and she just stared at him, the second parchment scroll just barely held in her fingertips next to her leg.

  “There must be another way,” was all she said. She let the parchment fall from her fingers to land almost perfectly upon the first, and she simply stalked past him to return to their blankets.