Axira Episode One

  Chapter 8

  Jason Singh

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” I sighed into my drink and shook my head.

  Another night wasted, I thought.

  I’d had a lead. One of the teachers from engineering – Emma Carrington – had come to my attention recently. Too many private encrypted messages and too many holidays away from campus. Well, now I was sitting two seats across from her as I realized her secret was less of the treasonous kind and more of the romantic tryst kind. To be honest, I kind of felt happy for her, as she’d been single since her husband had died in a Barbarian attack. Still, this was another night wasted.

  I paused, slammed a hand on the bar, then drowned the rest of my drink. Returning the glass to the table, I smiled at the bartender and walked out. Shoving my hands into the pockets of my civilian jacket, I warded off the chill by rounding my shoulders and receding into my collar.

  Admiral Forest was understandably getting twitchy. Three months, and what did I have to show for it? Nothing but dead ends.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying. It felt like I’d canvassed every single member of the Academy, but I still couldn’t find out who the leak was. It wasn’t as if our spy had run away either – we knew from leaked documents that they were still at it. But who they were and where they were, was still a mystery.

  How the hell was I meant to catch them?

  Shaking my head and grating my teeth together, I walked down the treed boulevard. When I realized it was too full of cadets and teachers from the Academy, I walked down a few side streets instead.

  This area of town was beautiful. Wide thoroughfares offset with mature oaks and elms that led down to cobbled laneways with well-kept median strips. There were even old-style lampposts and wrought iron chairs. It was exactly the section of town you went to if you were on a date, and I had to congratulate Emma for her good taste.

  “You’re not getting anywhere,” I moaned to myself, shoving my hands further into my pockets. I rounded a corner into another laneway, and that’s when someone ran into me – smack bang into me. It felt like being hit by a cruiser.

  I fell flat on my ass. “Jesus,” I said as I brought a hand up to check my back.

  Then I blinked. It was Cadet Em. She was dirty, the front of her uniform muddy, her sleeves caked in earth. Her hair, which usually sat in sleek lines of thick tendrils down her back, had the occasional leaf and twig sticking out of it.

  “Christ, are you okay?” I jumped to my feet to take a better look at her.

  She tilted her head to the side before nodding. “I’m fine. Sorry for knocking you over.” She turned to walk away.

  I held a hand out to her. “No, wait.”

  Reluctantly she came to a stop.

  As I saw how stiff her body language was, a wave of cold dread spread through me. Had my sister told her what I’d been discussing with Hendra this morning?

  My mouth quickly became dry, and I struggled to suck in a breath. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened this morning,” I said, realizing it was better to man up to it even if my indiscretion wasn’t the cause of Em’s current mood.

  She blinked hard. “There’s no need to be sorry; Lieutenant Ma’tovan was correct.”

  “What?” My brow knotted together.

  “I lack control,” she remarked in a weak voice.

  It was my turn to tilt my head in confusion. I remembered my mother promising me that no one was going to say anything to Em. None of her teachers were gonna push her, regardless of how rude she’d been to Hendra. But now it sounded as if Lieutenant Ma’tovan had ignored that order.

  My hackles started to rise. Em was clearly not in a position where she should be pushed, so what the hell was the lieutenant doing pushing her anyway?

  Perhaps Em could sense my growing ire, because her eyes flashed up to mine. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with, Lieutenant. I apologize for knocking you over.” She turned to leave.

  I reached out a hand again. “No, look, you don’t have to leave. We could … walk back to the Academy together,” I suggested in a halting voice that sounded like I was asking her out on a date. I really wasn’t; I was trying to keep her talking so she didn’t do something stupid like quit the Academy. Yet I couldn’t convince my shaking voice and trembling heart to stay still.

  She considered my hand. At first, I was certain she was going to reject it and walk away, then she shook her head and got a far-off look in her eye. “Fine. I suppose I could do with some company.”

  I took a relieved breath and nodded. I started to walk with her as I brought a hand up and began patting the dirt from my jacket. There was a stabbing pain emanating from my left gluteus all the way down my leg, but I wasn’t about to rub it. I could check for an injury when I got back to the Academy; I didn’t want Em thinking she’d hurt me.

  I glanced down at her muddy uniform. I wanted to know what exactly she’d been doing and why it looked as if she’d taken on a forest, but I held my tongue.

  “I was angry,” she supplied. “I took a walk amongst the woods to let off steam.” She brought a hand up and pulled a twig from her hair, flicking it behind her.

  “Oh,” I said in a weak voice. I could have and should have come up with something better than ‘oh,' but what was I meant to say? I wasn’t a counselor, I kept repeating to myself, and it was clear that Cadet Em’s problems weren’t the kind that assailed the usual recruit. She wasn’t steaming because she’d failed to pass a class or crying because some guy or girl she’d liked had rejected her.

  “Why don’t you just ask me?” She said all of a sudden.

  I was halfway through scratching my chin. I stopped as if she’d injected liquid nitrogen into my arm. “Sorry?” I stuttered.

  Still walking, she turned her head to me. “Why don’t you just ask me what happened?”

  My cheeks twitched. I couldn’t answer that the reason I didn’t want to ask her what happened was because it looked as if she’d either hit me or run away. Still, she’d challenged me, so I took a breath and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “That’s not what you really want to know. You want to know why I’m covered in mud and why I couldn’t keep myself together last night when that mindair pushed her way into my thoughts,” she said through a struggling swallow. “And most of all you want to know who he is.”

  “Sorry?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  She stopped and turned to me. “Master.”

  I stopped. I was cold. It wasn’t just because there was a chill wind blowing on the back of my neck – it was because of her expression. It wasn’t as hard as it had been last night when Hendra had challenged her. If anything, it was fragile, but fragile in a determined way. Like someone who knows their weakness and for the first time is ready to confront it.

  I let my lips drop open. “Who is he?” I heard myself ask.

  “A monster,” she answered.

  I felt sick at her admission – the kind of sick that bypasses your gut for your heart, making your blood thin and chill. “I’m sorry,” I said. Those three little words were the only utterances that could make it past my dry throat.

  “So am I,” she said as she brought a hand up and briefly covered one of her eyes before letting her fingers drop slowly down her face. “Lieutenant Ma’tovan confronted me this morning. He said I couldn’t control myself.”

  “That’s not fair,” I quickly jumped to her defense. “Okay, maybe you were a little rude to Hendra, but she was way out of line. Any other cadet would have done the same or worse.”

  She shifted her gaze to me, considering me silently for a few seconds before saying, “He’s right; I’m not controlled. I’m contained,” she said the word with so much emotion hidden under the surface, I thought her face would crack.

  Contained. Why did I suddenly get the feeling that word summed Cadet Em up perfectly?

  I swallowed. I wanted to say something – something pertinent, something useful, something that could reach out and help her
. But I had no idea what that would be. Instead, my lips crumpled up into a commiserating smile.

  She brought her hands forward and stared at them, even pulling back her sleeves to glance at the permanent scars dug into her wrists. It was the first time I’d ever had a chance to get a good look at them. They were holes covered over by scar tissue interspersed at even sections all the way around her wrists.

  As she shifted, the light caught them, and I saw that occasionally they shimmered, indicating they were no ordinary scars. She’d already said they were permanently painful, and as I gulped, I realized that was probably an understatement. From what I’d read up about subspace scars, they could be agonizing. They sent some people mad.

  I gulped. For a man trained in one of the best combat programs in the galaxy, I sure did gulp a lot. Then again, there was something about Em that would make even the hardest warrior show signs of nervous worry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said suddenly. I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing about, but it was relieving to see her expression soften as she flicked her gaze away from her scars and toward me.

  “We should return to the Academy; it’s getting late,” she said.

  I nodded. It was getting late. While I had special dispensation to be away from the Academy grounds for as long as I pleased, I knew Em didn’t. People would be looking for her.

  We hurried along, or at least she did. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with her determined stride. She wasn’t taller than me, but the way she held herself and the way she moved served to make me feel like a child.

  I raced along with my hands tucked firmly in my pockets, trying to ward off the chill. She strode freely as if the biting wind was no hindrance whatsoever.

  “Let’s go down this laneway,” I suddenly said, “It’s a shortcut.”

  “This way is quicker.” She ignored me and pointed ahead between several buildings.

  I wanted to point out that I’d been here longer than she had and knew this city far better than a first-year recruit, but I held my tongue. For all I knew, Cadet Em had already studied blueprints of the city or run the whole thing in under an hour flat.

  I followed her lead and soon enough we were walking down a very narrow alleyway between one old style heritage building and a newer far more modern structure made of sleek white metal and blue tinted glass. It was when we were halfway through the alley that she abruptly stopped.

  I watched, a slice of moonlight striking her face, as her eyes narrowed. Her head tilted to the side with a quick twitch, and it was obvious something had caught her attention.

  Before I could whisper, “What?” or draw a step closer, I heard something too. Just above us, along one of the sheer walls of the new building, there was some kind of scrabbling noise. Slowly I tipped my head back, my neck muscles practically creaking at the move. There was something above us. It wasn’t a bird, and it wasn’t a section of the building giving way. It was—

  I jerked backward into Em, trying to latch a hand around her wrist to pull her toward the shadows and out of sight. She didn’t move. Instead, she brought her own hand up and anchored me to the spot. She wasn’t looking upward at the creature – whatever it was. Instead, her gaze was locked in the shadows to our left.

  Nervous energy sparked along my back, feeling like a rush of cold water tipping down my collar. Before something could happen, before I could say or do anything, I heard the creature above us move. There was a scraping as if claws were being retracted from glass, and a swish as something fell toward us. I tried to ram forward, but Em wouldn’t let me. She kept me in place with one of the strongest grips I’d ever endured.

  It was then that I saw what she could. As the clouds above shifted, and several shafts of moonlight shone between the buildings, I saw the light glint off something sleek, long, and coiled deep into the shadows of a recess.

  There was a clunk as something landed behind us.

  Adrenaline exploded through me, hitting my bloodstream and lacing through it with all the speed of light. I wanted to slam backward, drive my elbow around, and dive to the side. Do something. Start fighting. I knew I had seconds.

  Em wouldn’t let me move. She hadn’t once made any indication that whatever the hell was behind us had caught her attention. Instead, her head was locked toward the sleek coiled object between the buildings before us.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I heard something make a swooshing noise behind us.

  This was it. It was all over.

  Before I could prepare to have a blade sliced through my middle, Em finally acted. She shoved my shoulder so hard that she sent me skidding to my knees.

  She whirled on her foot, leaped into the air, and grabbed the creature who’d been behind us, just as it slammed toward her.

  A part of my brain picked up on the movement – whatever region of my addled mind that wasn’t shaking with nerves and adrenaline. I saw how graceful she was, how agile. She looked like she was attached to a wire, or moving in half gravity. When the creature leaped at her, she twisted in the air, slamming one knee into its head as she used the flat of her leg to push it toward the ground.

  All this happened in an instant – in half a second. As soon as the creature slammed into the ground, I twitched, whatever short reverie that had afforded me time to note her grace ending with a bang.

  I leaped to my feet, lunging forward to help.

  I still didn’t know what we were fighting.

  “Get down, Jason,” she bellowed, angling a kick toward me and slamming her foot hard into my shoulder as she pushed me back.

  Again I was driven to my knees. Just in time. The coiled creature finally reacted. It unfurled itself like a snake on fast forward. Something whipped out toward me, slicing through the air where I’d been standing moments before.

  Em had already dodged, falling to the ground and rolling before springing up to her feet in a neat summersault.

  Clouds covered the moon again, cutting out what brief illumination they’d given. We were plunged back into the dark, only the scantest light there to illuminate the bodies of our enemies.

  As far as I could tell, we were fighting two modified Kore assassins. One was a coiled, whip-like robot, essentially an antenna on legs. A deadly antenna. They were a type of communications device strapped onto the body of a robot assassin. The coiled whip could just as easily be used to slice through an enemy as it could to extend like an antenna to deliver its intelligence using hardly-detectable encrypted signals.

  As for the other enemy, that was also a Kore assassin. A biological one, covered in sophisticated armor. I say biological, but it’s questionable whether there was enough of the original creature under those glittering plates of armor to satisfy the definition of alive.

  I had no idea what two Kore assassins were doing on Earth, but I didn’t have the time to question either. And unless I helped Em, she would be dead. We’d both be dead.

  Somehow she managed to keep on her feet, always darting back from both foes, even when they combined their attacks. She was offering so much of a distraction that neither of them had turned on me yet, which gave me the opportunity to tug my wrist up and activate my device. Or at least I tried to. As soon as I jammed a thumb into the electronic screen, it blinked back with an ominous red flash. One that meant all signals were being jammed. I didn’t have the time to breathe, to swear, to scream. In that moment that coil-like whip came swinging around and slammed into my shoulder. This time Em wasn’t there to save me, and I had to buckle to my knees, lest the whip continue and slice my head right off.

  I ignored the pain that exploded through my arm, lancing down into my shoulder and up into my neck like sparks through my blood and flesh. Rolling, not caring that I jarred my shoulder again and sent splatters of bright red blood over the cobbles, I came up hard. This time I was ready to fight. As the whip sliced toward me, I ducked just in time, slamming one hand into the cobbles then using it as purchase to whip my leg around and use it to kick the
coiled whip. If I’d been wearing my armor, that move would’ve made a difference. As it was, it barely reverberated down the whip and into the base of the coiled creature.

  It did buy Em some time. I watched her double back, race toward the wall, and actually climb up it before flipping backward and landing behind the cybernetic assassin. She didn’t pause, she moved so quickly and so efficiently it was like watching a programmed hologram go through their paces. She lurched forward, rounded her shoulder, and slammed it into the middle of the cybernetic assassin’s back. Either she knew just where to attack it, or there was so much concentrated force behind the move that the metal plating along its back actually dented and it was sent tumbling forward. It slammed into the cobbles, its hands instantly scrabbling against them, digging into the stone as it tried to force its way back up.

  It was murder keeping my attention split between the cybernetic assassin and the antenna. At any moment if I allowed myself to be distracted by either one of them, the other could pounce. If I let them near me, I’d be dead.

  I knew my face was covered with sweat, I knew it trickled down my brow, collected along my chin, and dashed against the collar of my civilian jacket. I knew my face was contorted in fear and desperation too. I could feel the muscles pulling tight and twitching.

  That wasn’t the case for Em. Her expression was calm, maybe even detached. Her eyes were open and focused, and her lips pulled into a thin frown. But that was it. Sweat didn’t drench her brow, and neither did her expression contort with fear.

  It looked as if she’d done this before. As if the prospect of walking along a calm, purportedly safe street right outside the Academy only to face two Kore assassins was something that couldn’t possibly throw her.

  Something else that couldn’t possibly throw her was the cybernetic assassin. With the help of the coiled antenna, it got to its feet, the antenna pushing its whip into the back of the cybernetic assassin until it thrust it forward.

  The cybernetic assassin reached Em and wrapped an arm around her middle. For the briefest moment fear pulsed through me, it felt as if it was some kind of sun lodged in my throat. Before it could burn through my resolve and send me tumbling to my knees, Em resisted.

  The cybernetic assassin didn’t have time to pull one of the weapons from its holster. It didn’t have time to bring up one of the electro blades lodged permanently into its arm. Em bent her knees, twitched forward, and sent the both of them hurtling toward the ground. She managed to flip, and landed on the cybernetic assassin’s body, before ramming both her elbows backward, collecting it in the guts, and rolling off.

  She was amazing, incredible, but she couldn’t keep this up. Neither of us could. We had to get help, get help before these two assassins killed us and moved onto God knows who next.

  Theoretically, the Academy and the whole city around it had a security net. Sensors that permanently scanned the surroundings for any danger. Clearly, they weren’t working. Whatever technology the Kore assassins were using to jam my wrist device was obviously also working on the security sensors.

  That meant I had to raise the alarm some other way. I didn’t want this fight to spill out onto the street, even though that would presumably alert the whole city to what was going on. At the same time, I knew I couldn’t let us die alone here in the darkness of this cramped alleyway.

  Thoughts flashed through my mind faster than blasts from a plasma gun.

  We had to end this.

  How?

  I didn’t have any weapons.

  Or at least that’s what I thought.

  As Em fought, she did so with one hand, using the other to type something into her wrist device. Though with her it wasn’t latched around her wrist – it was further up her arm, just above her elbow.

  Sinking her feet into the ground and shoving her shoulder hard just as the cybernetic assassin whirled around to attack her again, she kept one hand free to keep typing something into the wrist device.

  I had no idea what she was doing. Presumably, her device was just as jammed as mine.

  But maybe I was underestimating her.

  The cybernetic assassin twisted toward her, its massive clawlike feet sinking into the cobbles and making them crack and shatter to powder.

  Em was a first-year recruit, but she didn’t bat an eyelid. She didn’t scream, not even when the cybernetic assassin brought both its hands forward, electro blades slicing from the claws and catching what remained of the light as blue pulses arced across them.

  The cybernetic assassin’s face didn’t contort with rage; it couldn’t. It was essentially dead. Here and there flesh fell off it in green slimy chunks. Any skin that would be lost in this fight would be replaced with genetic therapy.

  The glassy, dead look in its white rimmed eyes could not be replaced, though.

  I watched the coil-like assassin suddenly spring toward Em, making its whip rigid like a knife.

  I darted forward before my brain could think, going completely off instinct. I reached the coil assassin and kicked it, drawing on strength from somewhere to send it skidding backward.

  This apparently bought Em the time to do what she did next. She wrenched her wrist device off her arm then chucked it toward me. “Wrap it around the coil,” she shouted.

  I did what I was told. There was something about the exact shaking tone she managed to achieve that bypassed my reason and reached far down into my training. She reminded me of an admiral barking orders from the bridge.

  As I skidded forward toward the coil, I turned my back on Em. The next time I twisted around to see her, the assassin was lying motionless at her feet.

  Before I could register that, I somehow grabbed hold of the coil and slammed Em’s wrist device onto it. I didn’t clutch hold of that sleek, twisting metal for long; I knew it could become electrified at any moment and blast me backward or singe me to a crisp.

  It was long enough, though, to secure the wrist device.

  Then something kind of incredible occurred.

  The coil assassin stopped. It twitched as if some electrical pulse passed through it, then buckled, crumpling to the floor and falling to my feet like a dead snake.

  My heart beat so powerfully in my chest it was a surprise my head didn’t bounce off and start jumping over the floor like a live wire. My hands were drenched in sweat, and my jacket and shirt stuck to my back.

  My breathing was so short and sharp it felt like my lungs had been chopped in half.

  But it was over, right?

  It was over.

  Before I could question that, I heard Em move slowly to my side, her unhurried footfall matching her casual stance. “It’s over,” she mirrored my thoughts.

  I let out a stuttering sigh. No, it was more of a groan as I brought a hand up and tugged down the torn fabric of my jacket, revealing the massive slice along my arm underneath.

  Before I could become too distracted with my injuries, I immediately turned to survey our enemies. “We need to contact Academy security.”

  “They will already have been contacted. The coil assassin is no longer jamming the security net. Trust me, the Academy is on its way.”

  As if to prove that fact, I suddenly heard an alarm blare from across the city. I knew the pitch, and I knew the toneless melody. That would be the citywide yellow alert klaxon. You barely ever heard it. I’d only witnessed a security breach three or four times during my entire career.

  “Are we sure they’re down?” I asked as I pivoted on my foot to stare at the cybernetic assassin.

  It wasn’t moving, and neither was the other one.

  “They will not get up again,” she answered.

  “What … did you do? How did you manage to use your wrist device against it?”

  “Our wrist devices have the capability of being used as weapons. We learned that in the first week,” she counseled me.

  “I know that. But goddammit, that’s a coil assassin,” I stabbed a finger toward it. “How did you do that?” I co
uldn’t keep the surprise from reverberating through my voice. It shook and rippled through it like thousands of stones thrown into a once calm pond.

  “I modified my wrist device,” she answered, “To send out a strong, repeating electrical field, timed to make it through the coil assassin’s rudimentary shielding.”

  I stared at her, my mouth open, surprise apparent for anyone to see.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.

  “It doesn’t matter. It worked.”

  I kept staring at her as if my eyes had been locked onto her with targeting sensors. “And what about that guy?” I nodded at the cybernetic assassin.

  “I managed to get him off guard, and disconnected the primary command circuit from the back of his neck,” she answered smoothly.

  I drifted into silence. I couldn’t find my breath, let alone force any more words through my tortured dry throat.

  The alarm was getting louder, and now I could hear the steady drumbeat of boots approaching.

  “I have no idea how we lived through that,” I said as I fixed the coil assassin with a glassy stare and wiped a hand down my mouth.

  “That’s not the question you should be asking. The question you want to ask,” she tipped her head back to stare at the scrap of sky between the two buildings, “Is what an intelligence team was doing so close to the Academy.”

  “What?” My brow crumpled.

  “Have you forgotten your lessons on the Kore Empire?”

  My mouth continued to march its way down my chin.

  She pointed behind me at the two downed assassins. “They constitute an intelligence team. The specific grouping of assassins the Empire sends out when it is gathering intel.”

  My gaze slowly drifted from her and locked on the assassins.

  My mind was coming back to me now as the sound of a security detachment sprinting toward us calmed my nerves.

  She was right. The two specific assassins we’d encountered did constitute an intelligence team. The cybernetic assassin could protect the coil and feed it secrets to send back to the Empire.

  This was it, wasn’t it?

  Christ, I’d just stumbled across my lead. Sure, maybe this intelligence team didn’t have anything to do with my mission – maybe they were gathering secrets about something else. But I doubted that.

  Just as the security team rounded the laneway and a cruiser suddenly darted up high between the buildings and shone a light down onto us, I pushed forward and dropped to my knees next to the coil.

  “I wouldn’t touch it,” Em suddenly warned me. “If you are looking for the information the coil would have been transmitting, it’s too late. It would have been destroyed as soon as the coil was taken down. They have a backup mechanism, a safety feature to ensure captured coils can’t divest their secrets.”

  I swore. I knew that. Everything she was saying was common knowledge.

  I planted a sweaty hand into my head just as the security team reached us.

  I quickly explained what had happened, and the team secured the area, taking us and the assassins back to the Academy.

  I was separated from Em as she was taken to the med bay. I didn’t think she needed to be taken to the med bay. Frankly, I was far more injured than she was.

  Still, I was glad she was fine. Ecstatic, in fact. If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have made it through that. Heck, if it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t have taken a shortcut down the alleyway and we wouldn’t have found those assassins in the first place.

  But, as incredible as this lead was, was I actually any closer to finding the leak? Both the coil and the cybernetic assassin had wiped their memory banks. There was no information – no clue about what they’d been doing.

  Or so I thought.