Heretics

Dörner turned toward them. “What is he talking about, Sam?”

  “I told you, their Hall of Minds is a ritual space. They use it to record and pay homage to their ancestors.” He looked at the old man and said. “I’m right about the tattoos?”

  Their host nodded.

  “What about the tattoos?” Dörner asked.

  “There’s only two ways a recording of a human mind can be useful. The first is to implant it in an AI. And since AIs are illegal, most of what I’ve read on the subject is probably apocryphal. The other—”

  “Oh, no,” Dörner whispered.

  “—is to download it into another living brain.” Mallory looked at the old man’s skull and the tattoos there. Was that it? Did each of those marks represent another human being whose mind had been copied, one that had been downloaded into this man’s skull?

  Did that mean he had just done the same with the four of them?

  To Mallory’s horror, the old man looked directly at him and nodded slightly, as if he knew what Mallory was thinking.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Martyrdom

  “There is no such thing as someone with nothing to lose.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “No one is more dangerous than a man convinced he is about to die.”

  —AUGUST BENITO GALIANI (2019-*2105)

  Date: 2526.6.5 (Standard) 300,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  Vijayanagara Parvi, captain of the Eclipse, had been strapped down in an interrogation room on board the Caliphate carrier the Prophet’s Voice for several hours now. Nothing marked the passage of time, the light never wavered, and except for a few perfunctory questions when they’d dragged her in from the dying Eclipse, she had been without human contact since.

  She knew nothing about what was happening beyond the featureless walls of this room. She didn’t know the fates of the remaining bridge crew of the Eclipse, or Bill for that matter. Mosasa, Tsoravitch, Wahid, they had all been separated as soon as the Caliphate’s soldiers took them from the wreckage of the Eclipse. She had never even seen what happened to Bill. The Paralian had been trapped in the cargo hold in his massive six- meter environment suit. For all she knew, their “rescuers” never even bothered to remove Bill from the remains of their ship.

  She took some minimal comfort from the thought that the rest of Mosasa’s expedition had made it down to the planet’s surface. But only the gods knew what the Caliphate’s intentions were—

  That’s a lie. I know exactly what their intentions are.

  Before she became a mercenary on Bakunin, she had been a fighter pilot for the Indi Protectorate Expeditionary Command. She had piloted a drop fighter against the separatists on Rubai, a planet that—until the Revolution—had been her home; a Revolution that not only wouldn’t have been successful, but in Parvi’s opinion, never would have happened without Caliphate assistance and recognition of the Revolutionary government.

  Even as the Indi Protectorate withdrew from the debacle on Rubai, she had remained with a core resistance of ex-Federal forces about eight months past the point where it had been obvious that no relief was ever going to come to support the overthrown government. Rubai had been handed over to these bastards with only a token fight. She ended up wanted as a counterrevolutionary terrorist on her home planet, and in the Indi Protectorate she faced a court-martial for disobeying orders and remaining to assist the doomed Federal forces.

  So, she knew exactly what the Caliphate’s intentions toward this new planet were. She also knew what their intentions toward her would be. She might not be a high profile enough fugitive for them to go out of their way to hunt down, but she was important enough that if they had her in custody it was truly unlikely that they were going to let her go.

  Leaving her alone like this was probably an indication of what she could expect. The psychological operations had already started. Lack of contact, mobility, food, and water, the too-bright light.

  Inevitably, when the interrogator returned, she would be more likely to cooperate simply to prolong the human contact. Unfortunately, knowing what they were doing to her, and what they expected, didn’t lessen the effects. She could endure this for a while, maybe more than most, but of course it wouldn’t end here.

  In the end, what would they want from her? Some testimony against Mosasa? He had probably been destroyed as soon their Caliphate rescuers understood what he was. No, they’d break her, force her to renounce her support of the Federal Government on Rubai against the foreign separatists. Possibly make a propaganda holo just before they executed her. She also knew enough about psychological operations to know that when she did renounce her actions, she would be sincere.

  Each passing minute in isolation, alone in the featureless interview room, fed the growing conviction that she was not going to escape a demise at the hands of the same people who had razed her homeland. The same people who were going to take possession of this colony eighty light-years beyond what they could rationally claim as their sphere of influence.

  She could hear mechanical groans, even through the soundproofed walls. The uniform lighting flickered slightly.

  Her hands were fists, nails digging into her palms. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Just thinking about them watching her now, planning her eventual humiliation, caused her pulse to race in her neck.

  I’ve gone soft.

  She had spent a long time doing mental exercises to calm herself. Now that her facade was starting to crumble, and fatigue and despair were bringing her emotions to the surface, her captors should be ready to resume their interrogation. They would have her closely monitored, and there was little chance they’d miss her body finally giving in to the stress. Her discipline had worn away a lot earlier than it should have.

  But then, where were her captors?

  She looked up at where the door to the room was, hidden behind the omnipresent glare. The lights flickered again, enough that she could barely see the seam that formed the edge of the entry.

  Beyond that door would be a station where someone would be watching the throb of her pulse, the spike in her fight-or-flight responses, the shifts in her body language. “Where are you?” she whispered to the door. Her lips cracked with the effort, the elevated temperature and lack of humidity under the lights making her mouth sandpaper-rough.

  No response came from beyond the glaring walls, not even an echo.

  “Games,” she whispered. “They want games.”

  She knew she wasn’t thinking particularly clearly any more, but she no longer cared, if she ever had. Her head filled with the self-destructive impulse to get them to acknowledge her, force them to come in. Maybe unbalance them enough for one of their interrogators to go too far and finish her off before she was truly broken.

  They had strapped her into an uncomfortable, spidery chair that had articulated platforms to support her arms and legs. Tight polymer straps held her limbs down and doubled as monitoring equipment, holding metallic contacts to her skin. Her arms were held palm up against the cantilevered platforms at an uncomfortable angle from her torso.

  The fit wasn’t perfect. She was smaller in stature than the chair was designed to handle. Even adjusted to her length of limb, her elbows fell short of the hollow designed to receive them, and the straps on her wrist stretched at a bit of an angle rather than holding her arms tightly to the surface. Which meant that she had the slight ability to flex her arm a few centimeters.

  She bent her arms against the straps as if she was doing curls, pulling against the strap on her wrist and the whole armature holding her arm down.

  They wouldn’t allow her to keep doing this; they would send someone in.

  They didn’t.

  She tested the straps with all the force she could muster. She flexed her arms until she felt as if she was pulling her shoulder sockets out of joint. No reaction, not even an admonishment.

  Maybe it just means this is pointless.

  Her muscles strained until a thi
n sheen of sweat coated her entire body. Blood wept from abrasions on her wrists where she pulled against the straps binding them. They burned where her own sweat blended with raw bleeding flesh in a slick, painful mess.

  No movement in her restraints.

  She relaxed and lay back, gasping breaths of hot, dry air that was now tainted by the ferric scent of her own blood.

  She blinked the sweat-blur from her eyes and looked at her right arm. Her jumpsuit was soaked red from mid-forearm down, her skin raw to just under the meat of her upturned palm. Her palm pulled against the wrist strap that had been angled to accommodate her shorter-than-average reach.

  Perhaps she had been too direct.

  She flattened her right arm against the metal surface it was tied to and folded her thumb across her palm to make her hand slightly narrower. She pulled, and her hand withdrew a few centimeters under the strap.

  Teeth gritted against the pain, she pulled her hand, twisting her wrist back and forth against the lubrication of sweat and blood. Her skin tore against the strap, her thumb felt as if it was being dislocated, and arching her shoulder to pull her arm back wrenched every muscle in her back.

  But after several minutes of struggle, her wrist came free.

  She fell back, panting, holding her right arm up, bent at the elbow, staring at the area at the base of her thumb where the skin had been nearly flayed off by her effort.

  Something is very wrong.

  No psychological game should have allowed her to get this far. For some reason, they had left her unattended. Just losing the contact of her skin against the strap holding her should be firing off an alarm for even the most inattentive guard.

  Did that matter?

  Not yet.

  After a few moments to breathe, she worked on the rest of her restraints. After what seemed a very long time, she rolled out of the interrogation chair and got unsteadily to her feet.

  “Now what?” she whispered to the stark white room.

  It wasn’t as if they had left the exit unlocked. There wasn’t even a handle on this side. She was just as trapped now as she’d been when bound to the chair.

  But at least she wasn’t helpless.

  She knelt next to the interrogation chair and fumbled with the controls that positioned the articulated portions of the device; arms, legs, neck. She was able to loosen a long segment meant to cradle the heel of someone’s foot. She pulled it free and had a metal cup on the end of a meter-long steel pole. Not perfect. The pole was slick with grease and too thin for a good grip, but it was long and heavy enough to be dangerous when swung with enough motivation.

  She stood on the seat of the chair and tested it against the spherical sensor array in the center of the ceiling. The array exploded in a satisfying crash of electronic shrapnel, leaving a trail of dangling optical conduits connecting to nothing.

  Hopefully that left her hosts blinded.

  She hefted her improvised mace and stationed herself against the wall next to the doorway.

  Someone would have to come, eventually.

  The sound of the door opening startled her. She hadn’t been quite asleep, but fatigue had lulled her into a half-conscious state where hours or minutes might have passed without her being aware of it. She turned toward the doorway next to her, tightening her grip on her improvised weapon. She saw a flash of khaki overalls, a green Caliphate shoulder patch with a crescent on it, and she swung her weapon.

  The heavy base struck her victim in the throat, just under the chin. Parvi saw the face of a light-skinned woman, almond eyes wide with surprise, mouth snapping shut on a gasped intake of breath. The woman fell backward, body blocking the entryway.

  Parvi jumped over the woman’s body and out the door, hoping to clear it before another guard closed off her escape. She dove behind a storage cabinet, the closest cover, expecting grabbing hands or firing weapons to stop her at any moment. She crouched and wondered why she was still alive. She listened, and all she heard was a sucking wheeze: the woman she had struck, trying to breathe.

  The improvised club shook in her hands, her grip so tight, her knuckles hurt.

  After several moments of hearing nothing but the woman’s sick, wet breathing, she risked a glance around the edge of the storage cabinet.

  Nothing. No one else but the woman sprawled on the floor, half in the interrogation room.

  The woman was unarmed?

  Parvi saw no sign of a weapon, no side arm, not even a stun rod. She pushed the thought away. SOP was to not have interrogators bring any weapons within reach of a dangerous prisoner. The woman wasn’t the threat, her backup was.

  Parvi looked frantically for that backup.

  Across the hall she saw a control room behind an armored window. The consoles and holo displays inside were vacant and dark. The visible corridor was empty of anyone except her and the choking woman. Parvi took a few tentative steps back into the corridor, and nothing appeared to challenge her.

  She glanced back at the control room. Inside, mounted against the wall, stood a weapons locker designed to rack high-wattage lasers or plasma weapons. She wasn’t sure which, since it had been years since she’d studied Caliphate weapon specs—and because the cabinet stood empty.

  She ran to the woman on the floor. It was too late. The woman’s throat had swelled and turned purple, and a thin trail of blood leaked from the mouth and nose that no longer even pretended to breathe. The woman’s eyes still stared with the open-eyed expression of someone startled by unexpected company while using the rest-room.

  Parvi tossed the club aside and tried to clear the airway and get the woman breathing again. As she tried rudimentary first aid, Parvi told herself that it wasn’t guilt that drove her, but the fact that this woman was the only person available who could tell her why the soldiers assigned here emptied their weapons locker and left their post.

  Whatever Parvi’s motives, the woman had sunk beyond revival.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fallen Idols

  “It is better to ally along shared interests than shared ideals.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “Beware allies of necessity.”

  —SYLVIA HARPER (2008-2081)

  Date: 2526.6.5 (Standard) 250,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  Just twenty meters from her cell, Parvi found Tjaele Mosasa. The door to his cell stood open, revealing a utilitarian cabin beyond. At first, the lack of movement inside lulled Parvi into thinking the room was empty. Then, as she crept past, keeping an eye out for the friends of the woman she had killed, she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

  A foot.

  She turned to stare into the room and saw Mosasa sprawled on the floor, slumped in a corner of the room, unmoving, so still that he could have been part of the bulkhead. She stared for several moments, frozen in place.

  Mosasa had been her employer. In some sense he still was, even after the disaster with the Eclipse. Also, despite appearances, he wasn’t human. He was a construct run by an old Race AI. So the fact that Mosasa didn’t move or breathe didn’t immediately indicate something was wrong. The body Mosasa wore mimicked human metabolism only for the benefit of the humans he interacted with. There was no need for him to have a pulse, or breathe, or show any motion beyond what was mechanically necessary for him to move.

  “Mosasa,” Parvi whispered.

  She hated working for him. She, along with most of the rest of humanity, saw AIs as evil, almost demonic. She especially hated the fact that working for Mosasa had been necessary. It was because of him, of it, that she’d been able to support her family’s relocation from Rubai. Because of Mosasa, she was able to pay the outrageous fees of the smugglers without her family having to bear the weight of the debt. Without Mosasa’s employment, her brothers and sisters might still be working off a half-legal indenture somewhere on the ass-end of the Indi Protectorate.

  “Mosasa?” Slightly louder this time.

  His employment gave her a compass. H
e gave her direction when she was an aimless refugee. As much as she detested their relationship, she was much more frightened of being cut adrift without anything to hang on to.

  She ran into the cabin and yelled, “Mosasa!” For the moment she spared no thoughts for Caliphate guardsmen and crew. No thoughts for her own escape. Her only thought was the idea that Mosasa, as much as she hated him, was most of her world now.

  She grabbed his shoulders and shook, his body’s dead weight about twice as dense as a man’s should have been. His head rocked back on his neck to face her. She pulled away. Mosasa’s eyes stared up at her, open and static. The dragon tattoo still curled around the side of his bald head, slightly phosphorescent against his dark brown skin—except where the skin had burned away. Four charred trenches cut across the face of the dragon so deeply that Parvi could see the glint of a metallic skull underneath. The burns were mirrored in the opposite side of Mosasa’s skull. Almost as if a pair of burning hands had cradled Mosasa’s face.

  Worst was his mouth. His mouth was locked in an expression caught midway between surprise and agony. The teeth were charred black, and the dark hole beyond emitted a fetid stench that mixed ozone, burnt synthetics, and roasting flesh.

  Parvi shook her head.

  He’s gone . . .

  How? How could this AI, this grand manipulator, this spider sitting in the center of an infinite web—how could he die? How could he let himself be destroyed?

  “How?” Parvi stumbled back out of Mosasa’s cabin. She was more alone now than she had been in the Caliphate’s isolation cell.

  She ran.

  Parvi ran through the empty corridors of the Prophet’s Voice, trying to understand what was happening. The corridors were empty, and the comm kiosks were dark—not that she was going to try to use the Voice’s communication network. She only had a rudimentary battlefield knowledge of Arabic; she could understand words like “explosive,” “restricted,” and “no entry.” If she had to, she might be able to pilot something, as long as the design was familiar.