Empire of the Fallen, page 3
‘UNIS?’ Vondur grunted.
‘Just here to listen,’ one said. They walked to the back of the room and had the dispenser make them coffees.
‘Captain, thanks for coming,’ Okerea said, smiling. ‘You must be wondering why you’re here?’
Vondur cleared his throat. ‘No, it makes sense,’ he said.
There was a pause.
‘Why do you think you’re here?’ Hammond asked.
Vondur shrugged. ‘I’ve been marooned for six months on a blackworld with no human contact and no IHD net access. I watched three men get split in half by an alien claiming to be from the “Kaygryn Empire”.’ One of the men sitting behind him shifted in his seat. ‘I… I don’t know. I’m a Goliath pilot. This is a military hospital. It all makes sense. I’m not… shocked to be here.’
Hammond nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Captain,’ Okerea said with another smile, ‘the effect of total solitude for six months can be insidious. The physical effects—high blood pressure, vulnerability to infection, poor sleep patterns—can be relatively easily dealt with by your enhanced physique. We are more concerned with the mental impacts. Did you experience any… extreme fluctuations in emotion? Any hallucinations?’
Vondur thought back to the cold, miserable forest, building fires with smoky wet logs, talking to the inert and unresponsive form of ZEN who, in order to share power with Lyra’s head, had effectively shut down. By night, he’d slept in that pitch-black alien forest using Halder’s emptied-out and washed Mantix as a sleeping bag and a hide constructed of leaves and sticks as a shelter. By day, he’d take the rail pistols he’d collected from the corpses of the three EFFECT men and shoot some of the local fauna for sustenance. In many ways, he’d been too busy, too focussed on survival for extreme fluctuations in emotion. Naturally, there were times when he’d contemplated suicide, and occasionally he’d laugh hysterically for hours when the sheer, crushing hopelessness of his situation found form. But his drive to live, and to make sure that Lyra lived, had forced him on, forced him to survive. There was no driving force more powerful than having someone else’s life in your hands.
‘I did,’ he said slowly, truthfully, ‘experience some pretty bad depression. Who wouldn’t?’
‘In fact, Captain, we would have expected much worse. The isolation is bad in and of itself, but we have found that network deprivation can be a serious complicating factor,’ Hammond said.
Vondur shrugged. ‘I still had access to the UN Library. Just not the network. I was able to read to keep myself entertained. And there were survival tips, too. No net access was tough but… well, I’ve had the training. I was too concerned with where my next meal was going to come from. And keeping Special Agent Staerck alive. Where is she, by the way? And my ZEN?’
Hammond and Okerea exchanged a look. He was clearly not the meaty psychological case they had been hoping for.
‘Before we come on to that,’ Okerea said, ‘how do you feel now?’
‘I’m tired because I’ve been out cold for a month,’ he said impatiently. ‘Tired and weak. Now there are only three things I’m interested in: where Lyra and ZEN are, where the rest of my squadron is, and getting a decent hot meal. Four things, actually: can one of you tell my parents I’m alive?’
Okerea made a note of something with a holostylus that was invisible to him, then dismissed it with a wave of her hand. They were not going to waste any more time on him when there were thousands of veterans in desperate need of psychiatric care.
‘Okay, Captain. You seem to be… fine, for want of a better word.’ There was a hint of irritation in her voice. ‘I see no reason to detain you here for any length of time. However, you’ll have to undergo combat reassessment before we can authorise you for active service.’
Graham Hammond got up and left the room.
‘You haven’t answered my questions,’ Vondur said.
‘These men here will answer your questions. Once you’re done, you’ll have a full physiological work over, then a rest, and then your combat fitness reassessment. It should take no more than twenty hours of real time. All clear?’
Vondur blinked slowly and nodded. ‘Yeah. All clear.’
‘Before I hand you over to these gentlemen, is there anything you’d like to talk about? Anything at all?’
Vondur shook his head. In truth, he had a thousand questions about the war, but he could read up on that easily enough by himself. He didn’t want to sit in a psych hospital and talk about his feelings on the matter. Aside from the pervading sensation of helplessness his isolation on Sophia had instilled, it hadn’t been that much different from his biannual survival exercise. It wasn’t his fault it hadn’t turned him into a gibbering wreck dependent on months of psychoanalytic counselling.
‘Well, Captain, I wish you all the very best. Welcome back,’ Okerea concluded.
‘Thank you,’ he said, trying to rescue her opinion of him with a smile, but her handshake was brief and perfunctory, and she left the room in seconds.
He reclined as the two men behind him pushed themselves out of their seats and walked across the room to face him. One offered him a cup of coffee, and he took it.
‘You mind if we sit?’ the other asked.
Vondur gestured to the chairs Okerea and Hammond had been sitting in. ‘Be my guest,’ he said.
They sat.
‘Special Agent Scoville,’ the talker said. ‘This is Special Agent Kowalski.’
‘Hi,’ Vondur said.
‘We’d like to talk to you about what you saw on Sophia,’ Scoville said.
‘Not until you tell me what’s happened to Lyra and ZEN.’
Scoville looked at Kowalski, who, after a moment’s contemplation, nodded.
‘Special Agent Staerck is fine. Thanks to you. She spoke with the President this morning. She’s agreed to return to UNIS to undertake a classified operation.’
There was a silence. ‘That’s it?’
‘That’s all the information I can give you,’ Scoville said. ‘But she is fine. The President passes on her gratitude.’
Vondur reclined in the chair and took a sip of the coffee. It was good, but then most machine-made coffee in the UN was. It was based on millions of hours of taste bud analysis.
‘That’s good, then,’ Vondur said, helplessly. ‘I’m guessing I can’t see her.’
‘Perhaps later. Not at the moment.’
Vondur wrinkled his nose. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked.
‘And ZEN?’
‘The ZEN is yours. We checked the file. A gift from Tranquillity. We’re not proposing to take it away from you. It will accompany you to your new squadron.’
Vondur tapped the side of the cup. He thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’
He told them about Hasani, about the destruction of the Janitor satellite, the deaths of the EFFECT men and of Halder. He told them what Hasani had said, how he’d spoken perfect Terran, how he’d alluded to the existence of a ‘Kaygryn Empire’ and how that same empire had been locked in a war with the Ascendancy crusade fleets. He described the ship—a strange silver cone the like of which he’d never seen before—their strange laser halberds, their armour, what they were wearing, how they sounded, the fact that they all had four arms. He spoke for twenty minutes, recounting every conceivable detail. Scoville and Kowalski listened carefully, their eyes glazing over occasionally as they used their IHDs, hanging on his every word, rarely probing or prompting.
When he was finished, they told him about the Ascendancy War, about the capture of the Zecad, the map it contained, the destruction of the crusade fleets, and the eventual peace and alliance with the provar. They told him that they were still assessing the intelligence on the Kaygryn Empire, but that they were taking the matter very seriously and that, already, galaxy-wide defence contingencies were being put into place.
Vondur listened to all of this in a trance, staring at the floor, trying to make some sense of it all. He’d seen Hasani first-hand, of course, borne witness to their technologies and penchant for slaughter. He had no doubt that the Empire was real, and would certainly be coming for the Ascendancy, if not all of them. And as a Goliath pilot, he would also, undoubtedly, be required to fight them when they did.
He looked up. Scoville had concluded his narrative.
‘What happens to me now?’ he asked eventually.
‘Like the techs said, you’ll undergo combat reassessment. Then you’ll be transferred to 225 Interdictor Squadron Goliaths. If you pass CR, you’ll retain your captaincy and will be reinstated on the UNAF Register of Arms.’
‘What happened to 11 Squadron? To my men?’
Kowalski fielded that one. ‘Lieutenant Jarvin and Flight Officer August were KIA on Irene’s World three months ago. Chester Cox was transferred to 225 Squadron. He was promoted to staff sergeant. I believe you are familiar with the details of the rest of your former unit.’
Vondur nodded, stunned. ‘How did Jarvin and August die?’
Kowalski scratched his chin. ‘Uh, the lieutenant was killed by a rail strike. August was hospitalised after being infected with Jago 541b, and perished after CAF bombing.’
CAF. Comprehensive Atmospheric Firestorm. The provar had hit UN forces there with viral loads and then torched the entire planet. A brief IHD search brought up reams of horrifying data on it.
‘And now Executor en’Jago is an ally,’ Vondur said, anger coursing through his body.
Kowalski nodded. ‘That’s the way it’s played,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve all lost colleagues.’
Vondur’s fists clenched, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Raging through the corridors of Arrengate North was unlikely to impress anyone.
He calmed himself with an IHD relaxant program. There would be time for anger and revenge, but it wasn’t now.
‘I’d like to speak to my parents,’ he said after riding the program for a few seconds. His hands unclenched.
‘Of course,’ Kowalski said. ‘Okerea will take you to your temporary quarters. There’s a VR capsule inside where you can contact them and complete your CR in your own time. There will, I understand, be a full medical examination as well. You’ll probably have to spend some time in regen. Then you’ll be sent to Cobalta.’
‘No R&R I’m afraid, Captain,’ Scoville said. ‘With the state of affairs being what it is, we need everyone we can get on the front line.’
‘I understand,’ Vondur said, his mind rallying violently against the artificial calm being imposed by the IHD relaxant. A cataclysm of emotions boiled within him: rage at the deaths of his comrades, horror at the deaths of his countrymen, anger at the hypocrisy of the UN, fear at being reinstated as a pilot, and a lurking, aching numbness from his experience on Sophia that he kept buried deep down, like wadding stuffed to the bottom of a barrel by a ramrod. It would all pass; he was sure it would all pass. He just needed time.
‘Captain, as I said, we’ve all lost colleagues,’ Kowalski said. ‘Friends. Family. You’ll be angry. Upset, depressed, whatever. But we’re coming up on some hard times. A lot more people are going to die, and we’re going to need people like you, pilots, soldiers, medics, to be on top form. So if you are… psychologically impaired, in any way, it is your duty to get it sorted. The facilities are here. Don’t keep it bottled up; you owe it to the UN to be at your peak. Is that clear?’
‘Yeah,’ Vondur said, ‘that’s clear.’
Scoville and Kowalski exchanged a look. ‘Well, it’s good to have you back, Captain. Thank you for your time.’
*
< Message from: President Constance. TSMC >.
‘Oh fuck.’
‘Don’t stop!’
Yano looked up. Seka’s body landscaped away from his eyes: pubis, ribs, breasts, chin, a cream-coloured vista of desert dunes, hard as polished ivory. After a moment’s inactivity, her face swivelled down, flushed, sweaty and baffled.
‘Yano? Hello?’
Yano’s eyes met hers, the strong, sugary apple flavours of the appallingly titled ‘Flavoured Cunt’ IHD gland program melting away from his tongue like ice under a flamethrower.
‘Message from the President,’ he said. ‘TSMC.’
Seka’s expression was beyond scornful. ‘So finish up and speak to her later!’ she said, incredulous.
‘It’s… I mean it’s TSMC from the President, Seka. It’s a Hegemony-level crime to ignore it.’
‘What you’re doing now is a Hegemony-level crime!’ Seka shouted, then burst out laughing. Her head collapsed back against the pillow. ‘Just two fucking minutes longer,’ she said breathily, her whole body spasming with giggles. ‘Then I’ll trigger it either way.’ She caught his expression. ‘You can set a fucking timer if you like!’
It was a point of pride for him, reminiscent of his old Xeno Division days, that he was walking to the room’s VR capsule less than one minute later.
They had been put up in UNDM-owned apartments on the fashionable and astonishingly expensive Rue de les Diplomates, one of four boulevards that crosshaired the embassy district at Telmun Square, a stone’s throw from the Assembly Building itself. While Constance and the Coalition had struggled with the terms of their new alliance with the provar, and Xeno Division had descended on Arrengate in force, drawn from all corners of the United Nations to answer the UNDM’s call, Yano and Seka had languished at the UN’s expense. Languished and performed all the sex the UN’s vast array of technologies and mind-and-physiology-altering programs and drugs would allow for.
Yano was, naturally, deeply suspicious of this arrangement. It was true that the Exigency Corps had once sashayed across the galaxy in luxury interplanetary yachts, enjoying very high standards of living, galaxy-wide prestige and superb levels of government remuneration and benefits. But even by their profligate standards, an apartment on the Rue de les Diplomates, the most expensive real estate in the colonised galaxy, was too much for Yano. Yes, he’d been through a lot, including his own technical death on Gonvarion and his attempted assassination by quorl and human mercenaries, and yes, he’d been callously manipulated by the UN’s Special Warfare Division at great risk to his personal safety and then forcefully escorted back to Vargonroth by the egregious Commander Vladimir “The Vulture” Henrikson. But even all of that was not enough to give him—and his mercenary, blockade-running, UN-citizen murdering criminal girlfriend—a penthouse suite in Vargonroth House usually reserved for visiting Tier Three alien heads of state. They were keeping him sweet for something he was not going to like. And now, with the faded taste of FC-Apple still on his lips, he had a gut-churning feeling he was about to find out exactly what that was.
He clambered into the ostentatiously decorated VR sync on the apartment’s mezzanine and opened the connector code Constance had embedded in her message. A few seconds later, he was sitting at an oblong table, itself on an enormous stone dais, in the middle of a vast plain of rock surrounded by a distant ring of blue mountains. The sky above was grey, but the cloud layer broke near the horizon, giving way to an encircling halo of fiery orange. The air, balmy and breezy, caressed his skin.
‘Impressive,’ he said, looking around.
‘You know it’s an offence under the Terran Hegemony Code to ignore a message from the President?’ Constance asked. She was standing at the far end of the table, her palms flat against the stone table.
‘I didn’t ignore it,’ Yano said reasonably.
Constance gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t try your Exigency Corps bullshit on me,’ she said, but she wasn’t as annoyed as she was pretending to be. In fact, using his Exigency Corps bullshit, he could see that she was nervous more than anything, concealed beneath a veneer of affront.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I was… indisposed.’
She waved him off, shaking her head, and turned away from him slightly so that she was facing the distant horizon. The wind caught her hair, tousled it.
‘I’ve been meaning to properly speak with you for a while,’ she said, not looking at him.
He held his tongue. Gonvarion, the six months he had spent there alone, and his idiotic pursuit of Tanja Henrikson across the galaxy seemed like a lifetime ago. Back on Vargonroth, hot on the heels of a UNDM debrief and Xeno Division reinstatement—and with Seka in tow to boot, her criminal record expunged—he had somewhat reverted back to his cavalier mannerisms that had previously defined him. His Character Map was a little more balanced, but it still took a considerable amount of self-control not to shoot Constance full of witty repartees.
‘We’re speaking now,’ he said.
She turned back to face him, wearing a pained expression. ‘Zavian, I felt… bad. I feel bad. By the way you’ve been treated. Aurelius and his cronies really fucked you over at the summit on Gonvarion, if you’ll excuse the un-presidential language. You and the rest of us—the whole team, I mean. But you especially. And then you were bloody killed, and then the debacle on Pavonis…’
‘Andrea,’ he said levelly, ‘you’re rambling. I don’t want to sound blunt, but why am I here? You don’t need me. Everyone in XD is falling over themselves for a piece of the action. The last time there were this many provar on Vargonroth was for Hadan’s Reach. You’ve got the best of the best, all in one place, looking to make their career.’
Constance exhaled, long and loud. ‘The problem is, Yano, there isn’t anyone else I would trust with this. Bal Codey, maybe, but God knows where he ended up.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘You’re the only one I want for this.’
‘For what?’ he asked, nonplussed. ‘A suite in Vargonroth House? For a month? You erase Seka’s criminal record, you paid—I mean God knows how much you paid Rutai. Seka tells me he’s on Vargonroth too, with a skarl’s harem in Eska District. I should be banned from UNDM with my psych profile; instead, I’ve been promoted to Deputy Head of Mission. Don’t tell me this is all because you feel bad. Everyone gets screwed over in XD sooner or later. It comes with the territory.’
