Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (27 page)

At
first what she said hadn’t made much sense to me. I wasn’t quite sure
what to make of it or if I had even heard her right. Of course she was Aira.
The Aelita had to have some survivors and it would make perfect sense that
the daughter of one of the elders would be among them.

“I have changed, I am not the same girl you knew on Errikus. That girl
died the day I was left onboard the Aelita,” she said. It began to make sense
now. Ten years is too long and both of us had been changed. Both of us had
grown up and become far different then who we were back then. “Ok,” I
sighed not sure what else to say. I was pleased to see my old friend again but
saddened by the fact that she seemed to loathe the sight of me. I could see
clearly now the scars on her face. They were not inflicted by Skrav or
antliods - something the Aelita never seems to have a problem with - rather
they looked self inflicted or ceremonial.

On the Erebus we were told that we had it easy, that life on the Aelita was
much more intense as it was our scout ship, the first to advance and take
point on all expeditions from first contact to going into battle. We had been
told that they bred their crew into warriors by any means necessary. They
had no room for the weak on the Aelita. I now saw firsthand why our two
ships never communicated visually with one another or visited one another by
drop ship. I now saw the scars, the cybernetics, the skin grafts and the
numbness in Aira’s eyes that had made her a part of their crew.

“Who’s your friend?” I asked,
“I want to thank them for saving my life.”
“It’s not a friend, it’s a companion. You know him by the name Lore,” she

That was the last name I thought I would hear from her lips. What could
she mean ‘I knew him by that name’ - Lore was uncommon and nowhere in
the database could I remember there being another one.

“Nice to see you again Sev, I’m glad I could be of service,” a scrambled
voice came from the giant but it was unmistakably his. The yellow giant took
a knee so as not to look quite as intimidating during our meeting.

“What happened to you,” I said wanting badly to believe that his was truly
my old friend. I had so many questions running through my head. The Lore I
knew had given his life on Parcae blasting a hole in the side and falling into
the darkness of space. His last words had been a warning about this very
battle. The Lore I knew was a paladin, a member of First Descent and one of
the best soldiers I ever served with. He had given his life to save myself and
my team from certain death.

“Why did Aira call you Lore?” I said with just enough anger and distrust
in my voice. I felt offended but I couldn’t get past the notion that if anyone
could survive it would be him, he was a cyborg and who knows what kind of
augments and implants he might have had that could have kept him alive.
Maybe like Addax he could survive in the vacuum of space.

“Let me explain,” Aira said stepping in for the yellow giant.
“Your mission to Parcae wasn’t the only one in play. The Aelita has run
tandem black ops missions side by side with everything you have ever done.
When Lore did what he did we were on the other side of the station fighting a
small force of Skrav drones. We kept that information hidden from you
because that whole thing was ‘need-to-know’. When we finished dealing with
the Skrav we tracked down Lore’s body cold and nearly but not all dead. He
had just enough brain activity and life left we took him back with us that we
placed him in the ‘Valkyrie project’.” “What is that?” I asked. Aira continued
as if she knew the questions I had and she had practiced giving this lesson to
me over and over, “ most cyborgs are implanted with a tether. It allows them
to communicate with their cybernetic parts. I have one, Lore has one, the
monitor on Errikus had several… every cyborg or cybernetic organism you
have ever met has one fitted with one the moment they became one with their
machine. This made Lore the perfect candidate. We took away his
dismembered limbs and tore out his eyes. We fitted him with a new body and
allowed him to become one of us. Like myself he is no longer the same Lore
that you knew though he still has small bits and pieces of memory. Think of
him more as a guardian or auton if it makes you feel better.”
It seemed cold. Lore was one of the few that had spoken about sacrificing
himself for the greater good, if anything I’m not sure this was something he
would really want or if it was something he would be happy about - the
chance to be reborn and fight again after death. I guess if he was saving lives
he would say yes to the cause. He seemed to have no problem with it now.
Aira smiled.
It almost seemed like she was about to laugh. Perhaps she was mocking
me. The last thing I would want is to come back again and again and fight in
this endless war. “How many are in the Valkyrie program?” I asked
wondering if this fate waited everyone. “Too many to name, all are cyborgs or
volunteers. This is one of the reasons we don’t show ourselves on the Erebus.
Some of us have died several times only to be brought back in bodies similar
to their own. You have your secrets and we have ours all that matters is that
we lead the charge and we do what we do giving our very best,” she said a
small hint of pride in her voice.
“Is he still human?” I asked.
“Is a ‘user’ human?” she asked in return.
“You have an ability that no other human has that allows you to see into
time all because of some alien element; you are augmented by nature,
metahuman, mutant, demigod, seer there are many names for what you are
onboard the Aelita but just as you are changed from what it means to be
human so too is Lore,” she said in a condescending way.
“You were a user too though when you were young, they tested both our
DNA as children and we were a match so what does that make you?” I said.
“I wasn’t trying to make it sound like being different was a bad thing, I
may have been a positive match but the nexus never worked when I touched
it. I was punished for that. My own father disowned me for a time until I
managed to prove I was worth something more then being a piece of meat,”
she said looking downward towards her cybernetic hand.
“I had no idea, I’m sorry,” I couldn’t fathom what must have happened to
Aira on the Aelita. Her father always seemed like a cruel man from what I
had heard as a child. Far worst then her mother. The only reason she was on
Errikus was that her father abandoned her hoping that living on a hostile
world would make her strong. He resented that she was a woman. He must
have resented her more when she wasn’t a user.
She smiled again.
“You probably think all of this is weird huh?” she said.
“Yeah just a bit,” I said staring at her and the yellow giant.
“Wait till I tell you what they did with Dom.”

In the last dying days of Earth, before the sun went out there stood an old
fragile woman looking on all the vast wondrous things humans had created.
From cities that spanned coastlines to the mega-structures and space
elevators that tore through the sky into the heavens. Ports and mining
colonies built on far off worlds. The Sol System had become a beautiful haven
and humanity had become prosperous. She sat still, her face blank, years of
wear in her eyes. She was waiting at a space port, one on Ceres, a way station
between Mars, the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Titan. She was
waiting on a messenger, a man going by the name of Mace.

Mace was a pirate, a mercenary; he had been a thorn in the peacekeeper
organization’s side for years. This woman had a package for him, a special gift
she needed smuggled aboard a starship. Smuggling was nothing new for
Mace. He lived for the thrill of jobs like this. Which starship didn’t matter to
him; there were only three big ones being built to choose from anyway. The
Erebus, the Aelita, and the Tritan.

The Aelita itself was supposed to have been named in honor of the old
woman’s mother whom had long since passed. In her mind the old woman
recalled stories of her youth, her mother joking about how some Russian
bureaucrat behind a desk added a T and changed an entire words meaning.
Instead of Aelia the feminine version of the ancient Roman name ‘Aelius’
derived from the Greek word ‘Helios’ meaning ‘Sun’ the ship became the
Aelita, named for a soviet science fiction film made in 1924, something that
has since become little more then a few bytes of data stored inside a biological
hard drive lost somewhere on the ship its named for. Aelia never forgot how
she felt about the ‘trinity’ that had been created. She despised them. The
biggest lie ever told. She despised everything they stood for. Most people
believed humanity was preparing for a new age of deep space exploration.
Only a few knew the truth, the oncoming storm, the destruction and genocide
that was about to take place.

Mace was about to become one of the few.
The old woman handed him a small parcel no larger then an old
paperback book. He was instructed not to open it until a certain date.

Knowing he was a scoundrel that couldn’t be trusted the old woman smiled as
Mace looked the package up and down. Before he walked away he was
already trying to find the best way to peel back the packaging to see what was
inside. Immediately after finding a place of seclusion he opened it. Inside was
a new identity, a new beginning and a message:

‘Forget what you think is real, the world you know is a lie.’
‘Inside the peacekeepers there is an organization, an old and ancient order
known as ‘the Sons of Sol,’ they have been around a very long time dating
back to the Templar order, possibly even before. This may sound like science
fiction but everything is already arranged. You are living in a world of
interstellar colonization and deep space exploration, you should know that
there is more. Above Pluto there is a ‘trinity’ of starships. You think you
know what they are for but what you have been told is a lie. They are not
building starships, they are building warships; generational warships. A
single captain of one of these ships could live a thousand years and never age
a day through stasis and recreation. That won’t be long enough. Not for what
I am going to ask you to do. Each warship contains an element, a shard, an
alien artifact known as the nexus that allows certain individuals to see into
the past, present, and future. I have seen this nexus for myself and I have
seen the outcome of what is to happen. My mother too was a seer, a user, a
meta give the gift to use the alien artifact and it is through her the future has
become aware of our mistake. The details are hard to explain, its as if they
have been scattered into so many pieces of a puzzle they are all but lost. Only
fragments remain and many of those fragments will become obsolete in what
is to come. We have changed too much and the more we change the farther
into the darkness we slip away. The soul of humanity itself is turning black, to
despair as we continue to tear through the passage of time. I am asking you
Mace, kill the captain of one of those ships and take his place. Deliver the
information stored in this message to your descendants. If the truth becomes
twisted into legend of fiction the so be it, there is no higher power that can
judge me and say that I did not try.’
The next day Mace murdered the captain of the Aelita.
The captain of the Aelita was an older man named Sovros-Adel. It didn’t
end there. Mace and his mercenary friends murdered the entire bridge crew
planning to leave onboard with the Aelita. Mace used his mercenary ship, the
‘Gestalt’ to dispose of the bodies setting them adrift near the eye of Jupiter. It
was a fitting end to a man that currently led the ‘Sons of Sol’ and had been
known for his cruel treatment of his peers. Mace and his men traveled to
Europa. It was there in an under the ground underwater research station he
met with a man named Yule aka ‘the face-maker’.
Yule did what he does best utilizing 3D scans Mace and his men had taken
of Sovros-Adel and his accompanied crew the face-maker grafted new faces
on each and every one of them. Each skin-job cost a fortune but that didn’t
matter. Mace and his men decided to put their trust into the old woman’s
message. They spent years planning their take over. They used all their
resources and then some. By the end of the day Mace was an exact copy of
Sovros-Adel from his hair and face down to the fingerprints. Each of the crew
were given the same treatment - each a copy of an Aelita officer now dead.
The message the old woman had given Mace didn’t just include
information about the ‘trinity’ and its secret mission. It included background
files for all of the crew and everything else she had spent her life learning. All
of it was easily accessible via a small implant Mace and the others injected
into the back of their spine. The implant fed them images that seemed almost
like memories. They were untouchable. No one could mistake them for
impostors. For the first time in Mace’s life and for a few short years before the
time came for the ‘trinity’ to run he had become one of the most powerful men
humanity had ever known.
Years passed with Mace and his men moving in and out of stasis. Mace,
now fully committed to being Sovros-Adel had become old and tired. So
much time in stasis had begun to drive him mad. Humanity slept with no
advancement, no new ideas and nothing of any interest to a man who used to
call himself a space pirate.
Mace’s bloodline never stopped running. In the hundreds of years since
his death humanity began making advancements again. Slowly at first but
they were there. Both the Erebus and the Aelita set up several R&D
departments deep within their ships. Mace’s wishes became commands.
Mace’s bloodline still even makes up much of the Aelita’s command. A ship
bred from the blood of mercs and smugglers. A ship robbed out from under
the original ‘Sons of Sol’ Only that didn’t matter. The old woman had chosen
poorly. Mace was just as cruel as the real Sovros-Adel - if not more.