Marauder Ramses (9 page)

I
fall
in and out of sleep as Kain hauls me down the slope and toward the frozen sea. Ramses told me to trust him. He promised he’d protect me, and I have to think he meant he’d still do everything he could to fulfill that promise. But I’m more worried about him, and whether or not he will still be alive an hour from now.

Kain seemed to think he had a chance of survival, but with two horridly injured legs, a shoulder wound, and sub-freezing temperatures with no shelter...I can’t help but worry.

When we’re nearing the sea, I finally see other Marauders – or maybe Seraphim – as dark silhouettes walking along the coastline.

“Asshole,” I shout. “Tell me what is going on. Why keep me alive?”

He already let slip that he’d disobeyed his father, Grius, and I want to try to get him to talk more before he’s back under their authority. Judging from the distance, I have maybe ten or fifteen minutes.

Kain just ignores me, so I start to punch his back through the net.

“Stop that,” he grunts. “It’s bad enough that I have to carry you.”

“You don’t
have to
carry me,” I say. “You could just let me go.”

“Not an option,” he says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know what they want with you once the baby is born,” he says. “But I’ll try to see that they let you go. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to kill you.”

“What baby?” I ask.

“You could come with us,” he says. “That’s also an option. The baby will fare better with its mother –”

“How the fuck do you know I’m pregnant?” I shout, jamming my elbow into him, aiming through all that thick muscle for his spinal cord.”

“The gas,” he says. “Back in the train station. It modified your DNA, and made both you and Ramses extremely fertile.”

“What the fuck?” I ask. “How could...your father wanted to set that gas off in the train station. There’s no way –”

“Harmony is smarter than all of us,” Kain says. “Once we convinced her to help us, we told her what our end goal was, and she connected all those little dots way, way back – step by step – then we just had to do what she said.”

Pregnant. With Ramses’s child? And now he’s dying out on the snow, and I’m being taken hostage to God-knows-where.

“Just fucking let me go!” I start to kick him.

He throws the net down on the ground and looks down at me. “Look, Elise. You know what our end goal is? It’s to get the hell out of this star system. We should
never
have come here at all. You can see it – even Harmony sees it. You know why she agreed to help us? Because she wants us out – gone. The fallen Seraphim are too much for her to deal with, and the cleanest solution she found was simply for them to leave.”

“So fucking leave!” I shout.

“Seraphim can’t hibernate,” Kain says. “More evidence we never should have come here. We have a whole generation of offspring who won’t survive a trip to another star, and all but a few original Marauders – me included – are young enough to make the trip. We need a fresh generation of real Marauders...and your child is the first of that.”

“Ramses is a Seraph, you idiot –”

“Yes,” Kain says, “but the gas modified your DNA. Your child will be able to hibernate, and we think we can replicate it – give it to the Seraphim – and offer them a chance to leave. Do you see? We don’t need to destroy you, we can just leave – become what we are meant to be again. It’s best for all of us. Now will you stop kicking me?”

“No,” I say.

I
wake up in a bed
. A real bed with blankets. I gasp and tear the blankets off. I expect to see two blackened husks of frostbitten legs, but they are the usual pink. And there’s not even a scar from where the ichor burned hot.

Seraphim can heal fast, but not like this. Just how much time passed?

I look around the room. Everything is an aqua-blue color, from the walls to the blankets to the door. There’s very little in the room aside from the bed. I see a small dresser in the corner, and the wall is covered with a projection of fish swimming in the ocean.

“Where am I?” I say aloud. I expect my voice to be gone, but it sounds strong. I’m not even thirsty.

Have I been in some kind of coma? Did Darkstar capture me and bring me back to their ships? Is there any chance Elise is nearby?

“Let me the fuck out of here!” I shout, jumping off the bed.

The door opens, and a human man with a tall nose, bronze skin, and strange clothes steps inside.

“You’re awake,” he says.

“You’re human?” I say. “I’m not on Darkstar?”

“No,” he says. “Human...technically. You’re still on Atlantis. I’m Atlantean. I’m Gera.”

“Where is Elise?”

“They took her,” Gera says.

“I fucking saw them take her,” I snarl. I get right up in Gera’s face, but his deep brown eyes just look at me, analyzing. He doesn't back away or show any fear.

“You’re wondering why we saved you but not her?” Gera asks.

“Who says you
saved
me,” I say. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here or why you took me. And yes, why did you let them take her?”

“A long time ago,” Gera says. “Our ancestors made a decision which we have held to for thousands of years. When the agricultural revolution began spreading across Earth like a virus, kings and emperors soon rose to power, and with them slaves and suffering and war.”

I start to connect the dots. “So you just gave up? You cut contact and ignored it, not your problem?”

“That’s not how we would phrase it, but yes, that is more or less accurate.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you not human?”

“We share a common ancestor,” Gara says. “Effectively we are human though, yes. Twin planets...or maybe even triplets. Perhaps Venus failed long before.”

“It’s doing fine now,” I say. “Thanks to my parents.”

Gara huffs. “More rulers. They are doing well enough, and maybe you’d do well too. But how long until one of your descendants becomes hungry for power?”

“Where is Elise?” I say. “We can discuss the pros and cons of monarchy after I rescue her.”

Gara nods. “We are underwater right now, and Elise is on the surface. The Marauders from Darkstar are setting up a camp. Elise is there.”

“How many days have passed?” I ask.

“Three. Your cousin will be arriving tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait,” I say, “Elise may not have that long. And are you really going to let these bastards colonize the surface of your planet?”

“They can’t colonize it,” Gara says, “Not enough technology can function on the surface. And they don’t plan to stay here. It’s a temporary staging area for their mass exodus. We are happy to let them use our planet if it helps to get rid of them.”

“Get me to the surface,” I say. “And give me a gun.”

“We don’t have any guns,” Gara says. “We isolated ourselves from Earth to
avoid
war and conflict.”

“I’m sure you can fucking manage something. I counted six pods. I’ll need more than rocks to fight them and rescue her.”

“What if we don’t want you to rescue her? She’s key to getting them out of the solar system. We don’t like the potential conflict these Marauders are creating –”

Anger flares across my body, but I ball up my fists and count my breaths to force myself to calm down. I feel almost as if Gera is testing me, and he seems to hate nothing more than violence and conflict. If I lose it and attack him, he might never help me save Elise.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Darkstar is a problem,” Gera says. “But Harmony is our true concern.”

“So you are not willing to fight or do anything, but you want us to fight your battle for you?”

Gera narrows his eyes at me. “It’s becoming more and more intelligent. It’s still possible to stop it, but the longer you wait, the more difficult it will become.”

“My family is powerful,” I say. “Help me rescue Elise, and we’ll help you stop Harmony.”

Gera nods. “And if that isn’t incentive enough for you, you’ll probably want to know that Harmony is the one who tipped you off when you first arrived in Earth orbit. About the terrorist attack.”

“If Harmony knew...then why –”

“It wanted you to go after Sanga, it wanted you and Elise to get exposed together, and it wanted you two to have a baby together.”

“A baby….”

“She’s pregnant,” Gera says.

“I have to rescue her.
Now.
”

Pregnant. We’re going to have a baby together. Nothing will stop me from rescuing her. Nothing will take our life and future away from each other.

Gera nods and walks toward the dresser. He pulls out a small glowing orb and holds it in his palm. “You see...when Harmony is aware of all the variables – all the pieces in play – she can see too many moves ahead. She can orchestrate everything so that it happens exactly as she’d like it to.”

“Fucking great,” I say. “Then I’ll just go ballistic...attack erratically so she can’t –”

“No,” Gera says. “You don’t understand. Harmony doesn’t know we are still here. She can’t predict or control when there are hidden variables.”

Gera squeezes the orb, and his hand begins to glow. He reaches down and grabs my wrist, and the glow floods into me.

“Your bioglove will work now on the surface, and it’s fully charged. Harmony did not account for this. Now let me take you to the surface. You are our hidden variable.”

* * *

G
era has
me walk right into that screen with the fish. But it’s not really a screen – it’s a window. The window bulges out as I walk into it, and it surrounds me like an orb.

The orb begins to fog up, until I can’t see anything through it.

“We can’t let you see our city,” he says. “If you fall into enemy hands, it’s best if you know as little as possible. If you
do
end up in a situation where they interrogate you, please make use of your bioglove’s self-destruct function. It would be unfortunate if you let Harmony know of our existence. Good luck, Ramses.”

I feel no motion within the orb, and I stand waiting. It must be moving, I just can’t feel it. I’m wearing a thick white coat to camouflage me in the snow and shield me from the bitter cold.

After many minutes, the sphere becomes transparent again, and a map of glowing aqua-blue etches itself onto the surface of the orb as it floats through the sea.

The map shows my current location as a pulsing glow, and the coastline is just in front, but approaching rapidly. Not too far down the coastline is a larger collection of pulses, and a picture of Elise. The Darkstar base.

Once I reach the coastline, the orb begins floating straight up, and it shatters up through the ice. The top half of the orb opens up and exposes me to the biting cold. I jump out and onto the ice, and I begin walking like a penguin across the ice and back onto the shore.

I don’t fall down this time.

I
’m brought
into the largest tent. There are heaters pumping in warm air, and Grius is sitting at a table in a long, black coat. His ears are twitching as he scribbles with a pen on a sheet of real paper. No computerized writing system will function here.

“Elise,” he says. “I understand my son already filled you in?”

“On how you’re going to take my baby from me? Experiment on it? Yes, he told me.”

“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. There’s been a change of plans.”

Kain narrows his eyes.

“Straight from Darkstar high command,” Grius says. “The deal with Harmony is off. High command doesn’t trust her, and rightly so. They saw how easily she manipulates people...how do we know she’s not manipulating us?”

“It’s a valid concern,” Kain says. “But her goal is to get rid of us. Our goal is to leave. We share the same goal –”

“We can’t pretend to understand what it wants, Kain. It’s too far beyond us, and even if I agreed with you, High Command does not. While Harmony is still confined to Earth, we’re going to use our antimatter to obliterate the entire planet –”

“Father,” Kain says. “That is….”

“Not our call,” Grius says. “I don’t relish the thought of slaughtering so many Seraphim...but we will get as many off Earth as we can in the next nine months.”

“Nine months,” I spit. “Until my baby is born?”

“Elise,” Grius says. “We will destroy your planet. I’m sorry, but it must be. We can bring you with us. You’d even be permitted to breed again, should your modified DNA produce true Marauders, of course, rather than Seraphim. The alternative is that we take your baby away from you and drop you on Mars or Venus. It’s your call.”

I have to warn Earth. Harmony may be a problem, but destroying my race’s home planet is like nuking a bed to get rid of bedbugs.

I notice that Kain’s ears are pulled back, and he’s standing in stunned silence. He seems to question High Command’s decision. But does he question it enough to betray them?

It’s all I have to work with, so I’ll need to play along until I can get Kain alone.

“I just want to be with my baby…,” I say. “You’ll treat us well?”

“Of course,” Grius says. “We’ll have to work on a way for you to hibernate...but nine months is a long time.”

I can tell he’s lying to me. I know that I’m dead as soon as I give birth. But nine months
is
a long time. A long time for me to work Kain and bring him to my side. Assuming Sara doesn’t arrive soon and defeat Grius.

I try not to think about Ramses. He’s strong, and he may have found a way to survive. If he can hold out long enough, Sara could find him...I could find him if I get out of here. He
might
be alive, and that’s why I try not to think about it. Because he might also be gone.

“Good,” Grius says. “So now that we’ve all agreed, I need to get back to work.”

He waves me away, and Kain takes my arm and walks me out of the tent.

The cold hits me like a wall as we exit the tent, and the wind drowns out everything.

We’re only about twenty paces to the tent they usually hold me in, but Sanga is also in there, and I don’t trust him for a moment.

“Kain,” I shout over the wind. “Do you really want to destroy Earth?”

“High Command wants to,” he says. “Not my call.”

I stop walking. He tries to shove me, but I plant my feet down and look up at him defiantly. “You
don’t
want to destroy a whole planet of tens of billions of people. I know you don’t want to.”

“You’re a cop,” he says. “You know how chain of command works.”

“Yeah,” I say. “And it all comes down from a scheming, murderous robot.”

He stares at me as the wind lashes across us. “We’re not lead by a machine. It’s a Marauder chain of command.”

“It’s the same problem,” I say. “Your High Command is ordering the deaths of billions. The end of an entire planet. Innocent people...
children
. High Command may as well be a murderous machine. At least Harmony minimizes violence when it can.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Kain says, but I can see something in his eyes. He’s shaken, and I’ve started to get under his skin.

“If you really believe that,” I say, “then you’re just as bad as High Command.”

He shoves me back into motion, toward my tent.

When we get inside, the warmth is back, but it’s cancelled out by Sanga’s presence.

“You hear the good news?” Sanga asks.

Kain looks up at Sanga with narrowed eyes.

“With that glum look, I’m guessing you didn’t!” Saga says. “High Command gave us the go-ahead to blow up Earth. I was hoping we’d get to eradicate Venus and Mars, too, but we need that antimatter to get ourselves out of the solar system and on a course to Epsilon Eridani.”

I look up at Kain, and I can see his jaw trembling.

“Sanga,” I say, “Gaia is still on Earth.”

He’s sitting down and oiling a disassembled machine gun, but now he jumps to his feet and thrusts a finger at me. “Gaia made her choice! I begged her to come with me, to end our suffering together, but she wanted to rot away on Earth. You’ll not make me feel sorry for her.”

Kain, seeming to ignore the argument entirely, sits down where Sanga was and begins to reassemble the gun.

“So,” I say, “just because she disagreed with you, she should die?”

“No,” Sanga says, getting up in my face. “She
didn’t
disagree with me. That’s just it. She was just too much of a coward to act on her convictions.”

“I guess it takes a truly brave hero to obliterate an entire planet –”

Sanga’s hand grabs my neck, but just before he can squeeze, he squeals and is ripped away.

Kain lifts him into the air with one hand, and Sanga flails his arms around like a paralyzed insect. Kain slams him down hard, back first onto the hard, frozen soil, and before Sanga can even catch his breath, Kain punches him hard in the face.

I expect the fight to go on, but Sanga is motionless – out cold.

Kain looks up at me with clenched teeth. For a moment, I think he’s going to go off on me, but finally he speaks in a low growl.

“Get that gun put back together. The ammo is in a crate under Sanga’s bunk. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

He starts to walk out, but I grab his arm. “Wait, I don’t know how to put a gun together, I’ve never –”

He spins toward me, and his eyes are bulging. His ears are standing straight up, and his whole body is trembling. “Look, human. I’m going to betray everything I was raised to do, to save a planet I’ve never seen, and a people who hate me. I’m going to betray my own father. I don’t
need
your help, so if you can’t figure this out, you’re useless, and I’ll leave you behind.”

Before I can say another word, he ducks down and disappears out of the tent and back into the cold.

I stand in stunned silence for a few moments. What is Kain going to do in the next ten minutes? Will he really come back for me? And what the hell am I supposed to do with the gun while he’s away? Assuming I can even put it back together.

And then the urgency hits me, and I rush toward the bench with the gun parts all laid out, jumping over Sanga’s unconscious body as I go.

Kain has already partially assembled it, I realize. Had he planned this all out while Sanga and I were arguing? All of the tiniest pieces – the little nuts and screws and pins that would have taken me ages to figure out – are put into place. I count the remaining pieces. There are only seven of them. I imagine a jigsaw puzzle with so few pieces; it would be a
children’s
puzzle...I can do this.

There are screws and a screwdriver laid out in a neat line. And there’s one big, long spring that I have no idea where to put. But still – only seven pieces.

On a jigsaw puzzle, I’d first find the corners. The pieces of the puzzle that are most distinct, and whose position is clear. For the gun, I grab the grip. I find the stock, and push it up against the grip – it fits. I grab one of the screws and start to screw it in with the screwdriver. I control my breathing and make sure I don’t do anything idiotic like drop the screw or strip the threads.

Next I find the metal strip with the trigger on it – which Kain has thankfully already assembled. I place that over the grip and the stock, and then I screw in the three screws that hold it in place.

I spare a moment to look down at Sanga. There’s dried blood on his nose and mouth, but he still is breathing, though he hasn’t so much as moved an inch.

The next parts of the gun are more confusing. There’s a rectangular metal piece with a little rod sticking out of it, and another wooden strip that looks like it’s made to grip with the hand that isn’t holding the main grip. I move the pieces around a bit around where I’ve already assembled, and I find the metal piece fits above the trigger section. I screw it in, and then the wooden piece pops right onto the rod.

All I have left now is the big top section with the barrel of the gun...and the fucking spring.

I bolt the barrel on, and I try to jam the spring into the back. It goes in, but as soon as I let my finger off, it springs right back out.

“Fuck!” I hiss. It almost feels like I’m missing a piece, but the table is empty now – I’ve gotten everything in.

What if...what if Sanga was holding part of the gun?

I look down at him, and he’s shifting around, as if he were asleep and trying to move to a more comfortable position.

Shit. He might wake up soon.

I hold the gun – minus the spring – in my hand and tiptoe toward him. I crouch down beside him and slide my hand into one of his pockets. It feels as if I’m sticking my hand into a hornet’s nest. I expect any moment that he’ll snap down and rip off my arm.

I remind myself, however, that his entire plan hinges on my unborn child, so he couldn’t
kill
me, but whatever he might do to me short of that would likely be quite painful.

The pocket is empty. Rather than risking reaching across his entire body to check the other pocket, I decide to move all the way around. This way I can get away more easily if he starts to wake.

I hold the gun clutched in one hand while I reach into his other pocket. I grab hold of a heavy piece of cold metal.

Kain, you asshole, did you know that Sanga had the missing piece? Was this a test?

And then Sanga’s arm springs up and grabs my wrist.

In pure instinct and reaction, I swing the gun by the stock, and the heavy metal barrel slams into his head, right where Kain punched him before.

He grunts, and his arm goes slack, releasing my wrist.

When I turn around, I see Kain standing just beyond the entryway, his arms crossed.

He nods at me. “You found the bolt.”

“I found the….” I look down at the chunk of metal in my hand. “You fucking bastard! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Now I know you are useful,” he says, reaching down under Sanga’s bunk. “Get the bolt in.”

I put the spring in and press the bolt in. I hear it click.

I reach out to take the magazine from Kain, and he hands it to me.

I try to click it in, but it doesn’t work.

“Twist it,” he says.

I twist the magazine and it clicks in.

“Now cock it,” he says, pointing to a small protrusion on the bolt.

I obey, and pull to hear a satisfying click.

“What were you doing for the past ten minutes? I thought you’d be getting all kinds of stuff for us….”

Kain is holding only his big sniper rifle, and nothing else.

“I was jury-rigging and planting a bomb in the munitions tent. They will still have some weaponry, but very little ammo.”

“So what’s the plan then?” I ask. “Once the bomb goes off? Do we go take out Grius?”

He glares at me. “I don’t agree with my father...but I will not ‘take him out.’ We will sneak out of here together and find Ramses. I trust he’ll have a way to warn Earth?”

I think of Sara’s imminent arrival. “He will...but not until tomorrow. Is that fast enough?”

“Yes,” Kain says. “It is. Now follow me.”

He opens the tent flap, and the visibility is poor in the gusting wind. No one is out and about right now, so all the tents are sealed, and everyone is inside. It’s unlikely anyone will see us moving.

“Which way?” I ask.

He points. “This way, the opposite direction of the munitions tent.”

We start to walk, and after only a few minutes I can’t see a single trace of the camp. But then the bomb goes off, and I turn around and see the bright orange glow through the thick, snowy wind.

“It’s not as big as I thought,” I say.

“I’ve never heard that from a human woman,” Kain says, smirking.

I glare at him, and then another series of explosions goes off.

He flicks his ears at me, then turns and keeps walking.