The Agathon: Reign of Arturo (11 page)

Brubaker nodded at him and smiled.

“May we?” Carrie said motioning towards Tyrell.

“Please,” Brubaker responded, “I would like to talk to you when you’re done, Carrie, about the test we performed yesterday,” trying to maintain a level of privacy between the two.

“Of course,” Carrie replied moving past her towards Tyrell’s bio bed.

They stood for a moment beside the sleeping doctor. Young pulled up two small stools on wheels and they took a seat.

“He looks totally normal,” Young said quietly to Carrie.

Carrie suspected he was waiting for black goo to start pouring out from every orifice of Tyrell’s body.

“Yes, he does,” she replied looking up at the biometric readings from above the bed.

“Blood pressure normal, vital signs normal,” Young continued, “Surely Brubaker would have detected the presence of The Black inside him when she did a bio scan?” he asked.

“Apparently not,” Carrie responded equally perplexed as to why the black liquid was not detected by the doctor.

She suddenly felt a hand on hers, causing her to jump. She looked down and saw Tyrell’s eyes looking straight at her. Fully awake. The irises and surrounding tissue of his eyes had turned completely black. His grip on her hand tightened as the world around her started to fade away into nothingness.

A bright light dazzled Carrie. It was so bright that her eyes started to burn. She shut them to block it out and raised her hands to cover her face. The light began to dissipate as she opened her fingers and peered through. She felt weightless. Her legs dangled freely in a great void of greyish light. There she floated in silence. Waiting.

“We have to leave the ship,” came Tyrell’s voice from the void.

“Tyrell?” she shouted out into the nothingness.

“Carrie, we do not have much time. You must come with me,” Tyrell’s voice said.

It sounded like it was echoing off invisible walls.

“I am not going anywhere with you. This ship needs me. How can you ask me that?” she said raising her voice. She felt no power in this space. She could not feel any electrical energy inside her and for the first time since the discovery of her powers she felt truly vulnerable. This was clearly his realm.

“Carrie, you MUST come with me,” Tyrell’s voice said in a booming angry tone.

Carrie covered her ears. She let the echoes of his voice fade away into the empty space. She began to get angry.

“Why?” she shouted, “Show yourself, Tyrell!”

A solid strip of what looked like crystal formed in front of her. It was transparent, but definitely solid. It looked like a polished diamond with six perfectly shaped elongated sides. Light was broken up through its centre, splitting it into all the colours of the rainbow. She had to admit that it really was quite beautiful.

“What are you?” she said to the solid floating form.

“I am what was,” said Tyrell’s voice, “The others need you to fight,” he said.

“What others? What are you talking about?” she said.

The free floating crystal turned slowly.

“Tyrell, or whatever the hell you are, this ship is lost. We have to find the Signal Makers. We have to save our people, we have nothing left,” she said.

“Your people can be saved,” Tyrell said, “Carrie, their only hope is if you come with me,” he said sounding suddenly sincere.

“You want to destroy us, I heard you,” she said, recalling an encounter with a vision of The Black that had come to her while on the Martian surface.

The turning crystal remained silent.

“If you do not come with me, I will destroy your ship,” Tyrell said flatly.

Carrie was not expecting that and while she had put up a fight against The Black in Tyrell’s lab, she did not really know how powerful the entity was. Was it just keeping her alive?

“You can try,” she said defiantly.

“There are far greater things at stake here, Carrie. The Targlagdu will follow. It will not come alone. You must come with us. You can save us all,” he said.

Carrie thought about leaving her father. She thought about Chavel and the others. The lost ship and the broken Earth. The Agathon would never survive another encounter with the alien mechanical planet. If the Faster than Light engine failed for any reason they were all dead. She also knew that there was something happening to her. Could he be right? If a being was this powerful and helped, could it really save the rest of them?

“If I go with you, will you promise to return me to my people?” she said.

The crystal floated freely scattering broken colours across her face.

“If we are successful, you will be returned,” Tyrell’s voice said through the light.

Carrie was suddenly struck with a deep sadness that she would never see her father again. She could not allow him nor the others to die, but above all that, she suddenly felt like she had no choice.

“Okay, Tyrell,” she said bowing her head, “Let’s go.”

There was another flash of white light as she awoke suddenly in the medical bay. Tyrell’s hand was still firmly gripped onto her arm. His eyes still black. She looked around to find Young on the floor unconscious. Doctor Brubaker was collapsed on the floor behind him. The sounds of the bio beds and computer consoles filled an eerie silence.

“Let go of me,” Carrie said looking furiously at Tyrell.

He complied, releasing his grip on her and sitting up slowly from the bio bed.

“What did you do to them,” she asked looking around at the crumpled people around her.

“They will be fine, Carrie, we do not have much time,” Tyrell said standing up.

“Wait, I have to tell my father,” she said.

Tyrell checked his lab coat for the container he had taken from the engine room.

“You may contact him en route,” he said.

They stood from the bio bed and made their way to the exit. Carrie desperately wanted to see her father one last time, but Tyrell was moving quickly now. She thought about running, then she thought about unleashing a fury of electrical energy in his direction. She thought of the ship and whether it would survive a battle between the two. She came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they stepped into the hallway.

“The shuttle bay,” Tyrell said scouting out the corridors.

The Kandinsky

“Apparently it only lasted for several seconds, Chancellor,” Hector Stanley’s distorted image said.

Arturo stared at his security chief and leaned back in his hard backed chair. He nodded slowly.

“Are you sure there was no other transmission?” he asked.

“No, sir, just static, the relay is not powerful enough at this distance to transmit it would seem. What action would you like me to take?” he said.

Arturo thought about it for a moment. He could just order Elstone dead and be done with it at this stage, but seeing as it was going to happen anyway he might as well wait.

“None,” Arturo replied, “Contact me again in twenty-four hours, Verge out,” he said closing the screen into its holder on the surface of the desk.

He closed his eyes and placed his hands together touching his index fingers together and resting them against his head. He began to breathe deeply, quieting his mind. The door to his chambers bleeped. He ignored it and continued to relax his thoughts. He could feel the other one just below the surface of his mind. He was waiting, watching. The door bleeped again. He opened his eyes and sighed.

“What is it?” he shouted unable to contain his annoyance at being disturbed.

“Sir, it is General Escat. May I enter?” came the voice from the comm system.

“One moment,” Arturo said rising from the chair and placing a robe on, that was draped over the back of the chair.

“Enter,” he said.

The door slid back revealing two Colonial Guards standing on each side. Escat was standing in front of them.

“Come in, General,” Arturo said.

The two guards stood aside allowing the general to enter. Escat’s thin frame moved swiftly into the room.

“Have a seat,” Arturo said to him.

“Yes, sir,” Escat replied taking a seat next to a small coffee table under one of the circular windows. He almost stumbled sitting down as the lighting in the room was almost non-existent. Arturo liked to keep the levels low to minimise the likelihood of catching himself in a reflective surface. It was the closest he could come to privacy.

“How are the preparations coming, General?” Arturo asked.

“It is not without its challenges, sir,” Escat replied.

Arturo looked at the general awaiting an answer to his question. The general cleared his throat realising he had not answered directly and straightened himself in his chair.

“Sir, without the exact calibration from the FTL ring design that was incorporated into The Agathon’s primary reactor, The Kandinsky cannot enter hyperspace. We need to make direct contact with the ship to ascertain that knowledge. As you know, that data was
lost after the war and quite frankly we have not been able to replicate it,” he said.

Arturo sighed. The scientific endeavours of his people had been allocated to the dire power situation in the colony. It had not left much time or resources to devote to FTL development, much to his constant frustration. While he had practically worked Vishal to death, trying to work on both projects, it simply wasn’t humanly possible with the power plant taking up the majority of his day.

“The Unity received a signal last night,” Arturo said to Escat.

Although the general’s face rarely showed any sign of detectable human emotion, this information elicited a very minor response from one of his eyebrows. Arturo couldn’t help but be slightly amused by it. The pair had practically been raised by the same father. Like Arturo, his entire family had been killed by a mob of rebellious fools over food shortages when they were children. They had banded together in the holes of the space stations trying to stay alive, living off unfortunate mistakes of others. Escat had, at the time, been far stronger than Arturo. Killing had come naturally to him. He relied heavily on Arturo’s ruthless intellect and he on Escat’s brutal way of dealing with anyone who stood in their way. It was Escat who had formed the Colonial Guard. It had been Escat who had recommended the modification of the soldiers to elicit complete obedience. A process that had originally taken months, but now only took weeks with the refinements made to the temporal lobes of the ‘volunteers’.

“What sort of signal?” Escat said.

“Static,” Arturo replied pouring himself a glass of water.

“Hmm,” replied the general.

“Indeed, General,” Arturo said.

“I presume that Stanley is keeping a close eye on Elstone?” Escat said.

“Of course,” Arturo said.

“I would rather have killed him myself you know,” Escat said with an almost insubordinate tone.

Arturo let it slide knowing how passionately he felt about the topic.

“You never know, Charles, you may still get the pleasure. Stanley has orders not to act, unless he gets a direct command from me,” Arturo said.

“Fingers crossed, sir,” Escat said smiling through yellow teeth.

Arturo understood fully the general’s feelings on the matter. He had offered him the option of making the insubordinate pilot disappear when he had learned of the incident with the two of them, but Escat had declined his offer. He seemed to have some wish to personally blow him out of the stars using The Kandinsky’s cannons. He only had the opportunity to use them once to date. Several years earlier a small makeshift craft carrying three colonists had attempted an escape from the stations. Needless to say they did not get far.

“So, how did he get in, Thomas Greenly I mean?” Arturo said swirling his glass of water around and changing the tone to one of formality.

Escat suddenly looked flush. Arturo already knew of course, but he felt a sudden need to play with the general somewhat. Casting doubt on his abilities to maintain security kept him neatly in line. Escat cleared his throat. He shifted in his seat and cast his gaze against the wall of the room.

“I thought you already knew that?” the general said sounding halfway insubordinate.

Arturo didn’t answer. He looked at Escat coldly showing him that he still wanted an answer.

“He had been doing the same task for thirty years. Never a hint of displeasure above the norm. He had cleared his psych evaluation that very week and there were no signs that he was feeling disloyal, sir,” said Escat, “If Vishal had not been running a diagnostic on the life support systems of those plugged in at the time, we would never have known. It was bad luck on his part. It may be that he was acting alone,” Escat stopped and looked at Arturo who was frowning at the naive idea.

“I agree it’s probably not the case, but we got nothing out of him under interrogation. His resolve was … impressive,” Escat said.

“You are sure the data rod was erased?” Arturo said. He had asked the question multiple times already.

“One hundred percent, sir,” replied Escat confidently, “Sir, I know Elstone had something to do with it. I don’t understand why you keep him around.”

Arturo thought about it for a second. Of course the general had his personal reasons for getting rid of him, but he had built loyalty. It was not as simple as that. He needed more time and he was more valuable to him alive. For the moment. He placed his feet up on the desk and turned away from the general. There was a growing silence between the two as they sat there in the darkened room.

“Do you know what would have happened if we had not discovered our …solution to the power problem?” Arturo finally said looking into his glass.

“Yes, sir, we would be dead,” replied Escat.

A simple answer, but to the point.

“Yes, General, we would be dead. We would all be dead,” said Arturo. “Simple, isn’t it?” he said, “And who knows, maybe that is the way nature intended the human race to be. After all that happened to us after we lost contact with The Agathon, we practically ate each other. There is a sickness engrained in our species, General. We survive at any cost. Civility, culture, language, mathematics, family. All of it is suppressed and our basic animalistic instincts turn us into nothing but primal predatory creatures. We are bestowed with consciousness that tortures our very spirit. But,” Arturo turned to look at the general, “given the right conditions, we thrive as a species. Give us food, shelter, the basic necessities of existence and we evolve. We build. We create. We rule. In order to do that we must find the very best of us and we must seed our ideals into a new world. I agree with you that not all of us are created to be that seed. But we, General, you and I, will be that seed. These petty conflicts that we engage ourselves in must be laid to rest or there will be no seed,” he said.