The Legend of Ivan (18 page)

Though I happen to have a great many contacts and a high amount of influence, boarding a military vessel and questioning its captain was somewhat out of my range of abilities. Fortunately, I discovered a refueling station visited by the Cassander with some frequency.

Marxis type stations differ significantly from the Dei Lucrii. Less a hub of trade and variety and more a dingy stop-over point for large cargo vessels, they exist for fueling and base amenities out on the rim.

The usual authorities granted my docking request, and I was pleased to note my appropriate timing. The mammoth destroyer was berthed outside, almost half the size of the station itself and boasting significant firepower. Dozens of lines for fuel and supplies snaked out of the station and connected to the Cassander.

I wrapped myself in my usual cloak, donning a facial wrap and gloves in a mild attempt to disguise my mechanical nature. The risk for assault was moderate, but it wasn't fear of damage which motivated my attempt at concealment. I had strong doubts that any drunken miner or cargo-pilot could match me in any physical or mental fashion. Though the prospect of knocking around a few illiterates was alluring indeed, I was not there for that purpose. Any such confrontations would inevitably waste time.

My feature-concealing garb drew a few suspicious glances as I passed through the check-in point and moved into the market area, but no one spoke to or accosted me. Milling around the crowd, I spotted a few crew members in uniform. No one was of significant enough rank to be worth speaking to.

I had hoped to see a member of the command staff, but I didn't know if any of them would depart the ship for any reason. It was too much to hope Captain Onnels himself would be out and about, but I kept an image of him and the flight crew in a recent memory file in case I happened to spot one. Five minutes would be all I'd need.

I continued my walk through the market, cringing at the filthy sights and smells of dirty stalls containing worthless trinkets and food of questionable edibility. As time passed, I started to regret not contacting the Cassander directly to attempt to set-up a short meeting.

In cases of highly questionable cooperation, I try to catch my potential source off-guard rather than to give them the opportunity to deny me access or time to craft a suitably false story. Failing to find someone of importance, I considered speaking with one of the underling crew members when I saw someone else.

A flicker of light glinted off of a metallic limb not twenty feet away. A wary eye not made of organic flesh stared at me, scanning and scrutinizing. A sudden awareness of hunter and prey developed with no certainty toward who was which. An outward hiss of breath resulted as concrete realization struck, catching up with brutal instinct.

Someone jostled me, and another patron crossed between us. In the nanosecond of distraction, the figure disappeared.

All manner of thought related to my presence on the station and the inquiry I was attending vanished, driven away. Pulse quickening, I slid through the crowd, flitting every spectrum of scan available through my synthetic eye.

Stinking organic gas bags swarmed all around, stifling and choking me with their absurd idiocy. Electrical signals in neon lighting and cooking grills. Body heat surrounded by the cool metal bulkheads. Nothing but squishy, intellectually-devoid...

There: disappearing out at the end of the large chamber, the shape of a human hand without the heat of flesh. I smiled, hurrying through the milling people, obsession devouring all else.

Corridors flitted by, each time I saw naught but a flash of cloak as my quarry disappeared around another corner. Abandoning caution, I followed.

The Archivist whose name I did not know stood at the end of a short, empty hallway. The cold metal of the bulkheads surrounded us, and a sealed hatchway lay at her back.

Her. I blinked in surprise. The heat signature emanating from skull region betrayed the significant upgrades needed for an Archivist, but the shape of her body was most definitely feminine.

Her being female was a momentary surprise making no difference to the fact that we were about to fight to the death. Archivists are most often the product of industrial accidents. Whether there were fewer female workers or they were less prone to fatal mistakes, I didn't know. Regardless, female Archivists are a rarity.

It made no difference to myself or to her; I could see the same calculating expression, each of us deciding the best way to win quickly and quietly. The idiotic allure of physical intimacy was not a question or an answer. Such base, organic needs pale in the face of fresh data, the kind only we can attain.

I almost laughed. One prosthetic limb and eye, mild skeletal and muscle augmentations. She was young, a polar opposite to Cain with so much human flesh thus far only mildly tinged with the ashen pigment. No concealable weapons, I marveled at her bravery and inexperience. It made me almost pity the slight increase in her heart rate: a tinge of fear as she realized her chances of beating me were slim.

Nothing registered on her face, which remained as cold and hungry as my own. A flicker of doubt passed over my mind; my calculation suggested her odds of beating me were about as good as my own against Cain. No, she had something else I hadn't detected.

I was already committed. Rather than risk a more clever mental opponent jamming my consciousness somewhere else, much like I did with Cain, I locked down every wireless port under the most obstructive security I could manage. Without further hesitation, my hand shot forward.

Four needles erupted from my fingertips, pressure-fired and sinking into the other Archivist's flesh before her eyes widened in realization. As the tranquilizer sped into her bloodstream, I knew the fight was already all but finished.

She met my charge with a standing kick, her movement fast and vicious. I pivoted, allowing the strike to glance off my metal shoulder. I used the opening to plant an open-hand chop at her neck. Twisting, she attempted to dodge, but my blow struck her cheek. She staggered, off-balance with little damage done as I pressed the attack.

We fought, blocking and parrying with small hits chipping away at each other. Her movements became sluggish as the tranquilizer battled the scrubbers in her blood and brain. More of my strikes connected, but she fought on.

She overextended in a hook that carried body weight behind it. Seeing the opening, I braced my weight against it, taking the hit to position one of my own. My head snapped to the side, my jaw wrenched close to the point of breaking as my own fist struck her into her solar plexus.

Gasping, she doubled over as the wind rushed out of her lungs. I seized her shoulders, saw the fear and recognition in her eyes, and slammed my metallic head plate into her normal skull.

She fell to the deck, unconscious.

Her death was rapid, painless, and what followed does not merit discussion. Unlike Cain, I take no particular pleasure in the act of murder or extraction of the implants. She was the third Archivist I've killed, the vestiges of their memories and data still haunting the inside of my skull.

There will always be regret, but it won't stop me or any other Archivist from continuing this pattern over and over.

A feeling of sheer ecstasy mingled with the guilt of murder as I absorbed the data from her implants. Finding something of importance, my consciousness was swept away, lost in memory.

******

"Good afternoon, Captain Onnels," I said in a voice that wasn't mine, extending someone else's hand to the man in uniform. Bars on his shoulders confirmed the title, and I recognized his face as being the subject of my recent search.

Aside from that, I remembered... almost nothing. I wasn't me. Who was I?

The captain smiled at me/not me. "Call me Josef, my dear. I apologize that we cannot meet under more pleasant circumstances. I don't care much for the ambiance of these Marxis stations." He made a face. "Too uncivilized, filthy. I may be a man on the edge," he chuckled, "of the galaxy, that is, but it does not mean I can't try to enjoy the finer things in life."

"Of course," came the reply in what I realized was a feminine voice, "but I do not wish to keep you overlong, Captain-"

"Josef," he reminded.

"Of course," I... she repeated.

I had no control. I was an observer watching through someone else's eyes. My greater sense of self was lost, missing in this dream of another life. I knew the captain was important. I knew this person whose eyes I saw through was not me, but what else?

The captain folded his arms. "Please tell me what I can do for you, Miss...?" He paused, waiting with expectation.

It appeared to be a private room, or at least repurposed to be empty for the meeting. The cold lack of adornment along with the captain's statement and light discomfort suggested she was not permitted to travel to his ship. It made sense, as they had no reason to invite non-crew aboard.

Instinctive knowledge of a military vessel struck me as confusing, as I didn't remember how I knew that.

"Dana," she replied, answering his question. "I'm looking for information on the incident reported at Atropos Garden." The Garden? Very familiar. Wasn't I going to ask someone like him the very same thing?

Raising an eyebrow, Onnels asked. "Is that all? The incident was what, fourteen years ago now? A puzzling case, to be sure, but the investigation concluded long ago. Who did you say you worked for?"

I felt my, her, lips twist in a smile. "My client wishes to remain confidential, but as always there is a curiosity towards what method caused the devastation, including the ever-present rumor of new technology." I could sense anticipation in her mind, and this was only part of her inquiry. "My sources say the entire planet, not only the research center and colony, was completely destroyed."

I continued to witness the exchange, no more than an intruder in her mind. Somehow this thought of complete destruction of the Garden was a surprise.

"Ah, I see," the captain chuckled again, "
that
again. You must understand that the nature of the incident remains classified under GCG law."

She frowned. "Surely it doesn't also include the simple impressions of a patrolling ship captain."

"It does, as a matter of fact. In order to not be chained to a desk for the remainder of my career or exiled to the farthest reaches of deep space exploration, I had to sign a very threatening nondisclosure agreement." Onnels shrugged. "It's just as well: I take my duty and obligation very seriously, Miss Dana."

"Just Dana," she replied, irritation flaring in her tone. I felt the muscles in her body tensing, and I wondered if she planned on striking him. "Can you at least tell me the nature of the distress call?"

The captain sighed. "I suppose I'm only bound to secrecy on the issue of the planet's fate..." he rubbed his chin. "We were on our routine patrol when a warning signal from the planet was issued. The message was almost completely distorted. The Cassander arrived only a few hours later, and by then the colony was gone."

Her fist clenched. "That's quite vague, Captain. Was there anything comprehensible about the message you received? Perhaps related to the prime suspect-"

Rolling his eyes, he replied, "Oh, that. Yes, I suppose that's public knowledge enough. Yes, the message pointed to the possibility of the mythic fellow Ivan being involved. When the Cassander arrived, there was a vessel fleeing. It was a small fighter which we've always assumed as belonging to the perpetrator."

"How could a ship that small cause such devastation?" She swept a gesture towards the deck, where outside hovered a vessel much larger. "All of the ordnance aboard your own ship, a destroyer, couldn't manage to break apart a world in a month of planetary bombardment. Six months, a year even!"

A flicker of defensiveness passed over Onnels' expression. "Do not assume too much about me or my ship. She's one of the finest of her kind." Her muscles tensed again, frustrated by the captain's shift from friendly to not, and I felt an inward smirk. She was too goading, insulting matters of personal pride. I suspected he had not much left to say, but still she pushed the wrong button. It didn't matter how correct she was about the Cassander's bombardment capacity; she caused offense to the good captain, and he was likely to cease cooperating.

She seemed to realize it as well. "Thank you for your time, Captain Onnels," she said, rising and resuming the formality. He didn't correct her this time.

"Farewell, Archivist," he said, motioning for her to leave.

The title shot panic into my mind. It was important; I knew it from the very core of my soul. It was what I-

Images scrambled around, and the tension surrounding my mind faded, as though nothing but a bad dream. I saw images of her client, Seryia Hakar. Familiar, rival to Daedra-Tech, a name which prompted feelings of loyalty.

I viewed small probes containing sensor masking and disruption fields, fired through the thick web of preventative measures surrounding the area by the quarantined Atropos Garden. Risky: if they had been caught and traced back to the company, penalties would have been harsh.

A few images confirmed the glittering disconnected mass which used to be a planet. It was surrounded by data-collection satellites and dozens of science vessels. The spy-probes were not equipped for survey and analysis, but the images they sent back displayed a lumpy, unidentified mass surrounded by the sea of shining particles. Curious.

I saw someone handing the information, the images, to me/her. He said, "Here are the pictures from the spy-drones, Archivist."

The terrible urgency rose forth again. My head broke the surface of the stifling dream for a bare moment, and all that I was, all that I knew was laid bare before my flailing mind before-

More flashes, and my hands worked quickly at a console. No, her hands again. She tapped into one of the lines connecting to Onnels' ship. Her mind slid through security barriers in the data network on the Cassander, also a risky endeavor. Her inquiries side-tracked a hundred different ways, but she seemed capable of bouncing back quickly, only seconds lost to tangential searches. Impressive, somehow.