The Legend of Ivan (19 page)

Layers of encryption peeled away as she accessed the archived data from the incident. My first thought was that Onnels should not have kept this, considering the agreement which threatened his career, but it might not have been his decision. We watched, she and I, in fascination as the recording played in our mind.

The Cassander arrived in the system in time to see the flight of a single vessel, speeding away. The rest of the recording was that of the planet, it's final moments a matter of absolute awe.

An expanding sphere of something, energy perhaps, vaporized all in its path. As the camera recorded, the grass, trees, mountains, seas, animal life, everything appeared to disintegrate into a sparkling, disjointed mass. With no sound present, the event was quiet and eerie.

She whose mind I resided in connected the two events; the probe and the destruction. One was of the world falling to pieces, and the other was the beginning of the coalescence, the return of the particles to a gravitational mass.

Disconnecting from the terminal, her information in hand, I saw, reflected upon some surface, her face. The face of a person I knew. The face of an Archivist.

My thoughts erupted out of the nightmare once again, feeling an intrusive burrowing into the core of my overtaxed processors, assuming control of my mind and functions. Sid, Sid was my name, and I was an Archivist. Images of my friend, the librarian Marqyni Avieli, protecting me from being lost in data, but this was-

Consciousness was shoved into the swarm of memory again, and I lost myself in months of her life experience. Data collection. Interpretation. Interstellar travel. The collapsed world of Atropos Garden, its reformation. Very important. Marxis stations featured in the most recent memories. Stopover points for cargo, most often from mining operations. Mining operations, miraculous survivals... who survived? Phineas Gage, Piper Welkin. Archivists... Archivists!

I was her again, in a drab corridor. Fighting, movement sluggish from sedatives, losing ground against... who? I saw a face: Sid.

Me.

Breaking through the barriers, I became aware of both my surroundings and the intruder inside my mind, which rapidly devoured my systems, absorbing and wresting as much control as possible. I fought back, locking down motor functions and swiping aside her, yes her, attempts to bury me within further memories while she continued to chip away at my defenses.

Her mental architecture, now technically mine, was very sophisticated, a newer model. But her experience was lacking, never challenging anything but static security systems: no clever, tricky and strategy-changing opponents.

I shut her down at every attack point, striking back more quickly than she could manage. Realizing I was free from the data trap, her mind fled. I continued close behind, reclaiming pieces subsumed by her control. I cornered what remained of Archivist Dana and stripped it away, bit by bit, as the vestiges of her mind clawed in desperation at any hold.

Pieces of her slipped free and scattered, returning to their refuge in the memory archive which housed this virus of a personality. Ignoring the flow of new, unscrutinized data, maddening in its appeal, I cut apart and destroyed lines of code. More and more of her awareness disappeared against my onslaught.

A sense of safety overcame me, whether relief from the close call or another trap, and I was caught in a few of the corporate secrets housed within her memory.

Minutes passed before I gained another foothold.

When I emerged, no new threat, no conquering of my mind was taking place. She appeared gone. I searched, looking for those tiny bits remaining. They were hidden, vanished into the deepest recesses of her and my programming.

It didn't matter; like the programmed personality which intended to cast aside my mind and take over my body, the threat had dissipated.

Opening my eyes, the dead Archivist and bloody mess left behind by the extraction laid at my side. I was seated, back against the bulkhead. Only minutes had passed during the secondary battle, but every moment increased my odds of discovery with the corpse.

Now I experienced the full measure of regret and fear associated with my act and its inherent risk. Even the data, which loomed dangerously close to the front of my thoughts, held little comfort.

I rose to my feet and shoved the body as close to the shadow of the corner as possible. After wiping my hands free of the stains, I crossed back to the corridor entrance and donned my hat, the facial covering, and the cloak. A quick glance over my person revealed no obvious evidence of my brutality.

Nothing more could be gained, and much could be lost. Too many individuals would have accosted me for being what I am, and any delay risked discovery of the murder. As I crossed into the market again, the stink of dubious cooking and personal odors again pressing all around, I realized I'd not be able to return. This didn't bother me much.

Minerva slipped out of the dock without trouble. The mammoth destroyer looming outside, the only witness to the destruction of a world, provided no indication that it cared about my presence.

******

Departed, safe from the threat of discovery, I had time to consider everything. Barely forty-five minutes on the station, it seemed a lifetime wrapped in a whirlwind instant. As Minerva set her course, a general direction of
elsewhere
, I carefully peeled back layers of her memory.

Playing a few in particular, I watched her plotting and her intended defense mechanism against Archivists. She expected, knew, she would encounter others, but she had a target in mind.

Cain.

It appeared word of my narrow escape passed through a number of ears, and Archivist Cain's weakness appeared to be laid bare. As yet another of the denizens in search of Ivan, Dana calculated a probability of meeting him and prepared for it with a brilliant, original, but untested plan.

Her system was marvelous, elegant. It didn't matter what happened to her body and initial brain tissue. She utilized her memories and a framework, a virus almost, containing the edges of her personality. To an individual such as Cain, whose approach to everything seemed to be a mindless battering into submission and a love of brutality, her mental architecture would sweep through him without a second thought.

In a quiet victory, Dana had hoped to take control of the most potent physical embodiment of an Archivist, absorbing all of the information he collected over the years as well as the weaponry.

Unfortunately, her test was against me, long conditioned to extract myself from the lost depths of memory and data. She may have been able to best Cain or any other Archivist, but meeting me cost her dearly.

Or perhaps not: I allowed myself to wonder on the prospect. Perhaps her intent was far beyond what I could detect. Perhaps she slipped in a subtle programming, distracting me with both the mental duel and the data-swarm. Perhaps her mind was now a part of my own, a deep and delicate mingling of personality and experience, or further perhaps such a thing would come to fruition once I inevitably integrated all of her memories. Though I didn't feel any different, I suspected our personalities, including the deep-seated hunger for information, were not far removed from each other.

In addition, I wondered if the escaped portion was still hiding in the recesses of her or my programming. I didn't believe there was enough of her left to cause any further trouble, and I'd triple checked and layered protection over my important systems. Even if she had full processing power and wasn't just a ghost of code, she'd have been hard-pressed to break through it without me realizing.

In any case, more pressing concerns were present, and I more carefully reviewed other portions of her memories. The first time around, while she held me drowning within them, didn't provide as thorough an analysis as I wanted.

I saw again the destruction of Atropos Garden, a terrible, silent, and rapid disintegration of the world and its denizens. The ship, the one that fled, seemed about the right size and shape. Connecting it to Ivan remained conjecture, but it bore a similarity to Hanatar's description of the fighter. I enhanced, angled, zoomed, and attempted every measure of visual scrutiny on the vessel. It may have been wishful thinking, but I believed I saw lettering on the side: OLGA.

Another file, one I missed initially, was the distress call recording she stole from the databanks of the Cassander. Most of it remained a pile of static and garbled mash. I watched a frightened woman fade in and out, her words lost.

All but one.

Her face and expression of fright became all-too clear for one moment, one word. Nothing else to suggest the how and why of the terrible occurrence, nothing at all about escapees or last testaments. Her voice, filled with endless despair, cried out before the very end in a single moment of clarity.

"Ivan!"

This was it. The connecting piece, an innocuous phrase that created a universe of fame and myth for Afanasi Sergeyevich Lukyanov: the man called Ivan. The final word spoken by a dying woman connected with an unidentified, fleeing vessel.

No context, no suggestion of responsibility upon his shoulders. The scream could have been an apology or a woman calling out the name of her lover as easily as a curse at the one responsible. The number of possible, subtle meanings was infinite.

But rumor had a mind of its own. This tiny iota of truth, one word of Ivan's involvement, spun out of control and exploded with falsehood and possibility. His legacy became galactic property, and very few would ever know or believe the real truth.

One thing was even more obvious. I realized this as I sat, safe for the time being within Minerva. Myself, Dana, Cain. Archivists, experts of data collection, all searching for the same man, the same answer.

They who employed us weren't looking for simple stories, no matter how amazing they were. They wanted to know the truth behind the Garden. Daedra-Tech, Seryia Hakar, the government, whoever else was involved wanted to know how an entire world was reduced to a mass of disconnected debris. Ivan was the only one with knowledge yet unaccounted for in the incident, and clearly they believed he knew something.

I wished I could spend more time, days and weeks, absorbing and integrating the memories of Archivist Dana without any distraction, but events were accelerating. I wasn't the only one looking for Ivan, and my already potent curiosity was driven into near madness at the prospects.

Archivist Sid

Assignment:

Seeking information regarding the truth and whereabouts of Ivan.

Location:

Marxis Station

Report:

Intended meeting with captain [Josef Onnels] of planetary distress [Atropos Garden] call respondent vessel [Cassander]. Necessary information obtained from fellow Archivist [Dana - now deceased].

Probability
:

n/a

Summary:

Encounter with Archivist Dana fulfilled all needs for information regarding the incident at Atropos Garden. Discovered source of Ivan mythos in one clear word of the distress signal. Potent, unknown technology involved in full planetary destruction.

*Addendum: Archivist Dana retained significant data unrelated to Ivan search but likely of prominent interest, including a subjugation protocol inside security intrusion devices. May be useful in future encounters if intricacies can be discovered.

**Second Addendum: Ivan issues now seem to be of great interest by multiple parties; will have to accelerate process and disinclude leads with low probable utility.

Chapter 9: Hunted

Archivist Dana's memories held a treasure trove of data, but her Ivan tracking thus far had proven to be limited. Her source of information led her almost immediately to the Cassander and the cataclysm of Atropos Garden. Rather than a methodical gathering, she leapt right to the foundation of his fame as though the event could tell her everything about him, including current location.

However, it seemed she held in her mind other leads. Her intent was to follow his progress from the pinnacle moment onward, not bothering to discover his prior actions and persona. I thought it a glib approach, as I sought to develop a rudimentary profile for his behavior and motivation, bringing forth an understanding that would all but guarantee success in finding him.

She wanted to hunt him down as quickly as possible, but she had been yet young in her career. I already slipped by the feelings of regret for her recent demise, too fascinated by her mind's data and the sophistication of her processors.

Dana discovered what confirmed Voux Hanatar's theory; Ivan became a well-sought man after the destruction of Atropos Garden. Corporations, with hopes of brilliant new technology, began a bidding war for Ivan's living hide. A few contracts even did not quite care if the quarry was breathing. The pay-out amount drove into the billions and far beyond. So much money lay in the simple job of finding and apprehending Ivan.

The methods were non-specific, and payment would be rendered when the dragged in husk was proven to be the real thing, or at least able to provide the information the corporations so desperately wanted.

Thousands of bounty hunters pitted against each other in a frantic attempt to find the man. Not a single one succeeded, and all but a few died by the hands of their competitors, the elements, or for the few who found him, Ivan himself.

It was during these years of chaos and pursuit that Ivan's personal description blurred and multiplied into an absurd smattering of diversity. People were paid exorbitant sums for the most paltry details, and more than a few charlatans took advantage and thus obscured the pool of useful information. As the truth behind the myth became more and more murky, only those who had met the real thing became likely candidates to find him.

As Dana discovered, the last big push before Ivan details faded into conjecture and became dismissed as myth was eleven years ago. A coalition of bounty hunters banded together to cooperate in finding Ivan. The cooling trail was tricky to follow, but it seemed they caught up to him. Twenty-five of the most battle-hardened, ruthless individuals under the leadership of a brilliant strategist fought with Ivan.