Part 4
Fall
One by one, Earth’s interstellar eyes fell silent.
Not destroyed but disabled, their sensitive, vulnerable electronics obliterated by a wave of violent electromagnetic radiation that swept out from the sun. Everywhere the flare hit satellites short‑circuited, stripping Earth internationally of the power to see or hear or communicate. Ninety-three million miles from humanity’s home, the sun continued to rage in unstoppable, incomprehensible fury, a ball of nuclear fire indifferent to the presence of life. The smallest patch atop its surface had been tickled, and the leviathan had given but the barest cough. Now that trivial discharge hurtled to consume the Earth, and with it the destruction of every electric defiance of nature mankind had ever built.
What power did any of them hold before their true ruler? What could any of them do against the rage of a great old one?
In his insignificant fortress, on his insignificant world, Viktor Mentok watched darkness rush towards his empire like ink seeping through paper. The geosynchronous satellites continued to fall, collapsing outwards in a spreading ring. The sun-most tip of the mid-orbit satellites stared head on into the coming wave of particles – and then that too fell dark. Then all the mid-orbit sensors stopped working.
They had seconds. Not minutes.
“Go,” Mentok whispered to his lieutenants. All throughout the complex, all around the world, he felt the geniuses struggling to rise, to pull themselves from med-gel beds and out from their connections, to detach implants from their skulls and cables from their arms. He let them go, made no move to direct them – there was nothing to be salvaged by confining their last few moments of life.
“Run,” he ordered his protectorate. All around the globe, his mind spurred people to cover – to take refuge in the depths of the Earth, where maybe the electromagnetic radiation wouldn’t reach. Silent speedsters raced, silent teleporters tunnelled. But it was pointless. He had no gauge on the strength of the solar radiation – no way to know how deep it would penetrate.
“Help,” he called to his children. All across the Earth Siegfrieds turned, dropped what they were doing and rocketed towards their ancestral home. Their connection alone, if any, might survive the incoming blast, at short distance. He had designed the suits to absorb electromagnetic pulses, a luxury he had lacked the time or resources to replicate on the neural implants. The black spots would not survive the coming assault and if they did, there would be no way for them to communicate. The air would be too charged. He had designed the implants for disposability, replaceability, universality of function. Lose one bee, preserve the swarm.
And now the sun’s fire came to annihilate everything.
The low-Earth-orbit satellites went dark. Mentok closed his eyes.
And the world around him went black.
*
Wally Cykes and Natalia Baroque were playing chess. Telepathic chess, to be precise, without any actual pieces or board. It was a small luxury Ed had argued for and the Mindtaker had granted. They were implanted, yes, like the rest of humanity, their movements dictated just like everybody else. But they were Acolytes who had been with Mentok since the beginning, and so he granted them something of a concession, access to their powers, in recognition that they had been nothing but loyal. Besides, of all the powers out there, telepathy was the least threatening to Mentok’s safety – the Mindtaker dosed daily with Psy‑Block. Stuck in the underground caverns, the Acolytes’ duty was to monitor the complex for physical and mental intruders, which they did so, uncomplaining – there were worse fates. In the meantime, they played chess by firmly imagining the pieces on the board. It was a cult favourite sort of competition among telepaths, and the fact that you could see directly into your opponent’s mind was a big part of it. You weren’t very much of a psychic, were you, if you couldn’t concoct your plans while holding an image steady and repelling your opponent’s wandering eyes.
“Queen to D2,” thought Wally.
“Bitch-move.”
“Bitch please.”
Suddenly, the lights went out. Their conversation skidded to a halt.
And then the bulbs in their small steel quarters flickered back to life in the darkness, red with emergency power, and they felt without feeling that they could move their bodies again. They turned to one another, their faces pale.
“Bad,” whispered Natalia, “Very, very bad.”
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Wally struggled against a lump in his throat, then grabbed Natalia by the hand and the pair ran, as fast as their free legs could carry them, through the halls towards the central chamber.
Everywhere, lights flickered and drones faltered. Backups sparked and systems hissed, clearly struggling to come back online. The air continued to flow, the machines continued to move, but… barely. Somehow, in his teeth, Wally could taste it. Lingering, not dissipating. There was electricity in the air.
They ran into the throne room – the screen room, the console chamber, whatever Mentok wanted to call it. The largest and most open cave. To their left, the two-story high LED screen fizzed in patches of static, screamed red with cascading alerts. To their right, the Mindtaker sat in his metal throne – the hub of connections and cabling, some as thick as a person, which stretched out into the complex and back to the indention for his power suit, within which Mentok lay half-upright as information streamed out and in. His head turned to them as they entered, and there was fear, shock, and comprehension in his eyes.
A siren blared. Across the screen a proximity alert flashed grey, tracking movement high above them. And as Mentok looked up helplessly, the ceiling began to rumble.
Wally squeezed Natalia’s hand.
“A few seconds then?”
She laughed a dry, miserable laugh, tears dripping from her eyes. “Why not?”
And then as one, they tore into their minds and Screamed.
*
From a thousand miles above Mentok’s sanctum, a silver bullet dropped. Twenty feet long, as wide as a telephone-pole, it was a spear of pure tungsten, and at ten times the speed of sound it plummeted towards the Earth with all the force of gravity.
Buried hundreds of feet beneath the Earth, with teleporters and forcefielders on standby, the Mindtaker’s base would have survived such a bombardment. But there were no soldiers left to call. Only death raining from the sky.
The spear pierced the Earth with the force of a thermonuclear bomb and shattered humanity’s defences.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM
Mentok’s mind watched the destruction that was about to happen, knowing he had time for a single move.
Cables hissed and snapped, connections popped and ejected. Armour closed around his body and face and his suit launched him up and backwards, away from the coming impact.
A moment too late.
The world exploded in deafening violence, and the man in his machine was hurled back as he flew. His vision blackened, the force of sudden movement rushing the blood from his head. His last view was of the Acolyte psychics, holding hands and staring upwards, their mouths open, defiant.
Faster than humanly possible the suit readjusted, slamming against the walls of the furthest escape tunnel, smashed into the rock by the explosion’s force yet still desperately rising, still autocorrecting its boosters through emergency subroutines designed meticulously long ago. Even with the strength of the drugs flowing through his system Mentok barely stayed conscious, his body crushed against the inside of the suit as it hurtled through destruction, through the screaming air and burning night. Darkness circled his vision, vessels burst in his eyes, shrieks rang within his ears, iron swam across his tongue-
And then in an instant, they were free.
Siegfried and Mentok ejected from the rocky cave and skidded, tumbling, across the valley floor. Mentok’s brain lurched inside his skull, and his head snapped forward to the front the armour. His thoughts fell to black.
He slept but a moment.
When he awoke, the world was darkness and ash.
Plink-plink. Plink-plink. Whisper-whisper. Pain. Plink-plink. Plink-plink.
Viktor Mentok opened his eyes. The screen before him was cracked, though it didn’t matter – he saw with perfect clarity the world all around. It was dark, and it was night, and it was raining. Storm clouds hissed with angry, violent lightning, and rain pattered down across the plains. In the centre, where once a mountain stood, now lay a crater – a pit of fire and desolation where for thirteen years had been his home. Moonlight shone through an unnatural hole in the clouds, illuminating alone the devastation, the toxic smoke and molten rock. Lightning flashed in cracks of white. And in the middle of the glowing crater, the flames and twisted metal, a dark figure plummeted from the heavens, and landed with a distant thud. A black silhouette, rising to his feet amongst the destruction, with gleaming teeth and glowing eyes.
You still fall beneath the storm.
Mentok’s vision blurred. He pushed himself upwards with his hands, servo motors whirring as the suit responded, ground cracking beneath his gauntlets. He lurched forward, struggled to one knee, metal boots scraping against the rock. Seconds – he had mere seconds, until the Black Death saw him, until he succumbed to his fate. The voices in his head, the Scarlett’s Syndrome, spun suddenly impossibly loud – deprived of their work and distractions, deprived of their purpose and space. He grit his teeth, begging his brain for silence as the rain kept pouring down, as the lightning kept cracking and striking. His mind was molten lead which spun a million, billion chains and they consumed him, they bound him, strangled everything he was.
The sudden noise was deafening. The sudden silence was deafening. He had lost touch with the world and now he stood in shadows and flickering firelight, broken and alone.
Were it not for the telepaths’ sacrifice, he would have died right then. Their psychic Screams – terrible, primal acts of tearing every thought from your mind in a wave of mental devastation – lingered ringing throughout the impact, and for a few moments even the Black Death with his antipathy struggled to clear them out. Their lives bought him mere seconds. But those seconds were enough.
Mentok breathed deep through his nose and rose against the tempest, a lone beacon of silver – the eagle on his chest. Lightning flashed, and his damaged plating realigned. A thousand feet away, Klaus Heydrich snapped his head, and his eyes locked upon the Mindtaker. Blood dripped from Mentok’s temple. Cracks shivered in his bones. Rain poured down his visor.
Then he opened his mind and roared his last defiance.
All throughout the raging storm silent figures rose and dropped. Booster jets flared against the wind, metal faces stared with glowing eyes. In perfect unity around the Black Death assembled Mentok’s silent sentinels, surrounding the murderer on every side. The Mindtaker’s empire lay in ruins. But the implant atop his neck still shone.
And he was not alone in this storm.