Zoë opened her eyes, something she hadn’t expected to do. The bastard Lemetal had used an arc emitter. He must’ve known she would get caught in it, and with medical a good half an hour away, there was no chance of her surviving. She should be dead. So why wasn’t she? The thought cascaded through her head. The lecturers at the Academy had always warned them they shouldn’t hope to be so lucky for the damned thing to simply stun them. That was a pipe dream because they were not civvies. Cadets had one too many combat implants that would go haywire to make an encounter with an arc emitter fatal. And if she thought about it, the item wasn’t part of their standard gear, which meant that Lemental had to have smuggled it into the station. Of course, this opened an entirely new avenue of uncomfortable questions and hypotheses. However, all they did was push her further away from the issue at hand.
Therefore, Zoë had only one pressing question at this very moment. How was she able to open her eyes? But in order to answer that, she would first need to figure out where here was and what happened after the arc emitter went off. Slowly the girl shifted her head, trying to piece together what she saw. A dark room with an unknown purpose that was more decrepit than the worst sections of Last Hope, and those were too many to get a good fix on where this place could be. For all she could tell, she might be in one of the uncharted sections.
Instead of speculating and wasting time on useless guesswork, she might as well explore and see if she could find some route back to Security HQ. That idea was cut in its infancy as Zoë shifted her body. Her arms were tied behind her back, and there was something wrapped around her ankles. The fact that she had failed to notice the bonds until now was worrying. But one problem at a time. Undo the restraints, escape, contact HQ, and go to bed. How hard could it be? And the day had promised to be a good one, she thought as she tried to pinpoint when it had turned so bad.
“You really need to tell me more about that new trick you’ve developed,” a deep voice came from the darkness to her left. “Psi-locked slave using an acolyte as bait – unheard of. But going as far as trying to martyr yourself… Very curious, and a little worrying.”
“What?” Zoë tried to turn but found it problematic due to her bonds.
“Although, I’m more curious to know what you are doing here?” the speaker had an odd accent making it difficult to grasp what he was saying, but it sounded familiar. Yet she couldn’t place where it might come from.
“I… What?” The way the stranger spoke wasn’t the only reason for her confusion. Zoë genuinely couldn’t understand what he was asking. She was part of Security. What other reason could there be?
“Sigma 37 isn’t a place one would mark on any map.” The speaker was moving closer. “Which begs the question, how did you find out about it?”
“Ah?” Zoë didn’t need to fake ignorance, but now she had a suspicion as to who was asking the questions.
“I know I’m not the best person for making you speak, but please, do not insult me by pretending you have no idea what I’m talking about.” Zoë was sure of it now—the smugness at the end of each question, the odd accent and the deep voice.
“Commodore Neverok, I have no idea what you are talking about!” She snapped.
After what the girl had been through, being interrogated by the propaganda officer and his staff wasn’t something Zoë was looking forward to.
“How very interesting….” The voice was close, just outside her line of sight, hidden in the shadows cast by the few fading illumination rods scattered around her. “You’re taking orders from a turncoat. I’m surprised the Cathedral has chosen the same fate after what we did to the Disciples of Vaar, but why don’t you tell me more, Confessor Kurtz?”
“What the hell is a confessor, and who the bloody fuck are the Disciples of Fahar?!” Zoë had had enough of all that nonsense.
Alexei could look for some other poor sob to play his mind games with. As Commodore, he had nearly unlimited power to investigate anyone on the station under the slightest suspicion of being an imperial sympathiser or the like. However, there were safeguards against baseless accusations, and Zoë knew her rights. A moment later, the security guard realised she had been terribly mistaken. The strange man who had killed Hunter and was the source of her awful day came storming from the shadows. He pressed the barrel of a heavy Gauss pistol to her temple and nearly laughed at her.
“You cannot be serious!” The man paused just to let out a small chuckle. “Under Imperial regulation 7A-1, impersonating a Black Confessor is grounds for immediate execution.”
“Holy f…” Zoë began, but a light press from the cold weapon cut her words short.
>“I mean, everyone with half a brain knows this. And here you are,” the joy in the stranger’s voice evaporated as quickly as it had appeared, “outright admitting a capital offence. Who are you really, Miss Kurtz?”
“No wonder you were using a Ripper rifle! You are an imperial sympathiser!” Zoë was torn between surprise and outrage, doing her best to keep her skin intact.
Slowly the man removed the gun and locked it to his hip. After a minute, just standing there, kneeling next to her, he stood up. With one hand, he grabbed her by the jacket and pulled her into a sitting position. This made her aware of two things. First, this person was far stronger than he appeared, probably sporting some high-grade cybernetics under his combat suit. Secondly, more importantly, she had managed to get under his skin. All that was left was to find the right words to make him doubt his cause.
“Look, I have some connections with the big wigs in security,” the guard spoke softly with a confidence she wasn’t really feeling. But right now, she was willing to offer him the stars if it meant getting out of this mess alive. “Surrender, and I can put a good word for you. Might even have you get away with just a few years of hard labour. Worst case, you’ll have to spend a year or two at a re-education facility, but we both know those don’t work, so that’s still a win for you, right?”
The man just stood there, observing her. His arms crossed across his chest, still as a statue. Now that the officer had a good look at him, Zoë could see he was way too fit to be an ordinary terrorist or conspiracy freak. He had a physique that would put to shame all the trainers at the Academy, and she could see it, despite the fact he was hidden inside his armour. Or rather, it was because of how the softer thermoplastic sections hugged his body.
“What do you think my combat suit is made of?” He broke the silence after a minute.
“I would go with boron nitride plating over an M-13 Kevlar laced jumpsuit.” She gave him a small smile, seeing the faint flinch of his shoulders.
“Why do you think that?” He asked, keeping his voice neutral.
“My pistol is the same as that of the others. It is a standard N46 ‘Anvil’ that fires recycled iridium slugs. And those bad boys just bounced off of you. That’s some serious military grade-”
“That’s enough,” the man cut her off and began pacing around. “What do you know of the Ripper?”
“What’s with these questions? You know what it is!” So far, she hadn’t given him any information the average gun enthusiast couldn’t find after a three-second mainframe search.
“The longer you talk, the longer your pretty head stays hole-free,” he tapped the pistol at his hip.
“I must say, you make some outstanding arguments,” this time, the smile Zoë gave him was forced and conveyed her annoyance to its full extent.
It was odd to believe that her captor didn’t know the specs of his own gear. She took a deep breath and unloaded all the knowledge hammered inside her head.
“The Mark 9 was the favourite weapon of the Empire’s shock troopers during the Liberation Wars. It has dual mag usage – solid slugs and plasma bullets. Fifty reinforced iridium-75 KS slugs per clip and a hundred helium 23 plasma rounds per mag. It has an active range of-”
“That is enough. I get the picture,” he stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Or at least I think I do.”
He came at her when Zoë saw it. A tremor in his left arm. His head snapped and followed her eyes. Quickly the man reached into one of the many pouches at his utility belt and pulled out a foldable auto-syringe. With what looked to her as very well-practised movements, he loaded a strange pink vial in it and placed the instrument at the back of his head. There was a hiss, and the fluid was injected at the base of his skull.
“Look, I get it. Your grandad or something was a loyal citizen of the Empire, or he could’ve served in the army.” Zoë faked a warm smile. “You grew up on stories of the good old days. Somehow you found some grade-A gear, dug out the old man’s gun and got a bit too liberal with the chems.” She switched to the best motherly tone she could imitate. “Things got out of hand, and here we are.”
Zoë finished with a charming smile and blinked several times. “Let me go, and we can sort it all out. Ok?”
“That’s very nice of you, Miss Kurtz,” the man said, returning the auto-syringe to its place. “But you see, there is a small problem. While trying to restart your heart, I injected you with wide-spectrum nanite inhibitors.”
The smile dropped from Zoë’s face, and she felt as if he had just punched her in the gut. Her lifeline was gone. That was why she felt no pain and felt pretty well for someone hit by an arc emitter. This guy had shorted out all her implants, effectively turning her into a useless civilian. Her entire escape plan from this lunatic hinged on reconnecting to the security grid and sending out a distress signal back to HQ.
He turned his back to her, looking for something outside her view, and spoke softly in turn, “I think an apology is in order. I honestly thought you a Black Confessor. You have the uniform… But you have no idea what that is, do you?” He turned to her for a moment just to see her shake her head.
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“And I take it you have no idea what Sigma 37 is, either?” Zoë shook her head again. “On top of your ignorance, there are some very interesting secrets you are privy to and quote as if they are common knowledge. At the same time, I’m curious to know where you got the design for this?”
Zoë’s eyes were going to pop out of her head as she saw her chest piece, with a large portion of her jumpsuit, held in his hands. The security officer could feel her face turn scarlet at the realisation she was naked underneath her jacket and that he had actually seen what was now hidden behind it. Worst of all, she wasn’t wholly opposed to it. The size of her chest had gotten her out of much trouble back at the Academy. Get a grip, girl. That’s the drugs in your system talking, she chided herself.
“I may not have Puppeteer’s analytical cognitive processors in my cortex, to know asking you about classified information is pretty much useless,” there was a hint of a smile in his voice as if he was sharing a private joke with her.
Either way, Zoë found herself very interested in what this loyalist of the Third Terran Empire had to say. It was way too odd and disconnected from the usual drivel junkies like him spewed in the training clips and simulations. To her surprise, he placed his hands on the sides of his helmet and pulled up.
“Bloody hell! You are a bloody kid!” Zoë couldn’t help but shout at her captor. “You are what? Twenty-one? Shit!”
“You are technically right. But I think it’s closer to twenty-five.” The young man flashed her a charming smile as he lifted his hand, cutting her off.
This time she couldn’t blame any drugs for her face turning crimson. The only way Zoë could describe him was as kind of cute. His face was clean shaved, and his cheeks were slightly sunken, more to the lack of fat on them than to anything else. Yet, the overall shape reminded her of a skull, as strange as that was. His skin was slightly pale due to the lack of light, unlike the greying flesh of the other guards on the station. And then there were his eyes. There was fire and mischief in that pair of amber-coloured orbs. Combined with his dark blond hair, with a hint of red mixed into it, cropped on the sides and left to grow just a bit at the top, they gave him a mysterious yet calming expression. Under different circumstances, she would be trying to get into his pants before he had time to spell out her name.
The way he curled just the right side of his lips when he smiled made Zoë’s heart skip a beat. Or at least she hoped that was the reason and not some terrible side-effect of the vital organ failing again. A quiet voice screamed at the back of her head that this person was going to kill her, but she ignored it the moment the young man stood a step away from her.
“Although, Miss Kurtz, I must point out you aren’t that much older yourself,” the youth smiled again, and she felt the blood rush into her head.
“I was never that good at convincing people to tell me the truth. Besides, it wasn’t my job. Instead of wasting my time with pointless questions,” he produced a small auto-injector vial containing a bright orange liquid for her to see. “I have a proposition for you.”
The needle pierced the skin of her neck, and she let out a yelp akin to that of a small startled animal. The mischief was gone from his eyes, replaced by a hardness Zoë didn’t expect from a man this young.
“I think I’m right to assume; you have no idea what that was,” he moved back. “No need to answer. I can see the worry written on your face. I’ll be honest with you. It is a nasty type of neuro-toxin.”
This time, he produced a green auto-injector vial and dangled it like a prize before her eyes.
“This is the counter agent. Three hours from now and taking it will be pointless as the damage done to your brain will be irreversible. In twenty minutes, you will develop a fever and shortness of breath. In an hour, you will not be able to ignore the dizziness. At the mark of the second hour, your muscles will begin to spasm, and fainting episodes will occur. Complete brain death will come in four hours and thirty-six minutes.”
Zoë was sure that her heart was skipping out of fear and dread this time. This man was a monster, a complete sociopath. He was the archetype of every imperial loyalist’s profile. A ruthless mental case that had her dancing in his palm. Too focused on finding additional ways to describe his deplorable nature, she missed the moment he had taken a small wand and pressed it against her forehead. However, Zoë did feel the low-voltage spark that jumped through her skin. It was a short-burst EMP, the kind used by any licensed or questionable tech to disable nanites.
The implant in her eye and the comms in her inner ear booted, letting her know that, at long last, she was going to reconnect to the security grid. At least she would, the moment she was disconnected from all hard lines. Because of the general numbness Zoë was feeling and had utterly ignored to this point, she had failed to notice that the port hidden at the back of her right ear had a hard connection jammed into it. In the gloom of the room, she had missed the cable running down her shoulder and chest and stopping at a small handheld crypto device. All this time, he had been mapping her cerebral implant. Although protected, given time, the memory files could be unravelled, and then this monster would have access to all the security and authorisation codes Second Officer Kurtz had access to.
The young man smiled and picked it up. “Channel RL1Z-2. A cloned secure line to me. Its encryption is way out of your league, so don’t bother,” he added as a side note.
A chill ran through her. It was worse than she had thought. He had hacked her, effectively turning Zoë into spyware. Knowing her standing with the other members of Last Hope’s Security, she firmly believed that Chief Rex would rather vent her than waste the time to have the techs scrub the implant.
“You will keep that one open at all times,” the youth continued, gently disconnecting the hard line from the port. “When you return to your people, you’ll tell them the following. You managed to escape. You are wounded, implants offline, and have suffered cardiac arrest three times.”
He stood back, pulled a non-reflective combat blade, and let it dance in his hand for a few seconds, more out of habit than attempting to intimidate her.
“That story should hold since you were missing for five hours and forty-two minutes, and I’ve moved you quite a bit. The log I’ve uploaded into your implant’s memory cache should add credence to that story as long as no one looks too much into it. So, for your sake, I hope your techs are as incompetent as those who’ve made that junk in your head.”
“You will not get away with this!” Zoë hissed at him. “An entire Marine Corps is stationed here, and they will come for you!”
“Please, Miss Kurtz. Let’s not insult each other. Sigma 37 is way too far in the middle of nowhere for anyone to bother to keep a large force on it. Especially when, like you, they are clueless to its purpose.”
He took a step towards her, stopped and turned back. With slow, measured movements, the man picked up her chest armour and ruined jumpsuit and placed them near her.
“An entire corps,” he chuckled.
“Believe what you want,” Zoë doubled down. She had to plant doubt in his mind. “The marines have been using the station as a staging and training ground for as long as it’s existed.”
“I’ll assume that’s the panic talking,” the youth looked at her disappointment written on his face. “I honestly think you’re smarter than this. Otherwise, what would be the point?”
After saying that, he let the question hang in the air, giving her time to assimilate the part he didn’t voice. Swallowing was like trying to push a rubber ball through her throat as it dawned on Kurtz how close she had come to death. At the same time, appearing somewhat disinterested, her captor pulled her pistol from a pile of scrap and examined it for a moment before ejecting the clip and the slug in the accelerator bed. The young man placed the weapon a meter to her right and put a bullet through it from his own heavy gun.
“Can’t exactly have you running around with a functioning weapon, can I?” He flashed her that damned charming smile of his.
“Why? What do you hope to gain?” Zoë tried to look him directly in the eyes but was afraid she might not like what she would see there. “The Empire is gone; you can’t bring it back,” she added with a quivering voice.
“I really want to trust you, I really do. But you see, I am not good at reading people. I am good at putting them back together. For all I know, you are telling the truth.” He stopped midway from leaning to her with the blade in hand.
“On top of that, my current theory is too problematic to rely on your word as the only method of confirmation,” he cut the restraints at her ankles and placed his strong hand on her shoulder.
“That’s why I need access to the mainframe. Medical, Command, Support, one way or another, you’ll have a hard link connection to it. I need it for this place to make sense.” Another smile and the restraints at her wrists were removed.
Slowly he backed away and allowed her some free time to rub the irritated skin and put on her armour. Zoë had to admit that for a maniac, he was pretty polite. He had turned his back to give her a small measure of privacy. It would have felt less embracing if he had looked at her. She was used to it after six years of shared baths and dorms at the Academy and a similar arrangement here on Lost Hope. Although she had to point out that her chest piece was in a poor state, making it nearly useless, Zoë put it on nonetheless.
“You saved my life, didn’t you?” She took a gamble and hoped it would count.
“I thought you were a Black Confessor. And now. Well, if you are dead, you can’t help me, can you?” He rolled his eyes and tapped a command on the handheld device.
< DEMON 08, ‘HELIX’ CONNECTED TO SECURE CHANNEL >
The line danced in the corner of her vision and was accompanied by two beeps from the comm in her ear.
“Helix is a weird name,” too late, Zoë realised she had spoken the words out loud.
“As much as I would like to watch you blush and make rude comments, you’re on the clock,” the young man crossed his arms around his chest and stared her down.
“Seriously, who the hell are you?” The Second Officer narrowed her eyes and returned the stare.
“Let me guess, you made an attempt to check the station’s database and got an empty return on my call sign and a bunch of theological crap on the Demon part,” Helix let out a sigh and shook his head.
“How did you…” She couldn’t help but widen her eyes as he walked next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Gently he pushed her and started walking with her. Zoë hated to admit it, but it felt nice and bizarre at the same time.
“I personally prefer the definition of the Church of the Third Hell, and the Blue Bible Group have some nice depictions that you might want to check out,” Helix stopped and looked into her eyes and smiled.
“You are a curious creature. Not very quick on the uptake, but you are curious,” He took her chin in his fingers and slightly tilted his head.
At that moment, Zoë realised her heart had started racing in her chest and that he was a head taller than her. How had she missed it? Because you were way too focused on his face and his words, you idiot, she scolded herself.
“Since you are so eager to learn all you can about me, and because I feel a little sorry for you for not figuring this out, I will give you something to ponder about on your way down.” Gently he pulled her face closer to his, and she could feel his breath on her skin, making her head spin.
Wait a moment, he just said on her way down, didn’t he? She wanted her mind to work properly, but all the girl could think of was what his lips tasted like and how they would feel against hers. Zoë closed her eyes in anticipation and missed the smug smile that had crept on his face.
“The one I owe my allegiance to is Constantine V Rütter, Monarch and Sovereign of the Holy Terran Empire.” Her eyes snapped open as her brain struggled to comprehend what he had just told her.
“That’s… Impossible…” Zoë failed at forming any other meaningful response as Helix pulled away from her and winked at her.
“Tell me about it. Cryo-sleep is such a pain.” That comment had her mind kicked into full panic mode, trying to figure out what it was she had missed.
“Remember, Miss Kurtz. You have two hours and fifty-five minutes left,” Helix said, pushing her into the dark vertical vent.
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