He had made a real mess of the entire situation. If Virgil had been around, he would have chewed him a new one. Taking hostages was the most stupid thing Lucas could have done. That was not what they did. The Demons went in, destroyed their objective and went out. Rarely did they need to be quiet when doing so.
“Strike hard and loud. Making sure they know who is coming for them. We are the emperor’s wrath made manifest.”
Puppeteer’s command echoed in his mind. Those three sentences were spoken before every mission, becoming an official motto Helix and the others lived by. He had never thought about it until now, but the more Lucas examined his current situation, the more he understood that they had taken the easy path. It only made him appreciate the work the Oni did even more. However, standing around like an idiot wasn’t going to solve his problems. The combat-medic had some hard decisions to make and fast. There was one slight problem. He couldn’t keep guarding the four people in the examination room indefinitely, not without help. Locking them inside was plain stupid. Lucas would be better off killing them than doing that. And marching them all at gunpoint to the mainframe was a recipe for disaster. One or more of them would try to escape or overpower him, which would mean he would be forced to end their lives, which was somewhat of a problem.
All four of his hostages were valuable. The physician Saiko was vital, more so now that the majority of Helix’s implants had shut down. Technician King had access to all restricted areas, the same as the girl Kurtz, but with the added benefit of having access to the mainframe itself. As for Dr Werner, she was his main source of information until he could retrieve what he needed from the data-stores. The more he thought about it, the more Lucas was convinced that Zoë was the most expendable. However, one look at her face was enough to tell him that she would be the quickest to switch sides if pushed. Her surprising plea for Felix’s life caught him off guard and sparked an idea in his head. It was a risk, but this time it was a calculated one. But to succeed, Lucas had to act fast. The counter agent would take five minutes to have Zoë back on her feet and in an acceptable condition. In a day or two, there wouldn’t be any remains of the neuro-relaxant in her system. However, waiting that long was out of the question. After all, her well-being wasn’t his priority. What mattered was that the five minutes were almost up, and with them gone, the chance of pushing the girl over the edge would also be gone.
“Honourable physician, can you bring up Miss Kurtz’s vitals? I would like to check if the dosage was correct.” Helix broke the brooding silence that had taken control of the room.
“With this model, it is only done through a hard link.” Dr Saiko stated flatly, his voice devoid of emotion.
It made Lucas wonder if something had gone wrong during the installation of the bulky cybernetic unit in his head or if the man was that much in control of his mental state. Regardless of the truth, there was something about the physician that bothered him. Something stuck at the back of his mind, but for some reason, the Demon couldn’t connect the dots. Moving closer to the examination chair, Lucas motioned with his pistol for the Dr Saiko and Felix to step away. Keeping them at a distance was mandatory in a situation like this. Both of them would be dangerous in close combat. In the doctor’s case, it was because of his cybernetic augmentations. As for the hulking technician, one look was enough to inform Lucas that Mr King had enough raw physical strength to match his own at the current state.
“You’re looking a lot better, Miss Kurtz,” Lucas placed his hand over her neck, pretending to measure her pulse. “To be honest, I’m a little surprised your colleagues didn’t leave you to die. From what I observed, they’re not that fond of you.”
He was speculating, but the comment wasn’t without a grain of truth to it. The relationships between the current occupants of the station were a mystery to him. However, from what little conversations he had listened to over the feed, Helix noticed that loyalty meant very little to these people. That and the obvious age gap between them and Zoë told him that the girl was most likely treated like an outcast.
“Yeh. You’d think that.” She spoke through clenched teeth but couldn’t hide that he had hit the mark. It could be because of the drugs, but reading the Second Officer was as easy for him as stitching a minor cut.
“Too bad they’ll execute you as a traitor at the first opportunity.”
“You must be out of your mind if you think that will happen!” Zoë snapped at him as Lucas smiled inside his helmet.
The medic could see the doubt in her eyes. The worry etched on her face. She wanted an explanation but didn’t want to ask for one. This was going to be easier than he thought. Probably, he had really struck a nerve with his first comment. Officer Kurtz wasn’t an outcast. She was a pariah and aware of it.
“Think about it, Miss Kurtz. You could have warned them about me at any time but didn’t.” Helix lowered his voice to a whisper. “Look at your friends,” he gently pushed her chin with his index finger in the direction of Dr Saiko and Felix. “All they see is a traitor. A junkie who betrayed them for her next fix.”
“You’re wrong…” Zoë let out a stifled sob, tears forming in her eyes. “That was all you! You used me!”
“All I did was set you free,” Lucas answered the accusation with a low purr. “Allowed you to make your own choices without the shackles of morality.”
The Scriptures of the Church of the Third Hell portrayed him and the other Demons as tempters, trying to lure the faithful on the path of sin. As a result, they did the only reasonable thing and embraced the role, making a game of it during Free Reign whenever they travelled with other elements of the imperial army. Trick someone into running naked through the decks. Convince a group to organise an orgy before informing the military police. Trick a grunt to fire on his comrades during a training session by telling him that it would earn them extra reward points. Or start a drinking contest that would have half the crew too intoxicated to know if the artificial gravity was on or off. It was their way of having some fun. Sure, those harmless pranks landed the Demons in a lot of trouble most of the time, but that was part of the game. There had to be winners and losers. And if Lucas and his squad mates couldn’t win, nine out of ten times, they ensured everyone would lose.
“That’s…”
“Like it or not, you’re my accomplice by your own making.” Lucas cut her off, not giving her time to examine his words. “Dr Werner could use the excuse that I forced her to act the way she did and perhaps get away with it, but not you. So, what do you say, Miss Kurtz? There’s no need for you and me to be enemies. Why not be my friend instead?”
He gently helped Zoë to her feet. Apart from her clearly impaired mental state, her physical condition was surprisingly good. The shaking and spasms had stopped, and her skin had returned to a healthier colour. Pupil dilation was back to normal, and there were no signs of erratic eye movement. So far, the girl didn’t show any signs of having an adverse reaction to either the counter-agent or the relaxant. Long-term side effects were harder to assess without doing a detailed examination. Something Lucas was tempted to do because her recovery was far too perfect, and despite his skills, the medic knew he wasn’t that good. That could wait. For now, he had to focus on the present.
“Felix over there has no problem with it. You heard him yourself. Miss Kurtz, you’re an intelligent girl—an Officer. You should’ve figured it out by now that things are about to change.”
Lucas walked towards one of the dead guards and picked the pistol from his dead hand. A quick look at the weapon had the Demon utterly astonished. The bloody thing didn’t have a genetic lock. That was just asking for trouble. What kind of a security force would walk around with unlocked guns? Well, apparently, this one. He had to show her that he trusted her, so he thought giving her a useless weapon was a good way to go about it. But now, Lucas was having second thoughts. Handing a live gun to Zoë, especially in her fragile state, was insane; however, it was too late to back down.
“Friends?” Helix stretched his arm towards her, offering her the pistol.
“You want me to be your friend?! Are you insane?” Although her voice was nearing a strangled shriek, he could see that the girl was tempted by the offer.
“No?” Lucas tried to keep his voice level.
This conversation had gone on for far too long, and he wasn’t that fond of talking with ordinary humans, to begin with. Let alone with civilians pretending to be soldiers. A change of approach was needed, and if that didn’t work, Helix would have no other choice but to cut his losses and use this as a learning experience for his next target.
“You, Miss Kurtz, are the only one who doesn’t have any other choice but to accept my offer. In case you’ve missed it, the people you swear your loyalty to left you at my mercy. In their eyes, you’ve already committed an unforgivable sin. What’s one more?”
Lucas released the breath he had been holding when Zoë nodded and picked up the pistol.
“It wasn’t that hard, was it?” He placed a hand on her shoulder before addressing the other people in the room. “Felix, right? I’m dying to see what you people have done with the Command room. Besides, a nice walk will help everyone clear their heads. I’m sure you all have a lot to think about.”
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The command centre of Last Hope was as run down as the rest of the station. Most to blame for its sorry state were its new occupants. What the archaeologists hadn’t stripped or disassembled, the security staff had rigged and modified to make it work as they wanted. Exposed cables and data-stores cluttered the floor and had almost trapped the twenty technicians at their individual monitoring stations. In the centre of the large circular room was a rotatable dais with a connection half-pod placed on it.
The thing allowed its user to have a hard link to the mainframe and all its systems, at least those that the security staff had managed to turn back online. Usually, that was where Chief Rex would be sitting, though the man had an aversion to getting hooked to the machine. Instead, he preferred to get all the info from the techs. But now he was not here, and because the night shift had started, only a handful of techs were in the room, which was a shock for Zoë since the entire mining complex was under Security lockdown. By all accounts, the place should’ve been buzzing with people digging through every little scrap of information and feeding it to the guards. Not only that but the presence of a trio of eggheads violated every emergency protocol she could think of. No wonder that lunatic Helix had made it to HQ without anyone noticing him.
That didn’t change the fact that Zoë wanted to curl up and cry as soon as the reinforced door to the Control room opened. What was she thinking, helping a deranged terrorist? She had really messed up this time. Any excuse that it was because of the drugs or because of Helix would be a lie. She was the only one at fault. Zoë should have noticed that he had set her up the moment he pushed her down the air vent. To make matters worse, what he told her back in Medical sounded too reasonable, that she had actually accepted his offer of becoming his accomplice. And the way he killed Kodiak and Zheng with mechanical efficiency. It was nothing like the small engagements with gangs she experienced as part of her training as an Academy cadet. That and the brutality with which he had ended the lives of the others outside of the examination room was something Zoë had seen only on captures from active battlefields. She doubted that she could ever erase the sight of the corpses from her mind.
“You can’t come in. HQ is under lock…” One of the techs shouted, jumping up from behind his console only for his face to twist into a mask of horror as he saw Helix. “Oh, fuck!”
The tech reached for the pistol at his hip, and Zoë closed her eyes, knowing what was coming. She didn’t want to see the man die. The terrifying bark of the Ripper rifle made the girl shake like a leaf, and she felt tears roll down her cheeks. What she didn’t expect was the screaming. A part of her was happy that the tech wasn’t dead, while another part feared that this was only a way for her guilty conscience to torture her. Very carefully and very slowly, Zoë opened her eyes. Everyone had frozen into place. The only person moving was the wounded tech. Slumped against the raw of consoles behind him, his right arm was missing from the elbow down. In its place was a gruesome mess of torn muscle and fragmented bone.
Before she, or anyone for that matter, could so much as scream, Dr Saiko was sprinting towards the tech. Zoë was sure she would hear the rifle in Helix’s hands roar again. However, the madman appeared to be content to allow the physician to tend to the wounded man. Instead, he shoved Dr Werner towards the other scientist and locked the door. Turning around, he removed the helmet from his head and smiled. If he hoped that the gesture came across as reassuring or sympathetic, he was wrong. All it achieved was to make him appear smug and full of himself as if he had won. Well, no matter how Zoë examined the situation, he pretty much had. With HQ under his control, Security would have no other option but to storm the Control room, and considering the difference in skill she had observed, the chances of it turning into a bloodbath were all too high.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Felix, my good man, please lock the network. I do not want anyone interrupting.” And Helix’s voice when he gave the order. That was the voice of a born killer. Emotionless, unmoved, inhuman.
“You knew that from the start, girl,” she told herself. Yes, she did, but she didn’t want to believe it. “That’s because you’re thinking with your pants. First cute guy you see in months, and you go and commit treason.”
But that was just it. Zoë couldn’t say with certainty that she did it because of him. It was exactly as Helix had told her; she could have betrayed him at any given moment. Not that there was any loyalty there to betray, to begin with, but she could have. So, was it all because she wanted to turn on her colleagues? Sure, Zoë felt hurt that they had tried to kill her with an arc mine, but that was because, from their point of view, she was as good as dead. She might have done the same thing if it had been Camilo, Yori or even Lemental in her place. No, that was wrong. Zoë would’ve tried her best to save them regardless of what the protocols for this kind of situation dictated. Or… She placed a hand on her face trying to put a stop to the chaotic galop of her thoughts. All she needed were a few minutes to think things over. Maybe there was still a chance she could fix her mistake.
“Miss Kurtz,” Helix’s call made her jump. “Please, join me.”
He stood like a predator at the far wall, his head constantly moving from side to side. He was scanning the room, looking for signs of whom to kill next; Zoë was sure of it. Armed with the Ripper rifle in his hands, even if everyone in the room rushed him, they wouldn’t make three steps before he ended them all. Unsteadily she walked to him. Perhaps this was it; he was going to tell her that she was no longer needed. After all, he said it himself; she was expendable. Zoë stopped two steps away from this monster, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, prepared to accept her fate. She only hoped that the bullet would turn her head into a mist before she could hear the shot.
“I want you to collect everyone’s guns,” Helix said after what felt like an eternity.
“What?” Zoë didn’t need to fake surprise.
“Miss Kurtz, I’m starting to think that the requirements for security here are not high. You’re a smart girl, right?” Helix tilted his head slightly, giving her a quizzical look.
Zoë couldn’t understand what this killer was talking about. The techs carried only stun guns, hardly something he would consider a threat. They might be Academy graduates, but they couldn’t use the bloody things for shit. She had seen how bad their aim was in the training range.
“I see…” There was disappointment in his voice. “Killing civilians is regrettable. But there is no such thing as armed non-combatants.”
“No!” She hissed at him putting her hand on the rifle, ignoring the fact that her life could be ended in an instant.
“See, I knew you were a smart girl,” he placed his hand on her shoulder like a friend would. “When you’re done, go make sure the good scientists don’t do anything stupid.”
Having lost interest in her, Helix directed his annoying smile at King, who was already hard-linked to his console.
“Are you done, Felix?”
“Yes… sir.” The man was trying to act professionally. However, Zoë could see through him. Jing didn’t care he was sabotaging his friends.
“Very good. I knew the two of us would get along very well. Open channel SMA-1A.” Helix instructed.
“But that is…”
“I know what it is. Don’t worry. There is still a lot for you to do.”
“Registrita provo de aliro. Provizi aŭtentokodon.” An artificial voice boomed from the hidden speakers inside the room as soon as Felix nodded.
There was a response from Helix, but it was lost in the sudden commotion that erupted around her. Techs and eggheads were shouting at one another, not bothering to listen to what anyone was saying. However, the next sound that boomed from the speakers caused everyone present to go silent.
“Konfirmo konfirmita. Benata estu la Sanktulo de Infero. Uzanto Helix, kiel mi povas helpi?”
“Bloody hell!” Felix’s startled shout resonated through the command centre. The other techs had backed from their stations, trying to tear away the cables connecting them to the mainframe as if they were on fire. Worry and excitement warred on their faces, but nowhere was the conflict more prominent than on the comm operator’s large mug.
“What was that?” Zoë couldn’t help but ask as she froze behind him.
“That’s the voice of a Control AI! Those things are just theoretical!” King quickly disconnected the hard link he had with his console with shaking hands.
“Ok, but there is one in the mainframe. You must’ve known it was there,” she couldn’t believe that the best tech she had known was spooked by an AI. There were at least a dozen of those operating various functions throughout the complex. What difference did one more make?
“You don’t get it. It is theoretical. As in, it shouldn’t exist!” He turned to face her, pointing at the console’s screen. “Look, the data and coding of the mainframe are so complex that there was no way to know for sure. There were hints there was way more than we had access to, but….”
King removed the restraint keeping him locked to his station and stood up, towering like a mountain over her. It didn’t take much to scare the large man, Zoë knew that, but the mainframe was his domain. Every time there was some new alarm they couldn’t understand or a new function was found, Felix was the one to tackle and overcome it. Now, however, he appeared mortified.
“Hey, look at me, King,” Zoë put as much steel in her voice as she could muster. “It’s just an old AI…”
“Just an AI!” He snapped at her. “An AI is just a string of logical algorithms that follow a pre-determined problem and solution checklist pattern. I can write the code frame for one in a couple of days. But this is a Control AI! It can work without user confirmation! This thing is bloody sentient!”
“Ok, ok, calm down,” she tightened the grip on the pistol in case he became aggressive.
“No, Zoë, you should panic! We all should panic! That thing has complete access to all systems! If it decides, it can cut off the air supply or open every hatch, bulkhead and hangar door to the outside!” Felix collapsed on his seat and took a deep breath.
“Look at this,” King pointed at the tabs on the screen. “That’s an admin command panel. I don’t need to speak the damned imperial gibberish to recognise one. It took me a good hundred days to crack its encryption just to see it!” His finger shifted to the motionless Helix. “And your new friend is the one who opened it.”
The comment stung her. Helix was right; the others didn’t think of her as one of them, not any more. It only confirmed that she had made the right choice, even if it was one that tore her heart.
“So? It just means he is good with tech,” Zoë insisted, hiding the pain she felt behind faked indignation.
Felix looked at her with an incredulous expression. After another moment, he spoke in a calmer tone. “He is not good with tech. The Control AI burned through the firewall and removed every single restriction, giving him admin privileges in less than a second.”
“Ok?”
Zoë was having trouble understanding why King was so flustered. All that technology crap was beyond her. He could have been speaking in another language for the difference it would make. The AI Felix was talking about was a big deal. She figured that much, but the tech had given Helix the security codes, which meant there was no reason for him to be that surprised that Helix had gained control of the system.
“You don’t get it, do you?” King shook his head the same way a parent would when trying to explain a basic concept to a child. “For him to order the AI to do that, he must have an active valid security signature. Only the people who made the Control AI can issue those.”
“Fine!” She rolled her eyes in frustration. “In that case, he found one. You guys dig out access codes all the time….”
“Not the same thing. You don’t find sec-signatures lying around. They’re implant-locked.” Felix tapped the side of his head. “Remove the implant, or the user dies, and the signature is no longer valid. It’s one of the first things they teach us techs at the Academy.”
He leaned back on the seat and lowered his voice. “Zoë, who the hell is this guy?”
“Yeah.” As if she could answer that, however, there was something that was nagging her. “Could you find out what the Church of the Third Hell is and what they say about demons?”
“Seriously? You want me to do a search on a sect that was purged several centuries ago?” King shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you are into that religious crap?”
“Do you have something else to do?” Zoë snapped at him.
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Virginia had managed to get a hold of her emotions. Seeing the cybernetic kill all those men nearly broke her. Like every human being, she understood that combat was a horrible thing. All the images and stills she had come across during her research had her convinced that she had become desensitised and could handle any situation. But Virginia underestimated by an order of magnitude how paralysing primal fear could be. Worse, she had helped the monster practically cripple the entire security force on Last Hope. Not that there was anything she could have done to prevent it, but that did little to soothe her guilty conscience. Sadly, it was the one excuse she hated the most.
“There’s always something you can do. You push back, struggle, and fight, but you get it done,” that’s what she always told her students and assistants, condemning them for giving up. The hypocrisy of that statement wasn’t lost on her. In the end, Virginia had only herself to blame for everything. Herself and the stupid security girl. At least Virginia’s mistakes were caused by misfortune. In contrast, guard Kurtz had turned traitor. Virginia had doubted it at first; she had even felt sorry for the girl because she thought the grunt had been injected with the same toxin as her. But seeing Officer Kurtz now patrol between the monitoring stations with a weapon in hand, there was no longer any doubt.
“Why did you bring him here?” Anton’s accusing voice pulled her back to reality.
The only reason Professor Kruger and his assistant were still here was because of the alarm she had triggered. They were working on one of the servers when all this began. Of course, they would stay to help decrypt all the warnings. No, even before that, Anton practically lived inside Security HQ.
“I’m sorry,” Virginia stumbled and collapsed to the floor.
“Why did you help him?” Professor Kruger sat next to her between the cables. “I’ve known you for years; you would have fought and resisted against an imperial loyalist.”
“No, Anton, not against him,” she shook her head and stifled the new wave of sobs. “He’s not a loyalist. He is an Imperial soldier, however.”
“What are you talking about? The imperials haven’t moved out of the Balen Cluster in over three decades. And now you claim they’ve made it all the way here without anyone noticing,” the older man looked at her with concern in his eyes.
“I told you, he is not a part of the Third Empire,” Virginia closed her eyes, trying to erase the image of the dead guards. She wanted to scream at her former mentor but couldn’t muster the strength. “He can speak Unue.”
“You must be delusional. No one alive can speak…” Professor Kruger’s words were interrupted by a loud artificial voice coming from the inactive speakers hidden in the walls.
“Registrita provo de aliro. Provizi aŭtentokodon.”
“That… That is Unue!” Anton’s astonished voice was something Virginia hadn’t heard in a decade.
“Trust me, the surprises are just starting,” she pointed at Helix, who walked into the centre of the room.
“Heliks, nulo ok, generacio tri. Identigo nul-ok-m-tri-d-kvar-h-g-h-s-a-f. Vaganta Atako kaj Infiltri Sekcio Demono.” The young man spoke and smiled.
“That… That is…” The professor opened and closed his mouth a few times but could not find the proper words.
“That is why I did it,” Virginia gave him a bitter smile and buried her face in her knees to hide her tears.
The moment Helix spoke, she knew she would be known as a traitor. She had to learn more. She just had to. All she could do was produce a light hysterical giggle. It was hard for her to accept the truth. When everything was said and done, it all boiled down to Virginia’s curiosity and need to be the first to crack the mystery of history. Given a second chance, she would make the same choices. However, she didn’t hope to be understood or forgiven since she couldn’t forgive herself. But tormenting herself over guilt could wait. Especially when, right in front of her, Helix was conversing with an AI in Unue. And by the sound of it, not just any AI, but a Control AI. In just a few minutes, the young man had provided them with enough material to crack Unue and gain access to so much lost knowledge. The implications of what was transpiring here were enough to stir the scientific community into an uproar, and neither she nor Anton had any proper recording equipment. As a machine archaeologist, she was outraged; she could only imagine what a crypto-analysist like Kruger was feeling. The man looked as if he was about to burst not one but several blood vessels.
“Do you understand now why I did not resist?” Virginia smiled at her colleague like a lunatic.
“You remember how we used to joke at the Institute that we would kill for even a glimpse of something like this?” Anton’s voice was empty of all emotion. “I never thought… It feels unreal.”
The sudden movement of the half-pod startled them and broke the spell that had taken them over, followed by two sets of chain-linked automated turrets dropping from the ceiling.
“How did we miss this?” She managed to ask no one in particular.
“Because no one bothered to look. This was supposed to be a simple mining complex, nothing else,” Anton looked as if he had aged several decades in just a moment.
“We were wrong. Do you remember that old story Professor Ju-i used to tell at the beginning of every semester at the Institute?” Virginia asked, not expecting an answer since the poor man didn’t look to have the proper state of mind to do so.
“There are many things that have stayed with us from before humanity left its cradle and spread among the stars. But one you should remember well. There be dragons here. A simple warning against the unknown and the fear it inspires. We have always feared the unknown, so we explore it.” Virginia made a flimsy attempt to mimic the voice of an old bored man and laughed.
The sudden unmistakable sound of turret fire from the corridor on the other side of the door made her jump. She pressed her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream that wanted release. Only after a minute, without anything happening, did Virginia look at Anton’s deathly pale face.
“There be dragons here… I think someone forgot to place the sign before we came to Last Hope.”
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