SSFG-04 Survivor’s Voice
Orbit of Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.3.1 Interstellar
Nikandros sat patiently at the foot of the table and let the babble of the Consensus, or at least its local representatives, wash over him.
“This has gone too far,” Psorayan, the neotraditionalist, said. “We’ve never seen numbers like this.”
“You mean they have never been this high,” Hamilton of the matriarchate. “It’s because the externality is a woman.”
Uzu of the nihilists laughed. “Careful, Ham. She was enabled by a man.”
“Don’t call me ‘Ham,’” Hamilton said. “Nikandros’s Irkallans are out of control.”
“I’m sure he’d happily recognize they’re outliers,” Zerneel, the collaborativist, said. “I’m disappointed in your librarian, Nikandros. He should know we’re all on the same side.”
“There are no sides,” Uzu said.
Psorayan scoffed. “Survivor, preserve us. Can we agree that someone is responsible?”
All four of the arbitrators looked at Nikandros.
“Esteemed colleagues,” Nikandros said over his folded hands. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you my faction’s position. Janus Invarian is an outlier, and his introduction into the Krandermoran system has shaken loose millenia of rust.”
“At your instigation!” Psorayan said, slapping the table.
“As Zerneel pointed out,” Nikandros said reasonably, “the outlier has rebuffed my attempts at coercion. Even my apprentice has been led astray.”
Hamilton glared at him resentfully, and Nikandros gave her a small nod. “There is no need for us to be enemies, Observer Hamilton. The parts of me you resent are long gone.”
“The taint of your gender remains, Nikandros,” Hamilton said. “Your path is aggression, competition, and schism. One day, Zerneel will see you for what you are.”
Zerneel stared at the representative of the matriarchate across the table.
Sometimes, Nikandros thought, our enemies plead our case more eloquently than we ever could.
Uzu sighed. “The fact remains the aggregate scores have never been higher. It makes me cringe to say it, but isn’t survival what matters? I mean, isn’t that why we’re here?”
“I agree,” Zerneel said, and Hamilton smirked.
Psorayan sat down opposite Nikandros. “The scores have never been more volatile. They’re already dropping. For all we knew, they’ll finish at a lower point than we have since the plague.”
“But why?” Zerneel asked.
It was the moment Nikandros had been waiting for. He cleared his throat and asked, “Has anyone seen Architect Donnika?”
***
Assault Shuttle Mind the Gap
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.3.1 Interstellar
Donnika rode the shuttle down to the surface of Krandermore, drop harness locked down, just like her troops. She’d emptied the cryo bays, so she had sixteen former aspirants in the bay with her.
Things had gotten out of hand. While the arbitration committee bickered, Nikandros was only days from getting his hands on Dr. Jahangir’s research, and that could not be allowed to happen. If he did, the careful balance of the Consensus—and Donnika’s majority—would be destroyed.
She had to admire the old cyborg. Some saw Nikandros as a tireless hanger-on, stubbornly stumping for the exceptionalist cause for over two centuries. Some factions ridiculed him, while others thought he was a blind ideologist, but they both failed to grasp the danger Nikandros presented.
The exceptionalist architect wasn’t a bludgeon. He was a dagger poised to strike. It was only through her efforts and those of her predecessors that Nikandros had not yet had the opportunity to do so.
She worried, of course. No matter how much confidence she displayed, and no matter how much her faction deferred to her, she had not been prepared to assume the role of architect so young. The death of architect Lindgren had been a shock. She’d expected to have another fifty years—a sun-side lifetime—to prepare.
But there was no use in wishful thinking. History moved on its own schedule, and she would have to rely on the pressures of the times to shape her.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
A part of her worried that Nikandros had been right, that she should have given Brago what he asked for, what had been promised to him, and that she should have abided by the terms of the arbitration. She felt an uncertainty she had not felt for over a decade when her predecessor ordered the cleansing of Prometheus Base, and she had almost dissented.
Wasn’t their present situation a result of that action, and if so, had she been wrong to stifle her objections?
She had no one to perform that service for her now. No one but her sworn adversary.
“Fifteen minutes to LZ,” the shuttle’s pilot informed her.
“Acknowledged. All aspirants prepare for landing. Helmets on, suits sealed, weapons loaded, keep them tight. Proceed by teams and secure your objectives. You know what’s at stake.”
“Yes, ma’am!” came the chorus of assent.
Strength through struggle, aspirants, she thought but didn’t say. She remembered riding a similar shuttle over thirteen years ago, both eager to perform her duty to humanity and apprehensive about what was required.
She no longer felt that inner turmoil. She was an architect and the leader of her faction, and only outcomes mattered. The drop in the region’s survivability was a concern, but she trusted in her ability to shape the best outcome on the ground.
One way or another, she would protect the Cult from Nikandros, she would protect Krandermore from the cancer of Prometheus Base, and the remnant of humanity from the horrors Dr. Jahangir had locked away in the Eastern Labs, under the Carver Institute.
***
Hab 55, Second District, Carver Institute
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.3.1 Interstellar
Brago closed the door to the safe house and found the team waiting for him. The Motragi was by the window, to the side, watching the back alley. The Pugarian was sitting on the couch, playing a solo card game.
“What did she say?” the other Verazlan said, walking in from the adjoining room.
“To sit tight,” Brago said, dropping his bag and heading to the fridge. “She’s coming to us.”
The Motragi turned his head. “Red Donnika is coming here?”
“Who’s Red Donnika,” the Verazlan asked.
“The woman we worked for,” the Pugarian said. “She’s called Red Donnika because she led one of the biggest operations the Cult ran in the last decade. Killed tens of thousands of people.”
“I was there,” Brago said. He opened the fridge and grabbed a beer bag, designed to be able to be drunk in coveralls or in a vacuum suit. He twisted the seal cap off and squeezed the whole bag down his throat. “We’re not dead,” Brago said, tossing the empty into the recycler. “But she is coming to kill us.”
The Pugarian slapped another card down on the coffee table.
The Motragi went back to watching the alley.
Brago sat down in the only chair big enough for him, a ratty green easy chair he’d backed with Kevlar and with a sidearm taped to its side.
The others waited. The Motragi had ice for blood, and the Pugarian was good at hiding her nerves. They were both older than Brago—a few years in age, a few decades in cryo. No one they’d known was still alive. A part of Brago that had lain dormant for the years he’d worked for the Cult wondered at that. He’d killed the wayfinder because his family was at risk; the other two stood by him because they had nothing to lose. No right answers… he thought.
His eyes slid to his clan mate, an anxious younger man who deferred to Brago as a matter of honor, because of ancient debts between their families. He’d been an aspirant in the previous year’s Trials, not even part of their original team, a hanger-on who joined them in Midnight Hollow in hopes of greater glory. He had to be nervous that what was happening in Veraz would spill over from Brago’s family to his, but it was not enough to betray them.
“Where’s the coldsider?” Brago finally asked.
The others looked at him.
Brago sighed. He should have known. She’d always been quick to do Tiersen’s bidding, to make excuses for his failures. “We’re lucky she didn’t just kill us.”
“She tried,” the Pugarian said. “I disabled the bomb as soon as she left.”
“That’s it, then,” the Verazlan said.
Brago nodded and wrung his hands.
He was the first to admit—to himself—that killing Tiersen had been impulsive. He wouldn’t have done it six years ago when he’d been responsible for his family and been a real aspirant, living and surviving by his own decisions. He’d spent so much of the last years killing on command, it was like he’d lost the habit of restraint. The waking part of him worried about that but also recognized he was out of time.
They’d planned to give Red Donnika what she wanted—Team Invarian dead. Brago had never known why, exactly, and that bothered him, too, now that he knew Koni Atl-Verazlan was the reason his daughter was still alive.
He looked at the others and did something he hadn’t done since his fourth or fifth mission for the Cult. “My name is Brago Tlali Acamatl. I was a dockworker in Veraz before I won the trials.”
“Isaac Condori,” the Motragi said.
“Elsbeth Mackenzie,” the Pugarian said.
“Itzel Cualli-Tlacatecatl,” the young Verazlan said solemnly. “What do we do?”
“Need to get the chips out of our skulls,” Elsbeth, the Pugarian, said. “Otherwise, we drop dead as soon as she’s within transmission range.”
“My clan might help,” Isaac, the Motragi, said.
“It’s settled then,” Brago said.
They’d been burned, hunted by people they’d probably stood beside in battle, but they were all aspirants, and Brago intended to survive.
***
Freeport, Proxima Elementals
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.3.1 Interstellar
Janus ran a final check on the buggies’ diagnostics over his wrist comm. Fury was in her sidecar and sealed in. The others were suited up and ready.
“Last stop before the run to Midnight Hollow,” Mick said. “Think Koni will be okay?”
“Because of the Carverites?” Janus asked.
“She did try to kill all of them,” Mick said.
Janus looked over at Koni, who looked back and nodded at him. “Let’s just try not to draw attention to ourselves.”
“What about the Eastern Labs?” Ryler asked for the third time that day.
“I haven’t decided,” Janus said. “We can only do this during the Trials?”
“Yes,” Ryler said. “We’d never be allowed in otherwise.”
Janus hated the feeling he was being rushed into something he didn’t understand. The offer to move his team and two hundred of their people to Lumiara was a solution to their problems he wouldn’t have dared hope for under other circumstances.
Knowing Nikandros, it was probably both genuine and something Janus would regret. “I’ll reach out to the Motragi Rangers when we get closer. The scores are down across the board, and unless we do something drastic, there is no guarantee we’re going to win, but we also know the compartmentalist team has dropped out of the race. They could be waiting for us in Dr. Jahangir’s facility.”
“They wouldn’t be allowed in,” Ryler said.
“Doesn’t mean they can’t ambush us at the door, mate,” Mick said.
“Let’s get on the road,” Janus said, ending the discussion.
He had a bad feeling about what was coming. The last time things had gotten this quiet during the Trials, they’d gotten swarmed by triliths and bombed from space before almost dying of radiation sickness.
There was nothing for it but to get in and out of the Carver Institute as quickly as possible and try to finish the race.