41
TRAEJAN
Traejan shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench, stared down by the dark Consortia
woman. He felt a painful tightness in his chest, as she forced him to relive the worst event
in his life.
She’d sent him back there, back to the tundra. Traejan stared at Althea, trying to match
her penetrating gaze. He easily remembered the night three years before, as painfully clear
as if it was yesterday: the cold, damp wind blowing from the south, up from the tundra,
over them, towards the ice. That should have been the first warning. The winds always
blew down from the glaciers
“Where were you?”
There was so much to do, after securing their position. They had to locate buried
entrances, map the underground facility accurately. All the while, keeping watch for any
kind of mech presence. He was on the outside rim of the ruins – working his way in.
Find the trilium. Pack the trilium. High tail it back to the ice. Live for another day.
“What were you doing, when things started?”
“I was radar surveying the ruins for their underground foundations,” remembering
holding the heavy emitter, the readings on it’s screen, symbols glowing showing the pattern
of the structures beneath them, recording the results, comparing with the info they’d been
given. There were several levels extending all the way to the bedrock, giving tantalizing
hints of what he was looking for, “storage vaults, energy sources.”
Without any sign of an imminent threat, they all had split up into five set of pairs – based
on the layout of the ruins, five subterranean extensions, five groups.
“Were you alone?”
Was he ever alone, back then? No, never.
“No,” he told her. “I was…”
He looked at her. She was staring at him intently with those brown, alien eyes. “I was
with–”
“Kaelin,” he finally got it out. The effort made him gasp, and he breathed and breathed
again, until the stress subsided. What was he so afraid of?
“Do you know what I did?” he asked Althea.
She didn’t seem to understand, finally shook her head.
“No,” she said calmly, evenly, not responding to his distress. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“I left her.”
Left her there to die – left her there dead, unburned. Left here there – hadn’t been able to
return, not even for her. The anguish rose in him again, the anger, the frustration, and the
guilt.
He needed air; need to breathe, filled his needy lungs deeply, again and again and again –
looked back at the Consortia woman. Why didn’t she hate him? Why didn’t she react with
scorn, disgust?
He couldn’t take it anymore – jumped to his feet. She looked up at him, finally reacting
the way he wanted, with shock.
“I left her there!” he shouted his pain. “I said I would never leave her!”
So many times he’d promised Kaelin, whether she could hear him or not. She would have
never left him – not like that – never!
Then she was standing. He felt her grip on his arms, gently pushing him back down,
telling him to calm down, sit down, take it easy. It was over – long over. He felt her body
close to his, the smell of her, the touch of her breath, light and sweet. He couldn’t look at
her, shut his eyes tight as he could as he was forced gently back to his seat. The pain faded.
His breathing slowed.
Althea let go of him.
“What happened Traejan?” he heard her say, softly but firmly. He put his head in his
hands, remembering the chaos – the screams.
He looked back over at Althea, wiped the blurriness, wetness from his eyes. She held that
sympathetic expression he’d seen before. He didn’t see any hate at all.
“It was crazy,” he told her finally. “They were shouting, over the transceivers, over and
over.”
He was back there again.
“Kona screaming ‘what are you doing’,” he relayed the horror. “Dray yelling ‘look out,
stay away.’ I can’t remember what the others were shouting about. They were all shouting
at once.”
There was the sound of gunfire, repeated, followed by more shouts, screams.
Kaelin had looked at him, worried, alarmed. Told him they had to leave. He agreed – ran
– following her over to the northwest quadrant of the ruins.
“We got to them as quickly as we could,” he told Althea.
By the time he’d reached them, his legs were heavy as stone, he was gasping for breath.
“But it was too late,” he finished. “We were too late. It was over.”
42
The carnage had been horrific, and not just in the quadrant where the screams – the
shooting – had started. The others were dead or dying, bullet ridden or hacked apart,
leaving only Kaelin and him untouched, their friends and comrades bleeding into the
tundra, the dusting of snow their final blankets.
“What was over?”
He shook off his reverie.
She repeated her question.
“The fight,” he told her, angry at her insistence. “The attack.”
“But they weren’t all killed?”
“No, not everyone, not yet,” he continued, voice choking with the memory. “Moloch and
Dray were still alive – barely – bleeding badly. Thule was missing, we never saw his
body.”
“Did you look for him?” She wanted to know.
He stared at her in amazement. Hadn’t she been listening to him?
“Six of us had just been killed,” he forced out. “The two left were bleeding to death. We
were strecking busy keeping them alive!”
Kaelin and he struggled to keep Moloch and Dray breathing, staunching their wounds;
providing what drugs they had to cut the pain, stop the bleeding. Comforting each other,
pat on the shoulder, words of encouragement squeeze of the hand. However, in the
moments of free thought, he was filling with a growing dread.
Not Kaelin, she just seemed determined as she always had been – frantic, definitely –
angry, certainly.
“Did they kill each other?”
“At first I thought–” he began, “but no – they couldn’t have – could they? They would
have said something. They were able to talk to us a bit. Before–”
Before they died.
Althea moved back, sat back down gingerly on the chair that protested even her weight.
She looked up at him.
“What did they tell you Traejan?”
He sighed heavily, sat back down heavily on the bench, rubbed his face and then looked
back at her, matched her gaze. He was tired of talking, tired of remembering.
“Moloch and Dray,” he continued remembering it clearly. “They said that something
came out of the ground, out of the ruins. They didn’t tell me much – there wasn’t time.
Then… they were killed right in front of us.”
Metal arms, robotic grips – grasped them, from beneath the ground; cutting their bodies,
blood spurting from them before they disappeared into the tundra. The ground vibrated
underneath them, then started sliding, bucking. Kaelin grabbed his arm. He could still see
that look on her face – couldn’t forget it –the first time he ever saw her afraid.
“No one picked up the underground activity?”
Traejan shook his head. The next thing her remembered there was churned tundra
everywhere. It looked like the results of explosives – until it shuddered, rolled like water.
He said that he would never leave her.
“Was it a Bot that did it?” Althea asked him. “A Flyer? Many?”
He shook his head.
“I think so… I don’t know!”
He hadn’t stayed to look. They ran – ran until they could find solid, frozen ground.
“Didn’t you look?”
“We were running away,” he confessed – looking ahead – not back. Even now, he wasn’t
sure what he had seen in the roiling, churning ground. “I was running away.”
And he’d never even tried to go back – not once.
43
Not once.
Traejan realized that he had a hand on his chest, high, close to his color bone, fingers
outstretched to touch the rope of gold that still hung there. He looked down as his hand,
pale fingers desperately clutching it. Kyso had made the rope for him, a twin of the one the
old man had made for Kaelin – cold bright metal, twisting ropes of rosy yellow
permanence; their bond.
He looked up, seeing Althea’s eyes were staring at his hand, his act.
“Why believe in the traditions of the high and mighty Consortia?” she’d told him more
than once; left her’s dangling all over their home, least of all around her neck.
“The Consortia hasn’t come”, she told him once, as they held each other in the dark.
“Why should we be held to what the Consortia wants? We have to take care of ourselves.”
Kaelin…
He looked back at Althea; she was watching him, leaning forwards, hands on her knees.
She was Consortia. She was judging him; he could see it in her eyes.
“You’re still wearing your marriage bond,” Althea offered softly.
“Yes,” he told her reluctantly. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“No…” she replied, quickly shaking her head. “No.”
She sat up straight, pushed her hair away from her eyes.
“Did you see anything else?” She raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
He took in, a slow, deep breath – let it out.
“Not from below, I– we did see another mech. It came.” he finally told her, pointing up,
“from the sky.”
The ground had stopped shuddering. They had managed to reach the edge of the ruins, up
above on a rocky height, trying to figure out where to run, where would be the safest place.
The defenses hadn’t worked at all, had entirely disappeared in the fields of overturned
earth, and they a good fourteen from safe ground. Then the wind came up again, and they
saw it – descending – down of the clouds. Kaelin stared up with him, and they realized to
their horror, that it had been there all the time.
Must have been.
“Describe it, Traejan. Please.”
He remembered, holding her hand, for the last time, a tight grip as he, they stared up at
the colossal thing, eyes smarting in the wind blowing down at them.
“It was huge,” he told her, still terrified by the memory. “Vast… like a city. Maybe it was
a city – once – before. We had floating cities... I remember them. But this thing – it wasn’t
that anymore. It was one of them.”
She was watching him more closely now, eyes wide, rapt at his description, lips slightly
parted.
“Yes,” her voice was low, intense. “Continue.”
“It blocked out the sky, glowed with thousands of lights,” he continued, caught up as
well, with the memory. “The sound, so loud, so deep, I could feel it vibrating in my bones.
It had flyers circling it”
The pounding, pounding sound was all around them. He pulled Kaelin away. They
stumbled, struggled over the spongy ground. Traejan could feel his breath quicken as he
relived the terror.
“I ran,” he told Althea breathing hard, as if he as still running, still being chased by that
thing. “I ran. We ran. I though I was going to die, I thought it was going to take us, do to us
what the mechs did to the others.”
She sat there silently, watching, not yelling at him, not cursing, just watching.
“You saw a corpore,” she told him, voice still low, leaned back in her chair, eyes
narrowed. “It’s the primary physical expression of a Macro – its hand, or its eyes – a piece
of its body. It must have been called, Traejan. What happened to you, to all of you, must
have been planned well in advance.”
The mechs had known? All along…
“Of course it knew we were there, it was a trap all along,” Traejan relaxed. That was
exactly what he had always believed.
“And yet,” Althea reminded him. “Here you are. You alone survived.”
He looked down, feeling the guilt again. Why had the things taken everyone else but him
– why?
“What happened to Kaelin?” she asked him softly.
44
“We were running.” The powerful winds were growing even stronger, blowing snow and
earth all around them – so much that they couldn’t see ahead or behind.
“Don’t let go!” she had shouted over the roar of the wind.
Then he lost her hand, lost her grip – stopped – spun around searching. Where was she?
Why had she let go? He called out her name, but couldn’t even hear his own voice over the
howling wind. He felt around for her frantically, blinded.
“I found her on the ground, I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her arm, her head, her
hair,” he shut his eyes again, tears welling as they had then, but the pain was different.
“There was so much dirt in the air!”
There was nothing he could do, nowhere he could go. In the continuous roar, he kneeled
over her. Tried to wake her, tried to find out what was wrong with her. Her whole body had
gone limp. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. He held her close to him, opened his
eyes a crack – to look into hers.
Kaelin’s eyes were open, staring.
“What happened to her?” Althea’s voice was distant, prodding his memories.
“She just fell,” it was all he could remember. “She wasn’t breathing. She was staring up
at me, but her eyes...” were dead.
She was gone – and the great mech was coming closer – its roar overwhelming
everything! It was too much; he scrambled to his feet and ran and ran and ran.
Traejan couldn’t sit still any longer – lurched blindly to his feet – passed the Consortia
woman – right into an engine block. The sudden pain, anguish stopped him again. He held
onto the cold metal block, leaned against it, seeing nothing through the agony of memory.
“How did she die?”
“I don’t know!” He cried out. He hadn’t seen any wound. He held her body in the
screaming wind, cradling her, not wanting to leave her.
“Did you kill her?”
He whirled around to challenge. Saw the Consortia woman standing right there – hand on
the block, eyes blazing.
“How can you say that,” he shot back. “I loved her!”
“No!” he shouted at her. “I didn’t, I couldn’t, I loved her, I would never hurt her – or any
of them!”
“Then why did you leave her behind?”
He couldn’t remember! He remembered holding her, remembered the storm around them
– running, running, running and never looked back – not until he’d collapsed in exhaustion:
the horror, the mech, the dead – far, far, behind. He closed his eyes tightly, leaned heavily
on the engine, gripping it tightly. Remembered–
“The storm took her away from me,” a moment he was holding her – then, “I tried to
hold onto her, but I couldn’t. It just pulled her away.”
He felt a hand on her shoulder, squeezing softly.
“It’s all right now,” she was telling him. “It’s over. It happened a long time ago.”
He loosed his grip on the hard, solid metal, looked over at her.
“Did it?” his voice was loaded with unmitigated pain. “Did it really?! That’s not how it
feels.”
45
He still leaned against the engine block – weak, spent – wanting to be left alone in his
grief. Still, the woman wasn’t going away. What more did she want?
“I left her there,” he confessed. “What does that make me?”
“A survivor,” she said, refusing to condemn him, as though surviving alone was an
accomplishment.
It didn’t seem to be such a wonderful thing to be. He survived all his family, the whole
world he lived in, everything the he’d had in this life. What had that gotten him?
“I abandoned her,” he insisted. Why didn’t this woman hate that?
She shook her head, her dark hair swirling around her head. Like Kaelin’s had, when…
“You said so yourself Traejan,” Althea said coldly. “She was dead. You tried to hold onto
her. She was taken away.”
He lowered his head again.
“I did,” he said quietly. Why then didn’t it ease his pain?
“We are not in a fight where everyone can be saved,” Althea told him. “We’re not in a
fight where we can carry our past around with us.”
She lowered her gaze, then lifted it to look him in the eyes, a haunted look on her face.
“It’s too heavy,” she finished.
He’d been thinking only about himself. What about her?
“Who have you lost to the Macros?”
Her expression closed right up, face turning to a protective mask, offering nothing. He
knew that look.
“A lot,” she told him, voice cracking. He saw, for the first time, a vulnerability that she
hadn’t expressed before – even when she’d been unconscious – near death. “The closest.”
“Answer me one thing then,” he asked her.
She brightened a touch.
“What do you want to know?”
“Why you choose to come now?” His demands poured out in a flood. “Is this world so
unimportant? Are there so many in a worse state than we are?”
She looked away for a moment, took a few step from him. He pushed himself from the
block, waited.
Althea turned back.
“It’s not easy to move between the worlds now Traejan,” she told him evenly, she still
had a haunted look in her eyes. “Picture it: the galaxy is made up of millions of stars; each
moving in its own direction, at its own speed; their planets, moons, everything all traveling
through space in unique orbits.
“The Mirror Maze network has to keep track of all of that. When the Macro’s struck, a lot
of that capability was lost, maybe forever. Even the most precise transit formulas today
can’t compensate everywhere for that loss. It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was a matter of
scale, of… probabilities.”
She gave him a sad, wistful smile.
“I wish things were different,” she told him, sounding genuinely regretful. “I do wish I
could have come here years ago. You have to decide what is more important to you. Are
you going to hang on to what happened three years ago? To something you cannot undo –
or get back your world. Help me put an end to those things that killed all your friends... that
killed your wife. There’s nothing I can now, do but help the best I can. It’s all any of us can
do. What so you want to do? What would she have wanted you to do?”
He gaze, words, demanded a response, still standing very close to him.
“She would have wanted me help,” he finally choked out. “I want to. I have to.”
“I’m glad,” she told him, held his gaze. He could feel her gently pat his arm. “I didn’t
want to have to leave you behind.”
Traejan shook his head at her statement.
“Do you actually still think that I like this world,” he struggled for a moment. “That I
wouldn’t do anything to change it?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t know,” she admitted, narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him. “I needed to be
certain.”
He shook his head. Looking over at the lifter chassis, remembered that he still had plenty
work ahead of him. He glanced back at Althea.
“Is that it?” Traejan hoped it was.
She gave him a sympathetic look.
“I didn’t intend it to be so hard on you,” she told him.
“Sure.”
She looked away from him. He followed her gaze. She was looking at the thruster unit,
battered on the chassis, turned back to him.
“I could help you with that,” she offered.
“Let me give it another try,” he rejected her offer immediately, then softened. “If I can’t
get it in, I’ll ask.”
“Let me know, then,” she nodded, backed away a couple steps, started to turn. “I’ll let
you do your work.”
He nodded.
“Thank you,” he offered tiredly. She didn’t leave though, just lingered there. He needed
to get back to work, turned away, picked up a tool, examined it, not remembering what it
was, or what it was for – didn’t look up until the sounds of her retreating footsteps
disappeared. Traejan dropped the tool, rubbed his face, tried to think about the task at hand,
heard Thule’s screams again, echoing in his mind.
The thruster unit sat on the floor, across from him. He still couldn’t figure out how to fit
it in without compromising the strength of the chassis retaining brackets, cutting them.
There was the problem of equalizing the power feed, another headache in the making.
Maybe he should ask her to help. Maybe tomorrow…
His hand went again, up over the gold rope around his neck, the pressure intensifying –
felt again – cold metal against his skin.
“I’ll do it for you,” he whispered, closing his eyes, picturing Kaelin – smiling. “I won’t
forget you. If those things can be destroyed… I will do whatever I have to.”
46
ALTHEA
If she unfocused her eyes – the cracks above the bed transformed into rings – rings within
rings.
She ran a thumb and finger along the warm fabric of her memsuit, from her neck, along
the hardness of her collarbone down between her breasts. Unlike with Traejan, there was
nothing meaningful to break the smoothness, not with what he had – and never had been.
Oh, there had been moments, adventures, dreams: Nayr, Morogan, Trise. Nothing good,
nothing enduring had come of them. Still, her thoughts kept returning to those long
discarded hopes, then back to Traejan’s vivid recollections of loss.
Fleeing from the drones – the approach of the corpore, she could picture it in her mind –
looming, falling, surrounding, the force of its thrusters blowing everything around them.
Then losing her – the guilt in Traejan’s eyes, his face, all the ways he physically reacted to
the recalled memories.
Althea wondered who would remember her that way, if something happened to her. If
she had died underneath all that ice. Who would miss her? Like that? What human being
would care that much? Or at all?
She hadn’t wanted to leave him there, alone with his reawakened grief; but couldn’t stay
either, and risk exposing her own. So, she allowed him to turn away, forced herself to
leave. Pushing past the piles of broken, useless tech, struggling with the sliding door, she’d
made her way down the corridor, tears threatened to burst forth all the while. Later, lying in
the bed, concentrating on the ceiling, deep breathing, allowed quiet calm back into her.
Dorian’s quiet voice broke the silence.
Althea.
“I’m here,” she replied quietly.
I’ve analyzed the scans you requested, the secret scans to determine if either of the men
were implanted. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“Tell me.”
Kyso is clear, his field is purely bioelectric. Traejan’s is not. There are anomalies.
“Where?”
Cranial.
She felt herself sink into despair. That fact just compounded the tragedy. He could have
done it, then. A Macro’s implant in his brain, he could have done it all and never even
know. She felt her breath quicken, heart thumping in her chest, her eyes growing wet with
tears.
What was happening? Had her head injury caused her to lose her objectivity, her
emotional control?
The possibly that he was responsible for the events he recounted is high.
“I know that!” But did that invalidate the way he felt?
Althea, you must alter your plan.
She wiped the water from her eyes, cheeks, sat up – took Dorian’s case in her hand. She
spread open the reactive fields, stared at the graphic comparisons between Kyso and
Traejan. The difference was damning.
“I’m still taking him. He can help us. He wants to.”
Are you certain? Dorian was surely thinking of the potential threat – of Seddo – the
spike through her body.
“You said I needed help, didn’t you?” she responded bitterly “Traejan has contacts in the
settlement, Panak, with the locals and the greggas. Kyso wants him with us as well.”
Then I trust you are making the best choice.
“It’s not the best choice!” she spat back. She couldn’t know how many implants she
would find in Panak. If she could find no other way to break into The Macro’s code…
There wasn’t any other way.
“It’s not even a good choice; it’s what I have to do! If I had made the best choice, we’d
never have ended up here at all,” she lamented harshly. “I wouldn’t even be thinking of
ripping that thing out of his head, or anyone else’s.”
Such acts, would not make you the same as a Macro, Dorian insisted. Or the First
Centurion.
Wouldn’t they? Killing to maintain security, was the Palmyri choice of order over chaos.
Hadn’t she been responsible for the wholesale slaughter on Hadhalho, at least in part,
through her ignorance?
She had promised them hope, freedom – a future!
Now here, on Makan, it was going to be as terrible in its own way. Just to begin with, she
would have to sacrifice at least one human being. Maybe it was going to be Traejan, maybe
someone else – a damning murder just to confirm that the implant would be sufficiently
operable.
Her research, her examinations had revealed that the implants were only half of the
equation. She couldn’t just locate a corpse, extract the nantech. Her imprinted knowledge
was adamant; an operable implant needed living brain tissue to work.
“What makes me better than them?” she complained to Dorian. “I’m going to have to kill
just to confirm the theory! Then… I’m going to have to pick more victims to ensure a
proper connection.”
It was all too appalling.
47
You do not torture, Dorian reminded her. The implanted are not innocent, whatever
their memories, Althea. Their capability of human choice has been taken away. They
are tools of the Macros.
Echoes of her own words.
It is not your fault, not your crime, he counseled. It was done to them by the Macros.
Oneness, she mouthed. How can they, so beautiful in their codes, so beautiful in their
cores, commit such horrific acts?
Althea had only wanted to help, to understand. Thus far she could feel no happiness, no
satisfaction, no accomplishment – only sure, miserable anticipation of more atrocities, more
death. She closed her eyes, picturing the beauty, the purity of the codestream, a destination
that was now confirmed – the rush of her mind interfacing with the trinary logos of the
Macro – the powerful ebb and flow of the code, back and forth, more and more powerful
the deeper she penetrated it’s layers.
It would fill her emptiness; blot out the horror – needed to–
Althea.
–open herself to it, erase all her barriers, lose herself, becoming one with its pure being –
its pure code–.
Althea!
–fall into the heart of the oneness, the codestream so strong it scrubbed away any doubt
any fear any pain – leaving only warmth, peace and total acceptance! She would–
Althea!! Stop!! You have to stop! You have no control over the corruption! You will
destroy–
“I will– Dorian!”
She pulled her fingers away from the interface – heart pounding, chest heaving – eyes
wide in horror at what she had been doing, what she’d been compelled to do.
Althea covered her mouth with her hand, staring at the display, recognizing how close
she had gotten to his raw, underlying code. So may layers of protection; and she’d erased
them all. How could she have done that?
I lost control. I almost broke into his codestream. I could have destroyed him! I would
have destroyed him!
She’d never… should never, ever... Althea shut down his active fields – reset the lock –
curled around him, under the sheets, holding his case tightly to her chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated, mouthing the words until her voice fell
below a whisper.
The need didn’t fade, not for a long time. Calmly, intellectually – hours later – Althea
thought over what she had almost done. Empathizing with Traejan’s loss, his tragedy – had
almost cost her everything.
Her injuries, her losses had made her unimaginably vulnerable.
She had to get off Makan as soon as possible, needed to be properly healed. She couldn’t
put off confronting this world’s Macro. Its beautiful, gratifying trinary being was the center
of the undeniable labyrinth she had to walk. She had to focus her need on the Macro’s
codestream, and its alone! Not Dorian’s – never Dorian’s.
Never ever. Never ever!
Althea repeated that mantra again and again, remaining in the warm bed, until at the
fading of the light, came the anticipated knock on her door. Thankfully, by then, she was
ready to face Kyso and Traejan, and the cruel path ahead of her.