ABC - Penance

The Santa Velona, Coral Sea

I awoke in a rather lavish room, the floor and walls covered in a deep shag pile carpet the colour of pale ivory. The ceiling was tiled with insulation foam, a cheap option considering the rest of my surroundings.

“She’s awake already?” queried a man’s deep voice. My head felt like I had been kicked by a horse, my eyes smarting from the bright white lights set in the bulkheads around the room. Slowly I lifted myself to a sitting position, noting that my weapons had been removed but not the armour. Something tight was around my neck, a feeling I had experienced all too often in recent weeks.

The speaker was ex-Head Warden Acres, sitting on the other side of the wide room on a rich burgundy leather couch. He was dressed in a dark grey suit, cut in a military style with elaborate gold brocade on his shoulders and collar. There was no obvious weaponry on him, only a small device of some sort held in his left hand.

“Ms Alvarez has become a rather fast healer it would seem” said another man out of my sight. I noticed to my left was a tall cylinder of Ceramiglass, within which could be seen linked processors and supporting electronics. I thought the voice had come from the cylinder, then a man of short stature stepped into view, regarding me with keen interest.

He wore a finely tailored black suit, his pale skin standing out starkly against the dark fabric. The man looked unwell, like he had suffered a major illness and was barely recovered.

“Ah, Jacob Tan” I said with a voice raspy and weak. I coughed and continued in a stronger tone. “You are under arrest. You too, Johnathan Acres. Surrender now and I’ll be willing to testify at your trials about how co-operative you were”

Acres laughed at me, not with me, idly laying his right hand over his left that held that device.

“I am sure you consider yourself very amusing, Miss Alvarez, but I find you quite a bore” he said coldly. “However, it is possible that I may yet see you laugh your head off!”

That seemed to amuse him no end, laughing again and looking at a point somewhere between my smart mouth and my modest bust. My hand rose to my neck, feeling the plastic collar that encircled my throat.

“Janglers don’t scare me, Acres” I scoffed at his smug face. “I’ve had more jolts from these bad boys than you’ve had blowjobs from Campbell”

It was Acres turn to smile at me, holding up the device so I could see it more clearly in his big hand. As I looked at it from across the room, I realised it didn’t look like the control unit for a PCD.

“The collar you are wearing, Miss Alvarez, is a little toy I developed for my own games. It looks like a Jangler, but it is so much better. Your neck is currently surrounded by a fine ribbon of plastic explosive, designed to channel the explosive force inwards when detonated”

He wiggled the device in his left hand, held closed by only thumb and forefinger as he licked his lips.

“This is what we call a Deadman Switch, Alvarez” he continued. “If I release the trigger, for any reason what-so-ever, it sends a detonation signal to the collar. The effects are quite spectacular, I can promise you that, except you won’t be in any condition to see them”

I knew now why they had left me untied. If I attacked Acres, or maybe even gave him a harsh look, he could let his hand go loose. The only consolation I could think of was that the decapitation would be so fast I would be dead between blinks of an eye.

“Just behave and answer some questions, then maybe we’ll let you live” Tan added to the conversation. He was pacing the room and I naturally tracked his movements, until he walked past Ms September. She was standing silent and motionless in a corner, only her head tilting to allow her Smart Goggles to record Tan and Acres as they spoke.

“You knew about the Faraday Cage and the Stun gas, didn’t you?” I accused her. Two mechanisms guaranteed to take down any Guard and human companions. The cage prevented the pulse going outside the borders of the room, meaning the equipment and people in this room wouldn’t be affected.

“Of course she knew” Acres replied on the Observer’s behalf. “She has been all over this ship, making a record of our endeavours. Miss September is absolutely vital in ensuring future generations will know how we struggled to bring about the Second Evolution of Humanity!”

I stood up slowly, feeling my headache dissipating as the Stun Gas wore off. There was a low table on the other side of the room, with my weapons and other equipment laid out on it. Seeing the direction of my gaze, Tan moved to stand between me and the table, giving me a sly look.

“Please don’t do anything rash, Alvarez” he cautioned me. “The Warden is exceedingly keen to find out if your new regeneration powers can survive the removal of your head”

“You know about that?” I wondered. I had been assured by Doctor Chappell that the records from the hospital were sealed.

“We know everything, dear Inspector” laughed Acres. “Our good friend Archie here has been able to bypass all of the security that Mister Jericho tried to install”

I ran my eyes over the tall cylinder, seeing the power cables running from the rear of the unit into the wall.

“This is Archie?” I said incredulously. “He doesn’t look like much. I expected some fancy looking housing with lots of flashing lights and screens. Is he even turned on right now?”

I stepped closer for a better look, leaning forwards and reaching out a hand.

“Stop right there please” Acres called out, holding up the detonator warningly. I stopped and moved back a pace. “Archie is busy running his remotes around the ship. At my signal, he will retake command of the bridge and kill those damned Guard clones”

My ears perked up at that and I looked more closely at the interior of the cylinder.

“Must be hard for such a powerful AI to run those drones and operate the ship at the same time” I said innocently. Tan was eyeing me speculatively, then turned to Acres.

“Have the drones located her partner and the other two clones yet?”

“No, they must have gone into hiding someplace” Acres said with derision. “The abominations are useless, I kept telling the Board that but no-one ever listens to people on the front line. We should have replaced them years ago with human troops”

I doubted Acres had served on the front lines of anything for years, if at all. Blowhards like him could issue orders but they weren’t so keen to follow them.

“It must have been hard, deciding who amongst the Society was trustworthy enough to transport something as valuable as Archie” I asked Acres. “The other Society members must think very highly of you and Mr Tan here”

“Of course they do!” Acres responded. “It was the Society President herself that entrusted me with this mission. It was her suggestion that Mr Tan accompany me, as a representative of our ally”

“I think I get it now” I replied. “Thanks for your help, Warden Acres”

He shot me a confused look and I smiled sweetly back. Then I turned to meet the amused gaze of Ms September.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I accused her gently. “Right from the start, you knew what this ship was meant to be”

“Naturally” she answered. “I am very observant. If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to observe it, does it make a sound? If the Observer falls too, will the trees take notice?”

Acres stood up, his face turning a shade of red that contrasted rather well with the carpet covered walls.

“Stop playing games, Alvarez!” he shouted, then faced towards the clear cylinder. “Archie! Commence the counter-attack! Get this ship under my control!”

“Affirmative, Warden Acres” said a carefully modulated voice from hidden speakers. Both men were focussed on the cylinder, which is when I made my move.

I took two quick steps and hammered my right fist into Tan’s chest, focussing power into my Kinetic Enhancer. My fist sank in deep, a wet cracking noise telling me I had broken at least a couple of ribs. He staggered away from me, coughing wetly, then I turned to face Warden Acres.

He held his left hand aloft and dropped the Deadman Switch, glaring at me like I was piece of shit he had trodden on. The device went click then bounced harmlessly on the carpet. I ignored the suddenly ashen faced man, rushing to the table that held my weapons. I snatched up the Machine Pistol and spun around, giving my best shit eating grin to the old fucker.

“You dumb cow, the gun’s got no bullets” he snarled.

“I know that” I answered and swung the barrel towards Archie, triggering the front mounted EMP emitter. At this range, the focussed beam left September unscathed, the cylinder and the processors inside catching the full brunt of the pulse.

The lights inside faded away and a quietness descended over the room. Even the air conditioning had failed, but at least the overhead lights stayed on. I took the time to walk to the table and pick up a spare magazine, clicking it home and cycling the weapon. I pointed it at Acres.

“Now it’s got bullets”

Acres sat down heavily, disbelief written across his visage.

“How come it didn’t work?” he muttered.

“If you are going to rely on a remote detonator, make sure it has batteries” piped up September. She reached into a pocket of her white jumpsuit, pulling out two small batteries. “You might want to take that off now, Alvarez” she added. “I wasn’t able to remove the explosive from the collar”

“Hmm?” I said. “Oh, yeah”. I fumbled one handed at the back of my neck, finding the release mechanism. “Glad it wasn’t locked” I threw the collar onto one of the plush couches then addressed my two captives.

“Now, to return to my earlier statement. Jacob Tan, Jonathan Acres, you are both under arrest”

Acres shrugged at me and pointed to Archie.

“You have only gained yourself a few precious seconds, Alvarez. Once Archie reboots, he’ll take command of this ship once more”

I shook my head in denial, unable to stop myself from grinning.

“If that were really Archie, we’d never have gotten this far” I told Acres. “It’s a copy, built to fool you and hopefully us into thinking he was being transported on this ship”

I punched the cylinder casing hard, using my Ability to shatter the toughened glass. It wasn’t even Ceramiglass and I reached inside, wrenching one of the processors out of its housing. My boot crushed the outer casing, revealing the standard processor concealed within.

“See, they used normal processors to run a Dumb AI and called it Archie. The poor thing was struggling to keep the mechanicals operating with any kind of efficiency. Toasting the impostor was a mercy”

“But why?” Acres babbled. “They spent so much effort preparing this ship. So many resources”

“It had to seem believable” Tan spoke from the floor. He spat out blood and saliva with a wheeze and I was sure I had punctured his lungs. “The Society needed Archimedes and the Board to think they had destroyed their biggest threat”

“I was a decoy?” breathed Acres in despair. “I thought I was valuable to the Society?”

“You were, while they needed the resources at Camp One” I told him. “I bet they helped you get that position, am I right? Once they were finished there, they still had one last use for you”

“I’m betting they told you there was an escape route too if the battle went against you? A secret only you and Jacob knew about?”

Acres looked at me in such astonishment I nearly laughed. I pointed below our feet, where I was certain an underwater dock was installed.

“A lot of the smugglers, they use submarines launched from big cargo ships like this to bring their goods in and out of secure harbours. I am betting there is a submarine under our feet right now, waiting for you both to swim away”

By the look in his eyes, I had hit the nail on the head.

“Except my partner Ghost will have wormed his way down there by now, sneaking past your alarms and locks. There is no escape that way, he’ll make sure of it”

Jacob Tan had crawled to one of the couches and leaned against it. Red slime left streaks down his chin and neck, flecks of white at the corners of his mouth.

“You think you’ve worked it all out, don’t you Inspector?” he declared. “But what if we hadn’t made it past the territorial limit? How would we convince Archimedes that the Society had been defeated?”

A hidden door at the back of the room opened, revealing Ghost. Keen eyes surveyed the room over the sights of his rifle, then he lowered the gun and came to my side. He was streaked with oil and grime, soaked with water and sweat. I knew straight away the news wasn’t going to be good.

“We located the underwater dock, Luisa” he began. “There isn’t a submarine down there, but we did find something else”

“Like what?” I asked, yet I had a feeling I already knew.

“It’s a tactical nuke, looks like one from the Euro Block based on the markings”

Of course there was a fucking bomb. A bloody big one, large enough to leave no identifiable wreckage.

“How long have we got?”

“Fifteen minutes if the timer is accurate” he replied.

I had only one response to that.

“Fuck!”

=====

As soon as Trixie got our message, she came charging down the length of the ship to see it for herself. We left our captives cuffed and under guard while Ghost led us to the concealed submarine bay at the very keel of the ship.

“That’s definitely a Nuke” Trixie confirmed. “If we had the tools, we could disarm it. Sucker is probably booby-trapped anyway to go off if we tried”

The timer reckoned we had eleven minutes remaining. If at least two of our VTOLs remained operational, we could have evacuated everyone. With only Trixie’s craft able to land on the ship intact, we’d be leaving people behind.

“Get everyone to my VTOL” she decided. “We’ll jam everyone in and get as far as we can before this detonates”

“Your craft won’t have enough fuel left to reach the mainland” Ghost reminded her. “If she’s overladen there is even less chance of getting to a safe landing”

“That doesn’t matter” she replied philosophically. “The pulse from this will knock us out of the sky. We’re going for a swim either way. We just need to be far enough from this bastard so that we aren’t deep fried as well”

I regarded the meter long device sitting in the bay with a speculative eye. Ghost saw me and came to block my view of the nuclear warhead.

“You can’t punch it into submission, Alvarez” he warned me.

“I wasn’t thinking that at all” I lied. “Come on, we need to get our asses off this hunk of junk”

=====

At eight minutes to detonation, VTOL number two blasted off from the Santa Velona. It lifted clumsily, only the expert hands of the clone pilot keeping us from plummeting into the dark seas. All the possible excess weight had been discarded in the short time frame we allowed ourselves, including what armour and weapons we could quickly shed.

There were sixteen of us jammed into a space intended for nine, with four of the clones carrying wounds and Ninety-One still recovering from a knock-out drug he had been given. We’d found him in a cell next to the Faraday cage, kept handy in case Acres needed some leverage against me.

Despite our expectations, the ship had no organic crew and only Tan, Acres and September as passengers. It made it easier to leave, knowing only our dead and the mechanicals remained aboard.

As we lifted away, the loyal Sentinels stood watch from the deck, covering us with their rifles and Railguns until they disappeared from our view. With them, laid reverently on the decks were the two Guard clones, Eighty-Three and Forty-Five.

I had idly suggested we leave Acres and Tan on the ship and take the clones back with us. Trixie had been about to concur, yet reason prevailed. We had come so far and risked so much to find these two assholes. We weren’t letting them go now.

Our pilot drew every klick he could from his engines, propelling the craft in a vector aimed at the closest Coastal Patrol vessel. It had been diverted to our assistance the instant we crash -landed the first VTOL on the Santa Velona, but it was a good half hour from our position.

Trixie kept a call on the time we had left. The pilot added his own estimates on how long he could keep the overladen craft in the air. It was an even bet both ways which would run out first – our fuel or our time.

Time won the bet.

“Brace for crash!” Trixie yelled, crammed into the cockpit space with the pilot.

An early sunrise appeared low on the horizon in the north, filling the night sky with brilliant light. The engines and every other electronic device aboard died as the massive pulse washed over us. I saw Ghost and the other clones slump as their systems were overloaded, Jacob Tan too. Whatever strange things lurked in his blood, he was one of the Enhanced as well.

Only a terrified Acres and myself were conscious when the VTOL dropped like a flung stone at the watery surface beneath us. We hit once, sending out a wall of water ahead of the craft, skipped a second time on the long rolling swell, then crashed in a third time and stayed down.

It was chaos inside the cramped cabin, with bodies jumbled and thrown about like dice in a cup. The result was snake eyes.

Water was coming in through a ruptured seal on the side hatch, the whole craft tilting towards the starboard side as the sea flooded in. I heard the emergency rafts deploy outside the hull, one to each side and another next to the rear ramp. I pushed the crash harness away from me, bracing my legs against someone at my feet.

I snapped a couple of glow-sticks and held them aloft, their green glow showing me a tangle of limbs.

“Come on, slackers!” I yelled at my companions, slapping legs and butts and faces to rouse them from their pulse-induced stupor. The nose was tilting into the water now, rising up over the pilot’s canopy. I spotted Trixie helping the pilot out of his seat, her face marked with blood from a cut over her left eye. She saw me and pointed to the rear ramp.

“Blow the door, Alvarez!” she shouted. “We’re going down fast!”

I clambered over one of the Guards, not sure which one, and gripped the emergency release handle.

“Fire in the hole!” I yelled, since I had no idea what the correct warning call would be. There was a sharp series of booms and the door flew outwards, landing with a splash some meters away. I held my glow-sticks in one hand, the other bracing myself against the edge of the open hatch. “Okay kids, form an orderly line and get the hell out of here!”

The Guards assisted their wounded comrades into the closest inflatable. Ghost had stripped off his armour during the flight, now wearing only a black skinsuit. His muscled form strode past me and jumped into the water. A second Guard, similarly stripped, did the same. Both had volunteered to recover the other two rafts and tow them around to the rear of the VTOL.

I thought I was last on the craft, bracing against the sinking hull, when I saw a pallid face watching me from the depths of the cabin. It was Tan, still sitting strapped into his seat.

“Come on, Tan” I yelled down the almost vertical cabin. “Get your butt out of there!”

“It’s fine, Inspector Alvarez” he called back, his voice remarkably calm. “I think this is the best result for me, all things considered”

I heard voices calling my name outside, telling me exactly the same thing I had told Tan. I ignored them and began to climb into the cabin interior. With a combination of poor agility and expert swearing, I climbed the racks of seats like a ladder to reach my prisoner.

He observed my approach with a tight lipped smile, his pale face given an eerie cast in the green light of my glow-sticks. I straddled my legs across the raised crash harnesses, meeting his bemused expression.

Water was swirling around our feet now, warmer than I had expected. A shudder ran through the craft, tilting us further to starboard.

“Why did you let them send you on that ship, Tan?” I asked him. “You knew all along it was a decoy, doomed to be snuffed out. What would you gain from dying?”

He was utterly calm, the water reaching to his knees now, his left arm dangling in the water. Despite the crushing blow I had given him, he had shuffled onto the VTOL without a murmur of complaint.

’The man you call Jacob Tan died months ago, Alvarez” he answered at last. “This body was simply a vessel to be occupied for a while by my Master. She found a new vessel, someone unknown to yourself and Mr Jericho, and she abandoned me”

“So she let you go free, this master of yours?”

He smiled, his teeth stained crimson from his internal bleeding.

“No. She does not let things go, she only discards them. I was used as a prop, a ruse to convince Acres and your bosses that this mission was real”

Tan leaned forward, letting me see his eyes up close. A faint tracery of black oil drifted across his eyeballs, a fragment of what he had contained before.

“Who is this master?” I asked him. “If she has abandoned you, then you owe her nothing”

“I am nothing” he sighed and laid his head against the crash harness. The water was nearly at his chest now, covering my legs as I faced him. “For what good it will do you, she is the Abyss”

“Alvarez!” boomed a voice, a battery powered torch shining down at myself and Tan. It was Ghost, balanced on the edge of the rear hatch. “Get your butt out of there!”

“I’m not worth risking your life over” Tan told me outright. “This shell has outlived its usefulness, so let it go”

“Was there anyone you wanted me to contact?” I asked gently. I could see the life fading from his body, the water nearly to his chin.

“There’s no-one” he whispered, then his head slumped and the water covered him. I climbed the cabin, Ghost reaching out a strong arm to lift me onto the edge. I spared one last look at the man I had spent so much sweat and blood to find, then nodded to my partner.

“Let’s go” I said and together we jumped clear of the sinking craft. I was in the water, Ghost supporting me, when the VTOL slipped out of sight.

More strong hands lifted me out of the sea, laying me beside the wounded pilot from our original VTOL. He nodded a greeting to me, shifting his damaged body so that I could be more comfortable.

It was this simple act that finally broke me, letting all the anguish I was feeling come flooding out. I sobbed like a young girl, feeling like I had all those years ago when Papa carried me from our apartment, leaving my dead mother behind.

A warm body crowded next to me, enveloping me in his strong arms. I knew without looking it was Ghost, my big brother. My partner. He held me, soothing my tears, until the Coastal Patrol ship found us.