Concept Sci-fi

The meeting took place on a world called Saranac, located a safe distance from Sol in the Crux arm and thirty thousand light-years from the new installation in Gabriel.  As always, secrecy and security were the highest concerns.  Black-uniformed frags, their faces carefully obscured by visors and facemasks, manned doorways, patrolled the streets, monitored airways, and watched the skies.  The safety of their guest was paramount--or had, at least, to seem so.

  She came veiled, as always, and clad in the finery of a dozen worlds.  The Regent of the Returned Continuum had expensive taste and wasn't afraid to show it.  Accompanied by a retinue of cloned acolytes, alike in dress, expression and obedience, she breezed into the Grand Antechamber of Henley Hall, where he, one frag standing apparently alone, awaited her.  The echoes of her footsteps took half a minute to subside.  She waited until the chamber was completely silent before cutting straight to the point.

  "Who do you think you are," she said, "and what the fuck do you want?"

He took off his mask and indicated that she should do the same.  He was dressed much more economically than her, in light armour covered by a light ceremonial robe.  "I know who you are, Helwise MacPhedron.  I have always known, since Mother Turin first appeared on Hyperabad.  Let's not play these games any more."

  For a second, she didn't move.  His face might have turned her to stone, for all the animation she showed.  Her gold-flecked gaze didn't leave his expression.

  Then her right hand came up and tugged the veil away.  Her too-beautiful features were exactly as he remembered them.  They hid a bottomless well of cunning.

  "All right," she said, "but my questions remain on the table.  I know that's not your real face because you're not wearing it right.  You haven't lured me here to talk about trade with the Axenian worlds; they've been a spent force for ten thousand years.  So what really gives?  Here's your chance to tell me, as I'll admit you've piqued my curiosity."

  "As have you," he said, "by defying the First Prime's warning to steer clear of other versions of yourself."  She opened her mouth to protest, but he waved her silent.  "Yes, that you are not the real Regent is also known to me.  She is still on Earth, where my spies have her undergoing a deep-cell rejuvenation treatment.  You are taking her place, as you have done at least once before.  You are in league with yourself, and I naturally wonder why."

  A slow, reptilian smile crept across her face.  "I asked first."

  He turned from her and paced to the nearest window.  Through one-way glass he could see airships gliding through the big world's stratified cloud-layers.  It pleased to him to be out among people again, to at least pretend to have a conversation.  Abaddon was an environment hostile to human habitation.  He couldn't remember the last time blue sky he had seen with his own eyes.

  "It is true," he said without turning, "that I am not the same man who used to wear this face.  Neither am I the man calling himself the First Prime.  My name, however, is still Imre Bergamasc, and I speak with considerable authority."

  "Invested by whom, exactly?"

  "By experience.  By the fact that I'm still alive.  Does it matter?"

  "As long as you deliver, I suppose it doesn't.  I'm an ends-justify-the-means kind of girl."

  "I remember."

  "Do you remember the Casco Campaign, Imre?"  She came up behind him, swaying like a cobra under her robes.  "The Colvinites used orphanages as human shields.  You--"

  "Do not try to trap me," he said, turning.  "I also advise against casting judgment upon me or attempting to seduce me.  Until we reach an understanding, there is only one thing to discuss."

  Her smile didn't falter.  "The ends you are offering in exchange for my means."

  "Correct."

  "So let's do it: show me what you've got.  Then, when you're finished, I'll tell you whether I believe you or not--because unless you can convince me that you're really who you say you are, we're never coming to any kind of arrangement."

  "I believe that I can convince you."

  He talked then, telling her frankly and in great detail everything that had been kept hidden from the human race since the Slow Wave, concerning the nature and purpose of the aliens who had excised the threat contained by the Milky Way, and his determination not to give the enemy reason to act again.

  Of course, such reasons arose thanks to natural curiosity and ambition.  He couldn't easily dispose of every instance.  The forgotten scrap of his past that had escaped erasure and become, somehow, the ruler of a galactic empire, was his greatest concern.  If the First Prime became too curious, he could attract exactly the wrong kind of attention.

  "So take him out," Helwise said in a voice as sharp as glass.  "You'd be doing us both a favour."

  "The political upheaval--"

  "Temporary, manageable, and worth it.  I'd do it myself, except I'm the obvious suspect."

  He watched her closely, as he had watched her throughout his account.  Her smile had faded on the discovery that he was a Fort--had indeed been a Fort during much of their latter association, prior to the Slow Wave--and she assumed a deep-etched frown upon his admission that he was behind the saboteurs and spies that so plagued the Returned Continuum.  That came as no surprise.  The revelation that he had systematically lied to her and betrayed her was unlikely to curry her favour.

  Yet here she was, trusting him with the truth about her political aspirations and freely admitting the lengths she was willing to go to in order to pursue them.

  He didn't like to believe that she had lost all reason.  Better to assume that she was testing him, as he was still testing her.

  "I am not proposing to replace the First Prime with you," he said flatly.

  "With you, then?"

  "No.  Render would immediately see through the deception."

  "So take him out too."

  "That is not an option."

  Some of her suspicion evaporated at that.  "All right," she said.  "No assassinations or impersonations.  What do you want?"

  "You to resign as Regent and join me in the defence of the human race."

  She physically reacted to the suggestion, pulling away from him as though he had shoved her.  Her arms came up to cross in front of her chest, and her brows dropped.  Years fell from her.  She looked like the young recruit he had co-opted into the Corps, ages ago, because he would rather have vicious killers like her on his side than fighting against him.

She turned away and walked, as he had earlier, to stare out the window.  He knew, though, that she wasn't looking at the view.  She was seeing only her reflection in the glass.

  Her laughter, when it came, was cruel.  "You sad, lonely fuck."  She turned, and her expression was almost triumphant.  "Take your fantasies, whoever you are, and get the hell off my planet."

  "I am not a fantasist--"

  "Well, you're sure as shit not Imre Bergamasc."  She rounded on him as though he had insulted her personally.  "He would never ask me to do that."

  "To resign, or to join him?"

  Her laughter returned.  "Oh, don't you dare try to guilt me into anything.  You faker.  You liar."  She pointed at him with one sharp-tipped nail in time with each accusation.  "Did he send you?  Is this the First Prime's idea of a joke?  Maybe he's testing my loyalty, seeing how far I'd go before turning on him.  What would happen if I failed your test?  He'd accept my resignation while you quietly buried me in your bolthole, I bet.  Nice one, Imre."  She spun away from him and shouted at the ceiling.  "I never knew you were such a prick."

  "There's a lot about me you don't know," he said, mentally signalling his other frags, "or are at least failing to accept.  I could make you a Fort.  We could work together as true allies, not the farce you currently endure.  In time, nothing could stand in our way."

  She turned back to him with disdain in her eyes.  "I'm afraid the only person refusing to accept anything, here, is you."

He swallowed his disappointment.  "I am nothing if not pragmatic, Helwise.  If you tell me that an alliance is out of the question, I will believe you."

  "Not just out of the question, buddy, but off the entire page."

  "Very well.  This conversation is concluded."

  A stream of blurs swarmed into the room: black-clad, overclocking guards that had disposed of Helwise's retinue of guards silently and efficiently just moments before.  Helwise's acolytes fared no better, even though they, like her, were armed to the teeth with weapons not immediately visible to the eye.  He himself pulled an antique Surflen Systems sidearm from under his robe and pointed it at her.

  She recognised it and went to say something.

  He shot her three times before a single syllable emerged.

  It was over in less than a second.  The clean-up was well underway a second after that.  Within minutes, there would be no evidence that a slaughter had taken place in the Grand Antechamber of Henley Hall, and there would certainly be no evidence that he had been there.  The only people who had known that, however briefly, were now dead.

  He had no doubt that the Regent would cover up the murder, as she had covered up such mishaps in the past.  There had been assassination attempts before, and he would make sure they continued long into the future.  He didn't want her, of all people, to feel comfortable.

  He would also keep asking her until one day, finally, she said yes.  The alliance between her and the First Prime couldn't last forever.  He would make sure of that, too, if he had to.  The very second the First Prime outlived his usefulness, he would be disposed of, and that would be that.  There would be no more resurrections for that irritating scrap, Imre-Prime.

  And if Helwise didn't come around . . . ?

  There would be someone else, he told himself.  There had to be.  He couldn't do this on his own.

  You sad, lonely fuck.

  As Helwise's body was taken away, he wondered if he really had seen acceptance in her eyes, at the very end.  He was certain that she had believed him when the gun had been on her.  When it was entirely too late.

  She had always underestimated how ruthless he could be.

  The smell of smoke and blood hung in the air.  He breathed deeply of it, his natural atmosphere, and walked away.

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