The Last Cycle Read online

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We do,” the First Chair delivers this edict with the tired patience of a commander pointing out the obvious. “We’ve seen it. Stopped the senseless destruction so many times with the honeyed gifts of our miracles. And after that technology was brought against us, we destroyed those who dared and kept only the simplest ones. Only the safest species.”

  Time is difficult to judge. Cycles, with their indeterminate length, give Sax little idea of how long the Chorus has been in power. The potential span twinges his mind, makes him wonder how arrogant Evva and the rest of them are for attempting something that must have been tried many times before. If the First Chair is speaking truth, then the Chorus has seen many worse rebellions, many more difficult fights.

  And yet, Sax is still here. By the First Chair’s own words, Evva is progressing. So something must have changed. The Chorus must be weaker. The First Chair is keeping quiet. Content to let Sax work through the implications.

  “Then you made us.” Sax speaks as the realization comes through. The Oratus are the difference this time. A species so strong, so deadly that the Amigga needed to keep control of them to survive. “We’re the problem.”

  “Like the artificial intelligences we crafted before you, the solution has once again turned on us,” the First Chair confirms. “All I can hope for is that we can defeat your friends here, and reduce your species to irrelevance before it happens again.”

  The galaxy zooms out again, expanding until the endless stars once again swirl around the room.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Sax hisses. As much as he’d like to keep the First Chair talking, he’s fascinated. No enemy ought to reveal its goals to its opponent, not unless victory, or defeat, was assured.

  “Because, Oratus. You have a choice to make. Before, I offered you a chance to save your friends. Now, I offer you a chance to save your species.”

  “But you just—”

  “I said irrelevance, not extinction. The Chorus will remove your species from the Vincere. You will be given worlds to control, and like the Vyphen, be allowed to choose your own destinies.”

  “I’m not the one who can make that choice.” A three-letter Oratus deciding the fate of his species? Sax doesn’t think Evva would be a fan of that.

  “Your friends will not listen to me. They might listen to you,” the First Chair says. “Agree, and I’ll send a lift to where you can meet them. Discuss the offer, and decide.”

  The lift Sax arrived in blinks green and its doors open, inviting a clean, Flaum-less interior. The two guards Sax took care of must have survived. Picked themselves off the ground and crawled away to wherever the Chorus stashed the guards who lost. They were -

  Irrelevant.

  This fight isn’t only about survival. Not just about casting the Amigga from the top in a desperate bid avoid elimination, but also to say they deserve a chance at their own destinies. Living under the weight of the Chorus, knowing their charity drew the border for the Oratus’ part in the galaxy, would be as bad as a slow, creeping descent into extinction.

  Better to swing the claws while he has them. Better to attack the enemy while he can.

  “You hesitate.” The toneless voice comes through the galaxy, as if the cosmos itself is speaking to Sax.

  Behind that voice is no god. Behind that voice is prey.

  “Tell the lift to bring me to you,” Sax hisses. “Then we can begin a negotiation that matters.”

  The reply comes by the slamming of the lift doors. The flash of red on the lift panels as the lock, sealing Sax on the level, trapped within the spinning lights.

  “So you’re a coward, like all of the other Amigga,” Sax says, prowling the edges of the room. No idea if the First Chair is even listening, but the words feel good to say.

  Sax tests the dark walls with his claws, and while they’re soft at first touch - a surface more adept at catching the projection’s light without reflecting it in a blinding back-and-forth - beneath is the same hard metals Sax would expect to find on a Vincere ship. With time, Sax could carve his way through. With that same time, Bas, Evva, and the others would all be dead.

  The center of the galaxy is the brightest part, a dense cluster of stars in myriad colors pulsing. Sax heads to it next, takes in the lights. Touches the shape with a claw, and when it doesn’t react, Sax has to stop himself from getting carried away by philosophical meanderings. Maybe it’s being here, at the center of civilization’s power, or that he’s been alone and on the edge of death so often, but Sax keeps drifting into the sorts of ideas an Oratus isn’t meant to have.

  Purpose, for a living weapon, shouldn’t be hard to define.

  The chime of another lift arriving kills the musings, letting Sax turn and settle himself for whatever surprises the First Chair’s sent his way.

  Sax has never seen a single enemy more than twice. They’re either dead, or, well, dead after the second encounter with Sax’s biting jaws or razor claws. So when Kah clacks his way out of the lift, followed by a second mirrored Oratus, their reflective scales making the dancing galaxy all the more mesmerizing, Sax gives Kah a star-lit grin.

  Time to correct this error.

  “Even after all the First Chair’s offering you, there’s no thought of surrender?” Kah asks as he moves to one side of the galaxy while the other Oratus heads opposite, trapping Sax in the middle.

  “So you can use me against my own pair?” Sax hisses. “Those aren’t Oratus tactics, Kah. You know better.”

  “I know you’re too headstrong to understand what’s right,” Kah replies.

  The Oratus has plenty of scars from their last tussle in the broadcasting level, and the way Kah sits back on his talons, keeps his fore- and midclaws up makes it clear the Oratus has no desire to tangle with Sax.

  Sax is about to fire back, but stops. The two mirrored Oratus haven’t attacked him yet, and they’re not supported by what should be a crushing amount of armed Flaum. Then there’s the First Chair, spending time talking to Sax, trying to get the Oratus to change his mind.

  “Two of you?” Sax says instead. “Two of you. In all of the Meridia, that’s what you send against an enemy this far up your invincible tower?”

  Kah gives a low growl, switches his tail across the floor as stars and nebulae blow through him. The reflective skin mirrors those floating sparks, making Kah appear less invisible and more a distorting curve in the swirl of this miniature universe.

  “In moments, the Vincere will sweep down from above and blow apart your pair and your Resistance,” Kah says. “You could save them. Tell them to give up.”

  “So you’d destroy the Meridia to save... what, exactly? The Amigga that have already escaped?”

  Bluffs. Bluster and threats. It’s hard to believe that Sax thought the Chorus a strong and immortal fixture for so long when the illusion of their power is so clear now. All of these species in thrall to their commands because the idea of rebelling seemed so impossible, but when you’re actually fighting them…

  Turns out the Chorus isn’t quite so strong.

  Kah’s opening that mouth, inhaling with those vents, when Sax makes the move. He leaps through the galaxy’s burning core at the mirrored Oratus. Standing straight, tall, and ready, Kah would have been able to meet Sax’s leap with any number of counters. As he’s mid-breath, though, Kah makes a fumbling, tripping retreat back to the galaxy’s outer edges, flinging his claws up to deflect Sax’s swiping charge.

  Sax presses the attack for two seconds. Enough for each of his four claws to get a single rake in, then he uses his momentum to press past Kah, turning to the right and snaking his tail up and over the bracing Kah’s shoulders. With a snap, Sax pushes Kah forward, right where Sax was and right where the other mirrored Oratus, rampaging from behind through the blinding clouds of interstellar brilliance, dives.

  Mirrored Oratus rely on their stealthy scales to throw their opposition off balance, to make shots fire wide and security s
ystems miss their very presence. As they’re all elite servants of the Chorus, Sax figures they haven’t spent much time training against each other, learning to recognize their own telltale blurs when targeting a strike.

  The hypothesis proves true when Kah meets the slashing swipes and snapping bites of his supposed ally, a flurry of blows that cuts through Kah’s already-unraveling defense and re-opens plenty of old wounds.

  And by the time the mirrored Oratus realizes its mistake, Kah’s reeling away and Sax is making his own attacking leap. Both of Sax’s talons catch on the mirrored Oratus’ torso, biting to the creature’s chest and back, and giving Sax the one moment he needs to make lethal work with his jaws on the enemy’s exposed head.

  The body rides to the floor, and Sax settles with it, locking eyes with Kah the entire way. The mirrored Oratus looks at what remains of his companion, and lets loose a long sigh from his vents.

  “You don’t have to,” Sax offers, though, with the bloodlust pulsing through him, he wouldn’t mind if Kah decides to go down thrashing. “They don’t control you.”

  “No,” Kah hisses. “They do not.”

  There’s vulnerability in those words. An opening for one of Bas’ verbal snipes. A method of attack Sax would have sneered at not long ago, but that now makes an increasing amount of sense.

  “Look at what’s around us,” Sax says, pointing with his claws at the infinite stars. “You want to give up the chance to see all of this just because some Amigga told you to?”

  Kah hisses a dour laugh, runs his claws along his new injuries, as if trying to see if they’re as long and bloody as they feel. “If you lose, then the Chorus will kill me and I’ll see none of it.”

  “Do you think we’ll lose? After this?”

  “I wasn’t lying,” Kah says. “We’ve been herding your friends. They’re going to find themselves sealed on a pair of levels soon. The Vincere will hit those two with targeted antipersonnel blasts. They’ll all die, and the tower will survive.”

  Only one reason for Kah to tell Sax this: the mirrored Oratus doesn’t want them to lose. Or, Kah just wants to get Sax focused on something else to launch some surprise assault, but given that Kah stands still, wounded, and doing nothing with those claws suggests the former.

  “How can I stop them?” Sax says.

  “You can’t,” Kah replies. “Only the First Chair could order Nalucite to go back on the plan, and that won’t happen.”

  Sax doesn’t know the name, but now he has a new objective. It won’t do any good to get to the Priority Beam and send a message if Evva and the others are reduced to charred ash flitting through Aspicis’ sky.

  “Then help me find this Nalucite,” Sax says.

  Kah’s already moving as Sax says the words. Stepping long and slow past Sax and towards those locked lifts. “Nalucite is the Meridia, Sax. There are other Amigga that help, that keep tabs on isolated systems, but this one? It won’t be easy.”

  “Because it’s been easy so far.” Sax follows Kah to the lifts and watches as the mirrored Oratus places a foreclaw on the lift panel, which turns that beautiful shade of grass-green.

  When the lift’s doors open, though, Kah doesn’t move towards them. Sax gives the mirrored Oratus a breath, but when Kah only stares his way, Sax gets the hint and goes inside alone.

  “Tell it to take you to level zero,” Kah says. “That’s where you’ll find it.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “You just offered me freedom,” Kah replies. “I’m going to take you up on it, and get out of here before someone decides I’m better off dead.”

  Sax barely gets a nod off before the lift doors close. The lift sits still, waiting for Sax to give it a command. Level zero. That sounds like it would be all the way down. A long and steep drop, and the opposite direction from the Priority Beam.

  “Zero.” Sax says the word.

  Anything for Bas.

  17 Going Back

  Gone. After I swore I wouldn’t leave another friend behind, with the shutting of those lift doors I’ve left two. Viera and T’Oli, ditched on a level full of enemies. The glimmering teeth of that mirrored Oratus, snarling towards us in the blue-dark light, haunt me the entire lift ride, which, thankfully, is short enough for Malo to tell me we’ll find them only three times.

  “We will,” Malo insists again as the lift doors open. “I swear.”

  I don’t answer, because the part of me that thinks of the Ooblot and the Lunare is numb and doesn’t want to process anything other than the opening stages of grief. So, when my eyes catch the terrifying display in front of us, I’m grateful for the distraction. Fear is better than loss, curiosity better than sadness.

  The rows of floor-to-ceiling tubes in this level bring plenty of fear as they glow, illuminating with the same sapphire lighting scheme this section of the Meridia prefers. The lights are, this time, implanted in the tops of the tubes, and the liquid inside each shifts around as some circulating current keeps things lively. The effect makes the entire level appear undersea, shadows playing in the glass forest as I walk into it. Malo comes behind, his metal bar raised and ready.

  “I recognize this place,” I say mostly to myself. I’ve seen similar things on Vimelia, on Cobalt. These tubes aren’t empty - half-formed species linger in each of them, some looking closer to Flaum, while others resemble mossy rocks or stringy, shapeless masses of tendrils.

  “You’ve been here?” Malo answers anyway.

  “No, not exactly,” I reply, continuing to go forward. At the base of every tube is a small terminal displaying a simple read-out I actually understand - temperature, pulse, the sorts of rudimentary medical terms we’d even defined in Damantum. “The Cache showed me an entire ship full of these once. A Sevora craft. They were growing new hosts.”

  “Why would the Chorus have this, then?”

  “For the same reason.” I head over to a terminal in front of a stone-silent Flaum that looks more or less normal, albeit submerged in water. Beyond the vital signs, I flick my finger through graphs and diagrams, through code names and equations I don’t understand. “Only instead of giving them over to parasites, I think these are for experiments.”

  Malo stares at me and I can see the disgust in his eyes. “Kaishi, why did you pick this level?”

  The lifts that I can see, a similar double-bank on either side, have panels glowing a bright red. I don’t need to be up close to know that they’ll be locked, keeping us on this level. So I lean back against the Flaum’s tube, my hands at my sides.

  “I didn’t choose it,” I say. “The lift stopped here on its own.”

  “But, why?”

  “Malo, who cares why?” I want to be frustrated, angry. Despairing and enraged all at once. I want to be in one of these tubes too - lifeless and floating, watching the eons pass without a single concern. “One of the Chorus did it. Or maybe the lift was already going here. They have Viera and T’Oli, and they’re going to come for us too. It’s over. Done.”

  Even leaving Vimelia that first time, with Malo gone and out of reach, I didn’t feel so lost. Not even on Cobalt, as the Amigga poked and tore at me. Or on Earth, as the Sevora launched attack after attack and every human in Marilo knew it was only a matter of days till we died. I can’t find a hold here, not in this tower with all its horrors. Not now.

  But Malo, my true friend, tries his best. He picks up my sorrow and carries it back to me, putting his arms on and then around my shoulders. Maybe he expects me to cry here, but I can’t bring myself to do it. This is too far past grief now; not only are we trapped, but I never finished the Oath. As soon as the Chorus deals with Bas’ little insurrection, they’ll carry my crimes back to Earth and deliver the punishment to my people, to Avril and all the others depending on us for safety. Waiting for the miracles we promised them.

  “We can’t give up, Kaishi.” Malo tries talking. “You didn’t give up on me. You came back.”

  I shake my head against his skin and watch
the blue lights play on the far wall, try not to see what’s in the tubes lining it. “Malo, we did give up. We were sure you were dead. The only reason we came to Vimelia was because Lan and Kolas brought us there.”

  Malo’s silent, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to let go, drop me right here and now. Instead, Malo hugs me tighter. “But when you knew, when you had the choice, you risked everything for me. This is no different. We’ll get them back.”

  There’s plenty of differences, and I open my mouth, an angry heat rising to explain to Malo just how different it is to launch a rescue mission with a pair of Oratus, plenty of weapons, and the backing of an entire Vincere fleet compared to a couple of lost humans trapped in tower full of all-knowing enemies.

  I don’t, though, say a word.

  Because something else speaks instead.

  “Why not join them?” Ferrolite’s voice, like it did on the other level, echoes out around the tubes. Amused, tinged with static and echoing off the glass, the Amigga’s words lend to the ethereal nature of the place. Of my current state of mind.

  “You’re not killing her,” Malo says, stepping back from me, lifting the bar, and searching for the Amigga.

  “Of course not,” Ferrolite replies. “That would only hurt my reputation. I brought you humans here to bind yourselves to the Chorus, and that will happen. Your friends are alive, and they are waiting for you.”

  I’m too tired, too warped by the struggles of the day to play word games with the Amigga, so I glare at the ceiling and hope the creature can see my face. “No.”

  That’s it. That’s all I’m saying to that thing. Ferrolite did, though, shake me out of the black cloak threatening to suffocate me there on that level. Its cold reasoning brushes away the shroud, and I replace it with fatalistic determination: if we’re going to lose, we might as well give it everything we have. So I give Malo a nod.

  “Are you ready?” Malo asks me.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Ferrolite says. “Aren’t you going to save your friends?”