Chapter Eighty-Seven: Penumbra-556
Before sheathing his knife, Jack Noir wiped the small blade clean on the dead shuttle pilot's jacket.
The unfortunate pilot must have been new, otherwise he might never have opened his mouth. He could not have chosen a worse day to cite regulations to Jack concerning the Archagent's unauthorized presence in the cockpit.
While killing the loose-mouthed pilot gave Jack some small pleasure, it was not enough to offset the bitter rage still simmering from his latest interaction with the Black Queen.
Where did that raging Bitch get off chastising Jack, calling him a fucking clown, when he was already responsible for two successful assassinations? Didn't she realize each Hero had to die twice? Eight Heroes, sixteen bodies. Sixteen bodies.
Most Heroes had already lost one of their bodies, which the Bitch seemed happy to overlook in her criticism.
The mere thought of the Queen was making Jack see red. This rage had to be channeled into action, otherwise he ran the risk of throwing a tantrum. And Jack's tantrums often ended with a body count.
Jack picked up the pilot's corpse and unsealed the cockpit door, kicking it open. All twelve commandos sitting in the cabin watched impassively as he dumped the body onto the floor. Without a word, Jack resealed the cockpit door and took a seat in the pilot's chair.
By now the shuttle had left Derse far behind and entered the Veil, holding a course towards Penumbra-556 – a well-flagged asteroid containing a primary ectobiology lab.
According to the Black Queen, Jack would find three Heroes on Penumbra-556 whose lives were in dire need of a violent end. Successful kills would surely restore him to the Queen's 'good graces', which might have been compelling if Jack had any interest in such a restoration.
The Archagent had other plans; none of which involved wasting time on a dead-end asteroid while the Dignitary schemed and plotted back home.
Time for a little unauthorized course adjustment.
Jack veered the shuttlecraft in a gradual arc around a cluster of massive asteroids, moving away from Penumbra-556's direction and plotting a course toward a new set of coordinates.
Anna breathed in gently through her nose, resting back against the cold steel external wall of the Sburb building.
Although her eyes were closed, she was not idle. She was listening intently to Tami's soft humming.
Tami sat next to Anna, gazing up into the starless midnight. Thousands of asteroids loomed in the sky, and every few seconds two or three of them would flit away into space, hurtling at insanely high speeds towards Skaia. When she ignored the asteroids' intent to pulverize Skaia into dust, the spectacle was truly breathtaking.
Music whispered to Tami from the cloying darkness above. She allowed the music to fill her mind, humming it faintly under her breath. She did not think anyone would be able to hear her, but it was very quiet out here in the Veil. No wind, no wildlife, no ambient sounds.
The only noise on this particular asteroid, apart from breathing and the occasional heartbeat, came from Abigail Tarrant's tinkering. She was in the middle of rigging a series of explosive charges on the wall of the Sburb building, under the careful supervision of Chela Arevalo.
Cruz observed from what he thought was a safe distance.
The building, strangely enough, had no conventional entrance. It was designed to be accessed via transportalizer rather than from directly outside. Fortunately, Abigail had come prepared to create her own doorway.
Anna cracked an eyelid, sneaking a peek of Tami. She was still looking up, completely submerged in music mode, mesmerized by the dwindling asteroid field, swaying to a gentle inner rhythm. This was Tami at her most serene, and Anna was sure to soak in the rare experience.
The quiet melody Tami hummed was enchanting, sparking Anna's imagination, conjuring vivid images of exploring a vibrantly flowered meadow at sunset.
The sea of radiant sunflowers shined in the brilliant sunset, basking in their final warmth before dusk. Through the center of the meadow meandered a glittering creek, babbling softly over the smooth riverstones, lending a gentle ambient harmony to Tami's humming.
Sitting on a flat rock, dabbling her feet in the water, was Tami herself. She hummed quietly, facing away from Anna, watching the rosy sun make its prismatic exit. The rhythm of her hummed melody supported a comfortable waltz: One two three, Two two three, Three two three…
Slowly Anna allowed herself to be swept along by her inner waltz in a broad circle with an invisible dance partner. After a few playful whirls, dissatisfied with waltzing alone, she came to a graceful halt, her attention captured once more by Tami humming at the creekside.
Within a moment Anna found herself at Tami's side, asking for a dance.
With a smile, Tami accepted, taking Anna's hand-
Anna blinked, snapping her suddenly out of the daydream and back into her body.
For a moment she attempted to return to the meadow, but it was too late. All she could do now was remember it.
Or recreate it.
A gleam came to Anna's eyes. Now there was a fun thought. Would Tam go for it, though?
Glancing over to the others, Anna could see Abigail working hard to secure a series of four explosive charges to the wall. Once those charges blew, the quest continued, and then who knew when the next quiet respite would be?
Now or never?
Anna looked back to Tami, considering how best to get her attention. Perhaps a quiet ahem? Or a colorful witticism? Spoken in a funny voice, maybe?
C'mon. Since when did Anna overthink talking to Tami Abramov? This was some bullshit.
"Tam, do you know how to waltz?" Anna broke the quiescence, taking back the reins.
The humming stopped. Tami looked at Anna, eyebrow raised. "Huh?"
"Do you know how to waltz?"
"Um…no?"
"Oh." A few seconds ticked by. To keep those few seconds from expanding into an awkward silence, Anna had no choice but to continue speaking. "Well, would you like to learn? I could teach you."
"Why the sudden drive to become a dance instructor?" asked Tami.
"I was listening to what you were just humming, and I thought it was real pretty, and…" Anna scratched an itch under her chin, "I think we'd have lots of fun. C'mon, whaddaya say? Didn't teaching me to master the violin feel amazing?"
"Master?" Mid-frown, Tami caught herself already forming a jabbing reply and chose instead to relax. "Ah. You're needling again. Trying to get a rise out of me 'cuz you think it's funny as shit, right? You really think I'm that easy?"
"You are that easy, Tam."
Now Tami's frown returned. "I am certainly not."
"Tam."
"Am not."
"Your tomato face begs to differ."
Tami closed her eyes and forced herself to inhale slowly. Her face burned bright red, and she wondered for a moment if there was any heat distortion rippling off her cheeks. "I'm not that easy, Anna," she declared. "You're just incredibly talented at needling. You should've been an acupuncturist."
"So…is that a yes?" Anna ventured. She then lowered her voice to capture Tami's huskier tones: "Why yes, Anna, I think learning to waltz would be a delightful way to spend a portion of my remaining life."
"Tell you what. If I agree to learn the waltz, will the needling stop?"
"Nope," replied Anna. "Can't stop. Not possible."
"If you aren't even willing to negotiate-"
"Hey, I never said I wouldn't negotiate," Anna clarified, "only that a full cessation of needling was out of the question."
"Oh, look at you, Miss Full Cessation," Tami grunted. "Keep the big words coming."
"Tam, it's only three syllables. Not that big."
"You're so annoying."
"What?" Anna's trademark shit-eating grin made its grand entrance, creeping slowly inwards from the dimples. "I haven't even broken out the puns yet."
"Please don't."
"Okay, new deal: dance with me, and I won't break out the puns. Or no dance, and it'll be nothing but puns out the wazoo. Waltz it gonna be?"
"Oh my god, stop."
"How about-"
"No," Tami interrupted. "Whatever horrible pun you're about to say, just no. You win. I'll dance."
"Woohoo!" Anna beamed, giving Tami's shoulder a light affectionate punch. "You'll do great, and you'll look amazing! It's so much fun once you get the hang of it. Do you know the basic step and rhythm, or-"
"Alright, I'm done!" Abigail hollered, stepping back from her completed explosive rig. "Stand back from the wall if you want to stay pretty!"
"I guess that's our cue." Anna slid up the wall to her feet. "Our little quest beckons."
Tami looked up at her, smiling faintly. "You hear that? Adam's sister thinks I'm pretty."
"C'mon Tam." Anna offered a hand. "It's not such an outlandish thought."
As the shuttle approached its destination, Jack Noir triple-checked to make sure his current vector was viable.
The Reckoning seemed to be in full swing. Asteroids left and right were zooming away towards Skaia, abandoning the Veil in which they'd resided for eons. Within a day, the final asteroids would depart and the Veil would cease to exist.
Good riddance, too. Jack found the Veil ugly, dull, and maddeningly quiet. He would not miss it.
Despite his distaste for the Veil, however, Jack still respected the colossal danger posed to any spacecraft attempting to navigate it during the Reckoning. It behooved Jack to ensure his trajectory did not place the shuttle within the potential paths of any of the remaining asteroids, lest they smash into the shuttlecraft upon acceleration.
Jack's attention was fixated upon the asteroid directly ahead. It was one of the largest asteroids in the Veil, a quarter the size of the Obsidian Moon, and consequently would be one of the very last asteroids sent to pummel Skaia.
The shuttlecraft continued to approach the asteroid until it dominated the view of the cockpit's front window. Its gray pockmarked surface was a chaotic labyrinth of twisting ridges and valleys, jagged mountain ranges, and craters. Millions of ravines and dead-end gorges to get lost in.
Jack flew the shuttle to within ten thousand feet of the asteroid's surface before holding altitude, allowing the mountaintops and barren valleys to whiz by underneath.
As the shuttle approached the far side of the asteroid, a familiar silhouette gradually crested the horizon. Though at first glance the silhouette seemed to be a misshapen mountain, increasing proximity revealed it to be a towering pyramidal temple of gray stone, nearly a thousand feet tall. Squatting atop the roof of the temple was an abhorrent statue of a massive frog.
Bilious Slick.
Jack's permanent scowl twisted in disgust at the statue's foul visage.
A vile representation of the Speaker of the Vast Joke, in all his slimy Froggery. It took all of Jack's willpower not to open fire with the shuttle's nose-mounted guns and reduce the despicable temple to smoldering embers. Destroying a temple dedicated to the most violently hated figure in Dersite mythology would bring momentary pleasure, but would also deny Jack use of the transportalizers contained therein.
With the press of a button on the control console, Jack deployed the shuttlecraft's landing legs. He brought the shuttle into a less-than-gentle landing at the base of the abominable temple, remotely unsealing the aft hatch while powering down the engines.
The twelve commandos waiting in the cabin made no sound as Jack emerged from the cockpit. Fully aware of Jack's deviation from their intended destination, they dared not give voice to the myriad questions forming in their minds. Odds of getting stabbed by Jack for questioning him were high, and none of the commandos were eager to meet their anticlimactic demise in this shuttle.
Instead, the twelve seasoned fighters rose in unison to their feet, standing at attention.
Jack silently stepped over the body of the dead pilot and walked down the aisle, passing through the commandos on either side. He made his way to the open aft hatch, where the access ramp slowly extended towards the gray rocky ground outside.
"Orders, sir?" asked the senior ranking commando.
Jack glanced over his shoulder at the twelve commandos, who stood awaiting his reply.
He didn't have time for this. He was sure that even now the Dignitary was hard at work executing some shady scheme to topple the Black Queen, taking full advantage of Jack's absence. Every minute was precious.
"Do what you want." With that, he descended the access ramp, setting foot upon the asteroidal rock and walking off towards the looming frog temple.
The commandos all shared a collective glance amongst themselves before wordlessly following Jack down the access ramp.
The metal of the Sburb building glowed cherry red around the jagged edges of the newly blown open entrance, still radiating the leftover heat of the blast from Abigail's explosives.
Through the still-smoking hole in the building's wall lay a hallway with black walls and a gray metal floor, dimly illuminated by the ceiling lights' pallid glow. After entering the hallway and travelling it some small distance, Chela Arevalo led the motley group into a large, spacious chamber the size of two adjacent football fields.
The walls forming the perimeter of this chamber were lined with multiple rows of glass tanks mounted upon metal pedestals. The tanks looked like person-sized jars, containing transparent, effervescent gestation fluids within which vestigial carapacian bodies hung grotesquely suspended.
Anna grimaced at the disturbing contents of the carapacian tanks. "What the fuck is that shit?"
"Fuckin' weird," Tami agreed. "Can't say I'm digging this whole serial killer vibe."
"The carapacians are not dead," Chela explained. "They are being born. These are gestation chambers. There are many other laboratories like this one scattered throughout the Veil. Ordinarily consciousness would be activated in these bodies upon completion of their gestation, but this group will never reach maturation. They are out of time."
Cruz frowned, inspecting the contents of the nearest incubation tanks. "I'm seeing Prospitians and Dersites. Why are they grown together?"
"Because they share no fundamental difference," replied Chela. "All carapacians are grown in the same facilities. Random chance decides whether their core programming compels them to protect Skaia, or destroy it, which in turn sorts them into their kingdoms."
Abigail gave a quiet grunt. "Then they wake up and are immediately sent to the Battlefield for military service under their King. Welcome to life."
"That's it?" asked Tami. "That's all? Sounds so pointless."
"It is anything but," Chela replied. "Life is life. That of the carapacians is no more or less meaningful than your own."
"But…" Tami didn't sound convinced. "But they're just…grown. In tubes. And programmed to think a certain way. How is that supposed to be meaningful?"
"Is it more meaningful to be gestated in a uterus, and then psychologically imprinted after birth by the prejudices and beliefs of your caretakers?" countered Chela. "If you are awake and aware of your own existence, does it matter if you were born technologically or biologically? And setting all that aside, who is to say carapacians are incapable of challenging their core programming?"
"Yeah, you're blowing my mind," Tami mimed explosions from her temples, "I'm just having a real tough time imagining what it's like to be born in a freaking tube. It's just so… Such a strange…" she shuddered. "Skeeves me out."
Chela smiled at her warmly. "You'll love what you are about to see, Tamara."
"Well I don't love the way you said that."
"Alright, people, let's move this along," Abigail urged. "We're not here to sightsee."
Beyond the thicket of gestation chambers loomed a house-sized platform of black metal, lined with safety railings, dominating the center of the laboratory space.
Mounted on the visible edge of the central platform were four pairs of glass tanks. Metal pipes connected the top of each individual tank to a bulky device sandwiched between the centermost two pairs. Only the back of this device was visible from the ground.
"That is part of a specialized appearifier," said Chela, leading the way around to one side of the central platform, where a metal ladder spanned the platform's height. "It is programmed for a single task, which you will observe momentarily. After you," she said, offering Tami the ladder.
Tami grabbed the rungs and hauled herself up, followed closely by Anna and Cruz.
As the three teens scampered up the ladder, Chela took a moment to recollect a time when she could climb that quickly. She then grasped the ladder and steadily made her way up. As she neared the top, Cruz offered her a hand.
"Thank you, mejito." Chela happily accepted Cruz's assistance, finally setting foot on top of the platform.
Occupying the central space of the platform was a cylindrical stone pedestal, about a foot high and fifteen feet in diameter, similar in appearance to a transportalizer pad. Engraved upon the stone were triangle carvings arranged in engrossing geometric patterns, drawing in the curious gaze of Cruz, who enjoyed a few moments of mentally grouping various triangles into larger shapes and patterns.
To one side of the platform were the eight mounted tanks. Nestled among the tanks was the bulky device visible from the floor below, now revealed to be an intricate machine resembling a cross between a cartoonish ray gun and an electron microscope. The device pointed downwards, aimed at a much smaller circular pad no more than three feet wide.
On the opposite side of the platform awaited a complex computer console, consisting of a control panel situated underneath a suspended array of eight interconnected blank TV screens. Eight square green buttons were displayed in a neat grid on the left side of the control panel, a large square blue button sharing the middle with a joystick, and a circular green button emblazoned with a double helix symbol on the far right.
"Fancy," remarked Tami, examining the console, tapping one of the blank TV screens. She gave the joystick a wiggle, but nothing happened. "Anticlimactic, too."
"Is it plugged in?" asked Anna. "Make sure it's plugged in. Gotta troubleshoot this shit."
"Why don't you go ahead and press one of those green buttons on the left?" Abigail recommended.
At random Tami chose one of the eight green buttons on the left end of the control panel, pressing it.
The button lit up neon green, remaining depressed. A gentle hum permeated the entire console as the last of the eight TV screens flickered to life, revealing a Google Earth style view of the West Indies, with the central crosshairs resting over Puerto Rico.
Cruz, Anna, and Tami all grew very still and silent, transfixed by the view of the world they had known and loved and taken for granted.
It did not matter that none of them had ever been to the West Indies.
Earth was Earth.
Tami felt her eyes beginning to well up, and so to distract herself she decided to try the joystick again. This time, the joystick caused the TV feed to rapidly zoom in on Puerto Rico. As the view focused on the southern city of Ponce, signs of movement crept into visibility – flocks of birds traversing the sky, automobiles lurching down the streets, sidewalks cluttered with well-dressed pedestrians who looked straight out of the mid-twentieth century.
The feed's crosshairs honed in on a girl in her late teens, wearing a sunny yellow dress, escorted by a jovial middle-aged man through bustling crowds of revelers waving United States and Puerto Rican flags. The crowds were gathered for a parade which was only just reaching this part of the city.
Jeeps and tanks rumbled slowly down the center of the road in the near distance, laden with fortunate soldiers freshly returned from overseas. The horrors they endured in the war seemed to temporarily take a back seat to the hypnotically exuberant experience of basking in an adoring crowd.
"What is this?" asked Cruz. "How is everyone alive?"
As Cruz spoke, the blue button next to the joystick pulsed with a flash of cyan light.
"In that world, it is 1945," Chela replied softly. "Ponce is celebrating the return of the Borinqueneers from Europe. Pero mi papa…" she took a moment to produce a handkerchief from an inner pocket, dabbing her glistening eyes. "But my father is celebrating my birthday. I've just turned eighteen."
The jovial man in the TV feed stopped at the edge of the street in time to watch the first of the soldiers march by. He pointed out passing servicemen with a mischievous smile to his less-than-enthused daughter while the jubilant crowd churned around them.
"Papa is hoping I will see my future husband in the parade," Chela reminisced, a mirthful grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "He was insufferable. Although between you and me, the uniform was very attractive in those days. Marriage was far from my mind, however the bedroom was not."
Cruz seemed to turn a light shade of green.
"Teen You looks so embarrassed," Anna giggled, not even bothering to hide her laughter.
"Admiring those beautiful young men was one thing," Chela mused. "Admiring in front of Papa was another matter entirely. Had he caught me eyeing someone, I imagine Papa would have had no problem charging into the parade to invite him to dinner. And that would have been mortifying."
"…so…" Tami gently cleared her throat. "…why is this thing creepily spying on you?"
"An appearifier is a unidirectional teleporter," Chela explained, drawing everyone's attention to the downward pointing lasergun-like device on the far side of the central platform. "This one has been programmed to exclusively target eight people, of which I am one. It can be used for nothing else, and it will only ever be used once."
The blue button next to the joystick pulsed again with light, beckoning to be pressed.
"But…" Tami frowned, nowhere near finished. "Does it keep spying, like, even when you're in the shower?"
"Why don't I just go ahead and…" Anna tapped the central blue button. "There we go."
"Or pooping?" Tami continued to speak over Anna, "Or having any form of sex? Or just hanging out naked in your bedroom because you can? Who has access to this creepy fucking thing? And also, why do eight people need to be-"
Whatever else Tami had to say was interrupted by a loud whirring hum vibrating from deep inside the appearifier, rapidly increasing in frequency. When the energy buildup reached a certain point, it released in a bright flash of white light from the appearifier's raygun, silhouetting for the briefest of moments the form of a young woman wearing a dress.
By the time the light receded, the young woman was already gone, dissolving like a sundrenched snowman into a grotesque pile of quivering green slime.
"Holy fuck!" Anna backpedaled in surprise, backing right into Cruz. Both went down in a heap of tangled limbs and bruises.
Tami clutched her stomach. "I think I'm gonna throw up."
Within moments, the green slime was noisily sucked through a small connective metal tube into the last of the eight glass tanks, filling it perfectly.
"Yep. Operation Upchuck is a go." As her stomach convulsed, Tami lunged for the nearest safety rail and heaved a few mouthfuls of bile over the edge of the platform, splattering the floor nearly thirty feet below.
While Chela helped Cruz and Anna back to their feet, Abigail observed the pandemonium dispassionately. "Moments like these demand popcorn," she muttered to herself.
The twelve commandos silently followed Jack Noir up the stone steps leading to the top of the Frog Temple, where the entrance awaited.
Upon entering, Jack led the impromptu group down several flights of stairs into the bowels of the temple, soon arriving in a small gray stone chamber with two transportalizers embedded into the floor – one yellow, and one purple.
Without hesitating, Jack strode across the chamber and stepped onto the yellow transportalizer, vanishing in a brief flash of light. One by one, the twelve commandos followed suit, passing through the transportalizer and rematerializing in what appeared to be an alleyway separating two large buildings made of white masonry with golden trimmings.
Foreign colors. Most unwelcome colors.
A deep explosion rumbled in the distance, sending a tremor underfoot.
The commandos started unslinging their rifles from their backs, but Jack quickly stopped them. "Put away your toys," he grunted. "It's not playtime yet. Wait here while I take a look."
Jack headed to the mouth of the alleyway, peering into the street beyond.
A handful of Prospitians were idling on the street, but none of them noticed Jack because everyone was looking up, their gazes glued to the spectacular light show unfolding above. Bright conflagrations of fiery light flashed through the sky hundreds at a time, as if the sky were a glass dome pattered with luminous raindrops.
Though invisible from Prospit's surface, Jack knew an intense naval battle was still raging for control of Prospitian airspace. The explosions rocking the city below did not imply a successful defense on the part of the Prospitian Navy, which Jack knew was on its last legs.
As he watched, Jack spotted a group of tiny dots falling from the sky arranged in too precise a formation to be debris. Slowly he began to make out the familiar shapes of Dersite naval craft: half a dozen heavy dropships in the middle of the formation, escorted on all sides by twenty solo fighters. They descended rapidly, shedding altitude as they prepared to make a potentially deadly landing.
After a few more moments, Jack then saw a group of Prospitian fighters streak across the sky in hot pursuit, prompting at least half of the Dersite fighter escorts to peel away from the main group, reform, and move to intercept the incoming hostiles.
The heavy dropships pressed on, accompanied by their remaining escorts. Each dropship in the advance landing party could carry up to sixty troops, or forty thousand pounds of equipment. One of them probably carried a tank, along with a much smaller complement of troops. Upon landing, those commandos would have no choice but to carve out a viable landing zone and hold it against Prospitian counterattacks until reinforcements arrived.
Within seconds the entire group of spacecraft roared directly overhead, rattling every glass window in the vicinity and sending the Prospitians scurrying indoors.
Although Jack could not see exactly where the advance landing party was making landfall, he knew they were heading towards the Golden Keep. All he had to do was travel in that direction and follow the sounds of gunfire.
Retreating back into the alleyway, Jack drew his knife. From the inner pocket of his jacket he produced a tiny glass bottle, from which he dripped a single drop of oil onto the knife blade, spreading it around with a finger. He put away the bottle and pulled out a small rag, approaching the twelve waiting commandos.
"The White Queen is in a palace nearby," Jack announced, wiping down his knife and sheathing it, stuffing the rag back into its pocket. "Cushy promotions for anyone who helps me plug the broad. Follow me, and stick to the alleys."