Project Starfighter (51 page)

Without a doubt
.

Let’s go
, Chris said,
turning the Firefly in the direction of Kethlan’s fighter, reducing
the timeslip to the minimum level that Athena would allow, and
preparing to engage the man.

Don’t do anything reckless,
Chris.

I’m not planning to. I’m
actually going to ask him to surrender.

And you think he will?

Perhaps, if he can see reason. He
is human, after all
.

Chris weaved his way through the
swarm of WEAPCO fighters and warships, until he felt he was close
enough to the commander’s position. The Fer-de-Lance had slowed as
Chris had drawn up to it, Kethlan clearly waiting patiently for him.
His comms jingled.

“Congratulations, Mr Bainfield,”
Kethlan said. In spite of everything that was happening, the man’s
tone was mocking. “Today you’ve made it further in your quest to
overthrow the Corporation than anyone else ever did. Not that that
means anything.”

Chris ignored the baiting.
“Surrender, Commander, it’s over. Stand down, and I will see that
you’re given a fair trial by the new ruling government.”

Kethlan snorted. “A generous
offer, but not one that I will be in need of. And speaking of things
that you won’t be needing ...”

Chris felt himself surface, the
timeslip sliding away from him, sounds, sights, and other senses
returning to their normal speeds and rates of perception, Athena’s
consciousness fading away.

“Athena ...” Chris started.

I can’t. It’s not hardware,
it’s his natural ability.

Chris pushed aside a fear
threatening to take hold of him. Though he knew that Kethlan
possessed the same abilities as Ursula and Phoebe, Chris had
convinced himself that Athena would possess the ability to block him.
Not so. Phoebe might have, Ursula almost definitely, but not Athena.

“Let’s do it man to man, shall
we?” Kethlan said.

“Power weightings?” Chris asked
Athena as the Fer-de-Lance came at him.

I’m sorry, Chris, but this is
down to you, now
.

“Okay.”

Good luck
.

Chris took a grip on the flight
stick, met Kethlan’s charge, banked as the man opened fire, turned,
accelerated once again to dodge Kethlan’s swing as he passed, and
finally aligned the Fer-de-Lance in his crosshairs.

“Luck will have nothing to do it
with this,” Chris said, as he landed several bursts of cannon fire
on Kethlan’s shields. “This is all about skill.”

~

Despite
not meaning to do so, Ursula had delighted in dismembering the men
and women of the Upper Circle, as well as their aides. One woman
Ursula had cleaved neatly in two at the torso. Ursula had hated her
almost as much as she had Skillman. The woman had advocated direct
torture to facilitate finding Phoebe, and had truly relished carrying
out this herself. How many times Ursula had been subjected by her to
unspeakable cruelty she couldn’t be sure, but it wouldn’t happen
again.

The katanas had been a good choice.
They sliced fluidly through the air, as well as the arms and legs of
her victims. Hands, fingers, heads, and other appendages littered the
floor of the still-locked ballroom, lying where they had been
severed.

And the blood. There was so much
blood.

Some of the aides had tried to fight
back, attempting to punch or kick Ursula. They had lost hands and
feet in the attempts, Ursula dodging out of the way and swinging the
katanas, lopping off the limb as she went. Some of the severed heads
Ursula had kicked over into corners. Others she had picked up and
hurled at the men and women continuing to dart about the ballroom.
One head had been caught by a man who clearly intended to hurl it
back at Ursula. A single thought was all that was needed to make the
head explode like a bomb in his hands, nicely intensifying the panic
of those still alive. Desperately, they scrabbled at the fittings and
the walls, seeking a way – any way – to get out.

It had taken a while, longer than
she had originally anticipated, but now Ursula’s revenge was almost
complete: the Upper Circle and their aides were either dead or dying.
Two alone remained – Skillman and Jane. Skillman cowered behind the
woman, holding her before him and promising terrible things should
Jane refuse to protect him.

“A man should stick up for his
wife,” Ursula tutted, looking over the blood-sodden blades she held
in each hand. “The old saying is ‘behind every great man is a
great woman’, not the other way around. But no matter – all I see
here is a snivelling coward.”

“I never hurt you as much as they
did,” Jane started to plead. “I ... only ever asked questions. I
never agreed with the other methods.” She glanced back at Skillman.
“I never would have let him rape you if I’d known.”

“But you never objected to being
involved, either,” Ursula said.

“I was forced to do it! I was made
to act against you! I never wanted to. Skillman and the others told
me to. I never enjoyed it.” She struggled against Skillman, but the
man held her firmly between himself and Ursula, continuing to use her
as a human shield.

“You seemed happy for them to kill
me and my sister, though.”

Jane looked around at Skillman. “I
... told them to do it humanely. So you’d never know it had
happened. One moment alive, and the next ... gone.”

“Like this, you mean?” Ursula
clicked her fingers, and Jane shattered like glass, exploding into a
million black fragments. Skillman staggered as the tiny shards
showered through his fingers and spread out across the floor,
glittering in the light.

Skillman fell to his knees as Ursula
advanced on him, pleading with her to spare his life. She did not
hear exactly what he said; she wasn’t listening properly, but she
didn’t care. Slinging both swords over her back, she grabbed the
WEAPCO CEO by the throat. The man’s hands flew to her wrist to try
to prise her off him.

“I thought I would leave you until
last,” Ursula murmured, “so you could see what happened to
everyone else that followed and supported you. Believe me, I didn’t
really enjoy it. I pitied those people. It’s better that they are
dead.”

“They’re really dead?”
Skillman choked.

“Dead, gone. This isn’t a
simulation in which death results in a disconnection. This is
permadeath; you die here, your consciousness is permanently erased.
It’s as real as it gets. Allow me to demonstrate.”

She punched him in the gut, her hand
penetrating the man’s flesh and taking hold of his stomach.
Skillman screamed in agony as she did so, his shrieks growing even
louder as she began to squeeze.

“The pain is true to life, as
well,” Ursula said. Her anger deepened as she felt herself finally
at the end of her journey, her own determination to finish this once
and for all coursing through her veins.

“How does it feel to have someone
force themselves inside you?” Ursula asked. “Hurts, doesn’t it?
But it’s much more than the physical pain – it’s the mental
pain that goes with it; that feeling of violation and intrusion, that
someone would do that to you.” She squeezed a little harder on
Skillman’s stomach, the man’s fingers digging harder into her
wrists. It didn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt her here.

Skillman tried to speak, choked, his
words unintelligible.

“You can what?” Ursula asked,
her tone sublimely indifferent.

“I can ... get you ... anything,”
Skillman spluttered. “I ... can be useful to you.”

“You can’t offer us anything,”
Ursula said. “You’re redundant.”

Skillman tried to say something
further, but failed.

“You can’t give me anything,”
Ursula finished. “The galaxy is free once again.” She loosened
her grip enough to allow the man to speak.

Skillman’s face twisted into a
mixture of pain and defiance. “You stupid little girl. Do you
really think that it will be that easy? You think that you can just
take control of everything here and make the galaxy a better place?
Most people need to be controlled, to be put in their place.
Separation into social classes is a natural thing, to sort the wheat
from the chaff.

“Freedom?” Skillman almost
chuckled, a fair trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his
mouth. “Most people wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Ursula glowered. “That was never
for you to decide. You are not a god. You are a mortal, like the rest
of us. Which means you can die. And I think you’ve lived long
enough.”

With that, Ursula wrenched the man’s
stomach from his belly, his entrails spilling out with it, sinew
splattering down onto the floor. Skillman barely had time to scream
before he collapsed. He lay in a heap, convulsing briefly until the
light went out in his eyes and he was still.

Ursula exhaled, dropped the dead
man’s organs on the floor and looked all around herself. She had
done it. The Eternal Engine was her domain now. With the Upper Circle
and their aides dead, she felt her connection to the central
mainframe growing stronger. She was in control of everything. She was
absorbing the thoughts of all the citizens of the Engine, hearing
their voices, feeling their emotions. Most were fearful. They knew
that something was wrong, that their overseers were dead, and that
there was a new person in charge. Ursula felt the thoughts of the
drones and the bots, all simple binary operations.

And for a time, she was a god. She
was everywhere, felt everything, knew everyone. Nothing was out of
her reach, beyond her control.

Her newly found omnipotence
quickly threatened to
overwhelm her, and so she did as she had always done and began to
delegate tasks to the drones, telling them to carry on as normal, but
with the one caveat – to stop attacking the intruders to Sol, and
let them pass. They were no longer threats. They were friends.

~

They’ve
stopped firing
, Athena told Chris.

“Who have?” Chris asked. For an
instant, he thought that Phoebe had lost control of the starfighters
that Ursula had left her to command, unable to handle the demands and
pressures placed upon her. At any moment, he expected a naval force
twice as strong as the one they had been facing to turn and focus
their attention exclusively on him.

The WEAPCO fighters and warships
,
Athena said.
They are broadcasting a signal of surrender
.

Chris saw that Athena was right, and
that the opposing warships were now hanging in place, having brought
themselves to a stop. A brief cycle through his radar system revealed
that they were standing down, their weapons silent, and their
targeting systems offline.

“What happened?” he said.

“Ursula’s in control, now,”
Phoebe told him.

“Of the fleet?” Chris asked.

“Of all of WEAPCO.”

Chris was totally speechless. “So
... we’ve won?” he asked.

“Looks like it,” Sid said.

That had been easier than he could
ever have expected. WEAPCO had presented itself as a powerful
corporation, but at the end of the day had been easy to overthrow.
Chris felt himself relax, looking over the swashes of fighters before
him, and the giant blue marble that was Earth hanging directly in
front of him. He wondered what he would do next, how they might go
about telling the galaxy that the Corporation was no more, that there
was nothing to fear, that all of WEAPCO’s resources were available
to them.

A shape then caught his attention,
one that was moving quickly through the hanging fighters and
warships. It was a Fer-de-Lance. Kethlan. Chris had lost track of the
man during the dogfight, Kethlan falling back as Chris had started to
overcome him, taking cover behind the WEAPCO fleet to allow his
fighter’s shields time to recharge.

Chris swung around to follow the
path of the Fer-de-Lance, seeing it speeding into a still-operational
jumpgate. The portal opened and shut as Kethlan crossed the threshold
of the point, disappearing out of Sol.

Chris, we should go after him
,
Athena spoke seriously.
He is a troubled soul. He needs our help.

“Agreed,” Chris said. “Can you
trace the gate’s destination?”

No, but Ursula will know
. A
brief pause.
He has headed to Mars.

“We’re going after Kethlan,”
Chris told Phoebe and Sid, starting to make his way towards the gate.
“I want to bring him in alive. After what Overlook told us, I want
to give him the chance to see sense.”

Chris also didn’t want to kill
anyone that he didn’t have to. He thought of the four mercenaries –
Tyler, Dar, Clayton, Eve. All people he had fought against and
killed. He really didn’t want to add Kline to that list. He felt
warmth from Athena as he thought that, a comforting, understanding
sensation that he likened to a hug.

“Are you okay with this?” he
asked Athena. “We could always let him go.”

I want to help him
, Athena
said.
I want to say that I saved a life.

Chris acknowledged her there. “Can
you handle things here?” he asked Phoebe.

“Yes,” Phoebe said. “Ursula
has things well under control.”

“Good. We will be back soon. With
Kethlan,” Chris added.

The jumpgate came online as the
Firefly approached it, and Chris plunged into the portal, chasing
after the former naval commander.

C
hris
found Kethlan waiting for him as he exited the jumpgate and arrived
in the vicinity of Mars. The man did not appear to have had any sort
of clear plan in coming here. Perhaps he had simply panicked and run.
Chris did not judge him for that. He was human, after all. He who
fights and runs away ...

“Commander,” Chris said. “I am
here to tell you that the Wade-Ellen Asset Protection Corporation is,
effectively, under new management. I’m here to accept your
surrender. Come peacefully, and you will be tried fairly.”