StarDestroyer.Net BBS

So it begins. The first part in a Logical World serial. A relatively ordinary entry, however (too much dialogue, with not enough characterisation). I give you, with thanks to Mr Banks and Miss Sma:

Completion

Prologue

The light spilling out of the billowing clouds made the urban sprawl of Geneva seems almost pretty. The snaking Rhône Ocean-River, the same shade of gold as the sky, split the city in two. For hundreds of thousands of square miles there was nothing but city, a build up of gracefully art-deco structures quite probably millennia old. Above the mass stretched monolithic starscrapers that reached out into infinity. In the middle distance sat the unbelievable alabaster pyramid of the Overwatch; miles wide and miles tall, shining blindingly in the afternoon sun. Sleekly shaped objects floated by on their anti-gravity fields.

Dressed in a quietly reserved grey suit, Director-General Sir Roger Medfield watched vehicles flyby his office. Technically, they were no where near his office, located deep within the armoured bulkheads of one of the tall monoliths; central headquarters of one of the ultimate secret service organisation across the local group. From his core office, Roger Medfield could dispatch his agents across trillions of lightyears; his influence stretched out into the great Endlessness. Within the Firm he was known as C and under his direct control were all the operatives and resources of the second section of the SIS. At his word, one of his 'Knights' – those multi-talented, highly trained soldier-assassins – could be sent to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and change the course of entire star clusters.

His corner of the agency, SGN2, had been known for the longest time as the one to go to when times were . . . odd. SGN2 had no motto, though it had a statement of intent, written from the words of a woman who did not exist. They were words that were written everywhere; on walls, as headers on internal memos, in microscopic writing circling the iris on an operative's iris, along the cutting edges of knives, carved into the surface of certain types of ammunition.

We deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws break down; beyond those metaphysical event-horizons, there exist . . . special circumstances.

Medfield looked over the data he had had delivered to him. Such interesting happenings on the outer edge of the Sagittarius Arm; happenings which went beyond what was considered normal on a science project regarding the twentieth and twenty first centuries. That project had finished decades ago and had since been abandoned by modern society. Perhaps. In any case, modern society would be placing its feet back on that soil.

“Knight First Class Babylon to see you sir.” said the voice of Medfield's adjutant. Medfield pulled himself away from his window and towards the doors to his office.

“Send her in.” he replied.

*

“So, do you have any idea what this is about?” asked a deep, vaguely not-human voice over the click of a closing car door. The speaker was over seven feet tall, an almost featureless humanoid that one could mistake for being artificial. It (or he, as was preferred) was a mechanoid; fully sapient, extremely powerful and considerably more intelligent than a posthuman. For all his intelligence and data processing speeds many times the speed of light, it was not possible for him to guess what he had been called for. Even after trawling the nigh-infinite sea of information that was SGN2's mainframe; followed by other sections of the SIS and on a hunch the Scientific Union; he still had no idea. He'd spent ten seconds looking and had found nothing, and he did not like not knowing.

The woman he had been addressing pulled herself out of the car and leaned against the frame. She was not classically pretty; her features were sharp but still attractive. She pursed her lips, and then shrugged.

“Not at all. I don't think I've ever had any indication of what my previous meetings were to be about.” she looked over at the mechanoid and smiled “After all Rafken-Ghandi, don't we put the secret into 'secret'?” the robot ran a large manipulator over the top of his smooth head.

“It's good to see you can maintain your sense of humour, Babylon.” Rafken-Ghandi mused as they crossed the white floor to the waiting elevator. “For all you know this could be some sort of suicide mission.” The doors slid shut and the zipped up into the building above like an inverted meteor; the causality-violating mechanics behind the elevator allowing it to know their intended floor without them even having to think about it.

“Suicide mission?” Babylon raised her eyebrows as the doors opened and the stepped out, feet leaving the featureless floor of the elevator and sinking into the grass-carpet. They walked unchallenged; anyone who could infiltrate through the heavy sensor netting in the elevator – to say nothing of its prescience – deserved to get in. “I've always found your sense of humour positively uplifting, Ghandi. Let's just ignore the ridiculous idea of myself being sent on a suicide mission – the universe currently doesn't support the concept.”

Around them worked the highest-level staff within the entire organisation; processing information of such great confidentiality and importance that the fate of entire sectors could hinge on them. Babylon had once heard that there were no files of greater secrecy then those within SGN2; except perhaps outside of the Parliamentary records maintained exclusively by the Advisor, Olympic. At the very least, it was known that the mighty super intelligence often dealt in the same contexts as SGN2 and on more than one occasion Knights had been dispatched at his respect on missions that essentially had no context. Those occasions were rare, however; it required that SGN2 did not know of some threat to the stability of the universe.

They came upon a set of heavy looking doors looking much like rich red wood, though Babylon knew that this was a facade; the doors were more than weak wood. The woman and the mechanoid drew up in front of the desk set nearby, standing before the suit clad secretary, who was tapping her fingers aimlessly against the surface of her desk. Each finger was set with a large ring; as were the fingers of the other hand. Babylon didn't particularly want to be in the same as the woman if she was using all eight rings at once; let alone be the target of what had won the Award for Ludicrous Overkill three years in a row.

“Knight First Class Babylon to see the Director-General.” she said and the woman behind the desk looked up at her.

“Go ahead.” the adjutant said, and the doors into the Director's office began to slide back. First the three inch thick hardwood, then several equally thick plates of duraplast. At the core was an inch of armasteel; it was dark, the result of the weird twisting of space it was made up of. A material beyond something so simple as brute force; it was sometimes called ‘impervium’ for a reason. After the core door there were more duraplast doors, and at last another set of wood. All capped off with an impressive array of force fields, Babylon supposed that if you were to melt the entirety of the city and the crust it sat upon all the way to the mantle, Medfield's office would probably survive; as would the man inside.

The Director-General stood with his back to his hologrammatic window, hands clasped behind his back. He gestured towards the two chairs before his desk; large enough that it seemed that only a team of Egyptian slaves would be able to move it. It was an apt enough assumption; Roger Medfield's desk as a solid stone block, black and marbled in many colours.

“So, C.” Babylon began, lowering herself into the soft cushioning of her seat, which automatically adjusted it self to the contours of her body. “What's this all about?”

“Straight to the point as usual, Agent Babylon.” Medfield smiled beneath his moustache. He settled his elbows on the edge of his desk, settling his nose down on his clenched hands. “What do you two know about a planet called Dumont?” in response Babylon shrugged.

“Just that it was a sociological experiment carried out by the Scientific Union back in 8452,” Rafken-Ghandi noted, rolling one of his manipulators around “About the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. But that experiment finished about thirty years ago.”

Medfield's cheeks twitched briefly “I could always cut off Sub-etha transmissions if you like.”

“It's not fair if you do something technically impossible.” Ghandi sniffed as C pulled back into his leather upholstery, crossing his legs.

“Moving on. There are rumours of strange happenings on Dumont.”

“Strange rumours sir?” Babylon question had a hint of confusion “On a pre-singularity world no less; there's belief that whatever is happening there could be harmful to modern society as a whole?” Rafken-Ghandi placed his chin into the cup of his manipulator, focusing his optics on the Director-General. The man clicked his fingers; cutting out the light in the room, save for a rotating, glowing planet the size of a basket ball. A grey rock no bigger than an orange floated in a vaguely elliptical arc around the hologram planet.

“That's Dumont. While technically the experiment was abandoned years ago, the Scientific Union keeps tabs on it. Information came to their ears through the intelligence agencies of the largest superpower on Dumont – the Unified Concordiat of Calican, as well as more local agencies. Police forces and such.” he paused and a section of the planet expanded up “There is word of people going missing in an isolated part of the world; a particularly rural part. It isn't anything world shaking, let alone galaxy shifting. It piqued the interest of the Union however, and they performed a Slipspace flyby.
“The drone was destroyed.”

Rafken-Ghandi straightened up, and Babylon cocked an eyebrow “Well, that's interesting.” Babylon stated slowly “Any idea who the culprit is?”

“Not as yet.” Medfield continued, scratching his moustache “However, we have reason to believe that whoever destroyed the recon drone has something to do with the disappearing persons. The drone was destroyed when it made contact with this area.” he waved his hand vaguely at the hovering square. “When a sensor probe on an area results in the destruction of the machine, I get suspicious. I have a feeling that something is happening here.”

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?” Babylon asked, looking over the crescent shaped bay and mountainous regions surrounding it.

“It’s a rural town from what we can tell.”

“That’s it? With all our advanced technology and know-how in the realms of intelligence; you can tell me it’s a rural town.” Babylon sighed, rubbing at the corners of her eyes. She sunk into her chair.

“It’s out of the way; there are no real records on it in the databases of any country on the planet.” Medfield shrugged “We already know that whoever is behind it has sophisticated enough technology to track a Scientific Union covert recon drone’s sensor trail. I would prefer to keep the pending operation as secret as possible.
“I intend to send you in undercover, Agent Babylon.” C said finally “To slip you in under the nose of whoever has vested interests in this township. You are one of our few unaugmented Knights, but I have no doubt that you have the ability to handle most anything that is thrown at you.” He clicked his fingers and the lighting returned to normal, the hologram disappearing. “You’re a detective too, Clariana. Come what may, you are currently the best possible candidate for a mission of this type.”

*

“Suicide mission.” Rafken-Ghandi said as the last door closed behind them, waving the navifile in Babylon's general direction.

“It is not.” Babylon sighed as they walked across the grass carpet “It seems quite reasonable.”

Ghandi placed one hand over Babylon's shoulder “You're being sent in with limited support, equipment and intelligence, facing an unknown, highly sophisticated enemy. You think that's, and I quote, 'quite reasonable'?”

Babylon's lips twitched into a smirk before she walked on “It's not like they've cut off one of my arms or anything.” The mechanoid watched after her, before rubbing one digit above one of his optical sensors, as though he possessed an eyebrow. He waited a moment, and then took after his partner with long, even strides, quickly making up the space between them. The mecha joined Babylon at the elevator door, just as they dilated with a happy sigh. The lift was already occupied; a man leant against the wall, with his hair swept back away from his broad forehead; a woman with very white skin, black eyes and electric blue hair stood with her arms hugging a dark red rectangle to her chest. Rafken-Ghandi clapped his hands together; sounding for the entire world like two freight trains coming together.

“Helloooo,” he crooned, sidling up to the indigo-headed woman, planting one arm firmly against the elevator wall “Long time no see, Susy Blue.”

“My name is Susan, Rafken-Ghandi,” the woman replied “I would prefer it if you called me by my real name.”

“Aww, come on! What's a bit of informality between SIs?”

“You know Babylon,” said the man “You'd probably do well keep your mechanoid under control; and out of mine's hair.” she crossed to the back of the lift and shrugged, the doors closing behind her

“It probably serves you right for choosing her model, Hamilton.” she replied easily, lacing her fingers behind her head. She surveyed the man through lowered lids. The lift doors came apart and Rafken-Ghandi found himself against the wall, driven there by some unseen force. Susan, seemingly left unaffected by the laws governing action and reaction, walked past the prone machine and out into the golden sunlight. Babylon sighed and shook her head at her partner, who was generating hologrammatic canaries circling above his head. Just like he was carrion, and they vultures.

“You have a very strange mechanoid, you know that?” Hamilton asked as they stepped out into an atrium dominated by tall, sweeping arches and multicoloured vegetation. Broad acreages of skylights let the sun's rays spill down across suited life forms sitting at tables throughout the carefully terraced room. Like most windows throughout the star scraping SGN2 building, they were holograms from another part of Geneva. This atrium was too high up for the sun to come down on it as it was.

Chairs squeaked as they sat down and Babylon placed her chin onto one hand, pulling at her bottom lip with her fingers. “He's strange, but he's good. 'Best mechanoid in SGN2 since Bolo-Anosiel' as they say. For his quirks, he always seems to get his job done.” she paused, taking a cup from midair. Steam rose like a faint wisp of cloud in front of Babylon's face. “Of course, his ego is gigantic.” she took a sip.

“So, you were seeing C?” Hamilton asked, bluntly changing the subject. Babylon nodded and he tapped his chin “A new operation, hmm? One for which Agent Clariana Babylon is ideally suited.” she snorted into her cup “You're being sent to a primitive world then?”

“2042.” she replied simply and Hamilton whistled.

“That's not even primitive, that's sub-sentient.” Hamilton huffed “At that level of technology, do they have anything that can harm a shielded combat suit?”

“Probably the heaviest strategic nuclear weapons; assuming they could even manage a direct hit.” Babylon sighed “But I won't be taking a shielded combat suit; even with six millennia of progressive genetic engineering, I'm still just flesh and blood. I have no augmentations that could let me fight a tank with my bare hands, or catch an artillery shell and throw it back at the cannon that fired it.” she spread her hands expansively.

Hamilton chuckled and stood up “Seriously 'Ana. If any posthuman could take out a tank, it would be you.”

*

From space, Geneva was a spot of spiralling white lights split in two; parted by the body of water that was the Rhône. Babylon watched it become visibly smaller, quickly becoming a pin prick, then invisible. Her fingers found the frosted glass she had nearby and drank from the colour changing liquid inside. Babylon turned away from the bubble showing her the outside space as she heard a rattle on her table. She looked down at the box and up at Rafken-Ghandi. She opened the lid of the box, surveyed the rows of stubby matte black objects and frowned.

“Is this it?”

“I'll have you know,” Rafken-Ghandi grunted “Those are some of the finest carbonan jacketed, buckytungsten cored penetrators money can buy, to go with your new Berretta.” as he spoke, the mechanoid produced a black handgun between his fingers. “The 920EFS.” he finished, dropping the gun into Babylon's hand. She looked it over, spun it around on one finger so it appeared as a blur and pointed it off to the side. Frowning, she picked up one of the bullets from the box. She rolled the buckycarbon slug around in her palm, before bouncing it along the back of her fingers.

“I don't see what you're worrying about Clariana;” Ghandi placed his hands on his hips “That thing could take out a tank.”

“So why can't I take my Winchester?” she asked, looking away from the slug.

“Because it could take out tank companies, Babylon. Lots of them.”

“And what about a piddling little energy machine gun?”

“Every heard of the concept of 'collateral damage'?”

Babylon sniffed “It's only a quarter-terajoule a pulse.”

Ghandi squatted down, bringing his eyes level with hers “Yes, and a fire rate of several thousand pulses per second. This is a planet where they don't have ferrocrete or buckycarbon. They're basically asking for problems with every kiloton level detonation.” he paused “And why are you being so childish about it? I thought you weren't worried about this mission.”

Tapping her temple with the gun sight, Babylon sighed “It just seems so, so contrived.” the air around Rafken-Ghandi fluttered in different colours. “Oh, you know it's true. But any way, cheer me up. Tell me what this thing can do.”

“It's a Barbarossa class General Unit, the Relatively Ridiculous. Nothing special when you look at it. Two hundred and forty metres long, sixty seven thousand tonnes with three point eight times ten to the fortieth power kilograms of fuel pocketed. One thirty metre Imulsion furnace, with two fifteen metre back ups. Ten thousand tonnes of engine mass.” he ticked them off on his fingers as he went, running through an internalised list.

“We have a single layer of omni-purpose shielding, chromodynamic, gravitic, electromagnetic, quantum, multi-dimensional; you name it and we're running it. We're hardened against reality and temporal warfare, and have provisions for the first; this isn't even mentioning the stealth tech we've got going on for us. You could miss us at less than a hundred metres.” Babylon nodded, pulling on her bottom lip. She opened her mouth, but he continued anyway.

“Weapons-wise I'm running twenty eight banks of GUT lasers, and as well as a pair of geist cannons. We have fine gravity control out to sixteen light minutes strong enough to fling a small moon, as well as displacer tech for dropping singularities into stuff. Plus, we've got a Celsius Drive, so that means long range Imulsion for combat purposes. Make you feel better?”

“Get me another drink, please.” she sighed “I'm going to need it with you in control of this thing.”

So heartening, to see an AI with an Ego.

Rafken-Ghandi is a character I've wanted to try out for a while. He seems like a jester with an ego just a tad bigger than Saturn at first, yet is there something more to it than that? I guess you'll just have to wait.

Great job, Ford. I can't wait for the next installment.

I love it. About how long is the series going to be?

YAY!!! A non-short story!!!

agreed. Non-shorts are better than shorts

Hooray for you all! I'm not sure exactly on the length, but there's a fair whack to get through. I'll try and get another part up soon as possible; just for you guys.

Well, we get into the story proper now, as Clariana Babylon makes landfall on Dumont. It's a building up chapter like the prologue, but vital none the less. It makes a change from writing a one shot, in which you have little of this and a faster dive into the action.

Completion

Act One: A Town Called Wolfram

Chapter One


An empty star system is a very rare thing in the Milky Way. While only seven hundred million star systems are inhabited, ninety nine percent of all the other two hundred billion are still used for one thing or the other. The system the Relatively Ridiculous emerged into was one of those systems that were so unremarkable to be useless. At its centre was a star only a little more intense than that in the sky of Geneva, but all other objects had been removed; likely to be eaten by one government or the other. Rafken-Ghandi mentioned a Hypergate sunk into the local star; sucking out its mass at will.

The General Unit pushed back into Einsteinian Reality, the edges of its hull flickering with blue fire. It tumbled around, straightened, and launched itself into the broiling plasma sea and nuclear furnace that was the sun.

“Will they have noticed that?” Babylon asked, hands gripped against the back of Rafken-Ghandi’s control couch. Peering across the various information dials spread across the drive room for her benefit. There was no longer any view to the outside universe, and all the light in the dark was provided by the holograms. There was nothing to see any more.

“Not likely, especially at eight hundred light years distant.” Ghandi replied, placing his big manipulator over her hand “The transition of something as tiny as this isn’t really noticeable unless you’ve got your sensors hovering over the general area. We’ve stopped; there’s a Hypergate about four kilometres in front of us.”

“You say that so calmly, even though you’re sitting in a giant fusion reaction.” She grinned and the mechanoid patted her hand gently.

“You’d best get ready, so I can displace you onto Dumont.”

“Won’t they notice a teleport onto the planet?”

Rafken-Ghandi shook his head and spoke briefly about low detection methods of displacement and rebounding techniques and the added bonus of being in close proximity to an active Hypergate. These factors would, according to him, make tracking the arc of a teleport transfer so difficult to be impossible. Babylon patted him on the head, before straightening up. “I'll get my things together then. Give me a few minutes.”

The drive room door slid shut behind her, overlapping and locking together. The change between the smoothly curved control consoles and darkened interior of the command deck and the rest of the ship was dramatic. Instead of bare floor, featureless walls and holograms there was thick carpet, gold leaf and wooden panelling. Gone was the dim and moody atmosphere of artificial control, and instead were the brightly lit and hand-crafted halls of the GU. Paintings of landscapes were affixed against the wall; Babylon passed one by with a purple sky and bright blue sun hanging above it, all rolling hills and curling shrubbery, though even that was not the bizarrest world represented across the many canvasses.

Her cabin only barely looked like it was used for sleeping in, and was dominated by an artificial waterfall. She looked after it longingly, for she had a feeling that she would not be bathing in anything as interesting as that for a long time. There was a broad, floating nest of a chair floating in midair, and she took hold of the shoulder strap hanging from it; she checked the handgun sitting quietly in its holster, before pulling her jacket on.

“I'm ready, Rafken-Ghandi.” Babylon had been ready for the majority of the trip. She slid a pair of tinted glasses over the bridge of her nose, and when she was finished, she was not standing in her cabin aboard the Relatively Ridiculous. She and her suitcase were sitting on the side of a dull grey road, lined on each side by a wild spread of conifers. The road dipped downward towards a city in the distance; a nearby, battered sign said “Aascalada, twaf mijlia”.

“Am I going to have to translate for you?” asked Rafken-Ghandi, his voice not hovering at her ear, but rather inside her head; all put there by one of her ear studs which doubled as a Sub-etha 'radio'. It was technically untraceable, with no outside means of pinpointing the connection's origin or ending.

“No, I'm fine for the moment – Aascalada, fourteen miles.” in the empty surrounds, Babylon's voice came out like a violation “It's not too difficult for the time being. I'll call you if find any reference books without pictures.”

*

Aascalada, as a city, Babylon supposed as she walked a beachfront street, was a fair enough place. Like her feelings for mango flavoured ice cream, it may have grabbed her on a stranger day, but normally would come across as potentially worthless.

To her right were rows of buildings covered in dry, cracking stucco, like neatly lined ranks of sickly pale soldiers devoid of moisture. To her left, a hot road on which jalopies trundled; beyond that a strip of park consisting of tall, imported palms and just a little further a beach of white sand, also probably imported. People on wheeled shoes in swimsuits rolled by, talking in the local language, which Babylon was absentmindedly working out. A man passing by in what looked suspiciously like a Cadillac whistled something at her, before the car rumbled off in a cloud of dust and laughter. Babylon sighed to herself, before stopping short of a certain building.

It was taller than those to either side of it, stacked up like some miniaturised, heavily plastered Empire State Building. Long banners in black and red marked the washed-out walls with splashes of bright colour. The word 'Olizi' was emblazoned above the open double doors and she smiled, dashing up the steps. A man sitting in a dark red uniform glanced up at her from behind his desk, while a fan rotated lazily above. After passing his eyes over her appraisingly, he sat up straight with a smirk plastered across his face. Babylon pushed her sunglasses further up her nose and muttered in her own language, True, “They're all the same.”

She continued forward, reaching into her jacket as she did so. In one motion she produced a small black book, a silver star inside catching the light from a flickering fluorescent behind the desk. “Claire Brookeson, United Concordiat Marshal Service,” she said in Anglo, once the natural language of her people, and still used on the science project of Dumont. The desk sergeant’s eyes bulged briefly as he stared after the fabricated, but essentially perfect badge, and the forged identification card. Her work had been excellent, and even under the strictest scrutiny from Calican's actual Marshal Service it would have held up. They would even find that there had always been a 'Claire Brookeson' within their ranks. Such were the wonders of the force effector at the hands of a skilled user.

The desk sergeant babbled something about 'taking' and 'important' and rushed away, so Babylon supposed he was rushing to grab the chief. She blew at a stray lock of hair, before placing it behind one ear. The linoleum stuck to her heels and she frowned, peeling it free.

“Ah, Marshal Brookeson,” said a man's voice in accented Anglo, and Babylon looked up at the chief walking towards her. He was a barrel shaped man with an overweight moustache, and despite wiping at his balding pate with a kerchief, he carried himself as though a healthy man. Through the flapping of his tweed jacket, she caught the sight of a service revolver. “We had word that you would be coming through today. I am Emanuel de Silva.” he extended a meaty hand and Babylon took it.

*

“You want to go where?” de Silva repeated.

His office was a clutter of files and objects ranging from photo frames to sandwiches in evidence bags. The police chief's face was pursed as he stared across at Babylon.

“You heard me. I'm investigating the disappearances out in the wilds.” she laced her fingers behind her head, and listened to Rafken-Ghandi laughing about 'being smooth' “So I need to know everything you do.”

De Silva rubbed his eyes and leaned back into his chair, making it creak with the strain. “I get this enough from Lombardi,” he muttered under his breath in his own language, and though Babylon could easily hear what he said, she didn't quite understand him. De Silva looked at her for a moment longer before speaking again.

At length he explained that the area she wished to investigate was home to an old town, which as he understood could have been called semi-Amish. A separate little universe. The closest town to there, Torinese, spoke of its neighbour in hushed tones, according to reports from his officers who had investigated there. The town was generally called Wolfram, and it was said the inhabitants had a strange look about themselves. They kept to themselves and in more recent years, people who went into the surrounding forests did not come out again, and strange sounds could be heard in the night. Sometimes bodies could be found, impaled to trees, flayed apart.

“The people of Wolfram?” Babylon queried and de Silva shook his head.

No one quite knew what was killing people. The mayor of Wolfram, the appropriately named Zacharias Wulf, had visited Aascalada, telling of how his people had been taken as well. Teams of investigators had been lost to that place, and the roads to Wolfram were beginning to take on the look of a road into Hell itself, and few locals would travel on them. Thousands of square miles had become considered cursed; even police officers and agents were beginning to shun the area. Most parts of the government were just trying to keep it quiet, rather than trying to work out what was behind it all.

“We've been directed to stop thinking about it,” de Silva finished, cutting at a cigar with a pair of scissors. “And in general we don't. We keep stuff quiet out there.”

“See no evil, hear no evil?”

“It's for the good of the people. There would be mass paranoia if it got out that there had been all these murders.” he lit up and puffed for a moment “You understand of course; national well being.”

“Of course.” Babylon replied, taking a cigar from de Silva's box when he offered it. She slipped it into her pocket, and ignored Rafken-Ghandi's bemusement at how strangely similar the commissioner's attitude was. “You said that you don't think about it. In general.” Who's this Lombardi, Emanuel? She added to herself privately.


As he snorted, smoke escaped de Silva's mouth in a rush “I have a detective working under me, Michael Lombardi, who is obsessed with the whole case. You'll know what I mean.” he added pointing at her with his cigar locked between his fingers. Babylon internally frowned, as it sounded like an accusation. She brushed it away easily, effortlessly removing a little pile of dust. “If you really want to know about the happenings, talk to him. He's just outside.”

Babylon nodded, thanked de Silva for what information he could give and left the office. The desks outside were relatively quiet, and Babylon grabbed a hold of a passing detective, who pointed her towards the end of the room.

Michael Lombardi's desk was as equally messy as that of his boss, though the pin-up board next to it was neat and rule-straight. She passed her eyes over the board and the melange of newspaper articles, handwritten notes and computer printouts. She sighed; they were all in the local language and more or less unreadable. She rolled her eyes after Rafken-Ghandi suggested that he knew that his offer would have come to pass, when someone snapped in the local tongue. Babylon whirled around, coming face to face with a partially unshaven man in a somewhat dishevelled suit, blues steaming mug in one hand.

“Marshal Claire Brookeson,” she extended her hand to shake and the detective hesitated, before taking her hand in his. “I'm here on an assignment involving a town going by the name of Wolfram. I heard you were the man to come to.”

She smiled, and Lombardi cocked one eyebrow “You're from Calican?”

“Yah.”

“And I thought they had lost interest in the goings on around here.” he stepped around Babylon and sat at his desk. He cleared away a space on his desk and put down his drink (Was it coffee?), before turning his face up towards Babylon. “There's a lot to tell, you know.”

“Care for a drink then?”

*

Drums pounded and some woman plucked at her vocal cords, as well as the strings of some bastardised guitar. Babylon held a straw to her lips and watched Lombardi take a mouthful of his drink. She stabbed absentmindedly at her colourful beverage and rested her chin on one hand. “Your boss told me that you're obsessed with the subject of Wolfram.” she put her lips back to the straw.

He shrugged as he took another pull on his beer. “Obsessed? Possibly. More like I don't agree about just abandoning the whole thing. It reeks of international pressure as well; we really only started to get pushed to stop investigating it after a foreign special tactics team was lost in the area.” Lombardi's index finger circled the lip of his glass “It was really the climax of three years worth of killings, though their have been more.”

“How many?”

“On the record; sixty three,” he sighed in response “My own investigation has made it at about eighty nine, however.” Lombardi fixed Babylon with his eyes, flickering towards the half-drunk fishbowl quickly in astonishment. He coughed “This isn't counting the hundreds of other cases of missing persons in the nearby area.”

“And the killings started about three years ago.” Babylon noted, filing the information away in the fashion of a living computer. She knew that a real computer was filing it as well, though eight hundred lightyears from the source. “Is there indication as to what's doing it?” she tensed; a bowstring becoming taut as an arrow is drawn against it. At the same time she punctured her excitement like a child holding a balloon and a pin. Babylon already knew the answer.

“No,” Lombardi exhaled “Whoever it is is nasty though. The murders are particularly violent, to say nothing of the fact that a six-man, military assault team was taken down.” he drank deeply “It's really no surprise that some out in the boonies are suggesting supernatural causes. It doesn't help that the killings only really started after a meteor falling.” Babylon raised her eyebrows and Lombardi explained about the falling star, and how the first killings occurred months after that. Some locals had started calling the meteor – which in itself had been very bizarre; unlike any other that had been seen in Dumont's history – the cause. It had been an omen of 'bad things', Lombardi had heard people say.

“What's odd is that the object just seemingly disappeared. Despite being so large, it was seemingly swallowed up by the earth.” he finished as Babylon began vacuuming the remains of her drink from the edges of the glass. They talked further and Babylon ordered a second of her bowls of drink. She asked him what he thought of her mission, and he sniffed. “It's just Calican being Calican, I suppose.” he said “Though I guess if they only sent you, you must be pretty good.”

“You have no idea.” Babylon smiled to herself. Lombardi rubbed his neck.

“But when will you be leaving?” he asked finally, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Humm. Probably very soon.” she checked her watch, which read half past one; not far past midday by the standards of Dumont. “I want to get to Torinese by tonight; and head for Wolfram by tomorrow morning.” she grinned at him, not missing his brief grimace. “I can't leave this for very long; it's important, as you know.” her cocktail drained out visibly quickly, and she stood up, extending her hand. Lombardi shook it, but did not stand. “On that note, thank you for all your help, Mister Lombardi. Your information may prove to be invaluable in my case.”

Babylon walked away, and Lombardi looked after her. He buried himself in his drink, before setting the empty glass down. “Your case. Yes.” he said, before standing up himself and leaving the cantina.

Hmm.. could Babylon actually be up against a tough match armed with her kind of technology..? Can't wait for the next one.

Kwizard wrote:Hmm.. could Babylon actually be up against a tough match armed with her kind of technology..?

She wouldn't be, which is why I bent over backwards to make sure she had only limited access to "modern-day" weapons; her handgun and fielded knife (and in the next chapter machete) are the only advanced technology she has on her (excluding her earring terminal and sunglasses). She also has limited ammunition she could carry. Technically, she could get Rafken-Ghandi to just teleport her more bullets, but that would too easy, so I need to get around that too. In all likelihood it will be the secrecy thing; Ghandi is sure that he won't be detected, but he's teleporting stuff thousands of miles away from Wolfram.

Another chapter folks, with the first inklings of action, as well as a bit of geographic poetry. Share and Enjoy.


Completion

Act One: A Town Called Wolfram

Chapter Two


“And what transport have you acquired for me?” Babylon asked, rocking back and forth on her heels, her toes touching the edges of the curb.

“I think you'll like it.” Rafken-Ghandi replied through the earring terminal “I find some of that information rather interesting though. Literally hundreds of killings, and they aren't even attempting to find out what’s behind it.”

“Does it really surprise you though? The Commonwealth has done the same with the mysterious destruction of entire star clusters in the past.

“Dumont can't really boast the same sort of political intrigue of the modern galaxy. If it turns out that this was a carefully planned and executed plot by one of the governments of this planet to produce a more favourable outcome for their goals, I will eat my hat.” there was a pause and Rafken-Ghandi coughed mechanically “After I buy a hat and get a body which can actually eat, that is.”

Babylon covered her mouth with her hand, but said nothing. Around her swirled the happenings of early afternoon Aascalada; there were more people about now, not just the morning roller skaters and surfers and sleepless young men. There was music washing across the ground, spilling out of windows and doorways, splashing amongst the cavorting hordes of people. Babylon watched them, standing amongst them, yet at the same time apart. They may have looked the same, and shared the same genetic origin, but they were so different. It wasn’t even apples and oranges; it was greater than that.

It was then that a young man rolled up on a motorcycle. Babylon eyed him and his machine carefully. He checked the object in his hands, a clipboard, and walked up to her

“Package for Miss Clariana Babylon.” he said, though his halting Anglo and thick accent had it come out closer as “Peckege for Miz Clariana Babilong.” with the emphasis on the ‘ong’ sound. He held out a clipboard to her, she took it, noticing her photo in the corner. She signed her name and handed it back.

The delivery boy tucked the clipboard under his arm and walked off. Babylon turned to watch him leave, and then looked back to the bike. She realised quite suddenly that the bike was hers, and squeaked with pleasure, before coughing to cover it up. Babylon approached the bike, truly a beast of a machine, and paced back and forth before it. Its bodywork was smooth, and light reflected off the black shell. The wheels were broad; massive and chunky things that looked to be indestructible. The workings of the engine and exhausts gleamed gold. Babylon prodded the saddle; leather. She took in a deep breath and Rafken-Ghandi chuckled into her head.

“It’s a custom-made bike,” he explained as she mounted the motorcycle, leaving her suitcase sitting on the path beside her. “Big rotary engine running on, get this, the local equivalent of jet fuel. I’m pretty damn sure it’s the fastest privately owned land vehicle on the continent.” Babylon squeezed at the handles and clicked at something above the speed dial, which Babylon noted went all the way up to three hundred and fifty miles per hour. The right side of the bike swung open and Babylon jumped, for it contained weapons. “Yeah, I’m a sucker for cool things like that.” Rafken-Ghandi sighed, dreamily.

“Is my Winchester in this thing?” Babylon asked, clicking at the other button.

“No; it’s far too dangerous to have on Dumont. You’ll have to make do with lesser weapons.” A couple walking by looked over, seeing Babylon check through her racks of weapons. They screamed. Babylon looked over at them and sighed as they ran off.

“By ‘lesser’, you mean ‘of the standards set by the primitive world’ and not ‘of the standards set by the average citizen of the Imperial Commonwealth.” She paused and yanked at one of the stowed away items “And a combat machete.”

“You’re very perceptive, you know that?”

*

It was not in the nature of Clariana Babylon to sulk when left with what were, by her standards, the equivalent of ten year old boys with spit ball guns. They might have been the most advanced personal infantry weapons on the face of the planet, but there were tank guns with less punch than her Berretta. Regardless, she took it in her stride; they were still going to be useful against any local she came across, and there were saddle bags stuffed full of ammunition. Besides, how could one be unhappy when racing across the landscape with four hundred kilos of roaring machinery clamped between your thighs and the sounds of some ancient band from the depths of Rafken-Ghandi’s transfinite music collection playing into your head?

Freudian analogy aside, she did enjoy the ride. It was a long distance to say the least, and she’d been on the road for hours now, with the sun slowly sinking into the ocean, staining the sky champagne pink and setting the sea aflame. The motorcycle cruised alongside the flimsy steel railing separating cars and other road-borne conveyances from a long drop with a wet stop. The corners were smooth curves, following the gentle swooping of the headland. She could see the signature of a planetary architect in the towering cliff walls; in the seemingly random patterns etched into the rock face there was a name, and a message. That message spoke clearly to one such as Babylon, but went unnoticed by the people of Madris.

I am but a man, but I shape your world as if with the hands of a god.

Cliffs the colour of rusted iron gave way to sweeping fields of green and the road began to gradually lower towards sea level. Beyond the darkening grass, bent back by the wind, Babylon could see large white houses, their windows illuminated by yellow lights. She could smell cooking meat, the last meal of the week. Waves lapped ceaselessly at the damp grey sands, and seabirds cawed in groups so thick to make it seem as though snow had fallen in clumps. In the distance she could see a clustering of pale lights, the seaside town of Torinese; beyond that she could make out the purple haze of mountains. Beyond that she knew there to be Wolfram.

As she approached Torinese, the seabirds gave way to overturned dinghies and men on the edges of the water casting lines out into the waves. Boats with tall masts for holding mighty steel nets were pulling in with the night; some were already anchoring themselves near the quay. Babylon’s hand let off the accelerator and she coasted into town, leaning down onto the bike and propping her chin onto her crossed arms. Her eyes followed the faces of the buildings until she found one she wanted, one with music and shouting and laughter. A hotel at the end of the day. Babylon swung her foot out and planted it against the ground. The bike inscribed a wide arc and came to a halt before what passed as a curb in the little fishing town.

She turned the key and the engine cut out abruptly. She could feel eyes on her as she pivoted herself off the bike and planted both feet firmly onto the ground. After waving at someone starring from the other side of the street, Babylon pulled her suitcase free and walked into the hotel.

Babylon was greeted by clouds of smoke and the slurred singing voices of half drunken men trying to keep up with an untuned piano. She’d been the target of a low powered, two hundred decibel sonic weapon once before, but the discordant mess the hotel was producing was considerably worse; it was like being impaled by a fielded knife compared to getting stabbed in the eyes with a rusty spoon. After cringing briefly, she approached the bar, heads turning to follow her path across the floor. Babylon pulled herself onto a stool and was ignored from then on in. She tapped the bar and a scruffy bearded man walked up, cleaning a glass.

“Qé qosa uw beviendo?” he said in a tone that implied a question.

What do I want to drink? “You don’t happen to speak Aglais, do you?” she asked in the same language, using its local name.

“Gradono?”

“It’s never easy” She slumped.

“So what were you asking?” the man repeated, though this time in her own language, in Rafken-Ghandi’s voice.

“Just say: Het es niet importante. Maggerò Schots hebben.” Said the same voice and Babylon did as she was told. The bartender nodded and went about his business. “No need to thank me either Babylon. It’s not exactly a stretch by any means of the imagination.” Babylon smirked and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, removing her glasses. The publican returned, clapping the glass down in front of her.

“You’re not from around here, I gather.” Continued the man in the mechanoid’s voice, smoothing down his moustache. Babylon shrugged, lifting the glass to her lips. She avoided grimacing, as the drink was as weak as water, relatively speaking. Babylon placed down her drink and replied, speaking the simple phrase as Rafken-Ghandi said it himself. She told him where she was from, and he replied with a slow nodding, a new glass to wipe in hand. The chatted quietly; Babylon did not say that she was a Calicanian Marshal and at first did not mention that she intended to pass on into Wolfram. However as she moved onto her second drink, she asked how much it would cost to stay overnight.

“Only overnight?” asked the publican.

“Yeah. I want to move onto Wolfram in the morning.”

There was a hacking cough from three seats over. The man behind it spilled much of his drink onto the bar mat and beat at his chest. Babylon looked over at him, and when she turned back to the barman, his eyes had been cast downward. His rag had paused in its lethargic circling of the glass. She asked him what was wrong and he shook his head.

“Bad things happen to people on the other side of the mountains, stranger. We don’t go to Wolfram.” He said, though any kind of menace his words may have had were lost in translation. “There are things in the woods past the de Bulna Mountains. We call it ‘Vallei va Morte’” as Rafken-Ghandi left t untranslated, it came through in his own voice, and she could hear the fear in his words. “As you get closer to that town, it becomes worse. They’re not normal any more; not that they were all that normal to begin with. But ever since that comet that fell into Almanzor and the other mountains, they’ve boxed themselves in. We saw them once, when their mayor came through on his way to the capital.” He swallowed, a lump rising in his throat “They didn’t carry themselves right, didn’t look at anything properly.”

“Tell me about the comet.”

Imagine, if you can, a light falling from the sky. Think of a streak of pale colour that inscribes a shallow arc from the heavens into the land past the mountains that separate Torinese and Wolfram. Now try to imagine that the sky is bunching up around this flash of light, as though some great giant was pinching the very fabric that it was made from. Imagine brief flashes of flame, and a strong smell of ozone. Now imagine that all this is close enough that it seems that you can touch it, and that you know that it is close. Imagine that you expect to feel its not-so-distant impact, but do not, as it just seemingly disappears.

“What the hell kind of comet is that?” Babylon snapped to Rafken-Ghandi, who clicked vaguely. Before she could say anything to the bartender, he had started speaking again.

“Don’t go there,” and Babylon could tell he was pleading “Please.”

*

The bed was lumpy, but not so much that it was that uncomfortable. The pillows weren’t bad though, and Babylon’s face was half-sunk into them, eyes closed and mouth open. The room’s window was open to the outside world and occasionally the curtains billowed. It was quiet out, and you could hear her breathing softly in her sleep. Indeed, the whole town was asleep now, for they were fishermen in Torinese, and fishermen began their day with the sun.

The low grumbling of engines clambered up through Babylon’s window but cut out abruptly. Babylon opened her eyes and sat up, sheets falling away from her. She blinked briefly and rubbed sleep out of her eyes; had she any internal chemical factories she could have been wide awake in an instant, but they had been removed pre-birth. She gave herself a moment and pulled herself off the mattress and padded barefoot across the slatted floorboards. Standing at the window, she plucked at her underwear and looked out onto the main road. There were two bikes sitting there, but with no riders. Babylon cocked her head, but couldn’t hear anything. She waited a few more moments and there was a squeak.

“Ghandi,” she whispered, even though it wouldn’t have mattered if she had shouted “You can scan here without being detected.”

“I would presume so. There are two posthumans with limited biotic enhancement coming up towards your door. They’re eighteen metres away and relatively heavily armed, as well as being equipped with gelsuits.” Babylon did not reply, and instead leapt onto the windowsill. She paused momentarily before springing forward and catching a hold of the roof-edge. Pivoting up, she landed lightly on the roof, old wood breaking in her hand. Beneath her, she heard the lock on the door click open, and Rafken-Ghandi hummed briefly about the sophistication of their force effectors. Babylon ignored him and bent her attention towards those invading her hotel room.

“She’s not here.” Said a female voice.

“Obviously.” Snapped a male voice, though quietly. There was a sound of a heavy blow; similar to that made by swinging a sledgehammer into a strung-up pig and Babylon bit her tongue to hold back a giggle.

“Right, now that that’s settled,” whispered the woman, mostly to herself. A moment passed and she spoke again “She’s on the roof.” Babylon planted her hands against the roof and pushed up onto her feet. As her would-be hunter flung herself up above the level of the roof, she found a palm coming into contact with her face. The assassin, clad in a black, segmented costume and with a large weapon in hand, found herself being yanked forward and then propelled downward as blur. She hit the ground with a concussive thud and was lost in a billowing cloud of dusted concrete.

Babylon herself had had no real footing, and the laws governing action and reaction had pushed her into midair. As her feet touched loose tile again, a fountain of material shot up into midair, the entire roof expanding from a point where she had been standing moments before. The building shook and the roof began to collapse inward, imploding into Babylon’s room. She stumbled across the rippling waves of chipped green tile and ruptured wood and watched the woman being helped to her feet but the dusty man. She was clutching at the back of her head, and Babylon suspected that the only reason she wasn’t falling over on jelly-like legs was the jelly her suit was made up of. They looked similar, and Babylon didn’t need Rafken-Ghandi to tell her that they were siblings.

As lights flashed on all across the street, their motorbikes screeched away with arcs of electricity searing between their wheels and the ground.

“I guess they’re suckers for the cool things too.” Rafken-Ghandi sighed and then he laughed “But just how exactly do you expect to explain this away?”

...and the story becomes more complicated...

excellent read, as always! I eagerly await the next installment!

Well, I finally have another update. It's been a while, but I hope that it satisfies your needs.


Completion

Act One: A Town Called Wolfram

Chapter Three


A shifting crowd of men and women and their children stood around in a rough semicircle, all staring up at the second floor of Torinese's largest hotel; or what was left of it. Ragged spars of wood stabbed up through the collapsed material, and there was a definite slant to the whole building; certainly it was squashed somewhat. The owner stood apart from the rest of the crowd. At his feet was a shallow, human shaped depression; the bowl marking where the head would be partly filled with congealed blood. He pulled on his moustache, and looked to the Bulna Mountains in the northwest, then at the briefcase in his hand.

*

“So instead of trying to explain it away, you instead left him enough money to buy out a small country.”

“It was the least I could do.” Babylon replied as the town shrunk away behind her and her poncho sat horizontally. The sea was glittering in the early morning sun and the waves crashed audibly against the shore, drowned out by the guttural churning of the rotary engine. In the middle distance rose the tree-drenched mountains; there was a mile long tunnel cut beneath it, the quickest route into Wolfram. The mountains were a border, beyond which her support became limited. Rafken-Ghandi has said that he could not risk teleportation or active scanning into the valley; he had no desire to be under the assault of a high precision attack from weapons capable of taking out an object which had been designed to sit around in high energy cosmic events like gamma ray bursts and hypernovae and other, more esoteric phenomena.

“Hard left!” he shouted, and she complied unthinkingly, pulling the bike across the road. She glanced behind her and caught sight of the two from the night before, both of whom had guns drawn on her. She flung her weight onto her right and her motorcycle skidded to the other side of the road. Their bullets were soundless, but she knew they were flying past, and only her erratic criss-cross was keeping her alive. Babylon pulled back hard on the accelerator, and swung the entire machine around, bringing herself head-on with the brother-sister team. She drew out one of the weapons the bike was loaded with and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle barked in her hand, forcing the man to heave his machine towards the ground to avoid having his head hit. Babylon tracked the gun across the road as she rotated her vehicle round the right way, and the woman cringed in reflex as bullets hit her chest harmlessly.

They were in a line now, Babylon ahead, the sister behind her and brother straightening up his powerbike. They were still accelerating, and Babylon didn’t need to know that she was rapidly exceeding three hundred kilometres an hour; she could see it in the surrounds rushing past as multi-coloured blurs. Actinic crackling and the smell of ozone passed by and Babylon leaned forwards, something sharp breezing over her back. Looking up again, Babylon watched the black-clad woman leap from her bike, silver hair fanning out behind her. Babylon raised the rifle in her hand but her finger hadn’t even twitched before the assassin brought her weapon down through the barrel of the assault rifle. Her hand latched around the falling wrist, halting the slice. Babylon hauled one foot onto her belly and pushed, knocking her onto the road.

She tumbled across the tarmac as her brother rocketed past, seizing a hold of her and flinging her onto the back of his motorcycle. He rolled his fist back on the accelerator and the leaned forward. Babylon grew in his vision, and he threw the roaring machine to the side. There was a distant explosion behind them, but he ignored it, instead focussing on keeping out of her fire. Fire flickered in their wake, the electricity whipping off his wheels melting the ground where they struck. The sister kicked away from the powerbike, soaring across the black blur of the road. She landed lightly, sweeping her foot at Babylon’s head. The air rushed into the vacuum left behind the leg, and Babylon through herself backwards to avoid having her skull caved in. Her own foot came up to intercept the falling axe of the next strike, and she felt hot pain shoot through her bones. Throwing her weight forward, Babylon brought herself into a handstand, heel crunching into the assassin’s chin.

The sister rubbed her chin, foot snapping out at Babylon’s stomach, crumpling her into a ball. Babylon’s fingers grasped at the body of the bike as it continued on without her providing balance; like the powerbikes of the assassin pair, Babylon’s ride was gyroscopically balanced, though through a more primitive mechanism. With her grip firm, Babylon swung herself around towards the assassin’s legs, who bent back out of the way, hands resting on the extreme rear end of Babylon’s motorbike. Babylon came into a crouch, using her forearm to catch a blow from the woman. She cringed and pushed forward, palm flashing out. The blow missed by millimetres, tugging at the skin of the sister’s cheek and her hair. The next strike took her full in the face, spittle exploding and the geometry of her face deforming briefly under the weight of the palm-strike. The sister slapped aside Babylon’s follow up attack and snapped out a left jab; the punch came short of Babylon’s nose, and only the wind from it hit her.

A hand flickered past the assassin’s wrist and her entire world rotated. She could see motorcycles and the coming mouth of the Bulna Tunnel, the Knight spinning around, and her brother coming alongside with handgun drawn. She sprang away, landing on her powerbike and settling into the saddle. She rubbed at her battered check briefly, adjusted her sunglasses and turned herself about, easing off the throttle.

Babylon twitched her body back as the brother’s finger tightened on the trigger. The round tore a ragged hole in her fluttering poncho, then exploded out a chunk of the tunnel wall the size of a small truck, showering reinforce concrete and chunks of mountain rock across the road. She dropped as he fired again, blowing an equally large hole in the curving roof. Babylon crossed the distance between them as they emerged from the tunnel and pulled the slide off his pistol. He blinked once and Babylon tossed the piece of metal away. As Babylon leaned away from the brother, she found the sister on her left. Her hand tightened against the throttle, but the twins kept pace. Certainly, their bikes were faster, so Babylon braked. Smoke rose up from the tyres and she twisted the bike around, one heel grinding against road. By the time the assassins had rotated their bikes around, they were a hundred metres further up the road and Babylon was already accelerating into the trees.

A storm of red and brown leaves leapt up in her wake, shredded by the speeding bike. Babylon weaved her way past tree trunks and out of the corner of her eye she could see the flickering of her would-be killers’ motorbikes. She circled around an exceptionally large tree, which suddenly exploded, leaving more than a third of it missing. The charred remains came down, all the leaves shaking loose. Around her the trees were coming apart, and she felt a jackhammer blow to her arm. Spots danced in front of her eyes, but she shoved her pain aside, focussing instead on getting her assailants in a place where she could interrogate them, then kill them.

Babylon locked her sights on the forest ahead, and pulled back hard on the accelerator, whipping through the pale trunks. The sister was pulling across her path, and Babylon let off some of her speed.

Exactly how Babylon got her gigantic motorbike into the air, the assassin didn’t know. What she did know was that almost a quarter of a metric ton of machinery was about to hit her fair in the face at almost a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. She was torn free of the saddle and propelled into a nearby tree, impacting with a resounding, teeth-jarring crack. Her bike somersaulted and crashed heavily into another of the pale-barked plants. As Babylon passed by, she could see blood streaming freely down the woman’s face, as well as the fissure through the tree she had hit. The corner of her mouth twitched in amusement, and she dashed off into the trees hearing a distressed shout of ‘Geminia!’ behind.

His bike was faster, but the greater speed he had was useless in the dense terrain they were zipping through. Babylon was missing trees by inches and the hot throbbing in her right arm was beginning to turn cold. She couldn’t feel the blood trickling down her bicep anymore, and that worried her. She swung her weight down and the scything real end of the bike sent up a plume of dirt and foresty refuse. The back tyre was like a substandard mining drill, leaving a half foot deep gouge in the earth. As she crisscrossed through the random maze the forest made, Babylon reached behind her, searching through one of the saddle-bags. As she pulled out a small cylindrical canister, Rafken-Ghandi was speaking “They’re persistent, and lucky-” he paused to allow Babylon to cry out “Mmm, medical nanotech. Why haven’t you just shot them?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” she grimaced and hauled her bike to the side, barely avoiding a sudden crunchy death. She pricked her ears and could hear the onrushing assassin ploughing through the fallen leaves. Babylon emerged from the trees, and found herself in a relatively clear spot marked by an old circle of fire-blackened rocks. She dumped the bike on its side and it skidded across the camp clearing. Babylon pulled out her Beretta, and as the assassin’s powerbike came into the clearing, shot him in the chest. Her mouth quirked as the excessive momentum tore him away from his bike and rolled him across to the tree line. Standing, Babylon brushed herself down, readjusted her glasses, and crossed over to where he was lying. He was pushing himself up when Babylon’s ankle hooked around his neck and brought him into a kneeling position. She pinned him against a tree with her foot and lowered her handgun in his face. His sunglasses were crooked, and his eyes were grey.

“You have no idea how fucking annoying that gelsuit is.” Babylon snapped, eying the vague indentation marking where he’d been hit with distaste “I have questions, you have answers. I’ll have those answers.”

“No you won’t.”

“I’m a remarkably persuasive woman.” Babylon replied, tapping her finger gently against the trigger guard “Have you ever seen some one skinned-” there was a scream of exertion and Babylon finished her sentence with disbelief evident “-alive?”

Her head turned and she saw a blue motorcycle spinning through the air. Involuntarily, her mouth dropped open, and her eyes narrowed. Babylon whipped up her pistol and snapped off a pair of quick shots; the superalloy penetrators ripped through the inferior buckysteel construction and launched it back from whence it came. Even as the spent, smoking shells reached the apex of their arc, Babylon was taken in the stomach by a black and silver blur, sending her sprawling. Her Beretta hurtled across into the far scrub, but Babylon herself came into a crouch, rolling onto her feet. She watched the Geminia woman pull her brother to his feet, and her brow furrowed like a well-ploughed farm. She should have been thoroughly incapacitated. Not dead, but in quite close to paralysed. Less than a minute was not enough time to recover from that sort of hit to the face. The brother-sister pair looked over at Babylon who stood up and adjusted her poncho.

“Yay, no guns.” The Knight muttered to herself, rolling her shoulders. There was a moment in which a brief wind blew across the clearing, picking up dust and loose leaves. Geminia jumped, her brother flung and Babylon ducked away from the human missile. The assassin landed, foot flaring out for Babylon’s face. She stepped back and then turned her head to the side to avoid a silvery flash. Her hand seized the return blow, and the other snatched out the fighting knife holstered under her poncho, driving it up towards Geminia’s belly. They were locked for the barest instant, hands locked around blade bearing limbs, before Babylon kicked the assassin’s feet out from under her. She caught the brother’s blade with her knife, fields blazing brightly on contact. Pushing his arm back, Babylon lashed her elbow into his face.

Spinning herself and her knife around, Babylon met Geminia blade for blade, each contact resulting in a brief spot of nearly sunbright light and a crack like thunder. The brother came down on them both, and Babylon had no choice but to swap between them, bouncing each strike away. They traded blows quickly enough that the clearing was filled the sounds of an onrushing storm. They moved as one, crossing towards the edge of the clearing, even as fists and knees and feet impacted bodies with dangerous sounding thuds. Babylon snatched up Geminia’s falling kukri on her combat knife, side-stepped her brother and sunk her toe behind his knee. He dropped as his sister took the heel of Babylon’s palm to the face, staggering her back. As they reorientated themselves, they found Babylon had leapt into one of the trees. She waved down at them, spinning her Fairbairn-Sykes knife between her fingers. They didn’t miss a beat, Geminia taking her brother’s blade in her left hand, identical in all regards to her own. She leapt onto his waiting hands and was propelled up towards Babylon.

Dashing back a step along the branch, Babylon deflected an inhumanly quick blow that would have taken her head off and stepped inside Geminia’s guard, putting her weight into an arm thrust that sent the assassin barrelling back towards along the bending limb. She fell, but was replaced by her bounding brother, his fingers tugging on a glove on his right hand. He blurred as he threw his punch, and Babylon leapt away, bounding to the next tree over. His hand ploughed through the near meter thick trunk, explosively cutting it in half. As the top half of the tree began to fall, Babylon took it at a leap, pushing off the falling trunk and launching herself into the treetops. The assassins followed.

Babylon dropped beneath a swinging hand that would have obliterated her head, swinging her foot into the brother’s chin. She let her momentum carry her off the tree-limb and dropped to the forest floor. Geminia came down on her, and Babylon’s block sent one of the assassin’s kukri knives careening into the tree. The whole thing ruptured like a fallen melon, exploding outwards in a shower of wooden shrapnel. There was no respite; even as she came onto her back she had to roll to the side to avoid the brother hitting her. His fist imbedded itself into the earth, then seemingly exploded, filling the clearing with dust and dirt; a plume that reached higher than the tops of the trees. He pulled his fist from a glassy crater turning towards Babylon, who was panting slightly. He drew his arm back and rocketed forward. Babylon let go of her knife, then caught it again. Her assailant dropped, clutching at his face.

“Lee!” his sister screamed, though it was not of her own violation. She had seen Babylon drive her hand into his nose, blasting fragments of bone and cartilage into his brain. He got to his feet and staggered backwards, only to be caught by his sister. Babylon wrinkled her nose at them as Geminia flung one of her knives like a spinning buzz saw blade, catching it in mid spin by the hilt.

“Yeah, he’s dead.” Babylon sighed “Just like you in ten seconds time.” The assassin snarled and flung her brother at Babylon, the heavy weight making her stumble. In the bare seconds she had to recover, Geminia had gotten to her brother’s powerbike and started it up. Babylon could only watch as she rode off into the trees. Babylon raised an eyebrow, dropping Lee’s body. She holstered her knife and caressed her sore knuckles, trying in vain to ignore the disappointed noises that Rafken-Ghandi was making on the other end of the terminal. She dropped onto the body of her dispatched foe, rubbing at her eyebrows.

*

Night had fallen, and Babylon’s way was lit by the white spears extending before her. She was beginning to hate how exceedingly large the distances she had to travel were; she was sore from the blows she had suffered during her fight with the twins, to say nothing of the fact it was a close to ten hour trip. She felt stiff from all the riding, and was in no mood for Rafken-Ghandi’s speculation about the twins. As far as she cared, they’d been a nuisance that she’d put down. That was that. Excepting of course any crazed revenge attempts from the surviving sister.

Not so far ahead she caught sight of an orange flickering and she let off the throttle, coasting the last few hundred metres. It was a house; two stories tall, and to Babylon it looked to be ancient. Even as she sat before it, a tile slid from the lower roof and fell to the ground. The windows along the bottom floor had all been long covered with boards, though the top floor window looked in … fair condition. The veranda railing had been shattered, and a screen door flapped uselessly, creaking on unoiled hinges. Babylon hauled herself out of the saddle, grimaced as she attempted to walk. She slapped on her wide brimmed hat and pushed the motorcycle off the road. She crossed the bare ground she supposed served as a front yard and stepped over the broken steps.

Grabbing a hold of the creaking screen, and noticing that the actual door was open, Babylon rapped her knuckles against the door frame. “Hela. Es chiedque huis?” she called. After waiting a moment, she stepped inside, making sure to pull the flyscreen door shut. She knew there was someone there. She could smell them, even over the palpable decay wafting out the door.

The bare floorboards were stained with age, and the wallpaper was peeled away, revealing half a dozen different designs. Discoloured waves stretched along the hallway down towards the rear of the house and the warm glow she had seen from the outside. Every door Babylon passed, she looked into. A bedroom, it appeared, for a baby, with a cot in one corner and dirtied ducks along the hem of the walls. A decaying teddy bear sat atop a dresser with one draw hanging out. Babylon surveyed the room for a moment, blinked several times, and moved on. The kitchen she found to be equally disturbing, grimy from the once green bench tops to the linoleum floor. An old gas powered oven looked as though it was caked in muck, a rank smell hit her nostrils. Babylon retched; there was food on the bench, and in the open refrigerator, that seemed to have been putrefying for the past decade. Whatever had been on the benches had liquefied, and it did not smell of anything even vaguely edible. Certainly the thin carpet of dead flies proved that. What meat and vegetables and fruit the fridge had contained had decomposed, leaving it as fertiliser for the thick mould coating its insides.

She continued on, rubbing at her tongue in an attempted to get the taste of the kitchen out of her mouth. It had been liked swimming in filth; an experience she would rather not repeat. She emerged into another room, larger than the last few, containing a table, some chairs, a crackling fire, and a man. He was bent over his fire, poking at it with an iron rod. His shadow was long and spidery, sprawling across the room. “Scusileer?” she asked softly, and he turned to face her.

He wasn’t much shorter than Babylon, perhaps an inch under six foot, but stoop over she was easily half a head taller. He wasn’t young; his hair was spotted grey, as was his unshaven chin. His shirt was a yellow, though Babylon could see it was not its original colour. He wore a tattered vest, and a tarnished watch chain stretched across the dull brown expanse of leather. He eyed her briefly and asked her who she was. She aahed for a few seconds, and then replied. As the man nodded, Babylon inquired as to what Rafken-Ghandi was doing if not translating for her. He replied that she should know how to reply to the usual questions by now and she shook her head, smiling. The native gestured towards the table and the chairs around it and she sat down. He placed down a cup in front of her and poured her something from a cracked ceramic pitcher. Babylon thanked him, taking a sip.

She coughed, looked into her cup and put it down, Rafken-Ghandi’s laughter ringing in her skull. The water was spotted brown, and had … things in it. Things that were translucently opalescent and wriggled and swum about on a dozen legs. No, tentacles. They were tentacles. She stared at the rim of her cup, and in her reprieve she missed what the man had said. “Gradono?” she asked, looking over at him. He was gulping down his water (Was it water? It certainly didn’t taste even remotely like water; true, it might have had a new species of life thriving in it, but it should have still had some resemblance to water); spilled rivulets cut canals through his dirty chin. Babylon’s eye twitched imperceptibly.

They talked for a little while. His name was Barend, and he was the ‘gatekeeper’ for Wolfram, and lived with his wife and young daughter. Babylon nodded slowly as he talked briefly about how beautiful his little girl was, and said nothing. He explained that the town wasn’t so far away, and that she could find accommodation there. She sat with him for no more than a quarter of an hour before standing and saying that she should head into town. Barend nodded and thanked her for the company, wishing her a safe trip. He got up himself, shook her hand and went to stoke the fire some more.

Babylon turned for the hall and brought her arm up, feeling something hit it. She turned around and found Barend standing there, poker in hand. He held it up, almost in disbelief, for the iron rod was bent at an obtuse angle. Babylon shrugged at him and he snarled out “L'obiettivo gevonden. Na seguenti ordenes.” He lunged forward, but Babylon met him with a sharp jab. His face was suddenly obscured by blood, and he toppled like a felled tree. A hollow thud marked his jawbone hitting the far wall. Babylon sighed and turned away again.

“Droevig.” She said, making for the door. Babylon stopped as she heard a scuffle, and turned to find Barend hauling himself to his feet. His tongue flapped uselessly, and he made guttural noises. Babylon cocked her eyebrow and Rafken-Ghandi spluttered on the other end of the radio line. The man charged forward, and Babylon sidestepped him, her hand chopping down and sinking deep into Barend’s back. He fell and hit the floor, his spine severed. “Brutal.” Babylon grinned as she knelt down to examine him.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Rafken-Ghandi mused. He noted that such resilience wasn’t really that common in baseline humanity, and he said he doubted that many posthumans could just get over having their jaws punched across the room. Babylon patted Barend on the head before yawning. She stood, hat swinging in one hand and made her way for the stairs leading to the top floor. She found on a sitting room and a bedroom, both as equally unkempt as those below, but she dropped down on the mattress anyway. It was stuffed something remarkably like heather, and Babylon closed her eyes for a moment.

They didn’t open.

Ooh.. now I really can't wait for the next part. You'd better be working on it.

I am, I am. Don't you worry, you should have it well within two weeks.

Update! It's shorter than the last, and I'm not sure about the ending. It's probably one of the weaker chapters, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.


Completion

Act One: A Town Called Wolfram

Chapter Four


Clariana Babylon's eyelids fluttered open and she blinked a few times. There was a low rumble just outside and sudden crash. It was followed immediately by an angry shout. Babylon pulled herself off the bed and sprinted for the far window, Berretta well in hand. She pulled up to the wall, edging one eye out over the dirty glass. There were men, and an old truck; her bike was on that truck, and it was rolling away, rear lights burning like embers in the night. She gritted her teeth; she had supplies on that bike, and it was transport as well. Wolfram was close to sixty miles away; and she had no particular want to run the distance. The men below – Babylon counted five – watched the truck roll away. Then they turned towards the house, each one producing a weapon from their belts; hatchets, a hammer, a sickle, one even had a pitchfork. They only needed some burning torches and they would have made a great mob. Babylon snorted as they walked towards veranda.

“They think they can catch me unawares?” she said under her breath.

“Technically, they already have.” Rafken-Ghandi retorted. Babylon sighed inwardly, smiled for a moment, and then unlatched the windows. They looked as though they would squeak, so she snapped them free. Placing the window frame against the wall, Babylon climbed onto the sill and pulled her hat firmly on. She sprang forward and hit the straggly earth with a solid burst of percussion. She turned to meet the gazes of the men who eyed her dangerously. One was at the house door, the others arranged in a rough semicircle. With a grunt, one of them hurled his hatchet and it made half the distance to Babylon before being knocked out of the air with a whump of sound. The thrower slumped to the ground, a knife buried into his skull. To the hilt.

“Hela gentles.” Babylon said as the men began to fan out. Pitchfork was on her left, hammer on her right. Hatchet was backing up Hammer, while the man with the sickle was coming down the stairs. He shouted something in his own language and the men charged. Babylon snatched the pitchfork away from its user and swung it around, butt-end cracking soundly against Hammer's skull. She brought the tines into their previous owner, twisted and yanked his intestines into the open air. Babylon drove the rear end of the pitchfork into Hatchet's mouth, exploding teeth from his gums. Her hand slipped up the shaft and a short application of pressure saw his head embedded into the earth.

Sickle brought his weapon down, but hit empty air where a moment ago there had been a person. He felt a sudden impact to his chest and fell to the ground, vomiting up some of his important, now liquefied, organs. Hammer got his footing again, and turned to take the thrown pitchfork to his face. He was propelled backwards several metres and stuck to a tree. Clouds of dirt billowed up from her feet and she brushed her hands off, surveying her handiwork. Sure, the guy on the tree was still kicking and the guy with his head in the ground was pulling himself free (Not anymore, she made sure to go over and stomp on his neck; not just breaking it, but splintering it); but that still left the guys with most of their insides steaming on the ground in front of them, as well as the man with her knife his brain dead in under ten seconds. Which wasn't bad, she thought.

“Things aren't looking up.” Rafken-Ghandi murmured as Babylon retrieved her knife. She pried the sickle free of the dead hand looked it over. She flicked and the voice of the mechanoid was tinged with sudden interest, and he told her to pull the blade through one of the veranda supports. It went through like it was air and he let out a chuckle “A monomolecular edged farming implement constructed with modern material sciences.” he said “Not exactly the sharpest it could be, but it would make your everyday menial labour just a tad easier.” Babylon examined it further before dropping it. Really, you could down to the atomic or subatomic level with a knife; hers was monoelectronic, but when it came down to it, that sickle was easily capable of splitting her in two.

The tool hit the ground and Babylon stretched.

“I’m going to head on to Wolfram.” She said, “There’s no point moping over a missing motorcycle.” She straightened her hat and jogged out onto the road. As she started to run down the dirt track, Rafken-Ghandi whistled something in her ear that she didn’t really want to hear:

“Losing the bike may not be that big a deal, but what about the ammunition for your Berretta?”

*

The sun had come up less than an hour ago, leaving the sky a marbled grey, as if threatening sudden rain. Babylon looked up through the trees and wondered for a moment whether the weather had been influenced by some effector under the control of whoever was behind the townsmen, their violence, and their advanced farming implements. Her musings were brief as she stole further into the trees; her feet touching the ground only long enough to acquire traction and send her on her way. The trees suddenly gave way to open land all covered in tall stalks that practically glowed in the light and bent under their own weight. Beyond the veritable sea of wheat she could see the inklings of the actual town, and was struck by how large this place truly was. Wolfram wasn’t a town; it was a province.

Scanning across the waving stalks, Babylon could see the outlines of farmhouses, of curved backs. From behind her chosen tree, she tugged at her ears and listened. She could hear the puttering engines of ancient tractors, the idle speech and singing of those in the fields, the creak of their muscles, the heartbeat of a child only a metre away.

Babylon whipped around and found herself looking down on a little girl. Her face was grubby and smudged with dirt and something that looked suspiciously like dried soup. Her hair was straggly and hung down from her scalp in clumps, while her denim overalls looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned in years. The girl stared through her head and smiled, saliva running down her chin. She opened her mouth and called out “Mama! Papa! L'obiettivo gevonden!” though not at the top of her voice. All across the wheat fields men and women raised themselves up and turned towards Babylon’s tree. There were more shouts and amongst them Babylon picked out ‘Na seguenti ordenes’.

The little girl leaped forward and Babylon caught her, pitching her into a nearby tree. The Knight broke out into the open and sprinted across the dirt track. From the golden wall in front of Babylon, one of the farmers burst into the open, sickle in hand, a guttural scream tearing from his lips. Without as much as breaking stride, Babylon vaulted over him, snapping his head around in the process. She passed into the wheat, brushing it aside as the passed through it. Something came down from above and Babylon lashed out, twisting an arm and striking through the elbow. The limb hit the ground but Babylon had already passed on.

Blood was pounding in her ears as she came out of the tall stalks and into a cut down section of wheat. Ahead of her was a fence, and beyond that a house in better repair than that of the gatehouse. Springing over the fence, she landed dozens of metres further in. From the door of the farmhouse, a man called out to his brethren, before running out to meet her. He rushed to grab Babylon, but she seized his limbs and yanked them apart, bringing her forehead into his face. He dropped like a stone, a bloody crater in place of his features.

Wiping away the blood and fragments of bone on her face, Babylon whirled around; attackers from the field hurdling over the fence, as well as more from within the house. They swarmed in on her, a mess of fist and teeth and blades, but they found themselves assaulting a whirlwind of precise strikes and lightning quick twists. The wooden hafts of super-sharp farming tools shattered in hands, arms and heads came away from torsos. A haze of red leapt up from the bodies of the attackers, while Clariana Babylon came free of the melee with mere scratches and stray blood splattered across her faces and hands. She reaffirmed her hat’s position on her head and looked about as yet more disgruntled farmers shored themselves up on both sides of the raw wood palings.

They had stopped, standing in a mob of considerable size. Each face was equally blank, cunning and dangerous. The little girl from before, and a number of other children Babylon realised, had pushed themselves to the front of the pack, and she had a flash of sudden intuition. That wasn’t soup; it was dried gore. They stared at her, before finally calling out as one:

“Eindig l'obiettivo!”

They came as if a wave, hauling themselves over the fence and rushing towards her. Under her poncho, Babylon’s hand seized the reassuring memory-molded handle of her Berretta and pulled it free of the holster. She cupped the handgun in both hands and squeezed the trigger.

Rafken-Ghandi had called the bullets that Babylon’s 920EFS the finest carbonan jacketed, buckytungsten cored penetrators money could buy. Certainly, Babylon’s gun was probably the most powerful handgun on Dumont; probably one of the most powerful kinetic energy weapons on the planet. When it hit the first farmer, he exploded, sending his legs tumbling across the ground. On fire. The bullet continued on unabated, cutting through a dozen farmers as easily as one of their monomolecular sickle blades through wheat. She pulled the trigger again and again, leaving scores of farmers as formless piles of steaming, melting flesh.

And yet, as tens and tens were dropped, cast aside like so much useless chaff, they still came upon her in their great human wave. She crouched and leapt upward, landing lightly on the roof of the farmhouse. As Babylon slid a fresh clip into her handgun, Rafken-Ghandi reminded her that her supplies of ammunition were limited. She sighed as she pushed the clip home; to her right came the sound of a window exploding outward. The Knight turned to watch as another rabid farmer came over the sill, and ran towards her, axe cocked back for a killing blow. Babylon’s foot stabbed through his knee; as he fell, Babylon took his axe and sunk it into his skull. The body, after some encouragement, rolled off the roof to hit the grass before the gathering mob. His foot followed, landing on his back.

The house was surrounded on all sides by now; Babylon decided not to count them. They were not tightly packed, they had positioned themselves so to minimise potential casualties from Babylon’s slugs punching through their bodies. She frowned at their tactical intelligence; not because it was bad, but rather because it was so precise. They were shouting too, their words mingled into something incoherent, and through the shattered window she could see others, ducking away into the blind spots. She saw ladders being hauled towards her position and amongst the shouts Babylon heard something ominous.

Desperate cries of “Guadaña-sai!” blasted out from the surrounding throng even as ladders were thrown up with children and smaller adults clinging to the tops. Without missing a step they sprinted forward; more came out the window. The sun gleamed dully from the blades of their weapons; so much cleaner than the farmers themselves. Babylon moved like liquid, and the striking farmers hit nothing but air. On the other hand, Babylon hit nothing but flesh; her gun barrel cleaving asunder a skull, a blow from her foot snapping a spine. She grabbed a grubby boy in mid-leap and swung him around, shattering him through the roof and through a table below.

But even as Babylon cleared the roof, more and more were scampering up the ladders and through the window. As she stomped down on a woman’s head and punched her through her own ladder, she saw that though there wasn’t quite ‘no-end’ to them, it would perhaps be prudent to break away from the siege she had started. Every time she drove them back, they would regroup and assail her again. She lost track of time; it may have been mere minutes or it may have been hours. But the steady tempo was there, and when it suddenly broke off, she was startled. Babylon cast about, blood dripping from the tips of her fingers and their came a single, hushed voice.

It spoke gravely and with great dignity: “Guadaña-sai.”

There was mutual scoffing from Babylon and her mechanoid partner as this Guadaña-sai approached. He was a dark spot against the golden wheat; cloaked in light-drinking black. In one hand, held perfectly steady, was a scythe whose blade and haft were built from the same piece of material. Around the figure flickered a vague cloud, making it look as if Guadaña-sai walked within his own personal cloud of water. Rafken-Ghandi laughed suddenly and quipped “What, no pale horse?”

But as Guadaña-sai approached, Babylon became increasingly more disturbed. The crowd parted, speaking his name in those low, reverent tones. Babylon flicked her hands and cleared them of clinging gore and pulled out her pistol, backing away, closer to the window inside – there may have been more of the crazies in there, but she could deal with those. The cloaked apparition standing below she wasn’t so sure about.

There was a moment of silence that for Babylon lasted for a subjective eternity, but in actuality lasted half a second. There was a flickering in her vision, and had Rafken-Ghandi not roared in her ear a que to move, she wouldn’t have reacted in time. A storm of tiles leapt up in Guadaña-sai’s wake, stripping the roof bare. Babylon somersaulted away, beneath the blistering flash of the weapon in this creature’s hand. The second floor extension collapsed away from the mighty swing, and Guadaña-sai whirled around to meet Babylon’s bullets. The scythe simply disappeared and fifteen slugs hit the ground like a short spurt of heavy rain.

For a fraction of a second, Babylon saw Guadaña-sai’s face; a massive grin, sharp-toothed, but not the face of a skull. Something human, but only barely. The Knight had little time to consider it as whatever-the-hell this thing was came forward, lashing out with its weapon. The brim of her hat split, and a cut appeared on her cheek, vividly red. Thunder-crack blows leapt for her, and blood splashed out with each one. She was completely on the defensive, and was barely managing that. Each strike caused injury, even if only superficial. Her knife whipped out and came into contact with Guadaña-sai’s blade, the smell of lightning against the water wafting away from the combatants.

It was almost as though it was what Guadaña-sai wanted; Babylon was locked in place against the titanic pressure; the force making the entire farmhouse creak. The butt end thumped into her thigh and she stumbled to the side; then the blunt side hit her in the stomach like a falling meteor. All the air came out of her lungs, and she was swept aside, flung from the roof like a doll.

She landed on her back, but bravely forced her self to roll to her feet. She was thirty metres away from the horde, and the reaper-man was not on the roof. On reflex and instinct she dived to the side; Guadaña-sai came rocketing down using some unseen method of propulsion. It sunk into the earth beneath it, but before Babylon could scramble away, the heat haze surrounding the reaper engulfed her. Babylon didn’t have time to scream as she went from standing still to sonic instantaneously. Her innards seemed to compress, and her vision flickered, while her flight cut a trench through the earth almost a hundred yards long. Her hat fluttered away, torn from her brow, but her hand kept tight around her knife, unwilling to give up the weapon.

Lying still, Babylon gasped for air, her head propped up against a pile of freshly turned dirt. Her lifeblood bubbled from her mouth, while her head felt as though it had John Henry’s steam hammer coming down on it. Or maybe Henry himself. It didn’t help that the farmers were droning out Guadaña’s name or that Rafken-Ghandi was screaming directly into her brain, begging her to get up.

“Up! Get up!” the mechanoid was shouting (several hundred lightyears away, unbeknownst to Babylon, Rafken-Ghandi was on his feet, the panels of the drive room in front of him crumpled like so much tissue paper). “Get up for your Fabricator’s sake!” That wasn’t fair, she was trying. But it hurt.

“Now soldier!”

Isn't that supposed to be chapter 4?

*Waves hand* You see nothing. Cheers BV.

Okay Ford, I think you've proven your talent for writing gory action already.

I'm liking it so far, simply because the plot's getting so interesting.

Kwizard wrote:Okay Ford, I think you've proven your talent for writing gory action already.

What if I told you that this was only the beginning?

I'm liking it so far, simply because the plot's getting so interesting.

Actually, this is the point I've been waiting for, because I can actually get into the plot itself. So far, Completion doesn't quite have much in the way of indication of a coherent plot. But soon, soon it will.

Well, in celebration of my 2500th post, a new chapter! I am in some ways unhappy with it. However, it is required, as it's the next chapter in sequence. Without it, the story does not go on.


Completion

Act One: A Town Called Wolfram

Chapter Five


The sky looked so high and blue from where Clariana Babylon lay quietly. Feeble whisps of cloud raked across the roof of the world, and a bulbous shape made its way from her left to her right, with a high pitched wine audible even at this distance. But for that, it was totally quiet, and she was pleased. It was best like this, when it was quiet and you were left to be on your own. No worries or cares in the world. Just you, the sky and the silence.

“Hey Clariana!”

Or not. She sat up and ran her fingers through her jet hair, leaving the hand lodged in with the smooth locks. Looking down the soft curve of the hill, Clariana saw three boys sitting on their metal framed, dust-dulled bikes. They were dressed in worn through jeans, and shirts with the sleeves rolled up. The boy who had called out her name had fair like flax; it stuck up at the back, as though it always did. The other two, his brothers as she knew, were neater. The one in the middle had thick blonde hair, like a neater version of his younger brother's. The one furtherest away had darker hair; and darker clothes too. Clariana waved at them, as feebly as the clouds above.

“Hiya boys.” she called “What's cooking?”

“Well, nothin' really. We's were going to head down to the river. Thought you mayhap like to come with.”

Clariana patted her thighs rhythmically and shrugged “Nope. Sorry Rodney.”

“Aww, why no-” Rodney began, but his older brother placed his hand in front of his chest.

“You busy, 'Ana?” he asked.

A nod “That's the truth Jethro.” she lay back down, propping her hands behind her head. Taking in a deep breath, Clariana waited to hear them not leave. They didn't disappoint; their bikes didn't move, and the eldest called out again:

“I s'pose you'll be. Who’ll it be today?” the brothers, except for Rodney, sniggered. Clariana’s eye twitched and she sat back up.

“Pardon?” she snapped. One hand settled on a useful nearby stone.

“I reckon you boys know what I mean.” Jethro continued, more to his brothers (and his own ego), than to Clariana “Just look at her! Dresses like a whore, and acts like one too. She’s worse-” his tirade was ended, but not by his own violation. Tumbling from the saddle of his bike, he crashed into that of his brother. Rodney shied away, his arms about his face.

“I’ll tell you what Jethro Baines. If you get out of here right now, I won’t come down there and make you eat your own bike.” She looked pointedly at the darker haired brother “Don’t you say anything either, Michaeli, I’m not in the mood.” Jethro stumbled up to his feet, rubbing at a livid purple mark on his forehead. “You boys can just go the space away and fuck each other. God knows you ain’t-” she clenched her fists “aren’t going to get it anywhere else.”

Clariana lay back down, and this time there was a scrabble of tires against the earth. After they left, Clariana sighed and looked back up at the sky, reflecting on her simple belief that the sky was the only thing good about her entire planet. The sky held promise, especially at night, when one could see the bright points of light that indicated civilised, advanced society. Progressive society, with worlds that were cities and artificial constructs bigger than stars and wonders the like of which were never, ever seen in a backwater town on a backwater planet in the farthest reaches of the most backwater region of a backwater galaxy. She wanted off this rock, like her sisters. To leave behind her parents and the other idiot inhabitants of a community with an extremely strange view on posthuman existence; sure, she’d have to leave her grandfather behind, but he’d always said that the Babylon daughters should get the hell away from the star above.

That’d be nice. To go out into the universe; to that glorious epicentre of culture, the Milky Way itself. Maybe a place like Berlin, where her oldest sister Ysma had gone to study Pure Mathematics – her letters did say the place was alive in a way you couldn’t match outside of a galaxy’s core. Clariana didn’t quite know what that meant; they were light on astrophysics in the local schoolhouse. Or she could even go into the Armed Forces like Adilele, who was in the Maritime Service. Grandpa was always saying that the Imperial Commonwealth liked a volunteer and she was ostensibly a part of the Imperial Commonwealth.

The reverie might have gone on for some time, but for the sun being cut off. Clariana craned her head back to see what was blocking her light. It looked vaguely human; it had two arms and two legs, though it was much larger than anyone she’d ever seen. More than that, it seemed to be made of gleaming red plastic (it was, she would find out eventually, a gluonic material, made of sub-atomic buckyballs. She wouldn’t know what that actually meant for a longer period of time). The thing waved and Clariana gasped – it was a robot, a sapient Freedrone. Clariana was quick, and though it may have violated the concept of parsimony, she knew that it was a traveller from another star (perhaps the Red Milky Way itself!), a Space Pilot even.

“Hi there.” It said in an accent reminiscent of her own, in the language her grandfather had taught her, instead of the Anglo everyone else spoke. “I get the distinct feeling there’s a town around here. Well, I know there’s one here. I even know where it is. But I was wondering, would you like to show me the way?”

“Absolutely!” she replied and the machine chuckled, holding out one hand. It fully enclosed her hand and much of her lower arm.

Hauling her effortlessly onto her feet, the robot bowed “I’m Rafken-Ghandi. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

*

It took a supreme effort, but Clariana Babylon pushed herself to her feet. She swayed briefly but managed to stay upright. Grasping at her head, Babylon looked down the gouge her path had sliced out of the ground. She coughed, found her chin wet, and wiped it clean. Guadaña-sai was standing, scythe blade hovering behind his ankles. Nearly three score of farmers were massed behind the terrible creature; the rest of them lay in broken heaps around the farmhouse. He (or it) was just standing there, watching, perhaps gauging her strengths or following some unknown order. In her head, Rafken-Ghandi was almost weeping with relief, and Babylon smiled inwardly.

“Run away, stupid.” The mechanoid groaned “You can’t win in this condition. I don’t how I’d bet even if you were in your peak.”

Babylon tossed the Fairbairn-Sykes into the air, snatching the knife with her right “I know what you mean. It’s faster than me, stronger, probably tougher. But I’m just plain better.” She beckoned at Guadaña with the fingers of her left hand. It cocked its sharp featured face up and the crowd behind him began to speak.

The sound of almost sixty voices speaking at once was disconcerting. They spoke as one, as though a single entity and Babylon recognised that it was not they who was speaking, but rather the reaper, using them as a medium. “You have no chance.” They said, in her language. She tilted her head, as though asking: Are you afraid?

“Watch then.”

Lazily almost, the scythe rotated from behind Guadaña’s back and into both hands. If you blinked, you would have missed it, but Babylon did not blink. Nor did she stand and watch the white face grow as it came closer, framed by the flickering black cloak. Instead, she stepped to the side, her thick braid and poncho being pulled about in the wake of Guadaña-sai’s passing. The scythe angled back around, its blade glowing blue from the splitting of the very atomic structure of the air. The flash was eye-blindingly quick, but missed Babylon by less than a millimetre. She whipped past and jabbed out, her arm a blur. With a flash of light, the tip of her knife was locked just short of slicing into the grinning mask. Babylon pulled away, out of her trench.

It became a tense, whirling trade off of blows and dodges; superior physical abilities versus sheer technical skill. Babylon was on the defensive, dodging past the sweeping paths of the crescent blade, deflecting the machine-gun quick jabs of the unbladed end with her knife. It was a duel which the farmers watched in total silence as twin figures danced past each other. But it was a dance of death; the reaper would have been quite capable of splitting Babylon into two separate pieces. It took all her effort to keep within its guard, to limit his effective striking ability, but every now and then she’d just be deposited into such a place. The fight was dragging on, so Babylon did what she could.

She threw Guadaña-sai.

It wasn’t exceptionally difficult; she placed herself well and caught its wrist as it lunged forward. It went flying, but turned impossibly, landing on its feet. When it turned, Babylon wasn’t there.

“I like this plan.” Rafken-Ghandi said as Babylon powered through the wheat field, back out onto the road. Without any show of hesitation, the Knight plunged headfirst into the trees and underbrush, pulverising it beneath her feet. She really didn’t have a chance to outrun Guadaña-sai, however. It didn’t run, after all. It practically flew.

As Babylon settled herself into some high branches, she considered that. What was Guadaña-sai? Certainly there was something oddly familiar about it. And more to the point, where was it? Surely it should have been able to chase her down in seconds – Babylon was a fast runner to be sure, but the reaper was so much faster than she in a straight run. As she hid in a tree, beneath the smart-fabric of her poncho, she wondered what sort of sensors this Guadaña-sai was packing. It would only take a thermal sensor and her goose was cooked; she grumbled, not for the first time, about the relative lack of high-technology she had.

It wasn’t a Knight’s place to complain, but instead to take it in her stride, which she did. Hiding, of course. She stayed in her tree for over half an hour, and spent the time speaking with Rafken-Ghandi. The subject dwelled upon the reaper, though more than once Rafken-Ghandi enquired about how she felt. Babylon said she was fine each time, more because she didn’t want her partner worry, rather than because it was the truth.

“So, what do you think it is?” Babylon asked; check resting against the coarse bark of her tree, one eye peering out from under the edge of her poncho.

“An augment,” the mechanoid replied with complete certainty “It didn’t move smoothly enough to be an aioid. More interesting was the cloud of nanomachines around it; certainly, I haven’t seen a combat effective nanoswarm in over two hundred years. Each one is probably a component in a butterfly drive.”

“I’m sorry, did you say a nanoswarm?” she rubbed the bridge of her nose “That just doesn’t happen.”

“’Fraid to say deary; that that’s the way it plays.” Rafken-Ghandi replied.

“So a fairly substandard augment with a field scythe and an impossible swarm of tiny robots.” Babylon let herself droop against the trunk “Ghandi, does this seem just a tiny bit odd?”

“Just a tiny bit; certainly it has nothing on that psychic giant squid.”

Babylon shuddered as she dropped down from the branches, hitting the ground lightly in a cloud of leaves. She stretched briefly, and felt around at her ribs. None of her internal organs felt displaced or crushed, and certainly she knew she wouldn’t be doing quite so well if it was the latter. She padded off into the trees.

Babylon had a memorised a map of the surrounding area. It wasn’t exactly a very detailed map, but rather one that showed the structure of Wolfram. In essence, Wolfram was built on a hill, with Wolfram Proper being towards the top of this hill. It was ringed by farms and possessed a nearby lake, which lead out via a river to the sea. There was even a sizeable settlement devoted to fishing at the end of the river. It was practically self sufficient; it produced its own food, electricity and materials; either from the surrounding forest or the mountains to the northwest. It was an interesting little society, she supposed in the rear of her mind. So isolated from the rest of the world, semi-modern yet so primitive. Undoubtedly the Sociological Engineering division would have thought it was brilliant; a world within a world. Babylon thought it was just plain creepy; little eccentric communities just weren’t her thing.

A bare road cut through the forest and Babylon slid herself against the largest tree she could find, low to the ground. She shrugged the poncho over her head; the sound of a juddering engine growing in her ears. Curled up, she could see the old dusty shell of a truck shudder past, looking much like the truck that had taken her bike away. As the clunker left her behind, Babylon felt pangs of loss about her bike and as she stood, she told herself that she would get that bike back.

With the ancient machine moved on, Babylon crossed the road and drove into the underbrush again. She noticed the other person emerging from the bushes a split second before they collided. Legs tangled, they went down among the shrubbery, crushing branches beneath their combined weight. A high, female shriek split the silence and Babylon clamped her hand around the girl’s mouth. She squirmed beneath Babylon, clawing at the hand about her mouth. Desperately Babylon hissed out Madrin words in an attempt to stop the girl’s thrashing, but she was pretty sure she was simply speaking gibberish. It all came to a head when the girl managed to sink her teeth into Babylon’s hand. Babylon yelled out a curse as the girl crunched into flesh and bone, covering her own mouth in horror. The truck wasn’t so far away, and now the girl was screaming incoherently. Babylon thumbed the girl’s neck and she fell silent instantly.

The coughing engine of the truck was coming back around, even slower than before. Babylon sprang up off the ground and left the unconscious girl lying in the dirt. She came to a sudden halt, squeezed her bottom lip between her teeth and glanced over her shoulder. It didn’t do to get struck by a sudden bout of compassion when on a job, but Babylon couldn’t help but go back, seize the girl and throw her over her shoulder. In her head Rafken-Ghandi was decrying this sudden stupidity, but Babylon ignored him.

She disappeared from sight just as the truck had backed around the bend.

*

Black then suddenly pink.

Opening her eyes, she saw a woman’s face peering at her over the frames of a pair of sunglasses. She was rubbing her cheek with the end of a braid, as though considering her. She recoiled into the tree behind her back and tried to scream out again, but it came out as nothing more than a muffled mumble. Her hands were bound, as were her feet.

“Now seriously,” Babylon said to her ‘prisoner’ “Could you just settle down for a minute? I’m not one of them, and neither are you. If you’re wondering, you’re tied up because of this:” she waved her hand, a pale set of crescents marking the skin “And because you just won’t shut up.” She let go of her hair and shuffled forward on her haunches “Now if you promise not to starting howling like a drowned cat, I’ll ungag you. That sound reasonable?”

The girl nodded.

“And do you speak Aglais, by any chance? Whatever the space this country speaks is not a language.”

The girl nodded again. Babylon sighed happily and reached forward, pulling the gag free effortlessly, not even reaching for a knot. The girl eyed Babylon carefully, still shied away. Strands of strawberry blonde hair fell in front of her face.

“Do you have a name?” Babylon asked and the girl nodded. With a sigh, Babylon let her shoulders sink “What is it?”

“Oh! Um, Vittoria. Torquemaeder. Vittoria Torquemaeder.” Her lips trembled. “And, what about yours?”

Babylon scratched her nose “Brookeson, Claire Brookeson.” she reached out and broke the ties on Vittoria’s ankles then pulled her forward to get a hold of those around her wrists.

Vittoria sat quite still and answered Babylon’s questions: she was the daughter of a local hunter, though he had been killed by what she called the Wolframites. She survived in one of his stores; essentially an underground house that the locals knew nothing about. She emerged only to forage for food, and had been surviving like that for close to three years. Babylon had been impressed by this, but said nothing of the sort. On questioning her about what was wrong with the townspeople, Vittoria had no idea, which wasn’t much of a surprise. In the end, Babylon helped the young woman to her feet and suggested that they get out of the forest. As she expected, Vittoria suggested that they go to her father’s store and lead the way deeper into the trees.

She wasn’t nearly Babylon’s height, barely coming up to the Knight’s chin. She seemed to have an excellent sense of direction however, and tracked her way through some invisible path; it really was invisible, because Babylon couldn’t see any landmarks worth noting for an internal map. Vittoria kept a firm hold on Babylon’s hand, and dragged her down a short incline, into a recess in a wall of rock.

It was a door, a metal door that looked sturdier than a small mountain. Vittoria fished out a key the same shade of bronze as the metal that made up the portal. She forcibly twisted it around with both hands, opening up what sounded like an extremely large lock. It thundered into the steel casing of the door and Vittoria swung it open, gesturing for Babylon to enter.

Her head scraped against the roof. There was an oven, a sink, a roughly hewn table and an inordinate amount of hooks hanging from the ceiling. In the corner sat a heavy cupboard that smelt strongly of gun oil. The entire ‘house’ smelled quite strongly of meat, and it made Babylon’s stomach rumble. Behind her, Vittoria clanged shut a whole array of locks on her door, shutting off what little light there was. A little flame fizzled into tiny existence, and something popped; a gas lamp, shedding ample but dirty light into the room.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yah, I am.” Babylon replied, dragging a seat away from the table Though it’s not like you’re going to have enough food for me.

The truth was in eating. As a posthuman, Babylon was physically superior in every conceivable way to her genetic forebears, like Vittoria. However, the amount of food she consumed in one sitting would have fed Vittoria for a week. Babylon didn’t mention this, and faced her meagre portions with her frown on the inside; if she was lucky, she might find her high density rations. Otherwise, she was going to be a very hungry secret agent, and Clariana Babylon was not the sort of person who liked being hungry.

At the very least, Vittoria was pleasant enough, though quite frankly; anyone who wasn’t trying to murder her would have satisfied Babylon for company. She could see Vittoria glancing at her occasionally, perhaps trying to guess who she actually was outside of a name. When she finally asked, it was not without some trepidation. Babylon suspected that Miss Torquemaeder wasn’t sure about her, some random popping out of the forest. Though she knew that she was in part relieved, because Babylon wasn’t trying to bite her head off.

“So where are you from? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

“I’m not. I hail from the United Concordiat of Calican.” Vittoria’s eyebrows quirked, though Babylon ignored it.

“We don’t get many visitors out here. When I was little, you’d get cars cutting through the valley to head up north to the Stroggos Mountains. But they started to become less and less common as time went on.” Vittoria eyed Babylon across the table “I’m guessing you’re not just a visitor?”

“Maybe. But I have to wonder, why haven’t you just left?”

So Vittoria explained. She had once tried to leave the valley, but had discovered that beyond a certain point, there walked some beast, guarding the forest. It didn’t come to the roads, but that was to ask for the Wolframites to find you; they had a gatekeeper she said, and Babylon replied that they didn’t anymore. She had even tried meeting with some of the investigators, though that had been practically impossible, what with the Mayor himself with them. The last time she had tried to get out of the valley had been when some military team had begun sweeping through the forest, near to her. She even got within sighing distance, though it was essentially for nothing. For though there were a half dozen armed Calicanian soldiers with an armoured car, they were all killed.

“By the monster they call Guadaña-sai,” Vittoria stammered. It came among them and like some whirlwind brutally slew them all. Their weapons had been practically useless, even those of the vehicle they came with. They were crushed and decapitated and the armoured car was split in half. It had lasted all of ten seconds, after which the reaper simply left; she thought it might have been dragging a body, too.

“I’m not really surprised.” Babylon finally commented, when the young woman had finished with her story.

“You’ve met their protector?” Vittoria gasped.

“Briefly.” Babylon replied.

*

Steam rose in clouds, and Babylon wiggled her toes above the surface of the water. It might not have been an artificial waterfall, but the water was hot, and that was exactly what Babylon needed. She stared up at the ceiling, her hair floating down past her shoulders and asked Rafken-Ghandi what he made of Vittoria. The mechanoid made a noncommittal noise.

“Well, for someone who’s been living near Wolfram since this thing started, she’s doing quite well.” He paused “No, very well. She’s obviously very intelligent and probably knows the surrounding area extremely well.”

“So she has a use.” Babylon mused, and asked Rafken-Ghandi to play some music for her. He replied only if she put her glasses in a better vantage point than the floor.

It wasn’t the click of a gun being primed that told Babylon that Vittoria was there, nor was it the quiet click of the door being open, or the pad of her bare feet against the linoleum. Babylon had known that Vittoria was going to come in, one way or the other. She smiled, for it proved she had guts. She also had a shotgun, which Babylon saw when she opened her eyes and looked up at Vittoria’s face; her hand emerged from the water to wave.

“So, how’d you know?” she asked.

Vittoria pursed her lips “You said you were from Calican, but you got the name wrong. It’s unified, not united.” Rafken-Ghandi whistled, and said that she really was a smart cookie. “Then you said you’d met Guadaña-sai, and you obviously survived, where six men and an armoured vehicle did not. You’re just not normal, Claire Brookeson; if that’s even your real name.”

“It’s not.” Babylon replied, tearing the shotgun from Vittoria’s grip. Before the girl had a chance to register it and react, Babylon jabbed her in the stomach, dropping her to her knees. Gasping for breath, she found the barrel of her own gun lodged between her teeth. She looked fearfully down the weapon into Babylon’s eyes, which seemed almost carved from stone. Then she smiled and removed the gun barrel. Vittoria sighed in catharsis as Babylon leant against the edge of the tub, so that her face was level with that of the girl’s. “I’m not what you’d call normal either, nor am I from Calican. I haven’t been in the same hemisphere as that place.”

“Then who are you? Where are you from?” Vittoria gasped, still clutching at her stomach.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you where I come from,” Babylon smiled “But my name is Clariana, if it makes you feel better.” Vittoria nodded and Babylon waved towards the door “Now, could you get out please?”

Very nice. But why do posthumans like Babylon have such a high calorie intake? Maintaining muscle modifications and such?

Kwizard wrote:Very nice. But why do posthumans like Babylon have such a high calorie intake? Maintaining muscle modifications and such?

Action requirs energy, the more action, the more energy. Even with a more efficient digestive tract, a post-human, I'd imagine, eats a much more high-calorie diet than the average human.