V. Moody's Blog, page 5

Book 3 – 97: Mother-in-Chief

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Quazi

Planet Core.

 

“Ah, now I get it,” said Ubik. “I thought you were in some sort of tussle with the Machine, but it was your old Antecessor buddies you were trying to keep at bay. Did you win?”

There was no response from the cube. Ubik got the impression the Fourth was a little embarrassed.

“Who is he talking to?” said Fig’s mother.

“There’s an Antecessor god inside the cube,” said Fig. “It’s a long story.”

“There is no evidence the Antecessors had gods,” said Nigella.

“I know,” said Fig. “It’s just a powerful existence that Ubik likes to flatter. How are you, Mother?”

“I am very well,” said Nigella, smiling briefly, shifting the baby in her arm but keeping her eyes on Ubik. “This cube, I think I want it.”

“Fourth?” said Ubik, his attention on the cube. “Did you win?”

“He just said we failed and they have control of the network,” said PT. “I think we can call that not winning.”

“There are many types of winning,” said Ubik, not even bothering to look over at him.

His eyes were fixed on the cube, which no longer had hyperactive streaks of light running back and forth across its surfaces.

The lights were bright and static, painting a pattern of completeness. It was fascinating. And dumb. Everything the cube was going to do was written on its big dumb face.

“Their strength is profound and their power unfathomable,” said the Fourth. “They will be here soon, so…” The Fourth God of the Antecessors hesitated in a very ungodlike manner.

“So?” said Ubik, wanting the Fourth to say it.

“So, if you have a way to stop them, now is the time to act.”

Ubik couldn’t help but smile. Whatever the situation, no matter how bad it was for them, he was pleased that the Fourth had finally come to the realisation that he, Ubik U Ubik, was the only one who might possibly be able to do something about it.

It was a nice feeling to be recognised by a god. Especially this smug bastard.

It would have been nice if that realisation had been born of confidence rather than desperation, but you can’t have everything.

“Hoho, you think I can stop an entire Antecessor fleet hell-bent on taking away my good friend Figaro Ollo? Quite the expectation you have of me, Fourth.”

“That means you can do it, right?” said Fig.

“Yeah, can you quit the grandstanding and get on with it?” said PT. “Didn’t you hear what he said? Now is the time to act.”

Ubik sighed to himself. The Fourth might have begrudgingly accepted Ubik’s place at the forefront of this endeavour, but it was clear these two only saw him as a means to an end.

“Now is not the time to act,” said Ubik. “Now is never the time to act when you face profound strength and unfathomable power.”

“Then when is the time to act?” asked PT.

“Oh, you know, a few days back. You really want everything already decided long before you get in this sort of situation.”

“And did you?” asked PT.

“Unfortunately, didn’t have the time,” said Ubik. “I suppose we’ll just have to wing it.”

“So you’re saying we’ve already lost?” said PT.

“No, I wouldn’t say we’ve lost.”

“Because there are many different types of losing?” said PT.

“You’re doing that thing where you try to use my own words against me, aren’t you?” Ubik turned to Fig’s mother, who was watching them bicker with a look of mild consternation. “That’s his thing, using people’s own momentum against them. His greatest weakness is when his opponent does nothing.”

“That explains why I can never beat you,” said PT, sourly.

“Ahem,” said Fig’s mother, lightly clearing her throat. She raised the black-gloved hand not holding the baby and pointed her finger at Ubik. “Are you really relying on him to defeat the Antecessors.” Her tone was somewhat dismissive.

“Hey, Fig,” said Ubik, “you never said your mother was so mean.” He shook his head. “Pretty girls... think they’re better than the rest of us. Right, Captain?”

Fermont just sneered at him.

“Yes, Mother,” said Fig. “He certainly has a better chance than the Corps.” He glanced over at Fermont sitting on the ground.

“True,” said Nigella. “Your team’s performance has been less than satisfactory, Captain.”

Fermont looked up at Nigella with dispassionate eyes. “He has the same ability as your husband.” She said the word like it was painful to have it in her mouth. “Our organics were useless.”

Nigella looked at Fig and raised her hand, palm facing out, at her son. Her eyes turned completely black. The baby woke up and began crying.

A dark ball of nothingness formed just in front of her and began moving towards Fig. The pressure from it was immense and Ubik couldn’t help but back away.

Fig frowned and his eyes flickered with light for a moment. The ball disappeared.

The baby stopped crying.

“Good,” said Nigella, a small smile on her red lips. “You have already mastered his organic. We should be able to find many uses for it.”

Fig didn’t look very pleased about her tone. She definitely sounded like she intended to be the one who would decide on those uses.

Nigella didn’t wait to hear what Fig might think about it. She was looking down at Fermont.

“And you. Are you useless without your organic?” asked Nigella.

Fermont lowered her head, not saying anything.

“I can see we need to take a trip to Immigré after this,” said Nigella. She looked over at Speers and Otenu, both of whom were looking dispirited. “The two of you, also. You should be grateful to my son for highlighting your weaknesses so we can work on them.”

“What’s Immigré?” asked PT.

“It’s a Seneca training planet,” said Fig. “A tropical paradise.”

“Oh, sounds lovely,” said Ubik. “Have you been?”

“Men aren’t allowed,” said Fig. “Except as prey to be hunted.”

“I think I’ll give it a miss, then,” said Ubik.

“We weren’t properly briefed,” said Fermont bitterly. “If we had been, we would have brought a full team and we wouldn’t be in this condition.”

“Yes, you are correct,” said Nigella. “It is a position the Corps has been in often, and finding a way to survive so we can return prepared is what we do. It’s what you did. There is no shame in it, only opportunity. You two, help her.”

Two women came forward from behind Nigella — Weyla and Leyla.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Ubik. “Couldn’t stay away, huh? Did you come to rescue us? You and the sex robots working together, are you?”

Neither sister said anything and moved to assist Fermont, getting her off the ground and strapped to Leyla’s back. No words were spoken between them.

“It has been a long time since the Corps had to face a worthy enemy,” said Nigella. “Too long. We have grown soft, it can’t be denied.” She was looking at Fermont as she spoke. “I don’t consider the Corps capable of averting disaster here, either. Which is why we need to leave this place immediately.”

“There is no point leaving, Mother. If we lose here, there will be nowhere left to go.”

Nigella looked displeased by her son’s outburst. “This is not a fight we can win, Figaro. We need to prepare correctly, only then will we have a chance to be victorious. It is not only yourself you need to think of, Figaro. There is also your sister, who you have ignored so far. Do you not wish to meet her?”

She looked down at the sleeping child cradled in her arms. The baby sighed and moved slightly, unaware of the peril she was in.

Figaro took a step forward but stopped. “What’s her name?”

“Cadral Matton-Ollo.”

“Cady,” said Figaro softly. He looked at his mother. “I will not leave, Mother. As much for her sake as my own. Father would agree with my choice.”

“Your father isn’t here. And it’s high time you stopped letting him rule over you. You are no longer a child.”

It was obvious to Ubik that when she told Fig not to listen to his father, she didn’t mean he should listen to his own counsel. It was quite the family dynamic they had going.

“Father told me to make my own choices, which is what I will do. I no longer follow the path he set for me, and I won’t follow you, either, Mother.”

“How can you be so foolish, Figaro?” said Nigella. “Aren’t the Antecessors here for you? Don’t you hold the key to their goal? Without you here, they will be forced to change their plans, and that will be enough to stop them, for now.”

“You seem to have a very clear idea of what the Antecessors are after,” said PT. “Almost like you knew they would come for your son.”

“You are also an important part of this. You will come with us. The power you wield belongs to the entire human race. It is what will save us, but only if we use it correctly.”

“No,” said PT. He pointed at Ubik. “He’s insane, but I’d much rather take my chances with him. The Seneca Corps doesn’t hold any appeal for me. None at all.”

“An ungrateful son,” said Ubik sadly, “and an unwilling sacrifice. These two, huh? Who’d be a parent?”

Nigella handed her child to Weyla, who took the baby with a flash of fear and reluctance.

“It isn’t hard to see what the goal of the Antecessors is,” said Nigella, walking towards Ubik. “Neither is it very difficult to see what your goal is.”

Ubik started walking backwards, but bumped into the cube.

Nigella reached out with her gloved hand and closed it around Ubik’s throat. She lifted him off his feet with no apparent effort.

“Ukh! Fig, little help,” said Ubik, barely managing to get the words out.

“I can’t do anything,” said Fig. “She isn’t using an organic. Don’t worry, I don’t think she’s going to kill you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Nigella. “This one is responsible for the deaths of thousands. And his objective is entirely self-serving. Which I can respect, but cannot allow.”

“PT?” wheezed Ubik.

I don’t know why you’re even asking,” said PT.

“Grandma!” shouted Ubik. “The glove.”

“Ooh, okay, okay, I’m coming, dear.” The fake droid trundled out from the crowd of robots towards Nigella.

Nigella glanced over and casually flicked her other hand at it. The droids collapsed. But there was a crackle of electricity along Nigella’s arm.

She scowled and then shook her arm like she was shaking off some water, moving Ubik bodily, like a rag doll.

“Oh, will you look at that,” said Grandma, her voice coming from Fig’s arm. “She’s got a firewall protecting her. Not even a little gap anywhere. Very, very strong.” She sounded impressed. “There’ll be no bypassing that, I can tell you, and no mistake.”

Ubik felt the grip around his throat tighten. The glove could augment her strength, but she also had a level of protection around it that was even beyond Grandma’s abilities. Probably a gift from her husband. Which made this tricky.

“You need me,” said Ubik in a tiny voice. “I can stop them.”

“Really?” said Nigella, sounding unconvinced. “How?”

“I like your mother,” said PT. “She’s very direct.”

Fig just frowned.

Ubik didn’t really mind being suspended by the neck, his feet flailing. He quite enjoyed it. He kicked his legs around like he was walking on air.

The pressure on his throat eased ever so slightly.

“It’s easy. We can’t send the fleet away — you already tried that — but they need two things. They need your son and they need the planets in this quadrant. All we need to do is get rid of the planets.”

Nigella opened her hand and dropped Ubik.

“You want to destroy all the planets in this sector,” said Nigella, not sounding like she disapproved of the idea.

Ubik rubbed his throat. “No, that would be murder on a scale only a madman or the Seneca Corps would consider. We only need to get rid of this.” He slapped the cube a couple of times. “Without the cube, they can’t control the network. It’s the key component. Just use your portable black hole to send it away and it’ll take them forever to find it again. Problem solved. Temporarily.”

Nigella looked at the brightly glowing cube behind Ubik.

“Aren’t there others like this one?” she said.

“Yes,” said Ubik. “But they all need to be present to connect the network. Even one missing will make the whole thing collapse. Of course, we can’t just destroy it, the energy released would be catastrophic. And we need to separate it from the planet, otherwise there’ll be a thread they can follow to find it. But that should be easy enough — our robot workforce can dig a moat around it and put some sort of insulating material underneath. I’m sure there’s something lying around we can use.”

Nigella was nodding her head. “I believe that would be—”

“That’s the most complete explanation I’ve ever heard him give,” said PT. “So I think we can safely assume it’s a lie.”

“Why is it a lie?” said Ubik, not happy with PT’s negativity. “You think everything I say is a lie.”

“Everything you say is a lie,” said PT.

“Is now really the time to insult me?” said Ubik.

“The end of the universe is imminent,” said PT. “Who knows if I’ll have another chance?”

“If what you say is true,” said Nigella, “then we don’t have to send it away, we can take it with us. Along with the Antecessor inside it. Wait, what is happening now?”

The cube had started to glow brighter.

“Oh, this is the ignition of the, you know, whatchamacallit. Portal opening.”

“Then stop it,” said Nigella.

“Can’t. Seems we’re too late. You probably shouldn’t have wasted all that time chatting.”

It had been obvious the cube was counting down, all he had to do was stall. Now, there was no way for Nigella or the Seneca Corps or anyone else to prevent the portal from opening.

“Ubik,” said PT, “are you sure this is alright?”

“Sure, sure. As long as we have Fig, they can’t do anything. They’ve got the lock, we’ve got the key. Nothing changes. We just get to see what it is they’ve been working for all this time.”

There was a bright flash. When it faded, Ubik looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed, except...

“Guys, where’s Fig?”

There was no sign of him.

Book 3 – 96: Genie Unbottled

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Quazi

Planet Core.

 

Figaro was in two minds about Ubik’s sabotage of the entire Seneca fleet.

He was no fan of the Seneca Corps, but neither was he a fan of unfair fights. Even when it was the bully being bullied.

“What have you done?” screamed Fermont. She was on the ground, her only remaining limb propping her up as she glared impotently at Ubik.

“Me?” said Ubik, holding up Fermont’s severed arm and using it for emphasis as he spoke. “What about you? What did you do to my Grandma? She’s just an old lady, you psychopath.”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” said Fermont, her anger derailed by the incomprehensible accusation. “Why would I do anything to your grandmother? Why would she even be here?”

“You think I believe you?” said Ubik, waving the arm around. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. And she definitely knows.” Ubik turned and pointed the hand on the end of Fermont’s arm at the other Seneca woman, Otenu. “Look at the guilt on her face.”

Otenu didn’t look in the least bit guilty — she was Seneca, they couldn’t afford to feel guilt — but she did seem to be stunned and unresponsive. She was having trouble accepting Ubik’s complete unravelling of her understanding of tronics.

“Snap out of it, Otenu,” Fermont shouted at her. “Find out if the fleet is in danger.”

Otenu took a long breath as though she had just remembered to breathe, and then grabbed her helmet off the floor. She began trying to get it to work.

“He isn’t bluffing,” said Figaro. “Have you ever heard of anyone else breaking into Seneca coded frequencies or shutting down all comms systems from a helmet? If he says the fleet is defenceless, it is.”

“Reverse it,” said Fermont. “Undo it.”

“I won’t,” said Ubik. “And you can’t make me.”

Fermont began to desperately get closer to Ubik by shuffling across the floor towards him, presumably to throttle him with her remaining hand.

“Figaro, you have to stop him,” said Speers. “If the fleet is defenceless… Your mother and your sister are up there.”

“I know,” said Figaro. “I tried to warn her but you know what she’s like. I can’t hold back Armageddon, never could. What she does is up to her. I’m sure she’ll find a way to survive. Right now, we have other problems.” He turned away from Speers, whose pleading expression changed to a frustrated one. “Ubik, is the cube operational?”

The lights had returned to the cube’s surfaces, but they were flashing on and off and forming incomplete patterns that failed to stabilise for more than a moment.

“It’s operational,” said Ubik. “It’s just warming up.”

“What does that mean?” said PT. “Since when do Antecessor devices need to warm up?”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” said Ubik. “What I mean is that the Fourth and the Machine are in there and they’re refusing to come out, which probably means the Machine has realised that the Fourth is not working in pursuit of the Antecessor cause, so now they’re locked in some sort of struggle for control, and once they settle who’s in charge, the fate of the quadrant will be decided. Fingers crossed our side wins.”

“That’s what warming up means?” said PT.

Ubik nodded. “Short version.”

“Um,” said Figaro. “I thought they were both working for you.”

“Working for me? No, more like working near me. I just lay the groundwork. Set the stage. You can’t really control what anyone else does, can you? I mean, you can if you turn them into mindless drones like in Seneca, but when it comes to attempting mutual benefit, there’s usually mutual lying and mutual unpleasantness. Which is why I find it’s better to work alone.”

“Good advice,” said PT. “I wish you’d take it.”

“But the Fourth is the equivalent of their gods, isn’t he?” said Figaro. “Can’t he just order the Machine to do what he says?”

“The Machine is a machine,” said Ubik. “And this is the machine it was made to operate. No one can work it as well and no one knows its purpose better. It already knows what to do, we just have to convince it our purpose is the same as its purpose.” Ubik lowered his voice. “Which it isn’t.”

“It's going to help the Antecessors capture me and kill the rest of you,” said Figaro.

“Well, it probably is now that you’ve suggested it,” said Ubik. He lowered his voice again. “It can hear everything we’re saying right now, so don’t reveal any sensitive information.”

Ubik didn’t seem very concerned about the fate of the galaxy being so precarious, or allowing the Machine to know their plans. He seemed happy to wait for the outcome of the Fourth’s struggle with the Machine.

“I don’t know what you three think you’re doing here,” said Speers, “but your best chance of coming out of this alive is to give yourselves up and let the Corps protect you.”

“You know her, don’t you?” said PT. He was looking at Speers as he spoke. “She’s about your age. Childhood friends?”

“No,” said Figaro. “She’s part of my mother’s personal guard. She’s the youngest one because my mother wanted her to seduce me and form an emotional attachment which could be leveraged against me in the future.”

“And did she?” asked PT.

“Yes, several times,” said Figaro. There didn’t seem any reason not to be honest, although Speers didn’t look like she was happy with his summary of their relationship. “What? You were acting under orders, weren’t you?”

“Of course,” said Speers. “That doesn’t mean that’s all it was. Was it?”

“Wait,” said Ubik, as though he’d had a momentous epiphany. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No,” said Figaro and Speers at the same time.

“Wow,” said Ubik. “I thought you only dated princesses. Wasn’t expecting a grunt. Like it rough, eh?”

“Did you call me a grunt?” said Speers, her pretty face transforming into a gargoylesque leer, which Figaro found oddly arousing.

“Yep,” said Ubik. “Now, where’s my Grandma? I know she’s not up there, and she wouldn’t have let you come here without her, so where is she? I should be able to contact her but I’m getting nothing.”

Rather than attack him, which was what Figaro was expecting, Speers straightened up, pulled her shoulders down and recovered her calm exterior.

“You have gathered some very strange companions, Figaro.” She looked at him with a cool demeanour. “Even without shields, the fleet will defeat all enemies, and then they will come for you. Do you really believe these people will be able to avoid capture and the inevitable consequences?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking him,” said Ubik. “He isn’t even our leader. He is.” He pointed at PT.

PT’s eyes slowly closed. Figaro could appreciate the bind Ubik had just placed him in. If he denied Ubik’s pronouncement he would look cowardly — a weak leader trying to avoid trouble.

But if he confirmed it, he would be playing into Ubik’s machinations, whatever they were.

One or the other. Staying silent and hoping everyone would move on never worked.

“Ubik, get the Fourth out here,” said PT, eyes open and using his position as ‘leader’ to order Ubik around. Figaro smiled at this third option he hadn’t even considered. If Ubik wanted PT to appear as the leader, he would have to show his obedience.

“Yes, sir,” said Ubik, immediately turning his attention to the cube, a small smirk indicating that either this was all part of his plan or that he liked the way PT had turned his ploy against him. It had to be said that Ubik was always appreciative of any form of deviousness or deceit, even when it was aimed at him.

“You’re the leader?” said Speers with a sneer. “Fight me.”

“What?” said PT.

“Fight me. Prove yourself.”

“Why?” said PT. “What will proving anything to you get me?” He turned away from her, ready to shout more orders at Ubik.

“If you can beat me, I’ll answer your questions.”

“Speers!” said Fermont.

“I know what I’m doing, Captain.” Speers kept her eyes on PT. “But if I win, you come with us, as our prisoners.”

“No,” said PT.

“No weapons, no organics,” said Speers.

“And once again, no.”

“Yes,” said Ubik. “Do it. Beat her up and then ask her what they did with Grandma.”

“Even if I beat her, she’ll just lie,” said PT.

“Seneca honour code,” said Ubik. “She has to keep her word.”

“That’s not how the code works,” said Figaro.

“She’s Seneca, not a djinn,” said PT. “She isn’t bound by magic to grant my wish.”

“I need Grandma.”

“Are you saying you need Grandma to get the cube working or do you just miss her?” said PT.

“Bit of both,” said Ubik.

PT frowned. He looked over at Figaro. “Can you beat her?”

“Yes,” said Figaro.

“Only in training,” said Speers. “The real thing is completely different.”

Speers was already in a fighting stance, hands open and raised. She was going to go for his neck, smash his trachea and then attack the eyes. Standard opening gambit.

“Fine,” said PT, taking up a similar stance. “If I lose and we get taken prisoner…”

“You won’t lose,” said Ubik. “Think of how much I’d enjoy it if you did.”

PT’s expression became serious. As a motivator, Ubik knew how to press the right buttons.

Speers and PT began to circle each other. Figaro could see the satisfaction in her eyes at having goaded PT into a fight. A fight she had no doubt she would win.

PT was moving very lightly on the balls of his feet, arms down by his sides, watching Speers’ lower half.

“What combat techniques are you trained in?” said Speers. “I don’t recognise your movement patterns.”

“He isn’t trained in any combat techniques,” said Figaro. “He plays a lot of zero-G tag.”

Speers stopped moving. “The game?”

“It’s a sport,” said PT, and used the distraction to kick Speers between the legs.

She should have been able to block it, but seemed to be caught by surprise. She managed to use the force of the hit to jump back. She looked more confused than anything.

“What was that?”

“I think the technical term is toe poke in the balls,” said Ubik.

“But I’m not a man.”

“I know,” said PT.

“Then what was the point of kicking me in the groin?”

“It hurt, didn’t it?”

“A little.”

“One point to me, then,” said PT.

“You think this is a game? You want to win by scoring the most points? You only win by submission or death.”

“It’s the same in zero-G tag,” said PT. “It’s a very competitive scene.”

“Enough of this,” said Fermont. “Stop playing around and finish him.”

Speers came running this time, feinting a forward kick at PT’s chest, then twisting so her other foot came spinning around for a strike to the side of PT’s head.

It was a very smooth move that could easily snap the neck if undefended.

PT didn’t make a move to stop her or to dodge the strike. She was in mid-air and had no way to reposition herself. PT took a step forward, walking into the kick, but only getting hit by her calf on his ear.

He took the hit, but chose where she would land and with what part of her body.

She had expected to miss and then follow up with the rest of the move, which had sixteen steps in all, any one of which could be fatal, or to land a clean hit and take the victory in one.

Hitting and not having any effect wasn’t the most likely outcome, but even then, she would have momentum on her side and a range of options to choose from for her next move.

The opponent would be on the backfoot at the very least.

PT was very much on the front foot as he leaned in and slid his face up the inside of her thigh and slapped her from above and below in the stomach and the small of her back.

Speers let out a gasp as the air rushed out of her body. She seemed to bounce in the air and then slammed down like gravity had increased tenfold.

“You breathe too much,” said PT, already a step back and out of the way. “You do the same,” he said, turning to Figaro. “Overactive diaphragm.”

“You attacked her diaphragm?” said Figaro. It wasn’t a move he was familiar with.

“A static diaphragm is hard to move, but a moving diaphragm is easy to push further. And you can’t stop air leaving a squeezed lung.”

Speers groaned as she tried desperately to regain control of her breathing. She managed to get on all fours, head bowed, heaving loudly, but suddenly she was lunging at PT’s legs.

She didn’t make it. She got hit in the head by a flying arm and hit the ground as Ubik landed on top of her, pinning her to the floor with his knee in her stomach. Figaro hadn’t even seen him move.

“You lost,” said Ubik. “Now, where’s Grandma?”

“I didn’t submit,” wheezed Speers. “And I’m not dead. But you are.” Her eyes glowed red.

Ubik didn’t dive out of the way, which Figaro had expected, he instead pushed down with his knee.

Speers let out another gasp and the light in her eyes went out.

“Hey, that diaphragm thing really works,” said Ubik. He looked up at Figaro. “How come you didn’t stop her organic?”

“Wanted to see what you’d do,” said Figaro.

“What are you doing to that poor girl?”

Ubik looked up. “Grandma?” An oddly moving droid was coming towards them, along with a group of women. “Where have you been?”

“Ooh, they locked me up in a closet with all these floozies. Worst day of my life. I’ll need to be sterilised. Luckily, this nice woman let us out.”

There was a woman carrying a baby next to the droid.

“Hello, Mother,” said Figaro.

“Figaro, I’m disappointed in you. You’ve really been quite badly behaved recently. It’s time to go home.”

“I can’t, Mother. I have to—”

The cube’s lighting stabilised and the chamber lit up.

“What’s it doing?” said PT.

“Erm, opening something,” said Ubik.

“Opening what?” said Figaro.

“We have failed,” said the Fourth’s voice. “They are here, and they have taken control of the network. The portal is about to open. The Creator will be here soon. This universe is dead.”

Book 3 – 95: No Surrender

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Quazi - Orbit.

SCCV Venerate.

 

The noise on the bridge was loud and chaotic. Alarms and warnings and 142 crew shouting back and forth to try and work out where the problem was. And a baby crying.

All defensive systems were down and no one knew why. Or how to get them back online.

Everyone was reporting their station as fully operational, which clearly wasn’t the case. The howling sirens proved that.

There was nothing unusual about the level of noise or chaos. That was how a Seneca forward bridge was meant to be — twenty different command objectives happening concurrently, multi-layered interactions between computers and crew members, all relevant information being funnelled to the conn to support actionable commands.

To an outsider, it might look like bedlam. It took training and experience to be able to absorb so much information and make the correct decisions, but once you had the ship’s rhythm, it was like conducting an orchestra.

Only, this particular symphony was a discordant mess.

General Freya stood on the bridge of the Venerate, eyes on the remarkable person sitting in the command chair — in her chair.

There was no denying the acting-commander was a special individual; even among the ranks of the Corps’ greatest soldiers, she stood out. An extraordinary existence.

Nigella Matton-Ollo was not only the most powerful organic the Corps had ever produced, she was the most beautiful. There was no denying it. Freya had known her since she had been a small, precocious child, and it was obvious even then.

Delicate features, cold eyes, deadly mind.

Armageddon — the woman who had it all. Fear, respect, power.

She had conquered worlds; crushed all opposition; defied convention. Even when she decided to take up with a man, it was a man unlike any other. And now her children were proving to be just as remarkable.

Freya had none of these attributes.

No partner, no offspring.

All she had was her ship and her crew, and she wasn’t willing to give up either.

“I think you should give command of the fleet back to me.”

“Do you?” said Nigella, peering down from her perch. “And why is that?”

They spoke in a quiet controlled manner but were able to hear each other through the cacophony and clamour with relative ease. Both had spent time on the bridge. Both knew how to focus on what was important.

“Because you are too emotionally involved in this. He’s your son.”

“You think I don’t know that?” said Nigella. “That’s why I’m the only one who can bring him home.”

“Aren’t you curious to know how far he can go? Isn’t that why you’ve allowed him to run amok without check all this time?”

“That had nothing to do with me, that was his father. I already know he’s special, I don’t require proof.”

“Special? He is an experiment. A specimen.” Freya watched Nigella closely to see if there was any reaction, but Nigella’s eyes were calm and unaffected. “It isn’t even he who is causing us these problems. It’s the other one. The one who is meant to be powerless. He infiltrated our systems like they were nothing. He left us defenceless and then rang the dinner bell for all to come feast. And they will be coming, you know that. He is the one we need to bring down. Your son is irrelevant. He just got lucky.”

“Lucky? Hmm.” Nigella’s eyes remained the same but there was the slightest change in her posture. “Perhaps you’re right. But who knows what hand my husband had in ensuring that luck.”

“You think Ramon Ollo arranged for your son to encounter the other two?”

“I don’t know,” said Nigella. “It’s hard to know what that man is capable of.”

The chair began to descend.

Could Ramon Ollo really have orchestrated all this, wondered Freya. It didn’t seem possible, but three fleets in one place at the same time, it was the perfect set-up for an ambush.

“Very well,” said Nigella, rising from her seat. “You may have your command back. If you think you can weather this crisis better than I, please go ahead. I have other options I must consider.”

She raised a hand and her baby was brought to her. She took it into her embrace.

Freya watched with a sense of relief. It had never been easy to predict what this woman would do, but that also made it possible to ask for the least likely thing and get it.

“Good. Thank you.” General Freya sat down and retook her place on the bridge. “We will still need you if…”

“I understand,” said Nigella. “I am at your service.” She smiled but her smile was chilling. She might have given up command, but she had her own reasons for doing so. And she was never easy to predict.

There was no point pondering over it now. The chair rose.

Nigella Matton-Ollo took her child and left the bridge.

“Full sweep of the sector. Look for ships approaching, probably disguised, they will be armed even if the sensors say they aren’t, so find out what they’re carrying. Get me the Consolation and the Delight. Tell Analytics to prepare a full report on the one called Ubik. Everything we have and everything that might explain what he is. And I need more ghosts up here.”

There was a moment of silence as her orders were received, and then pandemonium broke out as the crew followed her instructions in a concerted surge of focused intent.

“We can’t find the breach in the defence systems.”

“Forget that. We won’t find it and even if we do, we won’t have time to fix it. Focus everything on offence and prepare to engage with everything we have.”

“General, detecting ships approaching from the interior. All are running commercial tags. All are showing faint signs of weapons activity but no live weapons signatures.”

It was what she expected. They were hiding their weapons but they had tested them recently enough for there to be traces. Idiots. This was the true legacy of decades of enforced peacefulness — tactical incompetence.

“How many?”

“Seven thousand.”

Seven thousand ships. How many years had they been waiting for a chance like this, a chance to unleash their impotent stockpile of prohibited toys?

And now they had smelled the blood in the water and were gathering for the feeding frenzy. A chance to destroy three battalions at once.

Even if they lost every one of their ships, it would be worth it for them. The galaxy would have a completely new look to it. New rules and new rulemakers.

“General Kieto is on.”

“General Morra is on.”

“General Kieto, this is Freya. Take the First Fleet and get out of here.”

“I can’t do that, General. We are the First. We don’t back down.”

Freya wasn’t surprised by the response. She would have reacted the same.

“General, three-quarters of our main assault force is in this one small sector, and we’re completely open to attack. If we get taken out here, the Corps will suffer unrectifiable losses. You have to withdraw. The Corps can’t be left defenceless.”

“We are the Corps,” said General Kieto. Her voice was cold and unemotional. She was the commander of the First Battalion for a reason. The woman was small and carried a limp she refused to get fixed, and she fought like every battle was her last. In this case, it might well be. “If we go down here, so be it. As long as we take all of them with us, I will be satisfied.”

“Morra?” said Freya.

“No,” said General Morra. “I don’t care what he did or how he did it. We don’t need shields to defeat these clowns. It will do them good to see what happens when they get their danders up. We should thank the brat for giving us this opportunity to remind them who we are.”

“You take point,” said Kieto. “You have eyes on the target, we’ll follow your lead.”

Freya smiled to herself. The Corps had instilled a certain disregard for common sense in its members. It gave them an edge over their opponents but one day it would push them too far. Perhaps today was that day.

“Very well. It seems we’ve grown complacent of late. Allowed ourselves to become too confident in our sense of superiority. Let us show these worlds what it means to stand against the Seneca Corps.”

Three young men — boys, really — had managed to make a mockery of the Corps, and now others were starting to think the reputation built up long ago was no more than a myth. It was time the myth was made real again.

She hit a switch to give her direct access to Offensive Command, the nerve centre of the Corps’ attacking capabilities.

“This is General Freya. Launch all assault vessels. Engage with the enemy and leave no survivors.”

“Offensive Command, this is Launch Ops. Mission is a go.”

Hundreds of fighter vessels shot out of the Venerate’s hull, each one piloted by a Seneca soldier with an organic.

They would fight, they would kill and then they would eviscerate whatever was left.

“Consolation has launched eight hundred and twelve fighters.”

“Delight has launched nine hundred and thirty fighters.”

“General, we’re being hailed by multiple ships.”

“Send out the standard disclaimer recording and block all other transmissions. How long to engagement?”

“Three, two, contact. 6800 ships surviving. 6500. 6000. Core explosion chain reaction. 3000 ships remaining. Enemy combatants are retreating.”

“Pursue and destroy,” said Freya. “No survivors.”

“2000 ships. 1800.”

“Do we have points of origin for these ships?”

“Yes, General. Forty-two separate planets and space stations.”

“Combined populations?”

“Twenty-seven billion.”

“Twelve hundred ships remaining.”

“Prepare new targets. Prioritise high-density worlds first. No more than a five percent survival rate. Full structural elimination.”

“800 ships. 600.”

“New targets locked.”

“Three hundred. One hundred. Thirty. Twelve. Six. Two. All enemy combatants destroyed.”

“How many casualties did we take?”

“Zero casualties.”

“Good,” said Freya. “They’ll have more waiting for us.”

She knew this had only been a probe. They weren’t stupid. Seven thousand ships was nothing compared to the true might of the major corporations. They would see this as a way to gauge how much effort they would need to make, how many of their resources they would have to spend.

They were just merchants at heart, adding up their credits and debits to ensure hygienic bookkeeping. They just wanted to know how much it would cost.

They had their answer now — all of it.

“Prepare to move the fleet.”

“Seneca Corps, this is Central Authority Vessel Amnesty. Request you power down. We’ll take control of the situation now.”

“I thought I told you to block all transmissions,” said Freya.

“We can’t block the CA under Directive 3.12—”

“Yes, yes, I know the directive. Amnesty, this is Brigadier General Freya of the SCV Venerate. We are operating under the full licence of the Combined Mutual Accord and following all protocols. The following forty-two locations have been targeted for justified destruction. Take a look at the list and get back to us… Send them the list and move us into position as soon as the fighters are back on board.”

“General Freya, we implore you to—”

Freya waited for the Central Authority bot to make its plea so she could reject it but there was only dead air.

“What happened?”

“CAV Amnesty has been destroyed. There is a rupture in space at its last known location. We’re reading several new ships. They’re big. It’s… the Antecessor fleet.”

On the screen, huge ships of alien design began to appear. Nigella had sent them somewhere no one had ever come back from before. It had taken them a few hours to return.

“Great timing,” said Freya. “Where’s Nigella?” There was silence on the bridge. “Where is she?”

“She’s… not on board, General.”

“What do you mean? Where is she?”

“There was an unauthorised launch from Hangar 3. A small transport is headed down to Quazi. Should we send someone to intercept?”

There was a time when the Corps came first. No one was as loyal to the principles and people of the Seneca Corps. But then she had to get pregnant.

Freya let out a soft sight. It made no difference to what needed to be done.

“No, let it go. Prepare to face the enemy.”

The Antecessor ships loomed large on the screen.

Book 3 – 94: Passing the Torch

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Quazi

Planet Core.

 

Point-Two was surprised by how small the explosion was. As a device produced by the wantonly destructive Seneca Corps, he expected a massive detonation, killing everyone including themselves (just to show dominance — we don’t even care about ourselves, imagine how little we care about you…).

But it was just a small bang, a sudden flash of yellow light that bloomed for less than a second before swallowing itself, along with Captain Fermont’s legs.

It took them off at the knees, very cleanly, vaporising them so nothing was left to stitch back on.

She now had no legs and one arm. Her condition would have been quite tragic if not for the connectors hanging from her exposed titanium knee socket that indicated these were not the first pair of legs she had lost.

Everything went quiet, although he may just have been deaf. Point-Two checked his ears for bleeding.

Ubik showed no interest in the mayhem he had caused, his eyes were on the cube, which was flashing intermittently. “What did you guys do to it? You tried to access it, didn’t you? Without consent. Look at it, it’s all traumatised. You of all people…” He shook his head.

“How did you detonate it? How did you control the explosion? Why didn’t it blow when it was in your hands?” blurted out the woman called Otenu, stunned more by how Ubik had done it than what he had done or who he had done it to.

“The more energy the bomb absorbs, the larger the explosion,” said Ubik, like it was obvious.

“That’s not how it works,” said Otenu.

She was holding her position on the far side of the cube, probably trying to figure out her best move. Her best move was to run away, but she was Seneca, so that wasn’t going to be an option.

Point-Two assumed she was the one in charge of the explosive device, probably her area of expertise. Experts were the ones most offended by Ubik’s total disregard for the basic rules of their craft. It took a lot of effort to become an expert, and all their hard work was invalidated by Ubik’s existence. It was understandably demoralising. Point-Two sympathised.

“Did you know about her legs?” asked Point-Two. He was good at spotting artificial movements, but he had been completely unaware of Fermont’s legs. Which meant they had been of very high quality. And also very expensive. One more thing for the Corps to hold against them.

“No,” said Ubik. “But the Corps are very good about taking care of their girls, right?”

“Yes,” said Fig. “Free prosthetic limbs for anyone who needs them.” He was walking towards Fermont as he spoke.

She was sitting on her butt, adjusting the tourniquet around the stump where her arm used to be, more or less ignoring the absence of her lower limbs. Her eyes coldly watched Fig approach.

“Good,” she said. “Very good. You really live up to your family name. But even you won’t be spared if you kill us.”

Point-Two couldn’t help but feel a little insulted. He had taken her arm and Ubik had taken her legs, but Fig was the one she saw as the main architect of her defeat. It was a strange thing to feel wronged over.

Fig didn’t respond to her, he simply grabbed the top of her helmet and pulled it off like a bottle top. He dropped it on the ground and then he pushed down on her closely shaven head, his movements rough and impolite, holding her so the back of her neck was exposed.

“Can I borrow your knife?”

Point-Two shrunk his sword down. “How big?”

“That’s fine,” said Fig. He caught the knife thrown to him and casually nicked the back of Fermont’s neck. There was only the slightest trace of blood on the blade.

Fermont didn’t make a sound. Fig held the blade in his mouth, undeterred by the bloodstain, and used his thumb and finger to remove something from Fermont’s nape. Fermont let out a small gasp as he did this.

“Suicide pill?” asked Point-Two.

“Suicide bomb,” said Fig. “She would have used it already but the K-30 command doesn’t apply to me, not yet anyway.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Fermont through gritted teeth. “We have to bring your bodies back. Can’t do that if we’re all dead.”

Point-Two wondered if that was true. Had they been ordered to bring back Fig alive and so hadn’t triggered the subcutaneous bombs that would have killed all of them and solved everyone’s problem?

Of course, there was no guarantee a bomb like that would kill anyone apart from the carrier. Ubik would certainly have found a way to survive.

Fig let go of Fermont and walked towards Otenu, who didn’t look very pleased to see him coming her way. Her stance shifted as he got closer, and then she took a swing at him.

He caught her arm in the crook of his elbow and rotated it hard to snap her bone cleanly. She had expected this, had given him her arm to distract him while her left hand came in from the other side.

Fig smoothly turned further to her right, turning her captured arm at an impossible angle and hit her on the back of her helmet, sending it flying off her head.

Two swift moves later he had kicked her legs away and her down on her knees, head bent down, neck cut open.

He let her go and the broken arm snapped back as the sleeve of her suit stiffened to form a brace. The Corps really did equip its people with the best, no expense spared. The big corporations wouldn’t have supplied their people with a suit like that.

Fig moved towards the third woman, the youngest of the three.

She had a knife in her hand, a trace of blood already on the blade. The other hand was palm-up, holding her own bloodied device, a small disc, saving him the trouble.

Fig took it from her. “Thanks.”

“Your mother?” she asked him, her manner far more informal than the others.

“No, my father. He’s been training me to deal with the Corps since I was born. He knew you would come for me eventually.”

“How did he find out all our secrets?”

Fig shrugged. “Maybe Mother talks in her sleep.” He tossed three discs to Point-Two, flicking them off his thumb one after the other. “Can you turn them into sand or something?”

Point-Two didn’t get the chance as Ubik intercepted them. “I’ll take these. Never know when a blood-smeared neck bomb might come in handy.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the cube?” said Point-Two.

“I’m working on it,” said Ubik. He pointed at his head. “Up here.”#

“You have his suppression ability,” said the young woman.

“Hmm,” said Fig.

“They won’t leave you alone now they know. How will you survive?”

“The same way as my father,” said Fig.

“He had the strongest of us by his side. You seem reluctant to let her do the same for you.”

“She treated him as an equal, she’ll never see me that way,” said Fig.

“What other option do you have? You’re too powerful to leave out here. And you aren’t even our priority target.” She looked over at Point-Two. “Give us him, and you can set your own price. Even your freedom won’t be off the table. Limited freedom.”

“Me?” said Point-Two. “Why do you want me?” But he already knew. They wanted his organics, wanted to know how he had obtained them.

Ubik was the one they needed to talk to, but they wouldn’t believe that. They would want to get him on a table and dissect him and learn nothing. And then blame someone else for their own stupidity.

Which was going to be a problem once the current crisis was resolved. Fortunately, they would probably all wind up dead, which would make things a lot easier.

“She’s treating you like a commodity,” said Ubik to Point-Two. “That’s got to feel bad, being objectified like that. Like a piece of meat.”

“I quite like it,” said Point-Two. “Let’s me know where I stand.” He turned his attention to the girl. “Not that it matters. We’re all going to die when the Antecessors destroy the universe, so there’s that to look forward to.”

“They’ve already been dealt with,” said the girl. “His mother took care of it.”

“Nope,” said Point-Two. “She just delayed them.”

“He’s right,” said Fig. “She didn’t stop them. And Speers, you know I’ve always liked you, but if you try to access that pouch on your waist I will break both your arms.”

Speers lowered her hand to her side.

“Come on,” said Ubik, banging on the cube with his fists. “It’s safe to come out. Hello? Fourth?”

“That’s what you came up with?” said Point-Two.

“Don’t dismiss the obvious,” said Ubik. “It’s often the right answer. If the Seneca Corps hadn’t turned up and ruined everything as usual, we’d already have saved the galaxy by now. You guys can’t help yourselves, can you?”

“We didn’t do anything to it,” said Otenu, her hand on the back of her neck.

“Yeah, sure,” said Ubik. “It was like this when you got here.”

“You don’t think the bomb you set off might have affected it?” said Otenu.

“No, I don’t,” said Ubik.

“Then why are our comms down?” said Otenu, picking up her helmet and throwing it at Ubik.

He caught it and held it up to his face. “Looks fine to me.” He threw it back to her. Then he turned to face Point-Two. “Might have broken the cube when I set off the explosion.”

“What does that mean?” said Point-Two.

“It means the explosion released a certain amount of electromagnet—”

“No,” said Point-Two, “I don’t want to know how your stupid bomb broke the cube, I want to know what the cube was meant to do that it can’t now.”

“Oh,” said Ubik. “Right. You want the meat, not the juice.”

“That isn’t a phrase,” said Point-Two.

“Could be, if we—”

“Ubik!”

“Okay, okay. We can’t operate the planetary network without the Fourth and the Machine. Mostly the Machine, to be honest.”

“Then fix it,” said Point-Two.

Ubik looked at the cube which was still flashing. “It isn’t that easy. If Grandma was here, then, maybe…”

“Where is Grandma?” asked Fig.

Ubik put his hands on his hips and looked around. “Good question. Where are they? The robots. They’re around here somewhere, right? What did you do to them?”

None of the women said anything.

“Infil team, can you hear me?” said Otenu’s helmet, taking her by surprise.

“Control, this is infil team,” said Otenu. “Mission has failed. Send—”

Fig took the helmet from her. “Put my mother on.”

“This is General Freya. Stop this foolishness at once. We don’t have time—”

“Where’s my mother, General? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. You just initiated contact with us because this helmet registered a Seneca biosignature. I don’t know why Ubik wanted your ship to initiate the contact but I’m guessing it has something to do with your systems. You should do a full scan as soon as possible.”

Ubik walked over to Fig and snatched the helmet from him. “You really don’t know how to have fun, do you?” Ubik turned the helmet over and fiddled with it. Then he raised it to his mouth and said, “Hello, Mother, can you hear me?”

“This is General Freya. Who is this?”

“Hello, General, this is Admiral Ubik. You should hear a beep followed by a clunk.” Ubik waited. There was a beep, followed by a clunk. “That means your defence grid is down. I assume you’re locked into a ship-to-ship network, so your whole fleet is naked. Basically, you’re wide open to any sort of attack. I mean, if they knew you were defenceless right now, anyone with a grudge, from like the last couple of hundred years, could attack you with some stones and bricks and knock you out of the sky. Good thing they don’t know. Oh wait, this is an open channel. My bad.”

Ubik turned off the comms and dropped the helmet. “Right, that should keep them busy for a bit. Now, where’s my Grandma?”

Book 3 – 93: Emotional Override

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

Castle Corum.

 

Figaro scratched his arm around the control panel and hesitated. Ubik had already gone through the portal he had created and PT was about to follow.

Everything had gone far more smoothly than he had expected. With Ubik, you generally expected things to work out, but only after various complications. In fact, the more perilous the situation, the more dramatic the reversal of fortune required, the better.

Both he and PT had discussed this and had come to the same conclusion: Ubik deliberately made things harder than they needed to be, just for the flourish.

They had no proof of this, and no doubt Ubik would deny it, but it had happened too often to just be a coincidence.

But this time, both here on Romeo and even on Soros, they had quickly found their objective and Ubik had corrected the problem without any sort of brush with death.

Yes, he had destroyed the entire harvest and left the people of Romeo with a possible worldwide famine, but that really wasn’t the kind of disaster Ubik usually manifested. Crops could be regrown and the leaders of Romeo would find a way to feed their people, or they wouldn’t have anyone to do their drudge-work for them.

Using a term like slavery was misleading and pejorative.

They weren’t mistreated, for the most part, and they had food and shelter (except when a natural disaster or Ubik came along and made resources sparse). Despite the popular stereotype of overworked and underpaid victims of the system, the truth was that fit and healthy people were more useful and more exploitable than those that were starved and beaten.

The way Dr Fairway had framed it was how most people saw it, including the ones out in the fields. They were reluctant but willing labourers, resigned to their fate because of the perceived lack of better options.

It was that kind of mental suppression that was the real hallmark of modern slavery. And it wasn’t just people working in fields on small, out of the way planets like Romeo. Forcing people to do work they disliked and didn’t personally benefit from was a mainstay of most societies.

Figaro had seen it up close on his own world, where the vestiges of Enaya’s past were still present in a more dilute, palatable form.

He knew he was making excuses for a deeply unfair and unpleasant form of existence, but everyone had their own difficulties. It was regrettable, but it wasn’t like anyone had come up with a better alternative, other than to turn their backs on society and rely solely on one’s own ability to survive.

“He’s up to something,” said PT, standing in front of the portal.

The edges swirled clockwise, while the dark interior spun in the opposite direction.

“What do you think it is?” said Figaro.

“No idea,” said PT. “I guess we’ll find out in a bit.” He entered and for a moment his body blurred and seemed to stretch. Then he was gone.

Figaro took a look back at the doctor and her grandfather. She had put a blanket around his shoulder and was speaking soothingly to him. Her bedside manner around him was far more gentle than when she’d been dealing with her patients, but that was probably to be expected.

“You should take him back up,” said Figaro, “and don’t tell anyone about this place. It won’t be safe here.”

“Will it be safe anywhere?” said the doctor.

“Probably not,” said Figaro.

“Tell your friend I’ll be ready,” said the old man.

“Ready?” said Figaro. “For what?”

“The end of the world, of course,” said the old man. “We might not be able to defeat them, but we can take them down with us.” He seemed very positive about his envisioned mutual destruction.

“We won’t die,” said Figaro, fairly sure that there would be at least one human survivor. If you could call him human.

He entered the portal.

The moment Figaro arrived at the other end of the portal, once his head had cleared — which only took a couple of seconds now — he was accosted by the sounds of arguing.

He was back on Quazi, inside the core chamber. It could have been the core to any planet, but the large cube and the women surrounding Ubik and PT gave away the location.

There were three women, all dressed in Seneca battlesuits.

Even though they were helmeted with visors down, revealing only their jaws, he recognised two of them, and wasn’t very happy to see either.

“It was working fine when we left,” Ubik was saying. “You must have done something to it.”

“We didn’t touch it,” said Fermont. “We only just arrived.”

It became apparent that they were talking about the cube, which was dark and unilluminated by the silvery-white lights that usually streaked across its surfaces.

“Oh, you expect me to believe it was like that when you got here, I suppose,” said Ubik.

“I don’t care what you believe,” said Fermont, “where is Figaro Ollo?”

“I’m right here, Captain Fermont.”

All heads turned in his direction.

“You’re here,” said a voice filled with equal parts irritation and relief. “You’re coming with us.”

Figaro stiffened. “No, Captain Fermont, I’m not.”

“You know her?” said PT.

“Yes, she’s my mother’s head of security,” said Figaro. “She’s in charge of an elite task force who usually guard my mother, but she doesn't seem to have brought them with her.”

He was looking at the other two women alongside Fermont, only one of whom he recognised.

“That’s because this isn’t a hostile insertion,” said Fermont. “Or is it?”

“I’m not going with you.”

“It’s not up for debate, Figaro,” said Fermont. “I’m here under your mother’s direct orders.”

“You may be,” said Figaro, “but I’m not. You should leave. It isn’t safe here.”

“All the more reason you need to come with us,” said Speers, lifting her visor and fixing him in her eyes as though trying to impart some special message to him.

“Not really,” said Ubik. “He’s the reason why it isn’t safe here.”

“I don’t know who you are,” snapped Speers, “or what your involvement with him is, but I suggest you limit yourself to necessary interactions.”

“Oooh,” said Ubik. “I think she likes you, Fig. Wanna fight me for him?”

A crease appeared in the centre of Speers’ brow, which usually happened when she was sparring and finding it hard to break through a solid defence. She usually followed it up with a blitz of random attacks in an effort to surprise her opponent, a disguised attempt at finding an opening.

If she used that approach on Ubik, she would probably find the randomness being returned to her tenfold.

He understood why his mother would have sent a junior officer down here to fetch him, despite the obvious dangers; in particular, this junior officer who was still very inexperienced. She knew of their relationship, of course, since she was the one who had initially instigated it. You couldn’t stop a young man’s sexual desires, but you could try to manage them with the help of a willing accomplice.

It was the kind of involuntary micromanagement his mother considered normal, and which he found suffocating, even though he had knowingly submitted to it in the belief he could maintain some level of self-control.

“You can discuss all of this with your mother once we are back on board the Venerate,” said Fermont.

“What is this?” said Ubik. He was holding up a small black box with several wires hanging off it. It looked a bit like a tiny, limp droid.

“Put that down!” said Fermont, sounding a little frantic. “Otenu, disarm it.

“Oh, should I just drop it here?”

It fell out of Ubik’s hand, making Fermont and the other Seneca woman, Otenu, who Figaro didn’t recognise, jump back.

Ubik caught the wires so the small device didn’t hit the floor. “Looks like someone’s been trying to leave a farewell gift for Quazi.

“How did you find that?” said Otenu. “It isn’t…”

“Possible?” said Ubik. “You’d be surprised what’s possible if you put your mind to it.”

“What is it?” said PT.

“It’s a feedback surge amplifier,” said Figaro. “A bomb.”

“Yes,” said Ubik. “A sneaky bomb. Completely undetectable until it siphons off enough energy from a convenient power source, and then converts it to a massive amount of ka followed by a huge amount of boom.” Ubik slapped his hand against the cube. “It’s okay guys, you can come out now. Crisis averted.”

The cube lit up as lights began running across its surface.

Figaro was familiar with this kind of explosive, and well aware how insidious it was. It could lay dormant for years until someone turns on a power switch. And then its ability to convert one form of energy into another was astonishing.

The cube, however, had been shut down to prevent this happening.

“If it’s completely undetectable, how did you find it?” said Fermont. “Unless you put it there.”

Ubik looked at her like he couldn’t quite believe her gall, trying to put the blame on him. “You think I use bombs? What am I, a caveman?” He tossed the device at Fermont, who jumped back.

It hit the floor and fell apart.

“Shoddy workmanship,” said Ubik. “What happened to the others, by the way? Bunch of female robots, very attractive, self-cleaning, at least I hope so. Seen them?”

Fermont didn’t answer but Figaro could tell she knew what Ubik was talking about. Had they dealt with all seven of the robots already?

“We have to leave,” said Fermont, still on repeat. “I will use force if I have to.”

“Fermont, what’s your status?” said a voice from Fermont’s suit, one he recognised only too well.

“We’ve located the targets. Preparing for extraction.”

“We’re not leaving,” said Figaro.

“Figaro? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Listen to me, Figaro, you must return to me, now. With your father gone, you are the—”

“He isn’t dead,” said Figaro.

“I have his life crystal, Figaro,” said his mother. “It went out.”

“That’s because it’s connected to his organic, which was removed.”

There was a moment of silence. “You know this, how?”

“Because I was there when it happened. When it was put in me.”

“You have your father’s organic? You have two organics? And the transfer was successful? Figaro, you must return immediately, this is—”

“Fermont, this General Freya,” broke in a new voice. “I’m giving you a direct order, override all previous orders. Execute command K-30.”

Fermont’s eyes began to glow red with such intensity it was visible through her dark visor.

“What’s command K-30?” said PT.

“It’s a thirty percent kill order,” said Figaro.

“What does that mean?” said PT.

“It means they can reduce you to thirty percent life signs — brain and spinal cord intact, everything else expendable. Usually, that means limbs amputated, organ failure, severe haemorrhaging are all acceptable. Makes it more convenient when transporting.”

“Makes sense,” said Ubik. “Easier to stack the bodies.”

“They use it when they want to investigate the targets before disposal,” said Figaro. “Don’t need to be conscious, just biologically viable.”

“Hmm,” said PT, a cold glimmer of light in his eyes. “So they can dissect us at their leisure, I suppose.”

“That’s only if you resist,” said Speers. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

PT took out the sword hilt from his belt, pointing the stub at Speers.

She frowned and didn’t look very impressed.

The stub grew into a blade in an instant, and kept growing until it was at her throat, which made it around two metres long. There was no bend in the blade.

She didn’t try to dodge or counterattack, but her eyes glowed green, ready to teach him what it meant to be an opponent of the Seneca Corps.

The light in her eyes went out, much to her obvious surprise.

“You think we need our organics to take you down?” said Fermont, her own eyes also back to normal. She lunged towards PT, moving at a frightening speed.

PT moved to the right and then swung his sword at the empty air in front of him. Fermont was in the middle of a feint but PT had seen through it. He didn’t attack where she was, his sword sliced through where she was going to be. She walked right into it and her arm was cut off at the elbow, but it looked like she had deliberately thrust her arm into the path of the blade.

She didn’t scream, she just let out a grunt as she stumbled back, already with an auto-tourniquet in her working hand.

“Is losing an arm a K-10 or a K-90?” said Ubik. “I really don’t get the whole numbering system you guys use. Actually, why don’t we make it a K-50, that way it’s right either way.”

The device that Ubik had thrown on the floor earlier, which was practically under Fermont, suddenly lit up.

Book 3 – 92: Getting Down

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

Castle Corum.

 

“We’re going down,” said Ubik.

“We know,” said PT.

“It’s the right direction to get to the core,” said Ubik. “She’s probably taking us there. Like she said.” He looked at the doctor and gave her an encouraging smile.

She maintained a grim expression. A hard nut to crack. She was doing what was required, but she wasn’t about to act pleased about it.

“Why are you telling us?” said Fig.

“Oh, you know. You two are all powerful and souped-up — flashy-flashy — I just want to feel like I’m helping. Making sure we don’t miss something important.” Ubik bounced up and down on his toes a couple of times. “I’d say it’s a solid piece of engineering. Not like the rest of the tronics we saw up top. Different level. Old, but built to last.”

PT shook his head with his mouth pushed to one side. “Do you think he’s going to try to hijack this elevator?”

“I don’t know,” said Fig. “Where would he take it?”

“I don’t really want to find out,” said PT. He looked around the small space. “Is the whole thing made of glass? Doctor?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t build it. It’s very old.”

“But built to last,” added Ubik with a smile. “By a master craftsman.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, warily, “I suppose so.”

“That was pretty flashy,” said Fig, “what you did up there.”

“What, you mean the sword?” said Ubik. “Very cool. Hero with a sword, don’t see that very often these days.”

“It’s not a sword,” said PT. The sword in his hand changed back into the rod it had been before. PT stared at it as though he didn’t like the look of it, and it changed into a sword hilt with just a stub of the blade. He stuck it in his belt.

“No, I wasn’t talking about the sword, although same thing,” said Fig. “I was referring to when you changed the glass wall into water. Didn’t look like you were going to blackout or anything.”

PT shrugged. “It’s easier when it’s mainly one substance changed into mainly another. Mixed materials are what give me a headache.”

“Interesting,” said Fig.

“What about you?” said PT. “How did you manage to suppress all of those guys at the same time?”

“Ah, well, after suppressing my own organic for so long, it almost feels like second nature to do the same to other people. Like I’ve been in training to use my father’s organic all this time.”

“Who are you people?” said Dr Fairway in a soft, confused voice. She was standing a little apart from the three of them, her eyes wide open, not really being able to take in everything she was hearing and seeing. Her hair was tidy once again but it only served to make her stunned expression more pronounced.

Ubik was pleased with how PT and Fig had casually impressed her with their gifts. She had probably already noticed their powers, but there were many artefacts and devices that could have been used without anyone noticing. To really understand the power level she was dealing with here, a little light bragging was necessary.

“See what I mean?” said Ubik. “It’s very hard to keep up when you’re just a regular boy in an irregular world. How am I supposed to compete with them?”

“You all have organics,” she said, the world slipping easily off her tongue even though she had previously acted as ignorant of their existence as everyone else. “Strong ones.”

“Not me,” said Ubik, a little sadly. “I’m all natural.”

“This world…” said Dr Fairway, “it isn’t anything special. We don’t have anything worth fighting over. Why are you here? Just to bully us for not being as strong as you? Really, why come to this place?”

“Oh, that,” said Ubik. “Quite simple, really. These Antecessors turned up — you’ve heard of them, right? — and anyway, they want to, you know, subjugate the galaxy etcetera, etcetera, and we’re trying to stop them, and it turns out your planet—”

The elevator stopped moving. It was quite a jarring stop. PT and Fig didn’t move, of course, but Ubik stumbled back a couple of steps. Because he had turned off the stabilisers in his boots.

“What did you say?” said the doctor.

“Which part?” said Ubik. “You want me to repeat the whole thing?”

“Antecessors? Here? Now?”

“Yes,” said Fig. “The Seneca Corps are holding them off.”

“Not doing a very good job of it,” said PT.

“And we’re trying to find a way to send them back where they came from,” said Ubik.

“Are we?” said PT. “I mean, good, but that’s the first time I’ve heard you identify a clear objective.”

“What else are we going to do with them?” said Ubik.

“I don’t know,” said PT. “You usually surprise us.”

“I don’t really like surprises,” said Fig.

“I used to,” said PT.

“Wait. Stop. You’re serious? The Antecessors have returned?”

“Yes,” said Ubik. “I mean, a few. A dozen or so ships. But big ships. Who knows what’s inside.”

“And this planet is important to their plans?”

“Crucial,” said Ubik.

“The core?” said Dr Fairway.

“Exactly,” said Ubik. “That’s where the control centre for this world is. And for the other worlds in the Inner Quadrant.”

“Because they’re all linked together in a network of planets,” said Dr Fairway.

“That’s right,” said Ubik. “You catch on quick. It’s almost like you knew all of this already.”

The elevator began moving again with a lurch, but they were no longer travelling downwards. They were moving sideways.

“We’re moving sideways,” said Ubik.

“I know,” said PT. “Why?”

Ubik shrugged.

“He moves it around,” said the doctor.

“He?” said PT.

“It?” said Fig.

“She’s talking about the core,” said Ubik. “It can move around inside the planet. If you know how. I don’t know who the ‘he’ is.”

“How is she controlling this elevator?” said Fig. “Implant?”

“She’s got a device in her pocket,” said Ubik. “Look, you can see her fingers moving.”

The other two looked at the pocket of Dr Fairway’s lab coat, where her hand was inserted.

“He is my grandfather,” said Dr Fairway. “He’s the one who built this.” She looked up and around to indicate the small moving room they were in. “And he’s insane. Or so I thought. He became obsessed with the Antecessors. Of them returning. And Romeo being the world that would end up stopping them.”

“Sounds like a pretty smart guy,” said Ubik.

“Doesn’t mean he isn’t insane,” said PT, staring a little too intently at Ubik as he said it.

“You can make up your own mind,” said Fairway. “We’re here.”

The elevator stopped moving.

“We’ve stopped moving,” announced Ubik.

“When will you stop talking, that’s what I’d like to know,” said PT.

“I haven’t said anything,” said Ubik.

The side of the elevator slid open, revealing a large room. It had a familiar feel to it: its spherical shape, the markings on the walls, the sigils hanging in the air.

The walls weren’t lit up with white streaks of lights, though, and the sigils were only dimly glowing, like they had their power turned all the way down.

And under the sigils, illuminated by a small lamp, was an old man. He had long white hair with a long white beard to match. He appeared to be in his underwear — white pants and a vest — and was mumbling to himself while going over sheets of paper that were strewn around him on the floor.

“Come on,” said Dr Fairway. “If we’re lucky, he might be in one of his lucid periods.”

As they headed across the room, there was a tray with food on it sitting on the ground. The food looked untouched. Ubik bent down and picked up a bowl and a spoon, and ate the stew as he walked.

“Not bad. Bit cold.”

“I left it here a few days ago,” said the doctor.

PT winced and Fig pulled a face. It was a wonder they had survived as long as they had with such prissy tastes. Ubik took another mouthful.

“Nice. Spicy.”

“It’s not supposed to be spicy,” said the doctor.

“Everything’s supposed to be spicy,” said Ubik, finishing the rest.

“Ah, there you are,” said the old man, springing up with bundles of paper in each hand. “Here, here, look at this. Do you see?”

He ran up to Dr Fairway on his pale spindly legs and thrust the papers at her face.

She slowly and gently pushed them down. “Yes, Grandfather, I see.”

“But look at these spikes. This means they are nearly here. We have to tell people. We have to prepare.”

“Yes, we will. How are you feeling, Grandfather?”

“Feeling?” The old man stopped, his shoulders sagging. He let out a forlorn sigh. “Feeling. Yes. Nails curling, hair falling, brain rotting, penis shrinking, sight fading, bones aching. Feeling.” He let out another long sigh.

“I know exactly how you feel,” said Ubik, taking a page out of the man’s hand. It was blank. “Ah, yes. You’re nearly there.”

Ubik handed the empty bowl to the doctor and kept walking, staring at the sigils floating in the air.

“I like what you’ve done here, but I think you’ll find you’ve got a couple of these mixed up.” He reached up towards the nearest sigil.

“No, no, no, no,” cried out the old man, rushing to stop Ubik, pulling on him to stop him getting to the sigils. “You mustn’t. You can’t. They’ll see you.”

Ubik lowered his hands. “That’s the idea, old timer. How will we catch them if they don’t know where we are?”

The old man stopped trying to grab Ubik. “We want them to see us?”

“Of course. That’s why we’re here. They think there’s nothing we can do to stop them, but that’s our secret weapon — overconfidence.”

“Theirs or yours?” asked PT.

“Bit of both,” said Ubik. “Look at this. He’s inverted the whole structure so it's a closed loop. Sucked the energy into the sigils and dropped the floor so it’s like a bottomless pit. Still works, but nothing gets out. Genius.”

“If you say so,” said PT.

“You understand?” said the old man. “You can see it?”

“Of course,” said Ubik.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“No more than her, or me.”

“Let’s just say he’s no crazier than her, and leave it at that,” said PT.

“You did an amazing job. You can’t mess things up this bad without knowing exactly what you’re doing. It’s an elegant solution — no way to get past this.”

“This is why the network isn’t working?” said Fig.

“Yep,” said Ubik.

“Can you fix it?” said PT.

“Maybe,” said Ubik. He stepped back and inspected the big picture.

“It won’t be easy,” said the old man. “It’s a lot easier pulling it in than getting it back out.”

“I can see that,” said Ubik. “You must have had it pretty rough, old timer. All of this to maintain, and everyone thinking you’ve lost your mind at the same time. That’s the hardest part, isn’t it? Doing it with no support. You kept them all safe for so long, and they’ll never even know it.”

“That’s not important,” said the old man. “You’ll take over for me now, won’t you? So I can rest.”

“Sure,” said Ubik. “You can go rest now. I’ll take it from here.”

“Yes, yes. I could use a little rest.” The old man shuffled towards his granddaughter, seeming to age in the space of a few seconds. She welcomed him into her arms, tears streaming down her face.

Ubik took a breath, looked around the sigils, and then raised his hands holding a black bone in one like a conductor in front of an orchestra.

He swayed from side to side, then he jumped up and struck one of the sigils like he was trying to hammer a nail into a high shelf.

The struck sigil didn’t move, it just vibrated in place.

Ubik stepped back. The sigil was vibrating even faster now. Then it started to glow brighter, a white light that filled up the sigil and then burst out. It poured out like milk, a long waterfall of white light. It hit the floor and filled up grooves that hadn’t been visible a moment ago.

The entire floor was covered in white streaks within a few seconds. Then the walls.

The sigils moved and grew brighter. They spread out, filling the whole chamber, and then they linked up and formed a portal.

“It’s beautiful,” said the old man. “I knew it would be safe in your hands.” He turned to PT. “You can trust this one. He will lead you well.”

PT smiled like he was doing his best to keep his thoughts trapped behind his teeth and just nodded.

“The network should be ready to go now,” said Ubik.

“That’s it?” said PT. “The whole network’s back online? We don’t need to go to any other planets?”

“This was the block,” said Ubik. “We can go back to Quazi and the whole system will be ours to control. Actually, we should hurry. No telling what they’ll be getting up to while we’re not there.”

He headed into the portal.

Book 3 – 91: Important Goals

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

Castle Corum.

 

As far as Ubik was concerned, things were going well. Very well.

They had ended up in the middle of the action, which was the ideal place to be. And now things were starting to get exciting. And dangerous.

That’s how you knew you were in the right place. The more the people around you tried to kill each other, the closer you were to the prize.

Didn’t matter what the prize was, proximity and violence were always closely linked. The more aggressive people behaved, the closer you were to the thing they valued.

It might not belong to them, they might not even know it was there, but valuable items had a way of warping the people around them. And the people around here were definitely warped.

“I will gladly kill this woman who I have known for so many years, tolerated her impudence, suffered patiently under her withering glares, for just this moment. Her guilt is now clear for all to see, just like her father and her father’s father before him. This insurrection shall not stand!”

The hooded man who was holding onto the doctor seemed more interested in giving a speech than in dealing with the supposed insurrectionists.

The doctor didn’t struggle, she hung limp under the claw-like hand gripping her by the scalp. Her once-tidy hairdo had started falling apart, long strands covering her face while others floated about under the influence of the static generated by the hooded man’s sparking fingers.

This was a man who was supremely confident that he had the room under his control. Comfortable enough in that confidence to pontificate like a politician.

Ubik liked supremely confident people. It was so much more enjoyable taking the rug out from under them.

“She’s nothing to do with us,” said PT.

“I know you’re all working together,” said the hooded man, his voice both smug and menacing. He tightened his grip on the top of Dr Fairway’s head, making her groan.

It was lucky for him there were no members of the Seneca Corps here. This was exactly the sort of thing that had driven half the galaxy into a rage-fuelled spree of death and unreasonable behaviour that had yet to abate.

“You think we don’t know your plans? You think we don’t keep a close eye on those who have spent their lives attempting to undermine the appointed heads of state. We were aware of your arrival the moment you set foot on our world. Your attempt to sabotage our crops was vicious and brutal, and for that you will pay. All of you. Now yield.”

“I like this guy,” said Ubik. “He has the right look for this place. The robe, the fancy speeches, the…” —Ubik put out a hand and wiggled his fingers— “sorcery!” He turned to PT. “This is more like it, right? This is what you wanted.”

PT didn’t look as pleased as he should have. He had been the one complaining about the lack of the right sort of atmosphere, and here it was, delivered to order.

“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” said PT.

Ubik didn’t believe him one jot. “I bet you always saw yourself as a knight in shining armour, right? Saving people from dragons and so on. Big shiny helmet.”

“Shut up, Ubik,” said PT. “We’ve got a job to do, remember.”

“Sorry,” said Ubik. “Damsel in distress. Go ahead.”

PT turned back to the doctor and her captor. “If you’re going to kill her, get it over with. We need to know how to get to the planet’s core. Do any of you know how to get there?” He looked around the room expectantly, but there were no volunteers.

“I don’t think they’re going to tell us,” said Ubik. “Probably be quicker to grab a spade and start digging.”

“Bluffing indifference won’t work,” said the hooded man. “I will kill her.”

“We aren’t bluffing,” said PT. “You can kill her if you want. We need to get to the core and then we’ll be out of here and you can carry on being horrible to each other. The core?”

“Core, core, core,” said the hooded man. “What is this nonsense? Do not test my patience.”

The soldiers, who didn’t seem all that comfortable to be rescued by these people, hung back and watched things develop. They weren’t even pointing their weapons at anyone, probably afraid it might attract the wrong sort of attention.

The other hoods behind the one holding onto Dr Fairway also seemed to be waiting.

“Please don’t do this,” said Dr Fairway, her voice strained. “Violence is not the answer.”

“Actually,” said Ubik, “in this case, I think violence is the only answer.”

“I would have to agree,” said Fig,

“Yep,” said PT.

“So much for your pacifist ideals, Doctor. It seems these off-worlders you recruited for your feeble resistance efforts aren’t any better than the people you hope to overthrow. To think you would resort to hiring thugs. I hope you didn’t pay them in advance.”

“Sorry,” said Ubik. “Who are you?”

The man lifted his head so his hood slid back, revealing a head of long white hair, a high forehead and a long aquiline nose. “I am Grand Wizard Achmedis of the Inquisition, and you are my prisoners.” His eyes shone with blue light and crackled with electric power.

The soldiers backed away, huddling together. They looked like they were ready to wet themselves.

“Grand Wizard,” said Ubik. “I love it. This guy... he’s perfect. They should sell action figures of him in the castle gift shop.”

“Give yourselves up,” said the Grand Wizard, “or first I will pass judgement on the doctor, and then the rest of you.”

“I have a question,” said Fig. “What do you plan to do after you kill Dr Fairway?”

“Then I will kill you!”

Fig didn’t look very impressed with the answer. “If you wanted to kill us, why not just do it? Why bother with the doctor?”

The confident leer on the Grand Wizard’s face cracked a little, just at the edges. “Silence! I am merely giving you a chance to save yourselves. Tell us who else is part of this conspiracy and where they have hidden themselves and maybe, maybe we can show you some mercy. But do not mistake my benevolence for weakness.”

“I was mistaking it for stupidity,” said Ubik.

“I thought he was stalling for time,” said Fig.

“No,” said PT. “He’s a ham. He likes performing in front of his people, likes to put on a show.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” said Ubik.

“Very well,” said Grand Wizard Achmedis, visibly annoyed at not being taken seriously, “it seems you think I am the one who is bluffing. We will begin with Doct—” He looked surprised as the flickering light in his eyes went out.

The light in Fig’s eyes, on the other hand, had come on. It wasn’t very bright, nothing like the candescent glow from the organic powerhouses when they went into action. If Ubik hadn’t been aware of what Fig could do, he might not have even noticed.

“What is this?” said Achmedis, pushing away Dr Fairway like she no longer mattered. He was staring at his hands. “Why can’t I feel anything? Where is my power?”

“Master, we have lost our power, too,” said one of his hooded goons. They all began to check their organics and found none of them were working.

Ubik was surprised by how effective Fig’s suppression ability was. It seemed he had already mastered it.

“Worry not, Master, I will deal with them,” said one of the hoods, and then he came charging out of the crowd with what looked like a stick with a ball on either end raised above his head. Some kind of ceremonial rod. It looked a bit like a bone.

He came at PT, who dodged the blow quite easily, tripped the man up so he stumbled over his own robes, and disarmed him.

More hoods followed, some screaming for no apparent reason as they attacked.

PT sidestepped the ones coming at him, sending them towards Fig.

Fig was able to suppress their organics and kick their legs out from under them at the same time.

The soldiers cowered and refused to get involved, which was probably for the best.

“We don’t have time for this,” said PT, looking at the rod in his hand. Then he turned his attention to the Grand Wizard, who had sunk to his knees as he tried to comprehend his loss.

He really wasn’t taking it very well. The once proud and domineering Grand Wizard was now little more than a gibbering wreck. Even Ubik hadn’t expected him to crumble so quickly.

Some people just relied on their augments too much.

PT strode towards him in a purposeful manner, raising the rod in a sweeping arc.

The rod elongated and caught the light off the blade that had now emerged. No, it hadn’t emerged, it had transformed.

The Grand Wizard looked up but didn’t even raise his hands to try and stop the blade descending on him.

“Stop!” cried out Dr Fairway, throwing herself between PT and the Grand Wizard. “You can’t do this. Don’t do this. This won’t solve anything.”

PT did stop, but he didn’t look too happy about it. Ubik understood his displeasure. A nasty slice across their boss’s face and the others would have been bound to answer any and all questions.

But Dr Fairway couldn’t even bear to see her enemies hurt. Which wasn’t such a bad thing. It meant she was a good and caring person, and they were so easy to manipulate it wasn’t even fair.

“Okay, okay,” said Ubik. “Can everyone just calm down for a moment?”

“Are you trying to act like the voice of reason?” said PT, lowering his newly forged weapon.

“I just want to clarify something. Is that alright?”

PT stepped back and waved Ubik on.

“What is your aim here?” Ubik asked the Doctor, who had her arms spread wide to protect the bereft Grand Wizard.

“I’m a doctor. I’m trying to save lives.”

“Okay, good. Very commendable. And you think this will work?”

“What else can I do?” she yelled at him. “You’re all insane, like every man I’ve ever known. Every man in my family was just like you and you and you. And now they’re all dead, and you want to do the same to these people. Why?”

“So your objective is to make sure no one dies and you’re trying to achieve it by getting yourself killed. How does that make sense? You think we’ll feel so guilty about your sacrifice that we’ll put down our weapons and have a group hug?”

She looked at Ubik like she might make an exception to her no killing policy just for him.

“At least come up with a viable solution to your problem,” continued Ubik. “You don’t stop someone from killing themselves by threatening to shoot them, do you? And you can’t stop people dying by throwing yourself in harm’s way. We are the problem here. We arrived and began this circus of death, yes? So to stop this madness, you only have to get us to leave. And we’ve already told you how to do that. You just don’t want to do it. So the real question is, do you really want there to be no killing, or is it just a fancy martyrdom you’re looking for here?”

Dr Fairway slowly lowered her hands, brushing the hair away from her face. “Very well. But there will be no killing.”

“Sure,” said Ubik. “I’m a bit of a pacifist myself.”

Dr Fairway straightened herself and walked towards an empty glass cell. Everyone was watching her. The inmates, the soldiers, the hooded men. Even Achmedis watched in silence.

The door slid aside and she stepped inside the cell.

“You want to go to the core. This is the only way.”

“Finally,” said PT, as though he was the one who had made her see reason. He was still holding his new weapon.

“A sword?” said Ubik as he followed PT into the cell. “Really? Why not a lance with a flag on the end.”

“It’s not a sword,” said PT. He lowered the sword and looked at it. “It’s just a big knife.”

“That’s what a sword is,” said Fig joining them.

Once they were all inside, the glass walls darkened, and then the floor fell away under them.

Book 3 – 90: Can't Complain

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

Castle Corum

 

Point-Two stood at the front with Fig behind him and Ubik at the back, which wasn’t where you wanted Ubik. You wanted him where you could see him and, optimally, with an unblocked exit you could get to before he could.

As soon as they had left the waiting room, worried soldiers flanked them with their backs extra straight, eyes nervously flicking towards Levitan, who glowered at them.

He was upset, Point-Two could tell. He hadn’t managed to break Ubik. He hadn’t even managed to turn on his torture device. He was probably very frustrated with how things had gone so far. No torturer wanted to look useless in front of his victims. It created the wrong sort of ambience.

“Take them to Dr Fairway and tell her to keep them quiet,” said Levitan, making it sound like there was some unpleasant way to prevent them from making any noise. If there was, Point-Two wouldn’t mind a bottle of it. He was sure it would come in handy next time Ubik wanted to annoy people carrying weapons. The Seneca Corps, Antecessors, random people in a field — there was always someone with an itchy trigger finger.

“If anything unnecessary happens,” continued Levitan, “you will all be held accountable, as will your families. I hope I make myself clear.”

They set off at a fairly quick pace, pressed in from both sides. The soldiers had looks of immense concentration and some of them were sweating, rifles held in both hands, ready to shoot. They were too frightened to even throw resentful glares at their prisoners.

“How come my hands are cuffed behind me and they get to have theirs in front,” said Ubik. “It’s not easy walking like this, you know? I mean, I’d understand if we were all treated the same, that’s fair. But singling me out for poor treatment when I’m the one who was trying to help, how does that make any sense.”

“Don’t worry,” said Point-Two to the soldier on his left, “you won’t have to listen to him once we get to Dr Fairway.” In truth, he doubted Dr Fairway would be able to shut Ubik up, but he felt it was best to give the soldier some kind of hope to cling onto.

They headed down several sets of wide stone steps, which at least meant they were going in the right direction, but judging by the views from the windows they passed — treetops and clouds, mainly — they were still quite a long way from the planet’s core.

After another five minutes of marching through empty stone corridors, they came to a large archway, through which were people in glass cells, making them look like exhibits in display cases.

“This is nice,” said Ubik. “Very clean. A modern dungeon — I like it.”

He was right. It was a clean and well-maintained dungeon.

The people were all wearing simple tunics that looked like they would tear apart at the slightest tug. They also looked in poor condition, their faces pale and drawn, their eyes hollow and ringed with dark bruises, their bodies frail and hunched.

Some of them were curled up on the floor, others shook like they were having some kind of seizure. None of them were making any noise and only a few seemed to have the strength to pay attention to the new arrivals.

“What’s wrong with them?” said Point-Two.

“Nothing,” said the soldier to his left. “They’re being kept quiet.” He didn’t make it sound like a punishment, more like a relief for all parties concerned.

There were dozens of glass cells on either side of the long room, each containing four or five detainees. In the central area between cells, half a dozen people roamed from one cell to the next, making notes on clipboards. They wore white lab coats, which were very different to the kind of clothing that the people out in the fields had been wearing.

The overall atmosphere wasn’t like a prison, it was more like a medical facility. Or a mental asylum.

“I think they’ve been experimented on,” said Fig. “Organics.”

Point-Two looked at the captives with renewed interest. He knew that there had been many attempts at using people less than ideally suited for the procedure, and often with artificially created organics.

The idea of being able to manufacture bespoke organics, usable by anyone, had been a goal for many of the large corporations for a long time. They had the Antecessor originals to reverse-engineer, which was how they had produced many of their greatest and most profitable technological advances, so there was a strong belief organics would be the same.

But results had never been good. In fact, they had been so bad that the process had been made illegal hundreds of years ago.

Point-Two had no real idea what someone who had been experimented on would look like. The symptoms were probably very varied. But he trusted Fig’s judgement on such matters. In many ways, he had been the subject of something similar through his father.

Thinking about it, they had both undergone experimental procedures, which made him feel a level of sympathy for these people. He could have quite easily have ended up in a similar condition.

At the far end of the room was a large desk with a woman seated behind it. She was busy looking through paperwork, ignoring the arrival of the armed escort and three prisoners.

The soldiers came to a stop in front of her desk and waited, not offering even a polite cough to get her attention.

When she did finally look up, she was surprisingly young-looking. In her early thirties at most. Her mousey-blonde hair was tied up in a bun and she had glasses sitting on the end of her long thin nose.

“What now?” Her manner was terse and dry, although her voice was actually quite cute and childlike.

“Three prisoners to be held until—”

“We’re here to liberate your people,” said Ubik. “Freedom from tyranny.” He looked around, raising his voice. “The end of suffering and slavery. Join us in our fight against the people who, er, are bad and mean.”

A couple of the lab-coated staff stopped to see what Ubik was doing, but he was mostly ignored.

“This is them, is it?” she said, looking past the soldier with an air of strong disapproval. “These are the terrorists responsible for taking the food out of our children’s mouths?”

“I hardly think that’s an accurate summation of what happened,” said Ubik. “Not unless your kids eat high-yield alcohol products.”

Dr Fairway stood up. She had the same white lab coat as everyone else, but she had a gold name tag on her chest.

“No, we don’t. We sell the crops and use the money to buy food. The bigger the harvest, the more the pay. The smaller the harvest, the less the pay. I hope that makes the situation clear for you.”

She was dry and sarcastic, which wasn’t going to work on Ubik.

“If you grew edible crops, you could feed them however much you wanted,” said Ubik. “That’s how farming works in the rest of the galaxy. You know, where they don’t have to fund their evil experiments with highly flammable crops.”

There was a moment of awkward silence before one of the soldiers hit Ubik in the stomach with the butt of his rifle.

“Ow,” said Ubik, staggering back a few steps, shaking the hand he had used to block the butt. “Didn’t they train you how to hold those things properly?”

“I think he did it on purpose,” said Fig.

“Did he? Why?”

“There’s no need for that,” said Dr Fairway. “The prosecutors from Rome will want them undamaged for their… questioning. Put them in there.” She pointed at an empty cell with the pen in her hand.

“Do you have somewhere deeper?” asked Point-Two, as the glass wall slid aside and they were shoved inside.

The doctor looked at him with confusion that could have also been irritation. “Deeper?”

“Yes,” said Point-Two. “Like a really, really deep cell under here. Like, way down.”

“There is nothing under here apart from the morgue,” said Fairway.

“What about the older cells, in the dungeon, where they keep the really terrible prisoners?” asked Point-Two.

“The old dungeon is unsafe and no longer used,” said Fairway. “You don’t want to go down there.”

“We do, I mean, we can escape from here,” said Point-Two, trying to make being moved seem like a reasonable request. Although, he could tell by her face he had some way to go. “A more secure cell, deeper underground, would be more effective.”

The glass wall slid back into place and things went oddly quiet, like the air was thicker and harder to penetrate with sound waves.

Dr Fairway took off her glasses and stared at him, like he was some sort of unusual specimen.

“You’re being too suspicious,” said Ubik.

“I know that,” said Point-Two, “but how else are we going to get to the core?”

It was tricky getting people to trust you by making it look like you wanted to help them make things worse for you. What kind of idiots would want conditions to be more harsh and unpleasant?

“Why don’t you just ask her?” said Ubik. “They probably hate the people in charge. Probably happy to help. Right?”

“I don’t know where you get your information from,” said Dr Fairway, her voice slightly distorted, “but the people on this planet are more than happy with conditions. We have everything we need. That is, we had everything until you arrived. If you think you’re helping us in some way, please stop. We don’t need your help.”

“Do you really mean that, or can you just not say?” said Ubik.

“If she can’t say, she can’t tell us she can’t say, can she?” said Point-Two.

“She could let us know with a signal. Blink two times for ‘Help, I’m being oppressed by an unfair society,’ that sort of thing.”

“You willingly work for these people?” said Point-Two, his face close to the glass wall, paying close attention for any kind of signal. The glass surface was cold and made his nose tingle.

“We do,” said Dr Fairway. “If we didn’t, we’d have all been executed a long time ago.”

Point-Two was a little taken aback by her logic. “Wait, you’re saying because you chose to do this rather than die, it’s voluntary?”

“Yes,” said the doctor with a completely straight face.

“So, if someone put a gun to your head and demanded your money or your life,” said Ubik, “that wouldn’t be robbery, that would be a legally binding exchange of goods?”

“If you want to put it in crude terms, yes,” said the doctor.

Point-Two leaned back slightly. “I don’t think these people are oppressed, I think they’re crazy. Is stupidity one of the side-effects of organic experimentation?”

“All these people are suffering from the effects of exposure to the modified corn we grow here,” said Fairway. “Used to grow here. It’s an unfortunate condition but a rare one. Out of the whole planet of several million, these are the only ones affected. It’s a blessing there are so few. There are no experiments. There is nothing untoward happening here. We are giving these people the best medical attention possible.”

She sounded dignified and sincere.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Fig, stepping up to a part of the wall where the glass looked a little more blue than everywhere else, his voice sounding surprisingly clear, “but all these people are showing classic symptoms of forced integration with synthetic organics. The ersatz alternatives manifest very distinctive side-effects that modified corn crops can’t replicate.”

The doctor gave Fig a withering look. “I assure you—”

“That man is about to vomit blood,” said Fig, pointing at a man in the next cell who was shaking so hard he was almost a blur.

A second later, the man folded in half and spewed blood onto the floor.

The doctor’s look of contempt faded. “How did you know that?”

“If you analyse the blood, you’ll find the red blood cells have started to form DNA clusters. It’s typical of this kind of low-grade organic infusion. These people have all been experimented on. Not by you, I’m sure, but they were sent here after the failure of whatever procedure they underwent.”

“You should ask the people from Rome about it when they get here,” said Ubik. “I’m sure they’ll have an explanation.”

There was probably a chance they could convince her they were telling the truth, but it would take time. And Point-Two wasn’t willing to wait that long.

He placed a hand on the glass wall of the cell. It was very thick and reinforced. A second later, it turned to water and flooded the floor with a sudden splash.

Now the other cellmates did take notice. They were standing and pressed up against their own glass walls, eyes wide and curious, heads bobbing about. It was strange seeing them all come forward together to get a better view.

A soldier lowered his rifle to point it at Point-Two. Before he had a chance to do anything else, Fig had taken it out of his hands and turned it around to point back at the soldier, who raised his hands and backed away.

He was pushed back towards Fig by Ubik who had somehow gotten behind him without anyone seeing. Point-Two had been keeping tabs on him — as he always did, or tried to — and even he hadn’t seen him slip around the back.

The other soldiers looked panicked and fumbled to get their own weapons pointing in the right direction.

“Tell us how to get to the core or we start shooting these soldiers,” said Point-Two, doing his best to sound like he meant it.

The tense silence was broken by the sounds of feet marching towards them. They all turned towards the entrance arch as a group of six men in flowing grey robes and hoods that covered most of their heads came into view.

The people behind glass walls all retreated, cowering and trembling.

“Put those weapons down,” said the man at the head of the group.

The hooded man to his right raised his hand and the rifle flew out of Fig’s hands. But Ubik jumped up and caught it.

“Aha!” said Ubik, pointing the gun back at its original target. “Woah! Hold on!” Then he began wrestling with the gun as an invisible force tried to pull it out of his grasp.

Ubik was practically floating as he was raised up on his toes, refusing to let go. Then a shot fired, pinging off the ceiling and ricocheting off a glass wall, shattering it. The inmates inside stayed stuck to the back wall.

“Fine, if that’s how you want to do it,” said the lead hood. He raised his own hand and the doctor went flying through the air, ending up in his embrace.

He placed his hand on top of her head. “We know who you are and what you want. Surrender yourselves or I kill Dr Fairway.”

Point-Two was momentarily confused. He looked over at Fig, who shrugged.

“Um, okay,” said Point-Two.

“You surrender?”

“No,” said Point-Two. “You can go ahead and kill her.”

If the man thought threatening Fairway would have any effect on them, he clearly had no idea who they were or what they wanted.

Book 3 – 89: Taken

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

Castle Corum

 

Figaro quietly squirmed in the mildly uncomfortable chair and scanned the room.

There was a guard sitting opposite him, legs crossed, reading a magazine, and two more guards outside the door.

The guard didn’t seem very concerned about his two prisoners, paying them very little attention while being engrossed in whatever article he was reading in The Monthly Gazette. The cover had a faded picture of a smiling woman in a field of golden corn.

The room itself was clean and sparsely furnished with eight chairs, all lined up against the walls. A table had several more copies of The Monthly Gazette, all showing their age. Figaro would have picked one up, but his hands were manacled behind him, which was one of the reasons he was uncomfortable. The other was that it was just a very poorly made chair, cheaply constructed and with a slippery seat cover that made it hard to stretch your legs without risking a sudden slide onto the floor.

The walls were painted a sterile white and bare apart from a poster of a kitten clinging to a ledge with the phrase ‘Hang in there!’ written along the top.

There were two doors, one they had come in through and the other one, the one Ubik had been taken through. The one that led into the ‘torture chamber’.

Which meant what he and PT were sitting in was the waiting room for the torture chamber.

That wasn’t what he thought it was, that was what the man called Levitan had called it.

“You will stay in the waiting room while we extract what we need from your friend.” He had a sadistic look on his face when he said it, confident in whatever machine they were going to use on Ubik.

There was a loud whirring noise, like a buzz saw.

“I don’t think it’s really a torture chamber,” said PT, sitting with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles but managing to somehow remain on his seat. “Nobody actually calls their torture chamber a torture chamber. It’s always something like the Ministry of Reeducation.”

“Department of Corrections,” said Figaro.

“Exactly. If it’s called the torture chamber, it’s probably an ironic nickname given to it by the people who work here. And this waiting area is too nice. It doesn’t exactly inspire fear.” He was looking at the poster of the kitten.

“You were expecting damp and mould?” said Figaro. “Chains hanging from the ceilings?”

“It’s a castle with a dungeon,” said PT.

“You’re disappointed,” said Figaro.

PT made a snorting sound. “I wouldn’t say that. I just think the cat poster doesn’t create the right atmosphere.”

Figaro tried to reposition himself so there wasn’t something hard digging into this left buttock. “These chairs are quite irksome.”

“Yes, but not exactly the level of depravity I was expecting,” said PT.

Figaro looked at the poster again. It did feel a little incongruous. “Is it supposed to be ironic, too?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s there because the staff hate working here.”

“The torture chamber staff are unhappy with their working conditions?” said Figaro.

“A job’s a job. If you end up having to support yourself by doing something you find unbearable but unavoidable, you start to go slightly crazy. This whole planet has that feel to it.”

The guard casually looked up from his magazine. It was printed on glossy paper which made three different sounds every time he turned a page — the slide across, the flick up, the slap back down. His eyes returned to the magazine without comment.

“You’ve never had a real job, have you?” said PT.

“I can hunt and fish,” said Figaro. “I spent several months alone in the wilderness to learn how to survive, although that was in a sim-U. I know how to cook pretty much every type of edible flora, fauna and fungus, but most of the time it doesn’t taste very good. And I can pilot most forms of transport. I think I could get a job on most planets.”

“I’m sure you could,” said PT. “But that’s not what I meant. Being able to do a job is very different from doing it over and over, every day, with no end in sight, no way to turn off the simulation. You probably don’t know what it feels like, waking up every day with a mixture of dread and resignation because your life is controlled by people who intend to use you for their own benefit. It’s a kind of soul death.”

PT let out a sigh and stared up at the ceiling.

“Sounds very much like being Ramon Ollo’s son,” said Figaro.

PT turned his head slowly. “Maybe you do know what it’s like.”

“If they’re not torturing him in there,” said Figaro, “what are they doing?”

The whining of the saw, or whatever it was, suddenly increased in pitch, like it was finding some resistance, and PT had to wait for the noise to subside before responding.

“Oh, I think they’re torturing him, but inside a sim-U or something like that. Trying to download his memories onto a flash drive, maybe.”

“I’m not sure they have that sort of technology,” said Figaro, looking at the magazine cover held up by the guard.

“They had the ship we came on,” said PT. “They probably keep the advanced technology for their own use. Let the peasants run around on foot.”

Figaro nodded. It was certainly possible. But everything he had seen so far suggested a basic level of technology. They hadn’t seen any machines out in the fields, either.

He knew from his studies about his own planet, that keeping a large population of forced labourers was best done with as little advanced technology as possible. They would end up using it against you at some point.

But what was more perplexing was that despite the loud noises coming from the other room, there hadn’t been any screams or shouts. If Ubik was being tortured, by whatever means, he was handling it very well.

The sound of the saw stopped and the door opened. Levitan was standing there, looking irate.

“Send for the engineers,” he said.

The guard shot to his feet, sending the magazine flying back to the table with a snap of his wrist.

“Engineers, sir?” He seemed unprepared for the request. “What should I tell them?”

“Tell them to come fix this blasted machine. It’s stopped working for some reason, and we can’t get it started again.”

The guard looked across at PT and Figaro.

“Leave them here,” said Levitan, scowling. “I’ll keep an eye on them. They aren’t going anywhere.”

The guard rushed off, slamming the door behind him.

“How’s he doing?” asked PT. “Haven’t heard any screams yet.” He sounded very much like he was making a criticism.

“We haven’t started yet,” said Levitan, sneering. “The machine has to be calibrated first. Different settings for different people, depending on their threshold for pain. We wouldn’t want him dying before we got what we needed.”

“Oh, he won’t die,” said PT. “We’ve tried everything, but he always finds a way to get out of it.”

“Hmm,” said Figaro. “We’d be interested in your results, when you get them. How much pain he withstood, what areas of his body were the most sensitive.”

“Yeah, could prove to be useful for the next group,” said PT.

Levitan looked at them suspiciously.

There was a triumphant cry from the room behind him.

“I think I’ve fixed it!” shouted Ubik.

Levitan spun around. “Why is he out of the chair? Put those straps back on him.” He rushed off, presumably to put Ubik back into the torture machine.

“I don’t think he fixed it,” said PT. “I think he broke it, then he modified it, and now it works for him.”

Figaro nodded. Trying to use a machine on Ubik was definitely a mistake. A simple wooden stick was probably your best bet. A few iron nails stuck in the end and you were already tempting fate. Anything magnetic was going to give Ubik an opening.

The outer door opened and the guard returned, followed by two men in overalls and grim looks on their faces.

They didn’t even notice PT and Figaro as they briskly marched through the waiting room and into the torture chamber, while the guard hung back, tentatively leaning to look through the open door.

“What have you done?” cried out one of the new arrivals, sounding horrified. “This is a state of the art extraction unit. Why is it covered in… is this blood?”

“Ah, yeah,” said Ubik’s voice. “Poor guy nicked himself, didn’t you? That blade’s really sharp. It was an accident waiting to happen.”

Figaro couldn’t see who Ubik was talking to, perhaps the operator of the ‘extraction unit’.

“Be quiet!” That was definitely Levitan. “Someone put the gag back on him. What were you thinking? He’s a prisoner, not a guest.”

“We were just consulting,” said a surly voice that hadn’t spoken until now.

“He’s not a consultant, he’s a criminal who’s responsible for the destruction of thousands of acres of crops, and the reason why you and your family will starve this winter. Now prep him for labotimisation.”

“I can’t fix this,” said one of the engineers. “I can’t even tell what’s wrong with it. I’ve never seen it this colour before.”

“Looks like the manifold on the belt’s gone,” said Ubik. “Try tightening the nut under the lever arch.”

“Gag him now!” screamed Levitan.

Everything went quiet.

“Did you take off your cuffs?” Figaro asked.

“Mm? No, still got them on. Not like we need to escape anytime soon.”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to find the core ourselves?” said Figaro. “Ubik is going to take his time. I think he’s enjoying himself.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” said the guard, who had turned around to face them. “And you won’t get out of those cuffs. They’re tempered planean steel. You’d need a mechanised cutter to even make a dent in…” His voice trailed off.

PT had brought out his hands. The cuffs were still around his wrists, but the chain between them was gone.

“How do we get to the planet’s core?” Figaro asked the stunned man, hoping his distracted mind would answer without thinking.

The guard slowly took out his weapon, a pistol with a long barrel. “How did you do that? You’re one of them, aren’t you? You have one of those things inside you.” His voice was weak and timid. He seemed very frightened, so much so that the gun was shaking in his hand, making it hard to tell which of them he was pointing it at.

“One of those things?” said Figaro.

“A demon,” said the guard, his eyes filled with horrified realisation. “You’re a sorcerer. I heard the stories. Make a deal with a demon and have magic powers. When you die, your soul will be consumed.”

Figaro had not expected the man to not know about organics. And he certainly didn’t expect him to believe in magic.

“No, he isn’t a sorcerer,” said Figaro, trying to keep the man calm. “He’s just very, um, strong.”

“No one’s that strong.” The guard looked over at the door to the torture chamber. He seemed to be in two minds about disturbing Levitan. His prisoners were still where they were supposed to be and showing no signs of trying to leave. He seemed the type who didn’t want to be accused of not being able to handle his assigned task.

“Do you really like working here?” asked PT. “Forced to do horrible things to innocent people — is that what you wanted to be when you grew up? A thug?”

“I’m not a thug,” said the guard, offended. The insult had a steadying effect on him. The gun was pointed at PT. “I’m in a very respectable profession.”

“The core,” said Figaro. “Of the planet. How do we get to it?”

The guard switched targets. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The dungeons,” said PT. “They go down, right? Deep underground.”

“Yes,” said the guard. “So?”

“So, they lead to a room at the bottom, don’t they?” said Figaro.

“I suppose. There’s a cell…”

“Yes?” said PT.

“I don’t know who’s down there. Maybe no one. We don’t go down that far. If you try anything funny, I’ll shoot you.”

“I won’t try anything funny,” said PT. He held up his hands which were now chained together. It was like they had never been apart, except that his hands were now manacled in front of him instead of behind.

Figaro felt envious. It looked a lot more comfortable that way.

The guard looked even more confused. “That was a trick. You tricked me.”

“Yes,” said PT. “There’s no such thing as demons. I was just messing with you.”

The door was pulled wider and Levitan reappeared, his face full of fury. “Take them to the dungeons. Him, too.”

Ubik came into the waiting room, pushed from behind, his hands tied together around his neck, and his mouth gagged with a leather strap.

“Mmm hmm mmm,” said Ubik. “Mmm ngh ung.”

“What did he say?” said PT.

“I think he said they have no idea what they’re doing,” said Figaro.

“Mmm hmm ah uh oh.”

“And they refuse to let him help.”

PT looked at Levitan. “First time one of your victims has tried to assist in his own torture?”

Levitan gave Ubik a hard shove. “The team from Rome will be here in an hour. We’ll see how helpful you are then. Get them out of here! Let’s go. I want them processed and in full shackles in five minutes. ”

The guards from outside came running in at the sound of Levitan losing his temper, and there was more pushing and shoving. An unnecessary amount, but frustrated people were prone to needless violence. The cat on the wall was the only one maintaining a level of professional calm.

Figaro found himself bundled off the chair and ended up on the floor. He stood up with his manacled hands in front of him.

“How did you do that?” asked PT, looking at Figaro’s hands.

“Magic,” said Figaro.

They set off in single file to the dungeons.

Book 3 – 88: King of the Castle

Inner Quadrant.

Planet Romeo.

 

The ship shook and rattled as they flew towards Castle Corum. The noise of the jet engines, and the air screaming around the hull, made it hard to hear anything under a shout.

“You want us to commit a crime so they’ll put us in their dungeon?” said Point-Two.

“Not just any crime,” said Ubik, grinning from ear to ear, “something so terrible, they have to put us in their worst possible cell, deep, deep under the castle. The one reserved for degenerates and psychopaths.”

To be fair, he had every right to be confident in his plan. If anyone could arrive on a new world, not know anything about the people, and violate their sense of decency purely by instinct, it was Ubik.

The three of them were sitting close together on a plain bench inside the small jet vessel while the soldier, who was the only other passenger, stood at the other end, holding onto a strap hanging from the ceiling.

The soldier hadn’t said much. He was acting like an escort who had no personal investment in his mission, more interested in whatever was going on the inside of his helmet.

Point-Two expected he was in constant communication with the pilot or maybe his commanders at the castle. The big, stone castle that had looked like something out of a fairy tale.

And with a dungeon under it that Ubik was convinced would lead them to the planet’s core.

“They might just lock us up in a regular prison,” said Fig.

“It would have to be something they’re going to find truly unacceptable,” said Point-Two.

“Guys,” said Ubik. “Guys, this is me. I’ll make sure they won’t just find it unacceptable — they’re going to have to put us in their deepest, darkest cell so that the lynch mob can’t get to us before the public execution.”

Point-Two had a moment of discomfort as the possibility of Ubik accomplishing this task too well flitted through his mind. They wanted access to the dungeon, not a swift burial in an unmarked grave.

“Well, you better get started,” said Fig. “They knew where to find us, which probably wasn’t by accident.”

Point-two looked over at the soldier, who was all but ignoring them. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a firearm on his waist, but neither was positioned for quick use.

The ship had turned up pretty quickly, though. They may have noticed a fluctuation when the three of them arrived. Which meant they would have questions.

“You think they’re going to give us a hard time?” said Point-Two.

“Yes,” said Fig. “The low key approach was to check we weren’t a threat. They can afford to lose one ship and a couple of guys. They’re going to have a lot more questions once we land.”

“No worries,” said Ubik. “I’ve already thought of something. Leave everything to me.”

Point-Two couldn’t help but tense up as Ubik stood and made his way towards the soldier.

The soldier swivelled his body and casually put a hand on the butt of the gun on his belt. It wasn’t a threatening move, just a place to rest his hand.

“Hey,” said Ubik. “Thanks for the ride.”

The soldier nodded. “Just doing my job,” his distorted voice filtered out through his helmet.

“Lucky you found us so quickly,” said Ubik, grabbing one of the straps, which was a little high for him and forced him up onto his toes.

“This ship, is it liquid fuel?”

The soldier’s visor went up, revealing a pale, freckled face. “What?” Without the visor in the way, his voice was high-pitched and slightly whiny.

“This ship,” said Ubik, pointing down at the floor, “it runs on liquid fuel.”

“Yes,” said the soldier, nodding. “Why?”

“I think there’s a leak.”

The soldier shook his head vigorously. “Leak? No, no. No leak.”

“I have a very sensitive nose. I can smell…” Ubik sniffed at the air. “Napthosene?”

The soldier looked alarmed. “Napthosene, yes, that’s what we use.”

Ubik sniffed the air again. “Just a whiff, but it’s getting stronger.”

“Are you sure?” said the soldier, sniffing left and right.

Point-Two and Fig had slid along the bench to get closer, so they could hear, but the soldier was projecting his voice enough for them to see how panicked he was.

Point-Two had never heard of napthosene. Most ships were solid-state and didn’t require refuelling. He had little knowledge of fuels made specifically for atmospheric flying, but judging from the soldier’s reaction, it wasn’t something you wanted leaking out of your fuel tanks.

“Yeah,” said Ubik, swinging from side to side. “I used to run a rig with a nappy engine back home. It eats away at the tubing, that’s the problem. They don’t like to make it public, bad for sales. You better tell the pilot to check.”

“No pilot,” said the soldier. “Automated flight controls.”

It seemed they hadn’t wanted to risk losing a pilot, so they had sent out an automated ship with one man who they considered expendable.

“Run a diagnostic,” said Ubik. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

Point-Two had never heard Ubik sound so calm and reasonable, but for some reason it was making the soldier more flustered.

“I… I don’t know how. I only joined the Air Force last week. This is my first flight on one of these things. I better contact—”

“No, no,” said Ubik, sounding flustered himself, “don’t activate your comms. The smallest spark could cause autoignition. Lucky we haven’t been blown to bits already.”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.”

“No problem, no problem, you’ve probably got a…” Ubik began to turn the soldier around, prodding and patting his clothing. “There should be… Somewhere around… Ah, here.”

Ubik suddenly produced a battery pack from a pouch on the back of the soldier’s belt. He pulled out a wire.

“We should be okay for now. But if we don’t do something, we’re going to turn into a fireball on landing.” He sniffed again. “It’s getting worse.”

The soldier sniffed too. “I think I can smell it now.”

Ubik looked around. “What we need to do is… ah, there.” He moved to the wall behind the soldier and pulled at a section so a panel came off, revealing a board of wires, switches and lights.

It looked quite primitive to Point-Two. Castles, antique wiring, liquid fuel — this was a very strange planet.

“No, no, no, this isn’t good,” said Ubik, pulling out wires. “We have to minimise everything.”

“We aren’t supposed to touch that,” said the soldier.

“I know,” said Ubik. “But this is an emergency. We have to dump the fuel.”

“Dump the fuel? But—”

“Do you want to blow the castle up? The auto-pilot is going to come in like normal, and everyone on the landing pad is going to be incinerated. And once it gets ignited, the tanks will go next, then the whole castle.”

“The whole castle?” said the soldier.

“Very low flash-point, napthosene,” said Ubik. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”

He began pulling out more wires and unscrewing knobs.

The side of the ship slid open, letting in more noise as the air whistled in and out of the cabin. The ship tilted to one side, making everyone except Ubik grab onto something so they wouldn’t be thrown out.

“What are you doing?” screamed the soldier.

“Have to make sure we don’t drop the fuel on any civilians,” said Ubik.

Point-Two stood up and grabbed a strap so he could see down at the fields below. They were a sea of gold, the tops of the crops rippling as the ship rushed past. There were no people he could see.

“Looks clear,” shouted Fig, who was standing next to Point-Two.

“Okay, here we go.” Ubik pulled a small lever and ran his hand down the board so every switch was flicked down.

Twas a loud whoosh, that turned into a roar.

Below them, everything looked distorted for a moment, like they were looking through a heat haze, and then the ground ignited.

It was sudden and extreme, a wave of blue flames that rushed out and across the land, moving incredibly fast in every direction, consuming everything in its path.

The golden fields were vaporised in an instant, and then the next field, then the next. The destruction showed no signs of stopping. There was some sort of chain reaction going on, and even fences and small groups of trees were instantly turned into ash.

The soldier’s mouth was open in horror. “What… What happened?” he managed to ask in a strangled voice.

“Looks like those crops were modified for high-yield alcohol production,” said Ubik. He leaned forward — his feet seemingly glued to the floor — and peered out of the open siding. “Looks like this year’s harvest is going to be a little light.”

There was nothing but charred ground as far as the eye could see.

“Ahhh, ahh.” The soldier was having trouble breathing. “Corum Control, come in.” He banged on the side of his helmet. “This is Corum-five-two, do you read?”

“You might need to reconnect this,” said Ubik, holding up the battery pack he had removed earlier. “Should be safe now.”

The soldier grabbed the battery and made a meal out of reconnecting it, almost dropping it out of the open door. As soon as he got it plugged back in, an irate voice came booming out of his helmet.

“Corum-five-two, come in. What the—”

The visor came down sharply and a heated conversation appeared to be taking place.

“Do you really think burning a few stalks of wheat will do it?” said Point-Two.

“A few stalks?” said Ubik. “That heat-flash isn’t going to stop until it hits a mountain range or the sea. And if they genetically modified the fish like they did the crops, all there’s going to be is an ocean full of barbecue, no need to add salt.”

The soldier quietly slumped to the floor and didn’t speak again.

They reached the castle a few minutes later. The soldier was still silent, his visor closed.

Close up, the castle looked exactly how you might picture a castle, with battlements and towers, flags and turrets.

And a crowd of uniformed people waiting on the roof.

They came into land with a hundred guns pointed at them. The gun barrels followed them down and were kept pointed at them as they disembarked.

Ubik stepped off first, hands raised.

“I surrender. It was my mistake, I accept my punishment.” He lowered his arms and held out his hands. “Lock me away.”

The landing pad was completely surrounded and the atmosphere was hostile. Basically, a normal reception for Ubik.

No one made a move towards them, but as soon as the soldier exited the vehicle, he was pounced on by four men and dragged off, screaming and shouting, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”

Then a tall, angry-looking man came through the crowd, in a slightly fancier outfit — shinier with bigger buttons down the front, but no weapon drawn. “Who are you? Who sent you?” he barked at them.

“Quiet, Levitan,” said another, shorter man, giving the first man a stern look. He was older, with a white goatee beard and long white hair coming out of a green helmet, wearing an even fancier uniform. “I’m General Hobbes, commander of this fortress. There’ll be a team from Rome here in an hour to question you, until then, you are our guests.”

His presence had a calming effect on everyone else, but his eyes were piercing and Point-Two was sure he suspected them of not being what they seemed. He was being cautious and would be hard to fool.

He didn’t order anyone to lower their guns, so Point-Two took ‘guest’ to be a euphemistic term. Which was what they had hoped for.

“Rome?” said Point-Two, out of the side of his mouth.

“Capital city,” said Fig.

“Once they arrive,” said Hobbes, “we’ll find out exactly how this accident happened. Take them to the guest quarters.”

It seemed like they were going to be treated carefully, just in case they were important people or had a powerful backer. Point-Two wasn’t surprised — a planet like this couldn’t afford to get on the bad side of the really influential forces in the quadrant.

But that wouldn’t get them to the core.

“Oh, it was no accident,” said Ubik. “It was all planned.”

“What do you mean?” said Hobbes, eyes narrowing.

“The destruction of your crops is only phase one,” said Ubik, sounding menacing and diabolical. He was overdoing it a bit, in Point-Two’s estimations. “Yep, all part of the rebellion.”

“What are you talking about?” said the irate man called Levitan. “This is Romeo. We are the breadbasket of the quadrant. There’s no rebellion here.”

“There is now,” said Ubik. “We’re here to end your thousand years of slavery and corruption. Wealth should be shared. Long live the revolution!” He shouted it like he expected a chorus to join in. No one did.

“Take them to the dungeon!” said Hobbes, his mood souring noticeably at the mention of shared wealth.

“Perfect,” said Ubik, spreading out his arms in welcome as the crowds closed in and pushed the three of them to the ground. “Make me a martyr. See how that plays on the galactic broadcasts.”

“We aren’t connected to the galactic broadcast network,” said Levitan. “Take them down.”

Their hands were bound with what felt like manacles — not tronics, actual metal bracelets. Then they were lifted up and carried off.

Ubik had been as good as his word. He had got them thrown into the castle’s dungeon. Now they just had to hope the core was down there somewhere, but things had gone surprisingly smoothly so far.

“Stop,” said General Hobbes, his frown deepening as he tugged on his beard. “Not the dungeon. Take them to the torture chamber.”