Legacy of the Centaur (RFVIII), Chapter 23

Spoiler alert: This is the work-in-progress of the 8th book in the Reckless Faith series. You may read the prologue here: https://devonai.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/reckless-faith-viii-prologue/

The Garmoniya produktovyy mahazyn was a small business on the western arm of the Crimean Peninsula, a location once visited by two sentient beings that were currently on Tartarus. Evangeline was one of them, and knew right away that the scene before her was an illusion. The building, barely standing after aerial bombardment, and abandoned some days earlier by its proprietors, had been ransacked of anything of value. It was the sight of the last stand of Eva and her partner, Kyrie Devonai, standing alone against Russian soldiers, shortly before she was spirited away to the Eagle by an ancient and inscrutable force.

Kyrie would tell her later how he survived what seemed like an impossible situation, but at the moment, he stood behind an aluminum and steel counter, the glass display shattered, holding an AK-74 rifle he’d procured off of the body of an unlucky resident. It was a moment in time of great significance to Eva, and so, it didn’t surprise her that the scenario was a convenient setting for whom she had to assume was Kheiron, the only being within hundreds of light-years who could fabricate it. Indeed, she knew that it wasn’t Kyrie at all next to her, but most likely one of the increasingly annoying aliens known as the Kira’To. Instinctively, she checked her abdomen for the gunshot wound she had sustained when this event actually happened, and again was not shocked to find it absent.

Though the shouts of the Russian troops outside filled her ears, time seemed to have been frozen. This allowed her to notice that Fuyue was there, too, looking upon the scene with confusion.

“Am I dead?” he asked.

“Your body is no longer capable of supporting life,” Kyrie replied. “But your mind remains here, with me. She Who Spoke the Gospel has provided this venue so that we may talk.”

“Have I?” asked Eva. “Last I remembered, an Alnairian marine had dropped a grenade at my feet.”

“The Alnairians were here to finalize my plan. It would have been better if you had stayed out of it.”

“Fuyue, if you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re speaking with Kheiron.”

He nodded, and stood up. “Yeah, I got that. Kira’To, what did you mean when you said my body is no longer capable of supporting life. Have I been killed?”

Kyrie-Kheiron said, “As I indicated, your mind has been preserved, and is part of the same mechanism as my own. For that reason, your continued existence will be linked with mine, until another suitable host can be found. She Who Spoke the Gospel, if you care at all for yourself or your friends, you’ll follow my instructions.”

Eva shrugged. “I’d have to be back in my body for me to do anything, regardless of what you want. Keep in mind that I’m only one person out of several; I may not be able to help you if the majority disagrees.”

“You misunderstand me. Do as I say or your lives are forfeit. Do not mistake me for Aquila or Cygnus or any of the other outcasts. I am not your ally.”

Fuyue said, “Whatever happens, Adeler, you mustn’t care about my fate.”

Eva tried to conjure a large glass of bourbon in her hand, but it didn’t work. “What do you want, Kira’To?”

Kyrie-Kheiron drew two RDG-5 grenades from his pockets, and tossed one to Eva. Again, it was a memory, though she suspected it held another meaning. He directed his attention back to the street, and spoke.

“I called the Alnairian soldiers here to destroy this place. Since they chose to die at your hand instead, you must complete this task.”

“What about the Thesprotians? What happened to them?”

“Your kind is so exhausting. Suffice it to say, they are somewhere safe. By the time the facility is in ruins, so I will be.”

“If you’re so fucking powerful, why don’t you destroy the place yourself?”

“If I could do that, the prison never would have been constructed. What I can do is flood the sub-levels with, what do you call it? Gamma radiation, that’s it. From the collider emitters. All fourteen of you would die instantly.”

“I give you my word, as one touched by your kind, that I will see to it.”

Kheiron must have believed her, because a split-second later, Eva found herself back in the corridor on Sub-Level Four. Smoke still filled the hallway, and as far as she could tell, very little time had passed since the grenade at her feet had detonated. One of the marines groaned in agony; the rest were silent. Radio transmissions echoed in her helmet, and she tried to focus on what was being said, at the same time as her HUD showed her just how badly the grenade had shredded her EVA suit. The good news, if any, was that it, and the conventional armor draped over it, had done its job and absorbed both the deadly fragments and concussive effects. Even still, she bled from a dozen superficial cuts to her extremities.

“… if we’re going to clear the prison again,” a voice was saying, “then we won’t get to you for at least fifteen minutes, over.”

Eva recognized Ray speaking next. “Negative. Recommend you either break off a fire team to clear the prison or trade places with the Antares and let them supplement your squad, over.”

“Wilco. We’ve got a team headed your way, ETA five minutes, over.”

“Roger, out.”

Eva picked her bokken up from the floor nearby, and moved toward the sound of the man in pain. Though she recognized his rank as corporal, she couldn’t be sure how badly she had injured him. Despite her inclination to end his suffering, she instead grabbed his rifle, sidearm, and grenades, and threw them into one of the adjoining rooms. Then, she dragged him by his load-bearing vest to the back stairwell. There, she met Vecky, who stepped to aside to allow her and her quarry inside.

“Are you okay?” the younger woman asked.

“I’ll live,” she replied. “I can’t say the same for this fuckin’ guy.”

“Bailey and Ferro are one level below, trying to stabilize Mister Fuyue.”

“Did you copy those transmissions just now?”

“I did. The Reckless Faith inserted an additional team of nine in response to our distress call.”

“Good. Vecky, I need you to keep a sharp eye on that corridor and secure our position until backup arrives. I’m going to check this marine for injuries; one more bargaining chip in our favor could be useful.”

Vecky leveled her carbine toward the hallway. “You’re bleeding. You should attend to your own wounds first.”

Eva nodded, but didn’t reply further. She knelt by the Alnairian, and began to carefully remove his load-bearing vest and armor. The man screamed in pain as she tried to pass his arms through the equipment.

“This would be easier if you told me where you’re hurt.”

“My left forearm and my right upper arm,” he breathed, “same as where you hit me, bitch.”

“You’re no use to me dead, asshole. If the extent of your injuries is broken bones, then quit complaining.”

Ray rounded the corner at the landing, and rushed up to join the others. “What’s going on?”

“The squad has been neutralized. I don’t know if there are more coming.”

“More of our own people are inbound. We just need to hold this position until they get here.”

“I heard. Is Fuyue dead?”

Ray nodded morosely. “Clinically, yes. If we can’t evac him to better facilities, he’ll be dead-dead. Ari is doing CPR, but it doesn’t look good.”

Eva turned to Vecky. “How long did it take me to come back?”

“Thirty seconds, give or take,” she replied.

“Bailey, I doubt there’s anything we can do for Fuyue. I had a talk with Kheiron just now; he said the Thesprotians are in a ‘safe place,” whatever that means. He also said he brought the Alnairian marines here, with the intent to have them destroy the facility. Since I interrupted their mission, he wants us to do it instead.”

“What, when?” asked Ray. “You know what, forget it. We know what the Kira’To are capable of; I suppose it’s possible the natives were transported elsewhere. I also have no problem with reducing this place to rubble, except that we don’t have enough explosives. If you’re serious, then I can ask our reinforcements to bring them.”

“I wish there was another option, but it seems Kheiron holds all the cards. Make the call. I need to sit down.”

Ray shouted down the stairwell. “Ferro, get back up here!”

Vecky continued to guard the corridor while Ray evaluated the extent of Eva’s wounds. She allowed him to do this, and didn’t object when he began to strip off her armor and suit. Ari arrived, her arms and abdomen soaked in blood. She keyed her radio, and updated their allies. When Ray was done with Eva’s clothes, he located several lacerations and applied compression bandages from his kit. Feeling woozy, she wasn’t paying attention to the voices in her ear.

“The team on its way said they have enough explosives to make a crater the size of Nebraska,” said Ari.

Ray nodded. “Good. I wish we knew what the hell was going on. By the way, there’s no way the Alnairians could have landed troops without us seeing. Eva, is it possible they got here the same way that the Thesprotians left?”

Eva grabbed a canteen and loosened the cover. “That’s the implication.”

“I hate being a step behind on shit like this,” said Vecky.

“Before our recent troubles,” began Ari, “Christie had shared a lot of data with me from the files we recovered from the labs. I haven’t had time to do my own thorough evaluation, but based on what I do know, and what we know about the latent abilities of the Kira’To, my guess is that the particle collider array is being used to facilitate the transportation of people.”

“That would make sense,” said Ray.

“Not only that,” Eva replied weakly, “but also supporting Kheiron after the loss of his physical body. He told me Fuyue is with him in spirit, although I have no idea if that’s true. Either way, he’d better have a plan to sustain the two of them if he expects us to destroy this place.”

“I don’t think we can consider Fuyue’s fate when weighted against the rest of our problems.

“That’s exactly what he said.”

A transmission could be heard over their headsets. Ray, Ari, and Vecky paused to listen to it.

“The Faith has docked,” said Ari. “Nine of our friends are headed this way.”

Eva took a long draught from her canteen. “Let’s hope they have an easier time of it.”

_____

Fifteen minutes later, John, Kyrie, Richter, and Cane arrived on Sub-Level Four, having traversed the path from the prison without further incident. The situation for those already there hadn’t changed, except that Fuyue’s passing was confirmed. His staff had been secured, and the eight of them were ready to try to fulfill Kheiron’s order. If the few members of the crew of the Antares that had arrived had any opinion of Fuyue’s death, they didn’t share it over the radio, instead focusing on their assignment to secure Inferno.

Eva had been stabilized, and continued to try to gather her strength. Kyrie had run an IV line of Ringer’s Lactate for her in an attempt to make her ambulatory. The Alnairian corporal had decided his best bet was to keep his mouth shut, though his wards had been kind enough to give him a shot of morphine for his trouble. After a few minutes, Eva was able to stand, and thus it was time for everyone to move on. In the corridor, C4 charges were placed at points that seemed to be critical, then the group moved into the old control room. John, Ray, and Cane set to work readying a pair of drones, and the latter two used their PDAs to get them in the air.

The plan was to send the Snoopys in opposite directions around the collider loop, and confirm what Kheiron had told Eva about the situation. Ari had set to work interfacing with the ancient computer system there, in an attempt to determine the minimum number of explosives that would be necessary to render the system permanently inoperable. They all hoped it would be just a few, as none of them wanted to commit to the time it would take to mine all thirty kilometers of the loop. What remained unknown was where the power for the system was coming from, or if Kheiron even needed any to sustain himself.

While the others focused on their tasks, Richter knelt down next to the Alnairian corporal. The marine’s broken limbs had been splinted, and the morphine had taken hold, so the man was comfortable, if not particularly chatty.

“Corporal, my name is Major Richter, I’m with the crew of the Reckless Faith. Though I understand that you’re bound by the rules of warfare to resist interrogation, I’d like to try to convince you that we’re not actually enemies.”

“Good fucking luck,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“This is not the first time Alnairian marines have been deployed to Inferno. How much do you know about what happened to that squad?”

“I assume they kicked ass and then drank a lot of whiskey.”

“Unfortunately, no. Did you know Master Sergeant Scrivener?”

The corporal looked at the ceiling. “Do you have any more of that painkiller? That shit is good.”

“Any more and you’ll be joining your comrades in the afterlife. I appreciate that you don’t want talk. Instead, I’ll tell you; your president, by way of the Gray Men, betrayed your fellow marines, and sent assassins after them to ensure the existence of this place would remain a secret forever. The three survivors of that attack were saved by my friends and me, and returned to Commander Hadar and the Bidelman. If you don’t believe me, consider that no one on my team executed you after you became combat ineffective. That we’re having this conversation at all should be proof enough.”

He tried to scratch his face, and immediately regretted it. “Ow. So what? What do you want me to tell you?”

“How you got to Tartarus or, if you’re feeling particularly generous, where the Thesprotians ended up.”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“The native population of this planet.”

“You mean the inmates? I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Richter gazed at him for a moment. He sensed that the marine was telling the truth, at least as far as what he’d volunteered. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

“Answer me one question, and I’ll leave you alone. How did you get here?”

“A portal.”

Though Richter pressed him several more times, the Alnairian offered nothing else. Frustrated, but not surprised, he stood up and shared what he had learned with the others. Ray and Cane were too busy piloting their drones to reply. Ari was the first one to speak next, her eyes fixed on the computer console in front of her.

“This system is still badly fragmented, but some basic sensors are still online. Within the last hour, several massive bursts of neutrinos were registered, originating at the center of the collider loop. I’m sending the data to Christie; hopefully she can make more sense of it. My own initial evaluation is that it seems to match the energy profile of each of the wormholes we’ve encountered before, as well as the signals that the CLF recorded upon Cassiopeia’s ill-fated trip to the Swan.”

“So Kheiron has transportation capabilities from here,” said John.

“Seems that way.”

“That would explain how the natives disappeared. Eva, did he give any indication of where they could have gone?”

Eva said, “I already told you, no. Based on what Malthus told me about his telepathic chat with Kheiron, and what we found in the Thesprotian settlement, I think they’re in a better place now.”

“Euphemistically?”

Eva laughed. “No, I mean I think he saved them. The most obvious place he could have sent them is the Eagle, though he could have also chosen the Swan, or even Earth.”

“If that’s the case, we should be receiving an angry and/or confused message from one of those places very soon. For what it’s worth, I hope so. That would mean we can set the charges, blow this joint, and go home.”

“Something about this whole situation still doesn’t make any sense,” said Ari. “Kheiron could have asked us to destroy the facility first, rather than send in another squad of marines. Eva, you said he threatened to kill us if we didn’t follow his commands, right?”

Eva nodded. “Right, with gamma radiation.”

John scoffed. “I’m a little offended he doesn’t trust us after everything we’ve been trying to do here.”

“It could be a trap,” said Richter.

“If that’s true, we just walked right into it,” said Kyrie.