The Fall of the Sky Lords

by John Brosnan

Genres: Humor & Satire; Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

Shangri-La is a protected haven built by the enigmatic Eloi, (genetically-enhanced humans of indeterminate sex), and is now the Antarctic underwater prison of Jan Dorvin, once Sky Lord Captain, sometime dictator of the depleted Earth of the Gene Wars, and her maimed lover, Robin. Far above them, the struggle against the mighty airships an their commanders continues, as Ashley, a rogue computer personality, once again joins forces with the Machiavellian trickster, Milo Haze, against the remaining rebellious survivors of humanity. Meanwhile, on Belvedere, a religious commune set in deep space, contact is made with Earth for the first time in years and an unexpected counter is thrown into the game. Milo Haze, Mark Two, is about to enter the equation.

Release date: February 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 281

Sample

About 250,000 miles above the surface of the Earth, Milo Haze, alone in his small cell, sat reading a science fiction novel from the early twenty-first century. He had come across it by chance while roaming through ancient files in the CenCom and was surprised that it had escaped the attention of the Fathers. Not that there was anything salacious in it, regrettably, but the Committee of Fathers had long ago banned and subsequently wiped all fictional material that didn’t reflect orthodox thought or didn’t “cause the spirit to be uplifted and enriched in the contemplation of the glory of God”. That meant that anything that was even vaguely entertaining, be it book or vid, had gone.

Not that the novel, called A Trillion Tales of Light and Love, was very entertaining, but after a long diet of religious tracts and technical manuals Milo found it mildly diverting. It came from the era which later was ironically referred to as The Age of Optimism. At the time it certainly seemed as if the world had a lot to be optimistic about; the filthiest of all centuries, the twentieth, was over; the world hadn’t come to an end with the second millennium, the United States and the new Russia had formed an alliance and science had finally conquered AIDS.

And it had seemed that the world was going to get even better, thanks to science in general and to breakthroughs in microbiology in particular. It was because of this improved image of science and technology that the era also came to be called The Second Age of Reason. As the twentieth century had neared its end there had been a tremendous increase in crank beliefs—astrology, New Ageism, homoeopathy, spiritualism, occultism, Gaiaism, holistic medicine, ‘natural’ food, reincarnation, ‘channelling’, aromatherapy, UFOs and ‘Green’ politics, to name but a few—as well as an expansion in fundamentalism among the established religions. But in the early years of the twenty-first century, when it seemed that science was finally going to banish the old human curses of disease, hunger and even old age itself, superstition loosened its grip on the human mind for a time. And yes, science did indeed achieve its goals and the scientists were hailed as gods by the masses. And then came the Gene Wars. …

Not that the Gene Wars were the fault of the scientists. No, they were the fault of the people who controlled the scientists. Heads of States and the people who controlled the, by then, all-powerful Gene Corporations. People like himself.

It amused Milo that the first section of the novel was set in a space habitat similar to his own. Similar in terms of structure, at least. Both were basically just four-mile-long, rotating, bulbous metal cylinders. In the novel the habitat was the base for the builders of a vast starship. The starship was being built in response to mysterious signals coming from the centre of the galaxy. The builders were a bunch of young, idealistic, free-loving immortals; very unlike the people with whom Milo shared his space habitat, Belvedere, who were a bunch of fanatical Christian fundamentalists, sexually repressed under their stifling moral codes and irritating to Milo in the extreme.

Milo understood how this situation had come about, though it didn’t make it any easier for him to bear. He knew that the inhabitants of such a space colony, cut off from its mother world, had to live under very strict rules to survive. In space death was a close companion and it would take the careless actions of just one individual to endanger the whole habitat. Religious fundamentalism was an efficient way to impose a strict code of behaviour. Another factor was the emotional trauma experienced by the original inhabitants of Belvedere in the wake of the Gene Wars. The world had been poisoned with man-made plagues and other genetically engineered horrors. Man, with his Science, had destroyed the planet Earth. The Christians among the Belvederians had spread the word that it was up to the survivors to atone for this terrible insult to God and, in the heated emotional climate of the time, the idea quickly took root. Milo remembered those days well; or rather, his original self remembered. He merely shared his other self’s memories.

Milo finished the novel. He switched off the scanner, sat back in his hard chair and rubbed his eyes. Pity the mysterious alien force turned out to be benign. Milo could have done with a bit of blood and thunder. He leaned forward and used his terminal to inform CenCom of the novel’s existence on the file and asked for it to be brought to the attention of the censorship committee. Milo regretted doing so, for the novel was sure to be erased, but he had no choice. CenCom monitored everything he scanned and would have reported to the Fathers itself if Milo hadn’t.

He checked the time. His penitent was due to arrive in a couple of minutes. He was looking forward to it. Such sessions were one of his few sources of pleasure in Belvedere. Eating and lucid dreaming were his only others. Alcohol and all other pleasure-related drugs were, of course, banned.

She was punctual. As he knew she would be. She entered, dressed in the inevitable shapeless, dark blue smock. Her head was bowed. He sat straighter in his chair. He knew he looked imposing. “Kneel, Sister Anna.”

“Yes, Brother James,” she said as she knelt in front of his desk.

“Look me in the eyes,” he commanded. She raised her head and reluctantly met his gaze. She was young, almost beautiful and one of his best students. As her tutor he was also her confessor. A perk of the trade. Occasions such as this afforded the rare time that a man and woman could be alone together. Not that they were really alone, what with CenCom monitoring their every word and movement. If he so much as touched Anna with a finger he would be ejected from an airlock without a survival suit.

Physical contact between male and female was forbidden in Belvedere and had been for over a century. Only in cases of extreme emergency was this rule waived. All aspects of reproduction were, of course, restricted to the laboratory. Physical contact between members of the same sex was permitted but if the contact was ever sexual in nature the punishment was quick and severe. Masturbation was also forbidden, and as there was no place in the habitat where you could avoid the constantly prying sensors of CenCom few were ever tempted to break the law. And for males even wet dreams were outlawed. The punishment for this wasn’t too drastic—an embarrassing confession on the public channel and six strokes with a cane across a bare palm. Because Milo could control his body completely he had always avoided such a fate but such confessions and punishments occurred on a daily basis.

“You have a confession to make, Sister Anna?” he asked her sternly.

Her pale cheeks began to colour slightly. “I … I do, Brother James.”

“Begin.”

She was breathing rapidly. “I … it’s so embarrassing, Brother James.”

“You know you have to tell me, Sister Anna. And you must be absolutely truthful. Leave nothing out. God is watching and listening.” Not to mention CenCom and, through it, the Fathers.

“I have had evil thoughts again. I tried to stop them but I couldn’t.”

“Tell me about them.”

“I had them the night before last. In my bunk. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t mean to think such things. It was more like a dream … I couldn’t help it.”

“Don’t lie,” he warned her. “You wanted to think about these things.”

“No!” she protested, her voice rising.

“You know you did. Now tell me what you thought about.”

“It was about a man. He came into the dorm. He made straight for my bunk. I couldn’t see his face but as he got closer I saw he had no clothes on.…”

“And how did this make you feel?”

“Scared.”

“I told you not to lie.”

“… and excited,” she said hurriedly. “I didn’t want to be excited but I was.”

Milo leaned slightly toward her and increased his pheromone output tenfold. Soon the air of his cell was flooded with the potent chemical messengers. He quickly saw the girl’s response. Her face grew even more flushed, her breathing more rapid. “Go on,” he told her.

“He came up to my bunk. I then saw that his … thing was extended. …”

“You’re a medical student, Sister Anna. You know the correct term.”

“Er … penis.”

It was hard not to laugh. Poor girl. It was only by being a medical student that she even knew about the male sexual organ and the old, forbidden ways of procreation. Most Belvederians lived in total sexual ignorance. Sexual longing they had in abundance but no way of fulfilling it.

“And then what?”

Her eyes were half-closed now, her breathing rapid and shallow. “He pulled down my sheet … all the way to my feet. Then he … he took hold of the hem of my sleeping gown and pushed it up … over my legs … over my … my stomach … my breasts … to my throat.”

“You were naked to his gaze?”

“Yes….”

“You didn’t try to scream out or run away?”

“No, Brother James.”

“And then what happened?”

“He put his hands on my legs … and moved them apart. Then he climbed onto my bunk and … knelt between my legs. He touched me. …” She shivered.

“Go on, Sister Anna.”

“He kept touching me … in different places. Then he lay on me, pressed his body onto mine … and at the same time he pushed his … penis … into me … and …” Her eyes were completely closed now. Milo increased his pheromone output even further. “He … pushed back and forth, back and forth. …”

Not bad, Milo thought, for a girl who’d had only a couple of short, desultory and deliberately vague lectures on the actual technique of the sexual act. “And you enjoyed it? What it felt like?”

She was breathing very fast now. Panting. He could smell her juices. Taste them even. “Yes … I did.”

“And you’re enjoying it now, remembering it, aren’t you? You can remember exactly what it felt like. …”

“Yes! Yes! YES!” She threw her head back and began to shudder. “Oh! Ohhhh!” She tried to suppress the orgasm but she couldn’t. The shuddering of her body continued for some time. Milo kept the stern expression on his face but within he was smiling in triumph.

When the shuddering stopped she lowered her face. Tears dripped on the floor. She covered her face with her hands.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Sister Anna,” he told her coldly. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Yes, Brother James.” Her voice was muffled by her hands.

“A public confession, a severe scourging from your dorm Mother and at least two weeks in an isolation cell.”

“Yes, Brother James. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s too late now. I must make my report. Go back to your dorm and wait.”

“Yes, Brother James.” She rose to her feet and, without looking him in the eyes, hurried out of his cell.

As the door slid shut behind her Milo had to really fight the temptation to smile. The smell of her lingered in the air. It had gone wonderfully. Right in front of CenCom’s blasted sensors he had raped a woman. By remote control, admittedly, but rape it was.

He mused on how long it had been since he had physically made love to a woman. Over a hundred years. That was a long time between fucks. The woman concerned had been his then-wife, Ruth. Before the decree that forbade contact between men and women. Ruth was dead now. Reached her allotted span some twenty years ago. Got an extra three years past the two hundred mark, which was not a bad bonus. Too bad she had to spend them in this hole. But then she’d gone completely religious herself towards the end.

In one form or another Milo had spent over two hundred and eighty years in Belvedere even though, physically, he was only one hundred and sixty years old. Of course, the first one hundred and twenty years were spent in the original Milo Haze’s body, and there was a gap in his memory after that of some fifteen years. That had occurred while he was growing up.…

It had seemed a good idea at the time to leave a ‘cutting’ of himself on Belvedere before his original self left on the expedition to the Mars colonies. When Milo had arrived in Belvedere after the Gene Wars as a refugee he was carrying false identity papers but had declared his true age on them, which was then forty-eight. When a hundred and twenty years had passed and he had entered the final fifty years of the two hundred year span of an average Prime Standard he began to get worried. Because Milo Haze was immortal. And if he didn’t die on schedule, which should have been at any time between his two hundredth birthday and his two hundred and fifth, the Belvedere authorities would promptly execute him, just as they would promptly have executed him if they’d discovered he was Milo Haze.

So the original Milo Haze had begun to make plans. He volunteered to participate on an expedition to the Martian colonies, knowing that for him it would be a one-way journey. He would eliminate the other crew members en route and switch identities with the youngest. Then, on Mars, he would ask for political asylum. Because of the long-running feuds between Belvedere and the Martian colonies he was confident it would be granted.

But a month before he was due to leave he selected a woman who he knew was in her fertile year—one Carla Gleick, who worked in the water-recycling unit. As this was well before CenCom’s surveillance had become absolute it was easy for Milo to enter the unit when Carla was on duty alone, drug her and then impregnate her with the embryonic clone. Not that the present Milo remembered any of this—his memories stopped short forty-eight hours before those events, but he remembered planning to do it and his own existence testified to the fact that the original Milo had successfully carried out his plans.

He remembered nothing for a further fifteen years. Then one day he had awoken to find himself in a hospital bed. It was a period of confusion and disorientation while he slowly adjusted to the realisation of what had happened. And it was then that he began to regret his plan to leave a cutting on Belvedere. Because while he knew it would be a clone with his memories he hadn’t really expected the cutting to be him. He had expected to go to Mars, not stay trapped in fundamentalist Belvedere. And, of course, he had gone to Mars. He knew that, technically, he wasn’t the original Milo Haze. Unfortunately, he thought he was.…

Pleading amnesia, which was the truth, he slowly pieced together the last fifteen years. It transpired that Carla Gleick’s husband was sterile and though she understandably protested her innocence she was found guilty of adultery. She had been put to death. Milo hadn’t known about her husband’s sterility though it was a common enough condition in Belvedere and the other space habitats, thanks to the faults in the cosmic radiation shields. Not that it would have made any difference if he had known.

Milo, or rather James Gleick, had been raised in a government creche. From all accounts he had been a normal child, though he had grown remarkably quickly. Placid and obedient, young James had been a model Belvederian and rarely had to be disciplined. Entering his teens, he had shown an early aptitude for medicine as a vocation. It had been in one of his medical classes three weeks earlier that he had suddenly collapsed. Neither doctors nor the habitat’s sole operating med-machine could offer any explanation for the deep coma that James had slipped into.

Milo decided he would continue James Gleick’s medical career. As a former head of a Gene Corporation it would present no difficulty. On the contrary, it might be difficult to conceal the extent of his medical knowledge. And he would continue to be a model citizen of Belvedere, though the personality that now dwelt within the body of James Gleick was very different.

But his appearance changed as well. Within a few months all his hair had fallen out and one of his eyes, originally blue, turned green. It was a conceit on the original Milo’s part that he now regretted. And it wasn’t long before someone noted the resemblance between him and one of the volunteers for the Martian expedition. The name Milo had used since arriving at the habitat had been Victor Parrish, and it was now clear who Carla Gleick had committed adultery with. But fortunately for Milo the Fathers of Belvedere did not visit the sins of fathers upon their children. And as far as the Belvederians believed, Parrish had died with the others during the ill-fated trip to Mars. The sole survivor’s name had been Len Grimwod who Milo presumed was the original Milo, his plan to murder the other crew members obviously having been carried out successfully. He remembered that his original self had chosen Grimwod for his new identity because Grimwod was only thirty-seven years old. That meant that his Martian self had reached the ‘dangerous age’ again and wondered, but with not too much concern, how the original Milo would conceal the fact of his immortality again.

As for himself, a hundred and forty-five years of increasing boredom later, though interspersed with numerous secret victories—such as the one that had occurred today—he too was reaching the same position as the original Milo. At one hundred and sixty years of age he needed to start thinking about getting out of Belvedere. But his options were limited; one of the three other habitats or the Martian colonies. He would prefer the Martian colonies but if he somehow managed to reach them—and he didn’t see how he could—he would inevitably encounter his original self, who, if he was still alive, wouldn’t be happy about such an event. Two men physically identical, both completely bald and both with one green eye and one blue, would attract unwanted attention. Anyway, there were still a few years before he had to come to a firm decision.

Escaping from Belvedere would be more difficult now than it had been for his original self: only a specially trained class of men were permitted to operate, and travel on, the Belvederian ships that travelled to and from the other habitats. They not only lived in isolation from other citizens, to lessen the possibility of tainting Belvederian society as a result of their regular contact with the less holy residents of the other habitats, they were also eunuchs. This latter handicap was the main reason Milo was postponing making his escape attempt until it was absolutely necessary. He had yet to work out a way of overcoming the problem.

Milo entered his report on the poor Sister Anna with CenCom then checked the time again. It was almost his dinner period. He was about to rise from his seat when his terminal gave a loud beep. A face appeared on the monitor. Milo’s mouth went dry. A Father. But not just any Father but Father Massie, the most senior of all. Belvedere’s forbidding patriarch. What did he want with Milo? Had CenCom seen through Milo’s game with Sister Anna? Had the sensors picked up his increased pheromone output? It had never been capable of doing so in the past. If Milo had been capable of experiencing proper fear he would have been terrified.

“Brother James, prepare yourself for a shock,” said Father Massie, his stern eyes boring out from the screen.

“Yes, Father Massie, what is it?”

“We are receiving radio signals from Earth.”

In the flickering glow from the crude gas lamp the group peered intently at the sheet of plastic spread out on the table. On the plastic sheet were roughly drawn diagrams of the lower sections of the Lord Montcalm. The group was composed of four men and two women. They wore an assortment of ragged furs. It was cold in the storeroom. Ashley had cut off the heating throughout the ship, as well as the lighting.

“It’s agreed then?” asked Jean-Paul. He pointed again at corridor D on the diagram of the bottom deck. “We stage the diversionary attack in there?”

The others nodded. “It is the most obvious way to gain access to the control pod,” said Claude. “If we throw every available person into the attack Ashley will have no choice but to put all her remaining mechs into the corridor to protect the pod.”

“We hope,” said Dominique. She looked worriedly at Jean-Paul. “If there is even one spider still in the pod when Jean-Paul arrives …”

He smiled encouragingly at her even though the same fear was digging its claws into his own mind. “She will, don’t worry,” he said as convincingly as he could. “We know, from the number we’ve so far put out of action, that she can have only nine to eleven that are fully operational.”

“That’s if our estimate of how many of the damned things she originally had is correct,” said Eric dourly.

“We have no choice but to believe that it is,” said Jean-Paul, which was true. He scanned their faces. “Are all your units prepared?”

They nodded. “We’ll be throwing everyone and everything into that corridor,” said Claude. “Hell, there’s a good chance we will actually make it!”

Everyone murmured their agreement though Jean-Paul knew that none of them believed it. They all had experience of fighting the mechs. In the narrow confines of a corridor even a single spider-mech was capable of inflicting horrific casualties. Jean-Paul straightened. Time to get it over with. “Let’s do it,” he said.

While the others filed out of the small room Dominique moved closer to him. “Are you afraid?” she asked him softly.

“You hardly need to ask,” he said, and ran the tip of his forefinger down the side of her face. She took hold of his hand. “I’m afraid,” she told him. “I’m afraid I’ll never see you again.”

“Please,” he said, with a forced laugh, “that’s no way to boost my morale.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, then kissed him and embraced him tightly. After a while he pulled away. “Time to go.” He turned and began to gather up his equipment. They went out together. Claude was waiting outside, holding the coiled rope. There was a lot of it. Jean-Paul said to Dominique, “You had better join your unit, fast.”

She nodded, gave him a final, significant glance and hurried away. Jean-Paul and Claude headed off at a quick pace to their own destination, which was a small, open deck on the lower hull. As Jean-Paul stepped, shivering, out onto the deck he tried not to think of the enormity of the task that faced him. If he failed then their struggle was over. Even though the humans had taken over most of the giant airship it was still in the control of the deranged computer program known as Ashley. They had ripped out her sensors in the rooms and corridors as they had progressed through the ship but she still controlled many of the ship’s prime functions. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for her, in a fit of pique, to drive the Lord Montcalm nose first into a mountain. She had to be eliminated. Until she was gone the humans were nothing more than fleas inhabiting the hide of a giant beast.

Jean-Paul looked over the side. They were flying at a high altitude, which explained why it was so cold. He could see nothing below but a layer of cloud. His stomach felt queasy but he grinned at Claude and said cheerfully, “It’s going to work!”

Claude helped him into his harness and checked the bindings on the makeshift crampons he was wearing on his hands and feet. “When you’re in position give three sharp tugs on the—”

“I know, I know! You don’t have to tell me. It was my plan, remember?”

Claude looked hurt and Jean-Paul immediately regretted his words. Claude’s nerves were wound up just as tightly as his own. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to screw up.” He looked up at the hull of the airship that curved. . .