Bron is a chaos catalyst. He wreaks havoc and destruction as surely as a hurricane wherever he goes. Commando Central has planted an electrode transmitter-receiver deep inside his brain and infiltrated him into the Destroyer Spacefleet to prevent it from gaining absolute mastery of the galaxy. But Bron's own brand of chaos is lethally unpredictable. And when whole planets are annihilated by monster hellburner bombs set on course seven hundred million years ago from distant Andromeda, aimed directly at Bron himself, both sides realise something more colossal, more threatening and infinitely more powerful is taking a hand in Bron's weird destiny . . .
Release date:
February 18, 2013
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
189
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The night was shattered by a hundred copper candles, pressor beams bearing down, feathering the mighty bulk of a ship on to the centre of the city, bruising the very bedrock with resonant thunder. Green and violet, the lace traces of Yagi beams stabbed sharp disruption into the fabric of the buildings, and the quick flick of lasers struck the fires which completed the destruction. The city of Ashur on Onaris, mazed by the blistering savagery from above, prepared to surrender. Resistance was suicide, and even acquiescence held no guarantee of survival.
‘Perhaps it started as a whisper in some white wilderness: the sick spite of a broken body, cradled in cold, crying futility unto a futile wind:
DON’T YOU KNOW THAT GOD IS DYING?’
In the uncertain shadows against a broken wall the figure of a young man lay in foetal position, only partially aware of the devastation which raged around him. Such consciousness as he bore was almost entirely consumed by a battle of equally desperate proportions deep within his skull.
‘Perhaps in the sordid cells of some inhuman inquisition a spirit snapped, the mind mazed not by the searing steel, the nibbling nerve – but by a vaster wound:
DON’T YOU KNOW THAT GOD IS DYING … DYING …?
The man moaned softly to himself and rose to a sitting position, cradling his face in his hands. A Yagi beam, green and malignant, sliced the end from a nearby building, and the area was deluged with falling bricks. He sank back, unable to fight.
‘Perhaps some maimed martyr crazed upon the cross, held up his head and cried unto the heavens:
LORD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?
And was answered never: the ultimate betrayal: the immaculate blasphemy …
HAS NOBODY EVEN TOLD YOU?THEY SAY THAT GOD IS DEAD.
The young man climbed to his feet and started slowly and still unseeing across the littered square. His uncertain path took him nearly into the beam of a probing Yagi, but fate and guesswork diverted his feet. He blundered finally into the wall of a building, recoiling with a bloody forehead to sink again into the timorous shadows of a ruined doorway.
‘Bron! Bron, for pity’s sake, why don’t you reply?’
He made no answer. The blood from his forehead trickled down his face and ran salt in his mouth. Soon the shock and the pain forced him from his reverie and pressed on him a brutal acceptance of his environment. For the first time he showed an awareness of the holocaust. He looked outwards across the flickering waste of the tormented city, agony and comprehension filtering across his torn brow.
‘Bron, for God’s sake answer.’
The sky flared suddenly green and hideous as the Yagi’s beams found and detonated an unknown arsenal. The blast from the explosion damned the building as a sanctuary, and only instinct flung him clear. The walls between which he had been sheltering broke apart, and the door against which he had pressed his back seconds before was buried deep under a murderous pile of masonry.
‘Bron, are you receiving me at all?’
‘I hear you.’ In clear ground on the square he stopped and forced himself to speak, his voice ragged with undertones of near-hysteria. ‘Where are you? I can hear you, but I can’t see you.’
‘Jupiter!’ The voice was aghast. ‘No! You have to be joking! Six years and a quarter of the Commando budget were needed to place you where you are … and now you feign amnesia. Bron, you have to be joking!’
‘I never felt less like joking. I feel sick. Who are you … if you’re not imagination?’
‘Steady, Bron, steady! The big blast must have given you concussion. You’re in a bad way by the sound of things. I had to use the semantic trigger to pull you out of that coma. Is there nothing you remember at all?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know who I am, or who you are. You seem to be speaking in my head. Am I having hallucinations?’
‘Far from it. This all has a rational explanation. Only your memory is faulty.’
‘Where am I?’
‘In the city of Ashur on the planet Onaris. It’s under attack by Destroyer ships.’
‘And you hear me. How do you hear me? Where are you?’
‘Jupiter! This gets worse. We don’t have time for explanations now. First you have to get clear of the square and find somewhere to rest. I’ll explain later, if your memory doesn’t come back. For the moment you’ll have to take what I say on trust.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Don’t dare me, Bron. There’s too much at stake. If you remembered what you were, and why you were there, you’d know better than to ask the question. Don’t make me show you why.’
Bron pressed his head into his hands for a full half minute, then straightened.
‘Very well! I accept that for the moment. What do you want me to do?’
‘Move out of the city centre. The damage won’t be quite so bad on the perimeter. On the other side of the square, as you now face it, is a thoroughfare. Follow that until I tell you where to turn. I’ll stay with you.’
Bron shrugged and followed the instruction, fully aware now of the blistering fury which shrieked out of the sky. The ship above was obviously preparing for a landing, ploughing for itself a stabilizing furrow deep into the flesh of the city, and savagely eliminating all resistance in the areas surrounding. The relative absence of population in the attack area suggested that the atrocity had not been unannounced. A rising scream to the east told of where yet another spatial dreadnought had decided to make planetfall. Something about the pattern stirred a thread of memory, but its pursuit eluded him.
Cautiously he picked his way round the edge of the square, finding an unknown talent for making the maximum use of cover against the devastating Yagis. On the far side he found the thoroughfare, once one of the proudest streets of Ashur, now a hulk-like valley of debris, rimmed with fire.
‘You there in my head – are you listening?’
‘We’re always listening.’
‘How do you listen?’
‘You’ve a bio-electronic transducer implanted in your brain. Our equipments are such that we can hear you and speak to you no matter where you go.’
Bron absorbed this in silence for a moment.
‘Who are you?’
‘Associates in war. I’m Doctor Veeder. Does the name mean nothing yet?’
‘No.’
‘It will. And Jaycee, and Ananias. We three will be your unseen companions, as we have been in the past. We’re all part of the same team.’
‘What team?’
‘Special Assignments group attached to the Stellar Commando.’
‘Ah!’
‘You recall something?’
‘I recollect vaguely that I was a commando – but not here. Terra I remember, Delhi and Europa. I can’t recall anything after I left Europa.’
‘That’s significant. It was when you left Europa that you started these special assignments. I don’t wonder your psyche chose that point to start forgetting … Watch out!’
Bron moved. The cautionary word and his own instinctive reaction coincided completely. A probing Yagi beam shattered the road surface inches before his feet. The backwash of the discharge caught him as he turned, and flung him sideways, stunned but relatively unhurt. As the beam sliced on through a yet unbroken colonnade he regained his feet, still shaking with reactive shock.
‘You!’
‘What’s the matter, Bron? Are you hurt?’
‘You saw the Yagi coming. How?’ Bron was breathing hard.
‘Yes, I saw it. I’ve been trying to break this to you gently, since the re-learning of the facts may be something of a traumatic shock in your present condition.’
‘Spool the riddles! Can you see me, also?’
‘Not see you – we see through your eyes … and we listen through your ears. Day and night we watch and listen to every facet of your experience. That’s our job – Jaycee, Ananias, and myself. Also we can speak to you, and you can’t shut us out. Our voices are transmitted directly to your brain. We can do a few other things also, but we’ll go into those later. For now, just follow my instructions. We’ll find you a place to rest.’
‘Very well!’ Bron accepted the order with resignation. He was in no fit state mentally to compose an opposition to the voice within his head. Physically he was drained and shaken and desperately in need of rest. He withdrew into himself and followed the instructions mechanically, gradually wending his way into darker corners of the broken streets and away from the focal point of the attack. Finally the voice seemed to cease. Unable to proceed further of his own volition, he kicked a few bricks from under his feet, sank down to the dusty ground, and slept.
‘How’s Bron now?’
Of the trio, the speaker was the only one in civilian clothes – a simple jet-black sheath which detracted nothing from her femininity. Her strong features were framed by raven hair garnished with self-luminous star-spite spangles.
Her question was addressed to the Medic-Commander who turned away from the ranked screens. ‘Doc’ Veeder, tall and greying, bore the air of a man who had seen all the worst of life and learned to come to terms with it. Even at the end of his shift at the screens his crisp commando uniform, like his brow, showed no hint of other than authorized creases.
‘He’s still out, Jaycee, but as far as I can judge it’s a perfectly natural sleep.’ He glanced back at the monitors. ‘It should be safe to wake him in about an hour.’
‘Damn him! If he’s loused up this project I’ll give him such hell he’ll wish his mother had been a compulsive virgin.’
‘Don’t climb on his back too heavily when he first wakes. He took a considerable blasting last night. I don’t think he’ll appreciate the subtlety of your advances, and anyway, this happens to be an exercise in co-operation, not coercion. Ride him the way you usually do, and you could very easily put him on the defensive.’
‘I’d make sure he didn’t survive it.’
‘Agreed – but that’s not the point. He has to survive if we’re going to get the information we need.’
She accepted the point sullenly. Veeder left the screens and reached for his cloak. ‘He’s all yours, Jaycee. I’m going to get some sleep. Call me if anything unusual happens.’
‘Engaged!’ Jaycee slipped into the padded control couch in front of the screens and reached back to draw the curtains to kill the reflections in the cubicle. Then she began to run a routine check of the controls to ensure that she was familiar with their standing state.
As Veeder departed, the third member of the trio prised himself loose from the seat of the computer console. Throughout the preceding conversation he had remained silent, his eyes never once leaving Jaycee. Now he came over and stood directly behind her, watching the manifold screens as she trimmed and adjusted their symbolic legends. The bright tabs of his uniform proclaimed him a full Command General, and contrasted oddly with his apparent youth and with his flaxen hair and pallid complexion. His eyes were curiously bright, and he moistened his small, pink lips continuously with his tongue.
‘Doc’s right, you know, Honey-bitch,’ he said quietly. ‘No good lashing into Bron while he’s in that state. He won’t understand it, and he may well go on the defensive. You know what a cuss Bron can be when he turns awkward.’ He moved forward and leant against the back of the control couch immediately behind her. His hands hovered only slightly above her shoulders.
‘Jet-off, Ananias,’ she said tiredly. ‘When I want your ideas on how to handle Bron, I’ll ask for them.’
‘Sure, Honey-bitch. Play it your way. I just thought that as you couldn’t have an emotional workout on Bron you might be looking elsewhere for relief.’ His hands moved subtly on to her bare neck, lingering.
She froze.
‘What are you asking for, Ananias? A couple of broken wrists?’
‘Honey-bitch – you wouldn’t dare try that on me.’ His voice held an undercurrent of danger.
‘In three seconds if you don’t take your hands away.’
‘You’re teasing, Honey-bitch.’
She moved like a cobra, but he anticipated her action and had the additional advantage of operating from a standing position. He broke her hold and pinioned her hands against the back of the couch.
‘My God, you tried it, too!’ He sounded a trifle shaken. ‘You’re a vicious devil, aren’t you?’
‘You should know, Ananias. You’ve been around long enough.’
‘Too long, perhaps. That’s how I know the time to proposition. You can’t live through Bron for very long without breaking.’
Momentarily her head turned to the big screen on which, when he was awake, the scene viewed by Bron’s eyes was presented. Currently it was blank. The regular rhythm of Bron’s breathing and the heart pulse came through a muted speaker, against the muffled background rumble of warfare. Various monitors picked up the sounds, separated and analysed them, and presented scan traces of their findings. In electronic representation was displayed as much information about one living individual as it was possible to transmit over the precarious trans-galactic bio-electronic transfer link.
There was a stronger tie, however, between Bron the agent, and Jaycee, his operator. This was the rapport formed by the close-coupling of two minds sharing a common experience. When agent and operator were psychologically matched to form one complementary personality, the coupling was tightened even further. Intolerably further.
Jaycee faced up and tried to look at Ananias. ‘You know what that does to me, don’t you… living through him?’
Ananias kept control of her hands warily. ‘Sure. That’s how I know when you’re ripe for an emotional climbdown. Sometime you’ve got to give way – else you’re going to crack.’
‘And you hang around hoping to collect whatever it is I have to give?’
‘Sure, Honey-bitch. I’m a connoisseur. What you have to give is something of an acquired taste. You’ve a streak of spite which has no business this side of hell, and you have to work it off on somebody. Well … a man could get addicted to that sort of thing.’
‘And you think you’re deserving of special privileges?’
‘I always give good service.’
‘Look, Ananias, I admit you once caught me off balance after Bron had wound me up. But that’s only because you happened to be the first living thing down the corridor. It could have been anyone.’
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then:
‘You don’t mean that, Honey-bitch.’
‘Like hell I mean it. When I get that high I don’t care what I find as long as it struggles. I don’t respond to propositions. I’m not looking for a lover – I’m looking for something to help me catch up on a spell of suspended living. They don’t need any identity – better they don’t have any. No matter what, there’s only one person I grapple with in the darkness.’
They were saved from the impasse by the urgent summons of telltales on an auxiliary board. Ananias left her and was at the board in an instant.
‘Radio room, Jaycee. Report from the Antares transmitters. Come in, Antares! Ananias on-line.’
‘Hullo, General! There’ve been new developments on Onaris. To prevent further bloodshed, Onaris Radio has just broadcast their Government’s acceptance of the Destroyer’s unconditional surrender terms. Effective opposition to the Destroyers has now ceased.’
‘Good! Did the Onarian Government put out an appeal for outside help?’
‘They started using the FTL transmitters as soon as the Destroyers entered the system. Of course, they couldn’t expect to be heard except accidentally if there happened to be a starship within their range.’
‘Did you make radio contact with them?’
‘No. Our instructions were to the contrary. They could have no idea that our monitoring chain had picked them up.’
‘And nobody else answered their call?’
‘None that we could detect. Certainly the FTL emergency bands were clear.’
‘Keep monitoring the emergency frequencies. If anyone shows sign of answering their appeal – jam them. It’s imperative that nobody interferes before the Destroyers have taken what they want and pulled clear.’
‘Understood, General. We’ll report again if the situation changes.’
Ananias broke the connection and turned back to Jaycee.
‘So far, everything as planned … except for Bron.’ He frowned at the still-vacant master screen. ‘The Destroyers have attacked, Onaris has given way, the entire Commando fleet is on yellow-alert, and the most expensively prepared commando agent in history occupies a strategic position in the middle of a raped city – snoring his bloody head off.’
‘Not exactly your night, is it, Ananias?’
‘Don’t grieve for me, Honey-bitch. You know I always win in the end. And if I have to wait a little, then the spoils of battle become all the more enjoyable.’
‘You’re a Godlost weakling, Ananias. Unprincipled, but a Godlost weakling.’
She turned once more towards the screens, this time purposefully studying the traces which told the details of Bron’s existence. Ananias moved back behind the couch. He knew better than to attempt to interfere with her now, as she adjusted the microphone and began to re-establish the rapport she had with a sleeping commando agent half a galaxy away.
‘Perhaps in the sordid cells of some inhuman inquisition…’
‘Damn you for a bitch!’ said Ananias quietly.
His rest was broken by the insistence of a voice.
‘… the mind mazed not by the searing steel, the nibbling nerve – but by a vaster wound…’
‘Stop it! Stop saying those things!’
‘Get on your feet, Bron. Did you think you deserved a rest day?’
Bron stirred in the ruins, cruelly aware of the cold in his bones. The first pink of daybreak washed against the shattered skyline. His head ached, and the wound on his temple was stiff with a cake of dried blood. With difficulty he rose to his feet, shivering and trying to orientate his thoughts.
‘You in my mind – you’re not the one who spoke to me last night.’
‘God – you should be so lucky as to forget me!’ The voice trailed into spiteful incredulity. ‘No, Bron. Thi. . .
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