Hard Vacuum 1 (6 page)

The man grunted and pushed her off him.

Kyra rolled away from him and back to her feet. She slipped a little in her own blood but quickly recovered.

The man smiled at her. His head dripped blood onto his shirt, his blood mingling with hers. He blew Kyra a kiss.

Kyra charged at him, screaming. She struck up under his chin with the heels of her hands, driving him backwards.

The merc fell onto the table, with Kyra on top of him.

Kyra slammed the table monitor at random.

Robotic hands flew out and held the merc down. The man struggled against them. "Hey, let me out of this thing."

Kyra jumped off him and pulled the monitor to her. She scrolled through the menus until she found, 'Delirium'. Anaesthetic options appeared. Kyra selected, 'Inhalation sedation'.

A robotic arm rotated out of the head of the table with a long tube and a mask. The merc squirmed, trying to break free. The arm was insistent, plugging the mask over his mouth and nose.

Kyra found the gas level on the monitor and cranked it up.

"The others are coming. They're going to fucking kill you, little girl," the merc growled.

"Sure, just like you and your seven buddies did. Go to sleep, little boy."

The PA crackled. "Sergeant Sarin, this is Baltasar Kemke. Please pick up the nearest communications unit."

"Fuck you, nipple scrape," Kyra said.

"Now, now," the PA said. "The panel is on the wall behind you."

Kyra glared at the ceiling, spotting a camera in the corner.

"Behind you," the PA insisted.

Kyra looked around and found the panel - a basic video comms unit. She walked over and keyed it on.

Baltasar's face appeared. He was gaunt, with neat brown hair. He stared down his thin nose at her and smiled. "Now, isn't that better?"

"What do you want?" Kyra asked.

"I just wanted to talk to you. We haven't had a chance to introduce ourselves. I'm Baltasar Kemke, the CEO of Kemke Industries, amongst other things."

"Aren't you the head of WikiDeath?"

Baltasar smirked. "One of my more juvenile ventures, but it serves its purpose."

"What do you want, Kemke?"

"You've killed most of my men, Sergeant. I just wanted to tell you that you can stop. We're leaving in ten minutes. We're going to get in our little spaceship and fly away."

"Your plans are complete?"

Baltasar smirked. "I'm going to tell you my plans, am I, Sergeant?"

"I'm going to cram your little spaceship up your skinny ass."

"I might not have many men left, Sergeant, but I have enough. If you try anything, you'll die. I don't want to kill you."

"I'll take you with me," Kyra spat.

"That's not likely," Baltasar said. "You have such loyalty to WeaverCorp, after they've treated you so badly."

"They've kept me alive for five years."

Baltasar nodded. "Almost precisely five years."

"What in the ever loving fuck are you getting at?"

"There's a medical scanner on the counter behind you. Check your brain-stem on the right side. Anyway, I've things to do. Cheerio." The screen went dark.

Kyra looked at the scanner, and then at the merc on the table.

"Heh heh heh," the merc giggled. "Fucking kill you. Kill you fucking, you fucking kill."

"Shut up," Kyra said. She grabbed the scanner and activated it, pressing it to the right side of her neck. She connected her ReadyNet and looked. She couldn't see anything. Just random black and white blobs. She scrolled around the image. She almost went past it, stopping herself just in time. There was a black line on one of the white blobs. She increased the magnification, and the line swam into focus, 'WeaverCorp Model Kyra. Patent 587653245'.

REVELATIONS

K
yra limped towards the station hub; her hands clasped behind her back. She winced with each step, trying not to tear the bonding glue.

The three remaining mercs were standing in front of the control room. They trained their weapons on her as she approached, their fingers twitching against the triggers of their guns. Baltasar emerged from the door behind them with a wide smile on his face. "I knew you would come. You examined your brain-stem?"

"It doesn't prove anything," Kyra said. "You could have messed with the scanner."

"Of course I could have," Baltasar said. "But I didn't. I have more evidence for you inside the control room. You just have to get by my helpers first."

Baltasar strolled back into the control room, closing the door.

"Mr Kemke ordered us to give you one more chance to walk away," one of the mercs called. "You have five seconds before we start firing."

"I only need one." Kyra whipped the gun from behind her back, brought it to her shoulder and fired three times.

The three men fell to the ground screaming.

Kyra walked to them, her gun ready. She stood over the three writhing men for a moment and smiled.

"You can't have a gun. They're DNA coded," a merc said.

Kyra held her right arm forward into the light. It was thick and muscular, with hair running down it from shoulder to wrist.

"You cut off your own..." the merc said.

Kyra jammed the trigger, riddling the three men with flak fire. She kept going, reducing them to lumps of red mush. Kyra smiled. "Sorry, I had to strong arm you."

She stooped and took the gun from a merc, switching out her ammo clip with the unused one from his. She stepped around the puddles of mess and opened the door to the control room.

Baltasar was inside, studying a row of monitors in front of him. The monitors were filled with images of two women. One of them showed two girls — Kyra's daughters. It was the same picture she had in her pocket.

"Anuradha and Pradeepta Sarin," Baltasar said. "They're in their sixties now. Moved to America, if you can believe that."

"I don't believe any of it."

"Check their names on your ReadyNet. The image search is disabled, but not their names. WeaverCorp only has the rights to the one picture in your pocket."

Kyra pointed her gun at Baltasar, and then keyed up her ReadyNet. She searched for the names he'd told her and found images of two smiling elderly ladies. She ran through their profiles, scanning back in time. The women aged backwards, turning from wrinkled ladies into two young girls that were unmistakably her daughters. "I remember giving birth to them. I remember the birthday parties and the sick days. It's why I had to fight the Xenomigrants — to protect them."

"Their mother died in a car accident. Someone turned off the safeties in a taxi, and it hit her. WeaverCorp bought the rights to her brain. Hers and thousands of other womens'. They used her memories to build yours. Of course, there are gaps, but the human mind will always fill them with something."

"This is just a trick."

"Of course it is," Baltasar said. "A horrible trick WeaverCorp has played on you. I'm here to open your eyes, Kyra. To help you find the truth."

"You tried to kill me," Kyra spat.

Baltasar nodded and grinned. "I did. I hoped you would survive. I had to test you. You see, I need you, Kyra. You're one in a million. You survive when no-one else can. There's great evil back on Earth, and we need to fight it. With my mind and your body, we can do that. We might even make a lot of money in the process."

"Fuck you, Kemke."

Baltasar sighed. "The ship is leaving in five minutes. If you're on it, I'll take that as a yes. If not, your shuttle will be here in a few hours to take you back to WeaverCorp. Before you make your mind up, though, call Manik."

Baltasar vanished.

Kyra stared at his chair. He was gone. She poked the chair with her rifle and it rocked backwards and forwards.

She opened up a connection to Manik.

He answered in seconds, smiling at her with a gun in his hand. "Hello, Kyra."

"Manik, what's going on?" Kyra asked.

"We're nearly done," Manik said. "Look, Kyra."

Manik spread his video feed out to display the entire room. He was standing in a boardroom. Darshan Kant was sitting at the table with a sheaf of paper in front of him and a pen in his hand. Manana was standing behind him, her gun pressed to Darshan's head.

"I won't sign it," Darshan said.

Manik grinned and sat on the table, waving his gun at Darshan. "Mister Kant, turn and look at Manana."

Darshan swivelled around and stared at Manana standing behind him. Manana took her gun and raised it to her temple, pulling the trigger and sending an arc of brains and blood onto the wall. Manana's body crumpled to the ground.

"What the fuck? Why did she do that?" Darshan spluttered.

"Now that you know we're serious, you should sign the papers, Mister Kant," Manik said.

"This won't hold up in court. I'm under duress," Darshan said.

Manik shrugged. "Just sign them."

Darshan licked his lips and clutched the pen. With a shaky hand, he signed the bottom of the papers.

"Good." Manik shot Darshan in the head.

Manik closed the video off again, until Kyra could only see him. "Kyra, Baltasar is a great man. He's going to do incredible things, and he needs your help to accomplish them. Please join him."

Manik raised his own gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The ReadyNet connection vanished.

Kyra stared into the space Manik had occupied. None of it made any sense. The whole thing had been to get a signature on a piece of paper.

She walked to the chair in front of the monitors and sat, her mind whirring. The station takeover had forced Darshan Kant out of hiding. The papers had to be something devastating. Otherwise, people wouldn't commit suicide over it. It had to be something about the war. Kyra knew firsthand that they weren't winning, but maybe people back on Earth didn't know that yet. A triple suicide with a long note might convince them, though. Convince them it was only a matter of time until the Xenomigrants would kill everyone.

Kyra shook her head. Conspiracy theories weren't getting her anywhere. She got to her feet and walked to her combat suit.

***

Kyra sat in her chair in the cockpit, watching the retreating station on her ReadyNet. Ten missiles spurted from the side of the station and rocketed out into space. They flew out a few kilometres, and then arced back towards the station. Her display turned white as they hit. When her vision cleared, she could only find whirling debris.

Kyra closed her ReadyNet and levelled her gun at the pilot. "If I'd waited for the shuttle..."

The pilot looked at her, sweat streaming down his brow. "Well, erm, it's kind of good you didn't. Can I pull my trousers up now?"

"Nope," Kyra said. "Take me to Kemke."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I love eighties movies. I love how dumb they are. I love the endless over-the-top violence. There's something immensely entertaining about an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme film, or lately Jason Statham. It's fun to just shut off your brain and let the ridiculousness wash over you.

I started writing this novelette with that goal in mind. To create a silly book with groan-worthy lines after each death. Hopefully, I've achieved that. Writing about Kyra Sarin was certainly a lot of fun. There's something incredibly liberating about a person like that, that really doesn't care about anything much, other than her survival and her daughters.

The novelette was meant to be a self-contained story, but Kyra and Baltasar had other plans by the end. As happens so often when I write, the characters trashed my plans and announced that they were going to do something else entirely. Recently, I've begun work on the sequel, so we'll get to see just what that is.

Simon Cantan, May 2014

Everyone and their Grandmother has a ReadyNet implant.

Without them nothing works. Doors won't open. Cars won't drive. There aren't even any signs; why bother when you can tell peoples' implants to draw them in? And every implant comes with the "hardwall", a filter that guarantees no-one can edit what you see and feel without your permission. It's been completely unhackable... until now.