The Company Man (11) Part 2

As Nic watched Bagon’s chest slowly rise and fall in time with the ventilator, he wondered if it hadn’t all been in vain. Delfin had just explained how she, and a smattering of other rebels, had been scattered in the crowds at the foot of Company headquarters as Nic and Odessa had made their attack. They returned bearing the bodies of the wounded, who had wailed and moaned as they were sedated, speaking almost in tongues of the hellish vision they had witnessed atop the tower. They mumbled of the enormous hundred-foot-high beast that had exploded through the giant dome, showering the unsuspecting masses with glass and concrete. Hundreds were crushed, lacerated, and trampled. Those who made it back spoke of the blue-green aura that had surrounded its fists as they had slammed into the roof of the tower like giant wrecking balls, and of the explosion of orange and red and gold that had ended the maelstrom. It wasn’t over for long, though. Within hours everyone left in Hallogen, the entire population, had been ordered to emergency work detail. The drill crews would work non-stop until they had achieved the Visigoth’s goal of reaching and extracting the Earth’s core.

        So lost was he in his grief that he hadn’t noticed Odessa enter through the passageway behind him.

        ‘Glad to see you’re up and about,’ she chirped. ‘How are my heroes doing?’

        ‘No idea,’ he replied, startled. ‘They look almost dead.’

        ‘The nanoids will take care of them,’ she said as she swanned around the beds, examining several patients and smiling broadly. 

         ‘What do you have to be so happy about?’ Nic growled and glanced at the mass of bodies that surrounded them. ‘We lost, didn’t we?’

        ‘Depends what you mean by lost. We escaped the tower, and you’re alive, aren’t you? You look better than I’ve ever seen you, in fact.’

        Nic frowned and walked slowly back to the edge of the med-bay and focussed again on the water beneath him.

        ‘I find great peace in the water, but it disturbs me. When you saved us from the tower, I was blind. Yet, now I can see things in the water as well as my mind.’

        ‘The dreams again,’ she said and rolled her eyes. ‘I told you earlier, Nic. It’s the nanoids. They don’t only repair damaged tissue, they enhance it. I programmed them to restore the cells in your retina to optimal functionality.’

        ‘And what if they find other damaged tissue, outside of their programming?’ He probed.

        ‘They will ignore it unless they deem it to be life threatening.’

        ‘So, is it outside the realm of possibility,’ he asked, ‘that the Visigoth’s conditioning program, as well as your own invasion of my mind, didn’t leave some rather more serious damage than you expected.’

        ‘What are you getting at, Nic?’ She asked in mild frustration.

        ‘Is it not possible,’ he asked, this time in a rather more hostile tone, ‘that the nanoids could have enhanced my mind too?’ He paused, before becoming more agitated. ‘I’m telling you, I entered the sub-conscious realm!’

        ‘It’s just not possible Nic.’ She insisted, as she continued to examine the wounded. ‘It took many hundreds of millennia for humans to develop these skills. My own people only honed them after the technological intervention of the Terran pioneers in our evolution. It takes many centuries to master these skills as I have. To accidentally fall into the sub-conscious realm is unheard of.’

        Nic moved quickly around the bed so he was facing her.

        ‘And what of your battle?’ He challenged. ‘The power that was witnessed by everyone at the foot of the tower. Couldn’t that have pushed me over the edge?’

        ‘I gave you the nanoids after that Nic. After I brought you here, and anyway, the battle people witnessed was merely a mental projection. The Grand Visigoth is a powerful telepath. People see whatever he wants them to see. It seems that now he’s reverted to the way of fear, given our recent success.’  

        ‘I saw you on the rock,’ Nic insisted, ‘where you guided me from your prison, and I felt your battle. I saw planets explode and burn and I saw the Visigoth on Earth, but not my Hallogen, it was Earth, before!’

        Odessa sighed in exasperation and turned away.

        ‘Maybe your nanoids just reactivated the same parts of my brain? Maybe that’s why I keep having the visions.’

        ‘I guess it’s possible Nic,’ she sighed, ‘the nanoids are quite remarkable little things. They enable me to host all of my cybernetic implants. They constantly manage the fine balance between my natural organic self, and the upgrades I’ve added on my journey.’

        ‘Your armour?’

        ‘You asked me once how it was possible for it to unfold from within my own skin, do you remember?’

        Nic nodded.

        ‘Well, now you have it, Nic. Nanoids. And unfortunately I need them back.’

        He looked down at his stump and frowned again.

        Before he could speak, she continued. ‘We don’t have long Nic.’ She sighed and walked back towards the bodies behind them. ‘I must keep a surplus of nanite solution in my system at all times. Otherwise, I can’t deploy my armour or utilise many of the mechanical components of my body.’

        ‘How are you able to give them to us at all?’

        ‘Like blood, I have more than I need in case I lose some. I can donate some to help others, but ultimately I need them back. I can’t survive without them.’

        ‘Can’t you make more?’ He asked earnestly.

        ‘If we were on my old ship, I could show you the medical bay. We had a terminal to create nanoids but it was resource intensive. It required astronomical energy to create just one millilitre of the solution. My body contains about five hundred. We had a full-body nanoid saturation chamber too. It took us over three hundred years to build.’ She looked at his stump. ‘It would’ve made light work of that injury. It could’ve regenerated your whole hand in minutes.’ 

        ‘What happenend to it?’ 

        She removed a syringe from her pocket and manoeuvred herself between two unconscious patients.

        ‘We almost succeeded in defeating the Grand Visigoth a century ago.’ She began, as she started checking the patient’s vitals. ‘He tried to convert an entire star system to his cause. The Andromicronian star had three planets and about twenty colonised moons within its habitable zone. The human civilisation that developed there was advanced in its own right. It had yet to develop interstellar travel, but they had colonised the outer reaches of their own system.’

        She inserted the needle into the neck of one patient and extracted a miniscule amount of her nanite solution.

        ‘Will he die?’ Nic enquired morosely.

        She gave a wan smile and muttered, ‘he’s out of the woods for now.’ Her sombre tone returned as she continued her story.

         ‘The Visigoth wanted their fleet to join him; his mental trickery and gifts of technology had already swayed the rulers on Andromicron Prime, but the people of the outer colonies resisted. The concept of religion was long forgotten on their worlds. The idea that a master alien race had seeded the universe was downright offensive to many. They had advanced so far on their own ingenuity and technological development that they possessed a certain arrogance that comes with such technological prowess. Even the presence of the Visigoth and his gift of interstellar travel couldn’t assuage their doubts, so they formed a ramshackle alliance dedicated to halting the Grand Visigoth’s recruitment of their sister worlds to his intergalactic search.

        ‘The last of the Alphanians, myself included, arrived as their rebellion was in its infancy. We forged an alliance with the rebels, given our common enemy, and together, we almost defeated his entire fleet.’ She paused and continued grimly. ‘But his rage was fierce and his retribution unprecedented. As his ships were destroyed and his followers vanquished, he sprung his trap. Our allied fleet made its final advance on Andromicron Prime, and we offered our terms for his surrender. His response was quite simple. He detonated the Andromicronian star.’ 

        She bowed her head as a tear streaked down her cheeks.

        ‘He sacrificed his own fleet?’ Nic asked, incredulous.

        ‘Aside from the four ships in orbit of your planet, yes.’

        ‘How did you escape?’

        ‘The Visigoth opened a quantum rift,’ she said in a manner that appeared as if she expected Nic to know what she was talking about, but he just looked at her blankly.

        ‘It’s a form of unstable wormhole that can propel you across vast distances. The technology is incredibly advanced and there are few in the galaxy that possess it. The only downside is that you don’t always know where you will end up.’ She let out a soft chuckle and bowed her head. ‘I saw his plan too late, and I alone managed to follow them through. We were scattered into a distant quadrant of the galaxy, and I spent the best part of a century tracking them here.’

         ‘So he destroyed an entire system, rather than concede it you?’

         ‘We’d been a thorn in his side for too long, Nic. He sacrificed a star system of twenty billion people to destroy us. What few Alphanians remained tried to scramble the fleet and escape the supernova, but after I entered the Rift, all contact was lost.’

         As Nic processed the information, he could almost feel the neural pathways in his brain firing and all manner of permutations began to crystalise in his mind. He’d never experienced such a thing before and the sensation was unnerving, but it left him in no doubt as to the effectiveness of Odessa’s nanoids.

         ‘Don’t you see, Odessa,’ he blurted. ‘It all makes sense.’

         ‘I know,’ she retorted quickly. ‘He left no such chance for rebellion here. Your devastated planet and small population was perfect. He enthralled what was left of your people and set up The Company to maintain control until he could get at your core…’

        ‘No, no, no,’ he interrupted. ‘I see it clearly now. I saw the Andromicronian star go nova in my vision…’

        ‘Nic,’ she cut him off. ‘Not the dreams again.’

        ‘I saw a star explode and engulf three planets in flame,’ he insisted, ‘and through the fire I saw scores of people incinerated to dust…’

        ‘Nic…’ She tried to interject, but Nic continued,

        ‘Then I saw an unfamiliar looking Earth through the eyes of the Visigoth. I’m sure of it.’

        ‘Nic!’ She cut him off again. ‘It can’t be. Neither myself nor the Visigoth saw the destruction. We flew into the quantum rift almost immediately the star detonated. Through whose eyes do you suppose you saw such events?’

        ‘You said there were others, no?’ He said, smiling.

        ‘Yes, Nic, but…’

        Now it was Nic’s turn to interrupt.

        ‘Is it not possible that one of your compatriots, another Alphanian, witnessed the destruction?’

        ‘Well, yes. Technically speaking, but…’

        ‘Then couldn’t I have witnessed it through their eyes?’

        ‘I guess it falls within the realms of possibility, but Nic, I don’t see how it could even be possible in the first place. And without a brain scanner, we have no way of knowing for sure. Although given the logical deductions you are making right now, I am rather curious as to the state of your mind.’

        ‘And why may I ask is that? Aren’t you the very person who enabled me to think in such a way? When you freed me of my mental shackles and allowed me to follow my own wishes and desires, is this not what you had imagined?’

        ‘Well, Nic, of course. But for someone to go from a lifetime of conditioning and mental enslavement to the level of cognitive function you are now displaying is perhaps more the mystery. Ok, let’s say, hypothetically, I believe you. What do you suppose it all means?’

       ‘Well--

 

Before Nic was able to begin his summation, the entire cavern was rocked by a thunderous BOOM, which shook the walls and almost knocked both Nic and Odessa to the ground.

        ‘Damn, they’ve found us already, Nic,’ she panicked and hurried to the next patient and quickly extracted her nanoids.

        ‘I thought you said we had at least thirty-six hours?’ Nic yelled.

        ‘A most optimistic estimate, it seems. But we still have some time; the entrance is cloaked. But we have to go. Now! Your deductions will have to wait.’

        ‘Where are we going?’

        ‘You remember Delfin said that they had brought the wounded here to the caves.’

        ‘Yes, of course.’

        ‘What she didn’t mention was that among their number were thirty-three Officers, and I need you to come with me and enlighten them.’

        ‘What do you mean?’ 

        ‘As you’ve seen with your own eyes, Nic, I can enlighten the Private class reasonably easily. They’re just about all with us now. But the Officers, as it was with you, my friend, are not so easily drawn to our cause. We are currently holding them under guard.’

        ‘What am I supposed to do about that?’ He scoffed.

        ‘Well, isn’t that obvious?’ She paused, and Nic stared back at her blankly. ‘I need you to convince them to join us!’

        Nic didn’t have any time to panic at the request, as another almighty BOOM shook the cave’s walls and knocked him onto his backside. 

        Odessa retained her balance and towered over him. She extended her hand and said with a sly grin,

        ‘Come on, Nic, we haven’t got all day. I guess you can keep the nanoids for now.’