Chimerascope

Scream Angel-3

She turned to him. “I love you,” she said quietly.

He stopped. She waited. He said nothing. She lay down, sobbing. He swallowed and formed the thought in his mind, opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her, too, when she spoke again. “What will become of me?” she asked.

All his doubts about her rushed in to drown the words in his mouth. He was but a way of escape to her. She did not love him. She would give herself to one of her own. She was alien. The Angels hated RIP for what they had done. She hated him.

He pulled on his jacket and turned away...

The trial. I tried, Mojo—but nothing can save us when we fall, and we were falling the moment they put it in our blood...

The day after Mojo’s trial, Trelayne entered the RIP barracks pod. The Cutter and two other Rippers sat on drop-bunks watching Mojo stuff his few possessions into a canister pack. Mojo wore his old civvies, now at least a size too small. He still had a Medistim on his arm, and he moved with a limp.

The others jumped to attention when they saw their visitor. Cutter just nodded. Trelayne returned the salutes then motioned toward the door. After a few words and half-hearted slaps on Mojo’s back, they filed out, leaving Trelayne and Mojo alone.

Mojo sat down on his bunk. “Thanks, Cap. Hell of a try.”

Trelayne sat, forcing a smile. “You forget we lost?”

Mojo shrugged. “Never had a chance. You know that. None of us do. Just a matter of time. If the Scream don’t get you, they will. No way out for the likes of us.”

Trelayne searched Mojo’s broad face. I have to try, he thought. We won’t get another chance. “Maybe there is a way.”

Narrowing his eyes, Mojo glanced at the door and back again. He looked grim. “I’m with you, Cap. Whatever, wherever.”

Trelayne shook his head. “They’ll kill us if we’re caught.”

“I’m a dead man already. We all are.”

Trelayne sighed and started talking...

And so the fallen dreamed of rising again, eh Mojo? What fools we were. But we gave them a run for a while, didn’t we?

Trelayne returned to Lania. In his absence, Philomela had taken Procne as her mate. She refused to see Trelayne. He added her and Procne to the next cargo of Angels being shipped to the project worlds, with himself as the ship’s captain.

He did not see her until after their ship had made the first jump. Philomela was summoned to the captain’s cabin, to be told to which planet she and her mate had been consigned.

She stiffened when she entered and saw him. “You.”

He nodded and waited.

“Sending us into slavery to be bred and milked like animals, this was not enough? You had to be here to see it happen, did you, Jason?” She looked around. “Where is the captain?”

“I am the captain on this trip.”

She looked confused. “But you have never gone on these...”

He sighed. “Please sit. I have much to say...”

Why did I risk everything to save her? Love? Guilt? As penance? For her Scream? In a desperate hope that one day she would turn to me again? Or as I fell, was I willing to grasp at anything, even if I pulled those I loved down with me?

From the ship’s observation deck, Trelayne and Philomela watched a shuttle depart, carrying a “shipment” of twenty pairs of Angels for the project world below.

“Do you know why I chose my Earth name?” she asked.

Her voice was flat, dead, but he heard the pain that each of these worlds brought her as more of her people were torn away, while she remained safe, protected. “No. Tell me,” he said.

“In a legend of your planet, Philomela was a girl turned into a nightingale by the gods. That image pleased me, to be chosen by the gods, elevated to the heavens. Only later did I learn that the nightingale is also a symbol of death.”

Trelayne bowed his head. “Phi, there’s nothing—”

“No, but allow me at least my bitterness. And guilt.”

Guilty of being spared. By him. She and Procne spared, only because an addict and xenocide and soon-to-be traitor needed his drug source close. He had stopped trying to examine his motives beyond that. The Scream would mock the small voice in him that spoke of a last remnant of honour and noble intent.

“My sister is on that shuttle,” Philomela said quietly.

Trelayne said nothing for there was nothing to say. They watched the tiny ship fall toward the planet below...

At each planet on that trip, we gathered to us the castoffs, the unwanted, the remnants of a dozen races, together with the Fallen. And then, suddenly, there was no turning back...

Trelayne’s first officer, a young lieutenant-commander named Glandis, confronted him on the bridge. She wasn’t backing down this time. “Captain, I must again register my concern over continued irregularities in your command of this mission.”

Trelayne glanced at the monitor by his chair. Mojo and eleven other ex-Rippers were disembarking from a shuttle in the ship’s docking bay. In two minutes, they would be on the bridge. He tapped a command, deactivating all internal communications and alarms. He turned to Glandis. “Irregularities?”

“The ip cargo we have acquired at each of our stops.”

“Those people are to be transported to the Entity’s Product R&D centre on Earth,” Trelayne responded.

Glandis snorted. “What research could the Entity conduct with—” She read from her PerComm. “—a Mendlos subject?”

“Physiological adaptation to high-grav,” Trelayne replied.

“A Fandorae kit? A Fanarucci viper egg?”

“Biotech aural receptor design, and neural poison mutagenics development.” One minute more, he thought.

Glandis hesitated, some of the confidence leaving her face. “You have also protected one specific breeding pair of Angels for purposes that have yet to be made clear to me.”

“They, too, are slated for Entity research.” Trelayne rose. Thirty seconds. “Synthesization of Scream.”

“What about this stop? It was not on our filed flight plan.”

“Late orders from RIP Force command.” Fifteen seconds.

“I was not informed.”

“You just were.”

Glandis reddened. “And what purpose will a dozen disgraced ex-members of RIP Force serve?”

Now, thought Trelayne. The door to the bridge slid open. Mojo and four other ex-Rippers burst in, Tanzer rifles charged and pointed at Glandis and the bridge crew. Glandis turned to Trelayne with mouth open then froze.

Trelayne had his own weapon levelled at Glandis. “Their purpose, I’m afraid, is to replace the crew of this ship.”

And so the Fallen rose again, to scale a precipice from which there was no retreat, and each new height we gained only made the final fall that much farther...

~~~

After leaving the Bird Queen, Feran ran past the closed tubes of the barkers, the games of chance, and the sleep pods of the performers. The kit moved easily among the ropes, refuse, and equipment, his path clear to him even in the dim light of sputtering torches and an occasional hovering glow-globe.

The show used fewer glow-globes than when Feran had first arrived. The Captain said the globes cost too much now. Feran didn’t mind. He needed little light to see, and liked the smell of the torches and the crackle they made.

Turning a corner, Feran froze. Weasel Man stood outside the Captain’s pod. The Captain said that the man’s name was Weitz, but he reminded Feran of the animals the kit hunted in the woods outside the circus. The door opened. Weasel Man stepped inside.

Feran crept to the open window at the pod’s side. He could hear voices. His nose twitched. His ears snapped up and opened wide, adjusting until the sound was the sharpest.

~~~

Trelayne lay on his sleep pod bunk, shaking from withdrawal. Feran was late bringing his nightly hit. Weitz lounged in a chair, staring at him. It had been five days since their meeting in the jail. “Where’ve you been, Weitz?” Trelayne wheezed.

“Had some arrangements to make. Need a hit, don’t you?”

“It’s coming,” Trelayne mumbled. “What do you want?”

Weitz shrugged. “I told you. The Angels.”

“But not to hand them back to the Entity, or you’d have done it by now,” Trelayne said. But if Weitz wanted the Angels, why didn’t he just take them? He had his own men and a ship.

Weitz smiled. “Do you know there are rebels on Fandor IV?”

“Rebels? What are you talking about?” Where was Feran?

“Ex-RIP rebels like you, or rather, like you once were.”

“Like me? God, then I pity the rebels on Fandor IV.”

Weitz leaned forward in his chair. “I’m one of them.”

Trelayne laughed. “You’re RIP SS.”

“I assist from the inside. I supply them with Scream.”

Trelayne stared at Weitz. This man was far more dangerous than he had first appeared. “You’ve managed to surprise me, Major. Why would you risk your life for a bunch of rebels?”

Weitz shrugged. “I said you were my hero. The man who defied an empire. I want to do my part, too.”

Trelayne snorted. “Out of the goodness of your heart.”

Weitz reddened. “I cover my costs. No more.”

I’ll bet, Trelayne thought. “Where do you get Scream?”

“I...acquired a*****e doing an SS audit of a RIP warehouse.”

“You stole it. a*****e? Since when can you store Scream?”

Weitz smiled. “A result of intense research prompted by your escape with the Angels. You made the Entity realize the risk of transporting breeding pairs. Angels are now kept in secure facilities on Lania and two other worlds, producing Scream that’s shipped to project worlds with RIP forces. Angels live and die without ever leaving the facility they were born into.”

Trelayne shuddered. Because of him. But the Scream in him ran too low to find any joy in this new horror.

They fell silent. Finally Weitz spoke. “So what happened, Trelayne? To the Great Rebel Leader? To the one man who stood up to the Entity? How’d it all go to hell?”

“Screamers are in hell already. We were trying to get out.”

“You got out, in a stolen Entity cruiser. Then what?”

Shivering, Trelayne struggled to sit up. Where was Feran? “We jumped to a system the Entity had already rejected. Only one habitable planet. No resources worth the extraction cost.”

“And set up a base for a guerrilla war on the Entity.”

“No. A colony. A home for the dispossessed races.”

“You attacked Entity project worlds,” Weitz said.

“We sent messages. There was never any physical assault.”

“Your data bombs flooded Comm systems for entire planets.”

“We tried to make people aware of what the Entity was doing. Almost worked.” Trelayne fought withdrawal, trying to focus on Weitz. The man was afraid of something. But what?

“I’ll say. You cost them trillions hushing it up, flushing systems. But then what? The reports just end.”

“The Entity still has a file on us?” That pleased Trelayne.

“On you,” Weitz corrected. “You’ve got your own entire file sequence. Special clearance needed to get at them. Well?”

Trelayne fell silent, remembering the day, remembering his guilt. “I got careless. They tracked us through a jump somehow, found the colony, T-beamed it from orbit.”

“An entire planet? My god!” Weitz whispered.

“A few of us escaped.” But not Phi’s children, her first brood. More guilt, though she had never blamed him.

“In a heavily armed cruiser with a crew of ex-Rippers.”

He looked at Weitz. That was it. Even through the haze of withdrawal, he knew he had his answer: Weitz thought Trelayne still had a band of ex-Rippers at hand, battle-proven trained killers with super-human reflexes and their own Scream supply. Something like hope tried to fight through the black despair of his withdrawal. Weitz would try to deal first.