“I was not told!”
“In a unanimous vote, you are not required to be informed.”
Van Gower says nothing but is obviously fuming.
“They are most interested in how this project turns out as they may want one for their own uses. In defence, of course.”
“I can make sure that project is scrapped, doctor.”
Caufmann tilts his head, “I build everything you ask me to, from bio warfare to vaccines to genetic bombs and all I want is to build one android for my own experiment. Is that really so much to ask?”
“You just said that you build what you want, regardless.”
Caufmann makes a dismissive gesture, “With the board’s permission. I have work to get back to, it’s been an honour as always,” he says, and disconnects. He sits back alone in the silence and rocks lightly in his throne.
“I’ll thaw Nordoth and Straker, somehow,” he tells himself.
Rennin Farrow arrives home just after three o’clock in the morning to his upper working class apartment block. The building is also owned by Godyssey Company, and paid for by Godyssey employees in some kind of magical fiscal merry-go-round. It’s not pretty but the rent is cheap for their employees.
The interior is a dim grey and so are the bench tops, the cooking appliances, the bed sheets and the carpet. The lounge, living room, and kitchen are all the same room. The only floor space that isn’t covered by carpet is the kitchenette.
Rennin believes the blandness and lack of colour scheme is to aid the killing of imagination in Godyssey’s employees. The only other room is a bathroom with shower barely big enough to hold a child, let alone an ex-CryoZaiyon Standard trooper.
Then again, the walls are never plain for Rennin. He can still see the memories of the war on those seemingly blank surfaces like an olden day cinema screen. He can still see the warships flamed off Saturn’s moon, Titan, shot down by a hyper-transit rail gun from Neptune. On the opposite wall, he can see the troopers torn up by armed satellites off the frontline of Suva.
Rennin sits on his meagre couch and lies back, looking at the ceiling. On that bland surface, so devoid of detail, it seems to move before his eyes. It appears to stretch away from him then loom downward towards him.
For some reason the ceiling always plays the same hallucinatory memory; the terrible end to the Jupiter Sieges. Rennin was stationed on Io with a small garrison, protecting the last remaining android foundry. The Gorai Aurelia had set up a stronghold on Europa. As the two moons approached on an abnormally close orbit path, Rennin remembers Europa rising in the sky, seemingly close enough to throw a stone at.
The two moons’ respective armies waited until the celestial bodies were at the closest possible proximity, and then they both opened fire. Unfathomable beams of energy passed between them, propelled by vast engines of war, as Europa and Io began to reap devastation upon one another. Cannon emplacements the size of small mountains erupted with tremendous energy across the void in a cacophony that Rennin can still feel stealing his breath. The horror he felt still hammers the air from his lungs as he remembers the crash of enemy fire against the shields.
It was all a matter of which side would eventually wear down the other’s defences, or get a direct hit on a critical element of the war machine. Sometimes Io’s shields would fail and they’d sustain the barrage underground, praying for anything to make it stop. Sometimes the GA shields would be broken, and ravenous, voracious madness would grip the troops like they were rabid animals. They’d scream and snarl as they blasted Europa, fantasizing about wiping them from the solar system. When both side’s shields failed he isn’t even sure who was operating the guns.
It was pure chaos.
His ears used to ring after a bombardment cycle, which occurred roughly twice every seven or eight days. Io orbits Jupiter at almost twice the speed of Europa so it was only a matter of a few short days to prepare for the next time they were in range of each other.
Rennin had never seen weaponry like that. Sometimes he still isn’t sure if it was real. It was a literal war between worlds. Every time Europa rose on Io’s horizon was like a needle piercing Rennin’s soul.
Chaos.
Looking down to the final grey wall in front of him, he can see Commander Forgal Lauros brandishing a flaming green sword, cutting a swath through the ground troops leaving hacked limbs, heads and cleaved guns in his wake.
Despite the sheer brilliance of seeing it first hand, Rennin was shaking at the time. The concussive shock from nearby orbital shots temporarily left him trembling.
Rennin will never forget the eyes of Lauros. In the flaming ruin of a Gorai Aurelia base he remembers Lauros standing with shattered pauldrons, cracked armour, many cuts and even a few bullet holes in his limbs. Yet for all his wounds, he was still standing in the wreckage and fire waiting for his troops to catch up. When Rennin’s company met up with the leader, he wasn’t sure but he thought Forgal Lauros looked at him with his shining eyes. The shadow over his face made his eyes the only visible feature and the green in them looked reptilian. Those eyes had seen Hell, Rennin had no doubt of that.
What Rennin realised, at that moment in the embers falling like snow, is that those CryoZaiyons had no way to block all those battles away like a human can. Rennin himself never mustered the kind of cowardice to hide his pain behind a wall of repression. It was then that he found it easier to relate to a machine than his own kind. Because Rennin Farrow has never felt human at all.
2.
Line in the Sand
The blinding lights illuminate the yard, immediately followed by a sniper round tearing through the skull of another escapee from the lower level. Rennin hasn’t received a kill order from Caufmann yet, but it was an escapee, and there’s only one way to deal with them.
Del was returned to the lower levels for diagnostics a fortnight ago, and in that short period this is the third attempted breakout. Rennin is back in his seat even before the scientist’s body stops moving.
He wipes his eyes, feeling sleep accumulating and slaps his hand against his desk, angry with his aging body. He could once go for days without sleep during his time in the service.
Despite the obvious tediousness of his current job, Rennin knows he shouldn’t be so hard on himself. But sometimes when he really thinks about it, he feels like he is still in service. Something about Caufmann really makes him uncomfortable.
What kind of Head of Research threatens his staff with pummelling?
Rennin could take on someone twice his size, but Caufmann still scares him stiff sometimes.
Either he’s getting scarier, or I’m getting soft.
Rennin looks to his computer terminal and blinks away another wave of weariness. His mind reviews the two Beta HolinMech’s conversation in the bar, recalling the name of their primary target. He opens up the Godyssey Co. system and types ‘Arbiter’ into the search bar.
Only one match is found, and it is regarding a class of computer system made nearly a hundred and forty years ago. Rennin rolls his eyes and thinks to the other thing they mentioned.
“Iz-fee-or-ad…” he says to himself, sounding it out to decipher the spelling, but after a moment’s pause he shakes his head. “Fuck it,” and puts the computer in standby.
What kind of name is that anyway?