Critical Dawn Page 25

  For five long days, he’d wandered through the woods of Thracia until he’d managed to seek voyage across to Greece.

  Augustus closed his eyes, the fatigue of post-root injection making him tired. Though it was nothing like the fatigue of his escape; this was more of a spaced-out bliss. His body rejuvenated, growing young and vital again.

  His senses sharpened during this state. The soft, cyclical vibrations of the mother ship’s engines synchronized with his heartbeats so that he was one with the ship, a part of the larger system, a part of the Croatoan Empire.

  An empire that made his Roman Empire look like a backwater village.

  That revelation came to him within days of settling in Greece. The croatoans never did explain how they knew who he was, but one night, while he was working alone on a fishing jangada, hauling in the evening’s nets, he was approached on the beach. At first, he thought he was sick, hallucinating.

  The first impression he got of the croatoan was that of a large, helmeted turtle, standing on two reverse-joined legs in a strange suit. The eyes were large and held intelligence within them, but the overriding feeling he got was that it was ancient.

  For two weeks, the croatoan would visit him during the night, talking to him in broken Greek, but enough for Augustus, or Valens as he was then, to understand. The promises seemed unreal to begin with: eternity, a life without pain, which appealed greatly due to the wounds he’d suffered at the hands of the Goths.

  Even back then, he required the wearing of a leather mask or a deep-brimmed hat to hide the disfigurement. When he saw the creature’s pod, he knew the promises were real, that they had substance. He thought the Romans were advanced in their use of materials and technology, but the stasis pod, half-buried within a deep cave, told him that humanity hadn’t even started yet.

  And then came the first taste of the root. Within the pod, a system of root compound within a slow-feed drip ensured that the aliens could live indefinitely once in a stasis mode. It was like a voluntary coma but one that with some thought could be come out of at will or at specified times.

  For the first time in decades, he felt young and powerful again. The compound stitched his wounds, made him stronger. Even his thoughts sped up. It brought him out of the self-imposed prison where he’d placed himself, and now he could see the world of opportunity in front of him. He had a chance to build a new empire, to rule again, but this time without the limits of humanity and politics.

  Hagellen, the croatoan that approached Augustus, explained many historical incidents of how the aliens had intervened or taken candidates to work with them when the Earth’s conditions were right.

  When Hagellen said that he’d be in stasis for more than fifteen hundred years, the period of time needed to make the Earth’s ecological balance suitable for growing the root, Augustus laughed, but Hagellen had shown him relics from the Egyptians and further back still.

  It’d be like waking from a dream, Hagellen said. Within the stasis pod, the compound would keep him alive, compress time, so that when he woke and the croatoans rose from deep within the Earth, it would feel like no time at all.

  And he was right.

  Augustus sat up as the tingling sensation began to wear off. The compound was almost finished with him for this month. He shook his head. The memories of being Valens dissipated. It was always strange how this procedure would send him back to his former life. But despite the time-compression, it was a long a time ago. He wasn’t that cowardly emperor any longer.

  He was Lord Augustus. Earth’s first post-alien leader. Or at least he soon would be.

  “On screen,” he said, leaning his elbows against the glass desk in his office. They’d decorated it to look like a Roman court. This part of the ship, one of the lowest levels, was designed to support him as a human, but soon, he wouldn’t need a special atmosphere to suit him. Soon, he’d have the procedure that would make him more croatoan than human, and he would take his rightful place at the top of Earth’s new hierarchy.

  The wide screen, embedded into the curved white walls of his office, switched on and glowed the familiar blue briefly before it patched into the communications network. Thousands of smaller squares in a grid showed him all the channels to the farms down on the surface.

  “Message to all farms,” he said, and waited for each square to gain a white border to indicate the communication connection established. The screen beeped after a few moments, confirming the connection.

  Within each square, he saw the faces of the farm workers looking at him expectantly, the requisite level of fear in their eyes. It made him smile beneath his mask. As Valens and now Augustus, he could always draw that level of fear from his fellow humans, though he wasn’t so conceited to believe it was at him directly.

  No, it was due to his position. He’d always known that. It was why he’d ducked out of the battle of Adrianople. It was clear the Goths would win. He’d seen the winds of change and knew the Romans’ time was up. He would no longer have the position to instill that fear, so he left to cast fear upon the fish in Greece.

  Some men would feel they took a step down, but not Augustus. Even back then, he knew the order of things. Dominion over fish was no different than dominion over man.

  “Farmhands, this is Lord Augustus; we’re coming to a new stage of our development, and you are placed at the forefront of this transformation. Your actions next will determine not only your individual fate but also the fate of humankind. Fear not; your action is a simple one. I want you all to activate the pressurization protocols on all breeding facilities. The time has come to seal those precious breeding units from the harm of the atmosphere.”

  As though perfectly orchestrated, he saw three thousand pairs of eyes widen in fear and realization. By pressurizing the breeding facilities, it was clear that all those outside of the buildings would perish when the atmosphere changed. But they knew better than to question him.

  “Atmospheric metrics are being downloaded to your systems now,” Augustus added. “Once complete, activate the protocols. As for yourselves, I want to thank you personally for your work and tireless dedication. Without you, humanity would not be able to continue. Your sacrifice has ensured the continuing survival of our noble race.

  “Each and every one of you will be remembered in the records. I will see to it personally. In its current state, Earth has but a few more days left. Say your goodbyes and perform any last rituals you need. The end has come. Thank you, and good luck in the journey of your afterlife.”

  One by one, the individual video links to the farms glowed yellow as the data packs downloaded. The ones that turned green indicated they had activated the pressurization process, sealing off the breeding facilities and, so doing, sealing their own fates.

  Augustus took a great deal of joy from watching his orders being executed as the large screen became a sea of green squares. Hundreds activated at once, and within a few seconds, the entire farm network had activated the protocol although … He leaned forward and noticed that there was one that was still yellow.

  Of course. It had to be that one. He’d expected as much.

  “Engage Farm 1038.”

  The sickly image of Vlad, one of Gregor’s old gang members, came up on screen. The revolting man’s face was grey and puffy. His eyes were rimmed with red sores, and his brown hair lay lank and greasy against his scalp. He reminded Augustus of the street peasants back in Rome. Even then, they never looked after themselves. Some things never change. Some humans are just not as worthy as others.

  “Mr. Augustus, sir, I …” Vlad began to say. A girl appeared behind him, the one he remembered as Alex. She was barely more capable than Vlad.

  “Why haven’t you activated the pressurization protocol?”

  Vlad looked to Alex. Her face tightened. It was clear they were hiding something. The tension of their bodies said it all.

  “What’s going on there?” Augustus asked. “Do I need to send a squad down there to take over?”
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  “No, sir, it’s erm, fine, really, just a few minor issues with the livestock. We’ve got it in hand.”

  “Then activate the procedure.”

  Augustus kept the channel open and waited. Vlad fussed at the console and looked up through his lank hair. But he wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “There’s a problem with our mainframe, sir. I’ll get it fixed right away.”

  Augustus brought up a second console window on his desktop screen, patched into Farm 1038’s system, and ran a diagnostic. In hindsight, the croatoan hierarchy should have made everything automated from the mother ship. It was too risky to have left any procedure in the hands of the humans, but the aliens were hot on trust. They said many times over the centuries since being on the Earth that trust was always the first way to cooperation. Force should only come if that trust was proven to be less than optimal, and force could fix anything that trust broke.

  Looking down at the diagnostic report, he felt the bounds of trust retreat from the breaking point. It appeared that Vlad was indeed telling the truth. The mainframe was reporting an error in one of its processor cores.

  “I’ll give you an hour to fix it before I send help,” Augustus said, emphasizing that last word.

  “Thank you, sir, we’ll send a report right away when it’s done. Sorry to delay things.”

  “I’ll expect a report within the hour.” With that, Augustus closed the connection and shut down both screens. Immediately, a new session started. This time, the screen filled with the image of his old friend.

  Hagellen smiled on screen, stretching his wide, turtle-like mouth, his ancient face shown in super-high definition. Augustus didn’t know how old he was but, from his stories, calculated he must be at least five hundred thousand in Earth years. The compound had made his leathery skin look almost like bark.

  The alien was one of the hierarchy members. Although Augustus would never fully understand their cultural organization, the mother ship had a clear organization structure. There was Hagellen and three others that made up a command module; they decided what happened here on Earth and set the schedules.

  Beneath them was a council of five others who oversaw various aspects of planetary colonization. Augustus was an honorary member of that council with his role earmarked as taking over the planet once the terraforming was complete.

  The idea was that once things were running well, they would move a population of croatoan citizens to live on Earth while the mother ship and its hierarchy would head off to their next project, which could be thousands of years in the making, with Hagellen and the others going back into their stasis pods until whatever planet they had found would be ready for the same procedure.

  “Hagellen, old friend, to what I do owe this pleasure?”

  “Valens, my friend,” the alien said in his clicking language. Augustus had picked it up over the years. Although he would never fully understand the nuance, he knew enough to be able to translate on the fly. “The terraforming ship is one of your days away. We’ll soon dock and initiate the final procedure. Is all well with your systems?”

  “All working as expected. There’s a small delay on one of the farms but nothing that will prevent the plan from going ahead.”

  “I noticed that you ordered Baliska to the surface. That seems a drastic action at this time. Is there something I and the council should be aware of?”

  Baliska was the hunter Augustus had ordered down to deal with that meddling little bastard, Charlie Jackson. Seeing as Gregor couldn’t cope with him, he needed to do something. Though in the grand scheme of things, Jackson wasn’t a huge problem. “There’s a tiny resistance on the surface. Baliska hasn’t been hunting in three decades. After he arrived here from his sojourn on your jungle planet, he wanted a new challenge, so I decided to take advantage of his desire to find and eliminate this resistant human before he had the opportunity to become a bigger issue later.”

  “That’s understandable,” Hagellen said, shaking his head side-to-side slowly, which was the croatoan way of agreeing. The aliens had a complicated set of body language that Augustus had never quite got the hang of. It seemed to change on so many different nuances, and with him not understanding the language at a fundamental level, he was never exposed to those nuances. With a race as ancient as the croatoans, he didn’t expect to learn all that in just a few decades of waking time.

  “Was there anything else, old friend?” Augustus said.

  “Not for now. Inform me when the final farm has initiated the pressurization. I’ll inform you when the terraforming ship has successfully docked with us.”

  “Will it take long, the atmospheric change?”

  “Everything is but a blink of our eyes, Valens. You know this.” Hagellen squinted his large, black eyes slightly, which meant that it was a lighthearted phrase. The croatoans never laughed as such, rather, via their eyelid movements they indicated acceptance or rejection of the attempt at humor.

  Augustus never bothered to figure out what made them ‘laugh.’ There was too much risk of insulting them. He’d lasted this long by usually only speaking when spoken to and keeping his interactions with them strictly about business. To get personal with a croatoan council member was to go into a battle with a multi-headed hydra with the ability to kill you faster than you could blink.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Hagellen said before the channel on the screen closed.

  Augustus leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He let the hum of the ship enter his body. He pictured Earth, a bright blue marble in the dense black of space. “Soon, you’ll be mine.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Gregor watched the front of the clock tower from inside the remains of a crumbling brick building. The cover from here was perfect. He was obscured by thick ivy that almost completely wrapped the building. Poking his rifle through the plant gave him a perfect shot.

  Ben lay snoozing next to him. They’d spent all night walking by the side of roads and fighting their way through woodland, trying to find the former town in time to set up an ambush.

  Charlie Jackson would not catch him loitering by the clock tower. This meeting was going to be on Gregor’s terms.

  His stomach growled, but food could wait. All he’d eaten in the last twelve hours were two unripe apples from a nearby tree. Gregor kicked himself for not grabbing some supplies from the building by the reservoir. By the time he realized his error, they were heading to Ridgway. At least it wasn’t raining. The sun beat down on them through a large hole in the collapsed roof.

  Layla knelt beside him and swiped some leaves to one side. “Still no sign of them?”

  “Nothing,” Gregor said. He looked at Ben. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  She checked her watch. “If he was, Jackson’s nearly an hour late.”

  “Or he’s got his own vantage point. I’m not moving first.” Gregor shook Ben’s leg. He twitched awake and looked back, bleary-eyed. “Are you sure he said noon?”

  “Positive. I’ve told you several times already. Why would I lie?”

  Ben’s question was exactly what had started preying on Gregor’s mind. He could lie to lead them into an ambush. Jackson might’ve been in the process of surrounding the area.

  The instruction was given in the belief that Gregor was still running the camp. Maybe it was to draw him away so Charlie could attack.

  He wondered if Alex and Vlad were still alive. The croatoans didn’t seem to recognize feelings or attachments between humans. With a bit of luck, they’d still be feeding the livestock and monitoring inside the chocolate factory. Gregor had to get them free before Augustus got his claws into them.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Layla said.

  “Where you going?” Gregor said.

  “Do you really want to know?” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Oh. Fine. I want to have a little chat with Ben anyway,” Gregor said.

  Layla hopped over a partially collapsed internal wal
l, its chipped plaster surface covered with dark green mold spores, and disappeared to another part of the building.

  Gregor grabbed Ben’s shoulder and squeezed with enough force to make it unfriendly. Ben returned his stare with a nervous smile. “Gregor?”

  Back in Yerevan, they’d used Marek’s basement for extracting information from unreliable people. A thumbscrew was usually the best way to make people talk, usually after the first crunch of bone. Sometimes even the mere fitting of the medieval-looking torture instrument was enough to prize out information. It depended on the backbone of the person and what they had to lose. It was certainly a cleaner approach than Igor’s amateurish knife-related strategy.

  A verbal thumbscrew would be enough for Ben.

  “Treachery will always come home to the traitor,” Gregor said.

  Ben tried to edge away and winced as Gregor tightened his grip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Gregor drew his rifle from between the ivy and jabbed the muzzle under Ben’s chin. “It’s an old proverb meaning if you betray me, bad things will happen to you.”

  “I’m not. I swear. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Do you want to know my own proverb? I’ve made it up especially for you.” Ben didn’t reply. “If you’ve betrayed me, I’ll rip off your arm and beat you to death with the soggy end. Have I made myself clear?”

  Ben rapidly nodded. “Crystal.”

  A foot crunched over broken glass in an adjacent room. Layla coming back. Gregor let go of Ben and aimed his rifle back between the ivy.

  “Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to find you here,” a voice said.

  A voice that Gregor hadn’t heard for years. That he’d dreamed of hearing scream with agony while strapped to his garage chair as Gregor slowly pulled out his individual fingernails with snipe-nose pliers. Reminding him about his cousin.