Blue Squad: One Last Go


BLUE SQUAD:

ONE LAST GO



by Chris Eisenlauer



BLUE SQUAD: ONE LAST GO
Published in the United States of America
by Chris Eisenlauer.
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Eisenlauer.
All rights reserved.
First published August 2011.

Viscain Empire - Year 10,923


In the midst of eternity, Dolma Set, who has everything but the one thing he wants, is having trouble coping one day to the next. All he needs is a change.

10,923.052


1. The Bedroom


The smell of her was intoxicating. The press of her flesh the same. Her face, her body, her reaction to his movement—everything was perfect. It always was.

He was capable of self-discipline. He could go months denying himself, but eventually he would succumb to lust. Lust was easy to satisfy. He, however, was not.

...Bela.

Dolma Set disentangled himself from the woman and rose from the bed. He crossed the room to the wide, paneless window and regarded the twilit world without.

Waves. They were gentle now, but easily stirred to tumult. Maybe he should push the wave generators to full power, see how long it took to grind the rest of Planet 832 to sand. There were still some black crags, proud peaks of eroding ranges that pierced the planet's watery skin. They might prove a challenge. But it would only be a matter of time and time was something Dolma Set had in mind-numbing abundance. In the end, it wouldn't be much of a challenge at all.

He stood with his arms folded, a fine, even glaze of sweat making his bare skin glow in the pale light streaming in. He looked at the vast shadow that blackened the sea directly below and then to the monstrous thing that cast it. The Root Palace of millennia past seemed to grip the end of a broken ridge with skeletal fingers—actual roots, exposed on one side—that sank into the water and ran throughout what was left of Planet 832. He traced the Vine's length to a point where it simply seemed to vanish in the inky sky. He knew of course that the Vine continued. It had traveled far to reach this planet and gone at least as far again since.

He glanced at the artificial sun, with its blue light rather more like that of a full and bright moon, and caught sight of some of the reflecting mirrors that helped direct and distribute the light. He always looked for them. It was a pointless habit, but he couldn't help it.

He let out a long, wistful sigh.

Looking back over his shoulder, he regarded the woman sitting on the bed. She was naked, unmoving, and oblivious to shame, waiting.

"Which one were you again?" he said.

"Seven, sir," she replied in a flat monotone that was not unpleasant.

He nodded and cleared the tangle of dark blond hair from his eyes. "Forget the waves."

"Sir?"

"Nothing. Power the gravity blocks in sector three."

"Yes, sir."

He deftly stepped up onto the waist-high sill, still able to stand his full height and not reach the ceiling, and stepped out, plummeting some two hundred meters to the waves below.

2. The Swim


Down he streaked, head first to the waiting sea, the wind whipping his hair back from his face to reveal a wry smile. Just before hitting the water, he went Dark, activating the Essential Oil. He was instantly covered in a layer of minute placoid scales—beige overall with amoebic blue mottling—that, when folded, made every part of him almost completely frictionless. His head was no longer human and he bared a single, center-set fang, like the blade of a knife aimed at the surface in anticipation of impact. When he hit the water, it swallowed him with a quiet gulping sound and he made not the slightest splash.

His momentum unimpeded by the new medium, Set arched his back and altered his trajectory, gently curving up closer to the surface. Though it was black here beneath the shadow of the Vine, he could see clearly. His eyes were now dull yellow beads, and his vision, along with his other senses, was significantly augmented by the Essential Oil, his Artifact.

The exposed foundation of the former Root Palace lay ahead. He had come this way literally millions of times, but the scale of those great petrified roots never failed to impress him. He increased his speed to just beyond that of sound to navigate the twisted forest of cyclopean trunks. Even if he ran into one of them headlong, he would slide off, the impact—at this speed, anyway—only serving to slow him down. But he didn't hit anything, didn't so much as graze anything. No man, beast, or fish could beat Dolma Set in the water.

Though Set was an accomplished swimmer, his exceptional prowess in the water was largely due to the Essential Oil. While Dark, his Artifact, besides altering his body physically, surrounded him in an unseen field that reacted to external pressure. The field was extremely efficient operating in any liquid medium and could be flexed like a muscle, producing effects not unlike that of indelicate and explosive psychokinesis. Among other things, it gave him total freedom of movement in water.

He passed through the roots and into a narrow valley—a crack that ran the length of the ridge—and finally out into open water. He noted the profusion of fish, both great and small, and dismissed them. At the time of his retirement he'd stocked them for food and game, but had grown bored with both after hunting them all to near extinction ages ago. He wondered if the idea of sport would ever again appeal to him, but doubted it.

He was approaching the ruins in sector three now. It didn't take long at this speed, and Planet 832 was rather small. It had to be to meet Set's criteria. No other planet in the Viscain Empire had had this volume of water reintroduced, but Set had given a full term of service, and the Emperor was generous to his Shades on their retirement.

White shapes, blurred by the heavy water, came into view. Set found long ago that the ruins here, already ancient when the Vine made planetfall, relaxed him somehow. He liked to train among the marble foundations and the scattered columns—mostly fallen, but some still standing—so he had had gravity blocks installed below the whole lot. The water for several hundred meters was like rubber cement fast on its way to setting, but this was how Set trained.

3. The Ruins


First, though, as was his custom, he skirted the border of the heavy zone, heading for the white cliffs that rose up to less than half the depth of the ocean here and which formed a crude semicircle around the ruins. He darted through one of the myriad dark openings in the cliff face, into the network of tunnels and galleries spread throughout the vast array of backing rock. Reducing his speed, he negotiated the maze with practiced ease until he came upon the thing he sought.

Slowing to a crawling drift, he took in the splendor of what he liked to refer to as the Hall of Gods. Rows and rows of giants lined the hall, all of them outfitted in various fantastic styles and all of them exquisitely preserved against the fate of the civilization that produced them. Set didn't know if the statues were meant to portray gods or not, but something of the divine showed through in every last detail. He felt that way when he first came across this place, anyway. Now he came each time hoping to recapture that feeling of awe and wonder so clear and perfect in his memory, but, instead, he found that the impression diminished steadily with each visit. Today was no different. He stopped, floated motionless among the forgotten gods of a race long dead, feeling like one of them.

Every day it was a little harder to find something that interested him. He had a number of ways to pass the time, some of them still enjoyable even, but, in the end, what did he have? How was he any different from the statues?

With all his accumulated skill, with all the power provided by the Essential Oil, and after more than a thousand years of life what did he have? He was of course alive. Planet 832 and everything on it was his, including the ten gene soldiers engineered to serve and amuse him. They were made to his specifications, and though necessarily of the same design for maintenance purposes, they were still wildly appealing to him. But their uses were limited, and they were not Bela Fan.

None of it amounted to much in his estimation. He would trade any or all of it for Bela. He would do, kill, or be anything for Bela. If only she would let him.

At bottom, all he really had was the satisfaction of practicing his martial art. He shuddered, though, thinking that, even as its only living exponent, whatever it did to placate his soul, it too would someday—and likely soon—lose its allure.

4. Liquid Palm


Set drifted into the area affected by the gravity blocks, remaining at constant buoyancy with the aid of the Essential Oil. Coming to a wide, unmarred foundation, he relaxed the pressure field around him and began to drop, touching down almost exactly in the middle of the marble expanse.

He raised the placoid scales, and though there was no noticeable change in his appearance, his skin took on the texture of very abrasive sandpaper. This could provide a mild offense, but it mainly served to make him accountable to friction once more. With a hundred meters of water bearing down on him under the force of twenty-eight standard gravities, Set began to practice the Liquid Palm.

He dropped into a horse stance and began a series of hand exercises. Despite the terrific resistance upon him, his movements were smooth and appeared effortless. Abruptly, he burst into motion, stepping forward and swinging his arms to defend against imaginary attackers, following up with attacks of his own. His arms moved always in graceful arcs and circles, the flats of his hands, both front and back, slapping sharply to punctuate strikes and blocks. Whenever his hands stopped suddenly, the water churned, streaming in tight, visible currents that soon described an elaborate, changing pattern about him. He moved easily, like liquid himself, across the marble foundation, his steps swift, sure, and difficult for the untrained eye to follow, cycling through the five single-man routines, or forms, that comprised his martial art. The Slow Push, The Ripple, The Liquid Defense, The Infinite Trapped Ripple, and Transference, or The Instant Push: all the techniques of the Liquid Palm system were contained within those five forms, and Set alone knew their secrets.

He practiced the forms again and again for hours, one after another until he lost count. He was trying to exhaust himself both physically and mentally in an attempt to purge the malaise that plagued him. He was only partially successful, though. As with most F-Gene fighters, practice was a balm for all things. He had pushed himself harder than usual, building up a fairly high endorphin level, but the barbed kernel of nihilism remained firmly lodged within his psyche.

He swam out of the heavy area, thinking he would try the cliff city one more time. There were galleries that rivaled the Hall of Gods; maybe one or another of those would help lift his spirits. He thought this knowing at the same time that there was nothing new to experience or to feel in that cloistered city. He went anyway.

5. The Fight Underwater


Without actually registering it, Set had long been subconsciously aware that the fish kept clear of the gravity blocks and the affected water, so he wasn't sure at first why he was so put off by the approach of the two erratic swimmers. The bulbous heads and streamlined bodies, undulating frantically, were familiar, but his recognition was too late in coming. The sleek black creatures came at him blindly but full of purpose, hitting him and detonating with the force of bombs. A combination of things—the various powers of the Essential Oil; his inherent durability, regularly conditioned by twenty-eight standard gravities, with and without his Artifact; and least in evidence, his own marvelous reflexes honed by a millennium and more of training in the Liquid Palm—saved him from anything more than being sent spiraling through the water.

Stafros Lowe.

Set folded the placoid scales and looked about for Lowe. More of the living bombs—twenty? thirty?—were coming now, from several directions. He gave a contemptuous mental hmph and began rising to the surface with explosive speed. The strange fish moved to follow, were drawn up by the rush of his passage, and once they were all directly below him, he turned and unleashed the power of his pressure field upon them. The resulting turbulence ruptured those in the lead, turning them back and casting all into chaos. Each of them exploded, some because of the pressure assaulting them, some through forced contact, and still others in reaction to the explosions of their fellows.

There he was. Lowe was now becoming visible through the churning, bubbling sea. He was sleek, clad in flexible, interlocking steel plates, electric-blue with green spots. His head was a giant frog's, with bulging eyes like gleaming silver ball bearings the size of fists. The pods upon his shoulders, the source of the living bombs—not fish at all, but Lowe's pollywog drones—were closed now. The drones would offer no advantage at close range, but that meant little to Lowe.

He surged through the result of his failed attack at incredible speed. Before he reached Set, Lowe's mouth opened slightly, releasing a flurry of bubbles racing for the surface. But more than that, and not unknown to Set, was the boney spear point tip of Lowe's tongue that shot forth with a loud crack as it broke the sound barrier. Set's fang became partially visible in a very human inhuman grin. He caught Lowe's tongue, just below the point, and held on long enough only to direct it past him. Before it could snap back in reflex, Set rushed forward and sank his fang once into Lowe's neck. It passed easily through and back out of Lowe's steely skin. Lowe clutched his throat, now swollen to nearly twice normal size, and planted a heavy kick into Set's midsection, separating them.

Lowe staggered back through the water, shaking his head to clear the affects of Set's hallucinogenic poison. It would not be fatal to him, but it would prevent him from using his tongue as a weapon and impede his fighting overall. He turned to the surface and streaked towards it, with Set in pursuit.

6. The Fight Overland


Erupting from the water, Lowe had no trouble climbing high into the dark, blue-lit sky. He sought the nearest peak to move the fight to dry land where the odds would be in better balance. Glancing down, he saw Set below him, arms folded and waist-deep in a rushing surge of animate water, easily keeping pace.

The pods on Lowe's shoulders split open and disgorged twin salvos of pollywog drones towards the land ahead.

Set shook his head and sighed. "Give it up, Slowe," he shouted above the roar of the water.

There was no reply.

"Fine. Un Azameio!"

The water Set rode upon rose, increasing in volume and speed, becoming the towering, semi-independent beast, Un Azameio. From upon its brow, Set pointed, directing Un Azameio to strike Lowe down with a great watery claw. Lowe was overwhelmed and cast to the rocky shore where he bounced and skidded to a stop.

As Un Azameio dissipated, its momentum carried Set ashore. He kicked off once, and frictionless, skated straight for Lowe. By the time Set reached him, though, Lowe's pollywog drones had completed their programmed evolutionary cycle and now surrounded their maker in an attitude of defense. There were twelve of them, dull blue-gray figures—simple copies of Lowe, in fact—that gibbered and gesticulated menacingly.

Set entered into their midst, stopping suddenly and whipping his hands to deadly effect. He struck one of the drones squarely between the shoulder blades with the palm of his right hand, forcing a surprising amount of gray fluid from the thing's mouth. The fluid splashed the ground and exploded, the smallest stray drops bursting like firecrackers. Gurgling, the drone stumbled forward and collapsed dead, splitting its head on the rocks broken by its own volatile blood.

Spinning around, Set gently but swiftly bowed the head of another drone with his right hand as he drove the flat of his left up into its stomach. An instant convulsion wracked its body before the drone coughed out a jet of gray fluid straight down to the ground where it, too, exploded on contact.

One of the drones lost its footing as the ground blew apart, but Set was already gone. He lifted a tight roundhouse kick to another's head and sent it, limbs sprawling, into the air back towards the sea. Before it could splash down, though, its blood—set to rippling by the impact of Set's kick—began to boil and so detonated, spilling a rain of dark gore over the water.

Despite the poison coursing through him, Lowe was fast gaining his bearings and would pose a real threat, especially if the drones were not dealt with quickly. Set could not afford to be distracted if Lowe recovered enough to really use the Lead Cloud Steps.

"Transference," Set said softly.

He was a blur. His hands struck their marks, and though the drones were not knocked down by his blows, the explosive blood in their bodies was being forced out through their pores in great sprays and clouds of mist by his most advanced technique. Irreparable internal damage resulted from each strike, and the barrage of tiny blood drops spattering other nearby drones set off chain reactions that left them all burst-open and smoldering upon the rocks.

Set regarded the mess dripping from his fingers and shook his head.

"Bal Kom Nis Kar Ahn!"

Lead Cloud Steps, stage one.

Set looked up in time to catch Lowe's right foot under his jaw. He backpedaled clumsily, and his head filled with stars, but a good portion of the force was lost since Lowe could not get firm purchase—the placoid scales made Set too slippery.

"Kii Soh Nis Kar Ahn!"

Lead Cloud Steps, stage two.

Another kick struck Set full in the chest, and while only a portion of its force got through, once again thanks to the placoid scales, it was enough to worry him.

"Sai Sen! Kar Ahn!"

Lead Cloud Steps, stage three.

This was bad. Their fight had escalated too quickly and severely. The third stage Lead Cloud Steps would have been difficult to contend with even if Set hadn't spent the last several hours trying to exhaust himself.

Set righted himself and met Lowe's next kick with the Liquid Defense, which is to say that, despite its speed and raw, vibrating power, he avoided the kick altogether. He countered, striking with his palm heels, but could only manage glancing blows—Lowe was just too fast at third stage. While in this state, Lowe was also a good deal stronger than Set was. He adjusted his tactics, his hands now snapping like whips, but for each blow he landed, he took one of Lowe's heavy kicks.

There was no way to win. Set was too tired. Recklessly, he shot forward, just barely inside a kick that scraped against his left shoulder, to drive both palms into Lowe's midsection. Lowe bent double at the impact point and was sent speeding helplessly through the air.

Set pointed a finger at Lowe and cried out, "Un Azameio!"

Massive volumes of water instantly rose from all over the surrounding ocean, streaming to where Set pointed. The beast, Un Azameio, took shape and paced Lowe as he hurtled out of control. It spread its arms and, with a roar, took Lowe up in a watery embrace that he was currently powerless to escape. When Un Azameio cleared solid ground and came once again in contact with the open water, it took off at unimaginable speed given its size and mass, streaking for the horizon. Before Lowe could even discern which way was up, Un Azameio had taken and deposited him somewhere halfway across the tiny globe.

7. The Decision


Set lay naked on a beach of soft, white sand, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that suggested sleep or near-sleep. His tower loomed behind him and so, further beyond, did the Vine and the former Root Palace, its terminus. From that direction, most likely from the Palace, came an endlessly cycling wail, mournful and insistent. It was probably an emergency siren, Set thought matter-of-factly, not at all interested in or concerned by what emergency it might signify. It was starting to creep into his fading consciousness, becoming the background drone to what might prove to be an entertaining dream.

A moment, or perhaps an eternity, later Set had company. Lowe stood over him, no longer cloaked in the power of his Artifact, the Eternal Spring. But even without that power, he was more than formidable. Like Set, Lowe was an F-Gene fighter, possessed of that special gene that enabled all of their kind to inure their bodies to the terrific stress of multiple gravities and expand their minds through physical exertion to perform feats that defied explanation and that were on par with those of powerful psychics. He was at least a head taller than Set, had bronze skin that was almost red, and short hair, as fine and white as down. He clicked his tongue and nudged Set's leg with a heavy boot.

"Why'd you have to bite me?" Lowe said.

Rousing, Set sat up and sighed dramatically. He eyed Lowe in silence for a moment then shook his head, shrugging. "What'd you come at me in the water for? You're lucky I was tired or I would have—"

"Yeah, yeah, all right."

"What are you doing here, anyway? Did you start that noise?" Set said, pointing with his chin to the Root Palace.

"Nope. That's the Emperor's signal."

Set stared blankly for a moment, thinking. "Wait, the signal? The one we were told would never come?"

Lowe nodded. "Every planet in the Empire is ringing with that alarm right now."

"That's why you're in uniform. How long has it been going off?"

"About six hours now, I should think."

"I must have just missed it."

"I tried to reach you. Never having heard it before, I wanted, at the very least, to confirm that it wasn't some malfunction on my end. I was pretty sure you were out practicing so I suited up and came to check things here and possibly collect you. There've been calls for assistance before, hell the three of us went back in 10,011, when we lost Corso, remember? This is different. Whatever is going on is big, bigger than Geiss Sinzer, bigger than the Gun Golems and Ty Karr, bigger than Braams and his Blood Frame."

"Bigger than King Yellow?"

Lowe rolled his eyes. "If he's even real."

The siren stopped abruptly. Set stood, and both men looked towards the Root Palace. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, but the sudden quiet felt heavy, oppressive. With his eyes still on the Palace, Set backed up until he bumped into an expected chunk of volcanic rock jutting from the sand. He sat and rubbed his eyes.

"What do you think it means, Slowe?"

Lowe shook his head. "No way to know, but given the rarity of its use, I tend to think that silence is worse rather than better. You want to go find out?"

Set pursed his lips and stared past Lowe with unfocused eyes. "There's only one thing left that I want," he said finally.

Lowe bowed his head. "I know."

"Do you think she'll go?"

"Who can say? She may not have even heard the alarm. She spends a lot of time away on Planet 499."

"The colony planet."

"Yeah."

"What can the Emperor do if we don't go?" Set said.

"Anything he wants, I guess. Something or nothing at all."

Set shook his head. "Either way it's the same. Go or stay, punishment or no punishment, live or die, reason or no reason."

Lowe was silent. Truth being truth, he simply nodded in spite of himself.

Neither said anything more for a time, then Set took a deep breath and stood again.

"Let's go."

Lowe cocked an eyebrow. "Go?"

"Yeah. Why not? I'm bored with everything. Maybe you are, too. If this is the end of all things—or the Empire, at any rate—we'd never forgive ourselves if we missed it. Let's die if we're going to, go out feeling something instead of wasting away to nothing as victims of ennui."

"That was almost poetic."

"Are we going?"

"First put some clothes on. You're not impressing anyone. When's the last time you put your uniform on, anyway?

Set started off towards his tower. "I have no idea."

"Well, even if Bela doesn't show up, this is likely to be the last mission, official or otherwise, of Blue Squad."

"Okay, okay I'll try to act with all due pomp and decorum."

"That's all I ask."

8. The Departure


Dolma Set and Stafros Lowe walked upon a platform atop what had been the Root Palace. Both wore the Blue Squad uniform: Long coats, reaching down to mid-thigh with polished buttons like a trail of large coins, loose-fitting trousers tucked into heavy black boots which were fronted with steel shin plates. All but the boots were a rich cobalt blue. They had no insignia and needed none.

Here it was clear that there were actually two shoots of the Vine rising from the vast root complex, the one that had come and the one that had gone on to make further annexes to the Empire. The shoots were inextricably intertwined until some point out beyond sight where they diverged. The platform was square, fifty meters to a side, and marked at intervals with landing lights, forever blinking. It occupied a hollow at the point where the Vine made its initial split, before the two lengths began winding together.

Lowe's jump ship sat on the raised deck which filled the center of the platform. Set's ship occupied the far edge, out of the way and unused. Lowe approached the jump deck terminal at the base of the deck and ran a quick diagnostic test. On its completion, he whistled sharply.

"What is it?" Set said.

"Half the network is down. Looks like communications are completely out."

"So what are you saying? You want to go the old-fashioned way?"

Lowe thought for a moment about the "old-fashioned" way. Despite the Vine's stitch joints of folded space, the current Root Palace was simply too far away on Planet 1612 to even consider being pumped from here to there through the Vine's phloem. The system worked well within a single system or even from one system to another, and it was the only option before the advent of jump deck technology, but in this case it simply wasn't feasible. Both time and distance—and a dread of being trapped in a tight space with a total lack of control—counted against it.

Lowe shuddered. "No, I don't. I'll trust the jump deck network. But we're taking a ship so we can adjust for blackouts. I know you like to go without a ship, but it would be about the same as using the phloem tubes."

"All right. No argument here."

"Good. We'll take my ship. It's ready to go and I don't trust yours."

As they boarded Lowe's jump ship, Set turned and looked towards his tower.

"You want to say goodbye to this place? You might not be coming back."

"Whether I am or not, I have nothing to say."

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