GHOST SQUAD:
THE SINZER REBELLION
by Chris Eisenlauer
When Ghost Squad leader Geiss Sinzer goes to the planet of his parents' death to pay his respects, he learns more about them than he—or the Emperor—ever intended.
Published in the United States of America
by Chris Eisenlauer.
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Eisenlauer.
All rights reserved.
First published August 2011.
Cover by Chris Seaman.
1. The Decision
9,367.009.1835
"You really should go, Professor Sinzer."
"Mr. Cranden, we're colleagues now. We have been for years. You don't have to call me professor anymore."
The apparently opposite dynamic of their relationship was easy to explain. Both were Shades of the Viscain Empire and effectively immortal. While Geiss Sinzer appeared to be a dark-haired, clean-cut youth of 16, he was in fact 383 years old. Mont Cranden was a big man with skin of bronze and a weathered head, bald save for the long, thick golden braid issuing from his crown. He received his Artifact only 17 years ago at the age of 37.
Cranden smiled. "You're avoiding the issue."
"Perhaps I am," Sinzer said, putting a finger to his chin, musing.
It was amazing what could go unaccomplished after so many years of life. Or perhaps, with no threat of old age and death, there was no sense of urgency and later was just as good as sooner. Sinzer didn't think that was it, though. He'd been putting this off for a long time and had come to realize why. He was afraid.
"The Root Palace isn't scheduled for departure for another two months," Cranden said. "Classes here at Locsard are finished this year. You've earned some time. Take a vacation. You always talk about going to pay your respects, but you've never gone." Cranden gripped Sinzer's shoulder. "You should go."
Sinzer pursed his lips and nodded slowly.
"It's your choice," Cranden said, turning to leave. "But hopefully, this time tomorrow you won't be here or back at the Root Palace. Hell, you could go and be back before anyone knew you were gone," he said, winking. "Wish I could do that." Cranden stepped out the door and said over his shoulder, "See you... later."
Sinzer could indeed go and be back before anyone knew, but it seemed like such a huge step to take. Bram and Shella Sinzer were heroes, exemplary Shades who lost their lives in service to the Empire in acquiring Planet 1001. For as long as he could remember, buried deep within his psyche was a blind drive to visit the site of his parents' death, to know their struggle, to personally acknowledge their sacrifice, to thank them for the gift of life—a miracle since the Emperor's Artifacts were supposed to make Shades sterile. But the Empire's memory of his parents was so big, so revered that he feared confronting the reality. He feared finding nothing left of them, or worse, finding exactly what he sought and being unmoved or even disappointed.
He sighed and shook his head. He had the time. He had the means. He need only consult the records of Planet 1001, to see it, to register it in his mind, and he would be able to teleport there. It would take a short bit of concentration and he would be there, spanning the countless light years and leaving the Locsard Psychic Academy here on Planet 517 behind in an instant.
He had decided to go without actually realizing it. He stood alone in the empty classroom, overwhelmed and dazed for a rare moment by racing, unchecked, unfocused thoughts. He blinked back to active consciousness and sighing, rubbed his eyes.
There was nothing to do now but call up the information on Planet 1001. He paused, though. Briefly he considered discussing his trip with Pai. He didn't care about Thuzo, but Pai... No. Squadmates or not, it was his business, and it was something he needed to do on his own. He could half imagine Thuzo's scorn: the little boy wants someone to hold his hand while he looks for mommy and daddy.
"Computer," Sinzer said. "Access feed, Planet 1001."
The great holographic screen at the head of the classroom flickered to life and showed a graphite ball at the end of two olive tethers leading off in opposite directions. Sinzer stared for a time, seemed to drink in the image with his eyes, and with a subdued flash of blue light, he was gone.
2. The Search
9,367.009.1840
Sinzer stood below the towering bifurcate Vine, half of which had served as the Root Palace nearly 400 years ago here on Planet 1001. There was still enough oxygen to breathe so invoking the power of his Artifact, the Spectral Coat, was unnecessary. He breathed deep air that hadn't stirred for centuries. It was sour.
He was in the midst of a ruined, sprawling city, dark with harsh shadows made possible by a weak and failing artificial sun. There should be no threats, nothing alive here, but the leftover relic produced just enough midnight light to stir up the imagination. He couldn't help but feel a thin edge of excitement resulting from the combination of darkness and his vulnerability.
In truth, Geiss Sinzer, even without the power of the Spectral Coat, was far from vulnerable. He was the most powerful psychic the Viscain Empire had ever produced and was almost as tough physically as he was mentally, able to operate freely under the pressure of 30 standard gravities. Planet 1001 could offer no more than one and a half gravities and the Viscain Empire, invaders themselves, had never been host to alien invasion. Sinzer was safe and he knew it, but the quickness of his heart persisted and he savored the sensation.
The feeling of being utterly alone was beginning to sink in. The planet supported no colonies and was home to no retired Shade. In fact, it was being held in Sinzer's name should he choose to claim it after his service to the Empire was complete. He was alone on a dead world lit by dying, artificial light. There was something rather desolate and final about that.
He rose up off the ground noiselessly, and began a slow spin to take in his surroundings. Rubble was everywhere. Some buildings were still standing, in spite of the shock of the Vine's planetfall, but hadn't gone unscathed. Those that hadn't collapsed on themselves or toppled over were lined with great cracks of almost cartoon proportions. Vehicles, both wheeled and otherwise, littered the peaks and valleys of the permanent asphalt ripples that radiated out from the Vine's impact point. Bones, gleaming wetly like snakeskin in the weak light, were too numerous to count and covered the ground—and every other surface that would support them—like detritus, morbid and accusing with pointing fingers, gaping jaws, and blank, staring eye sockets.
Sinzer stopped with his back to the Vine and closed his eyes. For several seconds he concentrated then released a pulse of pale blue light. It was a perfect sphere, expanding out from his head, growing larger and larger, touching everything in its enveloping path, momentarily bathing the vehicles, the buildings, the rubble, the dead in its blue glow as it passed them. The bubble began to fade at about a thousand meters from him, but it had been enough—something registered.
Sinzer turned in the direction of the pale light that remained. Shimmering like a ghostly pearl lodged in the prodigious crack of a nearby building was something that might lead him to whatever was left of his parents. This intuition radar sometimes yielded nothing, sometimes provided the first step in an infinite, maddening spiral, and sometimes pointed to real answers. Sinzer had no expectations—or so he told himself. His heart rate still hadn't slowed. He folded his arms in an effort to master himself and drifted up through the air, under the power of his mind, towards the building and the pearl that awaited within.
Sinzer noted the exposed divisions of at least five floors as he passed through the rift to what he guessed was the building's thirteenth. There before him, doing nothing to alleviate the darkness of the interior, was the beckoning light.
To supplement his senses here where the rays of the artificial sun couldn't reach, Sinzer summoned the power of his Artifact and went Dark. He took on the aspect of a fast-inflating parade balloon, turning translucent first, then immaculate white with liquid blue light pouring off of him. He looked like a ghost, or a child's conception of one. He was completely intangible. His head was a dollop of cream, its pointed top a waving candle-flame wisp. His only features, his eyes and his mouth—which seemed set in a permanent, leering grin—were rips in white, spilling more of the saturated blue. His body was an animate down pillow, his arms and legs were the corners with no more in the way of definition save that his arms were twice the length of his legs due to a general narrowing of the chest. Comic or terrifying—one's impression of him was sometimes the former but invariably resolved to the latter once the extent of his power was known. His Raw Mental Power was a staggering 10,000 and was multiplied further by technique, and further still by the Spectral Coat.
Directly after the Emperor, Shades ran the Viscain Empire. Shades were the select few, judged worthy by the Emperor to receive Artifacts. Artifacts ranged in power and function, augmenting every mental and physical aspect of the recipient, making Shades into flesh and blood demigods, and more, sometimes into monstrosities when function synchronized exceptionally well with innate ability. Geiss Sinzer was of this monstrous variety, but monstrosity or not, now he could see in the darkness, even without the blue light he gave off.
He floated through the quake-ransacked room, slowly approaching what he sought. He made eye contact with himself in the vanity table mirror ahead of him and looked away only when he reached the table. Lying upon the cracked and peeling surface was a hairbrush, alight with his unwitting interest made evident by the intuition radar. He picked it up with intangible triangle "hands" that served only as a superfluous focus for his telekinesis. As he rolled the brush between his hands, he felt the room revolve with it, falling victim to a sudden and never before experienced turn of vertigo. His stomach dropped. Everything was falling.
Sinzer "stepped" back in an attempt to right himself and regain his balance, a physical reflex made moot by his current incorporeal state. He felt the hair brush slip from his grasp and begin a molasses-slow pinwheel to the floor. In an endless moment it struck the floor and echoed with heartbeat booms as it settled. Everything settled with it.
He looked around with vision that was abnormally clear but false at the same time. It was the vision of dreams. The room was different, intact now with everything in its place. The walls were whole, the furniture standing upright. Soft, orange light issued from a number of candles spread throughout the room and seemed to pulse in time with the slow ticking of an unseen clock. Movement caught his attention and he turned back towards the vanity table. Sitting before it, her face visible in the mirror, was one of the most beautiful women Sinzer had ever seen. Talia Fanslo. He didn't know how he knew her name, just that he did know her name. As she brushed her hair, she smiled at something in the mirror that could have been her own reflection, his, or that of someone else in the room. He felt that all three were equally possible, or, just as likely, that it was all three at once. It didn't matter because he knew that, in some way, her smile was for him.
That smile and what he saw in her eyes made Sinzer shiver with something he'd never experienced firsthand from another. It was love or what he thought must be love, anyway. Waves of warmth and a sense of belonging washed over him ceaselessly. As long as he looked into those eyes, he felt secure, that all the evils that ever were could be held at bay and not so much as threaten him.
From others, Sinzer had experienced affection, the bond of friendship, adoration, and even the occasional hot flash of lust, but never love. Never true, unconditional love, like that of a mother for her child. Despite the dream quality of what he was experiencing, two things were certain: this woman was not Shella Sinzer and the love she exhibited was, without a hint of doubt, meant for him.
Sinzer drank in the offered emotion to the point of intoxication. It was too pure, too wonderful to ignore or refuse. But a part of him, the seasoned, rational leader of the Ghost Squad, spoke up in a little voice in the back of his mind. All he really had was a host of new questions. He needed answers. He needed to be sure that this was real, at least as far as that word could be used to define what was happening.
Sinzer collected himself, took a deep breath that was wholly symbolic, and pulsed the intuition radar a second time. His fears of banishing the vision of Talia Fanslo were swept away as, touched by the expanding sphere, she ignited into a magnesium-bright apparition. The room went white with detail made clear only by silhouette shadows of rich cobalt blue.
Talia Fanslo remained. A livid incarnation of sadness personified, she pointed despondently at a blank wall. The love he'd felt was still there, but mixed with it was a crushing sense of loss and unfairness.
The radar worked better than he'd hoped or ever imagined, but it wasn't due to his power alone. This woman was his mother. She, too, had been a powerful psychic, and the impression left in this room was acting with Sinzer's probe to create a window into an unexpected possibility, a living scenario snatched out of Time's immutable grasp in which the dead woman might communicate with her son. The blazing white of the room and of his mother before him was a torrent of mental energy, a limitless rush that was beginning to lose definition. At this rate, he risked having the contents of his mind forced out and replaced by the blank, incoherent white noise thundering into his head, but he was on the verge of learning something profound. He needed to go one step further. Trying the radar a third time might bring clarity, or it might hasten the loss of his mind. He wasted no time making his decision.
3. The Truth
9,367.009.1905
The blue bubble flicked out flash bulb fast and Sinzer, whose body was infinitely pliable when incorporeal, went rigid. He saw it all. He saw the Vine crash down into the planet from the sky. He saw the 17th Generation Generals and the Gun Squad members engaging the planet's main line of defense which consisted solely of psychics, Talia Fanslo among them. He saw the native psychics fall one by one, often incapacitated first by Shella Sinzer's Artifact, the Time Capsule. He saw Talia Fanslo shot down, wounded, by Kenda Prist, the Gun Squad leader. He saw Bram Sinzer's head burst after being subjected to the combined efforts of twelve remaining psychics. He saw those twelve, helpless with exhaustion after their success, cut to pieces by Salos Musso's Paradox Cleaver. Curiously, he saw Shella Sinzer's heart explode out of her chest from a shot in the back by Prist's Modular Gun. Even more curiously, he saw Prist, somehow unseen by his fellows, harvest the Time Capsule from Shella Sinzer's still warm corpse—something that was both disturbing and intriguing. He saw an end to the fighting. He saw Talia Fanslo, and other psychics still physically whole, collected from the battlefield and brought into the Root Palace, into a series of rooms that were hidden away from the public halls and apartments, inaccessible to all but one. He saw a strange, unfamiliar man wielding a scalpel with ungodly skill upon the captive psychics, some while living, some while dead. He saw this same man—no, he was more than that, he was a Shade, but one that Geiss Sinzer had never seen before—take special interest in Talia Fanslo. He saw Talia Fanslo writhe in agony as the Shade introduced Vine ganglia into her body, made adjustments and splicings with his scalpel, and recorded his results with clinical detachment. He saw the Shade forcibly take advantage of Talia Fanslo, and witnessed his own violent conception. He saw his mother suffer through an accelerated pregnancy as the cuttings and experiments continued on her and on himself in her womb. He saw himself tear out of his mother's belly, too big to be contained and ignorant of the travesty of his birth. He saw Talia Fanslo's dead, staring eyes in the pointing apparition before him.
The past was gone and the bright white of the room was fast fading. The building was a translucent, gelatinous mass through which he saw the target of his mother's accusing finger. The former Root Palace lay at the end of a trail of lights left over from the last radar pulse, strengthened by its resonance with Talia Fanslo's psychic impression. Sinzer looked back to the ghost of his mother. Shimmering tears welled in eyes that no longer saw. She too was fading and would be gone soon. He returned to normal, dropped to his knees on the floor, took his mother's hairbrush in both hands and hugged it close to him.
He wept. It was something he'd never done before, but everything he had just seen, just experienced, just felt, was clear—too clear—in his mind to rationalize or to escape. There was no question of the truth of what he had witnessed. Though he had known her only briefly, the pain of losing her and the injustice of her lot bombarded him again and again, coming sharp and fresh each time.
He cried himself out in about an hour as his grief gave way to outrage. He knew that he couldn't bring Talia Fanslo back, but he could eliminate the stain of her shame and see that no one was subjected to similar horrors in the future. In the back of his mind, he knew what this meant, but he wasn't ready just yet to consider all the implications. He had work to do at the deserted Root Palace that took precedence over rational thought.
He went Dark once more and sailed over the waning trail of lights leading to the Palace. He noted with indifference the remains of Bram Sinzer and wondered how exactly the man had been a hero. He noted Shella Sinzer's remains with a bit more compassion, almost casually disheartened by the idea of falling unwittingly to a colleague with his own agenda. The final light was on the Root Palace itself, actually within it but shining visibly to Sinzer's senses. He passed easily through the Vine fiber, through the public halls and apartments, into a series of rooms that were hidden away, but were by no means inaccessible to him.
He stopped. The lab in which he found himself made him shudder. It was familiar. He had been born here. His mother had died here. Beyond that, though, something wasn't right. The Vine had moved on nearly 400 years ago, leaving no one behind—according to the records—and yet the lab appeared to be in use. Several transparent tanks filled with green fluid held living specimens of what Sinzer thought might once have been human. Based on their appearance and the knowledge he'd just acquired, he guessed that these subjects, too, had had Vine ganglia introduced into their bodies and it had been allowed to grow unchecked for... How long? Since the planet's acquisition? Sinzer was appalled all over again. He thought there was a chance that such experiments might still be taking place, but not here, not anymore.
He wasn't alone in the room. A man was standing stock-still, gaping at him, and likely had been since Sinzer entered. Only it wasn't just a man. It was the Shade responsible for his mother's terrible fate. It was his father.
"Who are you?" Sinzer said.
The unknown Shade swallowed hard, but years of working alone and an overdeveloped sense of professional pride kept him from bowing down to Sinzer's imperious tone.
"I am Vas Kirsey and I answer to none but the Emperor himself."
"You're a Shade," Sinzer said. "I've seen recorded images of every General and Specialist going back to the beginning. You and that, that knife of yours shouldn't exist. Who are you?"
Kirsey narrowed his eyes, said nothing.
"I asked you a question."
"Perhaps you didn't hear me when I said I answer to none but the Emperor himself."
The gash of a mouth on Sinzer's ghostly white face contorted into a wicked grin. "I think you know who I am. I think you know what I'm capable of. It would be a poor scientist indeed who didn't know the capabilities of his own successful experiment. Or would it better serve your ego to say progeny?"
Kirsey looked visibly shaken. "How can you know that?" He stared for a moment before continuing. "Your discipline is gross telekinesis, albeit on a grand scale. How?" He shook his head, but awareness dawned on him. "The intuitive faculty. Yes, but the reports indicate that it was never so well developed. Interesting."
"Was I a successful experiment, Dr. Kirsey?" Sinzer said, his voice like acid.
"Oh, yes," Kirsey blurted. He considered for a moment saying no more, but couldn't resist the opportunity to brag. "You were the only success. You're a miracle. Whichever origin you pick, whether it's the product of the Sinzers or of this lab, you're a miracle. You are the finest thing I have ever had the honor to produce."
"How can you do what you do? How can you do that to people?"
"It's my job. I'm good at it."
"You ruin lives."
"We all ruin lives, First Specialist Sinzer. I should think the number of lives you've taken far exceeds the number that I have. And I give something back. Mind you, the return ratio isn't high, but I do get results. You for example."
"It's not the same. You pervert whatever you touch."
"You mean, of course, whatever is left after you and your fellows are done."
Sinzer nodded. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time for a change. How many more are there like you?"
"Unlisted Shades? I don't know. I am in contact with some, but only the Emperor knows the exact number."
"And they're set up in abandoned Root Palaces throughout the Empire?"
"I can only speak for my own circumstances, but I imagine so."
"All doing the same or similar work?"
Kirsey shrugged. "Probably. I'll say again, though, that you are unique. There was something very special about your mother." His gaze became unfocused as he drifted into memory. "Both to me personally and as a test subject."
Sinzer's eyes blazed with an intensity that cleared every shadow from the lab, and Vas Kirsey was sent bodily through various equipment into the wall beyond, where he crumpled like a rag doll.
"She was my mother, not a test subject."
Kirsey stood clumsily and brushed himself off. Blood bloomed from a number of cuts and scrapes. "Oh, but she was. I am a scientist. She was a subject. There was more, of course." He limped across the lab, lifted a panel upon the wall and pushed the red button beneath it. Red emergency lights blazed, and a klaxon began to sound.
Sinzer shook his head. He was trembling with rage. "Not a subject. She was a victim. What was her name, Doctor? Do you even know?"
Kirsey either didn't know or couldn't remember, but his inability to answer incensed Sinzer further.
"Her name, you son of a bitch, was Talia Fanslo. She was a living, breathing person, not a subject, not a number, not a raw material. She was my mother."
"Yes, she was your mother. I am your father and I won't have you defying me."
Kirsey leapt with unexpected agility, something in his clenched fist held out before him. While Dark, Sinzer had little to fear from anything physical, but Kirsey's manner had made him leery so he reacted, mostly out of surprise, reeling as the air whistled in front of his face.
Sinzer floated back and away, leaving Kirsey where he stood, and as the mild shock subsided, he became aware of a sharp pain in his chest. Suddenly it was very difficult to breathe, which was an odd sensation to have while Dark. But he wasn't Dark anymore. He looked down at his chest and saw something sticking out of it. It was Kirsey's scalpel.
Blood soaked Sinzer's white shirt and was pattering the floor in a beaded stream. He felt light-headed and dropped down to his hands and knees. He clutched at the scalpel, yanked it from where it was buried, and examined it.
"H-How?" Sinzer said breathlessly.
"The Smart Scalpel does what I want it to. Even if it's just to help a father discipline his child. It did help make you, you understand?"
It took Sinzer several seconds to stand, his legs wobbly and unsure throughout the process. He touched the wound, knowing that his heart had been pierced, that his aorta had been all but severed, but knowing also that he was already beginning to heal. With a snapping motion, he flung the Smart Scalpel back at Kirsey.
A thin red line opened upon Kirsey's left cheek before the Scalpel sank three quarters of its length into the wall behind him. He turned his head with the sting and saw that his only weapon was now inaccessible. When he faced Sinzer again, Sinzer was Dark.
"You're not my father," Sinzer said. "Perhaps your genes are floating around in here, but you're not my father. The closest thing I have to a father is the Locsard Psychic Academy, where I grew up. You're simply a source of genetic material—those are terms you can understand, right? You're nothing more than that. What you did to my mother—what you're still doing—is unforgivable. Besides contempt, the only thing I have to offer you is gratitude for my existence, only in so far as it provides the means to avenge my mother and others subjected to your sick experiments.
"I assume that the alarm you sounded is for more than just show. It'll either bring more unlisted Shades or my own colleagues. Regardless, your life is forfeit." The lab suddenly filled with innumerable copies of Geiss Sinzer. This was the Ghost Army, one of the major powers afforded by the Spectral Coat. Now Sinzer's voice came severally, echoing noisily. "I'm going to make you feel what she felt. Maybe you can let me know if what you're about to experience would still be considered gross telekinesis."
Vas Kirsey bowed his head, resolved to what was to come. Every Sinzer in the Ghost Army focused his eyes on Kirsey, and at once all those eyes began to glow an intense blue-limned white which competed with the emergency red. Kirsey threw his head back in agony as each and every nerve fiber in his body was taken apart millimeter by millimeter, each strand eaten away to its source by the Ghost Army's en masse surgical attack. Kirsey's nervous system was like a web of fuses leading to the bomb that was his spine. His cries were prolonged and pathetic, and it took Sinzer a great effort of will to see his act through to completion. But it was finished now. At least this part of it.
4. The Consequences
9,367.009.2025
Nauseated by what he'd done and by the pain he still felt in his chest, Sinzer returned to normal. He bent down, resting his hands on his knees to better facilitate his breathing and to avoid vomiting. His stomach rose up anyway, though only mildly, and he coughed a messy streamer of saliva mixed with bright red blood onto the floor. He wiped his mouth, cleared his throat, and spat. He pressed a palm against the wound left by the Smart Scalpel. It had stopped bleeding, but only on the outside. It wasn't healing properly.
He cleared his throat again and composed himself as best he could before standing straight. He scanned the lab, the walls, the structure of the Vine itself.
"Samhain! I know you can hear when you want to hear. It's not enough to simply conquer, you have to play god as well?"
"Geiss Sinzer. Who is playing?"
Though he'd hoped for an answer, having the Emperor respond to him through the walls gave Sinzer a chill.
"You owe your existence to the man you just murdered," the Emperor said, the walls vibrating with his words. "He is perhaps replaceable, but the sum of his work is not. You will cooperate in the transfer of all pertinent research and information or you will be considered an enemy of the Empire."
Sinzer shook his head, barking out a cold, humorless laugh. "Let me turn it around for you. These experiments will stop on your order or by my hand. It's your choice."
"No, Geiss Sinzer. It is yours and you have made it."
A bright yellow flash momentarily blinded Sinzer. He blinked his eyes clear and searched the room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Vas Kirsey still lay dead. The tanks still bubbled with their unfortunate victims.
One of the tanks caught his eye, though. He was seeing the thing within it in incredible detail. Funny that he hadn't noticed before, but it was fascinating. It moved and pulsed and swelled and grew. It was metamorphosing before his eyes, taking on new depth and dimension.
The lab around him was all colors and kaleidoscope motion. Everything seemed so clear, so sharp, so well-defined, but far away, like he wasn't really there at all, like he was on the outside looking in on a dynamic and changing reality. For the second time that day, Sinzer felt dizzy and disoriented. Everything in the lab, every discrete object, every polished surface, every play of light seemed to demand his attention and assaulted him with detail, razor sharp and painful.
Sinzer began to panic. He knew what this was. Despite his unparalleled RMP, he was still essentially human in that he was reliant upon his five senses. He recognized the trap and that it was Thuzo Povall's, but knowing wouldn't necessarily help him out of it. Povall's power of illusion was perfect, working externally on the physical senses or directly on the mind as necessary. This was Povall's Truth of Infinity brought on so subtly that Sinzer hadn't been able to defend himself, hadn't even known he was under attack. By tricking Sinzer's senses, Povall had gotten a foothold into Sinzer's mind and was taking over at a viral rate. Through concentration, Povall simply pushed Sinzer's own mind through a tour of infinity, a technique which so far had left nothing but gibbering idiots of its survivors.
Images assailed his eyes and stabbed into his brain. They were mundane things, things found in the lab made grotesque by the obscene level of detail, but for every one thing he saw, his brain made innumerable associations, suggesting more imagery which presented itself unbidden, in turn creating more associations, and drowning him in sucking oil.
And then he heard it. Here on the stage of his own breaking mind, Sinzer couldn't escape Povall's gloating. Povall's voice was clear and sharp, like a needle dragging across the surface of his eyeballs.
"Do you know how pleased I am by this turn of events?" Povall said. "There's nobody in here to know but you and me, but I'm not even going to try to hide it on the outside. I've always hated you. At Locsard you always got special treatment. You never had to try for anything. Everything just came your way. You got the Spectral Coat, the strongest of the Artifacts produced that year. You got command of the Ghost Squad, which should have been mine. You were a snot-nosed kid made cocky by naiveté. It still infuriates me and makes me sick just to think about it. And here we are, you with your ridiculous RMP succumbing to the one thing that can beat you—me. Who would have thought it possible? I don't care what you did, I'm just thankful for the chance to be the instrument of balance. I hope you appreciate the irony as much as I do."
Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.
Through it all, though, Sinzer thought he heard something else. It was very faint, very far away, but was something outside of the illusion and provided a focus. He receded, attempting to close off his senses, which did little to hide the encroaching imagery or the booming rumble of Povall's derision, but he set his powerful mind to the task of halting the flow of information and peeling back the layers of illusion anyway. Again, he thought he heard something. It was another voice, a familiar voice calling his name.
Pai? It was Pai and she was crying. She was calling his name and begging Thuzo Povall to stop.
Sinzer blinked and saw them in a frozen instant, The 18th Generation Generals backing Thuzo Povall and Pai Casta. Povall was pouring his concentration into the Truth of Infinity. Pai had called Sinzer back, for just this one instant of time called to a stop.
In that instant, Sinzer acted. His retaliation was reflexive and not without a certain amount of liberating satisfaction. He and Povall had never been friends. Differing only in degree, their feelings for each other had been mutual, but Sinzer was still shocked that his squadmate would so quickly and easily try to take his life. He gathered his power and released it in burst with a flash from his eyes. From the waist up, Thuzo Povall came apart, subjected to a devastating knot of chaos. Sinzer watched it happen in slow motion with perfect clarity and he wondered for a moment about fate, about a higher power, about finding one's path. In the maelstrom of Povall's ruined body, he saw the dying man's Artifact, the Infinity Box. He reached out and held in the palm of his hand what looked like a small treasure chest, lid propped open and expelling shadows like an endless eruption of writhing worms.
Sinzer stood, captivated by the Box and struck by the beginning of an idea. There was potential here to exploit, but just how he did not yet know.
Two coherent light beams, one after the other, punched through his chest and he heard Pai scream through her tears. As he lurched backward, drops of blood decorating the plume of smoke coming off of him, he looked at Pai, smiled a sad smile, and went Dark. The Infinity Box sank into his translucent body where it swam lazily, now separate from the physical world until Sinzer decided otherwise.
Sinzer floated gracefully to an upright position just above the floor. He was panting and holding his right triangle hand to his chest.
"I don't want to kill him, Sana!" Mont Cranden snapped.
Sana Bale snorted. "You think that would do it? He's already killed Povall. If we don't give him everything we've got, more of us will die."
"It doesn't have to be that way," Cranden said. "Professor Sinzer, please stop. We've been ordered to prevent the destruction of this lab and have been authorized to use lethal force against you if necessary."
"I guess Thuzo got it right for once. I'm afraid I can't comply, Mr. Cranden. And unless you would like to see Miss Bale's fears realized, I suggest you all find the quickest way off this planet. It's funny, I never thought much of Thuzo. He was always looking for someone besides himself to blame for his problems, and here it turns out he was the one person who might have killed me. He would have succeeded, too—" He looked at Pai for a long moment in silence. "Miss Bale your lasers are frightfully painful, but as I am now Dark and in a rather foul mood, you would do well to do what I say."
"Povall had it," Sana said. "He's weak and still vulnerable to attacks on the senses. Sana tapped her Artifact, the Prismatic Scales, and the lab went solid, uniform, pitch black. Even the blue light Sinzer usually gave off while Dark was absent. While Shades could see beyond the visible spectrum of light, Sana could block or mask any wavelength that fell within range of Shades' perceptions.
"I could simply raze the entire Root Palace, Miss Bale," Sinzer said. "But I don't want to. I suggested you all leave, now I suppose I shall have to make you."
From Sinzer's head the blue radar pulse ballooned outward, marking Mont Cranden, Sana Bale, Aren Alspess, who had yet to speak, and Pai Casta. A flash from Sinzer's eyes sent Sana crashing into the wall, the upper half of her body lodging deep within the Vine fiber. Light returned to the lab and hovering before each of the other two 18th Generation Generals was a glowering Ghost Army soldier, eyes flaring. Both Cranden and Alspess shot into separate walls.
Rolling into a sitting position, Cranden coughed and sighed. "What did you think you were going to do, Sana?"
Sinzer was before Pai, his triangle hands upon her shoulders, his blue light transforming her tears into diamonds. He looked into her eyes. "Pai," he said quietly. "What's happening here isn't right. If you trust me, if you believe in me, come with me. I'm prepared to leave it all behind, prepared to fight if I have to, but there's one thing that I'd regret losing, one person that I don't want to live without."
"You killed Thuzo," she said as if she hadn't heard.
"Yes, I did. He would have killed me, if not for you. I came back—I was able to come back—because of you. I know this isn't the appropriate time. This isn't how I imagined it if I ever got up enough courage, but if it isn't now, you'll never know. Pai, I—"
She shook her head. At first Sinzer couldn't read the expression through her tear-stained eyes, but a faint smile graced her lips and through her Artifact directly to his, unheard by another soul, she said, "I love you, Geiss."
"Professor Sinzer," Cranden said, rising. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened here, but please understand our position."
Sinzer had to force himself to drag his eyes from Pai's. "I understand your position perfectly, Mr. Cranden. Which is why, if you want to live, you will do as I have instructed. This planet was mine to take at retirement. I'm simply taking it early."
Now Dark and armored by his Artifact, the Live Wire, Alspess extracted himself from the debris resulting from his abrupt meeting with the wall. "We can't allow you to do that," he said.
"I'm waiting for you to try to stop me."
Cranden's face darkened as he stood. "Very well, then. Forgive me, Professor." Cranden's brow clinched and veins stood out above his temples. The Gate Crown, his Artifact, became visible over his head. It was a great turning wheel of what looked like tarnished bronze, a primitive and oversized parody of a halo, that helped power Cranden's ability to open space between spaces and lock things away within.
Cranden traced patterns in the air with his hands giving birth to perfect framework cubes of yellow light around Sinzer and each of his copies. Beads of sweat stood out upon his bald head and came loose as he shook with exertion. These were the tightest, strongest vaults he had erected yet and the Sinzers were trapped inside them.
Cranden dropped back into a sitting position on the floor, breathing heavily. Hardest hit, Sana finished extracting herself from the wall. She was Dark now as well, all crystalline shards lit from within with colors ever changing.
"Can we get him back like this?" Sana said.
Cranden nodded and was treated to mocking laughter.
The Ghost Army filled the room.
"Mr. Cranden," they all said, shaking their heads, "it's becoming difficult to remain polite. You're like children."
One of the Sinzers moved to Pai Casta and gave the appearance of grasping her roughly. "I'm taking this planet and this woman."
"No!" Pai said, making no effort at resistance.
"As I have invited, try to stop me, but your safety is in your own hands."
Various Ghost Army soldiers turned and passed through the walls. A series of loud explosions rocked the lab and knocked it thirty degrees off true. Equipment crashed to the floor and slid down to collect at the lowest point. Other members of the Ghost Army turned their powers once again upon the Generals. Each General rose up off the canting floor, held suspended and immobile by a ghost soldier's will. Before being caught, Alspess had sent out a web of iron wire to anchor him in place and resist expulsion. From each anchor point, more wires shot forth, securing him further, but one of his support walls exploded, exposing the lab to the outside. The Vine lurched violently and the lab went through a series of alignment shifts, with pieces of machinery and girders of reinforcing steel raining down or sideways or in some other direction. Much of what was in the lab had been bounced out through the gaping hole during one shift or another. Cranden and Sana were ousted by their ghost soldier chaperones, but Alspess was working hard to remain. There was one final jolt and all that still littered the floor rose up and hovered in the air for what seemed a long time before crashing back down.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Alspess," Sinzer said. "You can't stay." Sinzer's eyes flashed brilliantly once, then a second time, and finally a third. In a punctuated rush, Alspess was ejected from the lab and from the reeling Palace.
Sinzer escorted Pai through the opening and together they witnessed an incredible sight. The Ghost Army, 10,000 strong at peak output, was laying waste to everything. Pai looked up and gasped, seeing that the Vine had been torn asunder. The exit shoot that had departed the planet to continue on in the chain of the Viscain Empire had been separated from the one that had arrived, the one that formed the Root Palace, and both had been cut free of the Vine. The portions hanging down from the sky looked like ripped open torsos with entrails dangling. Dull pops from as far away as the horizon sounded incessantly and provided a drumbeat to a bass rumbling. The planet was being subjected to gross telekinesis on a grand scale, telekinesis that could be released in focused, devastating bursts by way of a technique that Sinzer himself had developed. No one had seen it operate upon a planet before, and everyone who could see was gawking.
Deafening cracks shot out like black rivers of emptiness from around the city that surrounded the Root Palace. Though not a drop of water remained here, the surface of Planet 1001 took on the appearance of a tumultuous sea as the earth and rock shuddered under the Ghost Army's punishment. More cracks spread throughout the rock surface and the planet started to come apart.
Sinzer located the three Generals and cast each of them far from the Root Palace, which so far had gone more or less unscathed, except for its amputation. Satisfied that the Generals could no longer interfere, Sinzer and his entire Ghost Army gathered to face the Palace. As a group, their eyes began to glow steadily.
Pai looked on in unrestrained awe as the Palace began to rise. It was like watching a giant weed being pulled, with clumps of earth clinging to the roots, only the clumps of earth were the bedrock, asphalt, concrete, and steel of the surrounding city. About half of the Ghost Army turned its attention to the network of roots that still connected the combination of Palace and city to the ground below, severing them. The planet was crumbling. Though the Vine's roots held it together, it was shaking apart and soon there would be no planet left.
"You may want to go Dark, Pai. I've never done this before and am not exactly sure how it will go. I'm also exhausted, which may complicate matters."
Pai did as Sinzer suggested, becoming a pulsing sphere of purple light. Sinzer smiled inwardly. Pai Casta was beautiful both in the flesh and while Dark.
He really was exhausted, more so than he ever had been. His chest still hurt, too. All he had to do was get them out of here and he could rest for as long as necessary. He had to concentrate, though. He could teleport himself anywhere he had ever been or could see, but teleporting things was something else. As the Palace continued to rise, the Ghost Army swarmed close, forming a thin white veil around it. Individual soldiers began to shine, like severe lens flares from multiple sources.
Unable to think about how they would get back, Mont Cranden watched the spectacle above. He had never seen or even heard of such a display of psychic power. When lights began to shine all about the Palace, Cranden shook his head. "He isn't," he said aloud. "It's not possible."
But it was possible and the Palace, along with the chunk of city in which it was planted, was gone.
Cranden stared for a moment, unable to process what he had just seen. Finally he could do nothing but laugh.
5. The Beginning
9,367.013.0730
Sinzer awoke to Pai's smiling face.
"You're awake," she said. "Finally. You had me worried."
He was in a comfortable bed. There was light and it was warm. He sat up and his breath caught like sputtering liquid in his chest, bringing on a short, sharp coughing fit. He pulled his hand away from his mouth, examined the blood he found there, and realized that the wound left by the Smart Scalpel would never heal, not completely, anyway.
"Are you all right?" Pai said, coming close.
He nodded grimly and changed the subject. "You've been busy."
She smiled and gave a comical salute. "Yes, sir. The ganglion reactors are online, the breaches are secure, all the automated systems are running. We are self-sufficient. I don't know where we are, but we're safe for now.
"Good."
"Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"Yes. I can even show you some of it, if the equipment in the lab isn't too badly damaged."
Sinzer noticed the Infinity Box on a nearby table and couldn't take his eyes off of it.
"You had it clenched in your hand when you passed out and returned to normal."
"It's going to save lives, Pai. We'll need help, but that's what it's all about."
"Okay," she said, not knowing how else to reply. "Whatever it is you want us to do, we'll do it together. I chose you over the Empire, Geiss, and I don't regret it. I would do it again in a heartbeat."
He looked at her, recalling the events that led them here, and his eyes grew wet with tears as the honesty of her words sank in.
"Thank you, Pai."
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