Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Moebius

Chapter 5

 

“Rock, paper, scissors.”

Veronica covered Callum’s fist with her palm. “Looks like it’s your turn to deal with the brass.”

Callum pounded his palm. “Shucks. Fourth time in a row.”

“Maybe you’d be more lucky if you tried thinking two extra steps ahead instead of one.”

“Wait, you’ve been strategizing?” Callum said with a grin.

“I guess you’ll never know.” Veronica stood and headed for the hall. “I’ll tell the others we’re arriving.”

“Remember to send Taea up here.”

“Of course.”

Callum readied himself for the verbal barrage that was sure to come the instant they dropped out of hyperspace. The Resistance bigwigs were not going to be happy about a small strike vessel being borrowed, even if it was for a good reason. And led to good results. Never mind that the reasons and results were different things.

Taea appeared in the doorway. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, great. Perfect timing. Stand right there.” He pointed to the other side of the copilot’s chair. “Great. Just stand tight, I’ll need you in a minute.”

The green tunnel vanished and normal space appeared. Mithra hung before them like a holiday bauble with its sculpted continents and designed cloud patterns. Home sweet home.

On cue, the comm screen lit up, showing none other than Trace Archaea, a light-skinned, light-haired girl with some title like Minster of Yuman Chess Pieces or something. “Callum West and Veronica Xandermier,” she shouted. “This is the last straw. You stole a---”

“Yeah yeah,” Callum said dismissively, “I’ve heard this speech dozens of times. Let’s skip the part where you tell me I’m finished, and get straight to the part where I tell you how I just saved your life and the lives of everyone on that planet.”

“We were going to use the Lizardhawk for a critical reconnaissance mission,” Trace said. “Your rash action might have doomed us all.”

“Not likely,” Callum said. He beckoned to Taea, who timidly stepped into the comm camera’s view. “This is Taea. She’s come over to our side, and she has priceless intel.” He looked at Taea. “Go on, tell her what you told me.”

“Okay,” Taea said. She looked at the comm screen. “Tarran has decided to attack Mithra.”

Trace softened her face with visible effort. “We’re glad you chose to join us, Taea. We know how things have been in the Empire lately. It took a whole lot of courage and strength to make that decision. Rest assured we won’t hesitate to provide you with whatever resources we have available to help you cope with this difficult time.”

“Thank you,” Taea said.

“Now about this attack,” Trace said. “We’ve had plenty of skirmishes with Tarran forces poking at us. Rumors about a full-on invasion have bounced around since the beginning of the war, though they have recently resurfaced. Are you confirming these rumors? Is Tarran planning to invade in force?”

“I think they might be,” Taea said. “The exact word I heard was ‘annex.’”

“That sounds pretty forceful to me,” Callum said.

“And your source is reliable?” Trace asked.

“Well, um . . .”

“Yes,” Callum hissed through his teeth, hoping Taea would notice but Trace wouldn’t.

“I believe other evidence backs it up,” Taea said. “The last project I was working on before I left was some kind of new weapon, a sixteen-meter-long superium spike with a hyperdrive. I don’t know what they’re planning to do with it, but with so much of such a rare material it must be something big.”

Trace nodded. “Big like a full-scale invasion.” She pursed her lips. “Well Callum, it looks like just this once you’re off the hook. But next time I swear---”

“Yeah yeah,” Callum said, waving his hand. “You always say that. I’ll take that landing pass now, both for Lizardhawk and this antique we snatched up.”

Trace sighed loudly and signed off. Then, as expected, the landing permits came in.

“You did good,” Callum said to Taea.

The rest of the passengers entered. Oliver, Mara, and Conner stepped up to the front window and stared at the planet below. “Amazing, isn’t it,” Oliver said, “that the slave world of our time is this time’s bastion of freedom.”

“Oh yeah,” Veronica said, “you’re from the time of the dark ages, aren’t you.”

“Actually, right at the end,” Conner said, “and that’s not a coincidence.”

“Oh come on,” Callum said. “You don’t think we’d believe you three random time travelers would happen to have been critical to the Mithrassi Revolution? Didn’t you say you were from Moebius?”

“As a matter of fact,” Conner said, “we were the ones who brought in the Disease.”

“Disease?” Callum said, “you don’t mean the Rage of Chaos?”

“We were carriers,” Mara said, “and the first cases broke out near us before we left.”

“No crap,” Callum said. “Once we land, we’re taking a look at the historical records to see if you’re full of it.”

“Hey Conner,” Oliver said with a smirk, “you know what ‘historical’ means?”

“Shut up.”

 

* * *

 

Standing in the spaceport’s brightly lit hangar, Conner watched the maintenance boy installing upgraded weapons and shielding on the Black Fire. Ordinarily maintenance wasn’t Conner’s thing, but this boy was different from most people; he had robot arms and legs.

“Hi,” a voice said beside Conner, startling him. Conner looked to see a short boy with light skin and dark hair. “Is that your ship?”

“Uh, yeah,” Conner said. “I’m Conner. I’m from Moebius in Shaper’s Back.”

The boy’s mouth fell open in delight. “A real honest time traveler! You’ll have to tell me all about it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Skipper. But my real name is Ookawoo. I was raised by munkees.”

“Munkees?” Conner said. “Come on. They’re animals.”

Skipper crossed his arms. “No they’re not. They’re intelligent beings.”

“What? No they’re not. There are some living right outside my village in the woods.”

“In tree houses.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Constructed out of wood. Made with tools.” Skipper pointed his finger. “Only intelligent creatures can do that. And they have language.” He made some ooks and screeches. “That means, ‘A bird alights upon a midnight bow.’ A line from one of their famous poems.”

“They have poetry?” Conner said, mouth hanging open in shock.

“And history,” Skipper said.

The discrepancy of Arguen, his home island nation, having a village of furry people living among them, ignoring them and treating them like wild animals instead of giving them citizenship crashed into conner and put him into a state of panic. He started shaking uncontrollably, his arms rising in front of him. “WHAAAAAAAAAT???”

“Calm down,” Skipper said with a chuckle, “everyone was racist back in your time.”

“But we thought we weren’t,” Conner said.

“It’s okay. Just, now that you know, be better.”

Conner took deep breaths, his panic subsiding. “Okay.”

“If it helps,” Skipper said, “you’re not the only one going through a crisis. See him?” Skipper indicated the bionic boy working on Black Fire. “His name is Lawrence. When the Empire burned down my forest, I ran off searching for ways to fight them. After---well, it’s a long story. Anyway, Lawrence was captured by the Disassembler, and I ended up rescuing him before he was fully disassembled.”

“Ummmmm,” Conner said, “what?”

Skipper’s face got serious, and he spoke slowly. “Lawrence was a victim of the Disassembler. So.” He leaned in and spoke quietly. “If you talk to him, don’t ask him about the robot arms.”

 

* * *

 

Taea walked down the hall to the meeting room where the emergency strategy conference was about to be held. Some of the members had had to fly in from other stations, so she’d had time to shower and eat and change out of her Tarran worker’s uniform and put on some clean Mithrassi clothing.

When she was being shown to her quarters, Callum had paused by one of the many abstract paintings on the walls, thrown out his arms, and said, “Behold, a prime example of the latest artistic movement, barf-on-a-wall-ism!”

Taea had looked at the formless brush strokes with the uneven canvas and bits of paint peeling off at odd angles. “No offense, but, it looks like a jumble of garbage.”

Callum had looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t get it either.”

Now, a small one of those paintings hung framed by the side of the meeting room door. Taea practiced making peace with her dark side by letting her disgust take its fill. Art was supposed to represent deep truths, depicting the teachings of Drucan and the Veritasial stories. Virtues like kindness, judgment, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and guidance. This picture seemed designed as if to purposely avoid all semblance of truth. Where blue ripples might have signified the calm of an ocean, an offensive red mark streaked across. What looked like it might signify a warm, holy light had a brown splotch on it as if someone had spilled coffee on it. It was as if it was designed to be the kind of thing a lazy middle school art student who didn’t care about the class turned in banking on a fifty-fifty chance to get the lowest passing grade. A sign of total rebellion, spitting on the idea of purity and holiness.

“Hey,” a tough voice said. Taea turned to see a boy with metal limbs approaching. He laid a mechanical hand on the door she was about to go through and put the other hand on his hip, angling toward her and taking up a lot of space. He pointed a finger very close to her nose, and she recoiled a step. “You’d better not be a double agent, or I’ll do to you what your slimy dictator did to me.”

Taea stared at his plated, jointed finger, mind frozen. What was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do? “I’m, I’m not,” she said. “But he, he wasn’t a dictator. He won the election. We voted for him.”

“What?” he snapped, grabbing her shoulder, his cold fingers digging painfully into her.

Taea shrieked and struggled, but then calmed herself and lifted her chin. “You have to understand. He had faults, but he wasn’t---”

“Tell me you yourself didn’t vote for him!” the boy shouted. “If you did, you’re responsible for what he did to me.”

Those eyes, burning eyes, staring into her soul. She wilted before their piercing gaze. “N-no, I didn’t vote for him,” she said.

Behind her, a voice said, “Let her go, Lawrence.”

The boy held his gaze for a moment longer, and then released her shoulder with a shove. Then he turned and walked away, his metal feet sounding surprisingly normal on the floor.

“Sorry about that, Taea.” Trace appeared from behind Taea, accompanied by a retinue of colleagues. “Lawrence’s attitude toward your people is not entirely favorable.”

Taea said nothing, letting the silence speak for her while she mulled over the encounter. She actually had voted for the Disassembler. A strong leader for a strong people, one who could unify the patriots and intimidate the dissident voices. Sure, he had his habits, but he didn’t act them out on upright citizens. But with Lawrence grabbing her shoulder and staring into her with those piercing eyes, she couldn’t have helped but lie.

She joined the group entering the conference room and shyly took a seat. More attendees filed in, including Oliver. Taea didn’t see any of the other passengers from the Lizardhawk, though.

“Let’s begin,” Trace said, standing at the head of the table. “As you all know, the reason you have been called here is because we have good reason to suspect Tarran is planning a full-scale attack on Mithra.”

There was grim nodding around the room.

“Not only that, but they have built a secret weapon. Taea?”

Taea rose, took a breath, cleared her throat, and then began delivering the speech she had practiced. “Hello, my name is Taea. I was a construction and manufacturing worker for Tarran before I defected. My last assignment before leaving was to help build a strange object.” She gave the specifications for the superium spike craft.

When she finished, a blond boy spoke up. “Aside from being made of superium, it sounds like a relativistic missile.”

“That would allow them to use it multiple times against ships,” someone said, “or prevent it from being destroyed by anti-missile ground weapons, though we’ll still be able to knock it off course.

“So why make it out of superium? Why not make a thousand, ten thousand out of steel instead, and use the superium for shielding or something?”

“Could be they just want to flex on us,” someone else said. “Maybe they’re so confident in their victory that they’re willing to squander rare and valuable resources for show.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Until we have confirmation to the contrary,” Trace said, “We should assume they have an unknown strategy they’re going to use it for. When the battle begins, we should be alert and on our guard. Are there any further comments?”

When no one said anything, she continued. “On another topic, we have visitors from Shaper’s Back with news about our old friend, the Disassembler. Oliver?”

Oliver stood. “For us, it started with the Disease, which your history remembers as the Rage of Chaos. We---that is, Conner, Mara and I---well, not Mara at first---ow!” He looked down angrily at the boy next to him, Skipper, Taea thought she had heard his name was. “Fine, fine. We were searching for the elemental medallions to stop the Disease, when these people, Durgna, Senna, and Bloar, showed up, trying to beat us to the medallions. Turns out they wanted to use them to free the Disassembler.”

Skipper stood up. “When Lawrence and I defeated him, he wasn’t killed. He was imprisoned in an orb talia, which jumped back in time to Shaper’s Back.”

“A talia,” Oliver said, “for anyone who doesn’t know, is an object which travels backward along the Shaper’s Path and becomes its past self in an infinite loop. For reasons we don’t understand, this gives them seemingly magical powers. At least, I assume you still don’t understand it?”

“That’s right,” someone said.

“We believe Spellcaster’s staff is a talia,” Trace said, “if for no other reason than we cannot explain how it works through known science. Anyway, continue.”

“We’re here,” Oliver said, “because the Disassembler has been revived, and he and his three cohorts have returned to this time period. My friends and I got here by following them.”

“As uneasy as I am to hear this news,” someone said, “this might actually be good for us, in a way. If the Disassembler is back and he is not under the Shroud, then the Empire may have some internal conflict at the moment. Any amount of focus they spend on infighting is less they spend on us.”

“I agree,” Trace said. “We should devote some of our brainpower to finding those flames and fanning them. Oliver, is there any other important information you can tell us about the Disassembler and his companions?”

Oliver told what he knew about them, and the meeting went on to other things. The Resistance would send orders to fleet divisions in the stellar system and nearby systems, some to group around Mithra and others to stand by as backup---it wouldn’t do to leave other locations defenseless.

The meeting adjourned, the atmosphere tense. As Taea walked back to her room, she knew history would be decided soon. A lot of people were going to die. And she wondered if the tides would smile on her or swat her like a fly. If her choices these past days would steer the currents, whose fate might be sealed or saved because of her? Which carpenters or farmers or artists or clergy members would live or die because of her? Who was she to have such power? Who were any of them?