Duran Cross - Raddocks Horizon

Caufmann initiates a crude rapid thaw that results in death eighty percent of the time. It doesn’t matter now if Van Gower picks up readings of a thawing stasis tube; with the city’s blackout it could be a malfunction for any number of reasons.

The block of ice is saturated in an oozing pink liquid that eats the ice away at an accelerated rate. Again the question crosses his mind: who stole the bodies of Nordoth and Straker? Who knew where they were and how did they get them out without anyone noticing?

A thaw that should usually take a week takes just over a day and all the while Caufmann stands there watching, patiently. He has read almost every document about the HolinMech program and the slaves it was to make. Is making, in fact.

Over the day of the thaw Caufmann has grown to hate him. This ‘man of science’ condoned and even patented the transmogrifying technology that turned human men and women into cybernetic thralls of incredible power. This man signed off on men and women being taken from their homes and their families to be experimented on, to have their very identity and soul taken from them. This man was the pioneer of the entire conversion program, the forebear of the Embryon Protocol through Candidacy and beyond.

Caufmann takes his lab coat and shirt off, baring his sea of scars. Surgical scars, blade wounds and bullet holes, all visible, all exposed. He wants Holin to see him when he wakes up. He isn’t sure if he’ll recognise him but he doesn’t care.

When the pink fluid has dissolved all the ice, the naked body of Doctor Jonathon Holin, author of the HolinMech Program, is left shivering on the floor. Caufmann remembers waking up as Nexarien Decora in a very similar fashion. Confused and weak.

Holin isn’t reacting to the rapid thaw very well. He is showing most of the symptoms of hypothermia. He’s shivering and convulsing, almost fully aware now. As he reaches full consciousness, he rolls from the foetal position onto his back keeping his arms across his chest, squinting up at Caufmann who’s standing like a statue over him clutching a V6 Liston knife. It’s nearly a foot long with a razor edge on one side and jagged teeth up the back.

Holin’s eyes scan up Caufmann’s body, his old wounds, his imbedded gauntlet, and finally to his scarred eyes that glow eerily. Holin’s eyes focus, his breath stops for just a second, almost a gasp.

Recognition.

“Don’t,” is all that Holin manages to utter before a violent, powerful cut tears partially through his neck, jamming the knife into the floor.

The blade is stuck firm. Holin is coughing, trembling, trying to beg. Caufmann had intended to ask questions, though they are so far from his mind he can’t fathom anything apart from this very sudden, very brutal, aggression.

On any other occasion Caufmann would have cut with refined precision, taking the head clean off. He tries forcing the knife through but it still doesn’t move. He feels the knife scrape against Holin’s neck bone as he tries to wrench it. Caufmann slaps Holin’s reaching hand away from his face. With a grunt of exertion he grips a handful of Holin’s hair, dragging his head across the stuck knife. With a final effort and a spray of blood he rips the blade free of the ground, completing the decapitation.

Caufmann is seething far more than he thought possible. The very idea this disgusting butcher knew him means he probably saw him before he was turned into a CryoZaiyon. It meant he was probably one of the surgeons that cut out his humanity and imprisoned the last part of his being within a case, buried in his chest cavity.

As his anger subsides, the words of Antares run through his mind. It occurs to him that after all this time he does feel as strongly for someone as she.

It’s just not love.

He drags the body to his tomb pillar and connects some tubes into the severed arteries and another down the remains of the oesophagus. He shuts the tomb and powers it up. The pillar fills with nano-nutrient water and the tubes come to life, circulating the remaining blood in the body, making infinitesimal life signs on the monitor. Without a head, at first glance the body could be Nexarien Decora and that is enough. He seals all the tombs back within their pillar shell casings, seeing Antares one last time, watching as she is fully encased, and once again safely hidden.

He leaves the CryoZaiyon Tomb and finds himself in Del’s birthing chamber further up the hall. Inside, the upright pod chamber Del was hatched from stands empty.

Next to it, in the other pod, is the form of his brother: Adrenin. His formation is at last complete.

Caufmann smiles at Del’s younger sibling, another clone of the Suvaco units. This one is so close to the original genome that he’d be indistinguishable at first glance. Caufmann presses a few buttons on the console.

The gestation tank drains of its nutrient water, allowing Caufmann to open the door, inspecting his creation for defects.

Adrenin wakes up a moment before sliding to the floor, unsteady on legs he’s never used before. His orange snake-like eyes look up at Caufmann. He attempts to step forwards, but his leg doesn’t seem to do as he wishes, so he slips onto the floor. Adrenin looks as baffled as he is able.

Caufmann walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t rush yourself. How are you feeling?”

Adrenin coughs up some nutrient fluid from his lungs through his bared, sharp, teeth. “I… am not ready.”

Caufmann feels a pang of guilt. That is exactly what Del said. “Nobody is. The mission you were programmed for contains parameters that need to be reset.”

Adrenin looks up at Caufmann. “Status?”

“Breaking point. You were to help your brother unit in the field defending the city but Raddocks Horizon is lost. You have a new mission.”

“Command channel open,” Adrenin announces in a deep resonating voice.

“Del has…” he sighs, “malfunctioned, and needs to be…” he clears his throat, “taken out.”

Adrenin’s head tilts to one side. “I did all my combat training with him.”

“That is irrelevant.”

“We fought together and trained together.”

“It was all imprinted, it wasn’t a real experience. I assure you, the Del you’ll come across out there is not the one you know in your head.”

“I can’t kill my own brother.”

Caufmann is now disgusted with himself at how human he’s made his two finest creations. “Del has become a very grave threat.”

Adrenin looks at his hands, then to his birthing tank, then to Caufmann. “What are my additional orders?”

“You have your brother’s mission now, understand?”

Adrenin nods.

Outside Raddocks Horizon in a survivors’ encampment, Outbound, Rennin has been in makeshift offices and portable, prefab rooms giving briefings on the conflict for almost two straight days.

Most of it has been like one long interrogation, but the data provided by Caufmann has gone a long way to smooth relations with what’s left of the local military presence. Dead Star is one of only three gunships to make it out of Raddocks Horizon. The Horizon Military have been crushed under the contaminant onslaught.

Rennin rubs the back of his neck for the hundredth time today.

This presentation is to the Head of the Defence Force, General Tristan Faraday. He is Rennin’s height, mid-fifties, and looks like he’s seen one battle too many. The only other person in the room is Doctor Jellan Roths, who stares at him as if her eyes possess Superman’s heat vision.

Rennin feels like he’s going around in one big circle. “So the general idea is to leave them stranded there ‘until further notice’?” he asks with his most polite sarcastic tone. “Even with all this information? The fortified zone in Whitechapel is secure, you can land and pull them out.”