Extensis Vitae: Empire of Dust Read online

  To Reznik’s surprise, Rin slapped a pillow against his side and lay down, head on the pillow and feet propped on the arm of the sofa. She began to tell him about the last six months. When she reached the part about her brother releasing her from her directives and destroying the token, she passed out.

  Reznik smoothed her hair out of her face and studied her. She looked delicate as she slept, a faint smile and peaceful expression on her face, the fierceness gone for a moment. The studs in her cheeks glinted from the city lights, and he wondered if she wore them to disguise her beauty. Fine lines had formed around her mouth and corners of her eyes, which he hadn’t noticed before. He thought of his own fresh-faced new skin. Wonder if she’ll get a new skin anytime soon or stay the same.

  An alcohol intoxication alert popped up on Reznik’s HUD, and he chuckled quietly. Another nifty new feature. “Allow intoxication effects?” the message asked. Sure, why the hell not? He glanced down at the quarter bottle of cognac remaining. He acknowledged the alert and chose the option to disable any hangover. That kicks ass—I’m starting to really like this new skin.

  Soon enough, the bottle was empty, but Reznik was loathe to let the moment pass as a pleasant buzz kicked in. He realized how much he was enjoying the simple warmth and companionship of Rin sleeping quietly against him.

  After some time, he got up and gently carried Rin into her bedroom. He set her on the mattress and pulled the cover over her. She stirred and muttered something in her sleep but didn’t wake. Reznik went to the kitchen in search of a glass of water when something caught his eye.

  There, on a low shelf, her katana lay on a carved wooden stand. He picked it up and was surprised to find a thin layer of dust on it. The weapon had obviously not been used in some time. When he drew the blade, the alloy gleamed brightly in the gloom, and the elaborate inscription drew his eye again. As he focused on the Japanese, a translation popped up on his HUD: “Today is victory over your self of yesterday. Tomorrow is victory over lesser men.” Very fitting… I like that.

  Reznik put the katana back and walked over to stare out at the city below. I need to see this campaign through, but is it wrong of me to drag Rin back into this? Is this just my selfishness in seeking her companionship? She deserves some semblance of peace now that she’s back home, away from the wasteland and those cutthroat fuckers like Haze and his brother. But is the solace found at the bottom of a bottle what she is really looking for? Perhaps she is like me, feeling like something is missing, as if we are nothing more than machines needing a purpose in life. He remembered her words about sacrifice and Bushido. If we make it through the coming storm, perhaps she will find her peace.

  He thought of the pleasant warmth of her sleeping peacefully against him and the contentment on her face. Reznik’s conflicted thoughts churned for a long time as the rain drummed ceaselessly on the windows.

  ***

  Rin stepped out of the shower and quickly dressed in her usual business attire: black slacks and a matching coat over a white blouse. She dried her hair and decided to let it hang loose.

  When she went out to the living room, she was relieved to find that Reznik hadn’t just been the result of a pleasant, alcohol-fueled dream from the night before. He truly had returned and in fact spent the night in her apartment. He was currently sprawled out, fast asleep, on the sofa. The thought of him staying with her cheered her mood, despite her embarrassment at her state the night before.

  She put on a pot of coffee, and the aroma woke Reznik. He sat up on the couch with a yawn. “Morning. Mmm… that smells delicious.” He got up and stretched his back.

  “Good morning. Sorry I wasn’t the best host last night. I was a little out of sorts. I didn’t mean to lay all that on you as soon as you came back. It’s nice to see you really did show up at my door and weren’t just a dream.”

  Reznik grinned. “Eh, no worries about last night. Glad I made your dreams come true.”

  Rin laughed and poured two cups of coffee. “So what’s on your plate? Now that you’ve got a shiny new skin, are you off to save the world again?”

  “I suppose a little of that. Right now, I’m just on vacation. A working one, I suppose.” He took a long sip of the coffee and walked over to the window, taking in the view of the morning sun shining on the tips of the skyscrapers. “Looks like it’s shaping up to be a beautiful morning.”

  “Yes, those are rare up in these parts. Seems it never stops raining.” She sipped from her mug and watched the bustle of early-morning activity far below.

  Reznik looked her over. “Nice outfit—very professional, in a Yakuza hit woman kind of way.” He chuckled. “Seriously though, you look good cleaned up—without the wasteland-warrior thing going on.”

  Rin returned his smile and looked away, unsure if he was teasing her or not. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad either. Young and fresh-faced. Want to go out and grab some breakfast?”

  “I’ve never been known to turn down the chance at a meal.” They finished their coffees and stepped into the hallway. “Say, remember that supersonic aircraft you had on standby when you met me in Skin City? The one that could fly there in fifteen minutes or so?”

  “The hypersonic cruiser?” She pushed the elevator call button. “Sure, I can requisition one if I need to. Got a destination in mind?”

  “Yeah, actually. After breakfast, do you want to get away for a little while? There’s something I need to check up on. Thought you might like to tag along. It will be like old times.”

  Rin tried to restrain the smile but was unsuccessful. “Why not? Like I have anything better to do…”

  Chapter 17

  “I’m going to the market before it closes, love. I’ll return in a little while.” Gabriella gave Thorne a peck on the cheek. He looked up from the schematics on his drafting table and grabbed Gabi’s hand before she could walk away.

  “Do you want me to accompany you? You shouldn’t carry too much, my dear.” He eyed her growing belly with a raised eyebrow. Since she was well into her second trimester, she was really beginning to show.

  “Aw, you’re such a sweetheart. I’ll be fine, love. You keep working on your airplane drawings. Win the war for Britain.” Gabi blew Thorne a kiss. She put her yellow coat on, picked up her basket, and stepped out the door.

  Thorne marveled at her beauty: long, shimmering black hair, flashing dark eyes, and tan complexion. When she opened the door, her long shadow crossed the room before she shut the door of their small row house behind her.

  Thorne sighed as he turned back to his schematics. The upgraded Spitfire project was behind schedule, and as the war ground into its second year, management was pressuring his team to upgrade the fighters and provide the RAF with a newer variant.

  Despite the immense carnage and loss of life he had witnessed in the First World War, the unthinkable had happened—once again, the world was under the global threat of fascism that threatened their very existence. Even if humanity hadn’t learned its lesson the first time, Thorne had learned a valuable lesson: war was a good opportunity to make money, an amount beyond your wildest dreams, especially if you were on the winning side.

  Thorne was a journeyman engineer working for Supermarine Aviation in south London. He was constantly frustrated at the company’s bureaucracy, which prevented designs from getting to the manufacturing and testing phases in any kind of timely manner. One day I’ll start my own company, and then I’ll streamline the design and production phases. Nobody will be able to compete effectively.

  He absentmindedly took a sip of his Earl Gray but frowned at the cold tea. He got up and went to put a fresh pot on the stove. Going to be another long night on this project.

  A distant rumble rattled the dishes in the kitchen cupboard. What the hell? Thunder? Thorne looked out the back window but couldn’t see any storm clouds over the buildings. Another boom sounded, even closer, and he realized it wasn’t thunder.

  Just then, the air raid sirens began their shrill wailing. F
ear clenched Thorne’s gut as he thought of Gabi at the market. “Bloody hell! I hope she gets to the shelter.”

  His pot of tea forgotten, Thorne ran out the front door and sprinted toward the market, a kilometer away. He began breathing heavily after a few hundred meters, the result of too much time spent hunched over a drafting table and not enough spent doing physical activities. People ran for shelter around him, most of them running the opposite direction. A man called out to him, telling him there was space in his Anderson shelter, but Thorne ignored him, his only thoughts on getting Gabi to safety.

  Thorne rounded a corner and saw Gabriella running toward him about a hundred meters away. Rumbles of more bombs shook London, seeming to grow nearer.

  “Alistair!” she shrieked in alarm. “The bombs!”

  “Hurry! We have to get to a shelter!” he managed to shout, his lungs burning.

  An airplane engine droned somewhere overhead, followed by another rumble. Thorne almost lost his footing as the ground seemed to shift beneath him. A Luftwaffe bomber rumbled across the sky, and Thorne watched in horror as the dark shapes of bombs tumbled out of its open bay.

  He picked up his pace, Gabi only forty meters away. There was a whistling sound, and one of the bombs struck the roof of a stone building ahead to his left. The building exploded with a deep boom that Thorne felt in his guts. The wall collapsed outward, and large chunks of stone rained onto the street.

  Gabi screamed as the wall came down atop her. Her cry was cut off abruptly, and Thorne knew instinctively that she was gone.

  “Nooo!” he screamed.

  A large stone bounced into his leg, snapping his ankle, and sent Thorne tumbling to the street. Shards of stone cut into his hands and forearms as he fell. He desperately crawled toward where he had last seen Gabi. He choked on the dust, struggling to climb over a large pile of rubble clogging the alley.

  Thorne clawed at chunks of stone, tossing them aside until his hands were bloody. Tears rolled down his dusty face. Finally, he saw her slim leg sticking out from beneath the stones. He cried miserably, knowing there was no way she had survived, but he still fought to uncover her. By the time the air raid sirens cut out, Thorne had managed to dig Gabi out from the stones. He held her broken body in his arms, rocking her as he cried.

  ***

  Thorne woke from his fitful sleep. With a sigh, he sat up in bed and glanced over at the woman lying next to him. She was a nearly perfect physical replica of the woman who had been his first wife. Psychologically, however, she was quite different.

  “What is it, my love? Are you having bad dreams again?” Gabriella sat up and watched Thorne with eyes that were strangely vacant. Sometimes she unnerved him.

  “When you have several lifetimes worth of memories, as I do, you are bound to have many bad along with the good,” Thorne replied. If only the bad ones had faded into the past like many of the others did by the time I was an old man.

  He sat up in bed. Gabriella watched him as if waiting for a command. Much like a loyal dog. They never can get the AI right, no matter how much input I’ve given them. He had to admit, though, that all he could give his scientists and engineers was from his memory—and a hundred sixty years after the London Blitz, Thorne had to admit his memories of the woman he loved were likely to be faulty.

  Since his first neural transfer had been performed, preserving all of his previously existing memories on silicon, he now had the benefit of total recall. Two hundred years’ worth of every memory possible to remember, he could remember. However, gaps existed in those memories, which were attributed to neurological decay. He had aged and eventually died at the age of 122. The natural-born flesh is faulty—science has made me a god.

  Thorne got out of bed and left the bedroom. He walked across the parlor to the kitchen, avoiding summoning a servant, since he often preferred to be left alone with his thoughts.

  A couple years after losing Gabi during the London Blitz, Thorne had immigrated to the USA, where he had thrived under free-market capitalism and founded Thorne Aerospace. During the hundred-plus years since its founding, it had truly evolved into a corporate juggernaut with a global reach.

  He placed his mug under a dispenser and pushed a button. Fresh, steaming Earl Gray poured into his mug, which Thorne took onto the patio. The stars twinkled overhead in their chilly brilliance. Dawn was a short time off.

  In an introspective mood, Thorne accessed the memories of the day he found out the ability to provide mankind’s salvation was in his hands. That was one of his favorites to relive.

  He took a sip of the scalding-hot tea, and for an instant, the memory overlapped with reality.

  Thorne took a long sip of the scalding tea. With a thought, he reached out and activated the apartment’s holoscreens, pretuned to multiple newsfeeds reporting from around the globe. He rapidly scanned two dozen different feeds that spread across the room.

  With disgust, Thorne saw the usual madness being reported. More protests had turned violent outside a fertility clinic. Management had foolishly left the facility unprotected by any armed robots or autocannons. The pair of human guards had been overwhelmed and dragged outside into the parking lot, where they were killed. The armed mob had stormed the building and slain a couple of office workers before the rest fled out the back.

  Turning his attention to another newsfeed, Thorne saw violent gang wars had been leaving scores dead in Miami every week. That part of the country was on the verge of falling off the map, as far as Thorne was concerned.

  The Republic of Texas wasn’t faring much better—it was being torn apart by rioting and violence and was nearing collapse as a result of its thirty-five percent unemployment rate.

  Just outside the District, some young girls who had been abducted after school a week prior had turned up dead after having apparently been gang raped and murdered.

  Battles for water and resources continued across Africa and Southeast Asia.

  The fledgling Chinese democracy continued to fight against Thorne’s own expeditionary force. It wouldn’t be long until the country would topple, giving Thorne Industries a much-needed foothold in Asia. Shiru International was proving to be a formidable adversary in the Pac-Rim and had close ties to the Chinese government. The Chinese had been foolish to insult Thorne’s offers of a trade alliance. They would soon pay the price.

  Democracy is such a messy business. I’m glad the central USA government collapsed so quickly with some gentle prodding—society is much better off now that it’s been put out of its misery. The rot has been trimmed, leaving the healthy vines to prosper. Wish I could do that for the world as a whole. This world desperately needs a reset.

  Thorne scowled and shook his head. Nothing but bad news. Mankind is its own worst enemy. He turned his attention to a feed that caught his interest. With a gesture, the multiple holofeeds suddenly converged into one giant one.

  A flustered scientist could barely contain his excitement as he stood in front of a group of microphones. The Euro-Asian Space Consortium logo was on the podium.

  “Thank you for being here,” he began. “At 0535 this morning, an exploratory probe discovered the asteroid designated 192 Nausikaa, which has apparently been ejected from its orbit between Mars and Jupiter. We believe a collision with another asteroid caused it to break orbit and sent it on a new trajectory, one which will take it within the orbit of the moon and within striking distance of Earth itself.”

  The reporters erupted into an annoying clamor, all shouting over each other to be heard. The scientist raised his hands to calm them down before continuing.

  “Right now, our best guess is that at its current trajectory, 192 Nausikaa has an approximately 66.75% chance of striking Earth within the next one hundred and twenty days…”

  Thorne ignored the rest of the scientist’s press conference as the news set his mind racing. Perhaps that was the opportunity he had so long sought. He truly believed the world needed a reset from the despicable acts of savagery and resou
rce depletion plaguing it.

  Nausikaa… burner of ships in Greek. This Nausikaa might very well be a destroyer of worlds. This would take some looking into. He needed to make plans and get to work.

  Chapter 18

  The rugged wasteland streaked past the windows of the luxurious hypersonic cruiser Rin had managed to procure. Reznik reclined in his leather seat and watched the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains disappear rapidly below. In the distance, he could see one of the ragged gashes torn into the Earth’s crust by the asteroid impact. The cruiser flew at roughly half its top speed, allowing them to take in the view below.

  A thought occurred to Reznik. “Say, I’ve been wondering something…”

  Rin looked up from the holographic display she had been accessing through the tablet built into her chair’s arm. Her katana, wiped free of dust, was placed on the seat beside her. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, it’s just that with all this fantastic technology available around us,”—he gestured, encompassing the cruiser—“how is it that mankind was unable to prevent the asteroid from hitting Earth? Surely attempts were made to stop it, right?”

  “Yes, there were—three attempts, in fact. The first rocket suffered booster failure in low orbit and never reached escape velocity. The second fired a nuclear missile at the asteroid, but it failed to detonate. The third and final attempt tried to attach cables in an effort to alter the asteroid’s trajectory and divert it just enough so it would be a near miss.”

  “Obviously, that somehow failed as well.”

  “It did. The tow hooks sheared off the tow vehicle.” Rin shrugged. “Seems as though mankind was cursed no matter what we tried to do—fate had other ideas for us.”

  Reznik shook his head. “It’s amazing that we could put a man on the moon way back in 1969, yet over a hundred years later, our spacecraft barely make it off the ground without something breaking.”