17. Thestle Part IV Minotaur II

Lupo disabledhis mech's audio and emotional feedback through an internal command prompt before gently ushering Auren from the train.

Chaos was all around them. Overhead, the remaining human fighters were still doing their valiant best to fend off the drop pods. He'd watched as a few squadrons even dared to take on one of the Keth battle cruisers, flitting along its length and pounding into its hull with their plasma weapons. But it was hopeless; the Keth snuffed them out one by one. Lupo found he did better when he pretended they didn't have that to contend with on top of everything else.

Lupo and Auren sprinted past a couple of soldiers standing sentry at Fendhall's airlock, seemingly unperturbed by a man carrying another man hurtling past them and out into the dusky twilight. They were equally distracted by the drop pods that had just landed nearby. Green disintegrator rays were already cutting through the far side of the habitat as the Keth ground assault finally began in earnest.

The pair slipped from the doomed dome and ran across the landing pad to Fortunato. Its door slid open for them, a beacon of hope in the chaos, and Lupo raced up to the bridge, not even sparing a glance into the medbay to check on Ophion, who he worried may have become a foe again with the arrival of his people. He'd have to think about that later.

"Firing controls," Lupo ordered as Auren slid beside him into one of the ship's co-pilot chairs.

"Got it," Auren said.

His voice was mechanical and distant. But he was already bringing up the targeting reticules and lining up a shot at the nearest Keth drop pod as Lupo set the destination for Minotaur II—thankfully, located on the far side of the planet and far from the space battle, at least for now. He couldn't let Bartie get away. Not when he was this close…

The Fortunato's maneuvering thrusters launched them roughly from the landing pad. Lupo looked down in horror as they departed, watching helplessly as glowing green beams lit up all across his former home, cutting the sanctuary dome and its inhabitants to ribbons as the Keth invasion force did what they always did: obliterate.

Auren began firing the Fortunato's guns at the nearby drop ship, and as they lifted away, he blew a gaping hole in its side, which he promptly fired three more shots into. To Lupo's delight, the drop ship erupted in a chain reaction of explosions that blasted a shockwave across them and caused the Fortunato to shudder violently.

"Good aim," Lupo said, grinning maniacally at the relief of escaping the Keth, at least for now.

"Thanks," Auren said numbly. "All those animals, those people…"

"I know," Lupo mumbled. It was sickening to even think about.

The Keth fleet, far to their rear as they rocketed around the horizon of Thestle and out of sight, had finally begun to open fire on the planet's surface with their shipboard weapons—raining obliteration across the surface of Thestle as they played their Game of conquest.

* * *

The transit to Minotaur II had taken only twelve minutes at maximum thrust, and they hadn't spoken a word in that time. Lupo assumed that Auren was lost in thoughts of worry and despair. After they were done handling Bartie, he promised himself he'd take the younger man home to Obila and remain there with him for however long he wanted—but found himself unable to believe it wasn't pure fantasy that they might actually live through any of this.

"Minotaur II docking bay highlighted ahead," the shipboard computer informed them.

The asteroid loomed in front of them. It was ugly, nearly half a mile wide. Its surface was bulbous and covered in inextricable lights, vent stacks, assemblies, and structures. Lupo could tell it was inhabited, and evidently the site of some form of considerable industrial activity. The whole thing puzzled Lupo as he oriented the ship toward the docking bay.

"I don't mind making a little noise—do you?" Lupo asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at Auren, doing his best to bring the tone back from dismal to tolerable, trying to sound lighthearted despite his inner conflict.

"It's like you read my mind," Auren muttered darkly.

Auren flicked on the ship's weapon display again and fired at the bay doors, punching hole after hole with the vessel's cannons. To Lupo's relief, the asteroid didn't fire back. Lupo nudged the ship through the debris, sliding it through the hole Auren had opened for him and entering Minotaur II. He set them down gently before turning to his companion in the dark of the landing bay.

"Are you really—" Lupo began.

"I'm sure, Lupo," Auren said gruffly.

He rose without another word and headed toward the fab bay to retrieve his Keth armor and weapon. Lupo hurried to catch up with him, unsettled by the detached quiet that had overtaken Auren since the Keth weapons had cut into Fendhall. They suited up in silence and headed toward the airlock. There was no kiss this time.

Lupo glanced into the medbay pod as they passed, surprised to see that the status icons for Ophion's vitals were largely green now. He was recovering. Despite what they had just seen the lizard's kin do to humanity, Lupo couldn't help but feel a bit of relief that their unasked-for companion would be okay as the airlock cycled them through and into the asteroid's vast stone-and-steel docking bay. It was filled with various shuttle craft and cargo pods.

In the airless environment, Lupo could only point to indicate a nearby door marked to lead to the station's interior—and he pointed to it animatedly now as the two set off toward it.

Surprisingly, it slid open as they approached. Lupo looked at Auren suspiciously, but the shorter man merely shrugged in reply, and so they passed inside. Lupo was relieved when the atmosphere repressurized within and they could speak again.

"Do you think he knows we're here?" Auren asked, checking his gun.

"Probably a safe bet," Lupo said.

He felt certain that a station like this would have alerted its owner when a hole was blasted into something major like a hanger bay door. He flipped off the safety of his disintegrator and felt it hum to life.

"Welcome to Minotaur II," a lyrical voice sang from the shadows.

A floating orb appeared from the darkness. It glowed crimson and splashed along the asteroid's corridors. Lupo had never seen anything like it.

"My name is Charon, and I will lead you to the banquet, where Bartie is eagerly waiting to receive you. Please follow me," it said curtly, flitting off down a stone-lined corridor, its dim light the only illumination.

"You heard the robot," Auren said. "It's not like he'd let us leave, right?"

"No, no, I don't think that's Bartie's style," Lupo said, feeling rather foolish for underestimating his ex yet again.

Lupo and Auren took off after the orb.

"This facility is state of the art…" Charon explained.

Its electronic voice modulated as it went on, always sounding the note Lupo least expected from it. It was more than disquieting. To their right, the tunnel opened into a vast cavern, the lights within switching on as the orb stopped in front of the huge opening.

"Before you is one of ten holding bays," the robot orb said merrily.

"Holding bays for what?" Lupo inquired cautiously, peering into the massive space hollowed out within the asteroid. There were rows and rows of…

"Cryo tanks…" Auren gasped.

"Correct!" the orb said enthusiastically. "One thousand eight hundred survivors per bay," it added. The lights within the bay clicked out as it continued on along the hallway.

"But what are you doing with them? Where are you taking the survivors?" Lupo asked, worried now.

In all the time he'd known Bartie, the man had never once shown a humanitarian inclination.

The orb paused midair, replying, "My apologies, but I cannot share that information," before continuing along.

"Not at all suspicious," Auren remarked from behind Lupo.

The orb zigzagged them through the labyrinthine corridors for some while until Lupo could finally make out the din of conversation resounding down the stone hall from up ahead. He could hear the tinkling of glasses and the scraping of forks on plates well before the smell of meat, sweat, and humanity reached him.

"Sounds like some kind of party or something…" Lupo mused.

He handled the alien rifle uncomfortably as the thought of emerging into a banquet hall armed with a Keth assault rifle made him feel somehow self-conscious. But that's precisely what happened. The little orb, Charon, had zoomed off into the shadows when it led them from the hallway and into an enormous banquet hall.

"I don't like the look of this one bit," Auren said unsteadily. "Lupo, let's get out of here. This isn't right."

They stood side by side at the entrance to a vast, duskily lit space—the sole piece of furniture within an enormous table many dozens of feet long, extending in either direction from where they had emerged near its center point. Seated around it were hundreds of guests dressed in ancient finery from a time before space travel or electricity. They ate with their hands, drinking out of huge goblets and laughing in joint merriment as they ravenously consumed the vast quantity of food splayed out across the length of the great wooden table.

Beyond, lounging across a velour sofa upon a stone dais, was Bartie. Lupo's heart stopped when he saw him. He was swirling a glass of what Lupo expected was Chianti. And he was staring right at him, smirking like the cat that got the cream.

Lupo fingered the trigger of his Keth rifle, doing his level best not to raise the damned thing and blow Bartie away then and there. But he wanted—no, he demanded—an apology. A hush spread across the diners as they entered, the room falling into silence as every last one of them turned to look at the pair in perfect unison.

The quiet was only broken by Bartie's slow, unenthusiastic clapping. He rose to greet the interlopers.

"Well, well, well…" Bartie rumbled. "Who do we have here?"

He wore only a silk kimono, and his large, hulking frame bulged out of it menacingly.

"Ah! Lupo! Forgive me, it's been so long I'd almost forgotten you. Or at least, this version of you." He sneered. "And who is your little friend?"

Lupo made to speak and realized with mounting panic that he had been hacked. He was frozen solid—much as Auren had been when he'd been decanted back on the resurrection ship.

Bastard! he cried.

He couldn't even turn his head to check on Auren, but was certain his fate was the same, and he felt his heart begin to race in his chest as he frantically pulled up various control terminals in his mind and attempted to unfreeze himself to no avail.

"What's the matter, cat got your tongue?" Bartie taunted.

He stepped delicately onto the banquet table, tiptoeing through elaborately arranged piles of meat and cheese, fruit, and cake. Lupo was forced to watched in disgust as Bartie squelched his toes into an untouched cherry pie, mashing it around and smearing it into the table before pointing at a man seated near the mess and commanding him:

"Eat."

The man immediately dove face first into the pie and began to do as he was told, pathetically shoveling bite after bite of the smooshed mess into his mouth until every last bit of it was gone. But the moment it was, he crawled onto the table and began licking furiously at its surface, his eyes pleading and tear-filled as Bartie laughed at him.

"This little prick tried to rip off my latest shipment of consciousness uploads," he explained dismissively.

The man was sobbing now as he continued to lap the wooden table against his will. His tongue became raw and bloody as he licked the coarse surface. No one moved.

"This one," Bartie chuckled, pointing at a woman dressed in a Victorian ballgown, "thought she'd skim from my accounts."

He grabbed a katana gracefully off the table and said, "Smile," which she did perfectly calmly—before he cut half of her head clean away.

To Lupo's amazement, the gore was limited—and he realized with awe that she was a machine, not a person. They all were. She continued to try to eat, but the food spilled ineffectually out of her bisected mouth as she struggled to chew with half her face gone. She grabbed at the scraps with an uncoordinated hand as they tumbled to the table, trying to insert them back into her broken mouth only to repeat the process in an endless loop. Lupo's heart thundered in his chest as he watched.

Bartie couldn't stop laughing.

"You're starting to figure it out, aren't you?" he taunted, turning to Lupo and kicking a hunk of roast meat to the floor.

"Fight for it," he barked at the nearest two diners.

They immediately began stabbing one another with their dining implements. One grabbed the other and threw him to the ground, landing on top of him and engaging in mortal combat for the hunk of meat on the floor.

"You always were smart, Lupo, which is why I was particularly disappointed when you didn't show up with my resurrection ship. I waited for years. Imagine how much time you could have saved me. Instead, I had to build my own. You failed me. Just like each of these ingrates failed me," he mused. "Fitting that you'd show up just in time for our little party. I do like an audience, as you know. And I have big plans. Bigger plans than you could ever imagine. Charon here has been quite helpful, arranging an upgrade to my destiny."

Lupo realized without a doubt that the man he'd once spent years loving was gone. Bartie was insane. And he was a monster, too.

One of the men was strangling the other on the ground now, bashing his head against the asteroid's stone floor over and over as viscera and hydraulic fluids oozed and flecked across the room. Eventually, the loser fell still and quiet, twitching sporadically as the victor turned and began joylessly ripping off chunks of the roast and stuffing them into his mouth, tears streaming down his face.

Lupo would have screamed if it were possible, would have done anything if it were possible. Instead, he was forced to stand there, frozen, and watch as Bartie continued to play games with all the people he'd fabricated to torture. He was certain the twisted man believed he had a righteous reason to punish and enslave them all here in whatever this hellscape was.

Lupo worked furiously, running through his command script, attempting to locate the backdoor Bartie was using to control him. Unlike the pirates, Bartie was a skilled programmer, and Lupo had trouble finding his exploit.

"But do you know what was truly fascinating about building Minotaur II into my very own resurrection machine?" Bartie asked. He was standing directly in front of Lupo, bending down slightly so that they were face to face. His breath was hot, his eyes glittering blue menace, and Lupo had never hated anyone more than he hated Bartie right then. The man licked him from chin to forehead, then slapped him across the face so hard Lupo would have fallen over had he been a human. Instead, he merely screamed internally in pain.

"What was truly fascinating was discovering I still had a copy of you saved on my personal drive from your original upload," Bartie finished, turning from him and returning to his velour throne. Lupo's stomach sank.

From the shadows beyond Bartie, a perfect replica of himself emerged. He was naked, smiling dumbly, and he strolled over and casually began making out with Lupo's ex. Bartie grinned at him as his clone sucked and licked desperately at his exposed neck, moaning and begging for the man.

"Now, now…" Bartie giggled, pushing the Lupo-not-Lupo away.

"First, do me a little favor, love," Bartie implored as Lupo's doppelg?nger tried once again to advance its programmed lust upon him.

"Kill the short one. But take your time. I want to enjoy this entire bottle of wine while you do it… right to the last fucking drop. And bring me their guns."

The tittering laughter that began then went on and on as Bartie poured himself an enormous glass and sprawled out on the sofa to watch with glee as the violence and madness continued.

Lupo stared in horror as a perfect replica of himself advanced on his lover and prepared to murder him.