A Brother's Regret

His shot glass slammed into the table, shattering.

“Come on, Xaris, you have something stronger than this, this couldn’t get a child drunk, do you think I’m a child, Xaris?” An 8-foot-tall titan of a man exclaimed, one side of his mouth slurring down slightly.

“No, I think you’re drunk, Carik, I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m not giving you another methanol shot until you spill it.”

“Come now, Xaris, I’m fine, I’m the gene king, a little methanol isn’t gonna get me drunk.” His words had started to slur, as if he’d forgotten what he was saying halfway through.

Xaris leaned forward, his eyes glinting, “She refused, didn’t she?”

“Maybe”, Carik said, looking away as if he were ashamed.

“Come now lad, you didn’t seriously expect her to agree, did you? Those OZARKS like siblings to each other, they’ve known each other for centuries, it’s like you and me, ya know, did you seriously expect her to agree to help you kill them?”

“I don’t know, kinda? She had said she hated the way things were now.”

“She meant the war and lack of democracy, not that she was willing to betray her own family.”

“I guess I just hoped I wouldn’t have to kill her as well, and that she wouldn’t cause such a time crunch.” Carik was now almost completely sober again, his metabolism was a minor miracle in and of itself.

Carik stepped upwards, his head scraping the ceiling, and walked towards a side of the room, reaching out towards what looked to be just a normal wall. When his fingers brushed it a puls of energy ran around the outline of a door, before that section of the wall slid away, revealing a suit of massive thick bulky reminiscent of the kind worn by medieval knights, however the chestplate and gauntlets seemed more like they might be found in the bronze age than in some medieval battle field. Next to the armour sat a perfectly crafted montante with a basket hilt, its blade hummed with a soft power as Carik picked it up, swinging it casually as if reminding himself of its weight.

“Really gonna kill all 15 of them?” Xaris said as he finished wiping up the remnants of one of the shot glasses.

“That’s the plan.” Carik replied as his blade completed the final twirl before he fastened it to his belt.

“It’s not too late, you know, you could still not do it, until you give the order, you could still walk it back.”

“Xaris, you know damn well it’s not, the OZARKS won’t forgive me, or believe me if i told the m Clar was lying. Plus, I’m not letting them continue to run Venus into the ground. Have you heard about the training program they want to set up for gene lords? It’s an abomination, even for them.”

“And your solution is to kill all of them?”

“Do you have a better one?” Carik was now completely sober and had started to polish a Hellenistic pattern shield hidden in the corner. It glowed with a dull orange lustre as Carik wiped the dust off it.

“So what’s your plan then, hit them from orbit and rush the palace? Do you really think that the 8th lord is just gonna go along with this? His fleets will open fire on yours the moment the bombardment begins.” Xaris leaned forward.” And once that happens, you’ll die in nuclear fire.”

“The 8th lord will be either dead or unconscious when the bombardment begins; the methanol I placed in his stravka will ensure that.”

“You're underestimating him, Carik. He may not have 12 letters, but he is still over a hundred years older than you.”

“And he loves his stravka, I put in enough methanol to make me blackout. He will trust me.”

“You can’t beat them, you can beat Clar and Saris sure, but what happens when it’s Orion facing you down, or Karik, or Valrick, the warriors will tear you to shreds. You can’t beat them, and they won’t go down even if you do. They have hundreds of backups, sure, you can take out a few, and maybe all for Clar and Saris, but that’s only because by some miracle, you gained both of their trusts; you don’t know all the others’ backup locations. And at least one is offworld.”

“I have to try.”

“Why? Because they blew up a city. You’ve blown up cities. YOU’VE KILLED CHILDREN. WE ARE ALL MONSTERS, THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE TO BE, KILLING THEM WON’T CHANGE THAT AND IT WON’T BRING YOUR BROTHER BACK.”

Carik snapped forward as Xaris’s mouth closed on the final syllable, grabbing his throat and lifting him off the ground. “Don’t you dare mention him in my presence again.” he said, his face contorting into a snarl as spines started to rip out from his arms and his fingernails grew into pitch-black claws. His pupils dilated until his entire eye was pitch black, and his muscles began to swell. “Or else you’ll be seeing him real soon.”

“Where gck, in hell?” Xarick said, barely choking out the words

Carik dropped him hard ”If you talk about him like that again I will kill you, Xarick, I hope you know that.”

Carik turned and stormed out of the room, His armour clanking in harmony with the humming of the blade and shield. He turned around one more time as if to etch this place into his memory, and then he left.

The ship floated in the empty void, beneath them swirled the endless storms and chaos of Venus’s atmosphere, and music filled the room as the piano in the centre of the room played away. “Why, why would he do this? After all this time, and why would he tell me?” her brain was racing to process every interaction she’d ever had with Carik.

“Because he thought you’d join him, he didn’t ask me because I’d made my stance very clear to him long before the Rikki Nouli debacle.” Seris said, their hands expertly flitting over the piano that stood as the centrepiece of the room.

“But why would he think I’d join him, Orion and the others… they’re like siblings to me, just like you are, Seris.”

“He thought he mattered enough to you to make you betray them. He’s not like us, Clar, he’s not logical, not truly. Or at least not as logical as we claim to be.”

“ As logical as we claim to be.”. You know I always thought you just said the claim to be to piss me off, but we really aren’t very logical are we? Oh we claim to be, we say that we know what you think before you think it, that every action we make is optimal, yet here we sit not warning anyone, not moving our backups, not doing anything as we wait for the great Gene-King to come kill us!”

“Is there really a point in resisting it, though? He has every right to be angry, we did kill his brother,” Seris said as his hands sped up, nearly blurring as he flitted across the piano, its audio and volume being changed as effortlessly as the notes it was playing.

“It was necessary.” Clar said her eyes were watering, or as close as ocular lenses could be to watering, as she turned them away from Seris, her metallic hand clanking as she set it against the glass at the front of the ship.

“Would you care, though? If someone killed Orion because it was “Necessary”, no matter how many lives it saved, would you really care? Because I wouldn’t.”

“I guess, but to try and kill all of us? Because of something like that?” Her voice started to crackle as the metal of her neck came to rest against the humming glass of the window of the ship.

“We all have different breaking points,” He said as his hands raced up and down the piano before slamming down in a crescendo, causing the piano to split in half. “That, for example, was the piano’s.”

Clar’s face cracked into a grin, literally, the metal upper and lower portions of her face split in two, revealing a layer of wires and flashing lights.” Heh, yeah, I guess so.”

Their blades clashed together, blade vs halberd, muscle vs metal, man vs machine. The air screamed as they tore their blades apart, Carik staring at Seris, his eyes wells of blackness, oil-slicked off his blade as he lunged forward, slashing upwards towards Seris’s head. It hit with a screeching sound, as his blade tore through Seris’s skull, metal being torn asunder. Seris’s body fell, metal limbs clattering against the ground, outside orbital bombardments pummeled the surface, destroying the last of Seris’s backups.

“You-you killed him,” Clar said, raising her own halberd as she said so.

“Observant as ever, Clar”, Carik said as he turned around.

“Why? Why would you do all this?” Clar said, her voice started to shake as she lost control of her voice box.

“You know why, Clar.” Carik said, he sounded tired.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“You want to hear me say it?” He said, looking at Clar in the same tired way he had spoken earlier.

“Yes, I want to hear you say how pathetic you are.”

“Pathetic, PATHETIC, THAT’S WHAT YOU CALL IT?” Carik said, his previous lethargy shifting to anger, then to rage as his mind processed the words. His voice dropped as if reality was warping around it. Spines tore out of his back and arms as his armour gave way around them. His blade began to glow with a blood-red light as his eyes closed.

“Is there another word you would use?”

“REASONABLE”, Carik said as his eyes opened, revealing two glowing yellow pits of light, where before there had been only darkness.

“And now what, you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill your friends over one death? One death that saved billions?”

“I’m going to kill you because of the words you said. I’m going to kill you because it wasn’t Orion or Valdring who gave the order. It was you. I thought you were different. That you could actually feel emotions, but now, I know that to be false.” Carik said as he lunged forward.

Clar spun her blade up, attempting to cut his arm off before it made contact, but she was too slow. Carik grabbed her by the neck, lifting her effortlessly off the ground. Clar dropped her halberd as she tried to struggle against his grip, hydraulics screaming and moaning as she fought. Carik began to squeeze his hand shut, metal screeching as it constricted and tore. Carik raised his other hand, a pair of spines had come out of his knuckles, he said, “You know on earth they used to make books about people like me, ‘super heroes’, that’s what they called us. My brother loved those books, and you know how his favourite character killed people? Like this.” Carik said as he drove his fist forward, slamming the spines straight through Clar’s facing, ripping through wiring and microchips like they were paper. Then he dropped her. Her corpse was lying ruined on the ground. Carik walked over to a terminal containing Clar’s last surviving backup. He spoke as he raised his fist,” Any last words, Clar?”

“Was it really only one death that broke you, and if that’s the case, I am sorry”

“Yes, but so did you,” Carik said, almost in a whisper, his fist hesitating in the air, only for split second, but it was longer than it should have been.

“Goodbye Clar”, he said as his fist slammed down, a wave of electricity blasting out from it, frying the circuitry as it struck it. A warbled scream ripped out of the speakers before suddenly cutting off.

Carik picked up his sword and shield and walked back to his spaceship. There was still work to be done.