Jahx bridged his attention between his sister and the operator. The operator laughed and cheered as the soldiers dragged a Sentient out of a taxi. Jetta recoiled in horror.
How do they know he’s a telepath? Jahx wondered. The Sentient appeared to be of some humanoid ancestry, though his spiked vertebrae and yellow eyes indicated outerworld origins. Was it a false claim from an enemy? Or perhaps another demonstration of Eeclian Dominion authority?
“Serves ‘em right, those chakking leeches,” the operator grunted. “Only good thing the Dominion ever done.”
Jahx wanted to look away, but his sister kept him grounded behind the eyes of the operator. She crowded the front of his mind, watching with fervent attention as they put a shockwand to Sentient’s neck. Blue sparks danced off his body, and he immediately went rigid. By now a sizeable crowd had formed around the scene, though no one dared intervene. Some even began to cheer as the soldiers threw the Sentient’s body into a freezer case.
Removing himself from behind the operator’s eyes, Jahx found Jetta staring at her feet, sweat beading across her brow.
“You were right. I didn’t want to see that,” she whispered.
Jahx held back his thoughts from her. This wasn’t the first arrest they’d seen—in fact, it was the third that week. Six months ago the Eeclian Dominion only seized telepaths who broke rules by cheating the casinos or manipulating the government with their powers. Now it seemed like even an accusation of telepathic talent warranted immediate arrest.
“Sorry, Jetta,” he said as gently as he could. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Stop it. I’ll take care of everything,” Jetta said. Green eyes blazed with intense inner fires. “I promise.”
THE SCREAMS OF THE arguing couple next door rattled the apartment walls. Daring cockroaches skittered by. Usually exhaustion helped Jetta sleep right through the distractions, but restless nerves kept her awake. Something felt wrong, and she had learned over the years to trust her instincts.
She slowly uncurled, careful not to wake her brother sleeping fitfully next to her cot, and stepped onto the concrete floor. Walking on her tip-toes, she crept from their makeshift bedroom in the front hall and peered into the dimly lit center room where Galm sat staring at the television. The sound hadn’t worked in weeks, and the flashing lights and wild colors of the infomerical did nothing to stimulate their uncle. He sat slumped in his chair, eyes unblinking, oblivious to the advertisements racing across the screen.
Jetta didn’t recognize her uncle anymore. Cracked lips hung open beneath sunken cheeks. The little hair he had left tangled up into a greasy, knotted mess, and he hadn’t bothered to shave in months. The only indication of life came in the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Anger heated her limbs. Why does Galm leave us to fend for ourselves? She thought, biting her lip to keep from screaming. Why doesn’t he do something—anything—about our situation?
Ugly memories shored upon her consciousness, reminding her of the truth. Before Yahmen took Aunt Lohien away, he played games with them, or at least taught them new skills so they stayed useful on the mining ships. This is the best he can do; labor and sleep—and turn a blind eye to Yahmen’s abuse.
Grief tore down her scream and pricked her sinuses. Galm was still her Pao, her adoptive parent, and his love, and their aunt’s, was their first understanding of family. No one else would have saved a street rat like her. Besides, she had never loved and lost like him, and in the face of his fiercest pain, she shied away.
Jetta weighed the consequences of trying to enter her uncle’s mind again, but she immediately thought better. The failed attempt to extract information earlier that evening had only thrust her in a nightmarish morass of fractured emotions. He’s too far gone.
A faint scraping sound pulled her from her thoughts. She turned around to see Jaeia kneeling at the edge of the vent in the hallway, unscrewing the grate cover. Her twin paused to look back at Jetta solemnly. A long moment passed before either one spoke.
“I’ll be back before four. Don’t wait up,” Jaeia said as she began to wedge her tiny frame into the square shaft.
“Where are you mapping, Jaeia?” Jetta asked, glancing back at Galm. Their uncle sat frozen to his chair.
“I’m going back to the east side of town again. I think I found a parasitic area. I got too tired last week to make it past the latch-portal,” she said as she dropped down into the shaft.
The eastern latch-portal, Jetta mulled, trying to remember the route. Thousands of subsidiary air ducts ran into every household and business structure, but parasitic areas typically fed off peripheral conduits, meaning tighter and more confusing passageways.
I hate that we have to crawl through the air system, Jetta thought to herself. I don’t want my sister risking her life trying to find a way for us to escape. What if she gets lost? What if she gets trapped in a juncture?
“Wait,” Jetta whispered. She ran to the small pile of clothes by her cot. After brushing away the Bulgis beetles that nested in its folds during the night, she uncovered one of her tattered socks. Reaching inside, Jetta withdrew the morsel of bakken she had won in the daily scramble for food with the rest of the child laborers.
“You didn’t eat today,” Jaeia said as Jetta offered her meal.
“If you’re mapping, you’ll need it. I’ll be fine. I get to rest,” she said with a half-smile.
Hesitantly, Jaeia accepted the gift. She let a smile touch her lips, sending wordless thanks to her sister before disappearing with a barely audible swish into the junction of the main ventilation shaft below.
Please be careful, Jetta thought, looking down into the darkness before placing the cover back over the hole. She then crept over to her brother’s cot and, wrapping an arm around him as he moaned in his fitful state of topitrate toxicity, wished for sleep.
PAIN TRIUMPHED OVER exhaustion, keeping Jahx from falling completely asleep. Even semi-conscious, he yearned for reprieve.
I need something, anything. Jahx squirmed in his cot as another spasm tore through his gut. Gods, please—I can’t take this anymore.
Finding comfort or joy, rarities on a black market world, usually came through channels that made Jahx squeamish. He didn’t want to feel nostalgic pangs after chomping on a human femur, or the excitement of scoring an entire lot of fourth-class humans in another Deadskin auction on the Underground Block.
What is that?
Hope, though thready and faint, drifted by from the next room. Desperate for refuge, Jahx allowed himself to fall into the mind of the most unlikely of hosts.
Through his uncle’s eyes, Jahx watched an infomercial where endless rows of children lined up behind desks, application forms in hand. Decorated Dominion Core officers accepted each child’s form with a hearty handshake and a salute.
“This could be you!” announced the flashing script at the bottom of the television screen. A proud child with a beaming smile donned a Core uniform; a moment later he was sitting in a class taught by a Dominion officer, eagerly raising his hand to participate.
“Don’t delay!” flashed across the screen, followed by a telecam number and signature.
Maybe this is my chance to do something right, Galm thought, eyeing the entryway where he believed Jahx and his sisters to be sleeping.
Memories came at Jahx in swirling heat.
A sunny, brisk day in the forests of Cerra. Galm clutched his rifle to his chest, shaking and sweating as he weaved through the trees. Even when the birdlike prawl appeared in a clearing, he couldn’t take aim.
(I can’t kill such a beautiful creature.)
Yahmen, moving through the bushes opposite of Galm, didn’t hesitate, firing three arrows from his crossbow. The first speared the prawl through the neck.
(It was no accident!) Galm’s subconscious screamed, mind conjuring the bloody mess of his genitals. Yahmen, crossbow still in hand, did not bother to feign sorrow, instead revealing a sickle of brilliant teeth in so
me kind of deranged smile.
Years passed by in heartbeat. Galm kneeled in front of his father, Co’Gin, head bowed and weeping.
“Your impotence is a disgrace to our bloodline,” his father bellowed. “You force me to pass the family fortune to your younger brother.”
“Please,” Galm said, clinging to his father’s pants. “Don’t give it to Yahmen. He will destroy our family.”
Flash-forward. Poor and desperate, Galm followed Yahmen to Fiorah.
“Don’t worry, brother,” Yahmen said. “You and I will turn around the mining business. Then we’ll be rich.”
That was never your intention, his uncle thought angrily. You bled the trust dry on drugs and prostitutes, and when I found these children, when I finally proved that I had promising heirs to challenge you for the inheritance, you leave me nothing but debt.
Still half-asleep, Jahx saw the frayed edges and over-processed colors of the torments that recycled over and over in his uncle’s mind.
After all, what’s left? Galm stared at his hands, but their decrepitude made him look away. Soon leasing Lohien won’t be enough. Yahmen will use her up and then come after the children.
Uncle, please. More awake now, Jahx couldn’t withstand the cramping pains of his stomach and groaned.
That’s probably the boy again, he heard his uncle think.
“Uncle, no,” Jahx whispered, too weakened to go to him or to wake his sister snoring by his side. In the far reaches of his mind he saw a future unfold in the muddy colors of death and destruction: Creatures with mechanical limbs rising up from the sweltering pits of some hell-world, chittering in an ancient language that hurt his ears. A man with a plastic face holding up a martini glass, toasting to the bombs raining down on a city. Screams and cries as a monster, knitting itself together from spilt blood of his dead sister, called out Jahx’s name. “Don’t sign us over to the Dominion. Gods, please...”
Galm, unaware of his son’s pleadings, mashed together his gums and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yes,” he said to the television, clinging to his newfound hope. “This will fix everything.”
CAPTAIN MANTRI SEBBS popped Military Combat, the first of four videos, into the viewer.
“Pay attention!” he barked before he set the film rolling.
The children leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide and mouths open as they viewed interstellar battles and air-to-ground combat. A few cried out in shock when an enemy was blown to bits, but after the initial scare, all of them hooted and cheered.
The booster tucked away in his sleeve called to him with each victory march and bloated admiral that romanticized the Eeclian Dominion’s military.
There isn’t enough methoc in the galaxy, he thought bitterly.
Not long ago he watched the same videos in awe, wondering if he could ever be a part of such an indomitable fleet. No, worse—that he would be the best of the best, leading the fleets of ships across the galaxies on a course of bravery and honor, just as the videos had told him.
“Chakking launnies,” he muttered.
Ire and shame speared him. Here he was now, watching the children of Fiorah, their faces covered in ash and red-brown soot from the mines, knowing they dreamed of a future they couldn’t possibly attain. Acceptance into the highly competitive Dominion Academy involved rigorous testing of both mental and physical competency, neither of which any of these children possessed. Most, if not all, had been born to substance-abusing streetwalkers who had somehow managed to keep them to term. The launnies who weren’t completely damaged by all the harcok or methoc had one of two destinies—the mines or the Block, neither of which had a happy ending.
I could put that liver to better use, he thought, watching the child nearest to him chewing on his ragged shirtsleeve.
Despite the improbability that any of these kids had the capacity for military conditioning, he did as instructed.
“Seriously?” he muttered to himself as one of the kids wandered off into the corner and wedged his bottom as far as he could behind a power column.
“That is not a latrine!” he shouted. The little one didn’t seem to understand Common and proceeded with his business. Sebbs rolled his eyes and turned away.
Everyone, even the degenerates of Fiorah, had to be indoctrinated. The Eeclian Dominion’s military, known as the Dominion Core, would save the universe from disorder, righting the wrongs that the United Starways Coalition could not. Little did the people of Fiorah, or anyone else for that matter, know just what sort of order was coming.
The self-righteousness of the Sovereign and his Dominion sickened him, but little could be done about it. The Eeclian Dominion’s power grew exponentially as the USC fumbled with the fragile Starways economy. Every day more star systems were drawn in by the Core’s promise of security and wealth, and Sebbs knew that it was only a matter of time before the USC buckled. Sometimes he thought his habits and his side deals with Reht Jagger were all that kept him from losing his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sebbs noticed the door of the classroom creeping open. Light from the hallway outlined three small figures. He pushed himself up from the corner projector as a Core soldier ducked his head in and nodded a silent command.
“Chak,” he muttered. More of Fiorah’s backwash for him to condition.
And I will be the best of the best, leading fleets of ships across galaxies on a course of bravery and honor, just as the videos said. He swallowed the sour taste that filled his mouth.
As Sebbs walked toward the three new children, he noticed how weak and sickly they appeared, even more so than the others. Yahmen Drachsi abused the labor laws, but even he preferred his employees healthy enough to work long hours.
The two identical girls had deeply sunken cheeks, bony limbs, and knobby joints. Their clothing only emphasized their near-skeletal physique. The boy looked even worse, with neck muscles stretched taut like cables and a distended stomach that spoke of deeper sickness.
Sebbs closed the classroom door and faced the new three, towering at least a meter and a half above their heads. Not wanting to disturb the viewing of the video, he leaned down and whispered to them, “What am I supposed to do with you?”
He doubted they could speak, though they looked four or five years old. At that level of malnourishment and neglect their brain development was almost certainly impaired. They also appeared to be of direct humanoid descent, another strike against them. Most humanoids, including himself, were only able to survive on Fiorah a short while. He could only imagine what the heat and low levels of oxygen had done to them. But even if they’d been perfectly healthy, they were way too young to be drowned in this type of Core propaganda.
He muttered a command for them to stay and stepped outside to talk to the soldier who brought them in.
“Is this a joke, Lieutenant? I’m not much for humor these days,” he said, pulling out a cigarette he had bought before duties that morning. The soldier averted his eyes as Sebbs lit up and blew a ring of smoke up toward the vents. Core regulations strictly forbade any activity that could impair their health, but most of Sebbs’s subordinates knew not to challenge him, especially when he was in a bad mood.
“I received orders from Major Calcucci to pick them up during their shift today. Here is the report if you would like to read it, Sir,” the soldier said, handing Sebbs a datapad.
Another personal message. Sebbs drew an irritated breath, and typed in his code. A note from Calcucci was either a matter of trivial importance, meaning more menial work for him, or an issue regarding his work ethic.
Captain, the note read, these children are to be given a Priority Level 5. Test them by standard protocol and the new PCB. Notify me immediately of the results.
Sebbs took a long drag and extinguished the cigarette on his boot. Why would Calcucci give Sebbs such a serious task? After his demotion and reassignment to the slums of Fiorah, his usual tasks required strict supervision by an operations officer and had never involved a
ny assignment of consequence.
He muttered curses in his native tongue as he handed the datapad back to the soldier. The screen turned blank, orders erasing themselves as soon as it left his hands. This was surely a joke, a wild goose chase to prevent him from getting drunk that night.
When he reentered the class, he nearly tripped over the three new children. Still standing where he had left them, they ignored the video blaring its grand finale and studied the other children. Did they know none of them stood a chance? Had they seen through the careful editing to uncover the hoax that had drawn him in so long ago? Perhaps they saw that the Dominion did not want them to become part of their great officers’ corps, only to turn their heads the other way.
One of the girls turned to examine Sebbs, the light from the hallway illuminating her face. Though nothing about her words or manner seemed rude, her eyes bespoke obstinance.
“We’re grateful to be here, Sir,” the girl said in Common, her thick Fiorahian accent grinding against the vowels. “Working the decks has been hard.”
I didn’t think laborers in her condition could learn the language of the Starways. Who are these three?
Looking closer, Sebbs couldn’t help but notice her eyes. Brilliant green irises, haloed around dilated pupils, defied her pale and scrawny body.
Sebbs hid his curiosity with a scowl. Deck work is for colonists with mechanical inclinations, not little children. They probably clean and install parts under the strict guidance of an adult.
The little girl looked him up and down. “We did some duct work on the older drill rigs, but now we’re doing engine repair.”
Did she just read my mind?
“We do work with an adult,” she continued. “Our Pao actually, but he just makes sure we don’t get caught in the spindles. We’ve put in seventeen-hour days for weeks now with the second-class mining ships.”
Pao, Sebbs thought, rolling the Fiorahian word over in his mind. He remembered hearing the term during the cultural briefings. One of the instructors had said that the closest Starways equivalent was “uncle,” but Sebbs had heard the real definition on the streets. The launnies—street rats—mostly used it as a term of affection for a foster or adoptive parent, but the Underground definition equated to “rat keeper.”
Triorion Omnibus Page 3
