Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  “Baby, you got to understand, she’s really the best pilot in the galaxy,” Reht said, trying to calm the Healer down. “And she’s a killer negotiator.”

  “She’s going to kill me, Reht!” Triel said, swinging her legs off his bed and picking her clothes up off the floor. “She wrote my name in blood across the lavatory mirror!”

  Reht chuckled and stretched out his arms, trying to bring her back in bed. “Let me tell you about little miss Diawn Arkiam...”

  Frustration and fright turned into pity as Triel listened to the pilot’s history. Brought up on the streets, Diawn became a victim of back alley investors wanting to make her more saleable. None of Diawn’s physical enhancements had been voluntary, nor had she been willing to take in her first hundred clients. It wasn’t until she had met Reht that she had elected to use her assets. When Reht described the details of their relationship, Triel finally understood the true nature of the problem.

  “She tried to sell herself to me on Ularu, her homeworld,” Reht said, playing with the ends of Triel’s hair. “But I seen her action in the bars and streets. She could seduce anyone—gender, race, sexuality doesn’t matter—into overpaying for a favor. So I made her an offer. Do the same thing, just as part of my crew.”

  “You took her off the streets. You gave her a family,” Triel said, leaning against the headboard of Reht’s bed. “You’re not just her captain—you’re her savior.”

  Reht shrugged, playing with the bandages on his hands. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Triel pieced together the rest. Reht’s insatiable desire for female companionship blurred the lines of his relationship with Diawn.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Triel said, trying to leave again.

  Reht caught her by the wrist and pulled her back onto the bed. “Stay here, with me. Be part of this crew. I’ll talk to Diawn.”

  “Why? What could I offer?”

  “You’ll assist Bacthar, the ship’s surgeon,” he said, touching her palm and then brushing his fingers up her arm.

  Her attempts at covering her markings had failed. He knows I’m Prodgy!

  “I know you’re name isn’t Raina,” he whispered, drawing her closer. “But I can understand the need to keep secrets. I’ll just call you Starfox.”

  “Starfox?” she said, not resisting him.

  “Because you shine like a star,” he said, playfully nibbling at her neck. “And bite like a fox.”

  Triel laughed. “Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy that.”

  Reht stopped what he was doing and looked her straight in the eye. “No. I love it.”

  The way he said love, the way his expression softened when he looked at her, Triel couldn’t help but say yes. Besides, she could easily justify it by telling herself it was far safer to join the crew than to be on her own.

  (I think I love him.)

  Breaking from her reflection, the blue-eyed Healer worked up the nerve to walk onto the bridge. She found Reht slouched in the commander’s chair, his head propped on his elbow as he chewed on the butt of a smoke.

  “Level with me, Reht,” she said, seating herself next to him on one of the nearby terminals. Diawn shot her a nasty look, but Triel pretended she didn’t see it.

  “I already told you what I could, Starfox,” he muttered, leaning back and stretching.

  The Healer could hear his thumping heart rate and feel the roar of his rising blood pressure. He’s not telling me the full truth.

  She played with the webbing between her fingers, not quite knowing how to begin without revealing the extent of her upper hand. “Reht, the crew is on edge. You don’t need telepathy to sense that.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, distracting himself with a minor report on his armrest monitor.

  She crossed her arms, unfazed.

  “Join me in my office,” he finally said, surrendering.

  He indicated for her to follow him as he lifted up the trap below his feet and jumped down to the cramped half-deck below. It was merely a small electrical and plumbing station, but it was the only area of the ship not serviced by the video cameras, and the thick layers of rusty pipework made for sufficient sound-proofing.

  Reht closed the hatch above them, forcing them both to crouch in the guttering light of a single light bulb. “Triel, I told you the reason I brought you out of hiding was because of a new threat of the Liikers.”

  “Yes, and that the Alliance is not taking the information Mantri Sebbs gave them about the converted telepaths seriously. So, what are you trying to avoid telling me?” she asked, touching his knee. She briefly connected to him, feeling the sting of acid in his stomach and the anxiety that cinched his bowels.

  Reht yanked his knee away and frowned. “Don’t.”

  “Sorry,” she replied, pulling back her hand.

  “Look, I’m going to have to ask you to help me. And what I have to ask you to do might not only be dangerous,” he began, avoiding her eyes and patting down his pockets for a smoke, “but might also be a bit of a moral stretch for you.”

  “Oh?” She felt the nature of thoughts by the way his biorhythm shifted. Her eyes glazed over, and she held her breath.

  Reht found the crushed remains of a cigarette in his back pocket and lit it anyway. “I need you to save the commanding officer that led the Core.”

  “You mean?” she said, trailing off. Impossible—

  He took a long drag from his smoke before continuing. “Yeah, well, kind of. General Volkor wasn’t real—just a publicity stunt. It was a cover up for three little kids, one boy and two girls, that the Core was juicing.”

  Triel reflexively shook her head. “I—I can’t believe that.”

  “It gets worse. The boy was taken away by the Deadwalkers, and the girls were sent to Tralora after the Core meltdown. According to Mantri, the boy is like this superprocessor of the new Liikers the Deadwalkers cooked up using Core soldiers and telepaths—crazy, eh?”

  Triel couldn’t breathe.

  “No chance the Alliance can toss with these new Deadwalkers. So Sebbs is hell bent on bringing back the two girls ‘cause he’s convinced they’re the only ones that might know how to defeat him.”

  “So all that time,” Triel whispered, “General Volkor—the one the holy men on Jue Hexron prophesied as the Slaythe, the destroyer of worlds—was just a pinch of launnies?” Triel couldn’t believe the absurdity. “They caused the annihilation of Polaris Prime and Algar?”

  The dog-soldier captain nodded as he extinguished his smoke on his boot.

  “You’re the only one who can get them off that planet, Triel, ‘cause you’re the last Prodgy. Regular docs and meds can’t cure any of those on that planet. You’re the only chance we have.”

  “I-I don’t know what to say, Reht.” She gripped the pipework behind her, certain she’d topple over if she let go. I promised to make Volkor pay—

  “I met one of them kids a long time ago, on Fiorah. They ain’t bad, Starfox, just messed up.”

  Triel thought of her father, his gentle baritone voice whispering for her to let go of her anger, her fear, but all she felt was the pain and loss of her people, her home and everything she had ever known. She didn’t understand how Reht could ask her to do this—unless, of course, it was because he had a sizeable investment in the matter.

  Seeing her reaction, he backed off a bit. “You have a while to think it over. Tralora is on the opposite side of the universe, and even though I’m riding Tech and Mom to push our jumps, it’ll take a while.”

  A loud scraping sound came from above as someone removed the deck plating. Diawn peered down, her eyes narrowing when she saw the two of them together.

  “Captain,” she said sharply, “we have a problem.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” he said to Triel as he hoisted himself back up to the main bridge. Triel slowly followed but seated herself in the back near the navigations terminals.

  Reht’s face lit up with a giant grin when he saw Minister
Tidas Razar, seething with fury, on the communications display.

  “Surrender your vessel now, Captain Jagger,” the Minister said. “We traced you skulking around in our mainframe. You are now a federative offender.”

  “Ah, come on, Tidas, the nearest ship you’ve got is the Gallegos, and it’s still pushing through the Vareiopolos system.”

  Triel sighed. Reht was clearly enjoying himself, much to the displeasure of the Alliance Minister.

  “You and your pack of ratchakkers are going to the Labor Locks, Jagger,” the Minister growled.

  “Tidas,” Reht said seriously, as if he was done amusing himself. “I have what you need.”

  “Oh, please, humor me,” Razar scoffed.

  “I have a Prodgy. I have a Healer.”

  The Minister’s face turned ashen through the spectrum of blue filters. “Impossible. There are none left.”

  Reht waved for Triel to come down into the telecommunication field. She reluctantly descended to the platform and turned her head just enough so that the Alliance official could see her markings. She didn’t like being part of Reht’s scheme for another “big deal,” especially now.

  “Look, Tidas,” Reht said, “let’s focus on the issue that matters. Sebbs is right, and you’re just beginning to get your heads out of your assinos and put the pieces together. By now you’ve discovered the truth about Volkor, the triplets, and where they’re located. You know that you can’t just nab ‘em off Tralora without killing them except with a Prodgy—and it just so happens that I have one Prodgy.”

  “You’re assuming that those kids are still alive. Tralora is an extremely dangerous planet. Besides, it’s old Dominion territory. There are still loyalists lurking around.”

  “I know those launnies are alive—they were raised on Fiorah. They know how to survive. And Dominion territory? Come on, Minister—just the Warden is guarding it these days. Don’t pull that.”

  “You don’t know that a Prodgy—a Solitary, nonetheless—can save them.”

  “It’s the best chance you have.”

  “We’ll see,” the Minister snarled. “In the meantime, you will surrender your vessel to the Gallegos when she intercepts you at Tralora. If you resist, I have authorized the commander to use whatever means necessary to bring you back—dead or alive.”

  Reht sported a dented grin as he made a motion across his neck to have Vaughn cut the comlink. The dog-soldier captain strode over to Triel and attempted to place an arm around her shoulder, but she shrugged it away. In no way did she want to be part of something like this. She wasn’t interested in making a huge profit, and she certainly wasn’t interested in saving the Slaythe, even if they were just little kids. Nobody—young or old—with a mind capable of that kind of destructive power should be allowed to live.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  Triel had wanted him to follow her, to tell her it was okay, but instead he let her walk off alone. In the back of her mind she could feel Diawn delighting in her disappointment.

  JAHX FOUND A WAY TO hide himself, though he knew it wouldn’t last much longer. Trapped with the others in the lost space between life and death, he maintained enough of himself in the transition to have some awareness of the corporeality he had been forced to leave. With every last ounce of strength he concentrated on this awareness and tried to retrace his steps.

  M’ah Pae cannot find out what I’m capable of, he worried. But the only way to keep the Motti Overlord from fully exploiting his mind was to stay attached to what little the Deadwalkers kept alive by the pulse of artificial life. Jahx cringed. Staying linked to his body meant a whole new kind of suffering. As he concentrated his energies on maintaining that link, he faced the awful truth.

  Awareness came through in jumbled pieces that gradually assembled themselves. Hearing came first, then recognition of shapes and movement. Buzzing noises filled his ears, and the steady clicking of something nearby, perhaps even within him.

  Looking down and saw little more than a flap of flesh across a mechanical torso. He didn’t recognize himself. Nothing felt real. Heat was no longer something that made him sweat; it was merely a temperature reading running across the screen that had replaced one of his eyes. The stink of the oil and organic decomposition registered as “within programmed parameters,” completely absent of emotional or physical response.

  Strapped or fused upright, Jahx could only turn his head by a few degrees, enough to see that he was one of thousands of stalks in a field of half-flesh corpses.

  (What have I been reduced to?)

  His innards, dug out and filled with twisted machine, spun and hummed in response. Sensory data scrolled down his new visual field, but he couldn’t understand it. Right then he didn’t care what he felt, even if it was pain.

  (My body is not my own anymore.)

  Shutting himself down seemed a viable option until he encountered the programs specially installed within his matrix to safeguard against self-destruction.

  (I can’t go on like this,) he thought.

  Voices from beyond cried out.

  Don’t leave—

  Help me—

  The others wouldn’t allow him to self-destruct. They needed him. Since they didn’t understand that they were trapped, they were unable to reconcile the breadth of their predicament. Jahx was their only hope, a shining beacon in the dark pandemonium of limbo.

  Despite it all, he had to try. He couldn’t allow M’ah Pae to turn him into the unthinkable. He would shut down system by system, starting with the metronomic clicking in his chest. Slow it down until it stopped. Even though M’ah Pae had stripped him of almost all his essence, he still retained limited control of his talent.

  You can’t leave me—

  How can you abandon me—

  —I’m so afraid—

  The cries escalated in the back of Jahx’s mind as he focused on slowing the beating in his artificial chest. As the interval between clicks grew longer, their pleas became more desperate.

  I need you!

  —can’t go on—

  So alone

  His conscience arrested his reasoning. (If I end this way, the others will be lost forever in limbo...)

  But before he could even reevaluate his choice, he appeared.

  Mucosal lips parted wetly. An elongated jaw chomped down on the remaining black stumps of teeth. Grinding gears screeched as the towering Overlord bent down to Jahx’s level, flashing a prideful smile.

  M’ah Pae plucked out his own eyepiece and placed one of his pincers in Jahx’s head, digging out the portal latch. From what little sensation he had left, it felt like a tickling inside his skull, but when the Overlord placed his eyepiece inside him, a tidal wave of nausea swept over him. The slimy eye rolled around his head until it settled in a compatible input/output port.

  “I am always watching.”

  Jahx felt his hold on his physical self slip. He couldn’t let go—not now. He had to stop himself from becoming what M’ah Pae wanted.

  “I am always listening.”

  M’ah Pae removed a syringe full of a viscous white substance. The Motti Overlord flipped open Jahx’s abdominal hatch, revealing pink intestines punctured by tubing and wires, and twisted in the syringe.

  “I know you’re still in there,” M’ah Pae whispered into what was left of his ear. “I can feel the defiant stink still leaking from your pores.”

  He depressed the plunger, slowly infusing the narcotizing cocktail. “Whatever you are holding onto is futile.”

  M’ah Pae’s lips grazed the side of his ear. Jahx knew that it shouldn’t be more than a proximity readout that registered in his newly designed matrix, but somehow a chill made its way down his synthetic spine and into the threads of his awareness.

  “Do you not know what you have become? You are mine now.”

  Jahx felt M’ah Pae’s slippery eye roll around in the head portal where his ear canal should have been. Somehow the foreign eye connected with his matrix, downlo
ading images and sound bytes into his central processor. And in the bloodlit dark where his eyes should have been played a nightmarish reconstruction of what the Overlord wanted him to see.

  Symbols, figures, faces—a blurred amalgamation of visual information jerked past like a film compiled of random frames. The thousands of eyes behind his own filtered the datastream, enabling him to interpret the dizzy swarm of information.

  He remembered.

  (Organic life identified)

  He heard his voice, commanding, unifying and destroying in logical and precise patterns of deduction and inference.

  (Disrupt communications)

  (Eliminate all subspecies)

  (Disseminate virus to neutralize Sentient reactants)

  (Reserve enough for feed)

  Compliance is simple, and so rewarding. Annihilate a warship, and there is satiety. Obliterate a star system and the exhilaration is divine.

  (I am Yahmen hurting Jetta), Jahx thought.

  He couldn’t imagine himself conceiving let alone enacting of any of it, and yet his stalk executed entire worlds without hesitation. Even after absorbing all of the knowledge of the Core, the Voices, the fallen soldiers, and the Motti—it did not equate to what that part of him had become.

  The Motti Overlord whispered, “I have destroyed your body and stolen your mind. Surely there is nothing else. Give in to me and save yourself the suffering. Let go, Jahx. Let go.”

  THE HAMMERING IN HER head worsened with every heartbeat. Jetta touched her forehead just above her hairline and felt warm clumps of clotted blood. Eyesight blurring, she wobbled to her feet, trying not to think about how bad the injury might be.

  With a mixed feeling of relief and urgency, she reached the edge of the forest where trees and rocks came together at the base of the mountain.

  “Skucheka!”

  Too late. About a hundred meters above her she spotted Rawyll, severely injured, struggling with a Prig. Dinjin was behind him, slumped against the mountainside, his abdomen a gaping wound glistening with purple organs. From the sound of gunfire, she knew that the other Prigs had successfully breached the entrance.