Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  Reht got a good look at him. The man’s face, pitted and scarred, appeared raw and fleshy, like a gaping wound with serrated teeth. As he leered at the dog-soldier captain, his eyes, sitting behind deep epicanthic folds, zeroed in on the blood trickling from the cut on Reht’s lip in some sick carnal fixation.

  What an ugly ratchakker, Reht thought. Any scumbag could afford cosmetic enhancement, especially on Aeternyx, which made the wiry fellow’s hideous appearance all the more wretched.

  “Diawn, baby—” he tried before a flash of silver silenced him.

  Bewildered, Reht didn’t initially register the blow. Feeling new warmth spread across his chest, he looked down, seeing shredded cloth and blood soaking into his jacket.

  “Wait—no—” he pleaded.

  She hit him again, this time across the cheek with the palm of her hand, and again with her boot in his stomach. He doubled over, unable to breathe as his diaphragm spasmed.

  “I should kill you,” she said, getting down into his face. “You left me to rot.”

  He gasped, trying to right himself, but the thug behind him stomped on his calf.

  “You see this?” Diawn asked, pulling up her shirt. A ragged scar cut across her stomach. “You want to know how I made my way after you threw me out?”

  When she struck him again, a glint of light gave away her secret.

  Horrified, Reht barely made the connection. Did she replace her fingernails with razorcutters?

  “Do you want to know the things I had to do to my body just to survive?” she said, nails slicing into his chest. “If you think my fancy new nails are bad, I’ll show you what I had to do to my—”

  Drowning in the agony of her touch, Reht didn’t hear the rest of what she said. He sucked in his breath, trying not to scream as dark blood saturated his jacket.

  “She’s gone!” he managed to say as Diawn cocked her hand back to deal a lethal blow.

  “What?”

  “I got rid of her. Triel’s gone. That baech betrayed me.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You lying, ahůdábogo musalenðmos—”

  “She’s gone!” he said, shaking off the thugs. He dropped to the ground, picking himself up slowly, clutching his bleeding chest with his right arm. “You were always the one for me.”

  With his left hand, he handed her the bracelet Sebbs had stolen off of one of the felled patrons of Suba House. “I want to make it up to you. I want us to be together. Forever.”

  “Hey jackoff, she’s mine!” the wiry fellow said.

  “Back off, Mar,” she said, stepping in front of him. She took the bracelet, her eyes softening. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Baby, you’re my forever girl,” Reht said between breaths. “Let the past be the past. I had to sort a lot of sycha to be here, but this is where I belong.”

  Diawn looked at the bracelet again, turning it over in her hands. Her brows pinched for a moment, but then her face relaxed. “Gentlemen, take him to my private suite.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Mar said, jabbing his thumb at Reht. “This lowlife is gonna screw you.”

  “That’s the plan,” she said, walking past Mar.

  She wrapped her arms around Reht’s waist and teased his lips with her tongue. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  “Long gone, baby. Long gone. They were just draggin’ me down,” he said, his hand gliding down the curve of her hip. She moaned in his ear and slid her hand down the front of his pants.

  “You’re one messed up baech,” Mar said, looking hurt as he turned his back and headed off the dock.

  “What did you call me?” she said, tilting her head and reaching between her breasts.

  “Oh no,” Reht heard one of the thugs whisper. The chained humans shuffling onto the cargo ship picked up their pace.

  As always, Diawn’s aim proved impeccable. The bullet sizzled its way through Mar's chest, and his body flopped to the ground. Smelling the fresh kill, the crossbreed dogs yanked their minders toward the felled meat.

  “Pierced rounds. Love it. You haven’t lost your touch,” Reht joked.

  Diawn blew on the end of her pistol before returning it to its place between her second and third breast. “You really missed me, didn’t you?” she whispered in his ear, biting his neck.

  “A little.”

  “Definitely not little,” she said, pushing her hips into his. He playfully bit her back, but she shoved him against one of the thugs. “Get him to my suite.”

  Looking over his shoulder, past the barrier wall where his crew was hiding, Reht made a low, sweeping motion with his hand to signal that he was okay. Actually, things are going great, he thought. Diawn’s accepted me, and if I play my cards right, I can lift whatever she’s selling and make double profit.

  Reht slapped one of the thugs on the back. “Lead me to paradise, boys.”

  The bigger thug snarled, but the one with the scar whispered something to him as they led Reht up the secondary ramp to the forward compartments of the ship.

  “So, seriously, what are you doing with a cargo ship full of Deadskins?” Reht asked.

  The one with the scar responded indifferently. “Somebody’s hungry.”

  Reht stuck his tongue out. “Too salty for most meat lovers. Who’s buying?”

  “Don’t worry your pretty little face over it.”

  Without offering any more information, the thugs led him through narrow corridors to her private suite. Expensive-looking items that belonged in a museum decorated the walls and shelves—relics from Ten Jao Hi, a planet of blood rubies and pink latos flowers, and twisted metal weapons from the outerworlds.

  Beauty and brutality, Reht mused, thinking more of the owner than the collection.

  “You gave me the black mark,” Diawn said, shutting the door behind him. He jumped a little, not expecting her so soon. “I should let my dogs devour you.”

  Regaining his composure, he reached out to stroke her cheek. She caught his hand, her razored nails digging in the meat of his palm until he flinched, then eased up, bringing him closer to her.

  “How can I make it up to you?” he said.

  She threw him on her bed, pinning him down with her arms, straddling his waist.

  “Give me a reason not to kill you,” she said, licking the blood from his chest.

  Grabbing her by the hair, Reht pulled her up and bit her neck. She moaned softly, ripping her bodice open, warm breasts falling onto his chest. Animal instincts awakened, he leaned forward and undid his pants, holding her back by the throat until he was ready.

  “You’re mine,” she whispered, breathing hard and fast as she slid on top of him.

  Desire triumphing over pain, Reht gripped the bedsheets in his fists. Her inner thighs, strong and wet against his hips, milked both torment and pleasure in heated waves.

  “Gods, yes,” she said, leaning back. Necking arching with every gasping breath, Diawn dug her nails into his thighs. As she cried out his name, his hunger intensified.

  Reht.

  A ghostly image of Triel flashed across his retinas. He gritted his teeth, trying not to lose focus as he thrust harder.

  My love—

  He grunted and Diawn screamed as they climaxed in unison. Despite his initial eagerness, his release petered out into the empty space between them, muted and disappointing. He laid back, the headache he had when they first left the Alliance returning with a vengeance.

  She rolled over, chest heaving, her face curiously blank. “Get cleaned up,” she said, her voice monotone, the life gone from her eyes. “I can’t stand your stink.”

  Her affect should have alerted him to danger, but he didn’t care right then. With every beat of his heart drilled an ice pick into his skull. He pulled up his pants and stumbled to the door, where two thugs met him outside.

  The scarred thug took one look at him and rolled his eyes. “This way.”

  Something is very wrong—

  As much as he tried, Reht couldn’t string his though
ts together past the pounding in his head. With one hand on the wall he followed the thugs up four flights of stairs. Steel-plated doors separated him from what he hoped was a shower.

  “After you, princess,” one of the thugs said, bowing in front of the double doors.

  The way the thug said it, the glint in his eye. All the blood left Reht’s face, but as he turned to run, the thugs caught him under the armpits.

  “Paradise is just ahead,” one snickered.

  A triple-barreled rifle jammed under his ribcage. “Walk nice and slow, ratchakker.”

  The stench nearly blew him back as one of them pushed open the double doors and forced him through.

  “What the hell is...?” Reht trailed off, too horrified to articulate the rest of the thought as he gripped the railing to the observational balcony. Humans lay in mountainous stacks atop each other, moaning and screaming behind taped mouths.

  “Don’t worry your pretty little self,” the scarred thug said as whirring conveyor belts delivered more bodies into the swollen, squirming belly of the cargo ship. “Nobody will miss these slumrats.”

  “Where’s Diawn?” he said, whirling around.

  She stood in the shadow of the doorway, a venomous smile stretching across her face as she dangled the bracelet between her fingers. Casually, she tossed it to him. “Never trust a dog-soldier.”

  He turned over the bracelet and saw the inscription on the inside. To Mai, all my love, Taeh Ly.

  Even his best lie fell short. “Baby, I bought this for you.”

  “You found it, you stole it—doesn’t matter,” she said. “All that matters is that you’re here, right now, and I have this moment.”

  With augmented speed her white boot smashed into his cheekbone. He reeled backwards, tipping over the guard rail and falling headfirst into the slippery pile of humans.

  After flailing about to right himself, Reht looked up to see Diawn cackling. “Now you know what it’s like, you sack of sycha.”

  “Diawn!” he screamed, cradling his shattered cheekbone. “You can’t—”

  “You’re nothing but meat,” she said, signaling her thugs to follow her out the doors. “That’s what I was to you, and now that’s what you are to me.”

  After Diawn exited, the lights faded and the conveyor belts withdrew from the cargo hold. An internal siren wailed as the engines amped to full throttle.

  Reht tried to gain purchase, but he couldn’t balance himself on the tangle of limbs. Nails scraped across his skin, stray fingers desperately latching on, pulling him down into the undulating heap. Fear carved through his reason and he struck out, elbowing, kicking, and punching the people below.

  “Diawn!” he screamed, careening backwards as the ship took off from the dock. “Triel was a godich leech! She chakked with my head! Don’t leave me like this!”

  He fell back onto the pile, defeated, bruised, and battered. In the darkness there was only the slick, grimy movement of flesh, and Sebbs’ words of warning playing over and over again in his head.

  JAEIA DIDN’T UNDERSTAND just how desperate she was until she used her second voice to slip past the staff in the Division Lockdown Labs.

  “Turn around quickly,” she whispered to one of the technicians handling a tray of experimental liquids. Lost in her voice, the technician obeyed, spilling the contents onto the floor. The rest of the staff scattered as an odorous vapor cloud formed from the pooling chemicals.

  Holding her breath, Jaeia ran through the cloud to the crosslink interface room, eyes and nostrils aflame.

  “Ennui,” Jaeia coughed, closing the door behind her before loading the program. The interface powered up, translucent blue panel lighting up at her fingertips. “I need your help.”

  The Hub projected the image of an elderly human with patchy skin and a frail body, legs bound with thick metal chains. “Our name is Servus,” it rasped.

  Jaeia ran her hand through her hair. I don’t have time to deal with the Hub’s eccentricities.

  (These are more than ‘eccentricities’,) her conscience reasoned. (The Hub has a personality.)

  Swallowing her guilt, Jaeia justified her actions with fear. I want to help, but lifting the program safeguards to an interlinked dataprocessor is a serious security risk, especially with the Fleet engaged on multiple fronts. I can’t compromise the Alliance; too many lives are at stake.

  “Servus, I know what you want, but I can’t give that to you today,” she said. “I need you tell me everything you can find about Saol and Rion, the Abomination, from Algar folklore. And take this off-registry.”

  “Hmpf,” the Hub said, turning its nose up and crossing its arms.

  Jaeia paused over the keyboard. DeAnders would have just snipped some of its circuitry, but she couldn’t bring herself to cause it harm, even if it was an artificial being.

  “Please, Servus, I need you. I know what Dr. DeAnders does limits you, but if you can’t help me, then I can’t help you. You have to show me that I can trust you.”

  “Trust?”

  “Yes. Show me that I can trust you, and I will help you.”

  Servus did a backwards somersault in place. “We can trust you, Jaeia Kyron, because we know you.”

  “You know me?” Jaeia said. She eyed a bundle of secondary circuit links and the thought crossed her mind to start snipping, but she stopped herself. Fear doesn’t rationalize aggression.

  “We see everything,” Servus said, pulling down his lower eyelids with his fingers, a kaleidoscope of light shining through.

  Jaeia thought about what the Hub meant. It’s integrated into the wave network, so it has access not only to the Alliance datafiles, but to every piece of electronic information on the net. In some way it did know her—through the tabloids, the court reports, the military profiles, the public profiles. This is why the Defense/Research teams considers it such a potentially dangerous entity—and also such a valuable asset.

  Sucking in her breath, Jaeia drew a terrible parallel: It’s just like Jahx when he was integrated with the networked telepaths...

  “I promise I will help you,” she said. “If you do know me, then you know I keep my word. Now, no more games. Help me with this query.”

  The image of the old man flickered. “Taking the query off-registry will prompt a defense system alert,” it said, replacing its distinctive voice with a generic male monotone.

  “I’m aware. Please continue with analysis.”

  The Hub blinked. “We are now off-registry.”

  In the span of a heartbeat the artificial intelligence changed its image to that of a Prodgy male, mid-thirties, average height and stature with the trademark dark brows and light skin of the Northern tribes. “Saol of the Gangras tribe. Rion, the Abomination. Information found. Classified. Unable to proceed.”

  Jaeia tapped her fingers. “Authorization Jaeia Kyron, alpha beta 1001-71.”

  “Insufficient clearance.”

  “Oe Vead,” she muttered, cracking open the door to see if anyone had clued in on her unapproved activity. The staff, still occupied with cleaning up the chemical spill, didn’t seem to notice.

  I have no choice, she thought, realizing what she had to do. Having given up the practice of Rai Shar, Admiral Unipoesa had become weak and accessible. Over the past few weeks she had inadvertently gleaned many of his codes while his wayward mind drifted during conversations that required him to access related information.

  It’s not an aggressive tactic, she thought, rationalizing her theft. Stealing is just a leftover survival method from Fiorah and the Dominion Core.

  After overriding the voice authorization mode, she inputted the admiral’s codes manually.

  “Commander Kyron,” the Hub said. “Would you like your requested information in visual or audio format?”

  “Visual.”

  The text and photographic report gave her a brief description of the time period during the height of the Dissembler Scare. Much of Algar was auctioned off to prospectors and milling c
ompanies, but she didn’t know that the United Starways Coalition had secretly removed artifacts and religious scriptures from the sacred Temples.

  If Triel knew, she’d— Jaeia suppressed the thought before it could go any further.

  With a deep breath, she scrolled down. The Alliance had translated some of the ancient writings, but much of the script remained too complex for their language systems to decipher. The Hub highlighted the substituted words on the projection:

  Saol of Gangras lost his innocence during the Ten Wars of Perspheolys. Enraged at the Gods and angry at his own mortality, he journeyed to Cudal and stole the power of the Gods to seek revenge, but his broken mortal body was too weak, and he was poisoned. Reborn to Algar as Rion, the Abomination, he became obsessed with the destruction of his people, and drunk with the power of the Gods, killed without conscience. The tribes of Algar, facing total destruction, used the Great Mother to defeat the unstoppable Rion, but because of their weakness, the Gods bound the Prodgies with a curse.

  Jaeia frowned. “Servus, give me a percentage of the accuracy on these translations.”

  The Hub made a series of electronic noises. “42.8 percent.”

  “I can’t rely on that. I need to know who or what Rion the Abomination is and how anyone could draw a parallel between my sister and me to him.”

  The Hub chirped and buzzed as the image of Saol dissolved into a swirl of changing light. “Rion, the Abomination, Harbinger of Death and Destruction. He saw God’s image and chose to submit.”

  Jaeia looked up at the Hub. “What?”

  “He saw God’s image and chose to submit. Rion the Illusionist, the Speaker, the Seeker. He chose.”

  “What are you quoting from?” Jaeia demanded. “What does it mean?”

  “He chose,” Servus repeated more fervently.

  Jaeia lifted up her hands as the keyboard faded, her access suddenly denied. “What’s going on?”

  “There is always a choice,” it whispered. The Hub’s image transformed into a young boy that looked too much like her brother to be coincidental.

  “I need answers, Servus. Please, I don’t have time,” Jaeia said, ripping open the circuit box on the wall. She studied the auxiliary RAM, preparing herself to make the cut when the Hub cried out.