(Aelana uxoris,) someone whispered, (rise, be gone.)
A jolt of familiarity—Jaeia, Jahx—Triel. Her aunt and uncle. The Alliance. The Starways. Purpose.
Someone else in the flame, a presence apart from the pandemonium, rushed her away from the lure of the halo. She writhed and screamed as she shot back through the strata of hell.
(Jahx?) she cried.
Not Jahx.
(Who are you?)
Someone else.
Someone with the power of life and death.
A FLURRY OF HANDS HELD Jetta down by her arms and legs. Someone shouted orders above her head in a fuzzy, jumbled confusion.
—this isn’t right!—
The only thing that seemed real was the pain. It raged through her body in a torrent, the intensity spiking as she gained awareness.
“Drop the payload and jump us back, now!” she heard Ferraway say.
“No!” she screamed. Something sharp stabbed her thigh, and warm liquid seeped into tense muscle tissue. “Don’t leave! I can stop the—”
(They’re coming!)
Her words were cut short. The gravitational flux of the jump loosened the grip of the crewman, but she had already lost her drive to fight. All of her muscles relaxed, and anxieties dissipated in a comforting haze.
“We’ve got to stabilize her—”
Someone lifted her head and pressed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth.
“I have to find her...” she mumbled, trying to stay conscience. “I have to tell her... we can’t...”
Jetta’s head rolled to the side. Her arms and legs felt like wet sand. As her eyes drifted downwards, she caught sight of the bloody, mangled mess that had been her hands. She tried to scream, but her mouth felt stuffed with cotton.
As she floated away, a demon with eyes like burning coals whispered from the shadows, telling her to come home.
Chapter VIII
Admiral Damon Unipoesa was on his second round of Old Earth vodka, staring at the picture of himself and the student class of ’80 when his terminal buzzed.
This was taken a week prior to the selection of the final thirty candidates for the Command Development Program, he remembered. Urusous Li stood to his right and Tarsha Leone to his left.
Bitterness and spite overshadowed the memory. Back when I could still care about my students.
His terminal buzzed a second time.
“Sycha,” he muttered, putting the picture back under his desk where it would be safe. He scooted over in his chair to the terminal, pressing the button to receive the signal.
He didn’t look at the screen, assuming it would be a status report from one of the operations, as he pulled on one of his boots.
“Damon Unipoesa.”
The voice sent chills down his spine. He dropped his shoe and pushed aside his drink.
“Victor Paulstine. How did you get on this channel?” the admiral said, eyeing the alphanumeric code of the signal. Somehow Paulstine had breached the network and secured a direct line to him.
“I wrote the designs for your security system—you don’t think I left a few backdoors?”
Unipoesa cocked his head. “Our defense system was designed by the Strader Corporation—”
Victor smiled. “I’ve gone by many names over many years to protect my investments. When I invented the flash transport device, I did so on Tralora, under a Narki title—Tt’ek So MeCaią. When I wrote the concept designs for the wave network, I had fourteen different identities, each one submitting different components to various military and investment corporations. And your security system—I was the Strader Corporation—all 111 employees.”
The admiral laughed. “That is simply not possible. No human could possibly—”
Victor’s face went cold. “You underestimate the human race. That was my mistake 1,100 years ago.”
“Excuse me?” the admiral said as he typed in a tracking command. Unipoesa slammed his keypad, trying to understand the error message that kept appearing on his console.
“I’ll save you the time—don’t bother trying to track this conversation. And if you try and alert the staff outside your office, I’ll terminate this link.”
“What do you want?” the admiral asked, eyeing the door. If he could alert the guards stationed at his door, he could possibly get a remote terminal to track the conversation and maybe even the signal source.
“Your superiors pale to a man of your intellect. Razar and Reamon make a mockery of leadership. So I will tell you this: I am going to finish what I set out to do 1,100 years ago, and I want a man of your ilk at my side.”
“And what was that?”
“To create peace.”
The admiral leaned forward in his chair. “Of all the brazen—”
“Consider my offer,” Victor said. “I already have the rest of your kin working for me. Why not make it a family affair? If you’re ready to be something more than a pawn, meet me in the Holy Cities at the Temple of Zeitus in two hours. I will make my announcement then, and I want you at my side.”
The transmission terminated, and the screen went blank.
Realizing his hands were shaking, Damon reached for the bottle of vodka but missed, spilling it all over his desk.
“Chak!” he said, trying to salvage what he could. Finally he stopped, sat back and remembered to breathe. Why the hell had Victor unnerved him so badly?
“My family...” Unipoesa said, thinking out loud. “What the hell did he mean?”
The Dominion Wars had killed most of his biological family, leaving him with only a few distant cousins on Arkana that worked the milling plants. His wife, Maria, from whom he had been separated for years, was vehemently anti-military, and would never associate with a man like Victor.
Just to make sure, Unipoesa pulled out his personal interface tablet and queried Maria’s bio-signature. Even though it was illegal, an invasion of the privacy of a citizen, he could never stop himself when it came to her safety.
To his relief, he found her in her favorite location: her front yard, tending her field of wild roses and white Catheilia bushes. He quickly terminated the feed to save himself the hurt and returned to his earlier problem. What family member would be of any value to Victor?
Then he remembered the photo of the class of ’80. He removed the picture from under the desk.
“Tarsha,” he whispered, rubbing his thumb over her face to clear the smudges. She was like a daughter to him—as, at one time, Urusous had been like as son. But that was before he had to pit his prize students against each other, and abandon his own humanity.
Intelligence reports pointed toward a connection between Li and Victor, but Victor had implied the involvement of more than one family member. Unipoesa’s other students were either dead or Sleeping, but if Victor could breach their security system, he could locate the ones who were still alive. And if Victor is half the snake the reports make him out to be, it’s plausible that he could coerce my former students into joining his cause.
“Tarsha,” he said again, taking the last swig of Old Earth vodka. He wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything. Not guilt, not regret, not sorrow. Not for her.
Tarsha is dead, he reminded himself. Only a crude, foul-mouthed Scabber remains.
Other bits of the conversation with Victor reemerged. He pinched his eyes between his fingers, flabbergasted. Did Victor really write the routines for their defense system? He hurriedly rang in the Minister. “We’ve got trouble.”
“Where have you been? I’ve sent the guards for you,” the Minister said. “I need you on the bridge right now.”
Unipoesa heard the guards shouting outside his door. “Victor Paulstine just contacted me through my private line. We’ve got even bigger problems. He claims he wrote our security system and left ‘back doors.’ I don’t know if he’s full of gorsh-shit or not, but our entire Fleet could be vulnerable.”
The Minister scoffed. “That’s ridiculous—he wrote an entire Fleet defens
e system?”
“That’s what he claimed, and he did get through to me on a secured channel.”
“That’s plausible, Admiral, though close to impossible—messages can be piggybacked,” the Minister said, shaking his head. “But writing the entire defense system is unheard of, especially for a human. Besides, I personally know the director of Strader. He’s lying, pulling some angle.”
“But Sir, wouldn’t it be worth investigating—”
“Admiral, I’ve got mass causalities coming in from the Rapture and an emergency jump from the Telluron. I’ve also got Wren on the line saying that he’s lost two battleships and that the distortion field has reached the first moon of Erion.”
“I thought the Telluron was launching nukes?”
“Ineffective. We’re facing the destruction of an entire cityworld.”
Unipoesa’s stomach dropped to his knees. “My Gods...”
“I need you to start coordinating the evacuation of the next planet.”
“Where are Jetta and Jaeia?”
“Both Kyrons were critically injured during their missions,” the Minister said.
Unipoesa gripped the lip of his desk. “You can’t send Triel to medical if either Jetta or Jaeia are injured—I haven’t discussed the Sleepers with them, or Triel’s treatment.”
“I can’t afford to lose any of my top battle commanders right now. We’ll have to sacrifice the Healer.”
Unipoesa bolted from his chair, sending the bottle of vodka crashing to the floor. Ignoring the shouts of the guards outside his quarters, he jumped onto a moving lift and redirected its route.
“Come on, come on!” he said taking over the controls and accelerating the lift as fast as it would go. He took a corner too sharply, nearly beheading a line of soldiers marching down the corridor.
“Caution. Please slow down,” the automated system warned.
Unipoesa jumped off the lift when they reached the medical ward, careening straight through the double doors and catching himself on the admissions desk.
“Where are they bringing in the casualties from the Rapture and the Telluron?” he said between breaths.
The befuddled attendant pointed him toward the secured ward down the white-tiled hallway.
Heart slamming up against his chest wall, Damon ran to the sectioned receiving area. Doctors and nurses ran every which way, monitors alerting in the background, bags of fluid and medication dangling from the ceiling. Injured soldiers moaned and screamed on medical tables, the smell of blood and burnt flesh singeing the air.
“Where’s Triel?” he shouted above the clamor.
“Admiral!” Dr. Kaoto shouted, pushing his way through the crowd to him. “Over here!”
The admiral followed the doctor through the isolation corridor, back to the intensive care unit.
“Both commanders are critical,” Kaoto said. “Jaeia has Class 5 head trauma and Jetta—well, I can’t explain Jetta’s wounds. They are completely off the charts.”
The admiral looked down at the readings on the datafile. “This doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Those are Jaeia’s intracranial pressure readings, and that’s the analysis of the corrosive tissue damage Jetta sustained,” the doctor explained. “But don’t’ worry, Triel’s on her way—thank God she’s back. I don’t think they’d survive.”
The admiral bowed his head. “This is a direct order, doctor. I want Triel to heal them, but as soon as she’s finished, I want her tranquilized and secured in medical lockdown. I also want the twins sedated until I’m able to debrief them on the current situation.”
“Sir?” the doctor said, astounded.
I’m doing it again, he thought, trying to keep his hands still. Right then he would have given anything for the burn that only vodka could give him. I’m breaking promises in the name of the greater good.
He looked the Kaoto dead in the eye. “It’s for your safety—and mine.”
“THERE IS A HISTORY in this room that stretches back farther than you could imagine. And what transpires between you and I will determine more than you could ever conceive.”
Victor stood over her, his plastic skin glinting in the light. Pinned down by an unseen force, Jaeia found herself unable to move as he turned her right arm outwards. With a smile that stretched across his face and distorted the shape of his eyes, he took a knife and cut into her flesh. She tried to scream, but her cries could not be heard above his chanting as he sliced away her tattoo.
“With eyes open, they burn.”
Jaeia shot up, screaming and pawing at her right arm. Striking her head on an exam light, she dropped back onto the table, discombobulated and mumbling.
“Hold still,” said a familiar voice. Triel’s warm hand wrapped gently around her forearm. “It’s okay. Let me finish.”
Burning liquid flowed up her hand to her shoulder. She looked to the left and saw the intravenous line secured to her skin.
“I’m going to make another pass,” she heard Triel say as her anxiety melted away and she drifted from corporeality.
The Healer’s ethereal touch glided toward her core, dissipating pain and fear the further she traveled. As Triel repaired her injuries, aligning with her internal rhythms, Jaeia witnessed snippets of Triel’s conversations, sensations, and feelings.
Surprise, delight. The smell of yingar root and karrin potatoes. Sensing Jetta’s nervousness as she hands her a container full of traditional Algardrien food—
—“They don’t exactly serve that in the mess hall.”
Drawn away from her own discomforts, Jaeia reached back, taking shelter inside Triel’s mind as the Healer stayed focused on restoration. Entire memories unfolded before her, vibrant and unguarded, until she encountered a barricade.
This feels wrong, she thought, feeling the cold, hard exterior of the psionic wall encapsulating Triel’s memories from the moments after the theft to her rescue on the Mercury. ...Like an unwanted memory suppressed by pain.
Jaeia focused on the black surface, testing its icy smoothness. I’ve never felt anything like this, she thought, unable to find the slightest crack or blemish. Something horrible must have happened for this kind of blockade.
Concerned about her friend, she resorted to her second voice: (Let me in.)
At the sound of her talent, the barricade imploded, sucking her down and in. Before panic had a chance to gain hold, Jaeia stumbled into some sort of store piled high with books and ancient devices. The smell of preservatives and dust tickled her nose, reminding her of a museum.
What is this place? she wondered as an elderly man behind a counter counted and hummed to himself.
After looking around, she convinced herself that odd wares and a storeowner couldn’t be the extent of the trapped memory. This doesn’t explain Triel’s pain; there has to be more.
Jaeia closed her eyes and reached back, rewinding through the disordered memories. When she opened her eyes again, a human woman, perhaps in her twenties or thirties, with fair coloring and light brown hair stood in front of her against a gray backdrop.
How do I know you? Jaeia thought, trying to reconcile the familiarity of her serious expression. Staring into the woman’s pale green eyes, she realized why. I recognize that look.
The woman spoke in disjointed sentences: “There isn’t... I was born on Earth in 2021... The most important thing... Earth, when it was green and full of life... but that day in 2052 changed... I can only hope that it isn’t too late, that maybe my surviving... our surviving... mankind still has a chance.”
As muted colors seeped into the gray backdrop, Jaeia reached out to the woman, but her touch sent ripples through the image.
It isn’t real, Jaeia realized. That’s why everything is choppy and skewed—like a bad copy of a copy. It must be part of a recording or impression that Triel accidentally gleaned.
“The man on fire knows... where... go next,” the woman said, her voice fading in and out. “If you... look for... familiar sign. And
when you find Charlie... answered.”
The man on fire... Jaeia remembered, thinking back to the mysterious message she had received not too long ago. Is this woman the one who tried to contact me?
Back up again.
Jaeia gasped. She saw Reht in Triel’s arms and a red-haired human officer in an Alliance uniform sneering at her. Immersing herself in the memory, Jaeia absorbed every moment as the red-haired officer told her about the Sleeper program and what was to be done to the crew of the Wraith.
Reht... Jaeia thought, looking more closely at the dog-soldier captain. The unusual red and black-tipped coloring to his hair made it look like fire. It’s you—but why?
Piecing Triel’s memories together with her own, Jaeia formed a disturbing theory: The Alliance couldn’t make Triel a Sleeper because of her telepathic abilities, so they tried to erase her memories and stage an accident. However, whatever impression Triel had gleaned off of Reht was protected, and it consequently protected her, preventing the Alliance from completely wiping her memories.
Jaeia pushed further, listening to Triel’s thought process about the memory stain and came to another conclusion: The woman who stained Reht must have also sent me the piggybacked message. I was supposed to find Reht but never reached him in time. Triel got to him first and picked up part of the message.
(Reht—the man on fire—he knows where to go next,) Jaeia said aloud.
Then it hit her. Who could perform a memory stain like that? What kind of telepath was capable of something that powerful? And why did the woman look so familiar?
Thoughts and images faded as Triel completed the restoration and withdrew. Jaeia fought to wake up, and when she finally opened her eyes, white-masked medics held her down as a doctor rushed over with a sedative in hand.
“No!” Jaeia screamed. “Stop! I just saw—I just saw—” she began, wrestling against their grip. She managed to free a leg and kick the medication out of the doctor’s hands, but someone else got her from behind, jabbing something into her shoulder.
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