Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

As his ship jumped to the coordinates outside the Alliance Central Starbase, he pushed aside the ache in his chest to focus on his objective.

  The Alliance guard hailed his ship as he approached the perimeter to the starpost. “I want to speak to CCO Wren,” Damon said over the com line.

  Gaeshin Wren appeared on his monitors. The skin around his eyes hung like wet bags of sand, and his uniform was wrinkled and open at the neck. He was one of the finest officers Unipoesa had ever served with, but even Wren showed signs of wear under these conditions.

  “I’ve been informed that the Minister has been temporarily relieved. That being so, I’ve come back to offer my services. I know it wasn’t you who ordered my cryostasis.”

  “But I made no motion to stop it,” he said unapologetically. “I’ll be honest with you, Damon—over the last few months you’ve been unraveling. Not following protocol, going against orders. How can I trust you?”

  “You can’t afford not to, Chief. I’m the only one that can get inside Li’s head. I know him—I raised him to be the jackal he is. With your network down and your support dwindling, what do you have to lose?”

  Wren’s picture disappeared. In its place was a clearance to dock in Bay 17.

  When he landed, Gaeshin was there to greet him with a score of guards. Damon was patted down and searched before they allowed him to approach the Chief.

  “I hope you’ll forgive the inspection, but I’m cautious these days. Hard to trust anyone,” Wren said as they exited the dock.

  Out of respect, Damon offered him the truth: “Pancar is not your enemy. And neither am I.”

  Though his assurances were met with silence, Damon knew that Wren had afforded him trust, if only very little.

  “What’s the fleet status?” Damon asked.

  Wren secured them a lift before he answered. “We’re down to fifteen percent of our of Fleet capacity.”

  They were racing down the halls toward the command deck when Damon abruptly halted the lift.

  “What are you doing?” Wren exclaimed.

  “I need to see the Minister.”

  “He’s in a coma,” Wren said, trying to take back the controls. “Without a Healer they don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  “What about Triel?”

  Wren shook his head. “She escaped with Jetta’s help. We haven’t had the resources to track them down.”

  “Can’t Jaeia help?”

  “Jetta’s ‘blocked’ her out.”

  Damon dared ask about the captain’s whereabouts. “Where is Jaeia, anyway?”

  “You probably shouldn’t see her right now.”

  Wren’s reply was cryptic, but by his inflection, Damon inferred that she had discovered something undesirable.

  “I need to see the Minister,” Unipoesa insisted. “I need to get something off my chest before I do anything else.”

  “Will you harm him?”

  Wren’s eyes locked with his. The CCO would know if he lied, so Damon chose his words carefully. “I just have to get something off my chest. That’s all.”

  Unipoesa was thankful that Wren was overworked enough to believe him. However, the CCO didn’t hide the frustration in his voice as he stepped off the lift and signaled for another. “There’s a senior officer’s meeting at 1700 hours. We don’t have much time, Admiral.”

  Wren grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t do anything stupid or I’ll let the Kyrons have you—understand?”

  Damon watched him leave, stunned by the threat. It was quite unlike him. Then again, Damon had done enough that he would have liked to consider out of character in recent years that he could hardly pass judgment on the chief.

  In truth, Damon wasn’t sure why he wanted to see the Minister, or what he was going to do when he got there. He only knew that he had to. When he arrived at the intensive care unit, he was shocked to see how Razar had changed. Within just a matter of weeks his frame had atrophied, and his once fierce, angular face looked like a likeness sculpted of wet cardboard. Tubes, monitors, and probes emerged from every limb. Tidas Razar, the indomitable Minister of the Alliance, had been reduced to a nearly unrecognizable remnant of a man.

  “Sir,” the soldier at the Minister’s bedside acknowledged.

  “Some privacy, please, Lieutenant.”

  “We’re under strict orders from the chief, Sir.”

  “Well, I’m giving you a direct order. Give me five minutes of privacy with the Minister. You can watch outside the window and keep a lock on my signal.”

  The soldier looked nervously at his partner, but Unipoesa held his ground. The two soldiers finally relented, circling around to the observation window to maintain their watch.

  Unipoesa pulled up a stool and sat beside the Minister. The words came to him more easily than he thought they would. “You and I—we’ve done some unforgivable things....”

  Damon’s mind wandered back in time to when Tarsha and Li were first introduced into his class. Due to their accelerated growth they were rated as five years old, though in reality only six months had passed since the day of their birth. Initially neither of them would interact with the other children in the Program, but they quickly adapted to their schoolwork and competition with their classmates.

  Even with their superior genetic design, Tarsha and Li had the fundamental needs of any child, most especially for love and acceptance. But that was not part of the curriculum. In his class there was only discipline and reward.

  “All those years, all those things you ordered me do to my students—my own children. I will never be able to live with myself, knowing what I did to them.”

  From the start it was apparent that Tarsha and Li were leagues ahead of the other thirty children selected for the final phases of the Command Development Program. Tarsha had been designed with heightened empathy based on the theory that her sensitivities could lead to understanding an enemy, even thinking like one. Li was designed as her antithesis, with a limited emotional spectrum and, in Damon’s opinion, a pathological egocentricity.

  Damon’s orders were to break Tarsha and Li, remolding them so that their strengths could not be turned into weaknesses. Tarsha was drilled to be empathetic but cutthroat in her tactics. Li was trained to be vicious, but anticipatory of his enemy’s desires and responsive to the needs of his soldiers.

  Tarsha broke easily under the vituperation of her teachers, especially Damon’s. Li did not. Unipoesa was forced to break all the rules he had learned as a child psychologist to deconstruct the boy.

  “I’ll never forgive you for ordering me to torture my own son,” Damon whispered. Tears slid from his eyes. He could hear Li screaming as if it was happening now.

  It was the only time in his young life that Damon could remember Li crying. Something had gone wrong during his accelerated growth and development. The boy’s bladder hadn’t developed properly, and for the first twelve weeks after his introduction into the program he had multiple accidents per night. The doctors had tried to fix the problem, but in the meantime his superiors devised another lesson for their developing pupil.

  “Show him discipline,” the Minister had said.

  Discipline came in electric shocks administered with every accident. It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t the boy’s fault. But it didn’t matter. His superiors wanted Li to understand what was and wasn’t allowed.

  “We didn’t show him discipline—we showed him shame,” Damon said, looking at the floor. He could still see Li’s broken body shivering in a tight knot, soaked with his own urine and still sobbing from the electrical burns.

  “He was just a boy. He still had a chance to be decent. You tore that right out of him. You left him with nothing but his anger.”

  But every accusation that he threw at the Minister came up short. It wasn’t the truth. The truth was far too dangerous for him to acknowledge.

  Unipoesa closed his eyes. He could still see Li staring ahead blankly as the soldiers took turns beating him for his poor performance. He was older
now and no longer responding to corporal punishment. He made no sound and shed no tears.

  Having been pitted against four other candidates in the latest Endgame, he was supposed to win by predicting his enemies’ movements and defending the targeted territory. Instead, he did what he always did, what he had been designed to do, swiftly destroying every last piece on his opponent’s board. In the process he had lost many of his own game pieces, a tactic that made Unipoesa more nervous than his superiors.

  “He doesn’t care about the lives of his soldiers,” Unipoesa pleaded to Razar. “He will sacrifice every last one for the sake of victory.”

  “Show him his actions will not be tolerated.”

  The mistake wasn’t disciplining him in front of the other children. All his students had been beaten in front of each other at some point in their training. Unipoesa had taken it a step further.

  He should have known better.

  “Not very good at following orders, are you, candidate?” he said, circling Li, who was slowly rising despite his injuries. He stood at attention, favoring his right leg. He stared defiantly ahead through the eye that wasn’t swollen, his face unyielding.

  Unipoesa told the soldier where to hit next. The soldier’s punch landed hard and fast over his bladder, and Li doubled over in pain. His blue uniform quickly darkened around the crotch, and his futile efforts to conceal it from the other students left him panicked.

  “Still pissing yourself like a baby, just like you did when you first set foot on base,” Unipoesa said. “You’re still a baby. You can’t follow a simple set of orders. You’ll always be a worthless little pisser. A failure. An embarrassment to this program.”

  One of the other students snickered. He couldn’t remember which one. Probably Henderson, given what happened to him. All he remembered was the black hatred boiling in Li’s eyes, the blood fierce in his cheeks.

  He still remembered the words of the chief medical officer. “Candidate 00110 was murdered. No mistaking that. But whoever it was knew what they were doing. I can’t give you a culprit based off my exam.”

  Henderson, a likeable kid with a decent chance at obtaining the coveted title of chief commanding officer, had been one of the four candidates to witness Li’s punishment. He was found strung up in the bathroom by his ankles, all his joints dislocated, eyes blinded and tongue ripped from his throat. The only clues left at the scene were blood-soaked, sharpened utensils from the mess hall.

  Li had an alibi and witnesses. But Unipoesa knew better. Witnesses could be bought—or bullied—and after Henderson’s death, no one was brave enough to speak against Li, even when given assurances of protection and promises of reward by his team of teachers.

  After Henderson’s death, the students were heavily guarded and chaperoned. But that didn’t stop Li from ruining the others who witnessed his shame. One of them suffered from panic attacks and night terrors so severe that she had to drop out. The performances of the remaining two declined over the next several months to the point where they were iced out of the program. Unipoesa was never sure how Li did it. There was never any evidence, just the rotten feeling in his stomach.

  Unipoesa looked at Razar’s face. His beetle brows, unkempt and overgrown, cast caterpillar shadows across his eyelids. But what unsettled Unipoesa the most was the relaxation of Razar’s usual sternness into this strangely placid, almost vacant expression.

  “Then you gave me the final order,” Unipoesa whispered to him. “You wanted me to teach Li the value of life. But I didn’t. In fact, I think I taught him the most deadly lesson of all. Now I don’t know who I hate more. You, or me.”

  Unipoesa’s order was to break Li or ice him out of the program. So he did; after all, he had no choice. Li was rated as sixteen years old when they gave him command of a battleship and assigned him to patrol the planet they identified as his homeworld. The Dominion attack was a simulation, but Li was the only one unaware. Unfairly outnumbered, his ship’s primary weapons array and communications malfunctioning, they had thrust him into a situation that would force him to use defensive measures. When he didn’t, Unipoesa was forced to play a coldblooded hand.

  “My parents?”

  Li’s face had gone oddly quizzical as the false Dominion soldiers threatened to kill the man and woman the program had identified as his biological parents if Li did not retreat.

  Li could have fallen back, could have covertly deployed his SMT, could have stalled his enemy with negotiations—but he didn’t. That’s when Unipoesa realized how wrong he was about Li.

  “Lock missiles on their communications tower and forward scanner relay. Fire.”

  Even knowing it was staged, Unipoesa had to steel himself to watch the simulated execution. As the older couple slumped to the floor with freshly slit throats, Li’s eyes never faltered, his gaze steadfast and voice unwavering as he ordered a second round of missiles.

  Damon’s superiors, concerned with the financial ramifications of Li’s ruthless tactics and expenditure of resources, had finally had enough. They ordered Unipoesa to create a situation even more horrific.

  Unipoesa looked up into the lights, his eyes burning. “You told me she would be given a tranquilizer, something to take away the pain. But I saw the look in her eyes—she was still aware.”

  Livia was another student in the Command Development Program, the one and only person Li had ever shown a glimmer of interest toward. It was especially odd given that all of the students had been engineered with sexuality inhibitors strictly controlled by their handlers. Despite the miracle of Li’s natural instincts overcoming the program’s chemical and genetic manipulations, Unipoesa thought he had poor taste. Livia was rather plain. She was tall and thin, with gangly limbs and brown freckles smeared across her incongruously wide face. As one of the program’s early attempts at genetic design, her cognitive abilities were not as advanced as some of the others. She was also showing signs of Broekagen’s syndrome, the deadly autoimmune disorder that had killed several genetically modified students before her. Despite modern medical advancements, a Broekagen’s death was gruesome. Since she only had three more months to live, his superiors thought to make good use of her.

  “You killed your parents,” Unipoesa said. “An undesirable outcome. You’re lucky it was only a simulation.”

  Li sat staring coolly at Unipoesa. Usually a score of guards accompanied them, but this time Unipoesa was alone. He wanted no unnecessary witnesses.

  Li withheld the smile hovering at the corners of his lips. “I won the unwinnable.”

  Unipoesa folded his hands across the metal desk. “Not all victories are worth celebrating.”

  He played his ace. Unipoesa typed the orders into his datapad. Two guards escorted Livia to the front of the room and then left. A cocktail of drugs should have been keeping her disoriented and unaware, but Unipoesa saw the fear in her eyes and knew it hadn’t been administered. It was too late for Livia anyway, he told himself. His superiors expected results or else it would be his hide on the line.

  He looked back at Li. For a split second uncertainty flickered in Li’s eyes, but he quietly shuffled it behind his customary smugness.

  Unipoesa swallowed the last of his pride and continued. “There are twenty-six candidates left in this program, yes?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And only one will have the chance to be chief commanding officer, correct?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, congratulations, soldier, because now there are only twenty-five.”

  His withdrew his sidearm and shot Livia at point-blank range. Giving her no chance to scream, the shot made a neat, smoldering hole above her heart. She slumped to the ground, her head nodding limply to one side.

  Damon swallowed hard to stop his stomach’s contents from surging up his throat. The soldiers reentered, dragged her body out, and closed the door behind them.

  Li’s face began to crumple right before his eyes.

  Damon hated himself for
being able to continue.

  “That was not a simulation.” Unipoesa leaned back in his chair, giving Li time to absorb the full weight of what had transpired. “Since you have refused to follow my strategies, I’ve decided to change the game. I’m playing by your rules now, candidate. No mercy.”

  “I’m the best commander you have,” Li said angrily as tears spilled over his lashes. “I do what I have to do to win battles.”

  “So do I.”

  “You’re weak,” Li growled, “Your strategies are beneath me! I could beat you right now and spit on your record.”

  Unipoesa smiled. “Well, candidate, maybe you’ll earn that chance someday, but for now, you will do as I say.”

  Unipoesa stood up and circled Li. He took his time, his voice barely above a whisper. “The next time you disobey your commanding officer, there will be twenty-four students left. We have no need for a bed-wetting pissant like you. And I’ll make sure the world knows of your disgrace.”

  Unipoesa overturned the Minister’s shriveled hand in his. “I didn’t sleep. I started smoking again. And drinking. You watched it eat me alive, but you didn’t care. You found another use for Li, one that made all my work obsolete.”

  Li was rated as twenty, and his competition was down to six students. The other nineteen had either been put to Sleep or succumbed to the strange misfortunes that seemed to plague their training base. One student broke his neck during combat drills, an accident the holographic safety restraints should have never allowed to happen. Two accidentally blew themselves out the cargo hold while running a raid simulation. Another had somehow managed to slip and drown in the shower room in a few centimeters of water.

  When he read the reports his stomach always tightened with the same rotten feeling. The accidents could be explained in other ways, but in his heart he knew it was Li. None of the other students came close to scoring as well as Li or Tarsha, but that didn’t matter. Li was a killer, and he left nothing to chance. A miserable part of him knew that it was Li’s way of getting back at him for Livia.

  Unipoesa had nearly convinced his superiors to remove Li from the program when the breach occurred. Someone in the media had gotten hold of enough information about the Command Development Program to start rumors flying on the nets. Pictures of the students soon circulated, and Li’s became the primary focus. He was attractive and striking in his uniform, a curiosity that made the public push for full disclosure of the CDP. Then the General Assembly voted. Limited transparency was decided.