Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  Jetta witnessed Kurt and Josef entering lines of code into an enormous machine. At the center of the room, a miniature golden globe rotated on a suspended axis. Latticed steel pylons, arranged circumferentially around the globe, housed vast storage cells while boxed compensators grounded the dancing bolts of electricity flying from the immense energy field.

  The Ark, Jetta realized.

  The world fluctuated, and the scene faded from view. (God...) Ariya whispered, her image torquing.

  (What’s wrong?)

  (It took everything I had to lock Kurt into sleep. I don’t have time to tell you everything, so I will tell you the most important thing: Josef Stein did not destroy the Earth. It was Ramak Yakarvoah, leader of the Doomsdayers.)

  The gears of time reversed, flinging her backward until a severely disfigured man came into view. Jetta could barely look at him. Extensive burn scars mangled his face and crippled his stature. However, she did not cringe at his deformity, but his eyes, deep wells of hatred, and his hands that shook with unmitigated rage.

  (He was right there, all along, right beside Josef, but your father and I were too blind to see it. Something happened to him a few months before the end of the world, and he went into hiding. That’s when he somehow tricked Josef into thinking his wife and son were murdered by the UPR and coerced him into unleashing his nanites to infect the world.)

  Another image tried to form, but Ariya winced outside their psionic connection.

  (Are you okay?)

  (Yes—please—I can’t stop,) she said, her eyes alight with fear. (Your father and I were the only ones left on Earth from our group, and even though I was at the end of my pregnancy, we followed a hunch and broke into Ramak’s private lab. We found Kurt, but by that time, it was too late. Josef was mad, and the world was burning. So we stole Ramak’s ship to try and escape with the rest of the Exodus, but we didn’t know it was some sort of experimental trans-dimensional ship. I can’t even describe to you what happened next...)

  Jerky images ripped through her sight at incredible speed. Jetta caught only fragments of objects and sensations. The white outline of a face. Wheels of impossible colors arching across the sky, voices whispering in an unfamiliar tongue.

  (We went to a place outside our universe, outside time. But before we could get our bearings, the three of us were seized by these ghostly entities.)

  Jetta saw through Ariya’s eyes as a faint silhouette appeared before the starcraft dashboard and hovered above her for a fraction of a second, long enough for her to throw her arms up against the attack. It was a violation unlike anything she had ever experienced. Hungry fingers raked at her soul, trying to carve out a place in her mind for its new home, but her body was already host to those that lay unborn in her womb.

  (I’m not sure why—maybe it was because I was pregnant—but somehow we were spared the insanity that took Kurt and your father. Still, I was changed. Even though that thing never managed to take control of my mind, it left something inside me—inside each one of us. I could read people’s thoughts; I had a heightened awareness. I was so frightened...)

  In the memory, Jetta witnessed Ariya holding up her hands, seeing through their fleshy confinement and the flux of time into other realms, other places of existence beyond conception.

  (The others saw that I wasn’t overtaken and attacked me. In the struggle I went into labor. That’s when your father came back to me, if only for a moment.)

  Kovan lifted his hand for the killing blow, but paused when he heard the anguish of her labor cry. Sweat poured from his brow and he bit back a scream, the veins on his forehead popping out from beneath colorless skin.

  “You will not have them!” he screamed, blood streaming from his nose.

  Kurt lunged at him, but Kovan, a bigger and stronger man, knocked him out with the back of his fist and stuffed him a storage compartment.

  Terrified, Ariya scooted back into a corner, unsure of the man that approached her.

  “It’s me, it’s me,” her husband whispered, his voice strained as he clutched the back of the console chair.

  The labor pains intensified, demanding all of her strength. She had no choice but to allow him near. Moments later, three squirming babies with squishy red faces took their first breaths. Two girls and a boy, heads full of curly black hair.

  (He and I both knew we had to protect you from the entities, so we did the only thing we could—we put you in an escape pod and prayed for your safety. But not before I gave you this.)

  Kovan and Ariya bent over the three tiny bodies, hurriedly marking the insides of their right arms with a pen-like device.

  What the hell is that? Jetta didn’t recognize the instrument until Ariya turned over her own wrist, and with a quick press of a button, embedded in her skin the graceful strokes of her like tattoo.

  That’s a graffiti laser! Jetta thought, drawing from her stolen knowledge of twenty-first century Earth. The anti-government groups used them all the time.

  (The emblem of our conviction, our hope, our love.)

  Jetta’s breath hitched in her chest as she traced the outline of the tattoo on the inside of her right arm. Not a mark of shame. Not a symbol of her abandonment.

  (Somehow Kurt came back around and broke free,) Ariya said as the scientist freed himself from the compartment. (Kovan knew he was no match for the thing inside Kurt—or inside himself—so he forced me into the aft lifeboat. I wanted to help him fight, try and save him—both of them—but he set the jump coordinates back to Earth before I could stop him. I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is that in the short time that passed in that place, centuries had passed on Earth. I expected you to be dead, but instead I saw you on the newsreels after you defeated the Motti. Somehow, against all odds, you survived. I didn’t even need to see my tattoo to know it was you. You have your father’s face, his intensity.)

  Through Ariya’s eyes, she watched herself on the newsreels, reluctant and camera-shy, trying to act tough in front of countless viewers across the Starways. She felt the woman’s pain as Admiral Unipoesa gave his infamous speech revealing the twins’ involvement in the defeat of the Motti.

  (I couldn’t contact you, at least not right away; I knew the others would be hunting me, and I didn’t want to lead them to you. I tried to send you a message through the dog-soldier, but that failed.)

  (You tried to contact Jaeia, too, didn’t you?) Jetta realized, remembering the strange messages her sister had received via encrypted piggyback.

  (Yes. The Alliance defense network wasn’t hard to hack. It utilized the same base programs as when your father and I first worked for the government’s defense net.)

  (Your patch saved our Fleet from being crushed by Li,) Jetta said.

  Ariya gave a sad smile as her appearance lost some of its opacity. (Please—you must understand. Ramak and Josef... they’re not dead. I see their masked faces in my dreams.)

  Jetta whipped around, coming face-to-face with griddled steel and truncated flesh. A porcelain veneer hid his expression, all except the reddened eyes seething behind narrow slits. Another man, consumed by flames, stood behind the first. He wore a mask dotted with crimson dewdrops, and his breath came out as white smoke through the jagged cut for his mouth.

  (But above all else, you must help Kurt—you must find a way to save him.)

  The young scientist appeared before her, palms up, the golden globe of the Ark floating above his hands.

  (He is the key to unlocking the Ark. If you kill him, you will destroy our last hope of saving our world.)

  A vague shadow congealed into a smiling human face. Despite the resemblance to Kurt Stein, Jetta saw the entity dwelling within him, outlined underneath the gray ruin of his flesh.

  Barely visible now, Ariya drifted into view. (The accident—our survival—must be made to mean something.)

  Jetta reached out to her, but her hand passed through her wispy form.

  (Find Charlie. He was a present from your grandmother.
..)

  Another memory unfolded around her. Three sobbing babies swaddled in jackets and shirts, still wet from birth fluids, placed carefully inside the escape pod. Ariya holding back tears as she placed her gold cross necklace and an old, stuffed bear beside their tiny bodies.

  (Behind his eyes lies our salvation...)

  The scene changed, morphing into the store that she had grafted from Jaeia’s interaction with Triel, its air stuffy with mothballs, old paper, and wood stain. The same white-haired man with dark-rimmed glasses sat behind a counter, counting round, copper disks. Stacks of books and ancient-looking contraptions clogged the aisles and threatened to tumble off the shelves, collecting dust and insect husks.

  (And most importantly—do not think for one second that I didn’t love you,) Ariya whispered, reaching out to her. (That I abandoned you—that I wouldn’t have given anything to hold you in my arms for just one more moment...)

  WHEN JETTA OPENED HER eyes, she found herself breathing heavily, flat on her back, the dark-haired woman slumped next to her.

  Sitting up with a grunt, she took the woman’s hand, feeling the luminous edge of a familial soul lingering on its last tethers to life.

  “Mother...” Jetta said, finally allowing herself to believe her own words. “I have so many questions. I have so many things that I need to tell you—”

  Jetta looked to Triel and calculated the risk of a restoration in her debilitated state.

  “Don’t wake the Healer,” Ariya said, interlacing her fingers with Jetta’s. “She needs her strength, and you’ll need yours for what’s to come.”

  “No,” Jetta said, feeling the unbearable crush press down on her soul. “Not now. Not after I’ve found you. Not after you made me believe.”

  “My daughter,” Ariya said, cupping her cheek. “Not all is lost.”

  With a trembling hand, her mother pulled a rose-embroidered handkerchief from her jumpsuit. It smelled faintly of a sweet perfume. “I will always be with you. Always, my little Ashya.”

  “Ashya...” Jetta said, feeling something beyond herself realized, as if a door she had never known existed suddenly unlocked.

  Her hand closed tightly around the handkerchief, ready to extract the memory stain, but Ariya stopped her. “You must wait.”

  “It’s not meant for me?” Jetta said, sensing her unspoken intentions.

  “No, not just you.” Her eyelids grew heavy, and her breath came in gulps. “Wait for the time... you need... to feel...”

  Cradling her mother’s head in her arms, Jetta tried to hold onto the ethereal cords of her being.

  “No!” she cried, shaking her by the shoulders. Her mother’s head bobbed limply as Jetta searched for her presence. “You can’t just die!”

  Jetta opened her mouth for a scream that never came as Ariya’s body went flaccid in her arms.

  It was real— her mind cried. She was real and I allowed her to die!

  Overcome by anger and grief, Jetta’s attention went to the unconscious man in the opposing compartment, slumbering in a dreamless psionic state.

  “You Mugarruthepeta!” she said through gritted teeth. She leapt up to attack when white teeth pinched the back of her suit.

  “Let me go,” Jetta said, swatting at Kiyiyo’s muzzle.

  The wolf held fast, sending her impressions of the psionic conversation she had held with her mother.

  Don’t interfere, Jetta warned, but the wolf would not have it.

  “...you must help Kurt—you must find a way to save him...”

  The memory of her mother’s words soothed her fury until she saw nothing but little black motes buzzing before her eyes.

  “It was real,” she whispered, acquiescing to defeat and allowing herself to fall back against the wolf.

  Kiyiyo licked her face with his long, wet tongue until she finally put her hand up to shield herself from the loving onslaught. Curling up around her, he comforted her with his thick black coat and soft tail.

  Jetta buried her face in the wolf’s fur. “I just lost my mother...”

  OLD EARTH STANK. IT was worse than the piss-washed Underground of Fiorah, or the grimy backrooms in Guli’s old place. The place reeked of human ills, of bad memories, of things too vile to comprehend. On some level Reht recognized things his eyes refused to see as he chewed on the mangled quick of his fingernails.

  “I hate this place,” Reht muttered, spitting out more flesh than nail.

  “And I thought Ro and Cray’s bunks were bad,” Bacthar commented as he passed a man puking in a trash barrel. He wore only scraps of clothing across thin, jaundiced skin and peered up at them long enough for Reht to catch a glimpse of his hollow eyes. He knew the look, and it hit him harder than he expected.

  “Chak,” he said, tearing away a larger chunk of his thumbnail than he intended.

  Kids with dirty, outstretched hands ran along beside them, begging for anything of value, but Reht kept his eyes trained on the signs leading to the processing district. Since he and his crew were unwilling to part with any of their possessions, the tone of the streets changed. As people accumulated along their pathway, he kept hearing a strange word—Tourist—muttered and grumbled his direction.

  Not like I’m worried, he thought. His off-worlder crew could manage anything a weakling human could throw down, and it showed. Even the most aggressive Scabbers kept a respectable distance, especially from the Talian.

  “There it is,” Reht said, pointing to the carved sign reading Berish and Mau Imports and Exports.

  From what little word-of-mouth he had managed to collect on the west side of the Spillway, this was a dangerous section of the Pit, and the “Johnnies” that worked here were no ordinary thugs. They were the worst of the worst, the most violent offenders in the galaxy, kept in line by the profit and addictive need their “Joe” generously provided.

  “Ugly lot,” Ro muttered, licking the edge of his knife. “Let me pretty up their faces.”

  Reht couldn’t disagree. Both of the thugs that guarded Berish and Mau had lost their left ears and sported other body modifications that were taboo in most other cultures. Filed teeth, scarification, amputations, implants—alterations that were almost heraldic in their ugliness. Only the red bandana tied around their right arms indicated their affiliation.

  So typical of Shandin’s flunkies.

  Bacthar surveyed the subterranean architecture with his flecked red eyes, following the archways patched together with random scrap metal parts to the barricaded structure up ahead. “It’s an old subway station. There will be a few back entrances for sure.”

  “Yeah, we ain’t gonna walk right into this one,” Reht said, spying the derailed and gutted subway cars that had been refurbished with weaponry and riot control mechanisms.

  As he considered his options, he looked over his crew. He had elected to take Mom, Bacthar, Ro, and Cray with him, leaving Vaughn, Tech, and Billy Don’t to watch Femi and the ship. Since Tech was too shy, Billy a glorified tin can, and Vaughn sterilized by the prison system, he didn’t have to worry about the safety of his prize.

  And Sebbs went out to peruse the streets, probably to satisfy his new “appetites,” he thought, shuddering.

  Femi. He caught a whiff of her on his hands and grinned. There was something about her, something pure and untainted that made him want more, despite the sickening feeling he got now when he made love.

  “Let’s break up,” Reht directed. “Ro and Cray, take the north sweep, Bacthar and Mom the south. I’ll try and get above the warehouse to see if we can drop down. Keep an open channel and no chakking around,” he said, giving Ro and Cray the eye.

  Mom growled at him, but he put up his hand. For whatever reason, he needed to scout this out on his own.

  As they split off in their teams, Reht backtracked down the walkway and took a hard right into a secluded alley. Climbing up on the dumpster and hoisting himself onto the rooftop of the housing unit, he managed to get a direct eye on the warehouse. He watched
as his crew went their separate ways, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible as they searched for an easy backdoor into the warehouse. Ro pretended to be drunk and Cray assisted him. Mom and Bacthar blended into the shadows, keeping as low a profile as possible for two giant outerworlders on a human world.

  Reht tested the plated ceiling of the Pit with his hands, feeling the hum of electricity. Old Earth was completely dependent on fuel and food donations from the Alliance and other sympathetic governments, but like many unregulated colonies, it wasn’t long before criminal minds devised ways to take advantage of the underprivileged.

  After a few minutes of studying the routing ducts that fed into the warehouse, he didn’t even need to see the substation to figure out Shandin’s game. That bastard’s controlling all the electricity to the Pit. How else could he keep his illegal activities off the radar and attract Johnnies for work?

  “Etaho benieho,” he said, bending the safety latch off the running panel with the butt of his gun. It would be a tight squeeze, but there would be enough room in the primary router shaft for him to crawl his way into Shandin’s warehouse.

  “Hey mister—don’t go in there,” a kid said in broken Common. Dressed in patched food sacks, the little girl stared up at him from the alley with wide brown eyes and a ratted tangle of hair. She held a doll’s head by its hair and sucked on the tip of her thumb with her free hand.

  “Why?”

  Twisting her shoeless feet on the ground, she mumbled something in English and then pointed ahead of him.

  Reht almost stepped off the roof when he spotted the shriveled, blackened body hanging from the opposite edge by a few remaining shreds of tissue.

  Small enough to be a child—

  He looked back, but the little girl was gone.

  “Chak,” he muttered to himself. No time to reconsider. He had to go, no matter what the cost. I have to find Shandin.

  “Why son—why would you betray your family?”