Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  The medics stood back as Pancar cracked open the plastic container, unleashing a foul odor into the medical bay. One of the medics turned his head away and breathed noisily through his mouth as Pancar dumped the contents onto a bedside tray. After arranging the tangle of circuits and wiring as best he could, he pressed the back of his hand to his nose. No matter how much his team had tried to clean the devices, they couldn’t get the rotten stench off of them.

  Pancar marveled at the sudden shift in Tech’s awareness, as if a light went off in the scrappy dog-soldier’s head. With the help of the medics, he sat up and took to inspecting the mish-mash of electronic parts through his swollen eyes.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked, turning the pieces over in his hands and messing with the wiring.

  He gave his prepared answer. “We’ve found several of these devices implanted in key figures in Victor’s forces.”

  “Well, it’s definitely Motti, all right. I removed something like this from Billy years ago,” he said, making clicking sounds with his tongue. “But gosh, this is strange.”

  “What do you mean?” Pancar said as he watched Tech show it to Billy. Tilting his head, the Liiker child squawked a few times before opening up his chest and testing it with one of his internal probes. He made a few more computerized noises and strange facial expressions until Tech took it back again.

  “This is kind of like the key component of their networked communications, except it has a few modifications.”

  “Please explain,” Pancar urged.

  Grimacing, Tech tried to roll on his side, but the medics cautioned him.

  The doctor came up beside Pancar and whispered in his ear. “Two minutes.”

  “The Liikers are controlled by the Motti by input receivers, stimulant/inhibitor neurochemicals and surveillance routers.”

  Tech recognized the confusion on his face. “They basically have a way to order their drones around, give them juice if they’re not immediately willing to do their bidding, and can monitor their performance. But this one has been stripped down to just the input receiver, surveillance routers—and I don’t even know what this is.”

  Tech showed Billy a rectangular piece of compound wiring. When the Liiker touched it with one of his sensors, it gave him a zap. Billy retracted his sensor with a pitiful whimper.

  “Well, that answers that,” Tech said.

  “What is it?” Pancar said.

  When Tech tried to answer, he went into a coughing fit, producing a frothy mix of blood and sputum. The medics suctioned him twice before the scrappy dog-soldier could continue.

  “It’s... like a... torture device. I’m not sure... but I wouldn’t want that... in my head,” he said breathlessly.

  With shaky hands, Tech set the implants back on the tray and laid back down. Pancar noticed the engineer’s dressings beginning to soak through but didn’t dare look at them directly.

  “Why do you think they were in these people’s heads?” Pancar said, pinching his shoulder. “Tech, please,” he said, pressing a little harder. “I need to know.”

  Tech half-opened his eyes, his mouth hanging open without sound.

  “Please,” Pancar said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Billy...” Tech said, dropping his arm over the bedside. The little Liiker rolled up underneath his hand and let the engineer run his fingers through his single lock of blonde hair. “He will help you... My Billy. He knows what it is. He can help you... give them... peace.”

  The doctor pulled Pancar away from the bay as the medics descended upon the engineer, waving bioscanners and inserting new vascular accessways into their patient. Pancar watched in silence as the medical team worked furiously to save his life while the little Liiker wailed and cried.

  “I hope you got what you needed,” the doctor said frankly, plugging his ears against Billy’s shrieks, “because that may be all you’re going to get.”

  Chapter XI

  Even though they had only been apart a relatively short while, Jetta had forgotten how mindful she had to be of her thoughts when she was around her sister. It was hard enough for her to keep her outward composure as they passed through security into the Division Lockdown lab, and the closer they got to their brother, the more her nerves whittled away at her control.

  (I shouldn’t have left him.)

  (I should have found a way to save him.)

  (I can’t fail him again.)

  “Hey,” Jaeia said, nudging her side. Jetta felt a pinky finger wrap around her own when no one was watching. “He’s still here.”

  Jaeia spoke in private with Dr. DeAnders while Jetta approached the glass on the observation deck. Looking down, she saw that the Grand Oblin’s body maintained the form that resembled their brother, though his skin had become translucent and thin.

  “We can see him,” Jaeia said, returning to her. “But we can’t make any contact. DeAnders is worried that will put his body over the edge.”

  “Okay,” Jetta absently agreed, following her sister down the stairs and through a series of biofilters.

  The twins pulled up chairs next to the bedside, sitting beside each other to his left. A long silence passed between them as they took in their environment, the steady droning of monitors and slow drip of intravenous fluids keeping time.

  “When we were little,” Jaeia said, breaking the silence, “I used to dream all the time about the three of us all grown up. We lived on a farm, with blue skies and green and yellow grasses that came up to our waists. There was a river nearby, and mountain peaks on the horizon. And best of all, it always smelled like rain, and blooming flowers.”

  Jetta huffed. “Anything opposite of Fiorah, right?”

  “No, not exactly,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just how I saw us. Galm and Lohien were there too, though they were always in the distance, waving. And someone else. An elderly woman that smelled so wonderful. Like spices and perfume, and kindness. She was making us the most delicious food, and reminding you to behave yourself.”

  Jetta let a laugh slip. “Come on now; that’s just...”

  Crazy.

  (beautiful.)

  Jaeia touched her brother’s hand. “It was the best dream. I always had it after Yahmen was the meanest, when I worried we weren’t going to make it.”

  Jetta said nothing, letting her shared emotions speak for her.

  “You don’t believe we will, do you?” Jaeia said quietly.

  Jetta looked at her hands. Her veins had taken on an ugly grayish hue, and her entire arm trembled when she tried to lift it off her lap. “Jaeia, we’re dying, and Jahx is close behind. The best we can hope for is to stop Victor.”

  “Jetta...” she said, taking her time forming her question. “What do you believe in?”

  “What?”

  Jaeia ran her fingers nervously along the railing of Jahx’s bed.

  “If all that is left for us is to fight Victor, then we have to make it count. We have to go into the battle with a purpose, with some sort of conviction, or else he’ll eat us alive. So... what do you believe in? What makes this worth it to you?”

  Jetta opened her mouth to respond but found she couldn’t. What was she fighting for? Soon they would be dead, and Triel, with her plan to sacrifice herself to save her people, would be joining them shortly thereafter. And Galm and Lohien were most likely dead as well. All the people I care about the most are already dead or doomed. The wolves came briefly to mind, but despair turned her thoughts away.

  “Because he’s evil,” she decided. “And someone like him shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

  The two of them turned as the monitors blipped.

  “Did you feel that?” Jaeia whispered.

  “Yes,” Jetta whispered back, sensing a shift in the air. A heaviness settled over them, something she couldn’t quite explain.

  “Look,” Jaeia said, straightening up in her chair. “What about all the experiences you’ve gained? What about alleviating the suffering of all
the humans? Think of the ones on that refueling station—or the refugees on Algar—and the victims on Iyo Kono.”

  “They weren’t victims—they were cowards,” Jetta muttered. “They were afraid of their own skin.”

  “Think of all the others that Victor plans to abuse and eliminate,” Jaeia added.

  Jetta sat, unmoving. In her heart, she understood the point that Jaeia was trying to make. She wants me to have empathy toward mankind, but how can I? I’ve never felt like a part of the human race.

  Not that someone like her would even be accepted.

  I’m a mass murderer, a leech, in love with a woman—a Prodgy, no less.

  (Freak. Monster. Curse.)

  “Jaeia, I’ve always admired your ability to see and believe the best in others. I can’t do that. I can only see the ugliness and fear in the world; I can only see the monster in the dark. And I see Victor. It doesn’t matter what else I feel for this world. What matters is that I stop him from making this universe any worse than it already is.”

  Jaeia was about to argue with her when her sleeve beeped. They both looked at the message together.

  “Jade’s datawand has been downloaded,” Jaeia commented.

  Frowning, Jetta accessed her own sleeve interface. “Isn’t the Hub going to analyze this for us?”

  Jaeia’s face turned sheet white. “I set it free.”

  “You did what?”

  Unable to find the words, Jaeia shared her memory, and the emotions behind it. Jetta took it in, but remained unconvinced that her sister’s mercy was the right decision in a time of war. “Maybe it would have been prudent to wait until after we had finished this fight.”

  “I thought it was the only way we could negotiate the freedom of the Sleepers. Besides, if we don’t win this war,” she said cautiously, “I didn’t want the Hub to be trapped. It was the right decision; I have faith that it will come through for us.”

  “You always were a softie,” Jetta mumbled. Too tired to argue out loud, she dumped her contentions silently on her sister. Jaeia gave her the side eye but redirected their conversation to the datawand files.

  “Most of these documents are dated from before the Last Great War on Earth...”

  The two of them read the information in silence, processing the data in single and dual perspectives.

  Jaeia was the first to realize the gravity of the find. “This is the electronic correspondence between Ramak Yakarvoah and Victor Paulstine.”

  “Is this authenticated?” Jetta asked, scrolling through the logs.

  “As far as we can tell.”

  Jetta read aloud from one of the letters. “‘Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night...’”

  “That’s William Blake.”

  “I know,” Jetta quickly added. “But it’s on all the letterheads. Weird.”

  They read the rest in silence.

  Dated: June 26, 2042

  To: Ramak Yakarvoah

  From:

  Subject:

  Mr. Yakarvoah—

  I have no doubts that you know who I am by now. We have long sought each other out, whether or not either of us has ever fully recognized it. We have much in common: an abusive, alcoholic mother, an absent father. A brief dance with fame, bitter rejection, a lonely life enslaved to the idiotic, petty ideals of a crumbling government. But that’s where our similarities end.

  I know your secrets. I know how you got your scars. It wasn’t just any house fire. Your mother knew what you were, and what you would become. Despite all her disappointments, she still believed in God, and when she looked at you, she saw the bleak face of death.

  But you are weak. You’re a pariah in this ugly, shallow world. Some are born to sweet delight, but you, my friend, are born to endless night. I can help you change that. I can help you change this filthy world. Find me, and we will open their eyes, and make them burn.

  —V. Paulstine

  Shaking, Jetta looked at her sister. Her sister’s distress mirrored her own as she sat wide-eyed and trembling.

  “This... doesn’t feel right,” Jetta managed to say.

  Jaeia nodded.

  They read on.

  The second letter featured a correspondence between Josef Stein and Ramak Yakarvoah.

  Dated: November 1, 2043

  To: Dr. Josef Stein

  From: Dr. R. Yakarvoah, Director of Advanced Quantum Physics

  Subject: Opportunity

  Josef—

  I hope this letter finds you well. Since I last saw you, I have moved to New Berlin and am working with the international government in developing an alternative power source after the disaster in the Western states. I know your work has led you to study genetics and bioengineering with the World Peace Alliance, but I still think you’d be interested in my research in transphasic modulation. I have talked with my employers, and I have told them about our days in SPEC, and they are interested in offering you a position. Please consider this. I know you and your son are working on medical treatments for war victims, but I truly believe your talents could be put to better use. With gifts like ours, we should be dictating the future of this world, not preparing for its end.

  It’s not too late, Josef. We can still make a difference.

  —R. Yakarvoah

  P.S. I know you’re going to ask. Don’t bother. The therapies haven’t worked. I guess I will only live vicariously through you and your “adventures” in Asia back in the day. Don’t worry, I won’t tell your lovely wife Edina of the Josef Stein I once knew. As far as she is concerned, you have always been an angel.

  “What’s SPEC?” Jetta interrupted.

  “Special Programs for Exceptional Children,” Jaeia said, looking it up on the nearby terminal. “It was a government and military-run program for extremely gifted children with IQs over 200. Not a lot on it. There were some conspiracies and scandals associated with it—a few lawsuits over child abuse and labor violations. Looks like it was disbanded in 2022, and the children were relinquished back to the state or their parents. Some had fleeting celebrity status until their involvement in the Slaughter of the East was discovered.”

  Jetta did a cross-reference in the terminal. “It’s confirmed. Josef Stein and Ramak Yakarvoah were both enrolled in SPEC when they turned six. Stein was nominated by his teachers in elementary school after he tested out of every grade level. It says here that Yakarvoah was discovered in the foster care system after several run-ins with the law. Wow... his mother tried to kill him by setting fire to him while he slept.”

  “Gods,” Jaeia exclaimed, reading down further. “Apparently she then set fire to herself. She died, but he was badly burned. These pictures are awful...”

  Something tightened in her gut as Jetta studied the picture of the badly burned five-year-old boy hooked up to hospital machinery and intravenous tubing. The fire left no part of him unscathed except for the hatred in his dark eyes.

  “So Josef and Ramak knew each other. They were like old schoolmates in a way,” Jetta commented. A tickle that started in her throat quickly turned into a cough that doubled her over as she hacked up blood and mucus from her throat. She spat it out in the trash receptacle and quickly turned away before she could let the gravity of the situation set in.

  “I guess,” Jaeia said, turning away from the bloodied trash. “Okay, look here—here’s a response from Stein,” Jaeia said, pulling up another letter.

  Dated: November 27, 2043

  To: Ramak Yakarvoah

  From: Dr. Josef Stein, Director of Nanotechnic Research and Engineering

  Subject: Re: Opportunity

  Forgive me for the late response, but my research has kept me working at all hours. I have good news, though, especially in light of the fact that your dermal treatments have gone poorly. No doubt you’ve heard that I’ve been working on something I’ve called the “Smart Cell” to help with tissue regeneration and repair. The funding had originally come from World Peace Alliance to
aid war victims who had suffered traumatic injuries, but the United People’s Republic, having heard of my successes, has taken over the project. I’m not sure how long I will be able to keep the project running in this direction, but as of right now, I’m able to utilize these marvelous little nanites to bring hope once again to the wounded.

  As you can probably surmise, I have no time for much else, although I do appreciate the job offer. Besides, quantum physics and complex mathematics was your thing, not mine—I remember your perfect scores! I was lucky to be sitting next to you during all those tedious exams. I think I was more interested in girls when our teachers were trying to push us into cracking the secrets of the universe.

  Ramak, when the SPEC fell apart, I was worried that you would fall on hard times, and when you disappeared, I feared the worst. I am so glad that you have found me and that things sound better for you. I truly hope that you have found something that has made you happy. I have prayed all these years that peace and faith (and maybe a nice woman or two) have found their way into your heart. We spent many a night debating the fate of this world. It was always a battle—one that I never did win, did I?—to convince you that we might just have a chance to preserve and advance. We have always seen this world so differently.

  I stand firm that this world is worth saving, my friend. I see it every time I look into the eyes of my wife and child. That’s why I will continue my work. It’s not just in hope of saving war victims—I aspire to much bigger things, but I dare not share them just yet. All I can say is that Kurt and I are very, very close.

  There is hope, my friend. Come visit my lab, see what my Smart Cells can do. Then, maybe—finally—I’ll make a believer out of you.

  —Josef

  “He... cared about Ramak,” Jetta said as she stifled another cough.

  “Well, this is before Ramak started his underground preaching,” Jaeia said, flipping down a few pages while rubbing her neck.