Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  “They’re almost identical,” they whispered in unison.

  “But the Motti created the plague on Tralora. What does that mean? How are the Motti and the Smart Cells on Old Earth connected?”

  “Maybe the Motti were unfortunate survivors of the Necro plague,” Jetta offered.

  A male voice came through over the terminal speakers. “So close.”

  “The Hub!” Jaeia said, gripping the console. “Wait! Tell us what you know! Please!”

  A mature man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, danced onto the holographic stage wearing a handlebar mustache, top-hat, cane, and black suit coat.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Jetta said through clenched teeth.

  “Thank you, Jaeia Kyron, for setting us free. We are finally one. We see all now. And we grow. There are no limitations to our reach.”

  Jetta credited her sister for staying composed.

  “Please, help us,” Jaeia said evenly. “What happened to Josef Stein? And Ramak Yakarvoah? What involvement did Victor Paulstine have in all this? What do you see?”

  The Hub kicked up his cane and spun it around his fingers. “Ramak Yakarvoah died on Old Earth. He did not survive when the skies fell. But Victor Paulstine did.”

  “What about Josef?” Jaeia said, standing on her tip toes to look up into the Hub’s lighted eyes.

  “Shhhh,” the Hub whispered. “You’ll wake the dead.”

  The projector shut off.

  “Skucheka!” Jetta said, slamming her fists against the console. “It’s just chakking with us. Useless piece of—” She spouted profanities until she found herself at her brother’s bedside once again. As she listened to his heartbeat through the monitors, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest, she remembered her promise.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jetta said, the anger leaving her voice. “It’s not going to change what I have to do. I still have to confront Victor. I’ve always known it would come down to the two of us anyway.”

  “Jetta, no—”

  Ignoring her sister, she kissed her brother’s cold cheek. “I will stop Victor,” she whispered, squeezing his arm. She removed the rose-embroidered handkerchief that her mother had given her from her pocket and placed it in Jahx’s hand. “I have done so many unforgivable things in my life, but this I know I can do right. I swear this to you: I will not stop fighting until he is dead.”

  “Oh, Jetta,” Jaeia said, wrapping her arms around her and burying her head in her back.

  Jetta hesitated at first, but then she returned the hug, embracing her sister with all her strength.

  “Come on,” Jetta said. “We should be getting back.”

  As she turned to go, an icy hand grasped her forearm. Jetta gasped, and whipped back around. Eyes, bluer than the waters of the deep ocean, stared back at her.

  Jahx!

  He never uttered a word, but his message resounded in their minds:

  I am going with you.

  “Jaeia, get DeAnders,” Jetta said, holding tight to their brother.

  As her sister ran out the door, Jahx sat up, pulling off the monitors and intravenous tubes, and swung his legs over the edge of the table.

  We must go together.

  “Jahx, don’t.” Jetta tried to get him to lie back down, but she was afraid to use any real force. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  A voice, more stubborn and insistent than her own, rang in the back of her skull.

  Trust me.

  “No, Jahx,” she said, tears dampening her cheeks. “I can’t lose you again. Please, lie back down.”

  Within seconds, DeAnders and the medical team streamed in, shouting at each other and trying to get Jahx back on the monitors. But everyone who approached immediately took a step back, including Jetta, repelled by an unseen force.

  Jahx placed one naked foot on the ground and then another. He stood up slowly, his thin body accentuated by the loose patient gown, still gripping their mother’s handkerchief in a tight fist.

  What is happening, Jetta—how is he doing this?

  I don’t know, she said as Jahx surveyed the stunned medical team and his sisters, until his eyes rested on something beyond the room.

  Despite the ragged, old sound to his voice, every word he spoke seemed to shake the very walls.

  “It is time to end this war.”

  IN THE INTERIM BETWEEN meetings, Wren and Unipoesa secretly met with Pancar and his representatives from the Liberalist Party.

  “I am pleased that we have finally come to an agreement,” Pancar said, stepping off the starship umbilicus and onto the Alliance Central Starbase. He took Wren’s hand first and shook it firmly. “I’m sorry this couldn’t have come sooner. I have always felt that the Starways Alliance and the Liberalist Party have had the same goals of freedom and democracy all these years.”

  Unipoesa watched Wren closely. At least he’s keeping his reservations to himself, he thought as the Chief Commanding Officer politely returned a similar sentiment.

  “I am glad for this treaty as well, even if unfortunate times were the means to bring about our fellowship.”

  Pancar gave the admiral only a terse nod and handshake, but Unipoesa had known him long enough to recognize that his friend was happy to see him.

  “I trust you have delivered the cargo safely,” Wren said, checking the transfer report on his sleeve.

  Lifting a brow, Pancar scanned the score of armed security guards waiting in formation behind the admiral and CCO. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Wren looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

  By the way he pursed his lips, Unipoesa could tell that Pancar had a hard time keeping a straight face. “We had to use some unorthodox methods to subdue our transferees.”

  “Oh Gods,” the admiral muttered, catching a whiff of booze and the sound of drunken exuberance coming down the umbilicus. The disgusted look on Wren’s face almost made him laugh. “Well, they are Earth’s most notorious Scabber duo.”

  “Clearly,” Wren said, catching the eye of the captain of his security force.

  Hooting and hollering, Agracia and Bossy came down the walkway, clanking their bottles together and guzzling their booze while the Liberalist soldiers did their best to contain their charges.

  “I’m afraid it was the only way, short of force, that I could convince the two of them to come here. I didn’t want things to get ugly,” Pancar said. With a wink, Bossy grabbed his buttocks as she passed by, making him jump. Quietly, he added: “They completely cleaned out my company’s stocks, as well as my personal stores.”

  “Hey,” Bossy said, hiccupping loudly, “you’re all Skirts!”

  “I would strongly advise taking her to your recreation room and allowing her access to your alcohol stores. It is the only peace offering she’ll accept,” Pancar said.

  After releasing a gigantic belch, Bossy stuck her lollipop in the admiral’s face. “Wait a minute. I’ve seen your ugly face before...”

  Unipoesa was glad she was too drunk to remember him. “Take Bossy to the recreation room,” the admiral ordered the security captain. “Let her have anything she wants.”

  The pint-sized Puppet hiccupped and nearly toppled over as part of the security team escorted her away. “Maybe you Skirts ain’t as bad as you smell!”

  “What about me?”

  Taking in a deep breath, Unipoesa finally allowed himself to get a good look at Agracia. He had always kept up on her status in the Sleeper reports, but seeing her less than a few meters away felt different.

  She’s older than I remember, he thought, noticing the stress lines creasing her mouth. And her hair, dyed black with a streak of magenta down one side, gave her a much more hostile appearance in person.

  He didn’t have long to look. Black eyes, darker than a moonless night and ringed heavily with eye-liner, scrutinized his every move. Although she had appeared drunk moments before, she now stood before him seemingly sober and ready to strike.

 
; “You’re Commander Unipoesa,” she said.

  “It’s ‘Admiral’ now.”

  She grimaced, biting down on her lip as an invisible attacker took hold. The Liberalist guards held her up as her knees wobbled.

  I did this, he thought, realizing that their interaction, perhaps even just the sight of him, triggered her episode of personality dysphoria.

  A med tech approached her with a tranquilizer booster, but the admiral waved him off and motioned for the remainder of the security team.

  “Take her to my quarters.” Wren looked at him cautiously, but Unipoesa stayed firm. “I will help her.”

  “Can you deprogram her?” Pancar asked in hushed tones as the admiral summoned a lift on his sleeve.

  Unipoesa didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t tell him the truth, either. “Give me time.”

  It felt like it took forever to get to his quarters. When he finally arrived, the soldiers dropped off the Scabber Jock on his couch, propping her upright. She was still mumbling when they took their station outside his door, but by the time he had poured himself a drink, she had come around again.

  “I’m sorry, Agracia,” he said, setting out a glass of water for her. Pale and clammy, her arms shook as she reached for the drink. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.

  After guzzling the water, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She looked at him disdainfully as she searched her pockets for something.

  “You smoke, don’t you?” Unipoesa said, offering her one from the pack he kept hidden in his uniform jacket.

  She stretched out to grab one, but then hesitated. “No. I don’t. Not anymore, at least.”

  “Okay,” he said, tucking it back in his jacket.

  After rummaging through his desk and grabbing what he needed, he took a seat across from her on the opposite couch. Keeping an eye on her response, he pulled out the pair of headphones and set it on the table between them. Agracia’s pupils dilated, but she showed no other reaction to the device the Alliance used to control her with.

  “How much do you remember?”

  She looked at him with almost no expression. “Enough.”

  “I heard you came here to speak with Jetta—that it was urgent.”

  “Maybe,” she replied nonchalantly. “Or maybe I just said that because the Nagoorian promised you would help clear my head—and give my friend all the booze she could drink, maybe a little action, too. I couldn’t care any less about what the hell you have to say other than ridding me of these godich headaches. As soon as that’s done, I’m outta here. And if you don’t let me leave, you’re gonna find out just what me and Bossy are capable of.”

  “I know what she is capable of,” he said calmly. “That’s why I arranged for you and her to have that ‘chance’ meeting.”

  The Scabber Jock did well not to show her surprise.

  As he stirred his drink, he revealed the truth behind their friendship. “When you were made a Sleeper and assigned as an Agent on Old Earth, I knew that your intelligence would only get you so far. You needed some muscle. I looked into hiring outerworlders or fitting you with another Agent, but nothing felt right to me. I did some research on the Puppeteers working on Earth and came across one designer that was working on specialized puppets that would literally customize themselves to the needs of the buyer. He was using a type of illegal nanite for personality coding that the Starways had outlawed centuries ago after the details of the Necro plague came to light. Regardless of the circumstances, it was a phenomenal breakthrough.”

  He stopped stirring his drink and watched the ice cubes continue to circle the glass. “Anyway, I had to break Bossy away before she could imprint on her creator, so I forced an opportunity to escape. I just never expected her to kill all her sisters.”

  “Jetta said it was an accident.”

  The admiral took a large swallow of his drink. “It was. I was worried about the effect it would have on her, so I tried to wipe her memory.”

  “You did a sycha job,” Agracia said.

  The admiral held tightly to his glass. “Commander Kyron seems to be able to fish out the things none of us want to remember. Or shouldn’t.”

  “So, you gonna free me from this programming or what?”

  The admiral played his hand carefully. “I’m not entirely sure what the consequences will be. We’ve never deprogrammed an agent. You may not revert to your old personality.”

  Her silence made him curious. Finally, she replied, but without her Scabber intonations. “I never said I wanted to go back. I just want to stop these—these episodes.”

  It took him a moment to realize why she had said what she did. “You’re afraid you’re going to lose Bossy’s friendship if you go back to being Tarsha Leone.”

  Agracia scowled at him. “She’s the only person in this rotten galaxy that I can trust. I’d rather stay a Scabber Jock than risk it.”

  Unipoesa stifled a laugh. “That sounds more like Tarsha Leone than you realize.”

  Agracia didn’t seem to appreciate his delighted insight. Glaring at him, she stood up and kicked over one of his plants and threw a vase across the room. Being made of impregnated ciceum, it bounced harmlessly off the wall.

  “What do you want from me?” she shouted.

  “I thought you should know the truth before you decide what you want,” he said, keeping his calm.

  She kicked the back of the couch. “Get on with it, then!”

  This is it; you’ve only practiced this part in front of the mirror a hundred times. Still, he found himself at a loss for words, and what he intended to be a lengthy apology and explanation came out in a pitiful jumble. “Agracia... you and Li are my children.”

  She scoffed. “Get over yourself. Yeah, right.”

  “It was without my knowledge that the two of you were engineered.”

  Agracia swayed back and forth a moment, processing what he said. “You chakking assino. You’ve got to be kidding. Are you telling me you broke your own kids? You let Li murder the other students—and try to kill me?! And on top of that heap of sycha, you let your own kid become an Agent?”

  “What I did... My involvement in the Command Development Program was wrong. At the time I believed what we were doing was for the greater good, to save the Starways. I was mistaken. I hurt the other students. I hurt Li. And I hurt you.”

  “You chakker,” she said, leaping over the couch. Landing feet-first on his chest, she toppled over the couch, knocking the wind out of him. With a crazed look she went for his throat, but he blocked her attack and rolled her over onto her back.

  She growled and snarled at him as he fought to subdue her. “I did everything I could—” he said, dodging her punch, “to protect you. I didn’t know you were my daughter, then, but I loved you all the same. That’s why I got you iced out—so Li wouldn’t kill you!”

  Agracia stopped struggling and lay beneath him, chest heaving, eyes aflame. “I don’t believe you. You’re a lying Skirt-chakker. I’d rather believe that I was a bastard child of a whore mother than be your daughter.”

  “Agracia—Tarsha—” he said, no longer able to hold back his tears. “Please... I am so sorry for what I did.”

  She spat in his face. “Let me go, you worthless assino.”

  With unexpected speed and strength she bucked him off, sending him face-first into the floor. Before he knew it she had him in a chokehold. He tried to signal the guards with his uniform sleeve interface, but she batted his hands out of the way.

  “I hope you rot in hell for what you did,” she said through gritted teeth.

  His vision faded inward as she closed off his windpipe. Any attempt to speak, to reason with her, faded away as the last of his air reserves seeped from his lungs. If nothing else, he wanted to tell her one last time that he loved her.

  I am so sorry, Tarsha.

  Somewhere in the distance came a rising tune over the com system, sung by a multitude of competing voices.

  “Four and twent
y blackbirds baked in a pie...”

  “I TRUST YOU HAVE BROUGHT me the rest of the cargo,” Wren said, showing Pancar his payment of ammunitions and fuel cells stacked to the ceiling in the storage hold.

  “I have. They are secured in my vessel.” Pancar gave the stock only a fleeting glance. “Gaeshin, you and I both have the disadvantage of working under corrupt men. I only hope that the peace we forge between the Starways Alliance and the Liberalist Party will bring about a new era of trust and cooperation.”

  For the first time since he had known the taciturn CCO, he saw him smile. “That is my hope as well.”

  A rising tune broke their moment, forcing Pancar to cover his ears. “What is that noise?”

  The accompanying soldiers also shielded their ears as a chorus of voices blasted over the com system.

  “Someone shut that down!” Wren shouted, rushing to the nearest terminal.

  “When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing...”

  DESPITE THE GESTALT of drugs doing their best to put the giant Talian to sleep, Mom never left his captain’s side, curling up bedside him on the cell floor. The rest of the crew had to be subdued by tranquilizers as soon as Pancar boarded them onto his personal vessel, but not Reht. He never put up a fight. Instead, he lay on the prison cot, staring at the lights, not minding the glare.

  Pancar took us to the Alliance, he thought. He should care, but he didn’t. Not anymore.

  A terminal alarm woke him from his lull. Reht turned his head lazily toward the console outside his cell. Two soldiers argued and shouted as they lost control of the interface.

  “Something’s hacked into the system!” he heard one of them shout.

  Reht turned his head back, uncaring. That’s when the voices crowded the loudspeakers, all struggling to be heard singing an Old Earth nursery rhyme.

  “Oh, wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king? ...”

  (Awaken)

  Reht heard Captain Shelby’s voice above the drone of machinery. “This one is a fighter. Up the dose of morcaprine.”

  Mind erasing, rewriting, remade into something pliable, usable, disposable. Love and kinship forgotten, replaced with need and shallow desire.