by J. E. Gurley
Exhausted by his climb and his running battle with the dragon, he collapsed against the side of the tower to treat his wounds. He hoped he had injured the dragon enough to keep it away for a while. None of the slashes on his arm was very deep, but they burned like hell. His back throbbed from the earlier scratches. He hoped the dragon was not poisonous. That would really cap off a wonderful day, he mused. Luckily, he had had the presence of mind to remove a medical kit from the shuttle. He used some very fine Dastoran cloth to wrap the wounds after first cleaning them and spreading an antibiotic ointment on them. Satisfied with his handiwork, he stood up.
His head exploded as if stunned. He fell against the tower, clawing for support. He couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, Lord Hromhada’s image appeared in his mind. He was having a waking dream. The Highborn Lord was trying to locate him by telepathy. It felt as if the images were pushing aside his brain matter, forcing it against the side of his skull until it threatened to burst from his ears.
“Stay there,” the voice commanded. Lord Hromhada appeared angry, yet relieved. The same silk print as before was behind him. Jazon could also see a small statue of a woman, an oriental dancer. The presence left, leaving a vacuum in its wake. Jazon’s mind rushed to fill the void, and he passed out.
He regained consciousness still lying beside the tower. The blood droplets on the steel were still sticky but still wet. I haven’t been out long. Maybe an hour. He touched his throbbing head. My God, the power of the telepath the Lord Hromhada was using was phenomenal. The mental contact had almost killed him. He wasn’t sure what kind of reception he was going to get. He had jumped ship after promising to help the Highborn. He hoped they still considered him invaluable in this mission. Whatever lay in store for him, it was probably better than life as Robinson Crusoe.
He found his knife, still slick with the dragon’s blood, lying on the ground a few paces away. He tried to stand, but after several aborted attempts, decided to crawl instead. His legs ached and trembled when he put pressure on them. He picked up the dagger and replaced it in its sheath on his belt. His hands were shaking so badly it took three tries. His vision was blurry and everything had grown darker. He looked up but saw no clouds, and the sun was still high in the sky. He saw a glimmer moving across the sun and knew it was the shuttle.
The sound of the shuttle landing was sweet in Jazon’s ears. He tried once more to stand, but each movement sent a burning pain shooting through his back and his arm felt as though doused it with acid. He rolled up his sleeve to examine the wound. His entire arm was red and puffy. Angry red lines radiated from the wound like a roadmap. Experimentally, he touched the wound and cried out in pain.
“Just my luck,” he moaned. “Damned dragon was poisonous after all.”
The Highborn’s shuttle touched down on the far side of the field, and the ramp descended. He waved his good arm to attract their attention. Amissa rushed out, followed closely by Ulrich.
Through a pain-clouded haze, he saw them running toward him, Ulrich with a look of panic on his face, and Amissa’s face full of loss. Ignoring the shooting pains, he pushed himself into a sitting position. He’d be damned if they carried him aboard on a stretcher. He could see Ulrich’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear the words over the incessant buzzing in his head. He noticed both Amissa and Ulrich had stopped moving.
Suddenly, Amissa pointed toward the sky and began to wave her arms frantically. Without turning, he knew his friend Friday had returned. He pulled his pulser and turned at the same time, but he knew, instinctively, that he was too slow. He was too weak. He could barely raise the pulser higher than his waist. The dragon’s shadow loomed larger. He went flying from a blow to his back. He rolled over just in time to see the dragon slashing at Amissa. She went stumbling backwards as blood ran down her arm. Jazon was amazed when his friend produced a pulser and fired at the retreating dragon. He had never seen Ulrich fire a weapon. It took three shots, but Ulrich managed to hit it. The dragon spiraled to the tarmac and thrashed around in a death dance before going still. Ulrich’s eyes were wide with fright and surprise. Jazon stared at the fallen dragon until its movements ceased. Then, once again, for the third time in three days, Jazon’s world closed in on him and winked out.
He heard voices before he could see. A bright light shone in his face. He tried to move but could feel nothing from his shoulder down. A moment of panic set in.
“Easy, Jazon,” Ulrich’s voice broke through the terror. “The physician gave you a spinal sedative to keep you still. Part of the achikote’s claw was still in your wound. He wanted to remove it without leaving any slivers.”
Jazon heard the words but could not grasp their meaning. Was his brain damaged? “Achi … achi …” he attempted but failed.
“Achikote,” Ulrich prompted. “The lizard. The shuttle you thought was carrying you to Hhat was instead bound for Ghera to deliver a Mrumban achikote to the animal preserve there. They’re poisonous.”
“Will I …?”
“Will you die?” Ulrich finished. “No, you’ll live, but it was close. The Mrumban Ambassador had a sample of anti-venom with him. The ship is trying to duplicate it now.”
He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “What about Amissa?” He remembered seeing her take a slash from the creature. She had waved her arms to attract its attention from him. Ulrich said nothing, but Jazon could read the worst in his eyes. He raised his head after a great deal of effort. “What about Amissa?” he growled.
Ulrich looked down at his feet as he spoke, “I wasn’t fast enough. We saw it coming and tried to warn you. I had a pulser with me. I … she drew the creature’s attention.” He raised his head, and Jazon saw his eyes were brimming with tears. “If I had been two seconds quicker …” his voice trailed off.
Jazon’s heart dropped. “Is she dead?”
Ulrich shook his head. “No, but she’s in a bad way. They used most of the anti-venom on you. She insisted. They’re trying to synthesize more but it may take too long.” He looked away again. “Lord Hromhada wants to place her in cryo until they can download her memories into a new clone body.”
Download! Jazon’s pulse quickened. He knew that it was impossible to dump one mind into another mind. Only the memories and basic skills were transferrable, not the personality of that individual. If they downloaded Amissa into another body, even her own tank-grown clone body, she would awaken as someone else.
She might remember him as if a dream, but that would be all. Her DNA would be the same, as would her fingerprints, retina scan, and voice print, but it would not be her, just a simulacrum of her.
“No!” he shouted. “You can’t.” He moved his chest and strained against the straps. His spinal was wearing off. He had to get loose and stop Lord Hromhada.
Ulrich was in a panic. “Jazon! Lie still. Jazon! You’ll hurt yourself.” He pressed against Jazon’s chest, trying to keep him in bed.
Jazon heard the hiss of a hypo, and his body went limp. His mind was still clear, but he could not move.
“He gave you a muscle inhibitor.” Ulrich nodded his head at the physician. “You have to rest. I promise I’ll speak with the Lord Hromhada, but you must understand, under Dastoran law, she is a sixth-generation clone and his property. He has the right to do as he wishes, right or wrong.”
Jazon tried to turn his head so that he would not have to listen to Ulrich’s words. Unable to do this, he did the next best thing and closed his eyes. He sighed with relief when both the Dastoran physician and Ulrich left the room.
Rights. How could Ulrich talk about the Highborn’s right to do with Amissa as he wished? She was, or had been, an inhabitant of Earth. No one enslaved a Terran, no one. Slavery had been abolished for hundreds of years. Amissa might owe her existence to the Dastorans, but not her soul. Another thought plagued him. Why had she insisted that he receive the precious anti-venom? Had she done it simply because she thought that was what the Highborn would want, or because she feared for his life even at the
cost of hers? Jazon wanted very badly for it to be the latter. Either way, he would never have traded her life for his. She was too – perfect.
He knew that she had a deeper purpose than simply to entice Jazon to carry out the mission to the Claw Nebula. Lord Hromhada had gone to too much expense and trouble to have another fully developed clone body so readily available. She was more than a mere Dastoran plaything.
If she died … His mind balked at the idea. If she died, he could never forgive himself. His stupidity and cowardice had put her in the position she was now in. Even Ulrich deserved better than he had given him. He was deeply ashamed. He had not run during the Battle at the Rim, but he’d been running ever since, even earlier. He had run from the reservation. He didn’t know what he was running from. If a man stopped running, suddenly, would his past catch up to him and rear end him, like one of those sixty car pile-ups they had once haunted Earth’s freeways.
The Battle at the Rim had been his last fight. Three Alliance Cruisers – two Terran California-Class Heavy Cruisers and a Trilock Thistleship – faced six Cha’aita cruisers near an unnamed dim star that, technically, was drifting slowly out of the Local Arm, headed into the Void. The Cha’aita had set up a monitoring station on one of the moons of a dead world. The Alliance was there to take it out.
In a daylong, epic battle, they destroyed four of the Cha’aita ships before his cruiser finally succumbed to the damage she had suffered. Of the compliment of two hundred marines aboard, only thirty survived. The entire command crew had died in the conflict, leaving him, a mere sergeant, in command. While the second cruiser and the Trilock ship kept the remaining Cha’aita at bay, he abandoned ship, loaded his men in the last remaining shuttle, and landed on the moonlet. Gravity was so low that they used jet packs to keep from breaking free and flying into space.
One of his worst memories was looking into the sky and seeing emptiness vaster than he had ever witnessed. The Perseus Arm was a dim thread of light far away across the Void. At no time in his stint as a Marine had he felt so exposed.
After a long, exhausting battle, they had secured the station and destroyed it. He glanced up to see how the fight was going and saw the Trilock Thistleship Skipping out of the area. The Trilock were retreating, leaving him, his men, and the remaining Alliance ship at the mercy of the Cha’aita. The backwash from the Skip so close to a gravity well fried his communications. He couldn’t even summon a rescue ship. He remembered watching with horror and anger as the two remaining Cha’aita ships closed in on the U.E. San Diego and pummeled her until her reactors blew. He and six surviving marines outraced the blast of the explosion around that tiny piece of rock and survived. Unexpectedly, the two Cha’aita ships left, stranding them on an airless rock.
For three days, they waited for rescue surviving on air they looted from the destroyed station. By the fourth day, some of his men gave up hope and drifted off into oblivion. On the fifth day, thirsty, starving, and almost out of oxygen, an Alliance scout ship winked into existence, a rainbow on a field of black. Only he and a raw recruit named Ellison had survived the ordeal.
The Trilocks blamed their hasty departure as a problem with their reactor, but he had never bought into that excuse. There had been too many other such explanations, too many hasty departures. A month later, two days after dismissal from the Navy hospital on New Brodhead, he had resigned. He supposed he had been running ever since. Now his running may have cost Amissa her life. Whether she lived or died, he owed it to her to go on the mission. Whatever the Dastorans’ ulterior motive, he owed her that much at least.
For the first time in his life, no, the second time – he had forgotten the Rim – he prayed, not for himself but for Amissa.
Lord Hromhada anguished over his decision to download the current Amissa. For the sake of the Enclave, maybe the entire Dastoran People, he wanted Amissa alive. He could feel the fabric of the universe changing, rumpling under his feet. Time was growing short. The Council of Enclaves had advised salvaging her mind and starting over. At worst, ten or fifteen years would be lost as she regained some of the knowledge and talents that would inevitably be lost during the download procedure. The Council was patient. Lord Hromhada was not. He wasn’t as certain as the Council that all they sought rested solely in her mind. He had noticed an increase in her abilities over the last week or so. He feared that her telepathic powers were as much a part of her emotional being as her genetic makeup. If that was true, much more than her knowledge could be lost.
Lord Hromhada further suspected that her relationship with Jazon Lightsinger had much to do with her increased abilities. He had set her to snare the Terran, and the Terran had in turn ensnared her. It was a calculated risk to wait for the anti-venom. Each hour’s delay could destroy valuable synapses that they would be unable to save or transfer. Finally, he decided he could wait no longer.
“Metak,” he called to his most trusted servant. Metak rushed to his side and bowed deeply until the Highborn flicked a finger to acknowledge his subservience. “I wish you to go to our chief chemist. Inform him that I expect viable anti-venom in one hour or he will forfeit his life.”
Metak nodded and rushed out of the Highborn’s quarters.
Lord Hromhada detested threats but had found they often produced results more quickly than rewards. Something about impending doom perhaps opened new synaptic responses in the terrorized brain, he supposed. He smiled. Lightsinger was living up to his reputation. His escape on the shuttle had been most ingenious, although ultimately futile. He would bear greater scrutiny in the future. His reluctance to lead the mission was understandable. The chances of success were dismal, yet attempt it they must.
Regardless of the outcome of the war with the Cha’aita, Dastora must survive. Occam’s Razor was a prototype vessel utilizing radically new methods for propulsion and guidance. A fleet of such vessels was nearing completion near the Rim awaiting the results from Occam’s Razor’s trial run before going on-line. Before the dilation effects of subatomic string imbalance ripped the galaxy apart, his people would board the vessels and be long gone.
However, the Trilock worried him. Their resistance to the mission was well known, but he had not anticipated the attempted assassination of Lightsinger. He would have to watch the second Trilock closely. The knowledge that he, too, would try to stop the mission would remain a secret except to those who needed to know.
Protector Huumba had made his thoughts on the idea of a Terran commanding Occam’s Razor known on many occasions, but only a human could safely operate the neuro-link. In the event of an emergency, of which Lord Hromhada imagined there would be many, the ship needed an experienced commander at her helm. Jazon Lightsinger’s unorthodox style might be the one thing that could save them from disaster.
Huumba was a good leader, and doubtless, he would earn his right to breed soon. Lord Hromhada hoped he would not behave rashly and jeopardize the mission.
Huumba, like many Drones, too often acted first and considered options later – an impulse that went hand-in-hand with the desire to breed, a natural weeding out process the Dastoran reduced population could no longer afford.
The Alliance surely suspected the Dastoran plans. If not, what resided within the ubiquitous case carried so closely by Professor Lyton? Thus far, the case had resisted all attempts to penetrate its shell. If the Terrans and other Alliance races suspected the Dastorans were planning to leave the galaxy, how far would they go in an attempt to stop them? With the Dastorans gone and the Trilock indecisive, the Alliance could fall to the Cha’aita.
A part of Lord Hromhada felt a deep, penetrating shame for what he must do. For centuries, the Dastorans had lived by a code of honor that had catapulted them across the galaxy. They had met and learned from other Primary Races. They had nurtured younger fledgling species into space. It went against his entire being to use Amissa and the Terrans as pawns in this ignoble game. The other races would spit on the memory of the Dastorans and their treachery for abandoning t
heir children in their hour of need. No matter the outcome, Lord Hromhada had decided he would step down as High Lord of the Tuss once they had reached their new home. He had no heart for this type of dishonor.
Ulrich stared at Amissa as she lay on the hospital bed, a small waif on a sea of white. Her pale countenance and unfixed gaze made his heart go cold. That such a spirit should fall was not right. If only he had been two seconds faster. His guilt drove him from her room and into the safety and bitter solitude of his quarters. There, among the computer crystals and graphs on which he was working, he felt safe, if not secure.
He worried about Jazon. Jazon was a strong man and should recover from his wounds quickly. However, his guilt at having received the only available dose of anti-venom had robbed him of his spirit. He languished in his bed refusing meals and any words of comfort. He felt responsible for Amissa’s life even though Ulrich had taken the guilt upon himself.
If Lord Hromhada downloaded her memory, it would destroy Jazon. Amissa’s new clone body, Ulrich had learned, was just twelve years old. Even under forced growth, it would not age more than two years before the download could begin. The complex achikote anti-venom had thus far thwarted all attempts at duplication. Still, Lord Hromhada waited. For some reason, Lord Hromhada was determined that her body should reach puberty before the download. In Ulrich’s mind, that could only mean he feared to lose some trait that functioned only in a post puberty state. He suspected there was much more to Amissa than he and Jazon believed.
