“Who do they worship?” Adrial asked, eager to learn their prayers and rituals.
“No one knows. They are rarely seen and never speak of their home world. That translation device is wonderful, taps into brain synapses and interprets the meaning of words . . .” The librarian looked eager to wander off into technological babble.
“And what kinds of cargo do they transport?” Adrial asked, still fascinated by the intricacies of their anatomy. So simple and yet capable of so much with those long tentacles, some terminating in a pincer for grasping, others with sensitive pads for understanding.
“Anything that needs to move from here to there,” the caretaker said with disapproval.
“Smugglers?” Adrial asked. She knew she’d need a smuggler or a pirate next time the Law caught up with her. Smugglers knew how to hide their tracks.
“Godless beings who worship only profit. They’ve destroyed their home world and several others along the way in their quest for more and more money. Just like the Labyrinthians. That is the only book known to be written in the language of Labyrinthe.” A contradiction of his previous awe. Interesting. He knew more than he thought he did.
“How can they survive without a God and a planet to fix their place in the universe?” she asked warily.
“Labyrinthians live on and operate the best space stations in the galaxy. The Squids now live in their ships. No one knows for sure how they survive, if they propagate at all; only that their numbers decrease. Good riddance. They contribute little to the overall good since they won’t share their translator or their texts. If they have any.” He left Adrial to peruse the book.
By the time she’d finished turning each page, she knew the Labyrinthe language and most of their collected knowledge.
And when she desperately needed to flee the Law and their prison, she’d stumbled on the last of the Squid People negotiating an illegal cargo destined for the First Contact Café.
The last of their kind. Few knew of their existence. Fewer would note their passing.
Leave no trace.
No one would remember Adrial when her time came to join the Gods. She let her heart beat faster as she triumphed in succeeding at that deep command. She’d already set into motion a method for ensuring that no one remembered her presence here.
Now if she could just remember what she’d done, and how, she could accelerate the plan if needed.
At the same time a deep aching loneliness brought unwanted tears to her eyes. She’d never have friends, a family, someone to love and be loved by.
That must be how Harmony and Her family felt with both the HP and HPs away from home.
She feared for Laudae Sissy and her people, lost and alone without an avatar to keep their Goddess at home. She needed to talk to the priestess.
Her message to the Temple wing met with silence. She repeated it every ten minutes for two hours without an answer.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jake’s comm board exploded with lights and noise. Beside him, Sissy winced.
Her face still looked pale, with dark circles almost purple enough to match her top caste mark marring her olive complexion.
“FCC Control, this is FCC One. Please jam the excess noise on my frequency. I can’t dock this baby with people yelling at me. It’s a delicate procedure, and I have to concentrate.” He keyed in a code to get him a docking spot near Medbay. The increased speed of the station that gradually widened its orbit would make the docking trickier yet.
“Sorry, FCC One.” The male voice of a subordinate officer from the CSS sounded like it winced too. “Lord Lukan isn’t too happy with you right now. Ambassador Telvino and Admiral Marella have a few pieces of their minds to lay on you as well. They’ve all taken over the comm board.”
“You can dock a garbage scow with your eyes closed, Jake!” Pammy screamed. The unflappable spymaster must really be upset to raise her voice in those strident tones.
“You done anything to stabilize the orbit of this tin can, Pammy? If not, shut up and let me do my job. Lieutenant Cortini, my orders supersede theirs when it comes to running the station. Now can the chatter or I crash this shuttle with my VIP passenger aboard.”
Three voices shouted in outrage. He couldn’t tell one from the other. Not even in their abusive vocabulary.
“FCC Control, I’m cutting all comms. Just make sure that docking bay at Medbay is open and operative. My passenger needs assistance. Put a doc and orderlies with wheeled transport on standby.” He slammed his fist against the board, making sure the others heard the thud before the frequency went silent again. His hand didn’t like the abuse, but it didn’t hurt as if it was broken, just beat up. He could live with that; he’d endured worse.
He hoped they got the reference to Doc Halliday. He didn’t want anyone else checking out his Sissy.
“Barely get a line open to the station again and the diplomats coopt it,” he muttered.
“Jake, I don’t need to go to Medbay. I’m fine now,” Sissy insisted.
“No, you aren’t. You look like you’ve been to hell and back.” He let his frustration with the less than diplomatic diplomats color his voice with anger.
“Not hell. I think I went to heaven for a bit.” She looked wistfully into a distance he couldn’t see. “I need to go back.”
“Heaven is too close to death for me. You’re getting checked out by Doc Halliday or Physician John if you insist on one of your own with a lauded caste mark. They give me an okay on you before anyone else talks to you.” He turned his attention to nudging the shuttle up to the bay door and aligning his entrance. He held his breath several times as he matched speeds faster than he was used to. The docking skids were wide enough to adjust to a less than perfect match. Jake prided himself on needing less margin of error than anyone.
“Lord Lukan will want to know why we were gone so long. There will be a scandal because you are out of caste,” she said softly.
“He’ll have to settle for my explanation. He’s not going to berate you until after the doc clears you.”
“What will you tell him?”
She turned those wide, pain-filled eyes to him.
“The truth.”
“Is the truth enough?”
“It has to be.”
He glided into the bay and touched down with only a bit of a sway and thump. He waited while the bay doors closed and the air lock cycled through before he freed himself of flight restraints. He’d barely terminated the final checklist when the hatch burst open, Pammy muscling aside the two diplomats to be first in.
“Where the hell have you been, Jake? You have no business disappearing for forty-eight hours and turning off all your comms,” she said, hands on shapely hips, chin thrust forward belligerently.
“I thought you’d outgrown your loose cannon disrespect for authority, General Devlin,” Telvino sneered.
“What kind of example have you set for your acolytes, My Laudae,” Lord Lukan chimed in right on top of the other two protests.
Sissy slapped Jake’s hand away from her own restraints. Then she proceeded to open them by herself, slowly, calmly.
“Lord Lukan, Temple has blithely ignored the relationship mores of the other castes for generations. You have no right to question my actions.” She stood as she spoke. Her knees buckled, and she swayed in place.
Jake caught her, as he would have if he’d still been her bodyguard.
“Ambassador Telvino,” Sissy continued as she found her balance—by holding on to the back of the copilot’s seat. “As a former military man, you understand the value of following a direct order. General Devlin followed my orders.” She stiffened her spine, every inch the High Priestess with the authority of life and death over an entire empire of seven planets. “And Admiral Marella, I suggest you look at the source of the interference rather than blame General Devlin for not communicating with you.”
She closed her eyes and paled, as if ready to pass out again.
Jake wished he kne
w for sure if that was an act or not. He didn’t think even she had that kind of chutzpah.
“Is there a medic out there?” he called loudly over the shoulders of the intruders. “We need a medic and transport, now!” He grabbed Sissy around the waist.
Her knees continued to sink toward the deck.
Deftly he scooped her up and pushed his way through the crowd.
“What happened out there, Jake?” Lord Lukan called, the only one of the trio truly concerned for Sissy.
“We ran into a spiny plant on our new planet. She had an allergic reaction.”
“And now she’s having backlash from the high dose of antihistamines,” Physician John said. His green triangle caste mark had a new purple circle around it, along with the Spacer yellow star outline. Traces of a red square were embedded in there, too. Not too far off Sissy’s neat array.
Jake bit his lower lip, desperately willing Sissy to be healthy.
“I’m okay, Jake. I promise.”
“I expect a High Priestess to keep her promises.” He flashed her a brief smile, not able to manage much more than that until he knew for sure that she’d recovered.
“I’ll get better a lot faster if you take me back to the planet,” she added with a touch of her usual spunk.
“Later. I promise.”
“I expect my General Jake to keep his promises.”
Physician John back-kicked Pammy to get enough room to run a high-tech diagnostic tool over Sissy’s brow and pulse points.
Pammy looked as though she was going to yell at the medic.
Jake quelled her with a glare. Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“You won’t get away with this impertinence, Jake,” she hissed.
“Who you going to report me to, Pammy?” He flashed them all a cocky grin and relinquished his precious burden to an orderly with a gurney. “Last I heard, I’m accused of setting up the FCC as an independent state. You agreed with that so you could have the run of the place.”
Then he stalked off to Control without a backward glance. He needed another look at the planet survey—the original one, not the one Pammy had given him after she’d had time to alter it. Somebody was going to pay for Sissy’s injuries. He didn’t much care who.
“Ah, Physician Halliday,” Gregor greeted the stocky woman standing in his doorway. “I am starved for company in this isolated corner of the station. Where am I, by the way?” He kept his voice light and conversational, though he had to force himself to keep looking at her bare face.
Didn’t these CSS people know how revolting they appeared without the defining caste mark?
“Far removed from anywhere else,” the CSS doctor replied curtly. “Now what is so important that you drag me away from my work, halfway to nowhere?”
“I understand that my HPs has returned. I need to know that she is safe.”
“She’ll be okay.” Halliday kept looking over her shoulder, as if she needed to be elsewhere or feared she’d been followed.
“Excellent. I hope she is well enough to bear children soon.”
Halliday returned his look quizzically.
Good. He hoped she was as ignorant of Temple customs as most of her people and his own.
“Physician Halliday, perhaps you do not know that on Harmony the High Priest and High Priestess must . . . um . . . mate. Temple caste is a very small and select group. Many of our children migrate to the Noble caste, the only mingling of castes tolerable. We must produce many children just to keep our ranks filled with properly educated clergy.”
“And your point would be?” She moved two steps toward him, curious despite her harried workload.
“I am in no condition to . . . um . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. Sex would put too much strain on your heart. Probably kill you. But what a way to go.” She quirked a half smile. “You’ll get your new heart in about two weeks. If you are lucky.”
“Laudae Sissy was elevated to her position over a year ago. In a sense her ordination was also a marriage to me. She needs to bear my child, as proof to all of Harmony that Temple caste thrives and continues to serve them. We’ve delayed too long as it is. We both felt it better that she complete her education before she took on the responsibility for a child. The stability of our culture is now in jeopardy. We need your help to give us that child.”
Sissy could not be allowed to bear Jake’s baby and risk an improper caste mark.
Only Gregor’s genes were strong enough to guarantee a true child of Temple. A true child he could raise to lead Temple caste and Harmony along the path Gregor knew to be true. Now if they’d just hurry up with that cloned heart so he could live long enough to bring his plans to fruition.
“How?” She wrinkled her brow suspiciously.
“Artificial . . . um . . .” He tried to look embarrassed. He knew enough of CSS sensibilities to recognize their discomfort with the topic.
“Insemination.” She supplied him the word, much as Jake used to do for Sissy.
That grated on Gregor’s nerves.
“We have little need for it on Harmony. Our physicians do not know how.”
“I’m a trauma surgeon assigned to a military vessel. I don’t know a lot about it either.”
“But you have access to the information.”
“Ye—es.”
“You also have access to the technology to guarantee that the child will bear only a Temple caste mark on the proper left cheek.”
“It’s not that easy. Conception is chancy under the best of natural circumstances. Your specifications require a lot more than collecting sperm and shooting it into Laudae Sissy at the optimum moment. She’ll need to take hormone therapy for months. Extraction of eggs, genetic manipulation, then reinsertion of fertilized eggs . . .”
Gregor grew cold.
“You do not understand. Laudae Sissy has recently begun a new and inappropriate relationship. I must take matters into my own hands.”
“You want her to bear your child, you need her cooperation. I can’t give that to you. You have to talk to her.”
“She has this need to do things the natural way.”
Halliday chuckled. “She has a need to do things her own way.”
“There must be something you can do.”
“I can assure you that Laudae Sissy did nothing you would be ashamed of while out gallivanting with General Devlin. I assure you. She’s sick enough that she won’t be doing much for a couple of days, either. That’s the best I can do for you. You are on your own for the rest of it. Now I’ve got to get back to real work.” Abruptly she turned and vanished down the corridor, laughing to herself.
Gregor threw his water bulb at her departing back. It bounced against the closed door.
Then he had to drag himself out of bed to reclaim it. The effort left him panting and weak and seeing black spots in front of his eyes.
He needed a spy. Someone with two healthy legs who could move about the station, observing and listening. A live person who reported back to him, not a hover cam that returned to Media as a default. He also wanted someone who could bring him accurate news reports from Harmony.
As he plopped back onto the bed, his vision went all white. A radiant figure appeared beside him, her draperies glowing brightly.
His angel.
Her smile stabbed him deeply with emotions he barely recognized and filled him to overflowing with joy.
He felt strength return to his heart just looking at her. “My sanctuary. You offer me sanctuary,” he whispered.
Then he felt the slight sting of a stimulant patch against his inner wrist.
“My Laud, you need to return to Harmony,” she said. “You don’t have time to wait for a new heart. The Goddess is alone, drifting. The planet is in upheaval, and many have died in quakes and storms and eruptions because both you and Laudae Sissy have deserted her. You and Laudae Sissy must return to give Harmony an anchor. Otherwise She cannot find your people. Her people.”
Gregor’s heart flut
tered in sorrow.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jake slipped the privacy latch on his inner office door. Then he accessed the CSS database on Space Base III, the last station where he’d been permanently assigned. The last place he’d been known as Jake Hannigan. Admiral Telvino had commanded, and Pammy had recruited him as one of her spies from there.
He knew SB3’s computer system and codes. Well, in the last two years, the techs had probably cycled through six sets of codes. But he knew those techs and their idiosyncrasies. Chances were, his two-year-out-of-date codes had come full circle and been activated again.
Nope, not those. How about the ones before that?
Partial entry to public services. Hmm. If Ron still ran the tactical team, he’d use the same three sets of secondary numbers . . .
Jake tapped his desk impatiently while the computers thought about his entry.
“This password will expire in forty-eight hours. Please change your password.”
With a wicked grin, Jake set his own new password. Never know when he might have to do this again.
Bingo! He got past the first wall of security. He met a solid barrier at the next security level. Dan Michaels was good at day-to-day maintenance and winding his way through the maze of hardware. But he didn’t have a lot of imagination. Thinking up new codes left him staring blankly and stammering. Jake reversed the numbers and slipped unnoticed into a barely protected archive.
Within seconds the pristine planet survey lay open in front of him.
He scanned the index for plant life. “Thorn of God” the xenobotanists had named the spiked plant. The survey crew called it “Blue hooks,” based on appearance, bluish tinge to the leaves and a tiny hook on the end of each spike. Same difference. The sap caused severe allergic reactions, just as his contact had said. Chills, fever, hallucinations. Nearly everyone who encountered the ten-centimeter thorns built up resistance. A second penetration produced only headaches and sinus inflammation. No repeat hallucinations.
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