by Josh Leone
“I could not impose, Caller.”
“It would be my pleasure to provide such a place for your meditations. There are precious few of us immortals. We must help each other when the need arises. No other being can truly understand what we feel.”
Sha thought about it and decided that such a place might be exactly what he needed. What Vashek had said about duty had rung true. Sha may be having a crisis of faith, but he still believed in his duty and the oaths he’d taken. Perhaps the best way to honor Pietra’s memory was to continue his service, continue to defend and protect the human race.
“Thank you, Caller. I would be grateful for the use of your estate.”
“Excellent, honored one. When you wish to leave this dreary hospital, you can contact my staff and they will make all the arrangements. You will have the place entirely to yourself at your convenience.”
For the first time in many days Sha felt his burden lift slightly. He still felt tremendous grief, but for the first time it seemed limited.
“I am glad I could help you, Szoveda.” Vashek patted Sha’s shoulder in a friendly manner before putting his chair back in its proper place. As the Caller neared the door, he turned back to where Sha lay.
“And I assure you, Pietra’s death with be fully investigated. I will see to it personally.”
“Caller Vashek, why would it be investigated further? It has already been declared an accident.”
“An accident?” Vashek let a tinge of confusion color his expression. “I read the reports. While ship design is not my specialty, it is my understanding that a great many things would have to occur in a very specific pattern to create the sort of malfunction your wife’s ship suffered, far too many to happen by mere accident. But, as I said, it is not my area of expertise. Perhaps I am wrong. Do not let my words bother you. Rest, and let it pass from your thoughts.”
Vashek exited the room and Sha was left reeling. He’d been so absorbed in his emotions that he’d never considered the obvious. Of course it could not have been an accident. There were indeed far too many fail safes built into even the most basic of Legion vessels. Even in commercial ships the risk of such a catastrophic malfunction almost nil.
Sha opened the Legion’s secure q-net and DLed schematics for the ship Pietra had flown that day. Using this information and his neurotech Sha was able to construct hundreds of perfectly accurate virtual simulations in his mind. Not one of them resulted in such an all-pervasive systems failure. None had even come close. Then why had it been so quickly dismissed as an accident?
The Holy Mother had not taken Pietra from him, someone else had. Someone had sabotaged her ship and killed her. Someone had arranged a cover-up. Sha had wanted a target for his anger and now it appeared there may be one. He had to discover who was responsible. He had to make them pay.
There was a guard outside his room and Sha did not want to again use violence against a person only doing an honest job. The harm he’d inflicted on those who’d delivered the news of Pietra’s death still haunted him. Fortunately there was a window in the room. It was closed, locked, and covered in a transparent steel plate three centimeters thick. Sha was through it in less than five seconds. The thirty story drop was jarring but his armor absorbed most of the impact.
His absence would be noticed quickly so he had little time to get to his private ship. He found a null-G car in the parking lot and used his implant to hack the security system and the navigational controls. It was a high-end sports car, which meant that if Sha was willing to burn out the power plant he could get to his destination in less than twenty minutes.
◊
Vashek watched the image feeds. One showed Szoveda Sha as he leaped down from his recovery room window, making his way to a parked car. The car flew away quickly at a dangerous speed, exactly in the direction Vashek had expected.
The next image showed the interior of the Enduring Journey where Iyanna Twill and Jason Vig sat playing a strategy game in the main cabin. The view switched to show Seth Okan sitting outside the ship, relaxing with his back against a landing strut. Another vid-feed revealed Jonah Haj boarding a space-liner for the Legreth system where the young Returned would meet up with Okan’s ship for the next phase of his mission.
Everything was precisely as it should be. All of the pieces were coming together. Vashek gave orders to his car’s computer and the vehicle lifted from the ground, turned in the proper direction, and sped off toward Vashek’s next destination.
In the past few weeks Vashek had experienced more emotion than he had during most of his very long life. The Caller knew this was a side effect of being close to his ascension, to when he would leave his weak flesh behind and become pure mind, pure psi. He would become the pinnacle of sentient evolution. So very close.
◊
Iyanna tried to concentrate on the game but her thoughts kept drifting to other things. She was a watch dog. When she striped away all the rationalizations she knew that she had been made into just another part of the Legion machine, something she’d thought she’d avoided by leaving the PoPros and taking up the life of a freelancer.
Her life had been spared because she’d agreed to insure the success of the mission, to insure that Seth and Vig didn’t get any ideas. And how would she do that? Would she really hold a gun on Seth, on the kind engineer? And what if they called her bluff? Would she kill one of them?
The Admiral had made clear the consequences of failure. Not only would Iyanna not get paid, she would be placed on the lists. No matter how far Iyanna went, she’d always taken comfort in the fact that she could always go back. For Iyanna, being a freelance operator had always been like a game. If she ever decided she didn’t want to play, she could just quit.
Vig looked up, saw Iyanna’s distraction, and said, “Your tower is in jeopardy.”
“What’d you say?”
“Your tower,” Vig said. “My fleet is within two moves of taking it.”
“Oh, right.” Iyanna moved two of her pieces to protect her tower.
“That’s only going to delay things.” Vig moved a squad into attack range of Iyanna’s tower. “’Fraid your fate is already sealed, darlin’. Just a matter of time now.”
Iyanna wondered, and not for the first time, if the old engineer knew what she was thinking. In their time together Iyanna had come to recognize that the man was not as simple as he pretended to be. There was intelligence in him, of that she had no doubt, but there was more than that. Iyanna had known many intelligent people, but not many also possessed of an equal measure of wisdom. Iyanna had seen the engineer solve for fun in his spare time equations that most of her professors would not have been able to manage without computer assistance. She’d confided in Vig many times in the short span she’d been on the Journey. His advice had always been sound and helpful and never intrusive.
“I’m afraid, Vig.”
“It’s just a game, girl. No reason to be afraid.”
“No, not that.”
“I know what you mean, Iyanna. But that’s it, isn’t it?” Vig looked up from the game and sat back in his chair. “You find yourself in a new situation, one with real consequences, and you don’t know how to handle it.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“You’ve never really been on your own, have you, Darlin’?”
“No,” Iyanna curled up in her chair. “Not really. I’ve always been part of something.”
“Something that would catch you if things went pear-shaped.”
“Yes.”
“And now, for the first time, you’re seeing the strings.”
“Strings?” Iyanna asked.
“Working for the Legion, there’re always strings attached.”
“I feel like I’m being strangled by those strings.”
“That’s what strings do, darlin’.”
“What can I do?”
“Sometimes you just have to cut yourself loose.”
“What if I fall?”
Vig leaned forwa
rd and looked Iyanna square in the eyes. “Then you get back up.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You find a friend to help you.”
“How do I know who to trust?”
“Well,” Vig said. “That’s the rub, darlin’. You just have to reach out your hand and hope whoever takes it holds on tight.”
Chapter 5
She gives Her children power, that She may see how they use it.
-Book of Gifts (21-9)
Jonah’s flight arrived in the Legreth system on schedule. He was still angered by the confrontation between the security guard and the Gorwal family, but he tried to put that away for now and focus on his mission.
The space-liner was too large to land. Instead it docked with a geostationary docking ring in orbit around Legreth-Six. The surface of the planet was reached by way of a system of elevators attached to a kilometers long tether connected to a ground-based facility. The elevator took half an hour to descend and Jonah took the time to look out the windows at the vast orchards below. There was a beautiful symmetry to the orchards, each laid out in perfect geometric shapes.
There was time before Jonah had to meet with the transport that would take him to his final destination, so he elected to try out a restaurant in the facility’s mall. It was his hope that the experience would be different than the last one.
His original body had never been tolerant of spicy foods. He loved such foods but he’d had to be very careful or he would suffer for the pleasure. This was not a problem in his new body. Yet another benefit of it was a digestive system that could tolerate a vast range of substances that would prove lethal to a base-line human.
An Honored Returned could draw essential nutrients from almost any organic material regardless of source or condition. Jonah’s body could analyze anything it consumed and determine the best way to process it. If he wanted to, Jonah could have accessed a complete material analysis of every bite. He didn’t. He wanted to savor the food, not dissect it.
The meal was pleasant and, though there were a few non-humans present in the mall, there was no repeat of the cruelty Jonah had previously witnessed. He finished his meal, paid his bill, and left the mall. The station was surrounded by mostly open space with a few warehouses and processing plants. Jonah kept a steady pace as he walked down the rough gravel road leading away from the center of what on Legreth-Six was considered ‘a city.’
Once he was certain he was out sight, Jonah poured on the speed. His legs pumped hard against the rich soil as he veered off the road toward his destination. He hit forty kilometers per hour almost instantly, within seconds reaching fifty, then sixty. His enhanced brain was able to process his surroundings easily, allowing him to calculate best routes and avoid obstacles. Seventy kilometers per hour, eighty, ninety.
Jonah’s acceleration leveled out at almost one-hundred-fifty kilometers per hour. He passed birds and animals so quickly they hardly had time to act surprised. Leaves rustled, small branches bent and a rooster-tail of dust flew up behind him. Jonah reveled in the power of his body. The wind rushing against his face was easily the most exhilarating thing he’d ever experienced, except of course for the Returning itself.
So consumed was Jonah’s mind in the simple joy of running that he failed to notice a warning signal sent from his implants. Too late he realized his foot had come down on a loose stone, throwing off his balance and sending him headlong into a rolling, tumbling fall. Jonah skid more than a dozen meters before coming to a stop. His armor had activated instantly to protect him.
For several minutes Jonah lay on his back, arms and legs spread. There was no pain, only embarrassment. Jonah reviewed his visual record to determine exactly what had happened. The stone that had sent him sprawling was a tiny thing. Honored Returned were meant to face foes that would be otherwise unbeatable, odds that would be insurmountable by other beings. Yet a simple stone had laid him low. There was a lesson in that, and it was not lost on him. As powerful as he was, his greatest enemy was his own assumption of invulnerability. When he resumed his trek, Jonah kept to a sedate pace of just over eighty kph.
◊
Admiral Simms sat behind her desk and stewed. How dare that preening, sexless Caller use her like that! Yes, she knew the Caller outranked her in the hierarchy of power, but she was an Admiral, damn it. She was in command of one of the most powerful weapons ever built by human hands. Entire star systems had bowed before her. At her order whole planets had been scrubbed clean of alien infestation!
That she should be reduced to capturing and then actually interacting with some scruffy smuggler was beyond insulting. What had Vashek been thinking, sending the most powerful warship in known space on such a belittling errand? And to make matters worse, sending that nasty little toady of his to give the order? Unthinkable! Simms had at least gained some small satisfaction when she’d insisted on receiving the order directly from Vashek himself. The Caller had clearly been less than happy to do so but Simms would have nothing less and it was within her authority make such a demand. If she was going to follow such a demeaning order, she was going to at least make Vashek give it to her.
The expense alone of bringing the Judgment into position, and then actually using the phase field suppressor, was immense. Entire colonies could be founded with fewer credits. Vashek had carefully worded the orders so that any official record would indicate a simple test of the new weapon, the target merely one of convenience. There would be no official record of the conversation Simms had had with Okan, which was, of course, exactly why Simms had to be the one to have it. As Admiral she had ultimate authority. Any lesser officer would be required to file the appropriate reports with the Ministry of Records.
Simms briefly entertained the idea of filing those reports herself just to spite Vashek. But she knew she couldn’t. Vashek, for all that she hated him, had been instrumental in her rise to Admiral and her assignment to the Judgment. Vashek had recruited her straight out of the Legion PoPros, groomed her for power, and smoothed many paths for her. Even that might not have been enough to insure her loyalty to the Caller, but for the ‘incident.’
Simms had been a mere Captain in the Legion, in command of a small battleship patrolling the border between Primacy space and the Selik Collective, a stubborn and resilient enemy. The Selik were clever, sly, often employing genetically engineered human clones as operatives. The Selik were infinitely patient, planting clone operatives in human colonies, on commercial ships, anywhere they might come into contact with someone of value to the Primacy.
Jackson Simms had been a civilian maintenance worker at a Legion deep space facility. He’d worked on the battleship when it came in for regular maintenance checks. He’d courted her and she’d fallen in love. She’d been so dedicated to her PoPro training that she’d never let herself even think of such relationships. But he’d been sweet and he knew all the right words. They’d spent a single lust-filled night together before being married in a small ceremony the very next day. She adopted his name.
Once he was in her confidence the clone had split his time between being a loving husband and hacking her secure files. The Selik had used the information to plan raids against Primacy targets, knowing exactly when patrols would be absent. Lives were lost, human lives.
She’d known what was happening, but had no idea what to do about it. As soon as she realized that she was being used she’d taken care of the clone herself, a body’s worth of extra weight in the trash recycler. But the damage had been done and it was only a matter of time before some data-pusher put two and two together. The Selik raids had been too precisely timed to be dismissed as coincidence.
Just as Simms was about to turn herself in, she was contacted by a woman who she later found out was an agent of Caller Vashek. Vashek would make the problem go away, would insure Simms’ rise through the ranks and in exchange all Simms had to do was anything Vashek asked of her.
She had to admit, for all her complaining about being tasked to contact
Okan, Vashek had never before asked very much of her. She had risen in rank - farther than she’d dreamed possible. So perhaps she was overreacting. If all Vashek wanted of her was a slight dent in her pride, it was a fair price for what she’d received.
Simms deleted the memo she’d been writing, the one that would have become a permanent record of her encounter with the crew of the Enduring Journey. There would be no report. Vashek would get his way but that didn’t mean he was off the hook. Simms saved the recording of Vashek giving the order to capture Okan onto a secure data-chip, and placed it in her private safe. Someday that information would come in handy.
“Admiral Simms?” The voice of her second-in-command on the intercom.
“Go ahead.”
“Admiral, we’ve received new orders. We are to provide support for an assault on a Vodule-held world. HQ has actionable intel that the bugs are building a shipyard in border space in prep for an aggressive assault on our outer colonies.”
“Set course. Order full checks on all systems. I want everything tiptop by the time we arrive.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Simms was grateful. This was exactly what she needed to take her mind off things. A shipyard would be child’s play for the Judgment. The Admiral made her way from her office to the bridge. As soon as she stepped on deck she felt like the air had become fresher. This was where she belonged, this was home. She looked forward to the battle, short as it was likely to be.
◊
The field came into Jonah’s view and he slowed his pace to that of a casual walk. The cargo ship was sitting in the field, looking exactly as it had in the images Vashek had shown him. Jonah ran the I.D. numbers painted on the ship’s hull through his neurotech, checking that it matched the name in the registry, Enduring Journey. Jonah liked the name. It felt appropriate.
