Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  Nariko pulled at the globe to bring it over her head, but found that it was firmly bolted to the nightstand. A precaution hotels sometimes took to keep things from being taken from the room. Nariko pulled harder. She would rip through the bolts if she had to.

  Brannon pointed to the corner of the room, where a pillow and a spare comforter had been placed and slept on.

  “I didn’t know where you were staying and you were sleeping so peacefully, that I just brought you here. I slept over there on the floor,” he explained.

  It took several moments for this information to filter through Nariko’s mind until it reached the rational part of her. Slowly, her grip on the on the crystal globe relaxed and Nariko felt the person that she used to be returning to her. Brannon sensed her apprehension.

  “Nothing happened, Betti,” he reassured as he dressed himself. “To be honest, I am just as surprised as you are. Being in the Faust family has a certain number of privileges and there have always been a number of beautiful women who were interested in me at any given time. I’ll admit it may have even spoiled me a little. But, something is different with you. Something that makes me respect you. Maybe it was that spontaneous butter-knife duel at the restaurant, or perhaps it is your endearing awkwardness...”

  What do you mean awkwardness?

  “...but I feel a real kinship with you, Betti, so I was content to simply let you sleep in the bed while I slept on the floor.”

  Nariko willed herself to calm down further, but she just couldn’t make the emotion subside. Part of her wanted to run out of the room and never be seen again, another part of her wanted to thank him for protecting her virtue and still another part of her wanted to crush his skull. All these different emotions pulled her in different directions and all she could do was sit there with her mouth slightly open.

  “Why were my clothes off, then...?” Nariko finally asked, unable to keep the emotion and anger out of her voice. Brannon pointed over to the chair where her clothes had been laid.

  “I had the lady mädchen put you to bed,” he explained.

  “No, I mean, why was I not wearing any clothes to bed?” she stammered out, still flushed with emotion.

  Brannon looked at her, blankly.

  “Why would you wear clothes to bed?” he asked, puzzled.

  Nariko realized that the people of Ardura always slept without clothes.

  Another frakin’ tradition.

  When she realized that, she began laughing. Brannon laughed with her, pleased that she had a healthy sense of humor. As he laughed, he sat down at the edge of the bed and took her by the hand. “Betti, you know what I realized just now? I realized that I don’t care if you are an off-worlder and I don’t care how strongly my family will protest. You are definitely quite a find.”

  Brannon pulled a small velvet pouch from his pocket and fiddled with it nervously.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Autopsy in Steiermark

  You cannot truly love someone you have not met. You can, however, truly hate someone you do not know. This illustrates the transcendence of hate as an emotion, because it is possible to hate all of creation, but it is only possible to love a small portion of it.

  -Attributed to Kaiser Claus Schwarz of Ardura 6420-6508rl

  Genetor Harkoy kept his focus completely on the work before him. The rest of the world just seemed to fade away, leaving only himself and his work.

  “Hand me the scalpel, please, darlin’,” he asked and Nurse Anno placed one in his outstretched gloved hand.

  Harkoy made the incision skillfully and deliberately. This was the crucial moment, that time when the most could go wrong.

  “Towel, please, darlin’,” Harkoy asked and the sweat was wiped from his brow. Two more incisions were made with calm and steady hands.

  “Okay, pass me the plate and have the gravy ready.”

  Nurse Anno stepped aside, revealing the perfectly carved roasted turkey that sat before them. Harkoy elegantly placed three flawlessly sliced pieces of breast meat on her plate and then stood up to admire his work.

  “And that’s how it’s done,” Harkoy said, congratulating himself as he removed his surgical mask.

  “It really does look amazing when you do it that way,” Anno praised, lifting the plate up to draw in the delicious aroma.

  The doors to the emergency room were kicked in and two armed guards stormed into the room. Harkoy and Anno were grabbed roughly, their hands pinned behind their backs, their faces slammed to the walls. Flasks of paint were produced and sprayed onto the observation windows and onto the lenses of the medical augers. Within seconds, the room was completely cut off from the outside world.

  Harkoy and Anno’s frightened protests were muffled by gloved hands.

  A man in a gray long coat entered, his face covered with scars. “My name is Molotop,” he began, brandishing the platinum skull symbol of his office. “I am deputy to Marshal Rochestri, who in en route.”

  Harkoy and Anno stopped struggling, their eyes wide with fear.

  “The Marshals require your immediate service. As citizens of the Confederacy you are duty bound to give it or you will be imprisoned as traitors. I am placing you under oath to make no record of this night, nor will you breathe a word of what you see to another. If you break this oath you will be...”

  ...“killed?” Harkoy concluded.

  Molotop blinked at him, looking genuinely hurt. “Of course not. We are not animals. No, your names will be placed in the Purgatum. Your souls will be banned from entering the spirit realm, damned for all eternity.”

  “Oh, well, then...” Harkoy grumbled.

  Two more guards brought in a body bag. The roasted turkey was shoved off the examination table and crashed down to the floor with a splat.

  Harkoy and Anno were placed before the body bag, their hands released. Harkoy stood there for a second defiantly, chewing on his lip. With a thin smile, Molotop held out his hand and switched on a recording device.

  “You could have just asked you know,” Harkoy commented as he placed his surgical mask back on and took out his auger.

  “The Marshals never ask for anything,” Molotop commented matter-of-factly.

  The body bag was peeled open, revealing the corpse inside.

  “Okay,” Harkoy began. “1930 Local Standard Time: Subject corpse delivered under armed guard. Anno, can you get a blood analysis going for me, darlin’?”

  “Yes, Genetor.”

  “Initial visual investigation leaves no doubt to the cause of death. Subject suffered complete circulatory-system failure, having received a direct hit from a Triplex Pattern Plasma Rifle, burning a hole...” Harkoy produced a surgical ruler and placed it into the wound. “Point one-two meters into the chest cavity, destroying the heart and cauterizing the primary lobe arteries.”

  Anno removed a simple metal necklace from the body and handed it to Harkoy.

  “We have here Confederate dog tags from a...Jarome Akiyama. Do you want me to start a name search?”

  Molotop smirked. With the Atrudi you have here, a complete search of all worlds in the Confederacy would require 114.66 standard years without further search refinements.”

  “So no, then...” Harkoy said, as he ran his auger over the corpse and adjusted the settings.

  “Subject’s vital statistics measured as follows: Height: 6’0”, (91st percentile for standard human female), weight 158 pounds, hair color black-22. Eye color, green-16...”

  Harkoy trailed off, his brow furrowed. “Spectral analysis indicates hair pigmentation with altering bio-dermal compounds? Anno, am I reading this right?”

  Anno bent down and began examining the subject’s hair, her face pinched with confusion.

  “Genetor, look at this,” Anno alerted.

  Anno turned the corpse’s head to the side, revealing the back of her neck.

  “Large...symbol discovered on the back of subject’s neck, bearing unidentified markings,” Harkoy reported. “Unable to dete
rmine if mark is brand or tattoo. Is this a cult marking?”

  Harkoy turned to Molotop for confirmation, but Molotop said nothing.

  Fascinated, Harkoy took out his retractors and widened the opening in the chest cavity. “Anno, look at this. Her rib-bones are interlaced.”

  “Not just interlaced, look at this cross-section. There are extra layers of bone marrow, like the rings in a tree.”

  Harkoy and Anno looked at each other in distress.

  Surgical saws were produced and the entire chest cavity was opened with far more noted difficulty than was normal.

  “The lungs are the wrong color and they are chambered,” Harkoy affirmed as he handled them.

  “There is an extra organ attached to the liver,” Anno revealed.

  “An extra organ? For what?”

  “I couldn’t say. But here is another extra organ attached to the ovaries.”

  “There are no kidneys.”

  “Impossible. No one can live without kidneys.”

  “I agree, but like I said, there are no kidneys. I mean, there is something there, but they are not kidneys, whatever they are.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Harkoy mentioned, handling an organ.”

  “Explain,” Molotop ordered.

  “Normally this is where the uterus would be, but this...this is unlike anything I have ever seen.”

  “Look back here,” Anno said. “The entire spinal cord has some sort of...membrane coating it.”

  “Those look like little adrenal glands...”

  “On the spinal cord?”

  “Yeah and look at the pelvic bone, it has extra segments.”

  The hemo-atrudi made a buzzing sound, indicating that it had finished its analysis. Nurse Anno walked over to view the results.

  Genetor Harkoy looked at Molotop intently. “This is no mutant, this is...I don’t know what this is, but it’s scary enough to make a train jump track and take a dirt road.”

  “Is that your official medical determination?” Molotop asked coldly.

  “Genetor,” Anno called out. “Blood analysis complete. No sign of viral, bacteriological or toxicological contamination has been detected, but the hormonal patterns are completely inconsistent with standard human female, with estrogen and glycogen 23% higher than normal and three unknown hormonal types tagged. Servus reports heavy presence of non-mammalian chromosomal sequences.”

  “Non-mammalian?” Harkoy repeated as he rushed over to look for himself.

  “...and the presence of fifth and sixth DNA base pairs.”

  Harkoy and Anno looked at each other.

  “It’s not human...”

  From somewhere there was a rush of wind. Harkoy and Anno looked around in confusion as papers and scraps of cloth swirled about the room. Molotop and his soldiers looked about apprehensively, brandishing their weapons. Strange noises filled the room, such as Harkoy had never heard before. A strange ventriloquism, to which he could not locate the source. A smothered moan, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a bizarre keynote. Weird, unearthly, voices, uttering sounds that were less like words and more like breath caught in a throat. It was terrible to bear and startling with its power.

  Light gathered around the body on the examination table and to Harkoy’s horror the body began to reform itself. Organs were pulled back into their places; bones and flesh reknit themselves into full existence. The light reached a crescendo and Harkoy was forced to cover his eyes with his sleeve. When he was able to lower it again, the body was now sitting up on the table, screaming. The woman’s hair changed to a bright red as she grabbed the sides of her head and yelled, as if in unbearable pain.

  The two guards opened fire, shredding the table and the wall behind it, but the woman seemed to have disappeared completely. Harkoy looked around for her, then suddenly she reappeared, coming down from above in an upside down scissor kick that caught one guard in the head, knocking his head to the side as he fell insensible to the floor, while the other guard was caught in the face, smashing the faceplate in his helmet and throwing him backwards. The man fired blindly as he stumbled, forcing Harkoy and Anno to duck down, shielding themselves from the shards of glass and chunks of ferrocrete falling around them.

  One bullet struck the woman in the shoulder as she landed on her hands then cartwheeled herself upright, but her blood almost instantly coagulated, sealing the wound shut.

  Deputy Molotop drew an ion pistol and fired a blast of white-hot energy right at the woman, but again she seemed to vanish. The blast bored a hole through the wall and detonated a gas line contained within, cracking the wall in a spider web pattern.

  Harkoy looked up and saw that the woman was not actually disappearing, but had leapt up into the air above the shot.

  “How can anyone move that fast?” Harkoy asked aloud as the woman flipped in a tight tuck, unfurling herself at the last second, hitting Molotop squarely in the chest with both feet and knocking him back. The remaining guard got to his feet just in time for Molotop to crash into him. The two men slammed into the door, breaking it off its hinges. They came to a rolling stop in the hallway, unconscious.

  The woman walked over to Harkoy and Anno, who were huddled in the corner.

  “Can I have my tags back?” The woman asked as she breathed heavily, her hair slowly changing back to black.

  “O...over there,” Harkoy said, pointing at the tray.

  “San kyuu,” she thanked as she walked over and scooped up the dog tags. Noticing the spilled turkey, she pulled off a little piece and put it in her mouth.

  “Not bad,” she praised. “It needs a little rosemary.”

  As she moved to leave, Harkoy slowly took off his white coat and held it out for her. “Y-you’ll need this,” he stuttered.

  The woman looked down and squeaked, her hair changing to a bright purple as she realized that her clothes had been slashed apart during the autopsy.

  “Stop staring!” Anno demanded, slapping Harkoy on the shoulder.

  The woman took the coat and wrapped it around herself before dashing out of the room.

  Harkoy and Anno stood in stunned silence for several moments. The emergency room was shredded and crumbling. Dangling cables sparked and broken lights flickered as the two stood there, unsure of what had just happened or what to do next.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Parlay and Parry

  The Luminarch’s timing could not have been better. With the alliance signed between the Revolutionary Army and the Irathsa, the Imperialist forces would be fighting a war on both fronts. Emperor Beţiv Neîndoios signed into the law the Remiză Draft. For the first time in nine millennia, Ashtari citizens would be forced to fight for their own empire.

  -Excerpt from The Fall of the Ashtari, suppressed by the Marshals 22.03.4112rl

  Officer Lenhard bit down on his nicotine stick with dissatisfaction. He didn’t like it when other authorities came in and muddled up his investigations. He liked it even less when they took him completely out of the loop.

  Lenhard placed his rough hand on his prisoner’s shoulder. The man swayed drunkenly from the weight of it as he slept. Cartozine took a while to take full effect, but it was a powerful truth serum once it did. It’s too bad the details of its manufacture were of such questionable morality.

  Although his wounds were healing, Lenhard’s face was still covered in ugly blue and brown bruises that he had received from a gang of street thugs that had attacked him while he was in pursuit of a suspect. The incident had made his problems as an administrator crippling. Any respect he had won from those under him had been dashed aside and the men had even begun to deride him openly. He knew the problem was severe indeed when he had found that someone had placed a length of chain in his storage locker as a joke.

  So he had made it his personal mission to track that woman down. He had even started coming in on his days off. Security footage had produced a passable facial profile, accompanied by fingerprints taken from
the purse, but the Servus Atrudi had been unable to make any kind of match, so their culprit had either undergone alteration surgery, or came from some backwater planet that didn’t keep any profile records.

  The profile certainly didn’t match any entry records on Ardura and her accent gave her away as an off-worlder, which meant that their culprit had somehow managed to enter the system and land on the planet without passing through a checkpoint. That had been enough to pique Lenhard’s interest. It certainly wasn’t impossible to pull off, but it required an enormous amount of money and resources. Someone like that would most certainly be far more dangerous than your average criminal and that meant that the collar would be that much sweeter when he finally tracked her down.

  The items from her purse had only widened the mystery. There was almost no money at all, just a couple of tarries and a few münze coins. With no credits banked onto her ident-card, which meant that she could not have been staying at any of the hotels located in the city, all of which require ident-card debit for payment.

  That narrowed down the number of places in the city she might be staying to temples, tour-groups, and shuttlebays. The officers under Lenhard had been resentfully scouring the city and it was only a matter of time until they found her.

  The jewelry had been ignored at first, until Lenhard had noticed fine crystal fibers poking out from where the necklace had broken. Unfortunately, when they gave it to the department’s Technologists for inspection, it came back completely incinerated. According to the Preot, the jewelry had been designed to self-destruct when exposed to a sensor probe. Lenhard didn’t know what that meant, but if it made the gear-suckers uncomfortable, that alone spoke volumes to him.

  Just when Lenhard had started to worry that the trail was getting cold, he got an unexpected break. He had been called in to respond to a domestic disturbance at Zehn Nächte, when, lo and behold, he found footage of his mystery woman in front of the Dirne house talking with Marcos Faust’s boy. That is when he knew that he was onto something huge. It was too early to tell for sure, but it certainly could turn out to be something big enough to put a dent into the Agate Syndicate.