by Gwynn White
Kristiansen blurted, “Those nutriblocks.”
“We are unable to stop private food corporations from buying POCK meat and incorporating it into their products. Once it leaves Ganymede, we have no way to track it. We believe that some of it is sold into asteroid belt trading channels, but more often the smugglers just process it in orbit and re-import it to Ganymede.”
Elfrida remembered the unusual deliciousness of those nutriblocks. She hoped she was not going to throw up on the LivingLawn.
“That is why we inaugurated the POCK cull. If we could not stop the smugglers, we could at least try to keep POCK meat out of the food chain. Better that they be killed like vermin, than eaten by unsuspecting consumers.”
“So that’s why you couldn’t use drones,” Kristansen said.
Colden’s eyes were wild. “I don’t get it.”
“UN law absolutely forbids robots to kill humans,” Kristiansen said. “And … and I guess the POCKS have enough human genes … to qualify.”
Shyaka nodded.
“So they had to import people to do it.” Kristiansen clenched his fists. One of them was bandaged;he had broken a finger hitting Brad Layemall. “People who could be relied on to follow orders, and keep their mouths shut, even if they stumbled on the truth. People like us.”
Shyaka nodded.
“But we weren’t meant to find out the truth. Were we?”
“No. Like I said, I’ve seen several cadres of Space Corps graduates take up this challenge. And no one ever before got curious about the plumbing.”
“So,” Kristiansen said to the girls. “I was wrong about that.”
“Then what was the test? ” Elfrida drawled. She was furious. “Kill POCKs, and bring them back to be counted, and maintain confidentiality, in accordance with Space Corps rules?”
“Not exactly,” said the dean of the Space Corps Academy.
He had come in behind them, his footfalls soundless on the grass.
“Thanks, Tim. I’ll take it from here.”
With a grudging glance at the trio, Shyaka left the office. On his way, he snapped his fingers, turning off the screen-view of foggy farmland.
The room now felt smaller and enclosed. The dean walked around in front of them and sat on the edge of Shyaka’s desk.
“You kicked him out of his own office,” Colden said.
“Sir.”
“Huh?”
“’You kicked him out of his own office, sir.’” Colden repeated the sentence in a monotone.
The dean wore black jeans and a black turtleneck. He carried a plasma pistol in a thigh holster, which was his prerogative as a highly ranked Space Corps official. He swung one foot, regarding them levelly. The silence lasted so long that Elfrida felt an anxiety attack coming on. The events of the last forty-eight hours had destabilized her. She knew that she was still in shock, and the real reckoning would come later. But she could already feel a change in herself, a new propensity to freak out.
“There were several tests, nested inside one another,” the dean said. “Everyone except you, Colden, and you, Goto, passed the first test, which was to ignore the temptations of Ganymede. Most passed the second test, which was to participate in the POCK cull. You three passed a third test, which was to ask questions about the POCKs themselves and their origin. Insofar as that goes, Kristiansen, you were right. We like our agents to show initiative.
“But not.Too. Much.”
Elfrida’s mouth went dry.
“When you uncovered the POCK smuggling racket, you strayed outside the parameters of the test as it was designed. That activated a different test flow. Which you also passed—by surviving; and by participating in the capture of that gang of smugglers. They will be going back to Earth to face trial. Let’s hope they survive the journey.
“So. You needn’t answer immediately, but ....”
The dean was speaking to Kristiansen now. The girls exchanged a confused glance.
“Have you ever considered a career with the ISA?”
Kristiansen’s mouth hung open. He stuttered, “The Intelligence Security Agency?”
“Yes, that one.”
The ISA was dreaded throughout the solar system. It operated behind a veil of secrecy, which fed rumors that the ISA was the power behind the United Nations itself.
“Sir!” Colden blurted. “Are you an ISA agent?”
“No. I merely recruit for them.”
Kristiansen said, “Well, I’m not interested. My father’s a Star Force officer. He would never forgive me if I went to work for the spooks.”
“He would never know,” the dean said.
“That’s exactly the point.” Kristiansen slid a wry glance at Colden. “And more importantly …someone else wouldn’t forgive me, either.”
“Damn straight,” Colden said. She was smiling.
“I put your name forward, too,” the dean said to Elfrida. “But they took a pass. Something to do with your heritage.”
Elfrida shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not interested, anyway.” She had a lump in her throat. “I didn’t join the Space Corps just to quit as soon as the going gets tough.”
Colden reached behind Kristiansen’s back and squeezed Elfrida’s hand.
But something else had occurred to Elfrida. “Sir, is that why … never mind.”
“Something to say, Goto?”
“I was just wondering. The Love Shack’s hub. It helped me to escape.”
“It helped us, too,” Kristiansen said. “Brad tried to turn the sprinklers on me. They didn’t work. The hub wouldn’t obey his commands. But it helped me to access and download the ship’s log, which I gave you, sir.”
The dean nodded. “The Love Shack’s hub was compromised by the ISA some time ago. It was an undercover operation. However, the MI prioritized your safety over the needs of the operation. Fortunately for you three.”
Elfrida nodded in heartfelt agreement.
“It recognized you as Space Corps agents, and prioritized your survival accordingly. The operation is now blown. Still, with the ship’s log in hand, we may be able to reel in a few of the bigger fish out there. All in all, not a bad result.”
The dean stood up.
“Your final assignments, then. Kristiansen: UNLEOSS. The blue sky divison needs out-of-the-box thinkers.”
Kristiansen gasped. Elfrida couldn’t tell whether he was shocked or relieved. The UN Low Earth Orbit Space Station was the equivalent of being posted to Hawaii, with better weather.
“Colden, Goto; before I give you your assignments, I’d like you to answer one last question. What, in your opinion, should be done about this place?”
“This place, sir?” This was all happening too fast for Elfrida.
“Ganymede. Imagine you’ve been sent here to assess the community. What is your recommendation, based on everything you’ve seen?”
Colden surprised Elfrida. “They need help,” she said. “They’re on their own here, and they know it. That’s why they’re losing their way. They need more support from Earth. Educators, counselors, ethicists. They need a freaking police force.”
Colden, too, had been changed by their ordeal. There were tears in her dark brown eyes. She was clinging to Kristiansen’s hand.
“All right. Colden: you are assigned to telepresence operations on Earth. Don’t cry; it’s not far from UNLOESS.
“Goto?”
“They ought to be evacuated,” Elfrida said. “Every last freaking one of them.” She remembered Nell’s smile at Club Anonymous. The terror she’d felt in the ice tunnels. POCKs waving their little hands at her. The taste of those nutriblocks. “Send the gengineers to Pallas, and resettle the rest of them on Ceres. Let the asteroid colonists grow their own damn buckwheat. There’s too much freaking radiation here, anyway. I had to get half the blood in my body replaced.”
To her astonishment, the dean grinned at her. “Hear, hear. As they say, pigs might fly … but then again, pigs do fly, here, so who knows. In the future, Ganymede m
ay be brought fully within the UN community. For now, the Space Corps has other projects that require … ah … a certain principled ruthlessness. Goto, you’re assigned to the United Nations Venus Remediation Project.”
Venus!
Elfrida sagged. “Venus, Venus, Venus,” she whispered. Kristiansen and Colden slapped her back and congratulated her with warm sincerity.
“I expect great things of all three of you,” the dean said. “And now I think we ought to give Mr. Shyaka back his office.”
Squeak!
“What was that?” the dean said.
Lopsided on her crutch, Colden swung across the LivingLawn. The door was a soundproof curtain of microbeads. She shoved through it with the other two close behind. In the receptionist’s office, Shyaka knelt on the grass with his bottom in the air, reaching under the receptionist’s desk.
Elfrida dropped to her knees, shoved Shyaka out of the way, and reached in.
A baby POCK climbed onto her hand.
Colden had found the infant in the hold of the Love Shack, miraculously still alive. She had refused to let it out of her sight since. Shyaka’s receptionist had agreed to watch it for her, but had apparently gone for lunch.
“I wasn’t going to hurt it,” Shyaka said. “I was just offering it a biscuit.”
Colden took the little creature from Elfrida. “I’m sorry I called you a Hutu,” she said to Shyaka.
“Well, I am one,” he said blankly.
“That’s … oh, never mind.” Colden cradled her baby POCK. “I’m keeping it, sir.”
“You won’t be allowed to take it to Earth.”
“Then Kristiansen can keep it for me. Or Goto.”
Shyaka cleared his throat. “Maybe I could keep it for you. It seems to like the grass in here. I’ll set up a vid feed so you know it hasn’t been turned into nutriblocks.”
“I—I guess that would work.”
Elfrida smiled. Personally, memories were the only souvenirs she wanted from Ganymede. She made a mental note to remove that piercing, too.
★
“I’m going to straighten out,” she texted Colden later. “No more drugs. No more women. I might even let my hair go back to its natural color.”
“You mean it isn’t naturally pink?”
“I got Venus! I’m not screwing this up.”
Strapped into their couches on the Sargent Shriver, they watched Ganymede shrink on the big screen, a blue-white hailstone.
“I won’t have you around to keep me pointed in the right direction anymore,” Elfrida texted. “To rescue the baby POCKs of the universe. So I’m just going to have to be really careful …never, ever to get into a mess like this again.”
THE END
Elfrida Goto’s adventures continue in the Elfrida Goto Trilogy! Start with Book 1: The Galapagos Incident.
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About the Author
You might say Felix R. Savage has a long history associated with rebellion. He was born in the 1970s, a decade of American youth rebelling against the safe culture of their parents. He is married to a wonderful woman and they have a beautiful daughter. Together the three of them live in Tokyo serving their cat overlord and benevolent protector. Felix writes Science Fiction and Fantasy while not translating, delighting in his family, or catering to the whims of the family’s cat. He never stops watching out for any sign the lizard people have found him.
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Ellora’s Quest
Nancy Segovia
First Edition 2016
Editor: Melissa Robititlle
Editor: Dee Addie
Cover Design: The BookCoverMachine.Com
E-book versions of this work are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright ©Nancy Segovia - 2016
Chapter One
Ellora and Riesa were as opposite as summer and winter, but it made them the best hunters and trackers in all of Mithlonde. Ellora methods were cold, calculating and smart whereas Riesa used an intelligence filled with daring and a hot passion that fueled her hunts with enough energy to track her prey past the valley and into the Draekhen Mountains. Ellora would follow, caution and logic guiding her as she tracked their prey. However, even though Riesa’s tracking skills were unmatched in all of Mithlonde; Ellora’s skill with a bow always brought back the required tithes and offerings. No one could match her uncanny and unerring aim, and there were those who thought it might be something other than human skill.
The huntress quickly changed from her priestess robes to hunter leggings, stashing the robes in the burl of a tree; a tree marked with the symbol of the goddess. Ellora recognized her Mistress’ mark instantly by the lightning burns that seared the bark from the old oak, and Ellora knew her ornamental robes would be safe within its sacred trunk. Now, as she looked back on it, she asked the Goddess for her blessing on today’s hunt. The priestess-hunter loved the thrill of the hunt, the chase, the freedom. She exalted in the running rush through the forest, the bounding leaps over shrubbery and fallen trees. She felt fully alive as she did at no other time. But, the killing, the death that came at the end of a successful hunt tore at her. Attuned to their spirits, she felt each animal’s life breath ease from its dying body, and touched its spirit as it moved on to another realm. She felt its pain and then its peace, but the dual emotions weighed uneasily within her never balancing or giving her peace.
“Vail demands more and more each week,” she grumbled to her partner. “How are we supposed to care for the village and serve the Goddess?”
Riesa said nothing, and Ellora knew a shrug accompanied her friend and apprentice’s silence. Here shrug spoke louder than the unspoken words. It spoke of both helplessness and frustration at hearing the same repeated complaints. Riesa suspected that, as with any pleasure too frequently indulged, hunting for Ellora had become an unwelcomed chore; her friend also suspected that Ellora had begun to feel the same way about serving the Goddess, but again she said nothing and just listened while priestess muttered her complaints about the unfairness of her life.
In spite of her grumbling, Ellora remained alert and when a twig snapped off to her left, she instantly armed her bow and stood ready, waiting. Riesa assumed a matching position as they waited for the deer they could now see through the foliage in the morning gloaming. They watched it lift its head to sniff the air, but neither woman moved knowing they were downwind of their prey. Head lowered, grazing tentatively it moved closer and closer. When it came within bow range, Ellora took a step closer, pulled the string tight to release, and caught her foot on a protruding tree root. Stumbling, the arrow to taut to be constrained, it zoomed toward the prey off-center and off-mark. Riesa’s arrow followed, hers more sure and targeted. Yet, when the women inspected the fallen animal it had been Ellora’s arrow that struck true.
Eyes wide with terror, she whispered, “That’s not possible, Riesa. Your arrow shot true, I fell, mine should be buried in one of those trees.” A cold sweat covered her brow as she turned to her fellow priestess and confidante. “This can’t be. Not now. I don’t want it. I have never wanted it.”
&nb
sp; Riesa gathered her in a comforting hug. “We’ll work it out. I won’t let you go. We can do something. There must be something we can do. Come on. Let’s get back. I’ll bring the offering back like I always do. Get dressed and I’ll meet you at the temple.”
A bell clanged in the distance. It wasn’t a carillon of bells welcoming the morning. Only the iron booming that warned of the arrival of the wizard’s ambassador. Calling all to make a mandatory appearance in the square to hear his announcements. There were some who decided to skip one of these obligatory sessions, and it proved to be the last time they were ever seen anywhere. Christol had half decided to skip the daily message, or what he considered the daily brainwashing, but figured that might be a bad idea. His beer-muddled body, fumbled into his breeches and jerkin, stabbed his feet into his boots and stumbled out the door just as the Goddess’s priestess rode by.
“By all that’s holy, she is beautiful,” he mutter under his breath with the hope that she might accidently overhear his words. She already knew how he felt about her, but her position in the temple and his lowly status as a farrier did not make a match between them likely. In addition, she had made it very clear, she didn’t return his feelings. However, Christol did not give up easily, on anything, much less the woman he considered his Goddess-given mate. “It’s just a matter of time,” he said to her blond-haired covered robe. “Just a matter of time.”
He was still dwelling on Ellora’s beauty as he stumbled through the crowds to the town square. He loved her hair, its silky thickness. Her athletic slimness, yet all female curves fascinated him. But, it was her eyes that had captured his imagination and longing. He supposed they would be called hazel with their ever changing shades, but he knew they were so much more than that. They were gold-flecked, sparked with emerald when she was considering playing a prank on her fellow priestesses, and they were as sharp and narrow as a cat’s eye when angry. But, they turned to smoky topaz, deep and fathomless, rich and alluring, when he held her in his arms and her passion for him began to consume them both.
