Fate

by Tia Wylder

  “Shapes of men? Of people?”

  He took down his hands and nodded no. “Not people. I don’t think they were people. And they were all around me. And all I wanted to do…was kill them. And I did. I started firing at them, and I saw them fall. And I think there were other people around me, shooting at them too. And I think suddenly I broke into a run. Yes, I was running. And the shapes were chasing me, and people were shooting at the shapes. And I jumped into someplace, like a cell, or…maybe it wasn’t a cell, but it was someplace lit up. And it was all lit up for a second, and then I was someplace else…” He looked over at her, one small piece of memory clicking into place. “I jumped into a Transit port. An interstellar Transit port. Without a spaceship, with just what I was wearing, which wasn’t a regular uniform. And somehow I knew what I had on would protect me. And I Transited out from…” A look of pale shock came over him—shock, and clarity, and realization. “I was at a Stellarforce space station, and I was in training, and we came under attack, and…and I deserted my post! I did that; something made me go berserk, and I deserted my post! I deserted the rest of my unit and jumped into a Transit port!” He leaped up from the bench as if his clothes were on fire. “I’ve got to find out what happened to the rest of my unit! I’ve got to get in touch with Command, find out what happened at the station, see if anyone else made it out! And…and…what happened to me! They’ve got to know what happened!”

  Tia quickly stood up beside him. “Jay,” she said, “it sounds like what you did wasn’t your fault. It sounds like these ‘shapes’ you’re talking about did something to you, like that was what made you that way. Listening to you, I don’t think you did what you did on purpose. Maybe you didn’t mean to desert your unit. Maybe whatever these ‘shapes’ did to you made you act the way you did.” Reflexively, not even aware she was doing it at first, Tia reached out and took him by one arm. One lean, muscular, perfect arm. She was startled when she realized she was touching him, and from the look on his face, he was as startled as she was.

  Jay, who had been facing the door, spun halfway around to face her and surprised both of them further by taking Tia by the shoulders. And there he was, touching her, holding her with those strong, smooth, duty-trained hands. In his grip, so strong but oddly so safe, Tia forgot to breathe.

  “I’ve got to know,” Jay said. “I’ve got to talk to your father again. And the other people who interrogated me. I need to tell them what I remember now, and find out about my station, maybe see if they’ve been in touch with Command. Maybe Command can tell me the whole story of what happened.” Then, more quietly, he added: “And figure out what discipline to hold on me for running away.” Now he sank into a voice and an expression of shame and sorrow. “I ran away, Tia. From my unit, my friends, my station, when we were under attack. Tia, I ran away.”

  “You didn’t mean to,” she said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. “I know you didn’t.”

  They stood that way for a moment, Jay grasping Tia by the shoulders, until the footsteps of the Security men drew near. Tia watched them approach over Jay’s shoulder, and Jay did a half-turn to look at them and realized he had grabbed the Colonial Chief’s daughter in view of personnel who were there to protect her and the Colony. As quickly as he had grasped her, Jay let go.

  The uniformed men came up next to them, and one of them asked, “What’s going on over here? Ms. Swift, are you all right? Is he hurting you?”

  “No!” Tia exclaimed, her fear and anger at Jay now disappeared as if they’d never existed. “No, we were just talking. I was trying to help him.” And she met Jay’s sparkling brown eyes, and a look passed between them that carried a feeling that neither of them could quite name.

  Jay said to the officers, “I’ve got to talk with the authorities here. I’ve got to meet with them again. Take me to her father, or someone else in charge, now.”

  The officer who spoke before addressed her: “Miss Swift…?”

  Tia said, “Yes, please, do it.” Looking into Jay’s eyes again, she said, “Help him. Just help him.”

  Gesturing to the door, the other officer said to Jay, “This way.”

  And Jay let the two uniformed men start to lead them out, but as he started to go, he kept Tia in sight over his shoulder—until he stopped and walked back to her. Returning to Tia, careful not to touch her again and provoke his guards, he said, “Tia…I’m sorry about your party.”

  A lump in Tia’s throat dropped into her stomach. At the confused, stricken look on Jay’s face, she wanted nothing more at that moment than to throw her arms around him. “I know,” she said. “Good luck, Jay. I hope you find out something.”

  “Thanks,” Jay softly replied.

  “Lieutenant Goodwill, come with us,” one of the Security men called.

  With a last look at Tia, a look filled with that feeling for which they both were now starting to find a name, Jay returned to the Security men and let them take him out of the gym.

  Tia moved back to the bench and sat down again—and put her hand on the spot where Jay had been sitting. He had just laid his hands on her. That’s all he had done, nothing more. So why did it feel like so much more?

  She had never let a boy do more than French kiss her, and touch her bosom over her blouse. She had never even let a boy slip his hand under her skirt or into her slacks. Many times she had thought of letting one of them do more, and doing more to him. She had thought of letting one of them do everything. But she had never let it get that far. It seemed to Tia that she had always been waiting for something, not knowing quite what it was.

  Now, after just a few minutes with the boy who had crashed her birthday party and terrified her within an inch of her life, Tia began to suspect just what it was she’d been waiting for. And when Jay disappeared with the uniformed men out the door of the gym, she felt a nagging emptiness inside her, waiting to be filled.

  Chapter Five

  One piece at a time, things began to click into place. In another session with Chief Administrator Swift and his aide, Jay discovered that Tia’s father had succeeded in getting information from Interstellar Command, Interstellar Intelligence, and the Terran Union. They had complied because of the security threat to the Terran Union but had done so on the condition that the Chief does not release the information beyond his office unless it became imperative to do so. Jay was permitted to know because it directly involved him, and the knowledge of his own identity and what had happened to him was another critical security matter.

  Interstellar Security had learned that the Terran Union had been targeted by members of a hostile alien power, the Dhurians. These aliens operated by capturing their foes and sealing them in body sacs containing an immersive bio-agent that penetrated the cells of the victim and overtook the nervous system. To meet the Dhurian threat, Interstellar Command had set up training units in space stations at strategic points in Terran-controlled space. In this training units, Stellarforce personnel had been physically enhanced against outside control and to make their nervous systems compatible with advanced battle exosuits that would make them living weapons against the Dhurians. Jay was a member of one of these elite units, selected after a rigorous physical and mental vetting process. He had been in training at the Sigma Pegasii Station when it came under surprise attack by the Dhurians, who boarded the Station and began to assimilate the personnel. In the battle against the aliens, Jay was cocooned, and the Dhurian bio-agent started to penetrate his suit. The bio-agent contained amoeba-like cellular components that disrupted the interface between Jay and the suit and caused his violent, hallucinatory trauma. Jay’s training and conditioning had thrown off the Dhurian influence enough to allow him to escape his cocoon, but in a mentally compromised state. An extreme and instinctive fight-or-flight response had taken him over, in which Jay retreated into a Transit port and set it to lock on to any outside communications signal and send him to the point of reception. The Transit port found the holo-transmission signal of the concert b
eing beamed to Tia’s birthday party and sent him to a Transit Bay orbiting Sigma Cygni. In a hallucinatory state, Jay had seen the Security personnel at the Colony as Dhurians and engaged them in battle. He commandeered a shuttle, took it down to the planet, took an aircycle stored on board, and fled onto the planet itself to find cover, inadvertently flying right into Tia’s party before being captured.

  The good news was that the exosuit protected Jay from the effects of making a hyperjump without a spacesuit, and the suit itself was capable of weathering the jump as well—but the amoeba-like parasites infesting the suit were not so lucky. They died instantaneously, leaving Jay alive but temporarily, violently insane.

  Knowing what had happened to him had brought back Jay’s entire life to him, slamming it all into his head with a force that felt to him like the blast of the concussion grenades with which Colonial personnel had finally brought him down at the pavilion. His cognitive and memory enhancements kicked in, helping him with the process of filling in the vast empty space in his mind. He remembered everything, including the things he could still do even without the exosuit, which the Colony had impounded and was keeping under even tighter security than the surveillance placed on Jay himself. His enhancements and training enabled Jay to operate both physically and mentally at an almost superhuman level. And because of the interface between his nervous system and his exosuit, which was still in effect even when Jay was not wearing it, Jay had other capabilities that the Colony did not suspect—and which Jay had not disclosed. He had kept them to himself, partly because of his training to keep them a secret, and because Jay suspected he might have need of them.

  When Colonial Security first apprehended him, they had kept Jay in a detention cell. While he was there, he had taken advantage his neural enhancements. He had discreetly, mentally accessed the computer systems in the detention facility and sent the fingers of his mind out into the systems of the entire settlement. He knew the complete layout of his surroundings. He knew that Colonial Security had given his exosuit its own detention cell, an accommodation that amused him. Now that his identity and background were known, he had been provided with an empty apartment in which to stay until Stellarforce issued him transfer orders—or decided what discipline to hold on him for desertion. Jay crashed onto the bed in the apartment and fell asleep for several hours until Colony administrative staff awoke him to bring him a meal. Lying on the bed in the apartment, Jay now recalled his entire life: his family, friends, and upbringing back on Earth, his enrollment at Stellarforce Academy and eventual commission in the Stellaforce itself as one of its most promising young officers, his selection for the Enhanced Operatives Program and his assignment to Sigma Pegasii—everything. Breathing deeply, replaying all the facts of his life and what had brought him here to Sigma Cygni, Jay slowly came back into himself and felt like a whole person again. He was not a cipher, not a blank slate, not an enigma. He was a young human male, just out of boyhood, with a past and future, feelings, and needs. And gradually, one particular need came to the forefront of his mind.

  That girl, the one whose party he had crashed—that Tia Swift. Now feeling human again after hours of doubt and confusion and no memory, what came pouring into his mind and his feelings was the memory of the one thing that he loved even better than being a member of the Force and serving his home planet and it all now coalesced around Tia. Even more than service and duty, Jay Goodwill loved sex: the feeling of his body commingling in the deepest, most profound and powerful ways with the body of a warm and willing girl. He had bedded plenty of girls in his twenty-one years. His looks and his uniform had brought him the attention of all the young women he wanted. He had known many a girl’s bed and many a long and exuberant night of joining loins with girls eager to have him inside them. Now, returning fully to himself, Jay wanted nothing more than to return to what made him feel most alive. His head was filled with the lovely face and the limber and leotard-clad form of Tia Swift. And it was not just the way she looked. It was the fire she exhibited when she came up to him in the gym and confronted him about what he did to her party. It was the way that fire simmered down into a warmth of compassion when she learned he had lost his memory and himself. It was the way she looked at him with such concern even after he had so terrified her—and the feeling that charged through both their bodies when he touched her. Jay wanted that feeling back, and more.

  Jay’s interrogation of the settlement’s computer systems had given him certain specific pieces of information that he had effortlessly and perfectly committed to memory: the address of the Chief Administrator’s home, where Tia Swift lived with her father. He even knew exactly where her room was. And accessing the computers in Merrill Swift’s office told him that Tia’s father was busy this evening, conferring with Chief Administrators of other colonies that lay in outlying areas of Terran space as Stellarforce and the Union briefed them about the Dhurian situation. If Tia were home tonight, she might well be home alone, which would suit his needs ideally. Outside, night had fallen, which was good. Though he was no longer a prisoner, it stood to reason he should not call too much attention to himself to go where he wanted to go—and do what he wanted to do.

  Chapter Six

  When the door sounded at the Chief Administrator’s dwelling, Tia was curious. After the melee of her birthday party, her friends had offered to throw her another party tonight to make up for it, but Tia had declined. She decided that after all that madness and how scared everyone had been, tonight she wanted just to have a quiet, mellow evening at home. But when the front door slid open, she saw that her evening was once again about to become something other than what she expected it to be.

  “Can I come in?” asked Jay.

  Scarcely believing he was actually at her door—that he had actually come to her house—Tia let him in. And there he was—every gorgeous inch of him, now dressed in a jacket, pants, and boots that she guessed the Colonial Administrators had printed for him.

  There was an awkward pause before Tia found the voice to ask him, “Do they…my father and the other Admins…know you’re here?”

  “No,” said Jay. “They’re not watching me anymore. They’ve kind of released me on my own recognizance. They’ve been in touch with Command; they know my story. They know I won’t do anything.”

  “What is your story?” Tia asked.

  “That’s what I came here to tell you,” he said. “I actually shouldn’t tell you; I’d probably get a reprimand and a mark on my record for it. They might even throw me in the Stockade. But after what happened to you, what you went through…I thought you deserved to know. Since, you know, it pretty much struck home for you, actually. You can’t tell anyone until it goes out through official channels. But I thought you deserve to know first after the way I scared you. Can we sit down?”

  They sat on the sofa facing the sunken fireplace in the middle of the living room. And Jay told her the whole story. Tia took it in, by turns amazed and frightened and stunned. She listened quietly to all of it, and watched him carefully as he did. During his telling of the story of what happened at Sigma Pegasii and how he came to Sigma Cygni, he remembered the Dhurians—not just the fact of the attack; not just what they did to him, cocooning him for assimilation and use as a weapon against his own people. At last he remembered them.

  Their shape was all that they had in common with humans. The Dhurians did not speak, at least not audibly. They were either telepathic, or they communicated cybernetically on some channel or frequency to which Stellarforce had no access. As far as the humans battling them were concerned, the Dhurians only moved and acted. Their eyes were luminous red ellipses set into flat faces with slits for nostrils and mouths. Their bodies looked as if they had been formed of purplish grey clay. Each of them apparently had a particle-beam weapon built into its right arm; they could all discharge energy bolts right from their arms the way Jay and his fellow members of the exosuit training program could fire from the gauntlets of their suits. The battle on b
oard the station was terrible, raging through corridors and decks and chambers, casualties mounting on both sides. Then Jay remembered the terrible moment that a Dhurian unfurled its cocoon from its non-blasting arm and enveloped him with it. He recalled the terrible sensation of struggling against the membranous sac in which he was abruptly sealed, while it filled with the noisome bio-agent that would penetrate first his suit and then his body—if he let it. After that came the slimy, churning, all-enfolding darkness, the desperation to get out, the flailing and the blasting inside the cocoon, the rupturing of his membranous prison—and the madness.

  Hunched on the edge of the sofa, staring into the flames in the sunken fireplace as if he were staring into the battle of Sigma Pegasii and the violence and violation that still haunted him, Jay said, “First I felt myself about to lose everything. Then I felt myself lose my mind. I couldn’t see anything the way it really was. All I could see was them. All around me—them. If it was really them or my own people, I could only see them. And I had to get away. And where I ended up was here.” He looked over at her. “You know the rest.”

  At first, Tia did not know what to say. She only sat watching him, seeing the play of emotions across his face, the most handsome she had ever seen. She thought nothing should ever cause pain to anyone who looked like that. No one so beautiful should ever know a moment of hurt.

  “I’m sorry, Tia,” said Jay. “I’m sorry for what I did. If I could take it back, if I could make it never have happened, I would. I could have hurt you. I could have…I don't even like to think what I could have done to you. But I’m sorry.”