by Alix Nichols
Darvesu—their guide on Sovyda—took them to the Empire War Memorial first. Built on a wartime battlefield, the memorial wasn’t special or noteworthy in any way. But this year, the entire galaxy was celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the Empire’s fall and of the establishment of the League of Realms. Darvesu said a visit was in order.
They stayed long enough to kneel at the obelisk and get a rundown on the local resistance movement.
“Sovyda lost ten thousand soldiers before surrendering, and then five thousand civilians during the terror of the occupation,” Darvesu said. “May their souls find peace and joy in Aheya’s Eternal Garden.”
Along with the rest of the group, Keiron touched his ouroboros pendant and repeated the guide’s prayer.
Darvesu smiled. “But now we have the League of Realms. It won’t let a disaster like that happen again.”
If the Council of Seven strengthened its Enforcer Corps, Keiron added inwardly to the guide’s overly optimistic statement.
As things stood, they were only three hundred. It helped that they were all cyborgs with top-notch skills and weaponry, but would they stand a chance against an army? It was time the Council of Seven opened its eyes to the trouble brewing in the galaxy.
Modified cyborg facilities mushroomed in the Silver Path despite the ban. They produced weaponized bionics. In other words, war machines with their emotions suppressed and their brains linked to a central mainframe. Keiron had lost two enforcers to those monsters on a recent intervention against a pirate boss in the Baylian Arm.
The LOR superintendent, Sir Nohad, was very concerned. He’d tried to impress upon the Council the gravity of the situation but to no avail. Now that he was retiring, Keiron hoped the next guy would take the threat just as seriously. And that he’d be more successful in conveying it to the Council.
Darvesu’s smile widened. “Xereill didn’t have Enforcer Cyborgs a hundred years ago.”
Thankfully, he didn’t look at Keiron.
Just like the tour company, the guide no doubt knew Xereill’s top enforcer was in this group, but he respected Keiron’s wish for discretion.
Keiron glanced at Linni. Her expression was solemn as she gazed at the obelisk. He quickly looked away, ashamed of himself. The woman had been more than clear with her lack of interest in him. He should leave her in peace and try to enjoy his vacation.
How hard could it be?
Chapter Three
Peeking out the window of the motor bus, Linni was eager to get to the famed Fresco Fortress, the next site on today’s program.
The ancient ruins were Sovyda’s main attraction, and considering last week’s scoop in the Archeology Weekly, they might soon become the main attraction in Xereill.
Darvesu pointed out the woodland ahead of them. “You’ll be able to see the ruins in five minutes, as soon as we’ve crossed the Spongetree Woods.”
She loved his singsong accent. Everybody on Sovyda talked like that, including the local jerriyas. Who happened to be the reason why Linni had taught herself to imitate the Sovyda accent when prepping for this assignment.
I mean, vacation.
She should be careful not to allow a slip like that when speaking with others. Besides, only the first two stops on the tour, Sovyda and Tastassi, were part of her investigation for the Anti-Trafficking Department. The last one, Upere 2, had nothing to do with her work. It was going to be a brief but real vacation—something Linni hadn’t done in three freaking years. Exactly as long as Keiron, aka the Hottest Cyborg in the Known Universe.
Gah.
If only she didn’t have that job interview with the Council of Seven next week! It could change her life forever. It could make her Keiron’s boss, for crying out loud. If only this tour had taken place three weeks ago, before she received the letter! If she’d gotten a blanket rejection, she’d be sitting next to him now flirting her brains off. Holding his hand. Slipping a foot out of her shoe and rubbing his ankle.
Not that she was in the habit of doing any of that, but with him, she ached to.
Damned timing.
Why couldn’t she have met him after the interview? It was likely that LOR wouldn’t hire her, even with showing up looking a decade older as she’d done ever since she got her first proper job twelve years ago. It was then that she’d discovered how handy appearance-shifting came in when one was a young thing longing to be taken seriously.
Sometimes, Linni wondered if she’d use her gift to make herself look younger when she grew old. But whatever she did to her looks, she never lied on her resume. The Council knew she was only thirty-five. They’d no doubt deem her too green to be the next superintendent of LOR, her impressive professional record notwithstanding.
And that made meeting the hunk of her lifetime now doubly aggravating.
Oh well, she’d always been unlucky with men.
“You’re very lucky,” Darvesu said from his seat next to the driver.
Linni blinked, taken aback.
“How so?” several people asked at once.
He turned around and surveyed the group. “You’ve arrived at the best possible time.”
Ah. Darvesu’s “you” had been a collective one.
“Once the discovery is confirmed by more studies and the news spreads, crowds will rush to Sovyda to see the Dragon Chamber.”
“The—what?” A woman with a yellow backpack pulled out a Sovyda guidebook and held it up. “It says nothing here about a dragon chamber.”
“The next edition will,” Darvesu said. “Anyway, I was saying that soon visitors to the Fresco Fortress will have to deal with long lines and exorbitant prices, just like at the most popular Ramoh sites.”
“Can you tell us about the discovery?” the redheaded woman, Zuzeh, asked.
Darvesu gave her an enigmatic smile. “For those who haven’t yet heard or read about it, I’ll explain at the site.”
Zuzeh humphed and folded her arms across her chest. A moment later, she threw in a pout to make sure Darvesu got the point: Zuzeh. Is. Not. Happy.
She was adorable. And judging by how she kept checking Keiron out, she was just as attracted to him as Linni was. Surely, he’d noticed it by now.
Colonel Yaggar. Not Keiron. Linni silently repeated the formal address a dozen times, hoping to drill it into her mind.
The ruins came into view atop a hill. A short time later, the motor bus pulled over at the site and Linni darted out. Excited, she peered at the fortress, waiting for the rest of the group to disembark.
“Most of it was built about ten thousand years ago,” Darvesu said, leading them to the citadel, “when the Original Ra arrived on Sovyda.”
“That’s before the Human Infusion, right?” the woman with the yellow backpack asked.
“Long before. The Ra mixed with humans from the twelfth to the seventh century Before Our Era.”
The woman furrowed her brow, computing.
“Something like nineteen hundred to thirteen hundred years ago,” Sir Raysten offered.
She gave him a grateful smile.
“This fortress was discovered shortly after Sovyda’s second colonization when Ra-humans got here in the first century Before Our Era and terraformed the planet,” Darvesu said.
“Why did they need to terraform it?” Keiron furrowed his brow. “I mean, if the Original Ra could breathe Sovyda’s air and eat the food, I would suppose the Ra-humans could, too.”
Darvesu chuckled. “Excellent question. We, Ra-humans are much pickier as a species than the Original Ra were.”
Keiron’s eyes crinkled at the edges with amusement.
Linni’s knees wobbled.
“We like to be surrounded by as many familiar things as possible,” Darvesu said. “Terraforming Sovyda helped the second-wave settlers feel at home.”
Keiron nodded. “I see.”
Lined like ducklings behind Darvesu, the group explored the fortress before entering a windowless hall illuminated with many power lights.
Linni g
asped.
Darvesu pointed around him. “The people you see frescoed on the walls are the Ra as they looked about ten thousand years ago.”
“They are magnificent,” Zuzeh whispered.
They were, indeed. The men on the walls were tall, robust, and perfectly proportioned. They wore little clothing. Their skin was reddish gold and appeared to have a scale-like pattern to it. Their heads were bald and their faces expressive with bright yellow eyes, noses with high bridges, and high cheekbones.
“Were they naturally bald or did they shave their heads and faces?” Zuzeh asked.
“The Ra had no body hair,” Darvesu said. “We know that from the records kept at ERIGAT.”
Zuzeh tilted her head and peered. “What’s wrong with their skin?”
“No records have been found yet to explain the pattern,” Darvesu said before pointing to one of the men’s eyes. “Notice the eye color. It’s almost disappeared in Ra-humans, but we have a specimen in this group who carries the gene.”
He turned toward Linni, and so did everyone else.
She wiggled her eyebrows and waved her hand. “Hi, says the specimen.”
It had been a silly, girlish thing to do, but it cracked them up. More importantly, it gave her a chance to hear Keiron’s deep, infectious laughter.
With a considerable effort, Linni peeled her eyes off him and turned toward the frescoes. She counted thirty-seven individuals spread across four walls. Their size was roughly the same with the exception of the toddlers and babies in arms. Were they all male? Or did women and men look the same?
“Did their females have breasts?” a woman with black hair asked.
Darvesu pointed to a painting next to the entrance of two adults and a baby. “Look at them carefully.”
At first glance, the adults looked very similar, but upon closer inspection, Linni saw that one of them had a rounded belly and enlarged nipples. The individual next to her had tiny nipples and a perfectly flat abdomen. He held the baby in one arm and had the other wrapped around the woman’s shoulders.
“They look like a couple—like a modern-day family,” Linni said, surprise in her voice.
Darvesu smiled. “That’s because they are.”
“But…” She frowned, confused. “I thought the Ra society wasn’t structured around family units like this one.”
“Didn’t they practice free love and raise their children collectively?” Keiron asked, coming to her rescue.
“They did,” Darvesu said, “but only in the Late Ra Era, when fewer and fewer females were born. Those females took multiple males, and monogamous families like the one you see here disappeared.”
“I should’ve figured that out,” Keiron said. “These frescos predate the Ra decline.”
But of course! Linni felt embarrassed about her poor knowledge of the Ra prehistory. For someone who tried to be on top of everything and subscribed to a dozen scientific magazines, including Archeology Weekly, forgetting a detail like that was disappointing.
“Polygamy hadn’t always been the Ra people’s way of life,” Darvesu said. “Despite their gifts and advanced tech, they had no idea why so few girls were being born and were unable fix it.”
Yes—Linni remembered the rest of the story now.
The Ra population dwindled. They abandoned their colonies throughout Xereill and concentrated on Ramoh, the home planet. The species was on the verge of extinction when the wormhole appeared, and the first spacecrafts jumped to Via Lactea in search of a compatible race. They found Terra and returned to Ramoh with the first volunteers. The Human Infusion Era began.
Linni gave herself a mental pat on the back for retrieving the knowledge she’d acquired two decades ago in high school. She also felt a surge of gratitude toward Keiron. Cyborgs had a much better memory than organics, so the impetus behind his questions must’ve been solidarity rather than forgetfulness.
“What do you think of the Fresco Room?” Darvesu swept his hand toward the paintings. “Impressed or underwhelmed?”
“Overwhelmed,” Linni admitted.
Others commented in the same sense.
Beaming, Darvesu rubbed his hands together. “Let’s hear what you’ll say when you see the Dragon Chamber.”
Chapter Four
Linni followed Darvesu past four armed policemen guarding the entrance to a primitive-looking squat structure.
“Watch your step,” Darvesu said, descending the wide but poorly lit staircase.
Holding her breath with anticipation, Linni descended the stairs.
“This place was discovered only six months ago.” Darvesu unlocked a door at the bottom of the staircase. “The fortress conservation team dismantled a damaged interior wall and found a chamber behind it. They knew at once they’d discovered something big.”
Having read the article in the newest Archeology Weekly, Linni thought she was prepared for what she was about to see.
It turned out she wasn’t.
“I’ll be damned!” someone gasped.
Mouths fell open, necks craned, and not-so-polite interjections filled the room.
“How old is this place?” Sir Raysten asked.
Darvesu turned to him. “Our experts are still working out the exact age, but they already know it predates the fortress by at least fifty thousand years.”
Sir Raysten whistled.
Three statues were carved into the rock wall opposite the door. The other three walls were covered in etched writings that reminded Linni of the old Raish texts she’d seen in museums. But this script looked even more archaic and impossible to read.
Linni returned her attention to the statues. The rightmost one was an upright man who resembled the Ra of the frescoes.
The leftmost statue was that of a dragon. Compared to illustrations in fairy tales she’d grown up with, this dragon was smallish—only twice the size of a Ra-human—and slender. The creature’s form and posture held a savage, feline grace that was absent in book dragons.
Its wings were closer to those of modern-day cyborgs than to birds. They weren’t made from feathers attached to front limbs but of membranes stretched between elongated bones on either side of his chest.
Linni studied the extraordinary dragon for a long while, but it was the middle statue that blew her mind.
It represented a man who looked like the Ra on his right, but not quite. This man seemed to be undergoing some crazy metamorphosis. He was hunkered down, his face grimacing in extreme pain, as he squeezed his head between his hands. A head whose shape was no longer round but oblong, with a spiky ridge running down the middle, over his neck and back, and then extending into a long—
“Is that a tail?” Zuzeh pointed to the rear of the statue.
Darvesu nodded. “We believe it is.”
Stepping closer, Linni inspected the figure. “And those…?” she stammered, hesitating to name what looked like thin, pointy bones pushing out of his sides.
“We believe those are some of his ribs straightening and extending to serve as struts for the wings.” Darvesu smiled at her and then at the others. “Our experts believe that these three statues represent the same being—the mythical dragon shifter.”
The woman with the yellow backpack raised her hand. “What if it wasn’t mythical? What do the wall inscriptions say?”
“They haven’t been deciphered yet,” Darvesu said.
Sir Raysten turned to the backpack lady. “Dragon shifters are a myth. The laws of physics make morphing into something more massive than oneself impossible.”
That’s what the article had said, too. The authors didn’t think the statues proved the existence of dragon shifters. They were art—a fruit of imagination like the Origin Legend, which claimed the Ra descended from dragons.
The import of the statues lay elsewhere.
“These sculptures demonstrate that the Ra colony on Sovyda was much older than previously thought.” Darvesu paused to let the notion sink before adding. “If, indeed, it was a colony
.”
Keiron narrowed his eyes. “Could Sovyda, and not Ramoh be the Ra people’s homeland?”
“That’s a possibility.” Darvesu pointed to the floor. “We’ll know more when a team of Xereill’s top archeologists convened by LOR arrives here next month and starts digging.”
Shocked whispers rippled through the group.
Darvesu glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s time to wrap up our visit and head to the best restaurant in the area for a gastronomic dinner.”
Linni glanced at her own watch—seven thirty. Time to get on with her assignment.
She took the motor bus with the rest of the group since it was going to Garonn—the nearest city and trade hub where, with a bit of luck, one could hope to find a jerriya. Especially when one knew where to look.
Zuzeh had rushed to plonk herself next to Keiron, and Linni could hear her animated chatter from her seat two rows behind. The cyborg didn’t say much aside from the occasional yes, no, and hmm. Zuzeh angled her body toward him, laughed seductively and touched her throat every couple of minutes. Keiron stared at the back of the seat in front of him.
If he had the slightest intention of sleeping with the woman during this trip, he was giving the poor thing all the wrong signals.
Yet, undeterred, she persevered.
The group got off in Garonn and followed Darvesu to the famed restaurant. Linni trailed behind and then ducked into a side street. According to her research, the street harbored a watering hole where jerriyas liked to let their hair down and do business. Those women were always working, even when relaxing.
Linni smirked. I’ll fit right in.
Which was precisely the plan—to blend in and gather intel on the upcoming auction on Tastassi. Once she had the date and the venue, she’d go to the restaurant and join the group. According to the schedule, her fellow travelers were slated to spend three hours there, enjoying their multicourse dinner and dancing. Linni hoped to arrive in time for the dessert.
When the sign above the bar’s entrance came into view, she stepped behind a tree and looked around to make sure no one saw her transformation. Then she visualized a jerriya and walked her mind through every detail of the trader’s distinct appearance from head to toe.
