by Jim Rudnick
But as he well knew, getting an ‘innocent’ from the Branton Tribunal was one thing.
His mother—his family as he knew—found him guilty.
He was the big brother and on his watch, Nora had died.
He looked back again at the big view-screen on this ship and saw that Branton was still ahead.
No closer.
And around him this meteor swarm maintained it’s trajectory—trapping him once again…
CHAPTER SIX
Alex Toombs checked for the third time and yes, the secure transport document on his tablet said that his shipment down from the Hospital ship had left just seven minutes ago now.
One thousand doses of the Ikarian longevity vaccine was that shipment and it was padlocked to a skid, the skid in the custody of twenty EliteGuards and as far as he knew, the shuttle down to Neres and the Baroness had no other passengers or cargo.
He smiled.
One thousand doses, with a 49% effective rate, meant that 490 or so of the first thousand Barony citizens who got the doses, would live longer. Twice as long it appeared.
On Halberd, the RIM Confederacy prison planet, the testing had proven the effective rate of the first nineteen runs; and the twentieth was the one that they’d decided to launch with initially.
Halberd had given them much in that the fifteen hundred convicts who signed up for the testing. The only ones who were eligible, were those convicts on the Max Island penitentiary who had received sentences of life.
If the longevity drug that they received as a testing run, gave them longer than normal life spans, their sentence would be commuted at the end of their normal life span, That would give them freedom and a whole other life to live. It made sense, Toombs thought to himself and he was happy that the Baroness herself had come up with the offer—at least that’s what he’d been told.
Of those fifteen hundred, fully half got the placebos—so they’d never leave the prison.
The other half ran through each of the tested runs of the vaccine, but only at twenty-five at a time, to test the effectiveness of each of the differing runs, and not to contaminate the results.
It was group number twenty that became the one that succeeded. These convicts took the 50 cc dose, downed it and then went back to working in the Power plant on in the Pod factory. No matter, he said to himself, because the vaccine changed nothing on the outside, only their livers.
The Ikarian virus somehow changed those livers, with the huge dose of new vaccine, to become a factory that disposed of all age indicators, issues, and in doing so, the body was changed, via the new blood sent to every cell in the body.
That’s what happened on the inside—on the outside, the convicts who had gotten Test #20, changed too.
Their hair—all over their body mind you he remembered, went back to their full natural color. Any wrinkles, age spots, facial lines disappeared. Their testosterone increased so much, that the tests had to be re-done three times before the numbers could be believed. They did a full days, work then took up extra-curricular activities like jogging, beach volleyball and the like.
In other words, Toombs said to himself, they got younger.
Empirical proof, but still needed some science too.
Which is why the past sx months were spent at first devising a test, using the universal lab animal, the Garnuthian mouse. They again, split the population into two separate groups. One got nothing, the control group, and the other got a dose that was proper for their size and weight. Normally, this testing animal lived about ninety days. The testing period had shown that the labs could take a blood sample, put it into their testing devices and measure the special Kupffer cells, being sloughed off the liver and into the blood. The fact that these were the cells that converted aging chemicals by wrapping them in a water-soluble jacket, meant that the body said ‘hey, water….I know what to do with water…it goes into the bladder….’
He grinned at that simple answer and then remembered that…and he leaned forward to look at his monitor on the console. He clicked a button or two and the Animal Lab appeared. He moved the camera over to look at the racks of cages and noted that the longest living ones were in the last vertical row. He scrolled down them all, and the inhabitants of each of those cages were all bright and moving around and playing with some of their bedding and yes, they were all acting like youngsters. Each however was not 130 days old, and in no signs of any aging slowdown.
Test #20, of course, was their run and they had provided the statistics to develop the tests used on humans.
Well, convicts, but then they were human right?
Well, as he corrected himself again, not all the Halberd convicts were human—there were a citizens from Hope, Carnarvon, Skogg, and he thought even a Caliphate citizen or two as well.
The dosages, each in a small ampule colored bright red, were all on their way down to the Baroness from the Hospital ship up in low orbit and his job—for today was done.
Tomorrow he knew, as he looked over at the sidebar on his console monitor, was the next step in trying to refine yet again the next run—Test #21, it would be named and someone over in the labs had an idea on making a slight change to the formulation on the vaccine to increase it’s efficacy. That’d be next, he thought.
Basic job of creating a working Ikarian longevity vaccine was done.
Now to refine and get it up over the 49% rate of effectiveness, and into the fifties and then the sixties and then…
And then, he grinned as he took off his glasses and reached into a side drawer on his desk to get some cleaner, which he spritzed onto the lenses and wiped them carefully with the no lint polishing cloth.
Some of the other lab workers had asked him time and time again, why he didn’t just go and get implants, with perfect vision.
But he’d turned that idea down every time it came along; in science, your eyes were often your first sense that you used to see something that others often miss. He liked using his own real eyes, rather than some kind of technological implant.
He looked up at the clock that he had insisted be up on the wall here in his private office but right above the door. The door that would lead out of the office, through the large Secret Labs, to the main corridor and then he’d don a spacesuit, float across the emptiness of space that acted as the most secure method to keep any biological samples from ever getting free. Then back into the Hospital ship proper and a quick shuttle down to his home in Neres City.
The clock said it was only about two thirds of the way through the day.
He nodded, stood and took off his white lab coat and put it on it’s spot on the coat rack behind his desk and hung it up on a hook. He smiled as he closed his console off and went out the door to go home…
#####
Bram sat and looked at the monitor and said to himself, now that was pretty easy…the Juno Hilton.
He had the idea, that to find Gia Scott, who was new to the RIM, that if she was a simple visitor, she’d be at a hotel.
He used his ‘I’m working for admiral McQueen’ with the RIM Navy IT folks who’d given him a desk with a console that gave him access to databases from all over Juno.
He’d had to ask, and was shown how to go to the recent check-ins for the past month, sort and then search for the last name Scott.
There were three of them. Two were men and one was a woman—one Gia Scott.
Bingo, he said to himself, I think that’s her.
She was registered at the Juno Hilton, in the downtown core of
He asked for, again after being shown what to ask for and how and where to key in that search, her landing papers and had gotten them all printed off and they were collated, stacked, stapled and a clerk had just dropped them off on his desk.
Well, not my desk but my RIM Navy station, he grinned as he leaned back and took a moment before he began to read.
There were about fifteen or twenty other desks in the room—his was a the very end of one of the rows.
; The desks were mostly filled with IT folks, mostly Tarvians, he noted. Big ears were swinging in the cool cold A/C air. While he couldn’t see, he knew that with that extra thumb, these aliens could do rings around anyone with only ten fingers. Some had even requisitioned the keyboards made specially for twelve-fingered aliens and when they were typing, there was a blur over the keyboard that one just had to see.
Some of the desks were un-occupied he saw too. Monitors off, chairs pushed in and their IN baskets were empty.
Maybe some kind of a budget cut or something, he said to himself.
But no matter to me and the Barony Navy. With the roll-out coming for the Barony Drive, the new technology that might be coming from the Ghayth wreck and the pie-in-the-sky Ikarian vaccine—the Barony was doing well.
He grinned behind his hand as he picked up the stack of docs and began to read about his quarry.
Gia Scott, was a Gallipedia employee, on a five year Sabbatical the landing papers said right up at the top.
She was posted to Branton—her home planet and had used up almost sixty percent of her time, in sleeper ships just getting to the RIM. With a bit of luck, she could catch a ride home on a ship equipped with the Barony Drive—found he noted, by her brother.
Her brother. Did she come to the RIM to see him? Be with him? Hurt him?
He had no idea and the balance of the papers in front of him told him no more.
Been a Gallipedia employee for almost ten years. Been given several promotions, and pay grade raises too.
She had noted that there were no next of kin—as it appeared that her mother had died just a few months after she had taken the Sabbatical leave. There’s more to that, than what can be read here, he thought.
And that got him to a point that he’d been noodling around in his head since yesterday when he’d gotten this mission from admiral McQueen.
He was a mind reader—not the best true, but he was good enough to be asked a few times to join the inner circle, where the Master Adept ran the Issians from with help from others like him. He was not conceited enough to think that being in his early thirties gave him the abilities of Issians twice his age. But, he was on a path that might lead to more and more responsibilities within his faith.
If he could get close to Gia, say in the same restaurant or walk just behind her on the street perhaps, he might be able to do some surreptitious delving into her mind. Not, that this was the best way to do this and not, he also had to admit, that the messages and feelings that he could pick-up were sometimes not perfect, not perfect at all.
Yet, one on one, sitting close or even if he could hold her hand—what he’d get would be so so much more accurate.
But, how to meet the girl?
Well, girl was relative.
He was 33 and she appeared to be 28 or so—and as the almost three years in cryonic tanks didn’t count, she was still 28 years old. Tanner was forty—a twelve year difference. That too looked like it needed some re-con and he sighed as he leaned back.
He had to meet her, in a way that was spontaneous and serendipitous too.
He had to chat with her for at least a few minutes.
Now, how to make that happen, as he went to the search field to look up local city events…maybe that’s where I should start, he said to himself…
#####
She had casually asked a young man who was queued up in front of her in the line at the local coffee shop and he’d been nice enough to smile first, flirt second and then give up the closest one he knew of, just three blocks down the street. She grinned back at him, had the nicety to but in front of him when it came time to pay and she bought him his coffee. She liked this coffee shop, a real throwback to days long gone. High tin ceiling, beautiful wood tables and chairs and booths, a blackboard that offered up their various brews and teas and baked goods. She had come here almost every day, on her way into the big downtown Library, carrying her big coffee carefully by it’s protective sleeve so that it wouldn’t burn her fingers.
She walked out of the shop and out onto the sidewalk, sipping her Cappuccino and enjoying the maple dust on the top.
She turned…right I think he said, and then walked slowly away from the coffee shop towards her next stop today.
She went by a very fashion forward looking ladies wear store and she had to window shop for a few minutes. Wonderful looking fashions could be found anywhere in the galaxy, she already knew. But some of these were wonderful. She clicked on her PDA and added this store address to her list of followups for Gallipedia, wondering who the designer of those odd colored frocks front and center in the window might be. She grinned, once you bought into the Gallipedia way of life, when something went by your face and it made you wonder—it was suitable fodder for the program. She’d added about ten thousand such stories to the database her own self and here was another one too.
She ambled on in the late summer sunshine, and crossed the two side streets with few other pedestrians as it was mid-morning and most of them would be at work, she thought.
Ahead, about a third of the way down the block, she could see her stop.
She walked right up to the storefront and as she knew what she’d find, she stopped and faced the store.
The sign above the single doorway said plainly “Weapon Shop.”
The glow of the force field that surrounded the whole front of the store was the lightest tinge of blue. It was on of course—it was always on.
She left the center of the sidewalk and walked right up to the door, and slid her own ID key into the port on the door.
There was a wait, then a single chime, and the force field surrounding the door, flickered out and the door opened up a bit.
She smiled, took back her ID key, and then walked into the store.
Ahead of her was a wall to wall pegboard with just about every kind of weapon she’d ever thought of—well more really as I’m not that well versed in weapons. But I have needs, she said to herself as she looked to her left at the long display cases that held more guns and rifles and, well, things that she had no idea what they were.
Standing behind the long row of cases, was an Ishtarian. A race of aliens from that planet that was a part of the Barony realm, they were known for being the biggest arms dealers in the RIM Confederacy. First, she noted, that they had red eyes, that always could be seen as their lids were made of some kind of a chitinous material. Each of their hands and feet had retractable claws that they had a habit of flexing that made a chinky-clinky sound. Of average height, they had little body hair but all of them affected some kind of a display of facial hair—beards and goatees and van dikes and muttonchops too.
Today, this shopkeeper had a nicely trimmed goatee, and he smiled at her.
“My first customer of the day—good day Mam,” he said and his voice was smooth and silky.
Salesman, she said to herself and that got a smile she choked back right away.
But she did walk up to stand right before him and gestured with her cup, if it’d be okay to set it down on the glass top of the display case.
He smiled and nodded and she did just that.
She looked down into the case in front of her and all she saw was blued steel everywhere.
She waved her hand at the contents of the shop on every wall and case and said “help?”
He nodded and half turned away to get a small brochure from behind him and placed it in front of her on the case top.
“Buying a weapon, can be a daunting task—but the best way to begin,” he said as he tapped the brochure, “is to find out what you want the weapon for—then we go from there.”
She nodded but never even looked down at the pamphlet.
“I am a single woman, who is traveling all over the RIM, and I believe I will need to be able to protect myself. I wish to buy a weapon—a gun I would suppose, that I can carry openly. That should I ever need to use it, it will be there and ready to use. And lastly, that somehow folks do not know it’s a weapon…” she s
aid.
He nodded and then looked over to his left to the large wall of pegboard and pointed.
“Great weapons there—but carrying one of those is an open statement that you are armed and protected. Sometimes that can be important depending upon your own situation,” he said.
“So those are out it seems.”
He pointed at the wall opposite where they were standing and she had to turn and look at the ones there. Most did not look like a real gun—they were smaller, some in bright colors, some looked like other things she could see as there was a hand broom on the wall and a series of what looked like canes of some type.
“These are closer to what you want. Each—in the right trained hands—can be a deadly weapon and not many people would expect that from a cane or a broom even,” he said and he held up a hand as she was just about to walk over that way.
“But they’re not right either, are they Ms. Scott?” he said and that froze her in her tracks.
He waved at her, and she didn’t feel any better.
“When you put in your ID tag, we get a readout only of the top lines of your ID. Gia Scott, of Branton in the Earldom of Kinross, and you work for Gallipedia. And it’s that Gallipedia tag that gave me the idea. What if we could offer you a weapon—a deadly gun that does not look like a gun?”
She settled down but still she was a bit perturbed.
“I would like to see that kind of a choice…” she said.
He nodded and went down to the far end of the counter, bent to take something from the lowest display case shelf and brought back a few items with him. He set them down on a thick black piece of suede to protect the top of the display case and placed the three of them for her to look at.
One, was a PDA. Looked just like a PDA, had the same display board, buttons, wrist strap that they all had.
Two, was a camera, what looked like a healthy sized SLR digital camera, with medium lens out front and a long strap that you’d use to put it over your shoulder.
Three, was what looked like a simple reporters pad—with the same wire coil top that held the pages together, and it had a fat big pen jammed in same.
