The incoming call notice rang in the middle of his desk and he hurried to answer. The screen projected in front of him as if suspended mid-air. His contact's thin face, who was currently in the fleet that was about to depart to Saturn, seemed cut into nothingness, illuminated only by the dim lights of the command bridge instruments of where he was. He had a ghostly appearance and seemed thinner than the last time they'd spoken.
“Is this a secure line?”
“Yes, I'm about to leave after the first ships that are heading to Saturn. I'm calling from the ship bridge. Don't worry.”
“When will you arrive at the Saturn base?”
“This is a fast ship, I'll arrive with the second group, two weeks later that the installation engineers group and the commander.”
“And the cargo ship we talked about, is it travelling in your group?”
“Unfortunately it's attached to the first group, so it'll be there two weeks before me.”
“That can complicate things. Could you explain what was it that happened?”
“We had to eliminate him, or he would have immediately uncovered our experiment.”
“I agree, although I think it was a mistake to leave the body in the ship.”
“We had no choice, when we entered the silo he was waiting inside. He must've arrived secretly in some kind of flight suit, without an escort like the ones they used to force upon us whenever we moved within the preparation area. He was an agency officer from our conglomerate, I'm sure of it; but we couldn't find out before he died...”
“You mean before you killed him.”
“It was that boy. The messenger. He isn't very stable...”
“He's a personal friend of the director and the only one, besides himself, who who's had contact with the Stone. We need him to encode the signal or the whole experiment would collapse before even starting.”
“I know. But you should've seen him when he discovered the agent rummaging in the cannon's cylinder container. He went berserk and exposed himself to the chemical catalyst without hesitation... I'm not sure he's in his right mind.”
“Did the agent receive a lethal dose?”
“I don't think so, when we arrived he had discovered one of the cylinders and was exposed to the cannon catalyser while manipulating the cylinder of the experiment's gravity generator. He'd already begun feeling the effects, but he could've survived with treatment.”
“How was the messenger exposed, then?”
“As soon as we went in, he saw the agent handling the experiment and jumped on him. He took the cylinder out of his hands and before he could notice, began hitting him on the face with the cylinder. The agent didn't even have time to scream. The chemical reaction disfigured his face and he died almost immediately. The messenger was wearing gloves and was exposed to the stabilized vaporized chemical that filtered in the air, after smashing the cylinder into the spy's face.”
“Who else was exposed?”
“I was on the other side of the window and ventilated the silo immediately. The messenger received a small dose through his airways. There were no external physical marks on his body... But I can't measure the consequences for his lungs and brain. He's received treatment and there should be no complications. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I miscalculated the medication dose. But there was no time for intensive analysis. Everything was ready to go and the messenger needed to take his place or we'd lose the opportunity to send him with the first team.”
“And you couldn't get rid of the body before taking off?”
“We barely had time to move all the equipment to my ship. We couldn't leave with an additional eighty-kilo package, the security escort would've asked questions we couldn't answer.”
“Do you think they'll discover the body immediately?”
“No, but I don't know how long they'll take to empty the ship after they connect it to the central nodes. As soon as they enter the silo they'll discover the body. Although it won't be easy to identify.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We got rid of his clothes and deleted his fingerprints with one of our welders. His face is gone; so they'll only have his DNA.”
“Let's pray that the station's databases doesn't have global security access. At least until the experiment is completed.”
Puntshó Blade
His father, Darren Blade, had been a young Englishman from a family that had ties with the British aristocracy. He had managed to become one of the promises of the new generation of recently graduated Southampton University engineers, specialized in Environmental Engineering. As soon as he finished his degree, he accepted a position he thought would give him the opportunity to experience all the adventures he'd dreamt of during his boring life in southern England. The company he worked for built large pipelines in Bhutan, and the young Englishman didn't hesitate when he was offered the chance to move to that country. But only a few months in since his transfer, he began to feel immensely alone. Only a year had gone by and he already wanted to return to England.
The company commissioned him one last major task, a trip to Bhutan's countryside, in which he needed to install a secondary pipeline, a project that hadn't moved due to the century-old restrictions that country applied on foreigners and the modification of its natural heritage. Darren Blade delved into this task, but the legal tangle puzzled him; he had to deal with dozens of officials and fill in mountains of paperwork. He told the company he worked for that he'd need help if they wanted to meet the required deadlines, so they contacted the local administration from the main office. Two days later a young ravishingly beautiful woman installed herself in the small office Darren had rented as a base.
“I'm Sabitri Phuntsho. I work for the local administration and have been sent to help you complete the paperwork for your project.”
She spoke perfect English and extended her hand in greeting. Darren was speechless. He hadn't planned to fall in love, and his relationships so far had been more than fleeting. But something sparked within him that day, and the month they spent working together was undoubtedly the most difficult one of his stay in Bhutan. He felt an uncontrollable attraction and he found it very hard not to be caught staring at her dumbfounded. He used his British stance and admirable self-restraint to avoid asking her out to dinner or to the movies throughout that whole time.
Meanwhile Sabitri seemed professional but friendly and seemed to like Darren's company, and practice her English with someone from that country.
The month was coming to an end and on the last night Darren decided it was time and, with the excuse of having completed their task, invited her to dinner. He had to leave the next day, but asked to extend his stay for one week and dined with Sabitri every night. She seemed to accept his philandering, always with a smile and a handshake as goodbye.
Darren was leaving the next day and needed to tell Sabitri about his feelings.
“Sabitri, this last month working with you has been great, and this week I've felt much closer to you...”
“I've felt it too, Darren.”
“I do not wish to disrespect you, but I need to tell you that a feeling has grown inside me and I wanted to know if...”
“If...”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I think I'm in love. You don't have to reciprocate my feelings but I needed to say that before leaving, so...”
He couldn't finish his sentence because Sabitri smiled in that charming way and raised her hand, brushing his face with the warm cadence of love. They kissed and walked under the moonlight and the shadows of the mountains.
Over the next year, Darren returned every weekend to spend time with his beautiful girlfriend and meet Sabitri's family, who also had aristocratic ancestors. His work was extended and Darren didn't want to leave the country anymore. But his company informed him that the Bhutan project had finished and that he'd have to work in England on the following year. Darren made a decision, and he needed to follow
it that same weekend.
“Sabitri, you know I love you.”
“I know, my dear Englishman.”
“My company is sending me back to England and I don't want to leave.”
“Oh, Darren. Your work is important to you, although I don't want you to go either.”
“There's another option, but I won't force you. Come with me, Sabitri. We'll form a family.”
“Are you proposing...?”
“Sabitri Phuntsho, will you marry me?”
Darren pulled a ring from his pocket and before Sabitri's astonished eyes placed it on her finger.
Sabitri never said yes in words, she embraced him, kissed him and took his hand to lead him to her family to tell them the happy news.
A year later and already living in the English town of Southampton, the happy couple received their first child.
They decided to name him Steve like his paternal grandfather, though his mother insisted that the child should have both his maternal and paternal surnames, many people and even his friends mistook his mother's surname as his second name: Steve Phuntsho Blade.
Darren Blade went to the civil registry while the young mother recovered from a very difficult childbirth. And it was then that the officer who had to record the newborn's names made a typographical mistake, which nobody noticed until several months later and which would eventually remain as the child's official name. The mother's maiden name in Bhutan had an "h" sandwiched between the first "P" and "u", but neither the father nor the officer noticed this mistake and nobody ever returned to fix it.
Puntshó was a restless boy, athletic form childhood and had inherited a mix of his mother's oriental and his father's Anglo-Saxon features; light skin and dark and thin eyes. He never felt different, though he grew up in post-brexit England with all its restrictive immigration policies. He grew up by the sea in the south of England, raised by his mother, while his father travelled the world closing deals and opening new markets for his company.
When he was nine, after the first African skirmishes, his father was stuck in Kenya during the mining rebellion and lost all contact with them for months.
Puntshó's mother fell into a depressive spiral that increased the isolation she'd already been undergoing due to living in a country so different from hers. Darren's family tried to console her, but Sabitri couldn't bear the sadness.
When news of Darren Blade's death, at hands of the Kenyan rebels, arrived; a distraught Sabitri mourned silently and painfully and after three months decided to return to Bhutan to raise her son near her grandparents and family. Puntshó was dragged by circumstances he couldn't control, without a father and outside of the environment in which he'd grown up. He became reserved and a thirst for revenge grew silently within him.
When he was sixteen, he decided to enlist in the new European conglomerate army and follow a military career; with the secret ambition of someday finding those responsible for his father's death.
Vengeance and Grief
His desire for revenge led him to gain a reckless reputation; his colleagues secretly called him "death's companion". He had emerged almost unscathed from several difficult situations and force commanders decided he was the perfect person for their command and rescue actions in the Horn of Africa territory, where the situation was far from stable. Hundreds of small armed and military groups working under the various leaders of the region, fought in the area for "the spark", the new strategic energy source, while killings of civilians and foreigners kidnappings seemed to have no end or solution.
However, when Puntshó took his post in Mogadishu, Somalia; his desire for revenge gradually turned into sadness. The new energy source only revealed the cruel differences that still existed between the inhabitants of all of Earth; and Africa seemed to have been doomed to hatred centuries before. He hoped to find hostility and suspicion among the people of the land; so close to the place where his father was killed. However, within a few weeks he understood that these people were struggling for survival without losing their smiles. Even when their leaders used them as shields or massacred them mercilessly. The new world government was another modern fiction to them; another hollow promise and empty hope.
The spark, whose distribution had become a difficult and never egalitarian process; was the best bet they had and Puntshó understood that those people who had nothing, were fighting in an attempt to gain control over this new technology; while their leaders filled their mouths with promises while planning to betray and subject them, as the Europeans and Americans had in the previous five centuries.
And his desire for revenge against those who'd killed his father years before, became a deaf pity that pierced his soul when he saw those barefoot and half-naked children playing with a rag ball on the dusty streets. They played and laughed, with a twinkle in their eyes and broad white smiles on their dark faces; and Puntshó Blade's soul broke into pieces.
Tired of witnessing suffering on his planet, and exhausted of feeling hateful and pierced by grief, he knew that within a few years those kids would turn into fighters for one of the groups that he himself would have to "deactivate". And he couldn't bear the thought...
But he had no choice, he had to obey orders and secretly pray that the conflict would end as soon as possible. Perhaps those children would have a chance if his efforts succeeded in getting that area of the world to finally stop collapsing.
And that's when a new mission request came from central command. An impossible rescue mission in unfamiliar territory, a desperate mission.
He boarded the plane that would take him to distant Tibet, but his heart could never erase those children who he'd watch daily, playing with a rag ball.
A rescue in the mountains
The Tibet mission was planned and launched in record time; they had to rescue a high office European politician who'd attempted to reach a diplomatic agreement with the dissident region's forces and who'd sinned of overconfidence. The ones holding him captive were independent radicals and were desperate; as they were losing support and sympathy from their own people.
This mission, in which Puntshó led the assault team, would mark his soul and career forever.
To achieve his goal, he needed to unceremoniously eliminate dozens of enemy combatants, without a chance to grieve for the lives of those desperate and very poorly armed fanatics who fought for a cause they believed fair.
Puntshó would have preferred a surprise, almost surgical, operation with the fewest number of victims. But they were waiting for them so he chose to safeguard the lives of his people and ensure the rescue. Dozens of bodies piled up in the underground facility's corridors when, finally, the rescue team resurfaced having accomplished their mission. Puntshó would vividly remember it for years, the terror-flooded eyes of a very young enemy fighter, the moment he understood he would die. At one point there was life in those dark and bright eyes; and then nothing, emptiness and absence. And it was that look, more than anything else in that mission, that would forever change his life and his way of understanding the world.
He couldn't remember the face clearly, as in his mind it mixed with the faces of dozens of other fighters killed that day. But his eyes... at the fatal shot his eyes contained life and horror. And then a moment later, were empty.
The absolute conviction Puntshó had throughout his military career as for the correctness and justification of his superiors' orders, had been undermined by a grief that overwhelmed him since the moment he stepped foot on the Horn of Africa; but he broke down that day, in the midst of that bloody mission. And disobeying orders, attacked the enemy with a savage fury. He just wanted to get out of there, fulfil his mission and not lose any of his peers, his brothers in arms, those who were shot when followed him without hesitation.
Almost his entire unit received a direct hit. But Puntshó marched unscathed through the underground corridors with fire in his eyes. "Death's companion" whispered his men, most with injuries of varying degrees. Their protective vests had save
d their lives and everyone returned home more or less with all their parts.
But on that same day, Puntshó Blade stopped being the insensitive, well trained commander who followed orders without a second thought. In a way that man died in those Tibetan caves, and the man who returned was more introverted and anxious for an inner peace he'd never needed before, until he saw those deep terrified eyes.
The rescue had been successful and the unit was climbing on the helicopter that awaited a couple of kilometres from the caves' entrance. Everyone was on board, except for Puntshó who stood a few meters away from the helicopter, looking towards the distant cave and crying. He didn't want his men to see his tears and pretended to check the perimeter to ensure take-off. A few moments later, having wiped his eyes with his dirty jacket sleeve, Puntshó turned his head towards the helicopter which was ready for take-off. There was no sound, he only felt the pain in his shoulder blade, above his bulletproof vest, and fell on the ground after being hit by a sniper's bullet. Two of his men jumped out of the carrier and in a coordinated movement covered their commander and placed him on the helicopter which took off grazing the tree tops, flying away from the caves and the possible shooters who were still targeting them.
Puntshó was still conscious, having been pierced by an excruciating pain and looked after by one of the cargo helicopter crew members, when he was transported to the aircraft carrier. At that moment he didn't even care about dying, he could only think about the young man's terrified eyes, whose life had been wasted.
His wounds included bone damage and a punctured lung, but his spine wasn't hurt. Within a few months Puntshó was discharged from active duty and received an award for heroic service as well as harsh reprimand for disobeying orders and risking his team.
He was satisfied with having survived and thought that was the "right time" to request a destination change. When he had the chance, he left special forces and to his leader's and comrades in arms' astonishment, asked for the quiet and "boring" post of Commissioner of Customs Military Police in Oslo, Norway; where he hoped to live quietly until retirement and perhaps ever start a family someday.
Singularity: The Labours of Iktis - Book 1 - A Space Opera begin Page 3
