by Peter Kenson
“The Belsi, on the other hand, will do everything in their power to prevent this. Now the Belsi are inherently a non-telepathic race but they will have access to telepaths and it will not take them long to find the location of this planet. Once they have it, they will be down there in numbers, trampling everything and everybody in their way to find this Ystrad prince and eliminate him.
“So we now have not only the possibility of technological interference with a pre-industrial society but the real risk of an inter-racial conflict being waged on the surface of this planet in the middle of a primitive and innocent people.”
“Oh shit”, muttered the chancellor. “Do we have to tell the emperor?”
“That’s your call, of course,” Khan said. “But I don’t see how we can keep the lid on this, particularly if it does break out into open conflict.”
“So what’s to be done?”
“I suggest that the first thing is to get the emperor to summon the Belsi and the Ystrad ambassadors and read them the riot act. Tell them the boy is under his personal protection; make him a ward of the Imperial court or something. If he puts on one of his really scary performances it might slow them down a bit, or at least make them think twice about putting troops on the ground.
“The second thing is to seal off the planet as far as we can. They will still try to put some people in there even if they don’t send in troops. Admiral Wei, can you put a blockade up around the planet?”
“Not that would be totally effective. You can commit as many ships as you want to a planetary blockade and a determined smuggler or blockade runner would find a way through. They always do. The best I can do is to put up a network of early warning satellites with a warship there to monitor the signals and intercept what he can.”
“Okay then. The third thing is…. We’ve got to find this youngster and before anybody else does. And that means we’ve got to put our own people on the ground.”
“And break a few galactic laws ourselves?”
“It won’t be the first time and I doubt it will be the last. Of course it would probably be best not to draw the emperor’s attention to this part of the plan. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“How will we identify the child from the native population? For a start, what age would the boy be or, at least appear to be?”
“That’s very difficult to say with any degree of confidence. The exo-team who have been studying the race say that the rate of development of a young Ystrad is heavily dependent on environmental factors: suitable food supply, secure family environment, education and training, peer group pressure etc. With the possible exception of the food supply, most of those other factors have either not been present or not been ideal. Best estimate is that he will appear to be in his low teens, possibly as much as 15/16 but no more and he could be very much younger.”
“Great. That narrows it down to most of the male children on the planet. So how will we identify this particular one?”
“Well, the boy is probably going to be a loner. He may be able to physically pass as one of the natives but he will not belong to any family group. However, I would suggest the most profitable course would be to look for telepathic leakage. The native population is very definitely non-telepathic. The evidence of this blast shows that the boy is not in full control of his own ability and is unlikely to be able to fully shield himself. If we use people who are capable of tracking telepathic ability, he may give himself away.”
It was the chancellor who voiced the suspicion that had been growing as Khan relayed all this information.
“Uh, Khan. How exactly do we know all these details about the local population?”
“Well… I do have some low-level assets on the planet. Locals who file regular reports but without any understanding of why, or who they’re reporting to. Useful as contacts for the people we will have to send in but no more than that.”
“So, do you have any agents suitable for this assignment?”
“Yes, of course. We have to treat this as a priority task and I have three or four agents who could handle it. All of them have some telepathic ability, either natural or trained and all of them are capable of dealing with a mission of this… sensitivity. I will just have to pull them off their current deployments.”
“Won’t a team of agents increase the risk of drawing attention to themselves?”
“They won’t be a team as such. I will have to send them in as individuals, working on their own. Scatter them across the continent to provide maximum coverage. I will alert the local contacts to help but it’s a huge area to search. What worries me is the risk of technological contamination. All of my people are trained in the latest weapons, devices, technological gizmos, anything that will give them an edge. And none of which they will be able to use on this planet. They’re going to have to go in bare-arsed.”
“Do we have a choice?”
“No regrettably, I don’t believe we do.”
“Well I may be able to help there,” the CSA broke in. “We’ve had a team working for quite some time now on deep memory implants, suppression and substitution of memories and we’ve been making a lot of progress. I believe we’re at a point where we could take one of your agents, suppress their technical training and knowledge and graft on a set of skills, training and experience that would be appropriate to let them blend in to the society on this planet.”
“How effective is it?” Khan asked.
“Oh it definitely works. We’ve conducted trials where we’ve taken a couple of volunteer scientists and retrained them in a completely different field. The trial subjects were able to work and converse with colleagues in their new non-scientific fields as though they had worked there all their lives.”
“And is it reversible?”
“Definitely. In fact that’s really the only problem we’ve encountered; occasional memory leakage. We’ve run some of these tests over extended periods and the new implants have stayed stable throughout. However, sometimes weeks or months later, something triggers one of the suppressed memories and it comes bubbling back to the surface. The trigger might be a sight or a sound, or even a smell. It’s completely unpredictable. Even then it doesn’t affect the implanted memories. It just causes a bit of confusion in the subject’s mind.”
“You’re saying that you could take my agent, suppress his technical training and knowledge, retrain him as a farmer who would blend into this primitive society and the only risk is that in two months’ time he might suddenly remember how to disassemble and clean a multi-phase repeating laser rifle.”
“Ah… yes. Something like that.”
Khan looked around the room at the others.
“Gentlemen, it appears we have the bare bones of a plan here. We have to find this boy, this heir to the Ystrad throne and protect him from the Belsi. Chancellor, I’m relying on you to scare the living daylights out of those ambassadors and keep their people off that planet. Admiral, I want that blockade up and running as soon as possible, to the best level that you can achieve. And I will go and roust out some agents for reassignment.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Kenson was born in Bristol, UK and grew up in an era when computers were new, exciting and the chairman of IBM forecast that there was a world market for maybe five computers. He graduated in Mathematics with a Masters in Operational Research and spent the next forty years working in IT at all levels from programmer to IT director.
He has always enjoyed reading, particularly science fiction and fantasy and wrote his first book, Sertian Princess, commuting on a train in and out of London. The family loved the story and eventually they bullied him into taking the plunge and publishing it.
After a writing gap of many years, Peter now lives in Spain with his wife Diana, where he has rediscovered his passion for creating new worlds for his stories. The climate, relaxed way of life and the odd glass of wine probably help.
Contact the author at www.peterkenson.com
Table of Con
tents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
