Triorion: Awakening (Book One)

by L. J. Hachmeister

  Reht left before the Minister could answer and before he did something stupid. Mom, forced to wait outside the Minister’s office during the meeting, matched his gait as he strode down the hall, a low growl rumbling in the Talian’s chest.

  Something up, Reht thought, concern bristling the hair on the back of his neck. He tried to play off his worry, walking with his hands in his pockets and head held high, grinning at the Alliance guards escorting him back to his vessel, but as soon as they arrived at the dock, he hurried to the Wraith.

  Once on board the ship, Diawn grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the wall, licking her lips.

  “Happy to see me?” Reht chuckled.

  Diawn sensuously pressed her face against his, her lips grazing his ear. “Billy did something,” she whispered. The two Alliance guards lingered for a moment, gaping at the enthusiasm of his pilot.

  “My lady missed me, so I’d best be getting on.” Reht nodded to the guards, wrapping his arm around Diawn and tickling her chin with his finger. One of the guards shook his head, the other tripping over himself as they descended the ramp.

  “Goodbye, gentlemen,” Reht waved as he sealed the door. When the locks clicked over, he turned to Diawn as she squeezed her breasts back into her top. “What did he do?”

  Before she could answer, Reht tore his way down to the engine room. As soon as he spotted Billy Don’t, he wrenched him away from the terminal, shaking the little Liiker by the shoulders.

  “What have you done?”

  Billy Don’t emitted a shattering scream, and Reht dropped him in favor of protecting his ears. “Remind me why the chak Tech gave that thing a voicebox?”

  Diawn wrapped her arms protectively around the little Liiker boy. “He tapped into their mainframe. We could be traced.”

  Grinning and blowing bubbles with his digestive lubricant, the Liiker boy with only half a face spun around on his back wheels, babbling and squealing in delight, oblivious to Reht’s anger.

  “Mom, take the helm and get us out of here now,” Reht yelled into the intercom. The ship beneath their feet vibrated as the engines fired, and they lifted off.

  “Diawn,” Reht gritted out, “This time he’s gone too far. I’ve had it with that psychotic tin can.” The dog-soldier captain drew a knife from his sleeve and turned toward Billy Don’t.

  “No!” Diawn shouted, lunging for Billy. “Don’t you touch him!”

  Tears ruined the dark makeup around Diawn’s eyes as she cradled Billy Don’t against her triple breasts. What she saw in the demented Liiker, Reht didn’t know. The little bastard could talk directly to the Wraith’s computer, and fix internal problems faster than his engineer, Tech, but that was the limit of his use. The Motti had discarded Billy for a reason—his brain didn’t fully take to the implanted neuro-network, resulting in impulsive behavior that landed him the nickname, “Billy Don’t.”

  “Don’t take him away from me,” Diawn said, smoothing back the few remaining blonde locks of hair on Billy’s head.

  “I thought you didn’t get attached to people,” Reht said, kicking the Liiker’s front wheel. “Or things.”

  Billy yelped and tried to spin away, but Diawn held him fast, staring down Reht.

  In the back of his mind stirred a vague recollection, perhaps an off-handed remark, or rumor Reht had chanced upon over the years about his pilot. Something about Diawn’s abandonment as a child, her despoiling at a young age by one of the circuit pimps that turned orphans into intergalactic sex slaves. Maybe Diawn related to Billy Don’t on some twisted level, seeing the ugly, mirrored truth of her own brutal world.

  Billy Don’t craned his neck to the left and as Reht reared back the knife. “Cooohh—duuds. Coooh—duds.”

  Reht froze mid-strike. “Am I crazy or did he just talk?”

  Over the last few months, Tech had been working on a program to help Billy Don’t speak again, but nobody, not even Diawn, had expected much to come of it. It was too much for anyone to hope for, especially for a discarded Liiker.

  “He’s saying ‘codes,’” Diawn whispered, looking directly into Billy’s real eye. She gripped the Liiker by his shoulders and used her sweetest tone. “What codes, Billy? What are you trying to tell us?”

  Billy Don’t inserted his interface module into the computer, and the monitor flickered. A long string of codes appeared on the screen. Billy Don’t integrated them with the files and unlocked all of them.

  “Holy Mukal,” Reht said, leaning on the bulkhead as he skimmed through one of the first files. The little Liiker had integrated Sebbs’s codes with the remaining fragments of information the Alliance had recovered and organized it into something concrete.

  He tucked the knife back into his sleeve—at least for now.

  After scanning through the compiled information, Reht thought he had pieced it together. “Sebbs isn’t that crazy.” Reht traced his finger along several paragraphs and shook his head. “Something must have happened internally to the Dominion.”

  “You can’t call on the devil and then expect to control him,” Diawn muttered, standing at Reht’s side and reading over the information with him.

  “Look at this—the Sovereign signed this mass execution order right before the Raging Front.”

  “Alliance said it was for the leeches,” Diawn read.

  Reht ignored the slur. “Naw, I’m betting not. That was their meal ticket. Bet that was for the Deadwalkers. Must’ve pissed ‘em off something fierce,” Reht said, scrolling through the text. “Gods, I’m not sure who to root for here.”

  “This is some hot stuff, Reht.” Diawn looked anxiously across the room at Billy, who rocked back and forth and smacking his real hand against the metal plating of his chest. “They’re going to be on our backs for this.”

  “Not if we flip it on them. Make them deal.”

  “What could we possibly have that they would want?”

  Reht grinned, his incisors gleaming. Time for the big payout. Diawn wouldn’t be happy, but this was too good an opportunity to miss.

  “Sebbs figured out that the twin girls were exiled, not terminated, and before he left our company, he graciously told me their location,” he said, pulling up a star chart on the nearby display. He pointed to a tiny star cluster, zoomed in closer, and then stabbed his forefinger at the second of five planets circling the red dwarf star. “Crazy things that boy will remember when a pack of smokes—and his balls—are on the line.”

  Tech popped his head out of a conduit and dropped from the ceiling. “You want us to rescue those kids off Tralora?” Tech said, nosing his way over to the display. “You’re crazy, Jag. It’s diseased. There’s no cure.”

  Jumping up and catching the railing above his head, Reht swung up to the command deck. With a smirk on his face he stuck his head back down and winked at Diawn. “Pilot, I need you set a course to Polaris, now. We don’t have much time.”

  Her expression soured. Diawn had never been his most stable crewmember, and his plan would certainly test what little sanity she possessed. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to charm her now. Time to play stupid. “What is it, babe?”

  “Nothing,” she replied curtly before disappearing up the navigational ladder.

  “You’re in for it, you know,” Tech commented before scuttling down to the engineering terminals.

  Reht returned to the bridge. It was still too hot for Triel of Algardrien, Prodgy Healer, to resurface, but this payoff depended on it. And, after all these years, he would have been okay with any excuse to bring home his Starfox.

  ***

  Fiorah had only one picture house in the slums, and the only time it didn’t show adult films was midweek during the hottest part of the day when nobody would be out anyway. During happier times, Galm and Lohien took the triplets to see an antiquated flat-projection pictures on the evolution of spaceflight. Even though it was a lazily crafted commercial for one of the starship dealers in town, Jetta didn’t care. She liked learning about tra
nsportation across the Starways and new developments in space flight, but more importantly, it was something her family did together. All five of them sat in the front row, even though nobody else was there except a few stragglers escaping the heat.

  The picture house smelled like a strange mixture of concession food, mold, and body odor, and whatever lay buried in the ankle-deep garbage on the floor. None of that bothered her. Strangely fascinated by the weird sound of Galm’s shoes sticking to the floor, Jetta also enjoyed the occasional treat when they found a discarded box of candy with a few remaining pieces.

  Wedged between her siblings, with Galm and Lohien a seat away on either side, Jetta relaxed in the presence of her family. But here, alone in the heart of her worst nightmare, Jetta couldn’t turn away from the terrible reel of memories the Oblin had been keeping at bay.

  Rogman appeared before her, closely trailed by a man who looked more dead than alive. Veins wound their way over his gray skin like tiny snakes. Avoiding eye contact, the grey man’s wide-eyed gaze looked beyond any object in the room. She couldn’t access his mind, but she tasted something familiar in the echo of his thoughts. She asked Rogman who the man was, but he only ever answered, “Another leech.”

  Leech—a word frequently whispered among the Core personnel. Fear attached to that name, and envy, but she couldn’t glean more information from anybody.

  (Jaeia, Jahx—where are you? I don’t understand why I’m having such a hard time reading other people’s thoughts…)

  Something sharp pierced her neck. “This will make you stronger, quicker.”

  “This will evolve your flesh.” Fire poured into her veins and worms crawled into her belly.

  “This will make you mine.”

  Everything changed. The cold sterility of the Core ships dissolved, replaced by the stink of old meat and the wet, pulsating walls of a body cavity. Unfamiliar machinery wound its way through the glistening slickness.

  (Where am I?)

  The thing with the burning red eye stood over her, inspecting her with one of its many ocular devices. Before she could move or speak, the view changed. She couldn’t see; she could only hear the sound of an argument pitched just below a scream.

  “This is not in our agreement. We will not authorize any of them to be ‘integrated.’ Their behavior problems will be addressed with the White.”

  (Rogman?)

  Shrill noises and metal scraping against metal.

  “No, and that is final. You have only one job—don’t chak it up!”

  Jetta tried to look away from the memory as it reformed, but as she resisted it swelled in her mind’s eye. She saw Rogman and the other decorated officers standing on the observation deck while men in lab coats huddled around their datafiles and chattered excitedly. Anticipation and expectation hung in the air.

  “Get your secondary fleet out faster today,” Rogman ordered. “I want a quick victory, not a pretty one. Their forces will surrender once you cross the Front.”

  (Why did they care so much about the game? What is it about the Endgame that is so important to them?)

  Jetta looked away from the Endgame display and saw her uniform sleeve threaded into her body. (What are we doing? This is all wrong.)

  Resist, she commanded her siblings, and in the stillness of her sudden lucidity, she heard her words go further than their three minds, rippling out across the psionic plane like a stone dropped in water. Other minds, like hers, carried her voice, their collective presence reaching into her, extending her consciousness across a distance she couldn’t begin to measure. As her psionic awareness sharpened, she saw herself become the central axis in a constellation of the brightest stars in the galaxy.

  Everything finally made sense. Without drugs disrupting her train of thought, she pieced together the truth. The leeches. The collective presence—her heightened intuition. Lessons with a new high commander every day. Separating them, controlling the intensity of her connection to her siblings’ minds. The thing with the burning red eye...

  ... And General Volkor. Terrible, soulless eyes that followed her everywhere, around every corner, through every newsreel, banner and poster that lined the walls and decorated each room of the ship. Soldiers greeted each other by hailing him, praising him and his glorious victories to unite the fractured Starways.

  Rogman’s thrown me against all the top commanders—so why haven’t I played Volkor? It was an old thought, one that she hadn’t been able to answer at the time. But even then, through the chemical haze, she had felt the connection, though she couldn’t hold onto the thought long enough to draw the inevitable conclusion.

  She did now.

  Volkor the Slaythe, the Usher of Death, the destroyer of worlds.

  We are Volkor.

  Jetta awoke slowly, pressing her palm against her forehead as a relentless hammer pounded the insides of her skull. Perched atop a series of stalagmites, the Oblin, morphed back into an old man, smoked his favorite pipe stuffed with black leaves and thistle. Purple smoke unfurled from his lips as he contemplated her.

  Jaeia, Jetta thought, reaching out to her sister across their bond.

  Sitting next to her in a daze, Jaeia did not look up, caught in the terrible revelation they shared. We killed millions of innocent people.

  It’s not our fault, Jetta tried, tears pricking her sinuses. The Core tricked us.

  What we did—unforgivable—

  I can’t do this, Jetta realized, shoving away her sister’s guilt, and her own, and turned to rage.

  “Is this what you wanted?” Jetta shouted at the Grand Oblin, throwing a handful of rocks across the room. Jaeia began to cry. “Did you want to break us down only to build us back up as you see fit? What exactly are your plans for us? Because I have news for you—it doesn’t change anything. I’m still going after my brother and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop me!”

  “Jetta,” Jaeia choked out between sobs. “Please, don’t. Please—”

  Clutching her head in her hands, Jetta fought against the onslaught of emotions threatening to unhinge her sanity.

  (What have I done?)

  Sadness, guilt and shame beyond anything she had ever experienced gutted her from the inside out, leaving an aching canker that drained her anger.

  (I am unforgivable.)

  When she saw the look on Jaeia’s face, she realized that the feelings came from beyond her consciousness.

  “Stop it, Jaeia!” she screamed, scraping up another handful of rocks and whipping it at her twin. The Grand Oblin leapt down from his perch and swatted the rocks away with his robe.

  “Control yourself, Jetta—”

  No.

  Jetta struck the Oblin, sending him staggering backward. Running up the tunnel, past Rawyll and Dinjin, she kept her eyes on the cavern exit. When Crissn tried to stop her from deactivating the bioshield, she punched him in the gut and kneed him in the groin.

  Running hard and fast down the mountain, Jetta stumbled and slid down most of the trail until she reached the valley floor, unaware of anything but the urgency wailing inside of her chest. Her lungs ached as she ran through the brush, branches catching at her skin.

  I don’t know how, but I will escape, she thought as she fought her way through a tangle of tree limbs, even if I have to kill all the Northies and all the Prigs or battle the infected along the way. And it didn’t matter that she would do it alone. Jaeia is weak. If I’m going to find Jahx, I can’t let that weakness get in the way.

  The sun, sinking behind the mountains, made the treetops glow orange and red in its dying light. In the back of her mind Jaeia struggled to be heard, but Jetta shut her out.

  “Don’t worry, Jahx,” she whispered as the last sliver of sun disappeared behind the peaks. “I’ll make things right.”

  ***

  Reht instructed his crew to dock on Spacey’s Port in the Polaris system. A dingy bar and fuel station located on an asteroid circling the giant planet of Ploto, Spacey’s was a hotspot for th
ose traveling in and out of the system and a safehouse for those who knew somebody in the business. Some time ago, Reht had acquired some pricey Old Earth artifacts for the owner, Guli Varocassi, who had subsequently granted him an unusual degree of access to the bar’s facilities.

  When he entered the bar, Mom, whose head grazed the ceiling, got him the attention he needed.

  “Reht Jagger, old friend, what brings you here?” Guli asked. The short, portly man wormed his way out from behind the bar, his eyes trained on the giant Talian at Reht’s side.

  Guli was completely human, a rarity in this region. Most humans who had any sense stayed away from the outerworlds, but Guli was different. Ruthless and violent, he possessed a keen sense for running an outerworld crime ring and never went without half a dozen weapons inconspicuously strapped to his body. Tokens of those who had dared to call him a Deadskin or question his authority—a combat belt, fingers and teeth, a length of dried skin—hung above the bar as a fair warning.

  “Come to the bar! Let me serve you your favorite.” Guli smiled and revealed a row of crooked yellow teeth. Mom, still at Reht’s side, turned away in disgust as Guli scratched at the bare belly hanging over his waistband. Reht smirked. He never knew how his first mate survived as a dog-soldier with such an extreme aversion to uncleanliness.

  Reht slid into one of the barstools as Guli poured a steaming green fluid that bubbled and splattered everywhere. Into Mom’s larger mug he decanted a single drop of red liquid. He then lit a match and placed it carefully over the top of the mug. When the smoke finally settled and the fireworks subsided, Mom slammed back the brew that had risen to the brim.

  “Always a scene,” Reht said before taking a swig of his own drink. The instant the liquid touched the back of his tongue he gagged, his cheeks puffing out and his throat tightening. Mom slapped him on the back, and Reht let loose a wheezy cough.

  “Chak, Guli, what did you put in this thing?”

  Guli laughed, spraying the giant Talian. Mom growled and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand.