Tech Tack

by Viola Grace

  With time stretching before her, she kept her attitude cheerful and her work accurate so that she never caught attention. She tried to lift the spirits of the talent at New City, but she had no idea if she managed it.

  It wasn’t until she was due to visit New City again that she ran into trouble.

  “Tech 534, come with us.” Having two guards burst into her rooms in the morning was not a normal event.

  She got to her feet and finished putting the clip on her braid. She followed the two men down the hall and into a section of the facility that no talent wanted to go into. She was going to be questioned.

  Ainora held her core beliefs and tried to remain calm as she was seated in an interrogation room and her hands were cuffed to the arms of the chair.

  To her surprise, it was the empath from her first interview that came through the door. She didn’t let her guard down though, she remained in a forced calm and she breathed slowly.

  “Hello, Miss Lenz. I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

  “I could say the same.”

  The empath sat across from her and she smiled politely. “I have a few questions to ask you, and then, you can resume your work. You have an exemplary record.”

  “Thank you. I will answer what I can.”

  The empath brought out a flat screen, and she turned it toward Ainora. “Do you know who this is?”

  Ainora shrugged. “He’s another tech.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He asked me if I had seen the New City. I told him it was from a distance. I was done and I left.” She looked at the image and tried to see if there was any give away as to why he had sat next to her.

  “Had you met him before?”

  Ainora shook her head. “No. That was a first for me. I never saw him after that.”

  “Did he request any details about the talent at New City?”

  “No. He just mentioned that he had been there as well.”

  The empath looked at her and nodded. “Have you gotten any unusual communication since you have been here?”

  Ainora was relieved to say, “No. Nothing unusual. Just letters from my family. My mom likes to write.”

  “She is a language teacher.”

  Ainora nodded.

  The empath checked a file and nodded. “Before I let you go, there have been reports of you humming while you work with talents.”

  Ainora blinked and then realized that they thought she was passing along information. “I hum to concentrate whether people are there or not. No one notices when I hum to an instrument panel.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “My father was a music teacher.” She shrugged.

  The empath smiled. “That would explain it.”

  She touched something on the screen and the cuffs opened. “Have a good day, Miss Lenz.”

  Ainora nodded, got up and said, “Good day.”

  She walked out and smiled at the guards. “Back to the normal schedule, I guess.”

  The men blinked and led her back to the dispatch office for her to collect her assignment for the day. She grabbed her kit and the assignment and got on with her day. There were three days of more waiting until the eclipse. She just needed to bury herself in her work until then. She could do it; she had had plenty of practice.

  Chapter Three

  Adjusting a communications array, she was out of her normal routes by several hundred kilometres. The guards with her were nervous, but no one was watching the sky. Without shielding, the bright flares of light could cause permanent damage.

  She hummed to herself as she closed the housing on the array and her hum was stifled as a hand wrapped around her, a sharp stab of pain struck her neck and the world began to spin. The guards were nearby, strange spikes sticking out of their necks.

  Whatever had hit them was now carrying her off while the light of the sun was blocked for the first time in decades.

  She groaned and tried to press her hand to her head, but it was fastened down. The world around her felt strange. Ainora made out a roar of engines to either side of her, and she held still as the pressure on her body increased before it suddenly relaxed and then a lighter pressure came into play.

  She could hear someone speaking a few metres away, and it was a male voice with no other voice answering. This was going from bad to worse.

  Ainora struggled to sit up, and she looked at her restraints. With a little analysis and nearly dislocating her thumb, she managed to press the release that would free her hand to free the rest of her.

  She unlocked her other hand and sat up, snapping the restraints on her ankles loose. Massaging her aching thumb, she draped her legs over the edge of the bed she had been tied to.

  If Ainora didn’t know better, she would say she was in a spacecraft.

  With her determination screwed in place, she got to her feet and went in search of the intermittent voice.

  “I told you that I have her. She is safe and strapped down. No, she is not a danger at the moment. Don’t be an idiot. The dart will keep her out until we finish the first jump.”

  He was a large shadow against the display of the stars and his voice was a deep rumble that carried easily.

  Unsure of the etiquette, she knocked on the hull with four rapid taps.

  He whirled around, and she hit the floor as the darts whizzed over her head.

  “Don’t do that. Those things hurt.” She looked up at him and blinked at the black and silver hair that was up in a startled halo. “I didn’t want to clear my throat.”

  “Are you upset?” He moved toward her carefully. His hair settled back into an even wave on his skull.

  “No. I rarely get upset. Can I get up from the floor or are you going to stick me again?”

  He smiled and extended his hand. “If you don’t mind, I could use the company. Getting sent here to pick you up was an odd assignment. Normally, I am a bodyguard.”

  “I see. Normally, I am working on some kind of an instrument panel. Why am I here?”

  He blinked. “They didn’t tell you I was coming?”

  She looked at him and snorted. “I live on a world with telepaths running the government. No. No one told me anything.”

  He looked completely befuddled.

  “Who were you speaking to?”

  He balanced himself. “Morganti Base. They were wondering how your language pack is sitting and when we are going to arrive.”

  “Can I sit down?” she pointed at the empty seat.

  “Oh. Of course. Where are my manners?” He stepped aside and held the seat for her.

  “My name is Ainora Lenz.”

  “I am Lyon Tacks. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you as well, Lyon, now tell me what the hell is going on.”

  She smiled up at him and he took a seat behind the controls.

  He settled and jerked his head. “No, she is awake and calm. Do you wish to speak to her?”

  Ainora stared at him and saw through the smooth locks of hair a tiny speck of silver in his right ear. He was on a communication device.

  “Well, that explains the one-way conversations.”

  He smiled and leaned forward. “You heard that?”

  “Your voice carries.”

  He opened the com and a female voice chuckled. “It does carry, even to this distance, Agent Tacks. Greetings, Ainora Lenz. We are happy to invite you to live and learn at the Citadel Morganti.”

  “Excellent. Who is we and what is a Citadel?”

  The voice chuckled. “My name is Relay, and I am the administrator of Sector Guard Base Morganti. The Citadel is a training centre for talents of all varieties and strengths. The resistance on Resicor put your name forward for evacuation, so you and several others were set for rescue during the eclipse.”

  “I see. Well, you did get me out, but why did Lyon Tacks have to dart me?”

  Relay laughed. “It was an effort to convince your government that you and the others were be
ing kidnapped. You were all sent to relatively normal assignments in public areas, just as you always would be, but our inside informers had you placed where we could get at you. It looked like a mass snatching of talents.”

  Ainora snorted. “That is what it was.”

  “Well, if you ever get returned to Resicor, it needs to look like you went under duress, so that is what happened.”

  Ainora sat back. “Where am I going?”

  “You are being taken to Morganti where you have a set of quarters waiting for you at the Citadel. You will be able to use your talent daily and in the manner you choose.”

  “What about my family?”

  “They are safe. There is no connection between them and the informer. Your family will get a message from the government that you have been taken, and they will know that you are safe. They have been trained for this.”

  Ainora smiled. “Of course they have. They have been working toward this since I was pulled in.”

  Relay paused. “How are you adapting to the language flash?”

  “Is that what is going on? I feel a lag between thought and speech.”

  “It is an experimental learning technique. A data flash. It was posited by one of your own people, actually."

  “Yes. Data and light can be combined to imprint on the optic nerve, and from there, the brain takes over. Your pronunciation will improve with time.”

  “I thought that it was coming too easily. Lyon Tack did not mention it.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

  He smiled and shrugged, turning his attention to the controls.

  “He is a chatterbox once he gets to know you. You will have a grasp of Alliance Common by the time you leave that ship. I look forward to meeting you when you head out to the base for outfitting. See you soon.” Relay chuckled.

  “Uh, see you soon.”

  The connection went quiet and the shuttle was suddenly silent.

  Ainora looked around the consoles and took inventory of the switches and displays. She sat still until he cleared his throat.

  “Prepare for jump.”

  She didn’t have a chance to ask what a jump was; she clutched the arms of her chair and held tight as she saw another point in space a moment before she was in it. Her throat was dry and her heart was pounding.

  She croaked. “If that is a jump. I think I would rather not be around for the leap.”

  He cursed and set them on their course. “Apologies. I will get you some tea. I remember my first time, and you are handling it much better than I did.”

  Lyon got to his feet and disappeared for a few minutes. When he returned, he was holding a cup in his hand. He offered it to her with both hands in a very formal way.

  She extended her hands and took the cup. His eyes lit up a little as she sipped at the hot liquid.

  “Thank you. My throat got a little dry there.”

  “It happens. What we experienced there is a jump. The ship creates a field and pulls itself to a matching point in space some distance away. There are designated jump sites all over the sectors, but connecting the right dots is the duty of the jump computer.”

  “That sounds like a tricky bit of programming.”

  “It is. It is a program based on an Alliance navigator’s mind. She was strong of thought, and they were able to take readings as she plotted points in the stars that were in neutral positions that would not injure the local gravity fields.”

  Ainora sipped at her tea. “Really?”

  “Really. She sat in the archives and created maps of systems until this very day. She can look at a display and find a stable point that is suitable for a jump beacon.”

  “She enjoys the work?”

  “She does. The Nyal Imperium has offered her a space in their archives, and I think she is considering the move.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “No. She is in a tank.” He smiled and took his seat again.

  “What is a tank?”

  He skimmed his hands over the console and an image was projected in front of them. “A tank is a medical device filled with an oxygen-rich liquid, and it can have tubes for food supplements and life support. She can’t survive without the tank for now.”

  “What species is she?” Ainora was looking close but the image didn’t let her focus.

  “From what she has told me, she is one of your kind. She is of Resicor, and she was badly damaged in something she refers to as the purge.”

  Ainora was shocked, and she peered at the image as closely as she could without disrupting it. “That would make her close to a hundred.”

  “She doesn’t age. That much I know.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  Lyon paused before he answered, and then, he gave her a sidelong look. “Urikara Lenz.”

  Her great grandmother, thought long dead, was floating in a tank and crafting maps for spacecraft to jump from one system to the other. Ainora felt positively tiny in comparison.

  Chapter Four

  Ainora wanted to speak to her great grandmother to find out if it was truly the woman that her grandfather spoke of with such fond memories. He had been a child during the purge. His talent had not arisen and his family had hidden in the mountains while the Kozue and government teams scoured for them.

  Urikara had run out to misdirect them, and it must have worked, because seven days later, she was gone without a trace and the purge was over.

  She both hoped that it was and hoped that it wasn’t the woman of her bloodline. If she had truly been on her own all these years and on life support, it would be horrible to imagine the long life in confinement.

  Ainora followed the directions that Lyon had given her and got the food dispenser to disgorge something suitable for her. She had been ordered to stay with purple-outlined images so that was what she did.

  The food was bland, but her body accepted it eagerly. So, she was off Resicor, and now, she was going to be sent from assignment to assignment without her consent once again, just like at home. Well, maybe the uniform would be better.

  She got to her feet and tucked away the dishes in the assigned slots. With her mind numb, she resumed her place in the flight deck and watched the stars as they shifted their positions relative to the ship.

  “How long until we reach Morganti?” She smiled at Lyon.

  His deep mahogany skin had a reddish tint, which made his dark hair and the silver streaks more startling. His nose was flattish and his brows were thick and black. All in all, she should have been petrified, but she had practiced keeping her emotions down for so long, it was second nature.

  “Six hours and one more jump. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. How are you feeling? I imagine you are overdue for sleep.”

  “I can stay awake for days at a time if need be. It is one of the things that makes me an excellent bodyguard.” He grinned and his hair lifted a little.

  She continued to look at him until he turned with a raised brow. “You are staring.”

  She blushed. “Sorry. I have never met anyone with mood hair before.”

  “Yours is doing a pretty good job of being an indicator of your state. I am guessing that blue means you are calm?”

  She snickered. “I am always calm when someone isn’t flinging darts at me. Do those things come out of your skin?”

  He extended his arm and flexed. A series of darts rose out of his skin down toward his hand. “I fire them by moving the muscles of my forearm. Once I have extruded them, a small pocket of muscles at their base prepares to fire.”

  She swallowed. “Are they all designed to sedate?”

  He grinned. “Yes. That is how my species developed. It is a hunting technique as far as our historians can tell.”

  “What is your species called?”

  “Uradu. Well, the part of me that has spikes. My mother’s people are Wyoran. She was on a trade mission to Kobal, the Uradu home world, and she left with me in her belly. Once he knew I existed, my father insisted on his righ
ts and they negotiated their union on Kobal.”

  “So, you are a blend of two species?” She blinked as she came to grips with that. It was the most interesting thing she had heard since learning about Urikara.

  “I am. The people of Resicor…right, you don’t blend with other species. Well, that is one thing you will have to get used to. There are literally hundreds of species in the Citadel and Sector Guard and more are added every day.”

  “I am looking forward to it.”

  “That is good. Do you want to start reading up on the species? There is a data pad around here somewhere.”

  “If it is no trouble. You don’t have to entertain me. I just want to do my work to the best of my ability.”

  “I think you will be able to exceed your estimation of your abilities. The Citadel has a way of bringing out the most in people. Learning from others who have gained mastery of their own talents in strange and unlikely ways is inspiring.”

  Ainora smiled. “I think I might actually enjoy this.”

  He got out of his chair and leaned over her, reaching past her and pulling back with a flat tablet.

  She couldn’t help but inhale his scent, and it had the peculiar hint of conifer that she associated with her family’s home in the mountains. There was musk, sweat and a myriad of other scents involved, but the trees near her home was the image that stuck in her mind.

  He showed her how to scroll through the data and bring up images. The language she had been given made it easy, and she started her Alliance education.

  By the time they were ready to land, she had been through all the files for the rescued Resicor talents that had already been posted around the Alliance.

  Even those who had been stuck in the dome and removed with the consent of the government had managed to get out of the restrictor suits and make new lives for themselves. It lifted her spirits to know that she wasn’t the only one, even with what Relay had said. Hearing that you were not alone was different than seeing the files and the non-classified missions that your planet-mates had been on.