by S. H. Jucha
Helena ran to the doorway and called out, “Stay in the bed, Sasha. The governor’s dog is searching for a bone.”
Giorgio checked the girls’ room thoroughly, and then he searched the rest of the accommodations. When he was done, he faced Helena squarely, hands on hips, and said, “I’ll give you this last chance to tell me where Aurelia has gone.”
“If that creature has hurt my daughter and done something with her, I’ll make you and your master pay. One way or the other, I’ll make the two of you pay.”
Giorgio wasn’t scared of Helena, she didn’t have the power, but when he felt fear creep up his spine, he eyed Sasha, who was standing in the bedroom doorway, a coverlet around her, glaring at him.
“Don’t, kid,” Giorgio warned Sasha, “or I’ll be happy to juice you.” He patted his injector pistol for emphasis. Immediately, the unnerving sensation disappeared.
“Benders,” Giorgio said, with disgust. “You’re a bunch of abominations who should never be allowed to exist.” He didn’t wait for a reply but left in a hurry. It took him a few minutes to search the house and discover Aurelia was nowhere to be found. Then he went to a small room on the first floor located at the back of the house and unlocked a door to which only he knew the key code.
Using a palm scan and a second code, Giorgio activated the monitors of the house’s surveillance. He rolled back the recordings to an hour and a half ago, focusing first on Dimitri’s private bedroom. He slowed the file to normal speed to watch Aurelia undress and don her short robe before he fast-forwarded to Dimitri’s entrance. Activating, the audio, he listened to the exchange.
Giorgio discovered he didn’t need the audio. He could tell by the change in Aurelia’s body language and facial expressions that when she turned from the drawer the girl had had enough of Dimitri’s depraved attentions. He watched the boy’s fear escalate until the terror that was etched in his face totally consumed him. Aurelia stalked him, and, driven by desperation, Dimitri deliberately leaned backward over the balcony’s railing.
The scene gave Giorgio chills. The girl was untrained, completely unaware of her tremendous power and how to control it.
“And thanks to you, Dimitri, she’s loose in the domes and mad at the world. I pity the next poor slob she meets and who doesn’t know enough to shock or juice her first and ask questions later,” Giorgio said, addressing the monitor, which showed an image of Aurelia’s face contorted in anger.
Searching surveillance footage, Giorgio found a good closeup image of Aurelia, which he loaded into his comm unit and sent out to his network. The accompanying message said, “Report the location of this girl. Don’t approach. Reward offered. DNS.” The acronym, which ended the message, meant the recipients weren’t to share the information with others. It was for their eyes only. It also said this was a high priority request and the reward would be significant.
Throughout the domes, hundreds of people, who had done business with Giorgio at one time or another, raced to be the first to provide the information to the governor’s head of security. It was an El tech, Gerald, monitoring the cams focused on the landing pad and the airlock, who spotted Aurelia. He had loaded her image into his system and ran a face recognition comparison on the passengers, who boarded the most recent car to lift. When that search returned as negative, the tech widened the program’s input to include the pad and surrounding freight areas.
The recognition program returned a 72.8 percent match, and Gerald zoomed in to study the girl, in ugly coveralls with a cap jammed down on her head, who was climbing the car’s ramp. The El car’s cargo chief seemed to recognize her, which made the tech doubt he’d found the target. However, the possibility of earning coin drove him on, and he selected the widest cam view of the pad and freight area. Locating the girl talking to the cargo chief, Gerald reversed the recording. He watched her walk backwards to hide behind a stack of crates.
Gerald found the girl had waited and watched the landing pad from a hiding place, which made the tech suspicious, and he reversed the recording at high speed, pausing when he caught her changing clothes. “Got you,” he whispered, snatching up his comm unit.
“Mr. Sestos, this is Gerald at the El pad. I’ve found your girl.”
“Don’t approach her, Gerald. We’ll be right there,” Giorgio replied.
“Sorry, Mr. Sestos, she’s gone. She snuck aboard the El as cargo crew. She’ll make the station in another half hour.” When Gerald heard nothing, he was tempted to ask about the reward but thought better of it. Shortly thereafter, the comm went dead.
“Well, the day’s not been a total waste,” Gerald whispered, an ugly smile on his face. He accessed a back door in the monitoring system and sent the recording of Aurelia changing her clothes to his comm unit.
Giorgio’s comm unit was tucked against his chin, as he thought. Gerald would get his reward, but he had more to worry about than that.
An eighty-year-old agreement regarding empaths was broken when Giorgio helped the governor kidnap Helena. At the time, it was a calculated gamble on his part. He was a new hire on the governor’s security detail. But assisting the governor with his dangerous and foolish action placed Giorgio in a position of power and confidence, and he’d reaped the reward every year since then.
However, Giorgio knew that the governor and he were lost if their crimes were discovered. It wasn’t only the kidnapping and illegal incarceration. There existed a delicate truce between topsiders and downsiders about empaths, after a series of ugly incidents surrounding their mistreatment. A binding agreement was signed by all parties, stating that when an empath was identified, he or she was to be sent to Harbour aboard the Honora Belle, the old colony ship, to be trained. When she certified their training period was successfully completed, they could choose to live on the station or aboard the Belle.
Since the initiation of the agreement, not a single identified empath had ever returned to the station. They’d stayed with Harbour. Coincidentally, not a single empath had ever been born to downsiders, and it was those in the domes who had transgressed against sensitives before the agreement was in place, which is why it stated that no empath could reside downside, under any circumstances.
Giorgio tried one last tactic to reacquire Aurelia before he contacted the governor and sent a coded signal to a contact on the station’s security force. When he received a reply, he shook his head in disgust and commed Markos Andropov.
“In a meeting, Sestos,” Markos replied tersely.
“Apologies, Governor, but you have a priority one at the house,” Giorgio replied.
“Handle it, Sestos. That’s what I pay you for. This meeting’s important,” Markos replied testily.
“Wish I could, Governor, but one of your private birds has flown the coop … all the way to the station.”
The comm was silent, and Giorgio waited. He could imagine the turmoil roiling through the governor’s mind. He heard, “Coming,” before the comm abruptly ended.
* * *
When Governor Markos Andropov arrived home, he found Giorgio had moved Dimitri’s body to a private room and had his man clean up the mess on the patio. The security chief’s briefing to Markos was terse and to the point.
“No doubt about it, Governor,” Giorgio said. “The girl mentally pushed him. The recording shows Dimitri was terrorized.”
“How can that be, Giorgio? Helena is an extremely weak empath. Why would her daughter be so strong?”
“I’ve no idea, Governor. There was no indication of it prior to this point,” Giorgio replied evenly, keeping a neutral expression on his face, even though he was lying.
“What about Sasha?” Markos asked, with concern.
“That’s a good question, Governor, but I wouldn’t be sure about how to go about investigating her strength. Right now, we need to think about Aurelia.” Giorgio needed the governor to focus on the bigger problem and to drop any inquiry into how Aurelia was capable of pushing Dimitri to his death. The last thing Giorgio wante
d was to have the governor discover his secrets.
“You reached out to your contact on the station?” Markos asked.
“He’s been warned, but he was across the station, investigating a mining ship. She’ll probably have exited the El before our agent gets there.”
“Appearing as she does,” Markos said, examining the image of Aurelia on Giorgio’s comm unit, “and knowing nothing about the orbital platform, she’ll be easy to spot.”
“But what if she runs afoul of station security before our man recovers her?”
Markos stared at Giorgio, while he thought through his options. He couldn’t believe that this day had arrived, and he damned his sister for being unable to control her son. “I’m going to have to call a meeting and warn the others.”
“And tell them what, Governor?” Giorgio asked.
“I need their station assets, if we’re to recover Aurelia before she’s discovered or makes it to the Belle. And, if they’re going to help, they’ll want to know why they should. This thing could blow up in our faces and undo the delicate balance of power between us and the topsiders.”
“The family heads could throw you to station security as a sacrifice.”
“They could, Giorgio, and they know that we could do the same to them.”
* * *
Markos Andropov fumed, fretted, sat down, jumped up, paced, and sat down again. In minutes, the dome’s power elite would descend on his home, and his secret that he’d kept for nearly two decades would be exposed. Worse, it was the type of explosive revelation that would endanger the Andropov dynasty that had governed Pyre’s domes since their inception.
The original patriarch, Andrei Andropov, wasn’t the greatest contributor to the construction fund for the North American Confederation’s (Sol-NAC) last colony ship, the Honora Belle. He was the third, and his credits guaranteed seats for his family. Andrei made his fortune as a brilliant building engineer. It was he who designed the domes of Pyre, which kept the ash-ridden, sulfur-polluted air at bay. His inventive metal-silica transparent plates resisted the bombardment of the mild volcanic eruptions that still plagued Pyre, nearly three centuries after the colonists achieved orbit.
The Andropov family held the governorship of the domes ever since Andrei was first elected and now Markos was about to place the dynasty in jeopardy because of a rash decision to kidnap a young girl. He had been on station to see to the death ceremonies of his wife and brother-in-law, who were killed in a decompression accident, while they were inspecting a terminal arm.
The Andropov adults were engineers. That was the Pyrean discipline in greatest demand, and it kept the family in the forefront of society. In the case of Markos’ wife and brother-in-law, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Construction on the space station’s shipping arms was a dangerous business.
Deep in misery, Markos found comfort in the attentions of a young, seventeen-year-old girl, Helena. She was a sensitive, a late-maturing empath, her powers so weak that she wasn’t aware of her capabilities and hadn’t been identified as a sensitive. People would characterize her as a girl whose personality lit up a room.
Helena was attracted to Markos’ power and position, but she refused his offer to return downside with him, and mired in his grief, Markos committed a singular act of stupidity. He kidnapped her.
Helena was hidden in the Andropov house, where only a few, trusted, and well-compensated servants had access to her. Markos and his wife had chosen to put off having children until later in life, and left without an heir after his wife’s death, Markos hoped to have a son with Helena, but she’d given him two daughters.
When Markos’ sister, Liana, approached him, complaining again of her son’s destructive and dark nature, Markos conceived the idea of making Aurelia a companion to his nephew. His hope was that Aurelia’s capabilities could soothe Dimitri’s provocative nature.
Although Dimitri wasn’t told the nature of Markos’ relationship to Aurelia, it didn’t take the shrewd nephew long to discover the Andropov family’s dark secret. He kept his knowledge from his uncle, but not from his cousin, Aurelia. Dimitri threatened her at every opportunity to enforce her silence.
That Aurelia possessed the power to push someone into killing themselves scared Markos, and he wondered again about Sasha. Worse, if Aurelia had that capability, she could easily convince station security of the veracity of her story of being held captive downside. While Markos ruminated on his choices, Giorgio knocked on his study’s open door.
“Your guests are here, Governor Andropov,” Giorgio announced formally.
“Show them in, Mr. Sestos,” Markos replied. He crossed the room to warmly greet three more powerful family heads. Together with the Andropov family, they formed an unshakeable cabal that ruled the domes. “Friends, good of you to come on such short notice,” Markos said. He tried to make them comfortable, offering seats and drinks.
“Let’s dispense with the amenities, Markos,” Rufus Stewart said, and remained standing as did the others. “Your comm said urgent.”
“There’s been a tragedy in my household, my friends. My nephew has been murdered,” Markos replied, dutifully hanging his head.
Condolences came to Markos, as was expected, but he knew better. None of them were his friends, especially Lise Panoy, who pretended to be.
“Who did this?” Idrian Tuttle asked.
“A young woman in my household,” Markos replied.
“Do you have her in custody?” Rufus Stewart asked.
“No, she escaped topside.”
“Then station security will have her soon,” Lise said. When she witnessed a pained expression cross Markos’ face, she asked, “Markos, you did report her to the commandant?”
“I can’t,” Markos admitted, “and that’s why I called this meeting. I need your help. More specifically, I need your assets on the station to help me recover the girl quickly and quietly.”
Rufus scowled at Markos. The details weren’t fitting together, and he became suspicious. “What’s the servant’s name?” Rufus asked, reaching for his comm unit.
“Don’t bother looking, Rufus,” Markos admitted. “She’s not in the domes’ registry.”
“How can she not be registered?” Idrian asked loudly.
“She’s a sensitive,” Markos said.
“Markos, I thought you said she was a member of your household?” asked Lise, frowning and attempting to piece together Markos’ disjointed comments. “You implied she’s a downsider. Now, you say she’s an empath, who, by the way, shouldn’t be planetside.”
Before Markos could reply, Idrian pointed an accusing finger at him and declared hotly, “You kidnapped this girl, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t. I kidnapped her mother. Aurelia is my daughter,” Markos said quietly. It felt as if his world emptied out of him — his secret, his future, and his family’s dynasty.
“When … when did you do this, Markos?” Lise asked quietly.
“Nearly eighteen years ago,” Markos replied. “Helena’s her name, and she’s given me two daughters, Aurelia and Sasha,”
Markos’ three guests stared at him in horror. The ramifications of what the governor had done and what it meant to the domes’ elite families were too far-reaching to predict.
“Did Aurelia kill Dimitri physically?” Rufus asked. He was always the detailed-minded one.
“No. She’s an extremely strong sensitive, unlike her mother. She terrorized Dimitri, who killed himself to end his torment.”
“Wonderful, Markos,” Idrian ground out. “You kidnap a woman, who gives you two daughters. Then you raise the girls in captivity in your house, without training and without realizing their powers. Now that the engine’s red hot, you throw in plasma and introduce this powerful, untrained empath to someone we all know is rotten to the core. Then you’re shocked and saddened when the girl retaliates against that piece of discharge you call a nephew.”
“How could you be so stupid, Mark
os?” Rufus railed.
“Stop, all of you,” Lise said into the noise. “Shouting isn’t going to get us anywhere. What’s done might be one of the greatest mistakes ever committed, but it’s done, and we have to think about what it means to all of us and what we need to do to direct the outcome.”
“Please, friends, I need your help,” Markos pleaded. “Employ your assets on the station to find Aurelia and return her downside before station security locates her.”
“I agree that’s our priority,” Lise urged, but Rufus and Idrian looked unconvinced. “If station security gets to Aurelia first, what’s the commandant going to believe? That this was just the governor’s doing … that for two decades we visited and dined at the governor’s house without knowing three women were held captive here? Damage control first, sirs. Then we can figure out what the families should do about this.”
Rufus and Idrian reluctantly agreed to Lise’s reasoning, and all three committed to Markos to use their station assets to locate Aurelia and secretly return her downside.
Lise briefly hugged Markos, assuring him that the families would work to mitigate the issue, and, as Giorgio led the three family heads from the house, Markos sat at his desk and wept.
At the door, Rufus and Idrian passed through first, and Lise spared a knowing glance for Giorgio, who tipped his head by the smallest increment.
Out on the ped-path, the three family heads caught a passing e-trans, and Rufus entered a priority code that would keep the transport from stopping along the way to their destination.
“Well, that certainly wasn’t the meeting I was expecting,” Idrian said from the back seat.
“Me neither,” Rufus acknowledged. “I thought you had Giorgio on the coin?” he asked Lise.
“I thought I did too,” Lise replied. “Just goes to show you that some secrets cost you more than you’re paying.”
“What’s the plan, Lise? Don’t tell me we’re going to help that idiot. We’ve got him right where we want him, and we can finally unseat the Andropov family from their lofty perch,” Idrian urged.
