by Frank Carey
"Wait, Dad owns a space freighter?"
Gus smiled. "Yes, he does, and I can't think of a better person or family to run her." He looked at his uncle. "Uncle, can you take care of all this?" he said, waving his hand to mean the hospital.
"Sure. Where are you going?"
"Don't know for sure. I have something to do, I just don't know what." Gus shook his uncle's hand, then kissed the top of his cousin’s head before heading to the door.
"Who the hell are you?" Shannon asked, truly concerned, surprised, and confused by her cousin’s transformation.
He shrugged. "Let's find out," he replied, then he was gone.
Shannon turned to her father and gave him the "What the plark?" look.
He shrugged as well. "Family meeting time." He took her by the arm and led her out into the suddenly-changed world.
###
Gus stood outside the hospital, waiting, for what he did not know, but still he waited.
"Mr. Curran?"
Gus turned and saw a young elf woman looking at him. She was holding a Royal Security ID so that he could see it. "Yes? I'm Gus Curran."
"R-Sec Agent Neta Tavish. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?"
"I'd prefer dinner, but sure, ask away," he said as he led the two of them over to some seats. "One thing before we begin. Are all R-Sec agents as beautiful as you?"
She gave him a small smile. "I wouldn't know. Tell me, Mr. Curran, were you aware that your father had taken out triple insurance on one of the pieces of cargo you were carrying on your last trip?"
"No, but then I wouldn't know things like that. My position aboard the River’s Edge is... was one of glorified dishwasher. I only knew we were in space or on a planet if I looked out a window."
"And that was normal operations aboard your ship?"
"Yep. When dad starts you at the bottom, he means rock bottom. He likes building character. Tell me something, Agent. Are you aware of why I'm here, in the hospital I mean?"
"No. It seems to be classified above my level."
"Then why are you here?"
"I am part of an ongoing investigation of the antiquities black market which involves your father. I saw your ship's name on the arrival schedule, so I thought I would talk to him. Unfortunately, he is unavailable..."
"He's dead," Gus informed her with a calmness that shocked him. He should feel something, yet all he had was silence. "They're all dead, except me."
"I'm so sorry. How did it happen?"
"They all stopped breathing. Look, I'm no longer part of River’s Edge Corporation, nor do I have any financial interest in the ship or the company. If you want to talk to someone, talk to my Uncle Stavros, though I have to warn you, he knows less about what my father was doing than I do. Now, unless you find this banter enjoyable, I must really get going, so if you'll excuse me..."
"How can I contact you if I have any more questions?" she asked, visibly flustered by the turn of events.
"Good question," he said. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his comm. "I guess you could call me on this."
Giving him a quizzical look, the touched the proffered comm with hers, instantly exchanging contact numbers.
"Thank you, Mr. Curran. My condolences on your loss."
He nodded. "So beautiful. It is a shame I must go and leave you here."
"Where are you going?"
"I have no idea. Good day, Neta."
"Good day, Gus."
She watched him walk away. "What the hell just happened?" she asked herself as he disappeared into the crowd.
###
Gus walked through the streets of the Ventosian capital city. He stopped when he saw the sun setting. It was then that he realized he had no idea where he was. He saw an aged human carefully cutting the leaves off a rose bush. Gus walked over and found himself watching the gentleman as he chose one leaf, but not another. Gus found it fascinating. Finally, he asked, "Sir, what do you look for to choose which leaf stays and which leaf goes?"
The man stood up, looked at Gus, then turned toward the house. "Follow me, and I shall show you. Gus followed him into the house. Inside he found Minnie and Horus waiting for him. Gus's host walked past them. "He'll do. Prepare him," the man said as he walked through a door, closing it behind him.
Minnie clapped her hands in glee. "He likes you. Sensei likes you!"
Both Gus and Horus raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Prepare me?" Gus asked.
"This way," Horus said. He and Minnie led Gus to a room he would call his own for the foreseeable future. On the bed, a white gi with white belt. "Change into this," Horus said. "We'll take you to the dojo where your training will begin."
"Training?"
"Sensei will train you in all aspects of your new life. You will learn to fight, think, reason, and feel based on traditions that have passed the tests of time."
"He trained the two of you?"
Minnie nodded. "He's trained countless mortals and immortals."
"I know the two of you have been around for a while, though neither of you look older than twenty-nine standard. So, how old is this Sensei?"
Minnie smiled at the compliment. "None of us can remember a time when Sensei wasn't kicking someone's ass. Some say he taught the Titans, others claim he is a Titan. You, sir, are in for the ride of your life.”
Oddly, Gus felt no fear, nor anger, nor sadness. What he did feel was anticipation. He stripped off his street cloths and donned his gi. "I am definitely not ready for this," he said as he followed his two friends down the stairs and into his new life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kel stood aside as the last of the technicians exited his laboratory. Queen Losira and her head of security, Director Tavish, joined him moments later. "Dr. Kellen Hardy, I would like you to meet Director Neta Tavish , head of Royal Security." After a hand shake and pleasantries, the Queen continued. "Kel, we hit a dry hole."
After leaving the medical examination, Kel had returned to the lab to work some more on reassembling the statue. Again, he fell asleep, and once more, he had a dream about the ship crashing on Cerberus, only this time he could hear the screams of people dying. He was seriously concerned about his sanity, as were Tannith and Losira. On a hunch, Losira had brought in R-Sec techs to sweep the lab for any device or devices which could influence Kel's dream state.
"No alien contraptions emitting rays which scramble one's brains?" he asked.
Neta chuckled. "No, Kel, no space aliens or death rays. The lab is clean," she informed him while her tail slowly swished in frustration. "We know of several technologies which could alter your dreams, but they all leave telltale traces either in the environment or in the subject. Both you and the lab are clean."
"Is it safe for my students to work in there?" He asked.
"It should be. Just in case, we've placed broad-spectrum scanners throughout the lab. They should go off the moment something starts emitting any kind of radiation," Neta explained.
"Good," Kel said. "We still have a large number of artifacts to catalog."
"Ah, the trials and tribulations of being a scholar," Losira said while patting him on the shoulder. "We'll keep an eye on things for now, but we should all get back to work."
"Copy that, milady," Kel said as gave both ladies a small bow before returning to his work area.
"Tannith and Penny are right; he's adorable," Losira said as she and Neta headed back to Neta's office to confer.
###
The couch strained as Kel fell into it, exhausted from hectic day of cataloging artifacts. He and his team of researchers had somehow finished describing each and every artifact in the lab before recording everything into lab notebooks and the computer. "And they say history is dead. Today, it fought us with a vengeance, but we were victorious!" He leaned back and quickly fell asleep.
###
"What in the Sam Hill?" Kel said as a very large number of beings ran past him with the requisite amoun
t of screaming and fear. "Great, more screaming" he noted, though this time, many of them were firing weapons at whatever they were running from.
Then they started dying, and not in a particularly nice way. It was as if something was tearing their souls out. Then he saw it, a black cloud of death descending down on the beings, consuming their souls while discarding their bodies.
Kel woke, screaming.
###
The three people sitting in the small meeting room quickly stood as Queen Losira walked in. There was Dr. Gloria Aymar-Taggart, an elf biocybernetics engineer at the Cube Center for Advanced Research, CEO of Elven Industries Ltd., and Losira's sister-in-law. Standing next to her was her husband, Dr. John Taggart, a human BCE who worked with Gloria at the Cube. Next to him stood Ciara Devlin, the Cube's Venlanten Director of Operations. Losira Walked over and hugged each of them. "Thank you for taking a break from your meetings to meet with me. Hopefully, your expertise can help Kel. Medically, there is nothing wrong."
"A creature that survives by feeding on the life force of living organisms?" John asked.
"Yes, his dream was a vivid depiction of a group of sapients dying in a rather horrible fashion, one that would suggest this creature—in the form of a black cloud—was ripping the soul right from their living bodies. We regressed him hypnotically and he recollects even the shrubbery around him was turning black."
"This was the third dream, what about the first two?"
"He was inside a war room under attack by some force or organism. He said the fear was palpable. The medics reported his BP and heart rate were nearly off the scale. The second was similar, though there was more screaming," Losira explained. "John, you and Dr. Joshua Gray on Arctillus are the only living sapients to experience their souls being forcefully removed from their bodies. Could a living being do that?"
"Yes," Ciara said quietly, "though what you describe is not soul ripping." Her eyes went unfocused as if she was remembering something she'd rather not. "The person or creature doing the ripping gains nothing except, perhaps, a sense of deep guilt. What you describe is the wanton taking of a living being's very life force to supplement the user's own life force. That's something no Venlanten royal has ever even come close to doing. We don't even have legends about something like that."
Gloria walked over and put a comforting arm around her friend. "When a sapient joins in on a telepresence session, they transfer part of their consciousness to the TP unit while a link is maintained between driver and unit. The suit is not powered by the user's life force," she explained.
"That's what happened to both me and Joshua—our consciousness were moved, but not the life force," John continued. "What you describe is beyond our technology, or even our understanding."
"What kind of time line are we talking about?" Ciara asked.
"It started day before yesterday, just after he finished examining an artifact," Losira replied. "He fell asleep after everyone had left, then woke in a panic. The second time was after I checked him out medically, then sent him back to work. Finally, last night, after a day of cataloging artifacts, he fell asleep on his couch and awoke screaming in fear. This morning, we gave him an injection of a drug which suppresses the dream state in Sokuhl. He immediately fell into REM sleep followed by a panic so intense, it induced somnambulant fire breathing. He literally torched the lab."
"I thought that was a myth, fire breathing I mean," Ciara said.
Losira shook her head. "Some Sokuhl can puff smoke. Kel is a Basili. He breathes fire and flies with fully functional wings. He is a dragon in the truest sense. When we woke him, he was so apologetic he baked us all scones."
"I understand he's married. Where is his wife during all this?" John asked.
"She's with an archaeological dig on a planet called Cerberus, about four light-years from Arctillus. She substituted for a pilot who fell ill just before the expedition was to leave. She'll be back in a few days."
"Where did the artifacts in his lab come from?" Gloria asked.
"Cerberus. They were brought back by the survey team."
"Can we see the lab?" Ciara asked.
"Sure. I'll have Kel meet us down there and let us in," Losira said as she activated her comm.
###
Kel quaffed coffee as if his life depended on it. Still embarrassed by almost burning down the sleep lab, he had brought a tray of fresh-baked scones for his visitors to enjoy. A knock at the door signaled their arrival.
"Come in, come in," Kel said to the group standing outside the door.
Losira grabbed his wrist and checked his pupils. "How are you holding up?" she asked.
"I can get by on only an hour or two of sleep a night...for a short while."
"Uh-huh, is that elven coffee you're inhaling?"
"Goranthi dark roast. It has a unique flavor."
"Road tar steeped in turpentine, if memory serves," John said. He saw his wife's shocked look. "What, how do you think I got through my post-doc?"
She shuddered while her tail made a question mark.
"Kel, I'm a Venlanten royal," Ciara said. "Would it be OK if I took a look?"
"Sure. What do I have to do?"
"Have a seat. Damn, you're big," she said as she grabbed a stool to stand on.
"Yes, a number of people have observed that I'm big for my size."
She glanced at him and giggled when she saw the slightest smirk on his otherwise deadpan face. "Stop it!"
"Yes, ma'am."
She got on the stool so she could look into his eyes. "Ready?"
He nodded.
"This won't hurt a bit," she said as her eyes went black while her claws and canine teeth extended. "I'm going in...
###
Ciara and Kel stood on a plain covered with bodies, all in poses indicating extreme agony when they died. Overhead, a black cloud rose into the sky. "Oh my God," Ciara said while barely stifling a scream.
"Welcome to my nightmares, director," Kel said as he closed his eyes tight.
###
Kel grabbed Ciara and kept her from falling as she came out of her trance. He felt her trembling. "Breath, Director. It was only a dream," he said. Slowly, her trembling subsided.
"Do you want me to call the medics?" Losira asked while checking Ciara's pulse.
"No... No, I'm fine. Just give me a second." She grabbed Kel's cup and drank down a large gulp of coffee. "Yeah, that helps."
"What did you see?" John asked.
"A plain full of dead people," she said, "and a large, black cloud heading into space. Oh, and it wasn't a dream," she noted.
"What?"
"It was a memory. As a royal, I've been trained to discern the difference between a dream and a memory. What Kel and I experienced was a memory, and I don't think it was his."
"What do you mean?" Gloria asked.
"Sweety, I'm the director of a facility where members of every species in the League work and live. The dead people were not members of any race I have ever seen or heard of. For one thing, they only had one eye in the middle of their face."
"There are no cyclopean sapient species in the League!" Losira said.
"Exactly. Yet Kel remembers them vividly. Nope, someone has been downloading data into the good doctor's brain."
"Like our sleep learning system, only much faster," Gloria noted.
"Exactly," Ciara said while patting Kel's hand. "And Neta's sweeps found nothing, My Queen?"
"The teams found nothing. What are you thinking?"
"Whatever is doing this is only transmitting when Kel is in the room alone," Ciara postulated.
"But we left sensors around the room..."
"Wrong frequency," John said. He looked at his wife. "One-one-sixes should do the job, don't you think?"
She stared into infinity for a moment before answering. "Yeah, put four in the corners and one in the middle of the ceiling. No matter the tech, brains are brains. Let me call the Ventos Prime office and make sure we have some in stock." She walked
out of the lab with the comm pressed to her ear.
John watched his wife leave and shook his head. "That woman is task oriented. My Queen, is Royce like that? He is her twin brother after all."
"Nope, for a pair of identical elf twins, the two of them are as different as night and day. I think they're worse than Lucien and I. Kel, while we wait, do you have siblings?"
Kel smiled. "Several of both genders, all Sokuhl. We don't talk much. I also have hundreds of cousins, all part of the Hardy clan."
"Hardy? That's right, you're the grandson of Zor Hardy. Do you know Nayla Hardy?"
"Nayla? Yeah, and her sister, Tayla. They're cousins. Isn't Nayla working for General Aymar?"
Losira nodded. "Don't tell her I said this, but Royce is worried sick that she's thinking of leaving the service. He thinks she's the best officer he's ever worked with."
"Jacob, her human brother and Captain of the ship Tayla is working on, probably says the same thing about both her and her sister. Both ladies are incredibly driven."
Gloria reentered the lab. "We had a bunch of demo units in stock. They well be here within an hour. Meanwhile, Kel, could you show us around the lab?"
"Sure," he said, "This way."
CHAPTER NINE
With all his students off on a two-day field trip, Kel had the lab to himself. With a cup of tea in hand, he peered through a magnifier lamp to aid him in placing some of the smaller shards. He stopped, and pushed the lamp aside to get an overview of the partially assembled statue. "Wait a minute. How the hell did a .
"Case is lined with a pristine cloth similar to silk," he said into a microphone hanging from the ceiling above the table. "Analysis attached. Microscopic examination attached. Chemical analysis of material shows that it is minimum 65% silver, making it RF-opaque. Note to self: Why would anyone RF-shield a statue?"
Kel continued to work on the box while sipping tea. After an hour of looking, he stopped. Tearing off his gloves, he proclaimed, "It's a metal box filled with RF-shielding cloth that locks from the outside, just like any metal box. What the hell am I missing? Why adamantine? Why RF-shielding? Why a sphere?" He sat back and closed his eyes to calm his jangled nerves. "I miss my Sheila..."
