by F. E. Arliss
Chapter One
Payback’s A Bitch
Queen Altum Juls stood at the viewing screen aboard her living ship, Talio. Talio, an organic ship, had a human brain upgraded with the most sophisticated engineering and software ever created. As such, he was possibly the most powerful space-faring ship ever created. He’d opened an enormous viewing port for her and she now looked out upon the havoc she had wreaked. The twisted, smoking remnants of warships scattered space around her. Juls felt only a weary satisfaction.
Fools! She had warned them. They had not heeded her. Unwilling to tolerate further disrespect, she’d done what she had to. She’d killed them all. That was the message here. Queen Altum Juls of the Osmir would not to be ignored or trifled with. To do so, was to die.
To many, Juls appeared human. She was not. Not any longer, anyway. She was Osmir now, a species of her own creation. She would never again be subjugated to the whims of greedy, manipulative, power-seeking humans. For that matter, any race who would seek to use her, or harm that which she loved, would suffer.
Queen Altum Juls looked as many imagined a Valkyrie or Amazonian warrior princess might appear. She was neither. She was far more. Juls started out human, but humans themselves had changed her; molded her into something that was no longer simply human or simply Idolum. The Idolum, a super race of energy-consuming aliens, first appeared to humans only half a decade ago. That six years had transformed Altum Juls, from human - to a human with understanding of the Idolum, - and finally, into what she was now, a new species, Osmir.
The difference between Idolum and Osmir, was a simple one. The Idolum consumed energy;, the Osmir channeled energy into outcomes. Those outcomes also included helping themselves be sustained and healed. Juls and her nest could go years without eating anything. They only needed to feel the energy of the ethers flow through them and they were sustained.
They could channel those energies towards any outcome they desired. It was a powerful tool. Endless in its abilities. Everyone wanted it. Outsiders believed that it was something that could be gained through material means. It could not. Only Queen Altum Juls knew the truth of its manifestation.
Juls had always been tall. At 6 foot, 2 inches, she’d towered over most humans, and parted crowds as Moses before the Red Sea. Her beauty opened doors and navigated the lopsided world of hubris. Beauty, sex, money, and power were the currency of most species. Brains didn’t always count; they just helped.
Now she was even taller. Still beautiful, she possessed a brain that had made her the most powerful woman in the known galaxies. Not just a woman...Altum Juls was a queen. She was the queen of a legion of Osmir of her own creation, and she possessed the largest living super-warship in the known universes. She commanded armies of Idolum clones and was the sworn liege of 3 major Idolum queens whose nests numbered in the tens of thousands of warriors. Those allies did consume energy, and Vis didn’t mind feeding it to them. It was easy enough to post an Osmir channeler on each nest ship.
If the Idolum race terrified humans, the Osmir terrified the Idolum. They appeared as if by magic and disappeared just as quickly, coming and going as a wisp of smoke through the ether. The Idolum, while incredibly strong, fierce and hyper-intelligent, could not use energy the way the Osmir did. They could only consume it. Like a battery takes a charge, so the Idolum took energy.
Queen Altum Juls’ Osmir legion was more powerful than any other known species because they channeled energy. They were like superconductors that ran on nothing. Powerful and highly coveted, they also could not be induced to channel by pain or torture. They had to ‘want’ to channel energy.
Earth was gone. Technically, it still existed, but nuclear war had finally been wrought by a group of power hungry world leaders. It didn’t matter that the planet had become one large government many decades ago. Bickering and infighting among the elite never ceased, centuries of self-serving politicians sucked up vast quantities of ill-gotten gains, increasing the gap between rich and poor, educated and uneducated. Finally rebellion triggered Armageddon. It was strange how she’d been saved. Sometimes it hurt to even think about the events that brought her to the present.
Chapter Two
Survival
Jullian Arban leaned her silky-blond head back on the cracked and peeling synthetic seat-back, and closed her soft, brown eyes. Slowly, she let the tension drain from her 6’2” athletic body. She was safe. It was amazing to be on a transport ship on its way to Frontier Station on the edge of the galaxy. Well, not really the edge anymore. Known space had grown exponentially since the first space exploration a few decades ago.
She alternated between feeling elation at living and heart-wrenching grief at the loss of her home world. The thought of the millions of lives snuffed out by the stupidity and arrogance of its political leaders and the nuclear devastation of Earth’s natural beauties, made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. Drowning in an agony of grief, Jullian supposed, was the best description.
Their journey to Frontier Station would take weeks, as this transport was not designed for more than short space jumps. All the same, she was on board and safe. Her sometimes love-interest, Major Tom “Chad” Chadmore, had one of the last berths available. Chad was in the Intergalactic Guard and had been deployed to a planet in another galaxy. It was known as UZ238, or Uzi as it was affectionately called by its residents.
Jullian appreciated the irony of the name. Something that had been banned as a killer machine gun over a century ago was now the greatest hope of humankind. It was often surprising how things did a one-hundred eighty degree turn just when you thought you knew what was what. It kept mankind humble she supposed. Or should have. Humility was not something the current genre of her species had. If they’d been able to humble themselves for the sake of the planet, she wouldn’t be where she was now.
Never had Jullian imagined that she would escape Earth. Radiation poisoning was sweeping across the world. Over a wretched weekend, she’d made peace with death.Then ‘voila’, the magic communication had arrived. According to Chad’s instructions, she’d told no one.
All her family had been on different continents, not that it would have mattered. Most communication centers had been destroyed by mobs of rioting civilians terrified out of their wits and desperate to grab the last berths on ships leaving humanities home planet. People were being murdered, mugged, robbed and beaten by those who would never have used violence a few months before. Impending global doom let all civilized behavior drop, at least for most. Jullian had not been among them.
Her message had arrived via a comm sent to her workplace, George Washington University Hospital in downtown Washington D.C. It had come a few hours before everything had gone batshit crazy. She’d received the forwarded text and sat stunned for a few minutes.
She was an energy worker at the hospital in the oncology and intensive care units. Years ago, when she’d been a teen, the National Institutes of Health funded a project to find people that could channel energy, an ancient Earth healing modality called Reiki, into sick and dying patients to cut down on pain and prolong life.
Everyone in her high school class had been tested and Jullian scored very highly. Later she would find out that her scores had been off-the-charts, leading to her being funded for a scholarship to nursing school. In return for that ‘free-ride’ scholarship, she was to be a staff energy-nurse to the hospital for three years.
That contract had ended two years ago. Now at 26, she was aware that while the testing and scholarship sounded like the works of a benevolent government bent on alleviating citizens’ pain … it was really just a way to cut down medication expenses and clear more income for the hospital.
Energy treatments worked. At least there was no longer any debate about that
. Jullian was a conduit for healing energy. Because of her efficacy with the healing modality, she was often scheduled for long shifts and occasionally back-to-back shifts. When her three-year contract had ended, she’d made sure to renegotiate the new contract to put a cap on the hours she could work. She’d been over-worked enough to have long-since paid for the monies the hospital spent for her education.
In the last weeks, as things ramped out of control, those who could afford passage off Earth fled. The Intergalactic Guard recruited promising candidates for their ranks, and conglomerates gathered persons of ‘strong potential’ for their companies. After all, someone would have to do the work on the new planet and other colonies. Most of those of ‘strong potential’ had been either brain trusts or skilled workers.
There also had been a rather large contingent of ‘manual laborers’ as well. Of course, the companies selecting them for transport had made sure to do genetic profiles on those selected. Jullian thought it was an excuse for widespread acts of genetic profiling that in another day and time would have been fundamentally and profoundly wrong. When faced with extinction, all civilized behavior fell to the wayside. It made her feel ashamed of her species.
Jullian wasn’t exactly an elite, though she supposed her education, training, and parents’ money and status made her, at least, not an ‘undesirable’. The government knew about Jullian’s gifts. They’d sequenced her DNA, as they did everyone these days. She looked like an elite. After all, she was tall, blonde, brown-eyed, with pale skin and extremely beautiful. It was an unusual combination. Not that these things actually made her life any easier.
Usually people just assumed she was wealthy, loved, and privileged. When, in fact, she had never been wealthy, her parents were, but they just didn’t lavish any of that on her. As for the loved...well, her parents loved their horses and each other far more. Privileged, maybe, she was after all...still alive. Mostly, people just wanted to use her. They assumed that she had something to give them...validation, kindness, and a listening ear. In truth, she supposed she did give them all those things. No one ever seemed to offer anything in return.
No one would ever guess by looking at her that she was descended from a long line of Mongolian horse warriors named the Khalkha. For some reason, most people presumed that Mongolians were a short people. They were wrong. Many were tall and athletic. Historically, they were a nomadic people, and she supposed she was fulfilling that destiny now.
Jullian’s blond hair came from the one strain of her origin that wasn’t Mongolian, her mother. Mona had been mostly Norwegian and all northern European. Her blond radiance had knocked Jullian’s dark-haired father off his feet. He’d often recounted how it had been love at first sight for him. Her mother’s blue eyes and blond hair, coupled with pale, milky skin had riveted him to the spot.
They’d met at an universal horse sale in Switzerland, where her father had been selling some of the family’s Mongolian gaited ponies. There was a high demand for pure Mongolian ponies. Mostly, as a rare collector’s item, though pioneers to Uzi had been buying them for their stamina, ability to graze on just about anything, and hardy natures.
Mona had been searching for a competitive jumper for the international circuit. Their hasty marriage had produced her. Jullian spent most of her life in boarding schools. Her parents were wrapped up in the elite world of horses and the wealth that came with that. In her teens, she’d ended up in Washington D.C. at a prestigious boarding school and had never left.
Then came the energy testing when she was in high school. Her trajectory had been placed before her as a ‘done deal’ as her father would say. She had no doubt that both her parents were safely away from Earth and probably spending hours planning their new horse empire on Uzi. The fact that they had not messaged, or arranged a way for her to escape Earth, hadn’t really surprised her. Any money to spare would have gone to move horses. Their choices hurt her, but didn’t surprise her. Even she thought horses might be a better choice. Horses didn’t stab one in the back.
Chad’s comm, however, had surprised her. She was shocked she was safe and not dead. Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth, that was another one of her father’s sayings. Her mother said any gift horse was hiding problems. Jullian agreed. No one gave away anything for free these days. There was always a catch.
Now that she was safe on board the transport and leaving Earth’s atmosphere, Jullian thought about what the ‘hidden problems’ might be. She doubted Chad’s love for her moved this mountain. They had a very satisfying relationship and Jullian had been glad when she finally met someone tall enough and confident enough to date her. After a series of unfortunate struggles and experiences with the opposite sex, it had been a relief to find someone who wasn’t overly worried about her height. Chad just wanted to have fun. Jullian was fine with that. She wanted a family someday, but they’d cross that bridge when it wasn’t being blown apart by arrogant politicians.
There were undoubtedly ‘problems’ hidden in this life-saving arrangement. Maybe her ability to reduce pain and help patients heal more rapidly was needed by the Guard. Probably. Time would tell. She would be glad to help.
After receiving the message, she simply put on whatever clothes she had that looked inconspicuous and left her apartment. She stuffed food bars into every pocket and strapped one of Chad’s water packs onto her back under her clothes. Then she transferred all her Earth credits onto the Frontier Station chip-card that Chad had given her last year as a joke. He had said it was so she could see what real money looked like. Jullian had taken a last look around her home, then left for the rendezvous point. She was too distraught at that point to shed any tears. There was no future there.
Jullian destroyed the comm device the message arrived on, as well, just to be sure she couldn’t be tracked. All this on Chad’s terse instructions. It was a chance at life. She’d take it. Maybe some of those crazy ‘doomsdayers’ out in Idaho would live. Or not. It wouldn’t matter for several decades when they were able to come out from their bunkers and see what was left. Though who knew what would happen to them. It was anyone’s guess. They’d probably all be nuts. Lord knew she felt a little nuts about now.
Sending herself into a deep meditation, she calmed her energy. Opening her eyes later she surveyed the cramped, interior of the ancient cargo ship. The rows of cracked plastic seats had obviously been installed in the large hold in a hurried rush. The walls and floors still bore traces of the ore it had been used to haul and smelled strongly of minerals and sweat.
Hastily constructed bathrooms for each sex had been set up in one corner. It was already clear that there were not enough lavatories for the women. A line had already formed. Clearly retrofitted by a team of men, she surmised.
Feeling the anxiety and fear radiating from the many huddled forms, she began to let her energy flow out to those around her. Soon the worried and grieving group fell silent and most drifted to sleep. Only one tiny, wizened man at the end of one aisle gave her an intense look from coal-black eyes, then smiled and nodded to her. It was like he knew she was sending out peaceful, calming vibes. She smiled back. They both leaned back and went to sleep.
Chapter Three
Shanghaied
Jullian’s first inkling that things were not going to be as straightforward for her as for the other passengers came when their jump ship was intercepted two days out from Frontier Station.
It had been a harrowing eight weeks. Stinking toilets, insufficient space, monotonous routine, packaged rations, and fraying tempers had all added to the strain. Jullian had lulled them all to sleep each night and with the help of the small wizened monk, whose named turned out to be Kapong, had managed to keep most of the interactions civilized. Rumor would get to her later that some similar ships had degenerated into chaos, violence, and a few, even mutiny and death. Their ship was by far the most ordered upon its arrival at Frontier Station. In the long run, that item of interest would only ad to her problems. Someone able to i
nfluence the behaviors of others was always someone you wanted on your side. Whether by choice...or not.
A sleek Intergalactic Guard vessel pulled alongside and docked. Its gleaming skin and sleek shape looked incongruous next to their ancient freighter’s dark, dented, hard-working hulk. All around her the other passengers were wondering if the ship had come for them, if they were important enough to warrant an expedited journey.
Jullian was sure it wasn’t for her and leaned back and closed her eyes. The journey so far had been anything but a pleasure cruise. The many jumps, cramped quarters, and the entitled natures of many of the other passengers made her uncomfortable and tired. Not drained of energy, just mentally fatigued by the short-sightedness of the passengers. She was just glad to be alive. Why weren’t they?
Between her and the small, wizened gentleman she’d first noticed, they’d managed to keep peace. His name was Kapong. Just Kapong, he’d said, smiling at her warmly. He was a Buddhist monk and had no idea why he’d been offered this berth. It all sounded very similar to her situation, and they had bonded at once. He too seemed to be sure that the Guard vessel wasn’t for him and also appeared to be meditating.
It took a few seconds for the announcement to penetrate her concentration. What brought her more fully to attention was the silence. The buzz of excited ‘important’ persons in the freighter had dropped to a stony silence. Again the announcement came, “Jullian Arban and a Mr. Kapong, please make your way to the rear exit of the passenger cabin. Ms. Jullian Arban and Mr. Kapong, please make yourselves known at the rear of the passenger cabin,” droned the comm unit.
Standing, Jullian found her small carry-all and turned to follow the gnome-like figure of Kapong towards the back of the passenger cabin. Angry mutters and snide remarks followed them. Typical, people that were saved still couldn’t just be happy to be alive. It was sad, really, Jullian thought. She’d have been happy to just stay on the transport freighter. They were only two days out from Frontier Station. She was just happy to be breathing.