Moon 514- Blaze and the White Griffon

by Drew Briney

  “Almost,” she stretched the truth. “The vaccine appears to be holding on the test subjects but I haven’t tested it on myself yet,” she misled again. Everything was completely ready and two of her lab partners had unwittingly been exposed to the virus and later vaccinated without any significant side effects. Aria just wasn’t sure that she was ready to perform this duty that Toka had requested of her and she wasn’t sure that this was the wisest course to take. His hunger for power was becoming especially scary to her and despite her intense feelings of loyalty towards Toka, she was struggling to reconcile those feelings of loyalty with her feelings of aversion towards the requests he was making.

  “Well, I’m not sure it matters if you test yourself,” Toka countered. From her answer, he assumed she had weaponized the virus – she just hadn’t tested the vaccine on humans yet. “We could probably introduce any virus in the galaxy into your system without any ill effect. Let’s not worry about that. Try the vaccine on Maya …”

  Done, Aria silently responded.

  “and Sudiki …”

  Done, Aria echoed in her mind. They were still in holding but she hoped to convince Blaze to release them soon. She was glad that her uniform had no black star on it. Virtually everyone on her team had been placed in holding and it hadn’t escaped her attention that they were all teammates who had black stars. Getting them out of holding would be a delicate situation.

  “… or perhaps we could just release the virus while Blaze is on the other ship. What do you think?”

  Aria was shocked. While she was ecstatic over the degree of success she was having with Toka – this was probably the longest conversation about a non-biological subject they had had for months – he virtually never asked her opinion about anything. She was entirely unprepared so she decided to parrot Toka’s approach to problems: she would work through the pros and cons out loud.

  “Well,” she began, “the risks of an airborne infection affecting the entire crew – including those who are controlling the movement of the ship – seem very high. An untested virus attacking the frontal lobe could lead to permanent brain damage that would not only adversely affect the decision making processes of everyone on board, it could cause more extensive and unpredictable damages as well. Tests on this issue are inconclusive. On the other hand, an airborne virus would all but guarantee that Blaze would come to us for treatment and then we could easily inject the enhancements you have prepared for him when he asks for help … and we could blame negative changes caused by the enhancements on the failure of the vaccine to kill the virus quickly enough. But again, unintended consequences could be disastrous on Blaze as well as other members of the ship and that could lead to significant unrest. I don’t think anyone really feels that Evelia would be able to fill that role competently. I’m still incredulous as to why Dr. Boyd would put her next in line ...”

  As she mulled over her thoughts out loud, she began to connect some of the dots of Toka’s plan that she hadn’t carefully considered before. As soon as a devastating viral attack was unleashed, the crew would look for strong leadership. With Blaze unable to offer strong direction because of his new genetic enhancements and exposure to the same virus as everyone else, he would lean on Toka to save the crew from the virus. Evelia wouldn’t make the grade to replace Blaze as captain and everyone else who was in line to be the defacto captain would be subject to Toka’s influence so the resulting power vacuum would offer Toka an opportunity to comfortably assume the position of captain. All of this could happen without the need of the army he had so recently lost. The plan is brilliant, she concluded with no small degree of discouragement.

  Despite these provocative revelations, Aria continued without any significant pause. “It seems that localizing the virus to certain parts of the crew would be safer and tests subjects continue to contract the virus only from fluid transfer so the virus will not likely threaten airborne contamination to other members of the crew. That would prevent unintended infections and would give us some control over unintended collateral damage.” Aria guessed that she was building her case well but Toka’s response would be unpredictable anyway.

  It was.

  “Exactly what I was considering,” Toka lied. Somehow, he failed to notice that Aria said nothing about whether or not the virus was ready to be spread by some other means. He had ordered her to prepare the virus for airborne transmission and she had done it. However, none of the test subjects were exposed by airborne transmission. Everything had been done orally. Aria simply hadn’t been willing to take the risk of infecting anyone via airborne methods yet – even under the controlled circumstances of her lab. “Prepare the virus to be transmitted orally,” Toka ordered.

  “Yes sir,” she obediently responded with no small degree of satisfaction. Toka would expect that this could be done within a couple days at most so that would give her some free time to pursue her own endeavors and to sort out her own ambitions and feelings. Whew, she silently emoted.

  “YOUR STAFF WILL BE MORE DANGEROUS for you than for them, even in cloaking mode. Just leave it here.” The words were matter-of-fact, lacking any emotion. Evelia was too busy thinking through several complicated cultural details that might affect their trip to the alien ship to even consider that her words were a little blunt, almost commanding. She simply noticed Blaze placing the staff by the door so he wouldn’t forget it and determined that he needed to be made aware that this would be a poor choice.

  “You want to board an alien ship entirely unarmed?” Blaze responded, only half surprised. It seemed that everything Evelia said lately was nearly the opposite of what he would have expected. To an outsider, it may have made practical public relations sense not to bring weapons when invited to board an alien ship but the thought never would have occurred to Blaze. In reality, he was still more of a warrior than a captain, more of a commander of troops than a leader of civilians. Beyond his paradigm failure, Blaze had the ability to cloak his staff so that it would be undetected by any living eye – not bringing it seemed naïve, perhaps even foolhardy. Then again, who knows what scanning technologies they may use, he began to reconsider, entirely missing Evelia’s point.

  “It can only cause us trouble,” she assured him a second time. “Hundreds of generations have deeply engrained into their culture a moral code that strictly forbids taking any intelligent life unless they are first threatened. They wouldn’t even remotely consider killing any of us … unless of course, you brought a concealed weapon on board their ship. And even if you did, Blaze,” she explained very gently, yet pointedly, “it wouldn’t do you any good. This man is the leader of a very large ship. They choose their leaders from those who possess the most extraordinary psionic abilities. Only the most powerful are allowed to hold positions of authority. In other words, he could completely control your every move if he wanted to. But then again, he would never do that unless threatened. Right now, he feels a little threatened because we are approaching his home moon without any invitation and he fears that we – a violent species – might engage his people in combat. Bringing weapons would only validate his concerns.”

  For a moment, Blaze began to feel that Evelia’s words were less informative than patronizing, more defensive in tone than pragmatic. She immediately detected his unexpressed agitation and governed her tone of voice better. She looked at him with unusual compassion considering the stress she was feeling. “Our situation right now is not delicate but if you bring weapons, that could quickly change. Their leader will want to avoid confrontation … but if necessary, he will control our actions, spare our lives, and then transport us to some place where we could viably survive … without any access to the technologies we now enjoy.”

  Evelia was pausing more than normal but Blaze did nothing to interrupt her string of thoughts. “In other words,” she summarized, “he expects nothing more than a pleasantly short visit, after which he will ask us to peacefully return to our ship. Undoubtedly, they are not remotely interested in our messag
e. Their leader is simply trying to be gracious.” The last word fell heavily upon Blaze’s ears. The alien seemed anything but gracious from his perspective – and being disinterested in a message from an accidental refugee seemed anything but gracious – but Evelia was not finished talking so he said nothing, asked nothing.

  “We have no technology that interests them and they have reason to believe that we would only abuse their technologies so they will have no interest in exchanging knowledge with our species or in engaging in further relations unless we offer them reason to believe that we are different from what they expect,” which is precisely what we intend to do, she silently added to herself.

  Given his experience with the magic woman, Evelia’s explanation made sense. However, the prospect of not bringing any weapons left Blaze feeling more than a little outside of his element. Trained for every genre of physical combat since boyhood, it never occurred to him that his weapons would be useless in any situation – the concept itself left him feeling very unnerved.

  Evelia sensed the mental conflict swirling in Blaze’s thoughts and perceived that the energy flow around him was growing erratic. “Blaze,” she purred in a manner eerily reminiscent of the magic woman, “Although I’ve only learned the basics of how psionic powers work and although I lack any real experience, I can still protect us from whatever he might want to do because I also understand their culture. If I set up even a subtle defensive energy barrier around us, he will perceive that we do not welcome intrusion into our minds … which is something that he would not consider doing anyway unless he felt threatened … they consider it highly improper to read minds unless invited to do so. I have to put up that barrier anyway so they cannot discern why I do not want to share the message directly with them.”

  “Tell me again why you do not want to share the very message we were coming to share?” Blaze queried, exhibiting a rare moment of mental density – he remembered that the message was supposedly private but that explanation didn’t really make sense.

  “Do you want to know why it is private?” Evelia redirected.

  “Sure … that would be helpful,” Blaze answered.

  “This is somewhat complicated,” Evelia warned, tapping her lips with bent fingers, looking sideways, and trying to gather her thoughts. “I will probably have to offer a lot more details when we have more time but the short version is this: the magic woman was not accidentally left behind. She was exiled from her people because she was protecting her boyfriend … fiancé … well forget that detail … their culture is different that way,” she blundered. “When I first learned about her … fiancé, I understood that he was exiled to another planet because of a small lie or something like that but I later learned that he uncovered a government conspiracy. The magic woman lied to protect him before he was exiled and she later got caught. She asked me to relay this message to her family so they will no longer think ill of her … and …” Evelia hesitated, “I think the message may have some hidden meaning. Blaze, I think she wants to warn her parents so that they can try to stop the government conspiracy – whatever it is – but there has not been any corruption like this among her species for uncounted generations so they may not ...”

  “I am not getting involved in some alien dispute,” Blaze objected with overt agitation.

  “Oh no,” Evelia clarified, “I only want to deliver the message. This is their problem. I am simply repaying the magic woman for the many gifts that she has given us and ...”

  “Gifts?” Blaze interrupted, surprised and not following Evelia’s train of thought very well.

  “Yes,” Evelia answered with a sad tone, offering Blaze an expressive look that was a cross between a hurtful glance and prodigious patience. True enough, she considered. Perhaps I am the only one benefiting from the gifts so far – she alone was gaining new talents and she alone was beginning to accept Elayuh as her own child. Trying to harness Blaze’s attention in a way that might get him quickly back on track, she pointed to her recently healed ankle. He looked at it with no small degree of surprise.

  “I healed it while we walked to the deck,” Evelia explained. “Normally, it probably would have required more concentration than that but it was already healing pretty well so my body responded quite easily to directions to heal itself with energy I channeled from my room,” she explained with more detail than Blaze cared to know about right then. “I am grateful for this gift – and the many other things that I have learned at her feet. Besides, I promised you it would be worth every moment. Did you forget?”

  Only slightly dodging her question, Blaze queried: “Okay, so you are only going to deliver the message, visit with the aliens about what we might learn from them, and then go back home … correct?”

  “Well, that is what I hope to do,” Evelia answered. Blaze cocked an eyebrow and waited for more information. She smiled, unsure why she found his inquisitive looks so attractive.

  “If her parents are not on board that ship,” she gestured outside of her window towards the monstrous ship, “we have to follow it back to her home moon like we were planning to do anyway.”

  “But you promised to give the message to their captain…”

  “Not precisely,” Evelia correct. “I said I wanted to share the message in their native tongue. If her parents are not aboard that ship, I can simply explain that I presumed that since the magic woman was accidentally left behind, I expected that her family would be aware of our ship coming towards their moon and would be aboard the ship where I could meet them.”

  “But the magic woman was exiled, not accidentally left behind like we thought,” Blaze corrected.

  “But they do not know that I know that Blaze,” she teasingly mocked, imitating his tempo of language and tone of voice. “Did you not just tell them that you understood that they accidentally left her behind and that we were just bringing her back?” She offered no pause for an answer to her rhetorical question. It was clear that Blaze was overly stressed, lacking sleep, or otherwise overwhelmed – otherwise he wouldn’t have been so slow to comprehend all of these relatively simple details. “They will expect that she hid the truth from us … like she did initially … so my explanation will make perfect sense to them.”

  “Right,” Blaze answered, less than satisfied about how this new development was panning out.

  Sensing his hesitation and unspoken concerns, Evelia walked towards him and held him close for a moment. “Don’t worry,” she instructed. “You can make a formal appearance – I will take care of the details. It’s about time I returned a favor or two.”

  As Blaze held Evelia close to himself for quite some time, his thoughts wandered far afield – back to his old Order, back to rules about dating, rules for getting engaged, rules for getting married. He wasn’t sure if any of these procedures could still be followed. He wasn’t sure who should be in charge of making those decisions – and maybe it was Blaze. To him, it seemed that he had wanted to marry Evelia his whole life. But now, in deep space, he had occasional doubts about that and he had serious philosophical queries about what marriage really meant in this, his new world. His erratic thoughts then passed to Aria when he recalled a nagging question.

  “Evelia, you still haven’t told me how you knew all of the functionalities on my staff. Those were top secret in our Order. You did not find the information on the database did you?”

  Pausing for quite a long time, Evelia quickly betrayed her misgivings about discussing this issue but Blaze had no idea why. Not raising her head from his chest, she asked him how much time remained before they would board the alien ship.

  “Roughly two hours,” he replied. And then, recalculating, he detected his error and corrected himself. “A little over two hours, actually.”

  “Okay,” she resolved, pushing herself away from Blaze so that she could make strong eye contact. As she did so, she passingly remembered how Blaze was so frequently entranced by her hazel eyes. “I’m going to need a little time to think more about
how to present myself to the captain of that ship,” she began, pointing out the linatech window from her chambers, “but I think there is time to explain a few things I’ve been needing to share.”

  Blaze’s patience was waning. He was expecting two reports and he needed time to consider the new details Evelia had just shared with him. He’d asked a simple question; wouldn’t a simple answer suffice?

  ON THE VERGE OF A MENTAL BREAKDOWN, Aria emptied the syringe into the glass of flavorful juice made from mantha plants she and Toka had bred and modified several years earlier. Her hands shook as the syringe finished squirting the last little bit into the juice. Somehow, her conversation with Toka had left him feeling suspicious. Within minutes, he had hacked into her private logs, discovered her deceptions, discovered her misgivings about administering the virus, and discovered her budding feelings for Blaze. Enraged, he threatened her like she had never been threatened before; he beat her like she had never been beaten before – and healing quickly as she was prone to do, he had beaten her twice. Now, with feelings still raw, she prepared the drink while Toka personally supervised her actions. Forced to do the very thing she felt she could not make herself do, her body shook not solely out of anxiety, it shook because of her personal misgivings – it was wrong to genetically modify people without their consent. There were risks if the modifications were not well accepted by the host. There were occasional, unexpected side effects. There was always sickness and there were occasional deaths. Here body shook because it was wrong for her to do what she was doing. She shook because she was scared. She shook because of the choice she was making. Perhaps, she shook because she felt like she really had no choice at all.