Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  “So how much longer is this going to take?” Damon said, rapping his knuckles on the table. “I’ve had all the training. You’re going to have to get a lot nastier than babysitting me to make me crack.”

  Razar’s face remained emotionless and his tone even. “That’s not the intention. We would like you back on staff. There is considerable tension in the government. Whole planets have been rendered uninhabitable by the Motti; there are millions of displaced people. War is imminent. And... Li is back.”

  “So that’s why you need me,” Damon chuckled. “You want me to advise you on Li. Tell you how to beat him. Well, I can’t.”

  “You made him,” Razar said.

  “Yes—and I made him the best, just like you wanted. He’s a jackal. And now, humiliated after losing the Endgame, he’s going to try and take down the entire Starways just to prove what a murderous bastard he is.”

  “Are the Kyrons at risk?” Razar asked.

  “Of course—I’m sure he’s figured out a way to either assassinate or neutralize them completely. In fact, he’s the most likely source of all this controversy over their part in the Dominion Wars. If he doesn’t kill them, he’ll make sure to have them executed legally or you’ll face complete and total dissolution of your government. He’ll win either way.”

  Razar blinked several times, but otherwise his face didn’t change. “You were the one to expose them in the first place, Damon. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “You know I did the right thing—Li had enough silent allies in the upper ranks that he would have found out one way or the other. By putting them out there in the public’s eye, I kept Li from using them against you. You should thank me.”

  Razar’s mouth compressed into a single line. “Hate me all you want, but you know that if you help me, you’ll help the twins, and that’s one of the few things that matters to you.”

  “Stop playing psychologist, Tidas. You’ve never been very good at it,” Damon said.

  “Tell me you don’t look at them and see all the little girls and boys you broke and re-broke to produce Li.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  “Help me and save them,” the Minister said, remaining firm.

  Keeping his emotions in check, Damon replied: “Then I want them to know the truth—all of it. It doesn’t matter how much Rai Shar you do. Even if you resort to doping them like the Core, they’ll find out. They’re adapting, growing stronger. You know the time will come when you can’t control them any longer, and Gods help you if they see you as their enemy.”

  Razar leaned back, away from the light. A shadow fell across his face so that only the whites of his eyes were visible. “Reconsider this offer. It’s your only option if you want to keep your skin.”

  As the Minister got up to leave, Damon despaired. One way or another the Alliance will figure out a way to get what they want from me—dead, alive or somewhere in between.

  Then it struck him: Wait—what if this isn’t a threat, but a warning?

  He realized what he needed to ask. “Any leads on the tattoo?”

  “Come to the High Council meeting tomorrow, 0700 sharp, and find out for yourself. That is, if you’re willing to aid us with Li. Once you’re in, that’s it. No more chances, Damon,” Razar said as he walked out the door.

  Unipoesa ran a hand through his hair, marveling at how much it had thinned in the past few months. I’m falling apart faster than the Starways.

  As the guards took his sides, ready to escort him back to his quarters, his thoughts turned to Li. My old prodigy is much more cunning and ruthless than the Alliance is prepared to deal with. If anything, his political ranting and threats against the Kyrons are just a smokescreen for his true agenda.

  The longing for a smoke nagged at his thoughts as he walked back to his quarters in silence.

  REHT HATED THE BARS on Trigos. Not only did government regulations cap drinks after three rounds, the cheap bastards controlled total alcohol consumption so that even his favorite drink, vodka and Redfly, had been partially neutralized to decrease the desired effects.

  “I would rather give up my guns for a year than be stuck here another day,” Cray grumbled, licking the rim of his pint.

  Ro whimpered. “I’d give up Cornelia and Marlou.”

  “You never had Marlou, so don’t even cut that, ratchakker,” Cray said, shoving his empty glass across the table.

  “Quiet, you two,” Bacthar mumbled, rubbing his face with both of his wings.

  In an uncharacteristic display, Ro and Cray shut up and the rest of the crew fell silent as the generic background music played lightly over the buzz of conversation. A few of the patrons threw occasional glances their way, but nobody seemed to care about the presence of Reht and his motley crew.

  The dog-soldier captain frowned. And I know why. The saffron wallpaper punctured and dented to imitate a violent history. Chipped glasses and broken pints. Mystery stains too perfectly splattered and arched across the ceiling and floors. Just another badly-forged controlled setting with undercover Alliance guards monitoring their activity and interactions.

  Even that one-eyed bartender and dishwasher are probably in on it, too, he thought, playing with the ends of his newly-dyed hair. He kept the base white, but colored the tips red and black out of boredom, mainly because it was one of the few liberties afforded to him.

  This was all Unipoesa could bargain for them, and Reht hated him for it. The biochips were bad enough, but to be quarantined on a planet as strictly regulated as this one made him ache for the Labor Locks—at least there he’d have a chance of dealing their way out. He had no idea how many tails he had and no ways to make connections with his contacts.

  In the midst of his lamentations, a woman in her late twenties clothed in a plain green and gray civilian jumpsuit walked in and made her way to one of the barstools at the counter. Her hair, brown and falling to the middle of her back, was pulled back in a tight braid. He picked up her animal smell, the stink of fear and desperation, and pushed his drink aside.

  “Give me five,” Reht said to his crew.

  “Bah. I don’t give you thirty seconds with that one. She ain’t ripe,” Cray snorted.

  “Yeah, but she’s female. And she probably smells a lot better than you,” Reht said, shoving himself away from the table.

  The dog-soldier captain strode casually over to her, keeping track of the eyes that followed his every move.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” he said to her as he flipped the bartender a credit.

  “Don’t bother,” the woman muttered, her shoulders hiking upwards. Her accent was unusual; he had never heard anything like it.

  “Then maybe you could use an ear.”

  Silence. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes, and he couldn’t read through her stone-cold expression.

  “Okay, then why come here?” he asked.

  The woman turned and looked him dead in the eye. Pale green eyes locked with his, striking a familiar chord that he couldn’t quite place.

  “Can’t I have some peace? Aren’t there other women around here for you to hit on?”

  Normally he would follow that with a crass remark, or, if she was pretty enough, he would pursue her. But this one was different. She didn’t excite him the same way other women did; there was something different about her, something strangely attractive that threw him off his game, but he couldn’t pinpoint the cause.

  “Darling,” he said, leaning up against the bar and signaling for a smoke. The bartender pointed to the no smoking sign. He cursed under his breath before continuing. “This is a chakking poke bar, not a playground. This is for unfortunate souls like me who pissed off the wrong politician and have tails on ‘em everywhere they go. I just want to know where you fit in this whole scheme.”

  She fell silent again, seeming to take him in with more than just her eyes.

  He threw a quick glance over to his crew. Although they weren’t actually watching him, he knew they
were paying close attention. Bacthar, tapping on the rim of his glass, signaled to bail, but Reht decided to stay. His gut would never lead him astray. This woman wasn’t part of the Alliance gig.

  Tears formed in the woman’s eyes, and Reht felt he was nearly there, at some kind of breaking point.

  “There is nowhere else to go,” she whispered.

  Ah, she’s a Deadskin, he figured. Another low-status human, probably part of the growing number of displaced colonists that were left homeless after the Motti poisoned most of the habitable planets in the Starways. Humans who weren’t vouched for or declared liberated had a hard time, and from the looks of it, she was on her own.

  “Calm down, get a sponsor. It ain’t hard. A little makeup, a little smile—you’re not half bad for a Deadskin,” Reht chuckled. The bartender threw him a sidelong glare as he set a bubbling tonic in front of the woman.

  “I don’t drink. And I don’t need a sponsor,” she said, pushing aside the drink with the back of her hand.

  Reht wavered a moment. Wait—this doesn’t add up. She wasn’t in on anything, and she was certainly out of place in any bar setting, poke bar or legit street joint. She’s trying to tell me something, but she knows she can’t.

  No, there’s more, he realized, reading her body language, the way she watched him from the side of her eye. She’s trying to hire me for a job even though these Alliance chakkers clearly have their heads up our assinos.

  As he watched her fingers curl up into her hands and then relax, the puzzle pieces fell into place. For her to risk seeing me like this, it has to be about something only I could know.

  The launnies.

  He took a stab at it. “Maybe this is about your kids. Nothing else in the universe matters more to a mother.”

  A startled look crossed her face but vanished as she grabbed the tonic and slugged it back.

  “Personally, I don’t have kids—that I know about. Hell,” Reht said. “But sometimes they can be cute little buggers. Maybe I’d think twice with the right woman.”

  Her hands started to shake, but she crossed her arms and leaned into the bar to mask her nerves.

  “I would just like to know that mine are okay, that’s all,” she said.

  Reht almost didn’t believe it, but when she turned back to him and he got another look at the shape and color of her eyes, the closely guarded facial expressions, he knew.

  “I’m sure that wherever they are, lady, they’re alright. Looks like you can take care of yourself, so they could probably take care of themselves.”

  “Sure, sure,” she muttered, fumbling with her empty glass. She stared ahead for a moment, her lips twisting as she chewed on the insides of her cheeks. “I have to get going. Without a sponsor, it isn’t safe, even on Trigos. But I don’t have to tell you that. You know the way things are.”

  “Come by this place again—keep a prisoner company?” Reht asked, catching her by the elbow as she turned to go. One of the men at the bar shifted in his stool and pretended to stare into his drink. Light glinted off the recording device he tried to hide in his palm.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got to keep moving. It isn’t safe.”

  “At least tell me your name,” he said, holding fast to her elbow even though she tried to wiggle away.

  The woman looked straight into his eyes, and a thousand pinpricks shot down his arms and legs. He fell, but there was no ground to fall to, just an infinite black hole within himself, backwards, twisted and inside-out.

  Then, as quickly as the feeling came, it passed, leaving him gasping for air, still clutching her elbow.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered, finally freeing herself from his grip. She took the napkin from underneath her drink and, with a quick hand, plucked the pencil from the bartender’s back pocket as he wiped down a bottle. “I’m just a toy to you.”

  After scrawling something on the napkin, she scrunched it up and shoved it into the pocket of his pilot’s jacket. Still reeling, he couldn’t muster a single word as she exited the bar.

  “You okay, Cappy?” Cray said, joining his side. The Ereclian slapped his shoulder with a chuckle. “Some strange broads you like. She give you her number? Not like you can get laid without a chakking audience anymore.”

  With his heart pounding in his ears, Reht managed to steady his hands enough to pull the napkin out of his pocket. In ancient English were the letters, O E A.

  Reht wiped the sweat off his forehead with the napkin, smudging the letters before he ripped it up and threw it in the trash. “Eh, she couldn’t handle me.”

  “Chak, Reht, I’m so goddamn bored I’m about to slit my own throat,” Cray whined as he and the captain sat back down with the rest of the crew.

  “Chill out,” Reht said, holding Cray back as he wound up to throw his glass at one of the eavesdroppers. “Just sit tight. Something will come up, I’m sure.”

  THE FIRST THING DAMON noticed at the emergency High Council meeting was that it was limited to only a few of the ranking officers in the Fleet and Chancellor Reamon from the General Assembly. Upon further scrutiny of the conference room attendees, he deduced that each person had been in some sort of position to know privileged information about the Kyrons.

  This can’t be good.

  He took his seat at the conference table and reviewed the roster on his datawand:

  Gaeshin Wren, chief commanding officer

  Tidas Razar, Military Minister

  Waylen Reamon, chancellor of the General Assembly

  Damon Unipoesa, admiral, chief military advisor

  Msiasto Mo, chief of military intelligence

  Ryeo Kaoto, chief of medicine

  Triel of Algardrien, chief medical advisor

  Trecyn Rook, acting-commander, Special Missions Teams (SMT)

  LuShin DeAnders, director of Military Research

  “First off, this meeting isn’t going in the books. The room has been completely deactivated,” Minister Razar said, standing in front of the horseshoe-shaped conference table. “Any notes or records that you keep must be by datawand with defensive memory wipe coded into its primary routines. I don’t want anyone or anything getting hold of what we are about to discuss.”

  Whispered concerns circulated throughout the room, but Razar resumed the spotlight before things could get out of hand.

  “I’ll get right down to it. The war with the Motti has left us searching for solutions for our displaced citizens and our devastated worlds. We cannot survive if we do not find habitable planets for our Sentient brothers and sisters. Trigos was already overpopulated and facing ecological disaster before the massive influx. Arkana, Saelis, Aeternyx, Jue Hexron, Ra’Tunne—all are now facing crisis as refugees flood the ports. Civil wars have already ousted many of our delegates. We cannot negotiate with the terrorists that have assumed control of our land and people.”

  “I didn’t think this was about Li,” Wren said, cutting into the Minister’s speech. “I thought you wanted to discuss the Kyrons.”

  “Yes, I do. I think what they may have will save us from having to go to war with Li and his terrorist armies.”

  Razar returned to the open seat at the end of the horseshoe opposite Unipoesa, and DeAnders rose, taking his place in the center. The projection screen behind him lit up, and the tattoo on the girls’ arms appeared.

  “Our preliminary research fell short of revealing anything significant about their last name or the symbol,” DeAnders said. “We’re not sure how the Dominion determined their last name was Kyron, and our searches on the crosslink database came back with zero hits. Given the lack of data, we focused on their tattoo. We tried cross-referencing with known markings in xenosapien tribes, ancient languages, religious symbols—everything my team could think of. It wasn’t until we determined the children’s specific DNA group that we understood we were looking in the wrong places.”

  “What are they?” Mo asked, tapping his datawand against the table.

  “They’
re human,” DeAnders said. “But not just any ordinary human. They’re ‘original ancestors.’”

  Each of the officers had something to say then, but Unipoesa ignored most of them and honed in on Triel. Silent and emotionless until this point, the Healer finally looked uncomfortable.

  “What do you mean, ‘original ancestors’?” Reamon said, leaning forward in his seat.

  “We cross-referenced with the archives on Trigos. They possess DNA signatures that indicate they were from the original groups that fled Earth,” DeAnders explained. “We even identified old radiation markers, although that does not necessarily mean they were born on Earth. There’s the possibility that they are first-generation born during or immediately after the crisis.”

  Confusion followed, and speculation. All things that Unipoesa was thinking too. Original humans from Earth? Impossible; the Exodus happened over 1,100 years ago. And how did they possess telepathic powers without alterations to their genetic code?

  “They’re not mixed with Prodgy at all?” Triel asked over the rising volume of chatter.

  “No, they’re not,” DeAnders said, “though that was our original summation. Granted, my teams had trouble analyzing their blood samples because of the Motti’s genetic manipulation, but with the use of the crosslink Hub, we were able to perform a complex restructuring of their DNA. They’re pure Old Earth humans.”

  Razar stood again and motioned for DeAnders to take his seat. He adjusted the waistline of his pants as he took a visual sweep of the room again. “Acting-Commander Rook has been charged with finding the detailed passenger lists from all outgoing shuttles during the Exodus, something that might still be stored somewhere on a smartserver buried in the ground on Old Earth.”

  “I didn’t think anything still worked on that planet,” Wren said. “Didn’t the Last Great War destroy all their historical records and databases?”

  “Yes,” DeAnders said, removing his glasses and massaging the bridge of his nose. Many sleepless nights and stress had carved dark circles underneath his eyes. “But we’re hoping that there are still a few left that some of the locals might know about. We’re also hoping that there is enough saved data left in those servers to help us complete the search on the tattoo and their last names.”