Triorion Omnibus

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Triorion Omnibus Page 136

by L. J. Hachmeister

“A man? Where did he come from? Was he a Scabber?”

  Jaeia wavered, caught between her own disbelief and sharing what she had acquired from her sister’s memories. As Triel scrutinized her silence, she decided it was best to be upfront. “Jetta believes that it’s Kurt Stein.”

  Triel grabbed her arm. “The Kurt Stein?”

  Jaeia nodded.

  Disbelief contorted the Healer’s face as she laid back down. “Impossible.”

  “I know, but Jetta seemed convinced enough that it was true. We’re running a DNA analysis as we speak, but we won’t have full confirmation until we reach the Alliance Central Starbase.”

  “Do you know what this means?” Triel whispered.

  “If it is Kurt,” Jaeia said cautiously, “then it would change the war for the Alliance. We could—”

  “No,” Triel said, cutting her off. “It means that the prophecy is coming true.”

  “Prophecy?”

  “It can’t be me. It just can’t,” Triel said, covering her face with her slender fingers.

  Sensing her mounting tension, Jaeia pried one of her hands away. “What’s wrong? Tell me, please.”

  Triel looked at her, blue eyes pained with terrible knowing. “It would mean that I would have to...”

  The words never came, but Jaeia felt something heavy settle inside the Healer’s heart.

  Jaeia’s uniform sleeve beeped. Wren wanted an update.

  “I have to get back to the bridge. We can finish this conversation after I report in. If you need anything—anything—let me know,” Jaeia said, hugging her again. This time Triel didn’t hug her back, seemingly preoccupied with something beyond Jaeia’s senses.

  Jaeia wanted to go back and check on her sister, but she knew better than to keep Wren waiting, especially with news of the retrieval of Jetta, Triel, and possibly Kurt Stein.

  As she picked up speed back to the bridge, her sister’s memories weighed down on her conscious thought.

  Mother. Jetta met our mother...

  (So beautiful—)

  Jetta thought she died—why didn’t we find her body?

  (My mother’s name for me is Ryen. Jetta’s name is Ashya...)

  (She loved us)

  She ran her fingers along the wall, catching her pads on bolts and tile trim, relishing their texture, trying to keep her emotions in check.

  “Jahx,” she whispered, her fingers pressed to her lips. “If only you could see her...”

  JAHX SHIELDED HIS EYES as the afternoon sun peeked out from behind a fluff of white clouds. An opposing mixture of spring lilacs and diesel hung in the air, as well as the pleasant smell of home cooking. He breathed in deeply, surprised at the realism of the sensation. His lungs felt like his own again.

  Not knowing what to expect, he took in everything he could about his new surroundings: A beige brick house sat behind a grassy front lawn. He could hear dogs barking from behind the wooden fence and hovercars whizzing by on the transair highway a few blocks over. It could have been any Class IV inhabited planet in the Starways, but without understanding how, he knew exactly where he was: Earth. Or at least someone’s memory of the way Earth was a long time ago.

  At first he hesitated. He did not find this place like he had the cemetery and Josef Stein; someone brought him here. Someone powerful. An illusion like this wasn’t easily forged; its realism bore its own reality, and laws of its own design. He didn’t know what rules to play by, or who was running the reel.

  “Tierin,” a voice called from behind a screened window. “It’s time to come inside.”

  Jahx didn’t think it was a good idea until the sky changed. Angry clouds tangled together in dark gray knots. The wind picked up, battering the wind chimes on the front porch.

  As he walked across the front lawn, he accidentally kicked over a brigade of toy soldiers lined up around a clump of flowers. He thought about salvaging the helpless toys that littered the flowerbed from the imminent storm, but the blue zig-zag of lightning brought him under the protection of the house before he could take action.

  “Who are you?” Jahx said as he closed the front door.

  The house looked as if it hadn’t been occupied in years. Dust-covered sheets hung draped over furniture, and thick cobwebs connected the wall to ceiling fixtures. Pictures were faded, unrecognizable. Unlike the fresh air outside, everything smelled old and stale, and tickled his nose.

  “What do you want?” he tried again.

  A woman humming over the sound of clanging pots and pans caught his attention. Enticing smells of sugar and spice wafted toward him, inviting him into the next room.

  “In here, sweetheart,” she called.

  Cautiously, Jahx rounded the corner into the kitchen. A woman, bent over the stove, hummed a strangely familiar tune as she checked on her dish. “It was your father’s—and great-grandfather’s—favorite. Apple Delicious. It was the only time I could ever get him to eat anything with sugar.”

  “Who are you?” he repeated more firmly, fearing the worst.

  The woman wiped off her hands and turned to him. “Tierin—I thought for sure, of the three of you, you’d be the one to recognize me.”

  “Mother,” he whispered. His knees turned into jelly, and he held onto the countertop to stay standing. “I didn’t think I’d ever—”

  “I know,” she said, taking him in her arms. “And I am so, so sorry for that.”

  Something warm and wonderful spread from his chest to his fingers and toes. Even with all of the lifetimes he had experienced, he never thought such a miracle was possible. He hugged back with all his strength.

  But then his eye caught the changing view outside the bay window. As the storm raged overhead, a fathomless darkness ate its way through the surroundings. Just like what happened to me before the Grand Oblin gave me a chance to return to the world—

  “There isn’t much time, Mother. You’re sick, injured; I need to help you—”

  “You can’t worry about that right now. Your true journey has just begun.”

  She reached into her apron pocket and handed him a sealed letter. “We will meet again one day, Tierin, perhaps in a place not far from here. But for now, know the contents of this letter. And remember: A parent’s love for their child never dies.”

  As he turned over the letter, he saw the marking on the back. This is same design as the tattoo on my right arm.

  “Mother, I—”

  When he looked up, he found the kitchen empty, the stove cold and barren. Winds shattered one of the dining room windows, spraying shards of glass into the house and blowing off the dust-covered sheets. Furniture toppled over and smashed against each other as the encroaching darkness pushed up against the side of the house, rattling its foundation.

  Jahx quickly unfolded the letter and memorized every line as the world collapsed around him.

  “Thank you, Mother,” he said as he ran through the front door, catapulting himself from the dying world. “This changes everything.”

  AGRACIA GAVE THE JOHNNY aiming his gun at the wolfman a swift kick to his groin, doubling him over in pain. As he gasped for breath, Bossy ripped his head clean off his shoulders. Without pause, Agracia scooped his gun off the floor and took down two more of Shandin’s thugs.

  Agracia’s eye caught the glint of metal against the light and quickly squeezed off another round. Too late. The crazy lady brought down her knife, slicing the captain across the neck as she slumped over.

  The wolfman roared, forcing everyone in the room cover their ears. In a heartbeat the giant blue warrior sheared the crazy lady in half with his claws and felled the dark-skinned beauty with the same merciless rage.

  “Cappy!” one of the dog-soldiers cried, scampering to their leader’s side.

  As she removed her hands from her ears, Agracia looked around. The fight was over. The wolfman shredded about half of the Johnnies, including Shandin, painting the dingy underground hole with a bloody wash.

  “It ain’t right!” Boss
y grumbled. With her hands in her pockets she kicked the dead bodies, continuing to mutter and stew that she didn’t get her fair share of the fight.

  Never seen nothin’ like this, she thought. The wolfman had torn down an entire wall after Shandin abducted his captain. Dang. Bossy’s a fierce and loyal companion, but whatever the wolfman and captain have is way crazier and tighter than anything I’ve seen.

  Agracia made her way over to the dog-soldiers huddled around their fallen captain. Blood spurted from the gash in his neck as the bat-winged man worked furiously to patch the wound.

  “Stay with us, Cappy. You got this one. No sense checking out now,” the bat man said, biting off a strip of cloth with his teeth. The others worked to untie him from the chair and laid him out carefully on the ground. The bat man continued to treat him, pulling syringes from his satchel and injecting them straight into his chest.

  Agracia checked out her last kill. She had plugged the crazy lady in the temple; an instant kill, and even then the wolfman had felt the need to saw her in half. But her eyes remained open, their gaze still fixed in desperation and anger. What the hell did that captain do to her?

  “Diawn,” Reht said between gasps. “Where’s... Diawn?”

  The crew looked at each other in bafflement.

  “She’s iced, Cappy,” one of them said. “So’s her little baech and that ratchak, Shandin.”

  “Diawn...” Reht whispered, tears sliding down his face. “I should... have... My fault. I...”

  “Sycha. He’s lost it,” another dog-soldier said.

  “Well, duh,” Bossy chimed in as she searched for salvageable weapons among the dead.

  “You idiots,” the bat man said, holding pressure down on Reht’s wound. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “I know that this has been one giant sycha-storm after another for the last several months, mate!”

  “Yeah, this is some chakking sycha,” the first one said. “He should have chakking killed her back on the Wraith. Then we wouldn’t be in this godich mess!”

  Alerted to the rising tensions, Agracia observed each of the dog-soldiers’ movements. She noted the subtle change, one she had seen many times before in the bars and on the streets, as the dissident pair positioned themselves for quick access to their weapons.

  “Ro, Cray—you don’t understand,” the bat man said, still trying to reason with them. “Diawn wasn’t just his, his—”

  “Punte?” Bossy giggled, delighted to butt in again.

  “Enough!” the wolfman roared

  Stunned by the boom of his voice, the entire room fell silent. The wolfman slammed his hands down beside his captain, putting himself between Ro, Cray, and the bat man. “You don’t know anything about this man,” he growled.

  From the dog-soldiers’ wide-eyed expressions, Agracia gathered that when the wolfman spoke, everyone listened.

  Ro and Cray raised their hands. “It’s cool, Mom, it’s cool...”

  The bat man adjusted the bandages on the captain’s neck, keeping an eye on the wolfman as the hulking blue warrior lopped off Shandin’s head and wrapped it in one of the Johnnies’ jackets.

  Guess it ain’t enough to just kill the sucker, Agracia thought.

  “He’s stable. Let’s get him back to the ship,” the bat man said.

  The wolfman sniffed the air. “Ro, help Bacthar with Reht. Cray, you’re coming with me.”

  “What for?” he whined.

  But the wolfman didn’t say anything more. Instead, he ducked back through the hole in the wall he had created and disappeared.

  Ro shrugged, leaving Cray to catch up to Mom.

  “So... What was that all about?” Agracia said.

  The bat man shook his head. “Long history.”

  “Tell me.” Dropping her shoulders and softening her tone, she added: “please.”

  Bacthar nodded to Ro as they hoisted to captain up. Motioning with her head, she tried to get Bossy to help, but the dark horse slunk behind the group and crossed her arms across her chest.

  The bat man relented as Agracia pitched in, holding the captain’s midsection. “Reht saved Mom’s life a while back.”

  “Reht saved Mom’s life?”

  “Yes. After Shandin decimated Reht’s homeworld of Elia, he moved on to organizing the black market sport of capturing and hunting young Talians. You may have heard of it—the ‘Blood Dawn Massacre’?”

  Agracia shook her head.

  With a grunt, Bacthar stepped over a pile of Johnnies.

  “Let’s just say there aren’t too many Talians left. Anyway, Reht was tailing Shandin, trying to get revenge, but things didn’t end up the way he thought they would. Mom doesn’t talk about what exactly happened, and neither does Reht. But whatever it was, it was enough to make an outerworlder like Mom decide to dedicate his life to a humanoid like Reht. Reht has chakked up a lot in his life, but he did right by Mom.”

  Agracia’s toe struck a hard surface. “Dich!”

  Something chirped and buzzed.

  Bacthar and Ro carefully laid the captain back down and cleared off the pile of Johnnies.

  “Holy sycha!” Agracia exclaimed as they unearthed an inactive deadwalker. “A Liiker?!”

  After Bacthar rapped the biomech on the head a few times, he twittered to life. Clearly distressed by something, he babbled and squealed while the bat man tried to get him back on his wheels.

  The bat man’s red eyes dilated as the half-machine whizzed towards the exit. “We have to get back to the ship. Now.”

  “What about Mom?” Agracia asked.

  “Probably getting us supplies. We’re low and we’ll need them,” Bacthar said, picking the captain back up.

  “We’ll go with him—”

  “I need one of you. We may have injured back on the ship,” the bat man said.

  Agracia thought about it carefully. They could easily ditch out on the dog-soldiers now, but that would leave them without the means to get off the planet. Even if they did raid the warehouse and sold off their find, they would be sitting ducks for Victor’s retribution. “Okay. Bossy—go help Mom,” she said, adding quickly, “and be nice.”

  Bossy muttered something under her breath and stomped on a headless corpse.

  We gotta keep tabs on the dog-soldiers and make sure we keep our own supplies fresh, Agracia thought, wishing her companion could read her mind. She just hoped Bossy would cool down enough to see the angle.

  “I still think this is chakked up,” Ro commented. “Reht ain’t got it no more.”

  The bat man folded his wings as they rounded a corner. “Just because he was ‘too soft’ to kill Diawn the first time?”

  “That, and all this weird sycha he’s been putting us through lately. He ain’t right for captain. He’s weak.”

  Instinctively, Agracia looked at Reht.

  Something’s different, she thought, watching the uneven rise and fall of his chest as his bandages soaked through. The dashing, bold man she remembered meeting just a short while ago was gone. Instead, she saw a vulnerable human-like without the flash of his razored canines and the brazen look in his polychromatic eyes.

  “What were any of us—what were you—before you met Reht Jagger?” said the bat man, trying to keep things from getting physical. “A fat little doormat for the Queen. You owe him your life, you ungrateful little chak.”

  That shut Ro up—at least for the moment.

  Whatever’s eating at this crew ain’t gonna stop until blood is spilled.

  The thought bothered her. Why the hell do I even care about these losers?

  The little Liiker screeched and spun around on his wheels, apparently impatient at their progress.

  Agracia didn’t know where the observation came from, or how the words found their way to her lips. “Sounds like your captain doesn’t know if he wants to be a bad-assino dog-soldier or a decent prick.”

  Bacthar looked at her through his multiple sets of brilliant red eyes. “He believes that his
past defines his future, but it doesn’t. Same goes for the rest of us. But sometimes it’s hard to believe that, isn’t it?”

  REHT CAME TO AS PART of his crew carried him into the main entrance of the warehouse.

  “No—set me down. Set me down!” he said, flailing about until they assisted him to the ground.

  Gritting his teeth, he commanded his wobbly, unstable feet to keep him upright.

  “We have to go back,” he said, clutching the neck wound Diawn had inflicted.

  “Why?” Bacthar exclaimed. “For what?”

  “We have to go back!” Reht said, staggering back from the direction they had just come from. “The smell. I know that smell...”

  The stink of fleshy rot, a subtle bite to the air. The way his parents—

  Lugger took him back to the ship, promising him that the dog-soldiers would make whoever murdered his parents pay the ultimate price for crossing their youngest mate. He had Reht sit down in the captain’s chair, his feet barely touching the floor as the other crew members circled around him. The new recruit was there, too. Reht didn’t like the way he looked at him or his frigid, impassive face.

  “Shandin’s the best hunter this side of the Gateway. He’s gonna help us find the featherheads who murdered your parents,” Lugger explained. “Now you just tell him everything like a good kiddo and we can get us some blood!”

  The rest of the crew members cheered and chanted his name despite the tears that flowed down his cheeks. “Keedai, Keedai, Keedai!”

  “I—I already told you what I know,” Reht said, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  Lugger looked to Shandin, who indicated with a nod.

  Reht didn’t understand. Why was Lugger taking cues from Shandin?

  “Look, little buddy,” Lugger said, crouching down in front of him. “Those chakking featherheads betrayed and killed your parents. We need to know where they are and how to find them. They can just hide forever in the Wiconte forest. We need to know how to get to their sacred grounds. If we can go there, we can make them come to us, make them answer for their crimes.”

  The hallowed grounds, an area of worship in the heart of the dark forest. The chief of the Koiwros told him it was the only place in the world where all the tribes would come together in peace. A sacred place, one that even his monotheistic parents recognized as special, as did Reht the first time the natives had brought him there.

 

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