AWOL

by Traci Harding

  Once booted up, which took but a few minutes, the memory card slotted perfectly into the side. To Zeven’s great excitement, the content was not a text file filled with ancient Sermetic for him to decipher, but a movie file.

  ‘Someone actually recorded the event?’

  It was too much to hope for. But upon opening the file his pessimism proved unfounded. The footage opened on the Duchess of Vidor floating several feet above her covers, whilst her maid servants struggled to tie her down to the bed.

  ‘Are you getting this?’ one of the maidens queried to camera.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the person operating the camera. A woman, judging from the voice.

  ‘Blood!’ Maiara cried out, deep in trance. ‘Blood on the hands of the Old Ones, to whom the halfling of shadow harks back!’ She spat the words out as if possessed. ‘Not they, nor the Phemoray, foresaw the curse upon their union.’

  She spoke of Khalid — he was the halfling of shadow.

  ‘Hungry demons have an adult patron,’ Maiara warned. ‘Sermetica and Phemoria have a male heir; a second halfling of transcendental means — the polarity to the curse!’

  In the first part of this quatrain Maiara spoke of demons — the unnatural source of Khalid’s power to be found at Dead Man Downs on Sermetica. In the second part, she spoke of the event that was unfolding at the very time that she was voicing this prophecy — Zeven’s birth. The son of her grandson, Spyridon Vidor, and the Princess Satomi, first daughter of the late Qusay of Phemoria. Satomi had taken flight from her home planet before the cursed crown of the Phemoray was placed upon her head and had spent the rest of her short life in hiding.

  ‘When first they collide, blood pools in the House of Vidor. Victim and victor endure, to meet again, not so by chance.’

  Here Maiara spoke of the night Khalid came after Zeven as a babe, having got wind of the prophecy. The Princess Satomi was murdered and a blade was driven through Zeven’s infant body while his father lay unconscious. But Zeven had survived, thanks to Maiara, who, at her old age, had managed to summon the power to teleport herself to Zeven’s crib and teleport him to the aid of a healing child she knew. This healing child was now one of Zeven’s closest friends, Ringbalin Malachi, whom he’d met again through the AMIE project. In the last part of this quatrain, Maiara hinted that Zeven and Khalid’s next meeting would be a well planned affair. ‘And so it is,’ Zeven confirmed with a confident grin.

  ‘Time dances through shadows, to know even what the Old Ones could not. Then the victim will be victor, returning the curse to the abyss!’ Maiara calmed, and floated gently downwards towards her bed.

  The maid servant in charge turned to the camera. ‘That will be all,’ she instructed, and the image froze.

  This was where Zeven felt everyone had misinterpreted the prophecy. For they all considered Khalid himself was the curse. Yet first-hand experience told Zeven that once Khalid was cut off from the influence of the unnatural entity at Dead Man Downs he had the potential to be as righteous as any of the timekeepers. Although Khalid had been counted among their ranks for a while on the last mission, he did not belong to their soul-group, and yet he possessed the same talents as the best of the timekeepers. Which posed the question — where did Khalid belong? Who were his soul kin — the Old Ones Maiara mentioned in the first quatrain? Maiara spoke of time dancing through shadows, referring to Zeven’s timekeeping adventures, but where she spoke of the victim becoming the victor and returning the curse to the abyss, Zeven felt this could just as easily refer to Khalid as himself, who had equally been a victim since before he was born.

  ‘Zaman Vidor.’

  The sound of his true name being spoken struck the fear of exposure in his heart, and he turned about to find a beautiful middle-aged woman with a pulse laser weapon aimed at him. A stone, set on a chain that hung around her neck, was glowing with brilliance.

  ‘There are only three men alive who could have retrieved that coffer: Khalid Mansur, Spyridon Vidor, and his long-lost son, Zaman,’ she informed him. ‘I have met the first two candidates, so it stands to reason that you are the third.’

  ‘The lock on the coffer triggered a silent alarm.’ Zeven figured that’s how she had discovered his presence.

  ‘Of course,’ she confirmed, her fingers toying with the glowing jewel she wore.

  ‘And if I am who you think I am?’ Zeven queried.

  ‘Then you get to leave this room alive,’ she advised sweetly.

  ‘Hold on.’ Zeven looked back to the image frozen on his workstation. The woman before him was the same woman aiding to hold the duchess down as she spouted her prophecy.

  ‘You were there!’ He looked to the woman, excited by the prospect of some help with his queries. ‘Do you know anything about the Old Ones that Gran Mai speaks of in the first quatrain of this recording?’ Zeven posed.

  The woman suddenly seemed disposed towards him. ‘Gran Mai,’ she repeated the part that had captured her sentiment. ‘That was the name Spyridon called my mistress; you have had contact with your father?’

  ‘Maiara knew that we’d found each other?’ Zeven became suspicious.

  ‘Family secrets stay in the family, and I am not family,’ she replied. ‘Only a humble servant of this house, here to see that my lady’s legacy is delivered into the right hands.’

  ‘Then help me solve this riddle,’ he requested politely. ‘Where do I seek information about the Old Ones?’

  ‘What difference does it make, when your objective is clear?’ Obviously she wondered at the point of researching the history of the man he was expected to kill.

  ‘You’ve never heard the phrase, know your enemy?’ he posed. ‘There must be something written about the Old Ones in all of this?’ He referred to the treasure trove of books all around them.

  The woman shook her head. ‘If the Old Ones still exist somewhere, and if one of them did mate with the Qusay of Phemoria, then only the Phemorians know how to make contact, or have any record of who the father of the curse was.’

  ‘No,’ Zeven corrected. ‘The Qusay’s chosen mate had no more to do with this curse than the late, mad Queen of Phemoria did herself.’

  The woman frowned, having misunderstood the prophecy like so many others. ‘Are you here to rid the House of Vidor of the curse that is Khalid Mansur?’ she asked him outright. ‘He who killed your royal mother and my duchess. He who destroyed your father’s sanity and reputation, and attempted to take your own life as a babe!’

  All touchy subjects with Zeven, but he chose to overlook the recount of his life’s most tragic events. ‘I have been from one end of time to the other, in order to know how this curse might be broken,’ he began, hoping to reassure her. ‘Rest assured that I will see my late grandmother’s word made fact. The curse will be returned to the abyss from which it came.’ What Zeven didn’t mention was that he had no intention of banishing Khalid with it.

  ‘Then my job is done.’ The woman seemed, for some reason, trepidatious.

  ‘It would seem so.’ Zeven turned to retrieve the vital memory card from the old system and placed it in a zip pocket of his jacket, realising that perhaps the woman’s fear came from thinking he would now kill her to ensure she did not give away his identity to anyone. Thus he held both his hands high before he turned to face her again. ‘Don’t worry, I would never —’

  The laser gun firing startled Zeven. He swung about to see his grandmother’s messenger fall to the ground, a bloodied hole in both sides of her head where the laser bullet from her own weapon had burned right through.

  ‘Damn it! I should have seen that coming.’ He was still adapting to his royal status of importance; he was used to being a nobody, and had worked hard at that after his career as a show-off, smart arse, crash test dummy, had proven not very conducive to keeping a low profile. He hated that anyone would feel their own life was less important than his, and the suicidal precaution was unnecessary in any case as he was more than capable of defending himself. Wi
th a flick of his finger he closed the coffer and returned it to its place inside the room and the door locked closed in the wake of the treasure’s passage.

  ‘What a waste.’ He eyed over the dead woman. This was one of those instances that he wished he could go back in time and prevent, but too much of the day had already passed to go back to this morning and start again. A myriad of things could go wrong if he attempted to rework every instance since he awoke, so he was bound to stay his course. One of the few setbacks of time-hopping was that you could only jump into a body during its last unconscious state prior to your target day. And the more you tried to rework one instance in time, the messier causality became, the harder you had to work to make circumstances turn out to your favour.

  Zeven had hoped to pause and take stock here, but with a dead body on the floor, here was not the place to pause and reflect.

  He took up his bag and wandered to the foreign section under non-fiction, and browsed the titles.

  ‘The remote islands of Frujia,’ he read the title that captured his interest. The cover photo was of a beautiful uninhabited island close to the isle of Lappis. ‘That will do nicely.’ He observed the picture of the island paradise and held that image in his mind as he replaced the book.

  Zeven could teleport anywhere once he had knowledge of what a place or a person looked like, and this was true of anyone with PK. All the timekeepers would eventually master this talent, although only a handful of them had learned to do so at present.

  Frujia was the pleasure capital of the USS; everyone wanted to go there as the planet was kept in pristine condition, and a large part of the planet was a protected preserve, no residency allowed. Which made that part of the planet the perfect place for a psychic fugitive like himself to hang out.

  The destination Zeven had glimpsed filled his thoughts, and with his will to be there, his atomic structure was excited into a higher quantum state being and swept away through the light-field to its intended destination.

  3

  AN ACCOMPLICE

  The crew of AMIE were called to a meeting much earlier in the working day than expected. There were a few additional notes Zeven had made on the printout he’d given Taren, but she felt she needed to confirm the information before advising those involved.

  One such claim was that Telmo Decree, whom they were about to recruit to the crew, was the brother of one of AMIE’s security staff, Yasper Ronan, which meant Telmo was also the long-lost son of Zelimir Ronan, the ex-chief of the MSS. As head of the Maladaan Secret Service, Zelimir had once been fiercely anti-psychic, and had admitted to banishing his wife and unborn second child to life on Sermetica after he discovered that she had been hiding her Powers from him. Zelimir had placed them in the protection of President Anselm of Sermetica — Taren’s father. Zeven claimed in his missive that her father could confirm this. This puzzled Taren, as she had spoken to her father about Telmo before, and he’d claimed to have no knowledge of the man.

  Another side note Zeven had made about Telmo was that Taren’s kiss would awaken the latent Power of his akashic memory. This lad had the ability to tap into all his past selves, one of whom had been the spiritual master, Taliesin Pen Beirdd, in the last universe, who had been a mentor to many of them during their past lives there. They had learned from experience that, because of the power of the Juju stone they all wore, a simple kiss, given to anyone of their soul-group, would activate their psychic gifts. But then that was true of anyone who wore a Juju, not just Taren. As a happily married woman who did not wish to give her husband the wrong impression, she had no intention of fulfilling this prediction, but she would certainly bear it in mind.

  Besides herself, and with Zeven absent, there were fourteen people on board AMIE at present; twelve discounting the two children who were currently doing school lessons via visual correspondence in the office area. If Zeven’s predictions proved correct they would acquire another three crew members within the next working day.

  ‘What’s the story?’ Swithin appealed as he wandered in with his wife, Amie — head of their marine department.

  Amie was an impressionist, meaning that she could implant thoughts and memories into the minds of others and alter their recollections. Swithin Gervaise, the older brother of their captain, was the money man behind AMIE, who in younger days had been rather self-serving. Ironically he’d developed the one psychic gift that could only benefit others — his touch brought back the dead. Zeven had named both these crew members as vital to a mission this day; and they had three missions to complete by her reckoning, only two of which she need mention at this time.

  ‘Something’s come up,’ Taren told Swithin, not prepared to say more until everyone had gathered in the mess room — which had proven a better place to have mission briefs than the conference room as all food and beverages were close at hand. The mess was a rather expansive space as AMIE had originally been designed with a large crew in mind, but it was their aim to see the true purpose of the Astro-Marine Institute Explorer realised in the not too distant future.

  ‘Always does,’ Swithin grumbled, heading for the drink dispenser.

  ‘I’m here,’ Aurora announced as she breezed through the door. ‘But I can’t find Zeven anywhere! Do you want me to use my —’ she pointed to her temple.

  Aurora was referring to her Power. No one was permitted to use their psychic gifts on another crew member without permission from the timekeeper or the captain. Aurora’s skill was remote viewing; this meant that in her mind’s eye she could find any target and see where they were and what they were doing.

  This would not bode well for keeping Zeven’s movements secret, and as much as Taren was curious to know what Zeven was up to, she had promised to leave him go and so shook her head. ‘Zeven has his own mission today, and will not be joining us.’

  Aurora frowned, perplexed to learn this, but did not question it.

  ‘You mean to say Zeven is forgoing our first mission in space?’ Mythric, Zeven’s father, was certainly surprised. ‘That doesn’t sound like the thrill-seeking, spotlight-hogging lad I bred?’

  ‘If Zeven’s gone on a mission,’ Leal, Zeven’s co-pilot and crew telepathist, followed Mythric into the mess, ‘then technically he’s already on our first mission in space.’

  Mythric raised both brows and stood corrected. ‘That’s true to form then.’

  ‘I thought this was a day off?’ Jazmay, head of security, and her husband Yasper entered.

  Jazmay was a former Valourean — the Valoureans were the personal guard of the Qusay of Phemoria. The most feared warriors in the USS, Valoureans exploited their psychic power to protect their queen and planet, and had done so ever since the sexual revolution. Jazmay was also the only shapeshifter on the crew, and she could transform herself into just about anything she came into contact with. Due to the fact she had been in contact with the timekeeper, she had also inherited all her powers and a lot of Taren’s memory. Yasper, whose Power was levitation, was ex MSS, and Taren’s ex as well; they had had a brief fling way back during Taren’s early years in the secret service.

  ‘For many of you it is still a day off,’ Taren advised. ‘At this point,’ she added under her breath.

  Ringbalin their biologist who ran Module C — the greenhouse on AMIE — was accompanied into the room by Dr Ayliscia Portus, their marine biologist. They were both fairly quiet types, who merely waved as they entered, and headed to the food bar.

  The two biologists had become fast friends since joining AMIE, and this was no surprise to Taren as in a past timeline they’d been star-crossed lovers and the regular odd couple.

  Ayliscia was Phemorian, like Jazmay, but as a secret service agent she had been sent on board this vessel to spy on Taren and the project by the Phemoray. Still, as Taren had known this from previous timelines, she had recruited Ayliscia to the timekeepers, long before Dr Portus had time to do their project any damage, and her loyalties now lay with AMIE. Ayliscia and Jazmay were two people, i
n only a handful, who knew that Taren was the daughter of Qusay-Sabah Clarona and thus the heir to the Phemorian throne. As Phemorians they felt they would rather protect the heir apparent than their possessed queen and her spiteful Phemoray. Ayliscia was a remote viewer, as Aurora was, and had the stunning good looks and formidable warrior form and nature shared by all Phemorian women.

  In comparison to his fellow biologist, Ringbalin was rather effeminate and diminutive in stature; he was usually attired in overalls and covered in dirt. His shoulder length fair, straight hair was kept pulled back in a ponytail when he was working, but strands were always escaping and falling in his face. More boyish in appearance than manly, Ringbalin was also a good deal younger than the woman who’d taken a fancy to him. Phemorian women had a reputation for hating men, but Ringbalin had such a gentle way about him that everybody liked him; in fact, Taren ventured to say he was the most loved crew member on board AMIE — despite that he kept very much to himself. The fact that Ringbalin ran Module C and supplied them all with excellent fresh produce was only part of his appeal. An emotional sympathetic, Ringbalin could project his emotions onto others; he could heal or kill anything in his vicinity depending on his mood. Hence Ringbalin endeavoured to be happy, humble, grateful and positive at all times, and as long as he was, his greenhouse prospered.

  The captain entered the mess and had a brief look around. ‘Who’s still missing?’

  ‘The doc isn’t here,’ Leal waylaid pouring his coffee to advise Lucian.

  It figured that Leal noticed her absence, for AMIE’s doctor was Kassa Madri — their second telepath — who their co-pilot had been instantly intrigued with upon first meeting. Again much younger than the woman he admired, both he and Kassa had been excited to meet another telepath and although neither of them may have realised it yet, their attraction was inevitable.