During those half waking moments she consciously manipulated her body. Once the priests had taught her to alter her blood chemistry, she rarely needed more than half the normal healing time. Extra protein to the muscles; flood the sites of organ penetration with lymph to fight infection; drain excess fluid from swollen tissue.
Ah, less pain and more strength already.
The beeping machines behind her recorded her every breath and heartbeat, signaling the nurses when she woke and slept. She calmed them with another thought, cherishing her privacy—time to observe and assess.
“What did you say, Miss Adrial?” a male voice asked. He moved so that she could see him standing beside her. In the same movement he raised his hand and beckoned to someone.
Only then did she realize her neck and head were still held immobile by the thick collar and the gel pads.
“I remember you. Lieutenant David?”
“Yes, that’s me. I was here yesterday when you first woke up. Back again for the day shift. Important people don’t want you left alone. Now what was it you said about music?” He leaned over her and smiled.
A handsome young man, except for the blemish of a red square with a stripe below and a blue line tracing an elongated diamond around it.
She attempted to smile back. That slight movement stretched tight muscles in her neck and back. She relaxed and tried again. It came easier.
“What happened to the music?”
“Oh, the Dedication and the Grief Blessing. They’re all over now.”
Disappointment nearly sent Adrial back to sleep. She did not think she could live long without hearing that celestial voice again.
“But they recorded it for replay throughout the station. Let me find it for you.” He fiddled with something just beyond her periphery. “Here it is, Miss Adrial.”
A holovid popped up on the table across the bed. In moments she heard the sound of an angel singing.
“Who is she that she graces this place with her voice?”
“Laudae Sissy. High Priestess of Harmony. I told you that. Guess the drugs made you forget. We’re lucky to have her. Another priestess was assigned here, but at the last minute, our Sissy took her place. Hard to believe the Goddess Harmony would allow her avatar to leave the planet.” He sighed and watched the holovid for several minutes. “But then, I’ve heard it said that Sissy belongs to the entire universe, not just Harmony. I can believe that.”
“If She is here, then I must have found heaven at last.”
“Not exactly.” Lieutenant David snorted.
A doctor barged into the room and swept the table with the holovid aside.
Adrial tried to protest and found instruments attached to her arms and stuck into her mouth. The ethereal voice continued to sing in the background, taunting her with mere glimpses of the next step in her quest that would never end.
She’d never know peace because the place where the sacred rituals began no longer existed. Life must continue to profane and defile the spirit.
But if she could keep that wonderful voice and music beside her, she might accept her fate with less anger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Jake, please explain to the girls how the caste system became a part of Harmony’s culture,” Sissy said meekly when she cornered the new general while he inspected the hydroponics gardens.
She suspected he walked here to find a few moments of peace rather than to make sure the Labyrinthes had planted enough lettuce.
“My Laudae . . .” He paused while he petted the dogs rather than continue his protest or look at her.
Monster and Dog accepted his adulation briefly before bounding off to complete their business at the compost pile.
“They need to know how and why the ingrained prejudice of Lady Jancee and her son Garrin came to be.” She looked deeply into the overlapping petals of a plant labeled artichoke. Separating them out would prove as thorny and delicate as the caste system.
Jake straightened and motioned them all to take seats on the benches and paths between raised beds. “This is going to take some time.”
“Just be blunt. We’ll figure out the niceties later,” Mary insisted.
Such a grown-up attitude! Sissy wondered if she herself would ever feel as mature as her oldest acolyte.
“Very well.” Jake settled on the ground, cross-legged. He leaned forward a bit, as if including the girls in a huge secret. “Mr. Guilliam found some very old diaries and documents hidden in the library of Crystal Temple. He shared them with me. I pieced together that information with what we have on file in the CSS data bank.”
“Okay, we trust you to have documentation. Tell us,” Martha added impatiently.
“We don’t want to have to put up with Lady Jancee any longer,” Bella added.
Jake drew in a deep breath. “A long time ago, some people on Earth came together and founded a new religion. They called their goddess Harmony. When colonization became available, they took off, separated themselves from Earth. When they landed on the planet you call Harmony, they found a few Maril priests and mystics in residence. We think the Maril had been coming to Harmony for a long time for retreat and for burial.”
“We know that. We spent more time examining the bones than you did,” Sharan explained.
The dogs came back, circled the seated humans once to make sure they were all there, then wandered off, sniffing every plant and pathway.
“For a while your people lived in peace with the Maril. Then the planet became unstable. Quakes, erupting volcanoes, monster storms . . .”
“Just like when Sissy quieted the planet with her song,” Suzie lisped.
“Exactly.” Jake smiled at her. “Your people didn’t understand that these disruptions were cyclic.” He paused to make sure the girls knew the word.
Mary rolled her eyes. Of course they knew a lot of big words. More than Sissy did.
“They thought Harmony was displeased because the people had allowed the Maril to live there with a different religion and pantheon of gods.”
“So they slaughtered the Maril,” Sissy breathed. She saw again in her memory the first time Jake showed her the skeleton of a Maril child. The aroma of freshly disturbed dust and dirt still filled her nose. The blaring artificial lights deep within the funerary caves seared the images into her mind forever.
As if sensing her distress, Dog thrust his nose beneath her hand, eager and willing to comfort her.
“But the disruptions continued. A lot of people died in the war and from the planet’s upheaval,” Jake continued, glossing over the horror of all those deaths, human and Maril.
He gathered Monster beneath his arm. The big animal plopped down and rested his heavy head on Jake’s thigh.
“How many died, Jake?” Mary asked quietly. She looked as though she needed one of the cats that had escaped into the station and gone feral.
“Many, many thousands. The number of humans was reduced to critical. They didn’t have enough left to work the farms, rebuild their shelters, maintain the machines they brought with them.”
“So how did they survive?” Martha looked about anxiously. Of all the girls, she had the best scientific knowledge and probably suspected what was to come.
“When the children of Harmony first left Earth, they came on ships with a very primitive star drive. It was a long journey. Getting a large number of people from here to there was difficult. So they did what we no longer believe acceptable for people, but do for animals that don’t travel well in hyperspace.”
“Frozen embryos?” Martha asked, one jump ahead of the other girls in understanding. “Our cats and dogs did okay, in hyperspace because they could snuggle up to one of us. The other animals didn’t like it. They nearly went insane. We had to drug them senseless and send them home. I can see why farm planets need to bring their sheep and cows and goats in as embryos.”
Jake nodded and looked away a moment. When he re-engaged his gaze with the girls, he seemed calm, unemotional, and
distant. “The mother ship was still in orbit with most of the embryos intact. At first the colonists hadn’t needed them; life on Harmony was peaceful and plentiful. But when only a couple hundred of them were left, they incubated the embryos from believers who couldn’t come with them from Earth and filled the planet with enough people to carry on.”
“What does that have to do with the caste system?” Bella asked, puzzled. She reached across Jake to pet Monster. He picked her up and deposited her in his lap. He had done that often enough back on Harmony.
“The first people on the planet had endured a lot of hardship.” Jake spoke slowly, fishing for polite words. “The new people hadn’t. The older ones didn’t think the new people should have as many benefits as them. So they tinkered with the embryos to give them caste marks. Most of the hard work fell on the created people, and they served the original colonists, who became Temple and Noble.”
“They made slaves of the Workers, the Spacers, and the Military,” Sissy insisted. Her anger had grown cold. Every day she plotted ways to break the system without launching a civil war. But who would believe the tale?
Most people on Harmony grew up accepting the caste system as part of life. They never questioned it or their lot.
Only when evidence of a breakdown occurred—like the riot in the asylum where people with mutant caste marks were thrown away—did the masses wonder if something had gone wrong.
“Actually, we now believe that Spacers didn’t become a caste until the colonists decided to expand the empire,” Jake corrected her. “Again they tinkered with unborn children of Worker and Military caste. They made Spacers smaller and lighter boned with very efficient metabolisms so they can fit more of them on board ships and use less supplies and life support. While they were at it, they added great spatial relationship skills. They’d already given Military extra height and muscle mass. We don’t know if they did something extra to Professionals and Media.”
“So the caste system came from our ancestors, not from Harmony?” Martha asked. She reached out to hold the hands of her two closest companions.
“Yes. But not everyone knows that,” Sissy said in a mild tone that did not betray her roiling emotions. “Only a few who Mr. Guilliam has told. Lady Jancee and Garrin still believe that the Goddess created them superior to everyone else.”
“There are people like that in every culture,” Jake chuckled. “We call them pompous boors.”
The girls laughed with him. Bella jumped up and began imitating Lady Jancee’s waddling walk that threw her off-balance when she tried looking down her nose at the rest of the universe.
“On that note, I have to get back to work. A data gig of details awaits me in my office,” Jake said, rising to his feet in one strong motion. He dusted off his uniform and glanced at his comm. “May I escort you ladies somewhere?”
“Back to the Temple. We have lessons and services to prepare,” Sissy said.
The girls groaned in unison. “I thought this was our lesson time,” Mary protested.
“All life is one long lesson,” Sissy said. “We have to keep learning and growing or we become like Lady Jancee.”
Or like the Harmonite Empire had become.
“Explain yourself, Jake. I did not authorize you to assume command here. If anyone should have, it would have been me.” Pamela Marella awaited Jake when he returned to his office. She assumed the chair at the head of the conference table as if she truly belonged there.
“You were not here. The ambassadors needed my organizational skills, my ability to manipulate Control screens, and my knowledge of the station. A little bit of leadership training as squadron leader didn’t hurt. My position has been confirmed by both governments. Now get out of my chair, Pammy.” He spoke mildly, leaning casually against the wall near the holovid window that showed a real-time spacescape near the jump point, the only decoration on otherwise naked walls.
He made a mental note to do something to spruce up the place, make it his own. A mural here and there wouldn’t hurt. And glyphs of Harmony and her family . . ..
He might have looked relaxed, but every muscle in Jake’s body tensed, poised to launch into hand-to-hand combat if necessary. He’d sparred with Pammy during his training as one of her spies. She’d taken him down every time.
Since then he’d learned a few things about dirty fighting. He’d murdered dozens of desperate and rioting inmates from one of the asylums on Harmony and learned the horrible intimacy of taking another life, watching the spark in the eyes dim and glaze until his victim saw only death. He’d also helped clean up the aftermath of an assassin’s bomb meant for Sissy.
Pammy wouldn’t get the jump on him again.
He needed to be out and about the station. If he made Pammy walk with him, she’d see how desperate a situation he commanded. That knowledge would lessen his authority in her eyes. For now, all those supervisions and demands must wait. He must deal with Admiral Pamela Marella from his power base—this luxurious office.
The bureaucrats would make a politician of him yet.
His fingers caressed the grip of the Badger Metal knife on his belt, just one souvenir of his stint on Harmony. The blade was sharper than a razor and never dulled or broke. Pammy couldn’t miss the implication that he was prepared to fight her in every way.
“You going to cooperate, Admiral, or do I confine you to the CSS residential wing without access to comms for the duration of your stay here?” He flashed her a feral grin, almost hoping she’d get argumentative or combative.
“You can’t . . .”
“Wanna make a bet?” He edged the knife out of his scabbard.
“Very well. I concede you the trappings of authority. But never forget your ass is mine.” She shifted to a chair in the middle of the table. She removed a layer of dust from the polished synthwood with a fingertip. “You need to get housekeeping up here.”
“I’d love to. If I had a housekeeping staff. If I had any staff at all.”
“What about Labyrinthe’s people?” She looked surprised.
Jake hadn’t thought anything could surprise Pammy.
“Labby cut his staff—and safety protocols—to the barest bones and then some to save money—or boost his profit margin, not sure which. Even if I could trust his people, I don’t think there are enough to do half the jobs that need doing.”
Jake took the chair recently vacated by Pammy. “I need a crew, and I need it fast. I can only borrow from the two ambassadors for so long. They have other duties, and many are due to be rotated out.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Pammy sat back, arms crossed. She wanted favors for favors.
“You are more than just the spymaster, Admiral Marella. You have influence. You know which strings to pull, which favors to call in, which skeletons in the closets can be rattled. I need crew and a budget. Preferably shared by the CSS and Harmony.”
“You don’t ask for much,” she replied sarcastically.
“I only ask for my due. The CSS has been trying to set up their own First Contact Café for a century, and the Labyrinthe Corporation always moves into the area first. They’ve staked out locations next to all eight known major jump point crossings. Now’s our chance.” Jake leaned forward, eager to push Pammy to agree with him.
“Think about it, Pammy. At the moment, this place doesn’t officially belong to anyone. You and I can make it our own, establish our own security protocols, set up trade routes. Use it as a base for unregistered travel.” He threw in the last, knowing how hard she’d found moving her spies about the Confederation undetected.
“Fair enough. But you can’t run this place for long.” She smiled with secret knowledge.
“Why not?”
“Because we think we’ve found a planet for the CSS headquarters. I’ll need you there.”
“An unoccupied habitable planet that no one claims?” Somehow Jake didn’t think that would ever happen.
“Got it in one.”
“You�
��ve been looking for twenty years. We’ve only been on this station six months.”
“And now it’s time to move on. Don’t worry, Jake, I’ll find someone capable to replace you here.”
“Have you really found a planet?” Sissy asked from the doorway. In her simple purple dress, which hung discreetly below her knees, she looked far too young and fragile for the weight of the responsibilities she shouldered. She looked as though she needed the two dogs at her heels for protection.
Both animals curled their lips in silent warning as they caught a whiff of Pammy. Jake needed to protect Sissy. Reluctantly he conceded that with his new schedule, the dogs would do a better job.
His heart flipped over. Then regret descended heavily. If he ever acted on the impulses of his heart, Sissy would be exiled from her home forever. He couldn’t do that to her.
If he couldn’t love her openly, he’d at least do his damnedest to grant her every wish.
“Jake, I need you to take me to this new planet. Today. This minute. I need to hear the natural rhythms of a world in harmony with itself. If I have to stay onboard this station, listen to the ceaseless cacophony of chaos one more minute, I’ll go insane.” She floated in, as graceful in gravity as weightless, eager and weary at the same time.
“Sorry, Laudae Sissy. Harmony hasn’t signed a treaty with the CSS yet. Until then, our headquarters is off-limits,” Pammy sneered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Adrial came fully awake, minus the fog of drugs. She kept her eyes closed, listening, assessing, waiting. Her breathing and heart rate responded to her command to remain quiet, even, and slow. Sharp smells of antiseptic and the sour smells of sweat and fear told her she remained in the hospital. Comfortable, light gravity held her bones in place without straining them.
She tested her hips, knees, and feet with a gentle rotation. They all worked. Only her ribs remained unhealed. She could move if she had to. She’d managed greater pain than this and still kept running.
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