by Korza, Jay
D’Bath was extremely happy that the birth was progressing nicely without any complications. The baby was on schedule and perfectly healthy as far as he could tell. This was very important if the child was going to have a chance of surviving the surgery that would take place moments after his birth. If the child had any complications that weakened him, D’Bath was confident he wouldn't be strong enough to survive.
T’Leh was applying pressure points to M'Tawny's neck and shoulders. Every Nortes had twenty gathering points on their body where toxins and certain types of waste were relieved from the body. Usually the gathering points were manually relieved a few times a month but they also gathered stress and sometimes needed to be relieved more often. Not everyone gathered stress in the same points but T’Leh knew exactly where M'Tawny gathered her stress and how she liked it relieved. Labor was causing her gathering points to inflame and the pressure only added to her labor pains. T’Leh skillfully relieved the points every minute or so.
M'Tawny looked at him between contractions. “I am so lucky to have you with me for this. I don't think anyone else would be able to relieve my gathering points as well as you. And now, my love, I'm going to scream.”
And she did. M'Tawny's scream then faded at almost the same time the screaming began from the newest member of the royal family. D’Bath held the baby up for the briefest of moments before he took the child to the surgical bed that was waiting for him. Barring any complications in birth, the touching ceremony had to take place within two hours of birth of any royal child.
M'Tawny looked at her emperor and father to her son. “Go be with him; he needs you more than I do right now. I'll be fine.” She pulled his face down to his and kissed him gently before pushing him towards their baby.
T’Leh moved towards his son and D’Bath. The surgery was going to be tricky and stood a fairly good chance of failing. However, without the surgery the little prince wouldn't pass the touching ceremony and would instantly be killed by Fouter, the warrior performing the ceremony.
D’Bath had taken stem cells from T’Leh several weeks ago and began to grow a full-thickness layer of skin from them. He then shaped the growing cells over a three-dimensional model of the unborn baby, excluding only the hands and feet. Doing a complete dermal transplant in less than two hours was going to be a feat in and of itself; having to perform the delicate surgery on twenty small digits was out of the question. They would have to hope that the warrior didn't accidentally touch the baby's hands.
There was only a one in twenty chance that T’Leh and his son would have the same blood type but early in-vitro testing showed that not to be the case. The dermal transplant was only going to be temporary and last less than a day, but every little bit of compatibility would have helped in this case. Without them sharing the same blood type at the very least, not to mention all of the factors required for organ transplants, the little prince would start rejecting his new skin the moment it touched his body.
The plan was simple yet gruesome. D’Bath was going to remove all of the baby's skin and replace it with the skin grown from T’Leh's stem cells. The baby's blood would immediately begin perfusing the new tissue with an incompatible blood type, which would destroy the new skin and cause rejection issues for the rest of his body. Babies weren't born into this world ready for such a traumatic overloading of their bodies' systems, especially their immune system. The prince would be lucky not to die of shock before the ceremony was over.
D’Bath was giving the little guy steroids and anti-rejection treatments in preparation for the surgery. He was also pushing the known medical limits of pain and sedation medication that a newborn could handle, and then pushing those limits just a little further. The child would have to have all of the pain and sedation medication reversed just before the ceremony and that would cause more pain than any child should ever have to suffer.
Once the ceremony was over, the new skin would be removed and the old one put back on. That was assuming the trick worked and the warrior authenticated the prince as a member of the royal family. The blood coursing through the tissue wouldn't be of royal DNA but the skin on the surface would be and hopefully that would be enough.
D’Bath had toyed with the idea of just placing a second skin over the baby's real skin but it didn't work. In order to fool a mechanical DNA scanner they had to place a full-thickness layer of skin over the baby and it didn't look remotely like a real baby after it was done. Had that plan worked, it wouldn't have caused the baby any pain at all as the skin was just placed over him and then laser stitched at the seams.
In the end, the only thing that fooled the DNA scanner was to completely remove the skin and apply a new one over the muscle tissue. They had grown a section of skin from the prince-to-be and then used it to replace all of the skin on T’Leh's arm. The DNA scanner didn't recognize the different blood running through the tissue or the different DNA in the muscle tissue below the skin. As far as the scanner was concerned, the arm belonged to the unborn child. T’Leh, however, suffered severe side effects less than an hour after the surgery and intense pain for days after the surgery was reversed. He knew his child could expect the same, and even worse because they were replacing all of his skin.
The surgery began and D’Bath tried to comfort T’Leh as much as he could without losing the focus he needed for the procedure. “Don't worry, my friend, this part of the surgery is painless. He is completely sedated while I remove and replace his skin. Once we wake him up for the ceremony, I won't be able to stop the pain but I will sedate him as quickly as possible after it's over.”
“T’Leh wanted to comfort and touch his son but the integrity of the surgical field couldn't be broken. Instead, he began talking to his son. “You are a strong and proud Nortes. You can make it through this day and change the course of our society and the galaxy forever. Your biological parents were my best friends and the most noble Nortes I have ever met. Your mother and I will make sure that you know them as you will come to know us. You are loved by four parents, not just two, and you are stronger because of that. That strength will ensure you persevere through this first trial of your life.”
Impossibly, through all of the sedatives and pain medication, the prince opened his eyes and looked at his father for the first time. T’Leh felt M'Tawny's hand on his shoulder as she spoke. “He will endure; he will survive. It won't be easy for him but he will.” And T’Leh knew she was right.
~
The unnamed prince was wrapped in the traditional blanket for the ceremony and screaming in agony. D’Bath told those in attendance that the child had a small defect in his bowel that would have to be surgically repaired after the ceremony and that defect was causing the pain. The defect only made itself known after the child had fed for the first time and his digestive tract began to work on its first meal. There wasn't time to repair the defect before the ceremony began and for this reason they needed to cut it short and proceed with only the portions that were absolutely necessary to guarantee the right of succession. D’Bath had just thought up this excuse before the ceremony began and was quite pleased with himself for finding a way to cut through the lengthy pomp and circumstance that went along with the tradition.
The entire War Council was present along with their warriors. The majority of the royal family from this sector of the empire was in attendance along with a few hundred other important citizens. The only important person not in attendance was M'Tawny. If a concubine was the mother to the heir, she was not allowed in the ceremony and had to watch from a separate room. From that point on, she would raise the child as though she were the nanny and the emperor's wife would act as the mother. Because T’Leh wasn't married, M'Tawny would get to be more motherly than she would normally have been had there been a wife in the picture.
“Good afternoon, everyone.” T’Leh spoke using his emperor voice. “I know that I am breaking with tradition by not allowing the minister of royal affairs to speak, but as you can tell, the man of the hour is already hard at wor
k being an emperor and making us bow to his every whim.” This got a good laugh from the assembled crowd as they could hear the obviously upset baby in the background.
T’Leh put his hands up to silence the crowd. “In all seriousness, the little prince has an issue that needs to be surgically corrected as soon as possible.” A slight gasp came from the crowd. Again his hands went up in the air, and in a more reassuring voice this time, he said, “Please don't worry. Dr. D’Bath says the issue will be resolved by this evening and my son will sleep soundly his first night with us. We still must make haste to start and finish this ceremony as quickly as possible.”
T’Leh motioned to the minister of war, who then stepped forward with his chosen warrior. As the two stepped towards the screaming baby, T’Leh and D’Bath held their composure with more grace than either one felt they had. T’Leh forwent the ceremonial vows that were supposed to take place and just presented the baby to the warrior. The warrior took the baby in his lower arms and held him with a gentleness that defied all of his genetic engineering and lifelong training for killing.
With his two upper hands, he peeled back the ceremonial blanket and looked into the eyes of his future emperor and touched one finger, from each hand, to the child's face. The touch sent a shock of fresh pain into the muscle beneath the newly transplanted flesh; the prince doubled his previous screaming effort and actually stunned the warrior for a moment.
Whispering below the level of the podium's microphone, D’Bath reassured the warrior that he should continue quickly so the baby could be taken to surgery. The warrior looked to the war minister and was given a slight, if not contemptuous, nod to continue.
The warrior could feel the baby's DNA and knew he was of royal blood. But there was something wrong, something different with this child. The DNA was clearly of the royal line but it felt nearly identical to the emperor himself. The warrior had presided over the touching ceremony for the current emperor on the day he was born and so he knew that something was different than it should be. The warrior removed his fingers from the baby and saw that the child's face was bruising and swelling where he had been touched. With uncertainty he looked towards D’Bath.
D’Bath moved forward and immediately knew that the pressure placed on the prince's skin, slight as it was, had begun to speed up the degradation of the already dying tissue. Without skipping a beat, D’Bath said, “What did you touch before you came here?!” He snatched the baby from the warrior's hands. “He's having an allergic reaction to whatever you have on your hands. I need to get him to surgery for his bowel and now deal with this allergic reaction.”
He began to turn and leave when two of the emperor's personal warriors stepped in front of him and blocked his path. They both looked to the older warrior presiding over the ceremony. He knew something was odd about the child but in the end, his job was to verify the DNA of the baby and that had been done. He spoke to the warriors. “I welcome my new prince and pledge my undying loyalty to him forever.” The warriors parted and D’Bath left with the child.
T’Leh spoke for another ten or fifteen minutes before excusing himself to look after his son. He was actually surprised by the reactions of the assembled guests. He thought they would be so self-important that they wouldn't appreciate his leaving to be with his son. He actually received a spontaneous and nearly completely unison standing ovation. He waved one last time and left the room.
M'Tawny was standing by the lifeless form of their new baby. She could instantly tell what her husband was thinking and rushed to comfort him. “He's just sedated, don't worry. I know he looks otherwise, but D’Bath assures me he's doing better than can be expected.”
T’Leh began to reach down to touch his son when his hand was stopped by M'Tawny and D’Bath spoke up from the other side of the room. “Don't touch him, please. The surgical bed is just finishing setting up the sterile surgical bubble and I don't want you interrupting the process. I'm just about ready to start the procedure.”
D’Bath rolled a cart to the surgical bed and connected the two together. The two apparatuses then began talking to each other and a graphic on the main screen showed that the surgical field between the two was now merged into one field. The cart held the little prince's original skin, suspended in a gravity field. They looked like puzzle pieces to the most gruesome puzzle ever created.
M'Tawny sat by the surgical bed and tried to send her son all of the love she could. T’Leh was just about to get a harsh reprimand from D’Bath when he finally snapped out of it and went to the prep area and donned a surgical robe, followed by the cleansing process all members of a surgical team went through before starting an operation. No other medical personnel could be counted on to keep the secret or help with the surgery, so D’Bath had given T’Leh a crash course in how to be a surgical assistant. D’Bath planned to do everything himself but he wanted a second set of hands prepped and ready to enter the surgical field in case he needed help. After two months of coaching T’Leh, D’Bath was certain that the emperor could handle some basic surgical assistant duties if the need arose.
The procedure went as well as could be expected and the prince survived the operation. D’Bath was cleaning up and erasing all digital records of the operation from the surgical suite's memory. “I've given him as much sedation as possible but he is still going to be in a fair amount of pain as the nerve endings try to repair themselves. The procedure was very traumatic to him at a cellular level, not to mention the actual physical aspect of what just took place. Keep him out of the public eye and obviously never let a warrior touch him.”
D’Bath continued to talk as the proud parents looked at their son. The voice faded and the scene swirled again, telling Bloom that they were done with this portion of the history lesson. As the image swirled, he saw glimpses of the prince as he grew up and the family relocating to this sector of the galaxy. The images faded completely and Bloom was nowhere. There was an absence of sound, light, feeling, perception of any kind.
“There is so much more I would love to show you. Even through all of the pain my people inflicted on portions of the galaxy, we still created and discovered many wondrous things.”
“Can you download yourself into my visor program? Then I could take you with us and you'd have time later to show me, show everyone, all the good things your history has to offer.”
“Sadly, no. I'm not a computer program to be downloaded. I am...” A slight pause as though the answer was just now coming to him. “My name is Fouter.”
“Are you saying that you are the emperor's favorite bodyguard from a thousand years ago? How is that possible? I could understand if you were in stasis but obviously you aren't. Are you sure you're not just a digital avatar or maybe a download of who Fouter used to be?”
“Yes, I'm sure. At least I am now. Showing you our history has awakened my earlier memories. I have been evolving emotionally and intellectually for the last thousand years, in a way that my species was never designed to do. My body is in a torture tube in the main hangar bay where the rest of your team is. The emperor put me in it when they were escaping this planet. He gave the tube specific instructions to not torture me and to keep me alive at all costs. His hope was to return for me one day and free me if he could ever find a way to overcome my genetic programming to kill him after his deception to the empire was discovered. The tube followed his orders and has kept me alive ever since.”
Bloom was still in the ethereal nothingness, which for some reason made this new information even harder to comprehend. “I still don't see how that's possible or how that has allowed you to enter my mind. Also, why don't you want to kill us like all of your friends we've met so far?”
“As I said, I've evolved emotionally and I realize how wrong my genetic programming was. I've had a thousand years to review every piece of historical data the empire gathered. With the physical changes the torture tube made to my body to keep me alive, I have moved past what I ever could have been otherwise.
�
�With the base evacuated and no one to limit what the torture tube could do, it used its vast programming to come up with a solution to ensure it could follow the emperor's orders. It interfaced with all of the computers in the base and used the security robots for manual labor. Eventually it was able to create a neural network that allowed my mind to flow through the entire computer system in this base. Don't confuse that with a neural download. I'm not a program or even data in the system. My brain is still in my body but I have access to the entire base.”
“That still doesn't explain how you hijacked my mind, how we're going to help Daria, or why you can't just override the security protocols. Or maybe you can?”
“Unfortunately I can't. I have become 'friends' with the artificial intelligence that controls the base but he still won't let me override certain security functions. I would've liked to have helped your team sooner but I am blocked from controlling certain functions.
“I was able to use our security protocols to hack into your visor and communications to achieve a direct neural link with you. That's how we are communicating now. As you were probing deeper into our system and moving towards the pain you felt, you were getting to a security point that would overload your brain if I hadn't stepped in. Plus, without the direct access to your brain, all of the information I passed on to you would have had to have been done in real time and obviously that isn't an option. As it is, we've already spent almost thirty seconds in here and have just about that much time left to save your friend. Once I sever the neural link, I will stay in contact with you via your communications link.
“When I release your mind, you need to go to the security door and place flares in these four positions on the wall.”
Bloom's mind was given an image of the corridor and where the flares needed to go. In the image, he saw hidden control panels open up and mechanical levers twist in place in a specified order and direction. The hidden panels were just like the one they found in the hole at the beginning of the mission.