Mindguard

by Andrei Cherascu

  Sophie just nodded, for she felt she didn’t have the strength to do anything else. Ross gave the order to set up the tents.

  ●

  “Ma’am, sorry to disturb you but we need to talk.”

  Dieter Muench was the first person to come see her since they left Old Earth. The ship had landed on Noradio 2 a few hours before team Ayers-Ross was schedule to arrive. She had spent the entire duration of the journey in the holochamber, trying to establish contact with the Andersons. Once the ship entered the Djago Desert, she lost connection to the cloud and spent the rest of the time in quiet solitude, trying to make sense of the situation.

  The commander and his brother had been missing for twenty-four hours and they had made no attempt to communicate with anyone. Every single enforcer she came in contact with was visibly worried. This had never happened before in the unit’s history. In her heart, Tamisa knew that the brothers’ disappearance had everything to do with this mission. Her mission.

  “Ma’am?”

  She had given express orders to be left alone, but she was aware that Muench would not be asking to speak with her if it weren’t important.

  “What is it?”

  “Ross is scheduled to arrive on this planet in a few hours. We will intercept his team shortly after that. You haven’t yet set foot on the planet, ma’am.”

  Tamisa appreciated the respect. Prior to being declared Field Unit Commander everyone had either called her Tamisa or Tammy, now she was ma’am. Only Villo continued to call her Tammy, even in front of the others. It bothered her, but she was too busy with the events surrounding the mission to confront him about it.

  “I know, I’ve been working,” she said.

  “You need time to adapt to the planet’s neuraltranscendence field.”

  Since she had technically never been to a desert planet before, protocol required her to interact with the planet’s NT field at least three hours before the start of the mission. The brain needed time to adapt. The nanobots that served as mindguards had already been injected into her bloodstream but pre-exposure to the neural field was necessary before the mission could begin. The rule had been established by Prime Timekeeper Cor Wanners, after the formation of the Enforcement Unit.

  “I grew up on Aanadya, Mr. Muench. It’s a border planet that’s as dangerous as anything you’d find in the desert. I think I’m well-equipped to deal with the nuisance of a NT field.”

  “With the utmost respect madam, Aanadya is a border planet. I’m sure it has a considerable field in comparison with a place like Terra Antiqua, but desert planets are something entirely different. I respectfully advise that you follow protocol. Akio has also had his first exposure and he is in pretty bad shape.”

  “Understood, I’ll do it right away.”

  ●

  When Tamisa stepped outside the small spacecraft she found Villo and Winston Calladan stretching their legs. Akio was with them, and he was as shaken up as Muench had said. He was pale and his forehead was drenched in sweat. Everyone turned to look at Tamisa as she disembarked. They were obviously curious to see her reaction.

  She felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, like panic attack. A terrible headache developed behind her eye sockets and her heartbeat hastened. Her condition got worse by the second. She felt like she just wanted to start crying.

  She didn’t.

  Taking a few deep breaths she used the mental conditioning techniques that Villo had taught her, to calm herself down. She thought about that personal place every enforcer had to choose, the one corner of the universe that belonged solely to them. They should make it their life’s mission to always return to that place. Their ultimate destination. A beacon of light in the darkness of their dangerous assignments. More than just a physical place, it was supposed to be a refuge for their minds. Tamisa remembered the serenity with which Villo always meditated on the rock that oversaw the Mediterranean Sea. To him, it was the most important place in the world. A home for his soul. She had a different one.

  At first, she had encountered difficulties trying to pick out a place of her own.

  “There is just none I can think of,” she always said, when Villo criticized her inability to choose a mental anchor.

  “You are angry and restless,” he had said to her once. It was a short while after she started training with him privately. “Your heart is restless and your mind follows its lead. You just never stopped running away, even after all this time.”

  “So what the hell makes you think I’m running from something and not towards something?!” she snapped.

  Villo puffed. “Jeez Tammy, sometimes your head is as thick as it is pretty. Motion is good, running is good. Hell, I teach speed if nothing else. A fast body, a body that is always on the move, can never be harmed. A dynamic mind is so much more valuable than a static one.”

  “Then why are you lecturing me about running?”

  “Because, Tammy, running is only effective if you have full control over when to stop.”

  He had been right as always. Full control; that was the most important thing in the world. It had been difficult back then to find a place where her mind could ‘stop’, but it was not difficult anymore. Now she had a place of her own. It was her bed, the bed in which she had first made love to Villo. That was the most important place in the world. It was not only a place of rest for her body, but for her mind as well. It was a universe all of its own. Their shared universe. It was the place to which she always wanted to return.

  Now, on this alien planet, exposed to a traumatic neural transcendence field for the first time in her life, Tamisa thought of her bed… and it helped.

  It all happened so quickly. The process of calming down was strenuous, but in the end she succeeded. The pain receded, her body stopped shaking. The murmured voices grew silent. She was in full control. Her colleagues were staring at her in amazement.

  “Wow,” said Villo.

  “That was incredible,” Tahara said. He looked like he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was part astonishment and part shame.

  “Goddamn, you barely even flinched,” said Winston Calladan, the man who just days ago expressed his worries that the team was being lead by a woman. “Most people… ” He started saying something but then just looked at Tahara and burst out laughing.

  “Hey man, screw you,” the young enforcer said and stormed off back to the spaceship. Calladan was shaking with laughter. “You should have seen this guy before, he completely lost his shit.”

  In one single moment, Tamisa managed to earn the respect that had not been given to her when she had been placed in command. For the first time, she felt ready. Right on cue, Timekeeper Kernis informed her that their ship’s radar detected signs of a Muench-Henriksen gateway near the planet’s orbit. Within minutes, she was back in the holochamber, where Kernis awaited with a map of Noriado 2, as seen from space.

  The radar clearly displayed a red energy ring, where the Muench-Henriksen gateway had been opened. A red dot, representing the Ayers-Ross spacecraft, made its way towards the planet. Tamisa followed it for various minutes, petrified, unable to say or do anything. That spaceship carried Sheldon Ayers, her enemy, the man she had vowed to take down. His mere existence threatened the success of her mission and her future with the enforcers. Also on that spacecraft was Sophie Gaumont, who held inside her mind an information package so important it caused the commander to act in a manner that was completely unheard of. The second that ship touched ground, the most important day of her life would commence. She remembered her words to the hologram of Sheldon Ayers.

  “One of us has to lose!”

  Chapter 19

  Day 29: Today there was no speaking with him. He was quiet and sad. He spent the whole day sitting in his favorite armchair, with a book in his hands. I am certain he was not actually reading from it. He was upset over something that had taken place this morning. While working on his latest project, a biography of Silas Yurkin, one of the first explorers to step through a
Muench-Henriksen gateway, he wanted to look up some information in a certain book. He forgot its title. It took him very little time to recall it, but by then it was already too late; his mood became dark. He retreated to his office and asked not to be disturbed. I was, of course, with him when it happened. I think that hurt him most of all. I wish I could have better comforted him. I wish I could have told him it was not that bad. But I would never lie to him like that. He is a man with a monumental memory. He has memorized books of science word for word and equation for equation. He can quote thousands of works of theater, poetry or philosophy. He has the ability to notice and remembered every single visual detail of a particular environment, details a lesser brain might overlook. And there he was this morning, even if only for a brief moment, frozen with confusion in the middle of the room, looking lost, like a small helpless child or a deteriorated old man.

  Notes from an unnamed journal retrieved by High Commander Tamisa Faber from the home of Sheldon Ayers. The notes are attributed to Sheldon Ayers, though definitive authentication is still in progress

  Compared to La Khez, where the ground seemed to want to open up and swallow them whole under the delighted gaze of a sadistic, leaden sky, Noriado 2 was almost charming, with its small towns and villages of log houses surrounded by thick forests. Caught in a night that lasted over three months, the town of Kamona seemed to slumber peacefully. It almost resembled a winter resort. There was no hint of the dangers that allegedly plagued this world. Sophie pointed that out to Ross, who smiled knowledgeably.

  “In places like this, the forests are more dangerous than the towns,” he said. “Because of its distance from the border to the IFCO, Noriado 2 is a hotspot for black market merchandise. The locals illegally procure it from IFCO planets and sneak it into their towns through the forests.“

  “If you’re looking to lay low and keep out of sight, it can’t get any better than dense woodlands and three months of darkness a year,” Ray Manner said.

  They had landed their ship a short distance away from the village and had hiked through the forest for twenty minutes. In the company of the bodyguards, Sophie had not felt the danger at all. She had every confidence in Ross and his team. She was already feeling a lot better than she had felt on La Khez and she suspected that, after letting her go through the necessary shock of initial exposure, Sheldon was now sheltering her mind from the effects of the neural transcendence field.

  For the first time since setting foot on a desert planet, Sophie had actually had the awareness to notice the landscape that surrounded her. She studied the trees, observing in fascination how their barks had evolved to grow certain protuberances which, from the distance, looked like minerals. Isabel explained that those bulges served to store the sun’s energy for use in the months of winter darkness. For a brief moment, she forgot about her mission and just immersed herself in the exotic beauty of the strange planet. When they reached the entrance to the village, Ross signaled for everyone to stop.

  “We’ll find a local inn and we’ll bunk there. I’ll tell them that we’re a thoughtprotection agency so that they don’t get any ideas about you two lovely ladies.”

  “You think that will keep them at a distance?” Sophie asked.

  “We’ll get our point across,” Luther Brinks said, with a strange smile on his face. The man smiled very rarely and, after seeing that grimace on his battered mug, Sophie wished he wouldn’t smile at all. Some faces, she discovered, were just not made to express joy.

  “They’re just bumpkins,” Ross said. “They can be dangerous, but if they find out we’re a thoughtprotection agency they’ll know what’s best for them and keep away. We’ll spend a few hours in Kamona even though we haven’t been on the road long, because if we leave right now it will be nighttime when we arrive on Carthan and I don’t want that.”

  They proceeded through the dark and narrow alleys. There was no electricity. The only light came through the windows of the modest homes, where fires burned in shoddy stoves, the only defense against the darkness and the cold of a winter night that seemed to last forever. But it was beautiful, like something out of a fairytale. Sophie realized how different the place would have seemed if she were not accompanied by Ross and his team. Perhaps the smoke coming from the chimneys would not have made her think of home and hearth, but hellfire and brimstone, and the deserted village square might not have brought to mind rural charm, but brutal public executions. It was all a matter of perspective, a perspective that depended only on one’s state of mind.

  She wondered how much Sheldon had to do with the way she perceived this place. Was it the protective embrace of his mind that made her see things much less threatening than they really were?

  They reached a place that had a sign above the door which simply read ‘Pub’. It was written in the city’s native tongue, which was a variation of a language Sheldon could speak. Ross was the first to enter. He had the unmistakable aura of a leader, like a victorious general returning from battle. His enormous body barely fit through the door.

  When the entire team was inside, there was a palpable feeling of tension. Even though a mellow flame burned in a fireplace, Sophie had the sensation of cold. It was a cold that no fire could cast away. People with faces of predatory beasts and stenches that spoke of barns and negligence gawked at them in threatening stillness, especially Sophie and Isabel. For the first time in their journey, she could feel the subtle presence of Sheldon in her mind. So far she had only guessed it but now it was perceptible, like a friend you think you recognize from far away, but are not sure until the first features of their face become discernible. It was clear that Sheldon had perfected his protection to be almost undetectable by his client. Even the slight hint of his mind’s presence invoked a feeling of familiarity.

  Ross went to speak with the innkeeper, while the rest of the team waited near the entrance. The place became as quiet as a graveyard. The patrons stopped their conversations and just stared at the team, while the bodyguards made every effort to stare back just as forcefully. The surreal stillness was broken by a single voice. Sophie turned in the direction of the sound and saw that it had come from an extremely large man, almost as big as Ross, who was sitting at a table in the far end of the room. He had asked them something but she couldn’t understand the language. The massive man got up from his chair and started walking towards them, slowly, with heavy steps, as if to purposefully accentuate his impressive size.

  The rest of the patrons remained seated, watching the unfolding scene with great interest. The large man repeated his question. Instead of answering, Luther Brinks, who was closest to him, took a step forward, grabbed the man’s left arm and broke it with such speed and force that the behemoth dropped to the ground before ever having a chance to try to defend himself.

  “Any other questions?” Brinks asked, sweeping the room with his gaze. Nobody answered. Everyone looked away, their previously intrusive stares now fixed firmly on the drinks on their tables. During all the commotion Ross had not even bothered to turn around to see what was happening. He just calmly spoke to the innkeeper, whose body language revealed that he was eager to please the giant. When they finished talking, Ross walked up to Sophie, paying no attention to the man squirming on the floor.

  “The innkeeper also owns a few rooms around town,” he said, turning to look at the man behind the bar, whose face was a complete mask of servitude. “He will kindly put us up for the evening.”

  “Let’s get installed,” Francois said. He carelessly stepped over the fallen man, who was still screaming in pain.

  ●

  Tamisa was in the holochamber studying a map which displayed the position of every member of team Ayers-Ross. The glowing red symbols had different codes to identify the targets. The map made her think of a chessboard. The only two pieces missing were the most important: the king and queen.

  Because Sophie Gaumont and Sheldon Ayers were both prototechs, they could not be tracked by the neuralfield scanners, wh
ile regular genetic trackers could not produce results in real time. In this chess game, the roles were reversed. Sophie Gaumont was the king, the ultimate target; of inestimable value but holding no power. Sheldon Ayers was the queen, the most dangerous piece on the board. Remove him and all the other pieces will be reduced to mere pawns.

  At first, Tamisa had had a great aversion to the thought of using the NF scanners because of the legal repercussions. But now that she was using them, she was excited. Let the commander answer in front of the Council of Presidents. After all, he gave the order to use the devices. For now, she was planning on enjoying every second of the hunt. She was observing the real time movements of her enemies with great fascination. She loved the feeling she got from knowing where they were at all times, while they had no idea that she was even there.

  She watched as the team entered a local establishment. After a while, they all exited and split up into two different groups. One group was formed of Mensah, Gaultier and Manner, and the other consisted of Ross, Elden, Brinks and Bayles. They went to two separate buildings. Tamisa knew from their mission plan that they would spend a few hours on Noraido 2 while they waited for the night to pass on Carthan. She also knew that Ross and Elden were assigned with guarding the carrier’s physical integrity while Sheldon Ayers protected her mind, so it was easy to deduce that the invisible proto-techs were with them.

  While Sheldon’s team remained in their chambers, Mensah’s group quickly returned to the pub, presumably to keep an eye on the locals. The team was now divided. One single but powerful target became two separate, weaker preys. Tamisa had not foreseen this strategy. In the Ayers-Ross mission plans there was no mention of dividing the team at any time. Ross had winged it. His impromptu call worked in Tamisa’s favor. Ross had unwittingly made the Enforcers’ mission that much easier. What he had divided, Tamisa would conquer. She summoned the com system.