Kharmic Rebound

by Yeager, Aaron

  She lifted up a filthy patchwork doll with misaligned eyes. Cami... we’re finally going home. A real home, can you believe it?

  Thuquan looked younger back then, and sported a rather unflattering mustache as he turned around and put his massive arm over the back of the seat. “We’re here,” he announced. “Now, when you approach Mr. Ssykes, it is important that you...”

  Daddy! she squealed, opening the door herself and hitting the ground running. She could feel her feet pounding against the fancy stone floor as she ran towards the man waiting for her. Her stylish sun hat caught in the wind and blew off of her head. She opened her arms, her large innocent eyes full of joy as she neared him. How long had she dreamed of this day. How long had she waited for this moment. An entire lifetime worth of emotions bubbled up within her as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

  Her head cracked to one side. Her vision blurred. Her face hit the marble as she rolled over onto her back. Cami scattered and rolled along the ground, coming to a rest at the foot of Thuquan, who scooped it up to keep the floor clean.

  Who said you could touch me? The man with cold eyes asked, a look of disgust in his eyes. He had a fresh scar running across his face. The girl sat up and placed her hand on her cheek. Already it was swelling from the strike. Her large innocent eyes trembled in confusion, hurt, and longing.

  Two more men stepped up. Their eyes looked almost as hard as her father’s. They each had a son with them, about her age. She looked at the boys, but they refused to look back at her.

  Before she could say anything, strong hands grabbed her, and a needle was thrust into her arm. It burned so bad she squealed with pain, but when her father raised his hand, she shut her mouth and covered her face.

  So you can learn, E’Duwag said. The shot we just gave you will suppress your abilities during the trial.

  Trial? she asked, but immediately regretted it, as another strike hit her in the face.

  There cannot be more than one heir to the Ssykes Dynasty. That is our most sacred law. We learned it over many hundreds of generations, and at great cost. It inevitably leads to war, strife, and infighting. With the death of my daughter, two of the branch families have made a bid for leadership. There are now three potential candidates. After today there will be only one.

  The ground before them opened up into a deep dark hole. And the three children were tossed in, one by one. As the little girl fell into darkness, the hole closed behind her. You will fight, or you will die, her father said. Make your choice.

  Daddy! she cried, outstretching her tiny arms, but his cold eyes offered nothing in return. Then, all was darkness.

  * * *

  A day later, three of the most powerful men in the galaxy stood before the opening again. Down in the hole, they saw two boys lying on the ground, bruised and beaten, clinging on the edge of death. Above them stood the girl. The innocence was gone from her eyes. She was battered, cut, and swollen. Her dress was a shambles, stained with dirt and blood. Her shoes were torn and covered in bile. Her ta’atu writhed about like snakes. She looked like a completely different person than she had the night before. She was a child no more. It had been cruelly stripped away. Only a tiny corner of her heart remained unpolluted, and already she was learning how to hide that.

  E’Duwag Honrinar Ssykes only looked on in disappointment. Yesterday, you chose to fight. That earns you one day in my house. He held up his finger. Just one day. Today, you will make that same choice again, to see if you may earn your place tomorrow.

  * * *

  Cha’Rolette Ssykes sat in her quarters aboard the Kalia Greir, surrounded by windows of information. Her eyes looked the same as they did that morning in the pit as she worked feverishly. With one hand she plotted a theoretical course through an aetheric anomaly, with the other she created an economic projection on the zanzanite commodities market, planning out the exact moment that Ssykes Industries would sell its majority shareholdings in what she had already predicted would be a failing industry. Through her crystronic plugs, she reviewed course work, took practice exams, penned essays, and applied for extra credit course work. Simultaneously, with her ta’atu, she practiced moving about smaller and smaller objects. It was easy enough to punch a hole in the wall, any Issaguardian could do that, but refining one’s talent in order to move only a single grain of sand at a time, was quite a rare achievement. The practical applications of such subtle manipulation were endless. She could use it to carefully stimulate the adrenal gland of someone across the negotiating table, alter their blood pressure, irritate a nerve, or if the situation called for it, pinch off a tiny blood vessel in the brain. Such actions were completely untraceable, but even more important than having those skills was the ability to defend yourself when such things are done to you.

  The heavens knew she had saved herself on more than one occasion. In fact, to this date, there were only two people whom she had never been able to fully dominate. One was her father. The other was Gerald Dyson.

  Cha’Rolette paused and sighed to herself. Gerald...

  She reached up and placed her hand over her heart.

  A knock at the door startled her. “Duchess, are you in there?” Gerald called out.

  She snapped her fingers and the door opened, revealing Gerald standing stupidly in mid knock. “Oh, you are in here!”

  Where else would I be?

  “No one had seen you, we thought you were asleep.”

  Tch. Do not confuse me with Faolan. I am not on vacation. There will be plenty of time to sleep in the grave. While I am alive I have work to do.

  She went back to work, and Gerald could only look on in amazement. Each one of her many tasks were performed too rapidly for him to follow. The realization that she was doing them all simultaneously was mind boggling.

  “I thought you had taken a leave of absence; why are you doing schoolwork?” Gerald asked, pointing to the one window he actually recognized.

  I have, but when I return to Central Exeter, I will have to make up the assignments and lectures I missed. While I do that, my increased workload will slow my progress on the scoreboards, giving the others a chance to catch up. By completing the assignments and course work remotely, I ensure that I will hit the ground running.

  Gerald whistled as he stepped inside. Cadbury knew enough to stay out in the hall, scratching ineffectively at the metal deck for worms. “I never realized that you had to work so hard.”

  Cha’Rolette swiped her widows closed and turned to face him. Look, Gerald, I know this might be hard for you to understand, but being a Ssykes isn’t something that was handed to me. I have to earn it, every day. I had to work harder than anyone else to become the number one student in the school, and I have to work twice as hard to stay there. You know what it’s like to be at the back of the pack, everyone ahead of you, longing to equal their pace, and I can sympathize with that, but you don’t understand that it is also hard to be at the front, with everyone nipping at your heels, everyone hungry to see you fall. Everyone knowing that every stumble you make benefits them. All the time...

  Something made her back down and she turned away.

  “Go on,” he urged softly. He knew how hard it was for her to speak her mind, her real mind, even when it was just the two of them.

  She looked up at him, and that little bit of that innocence shone through for a moment. All the time wondering if the next step will be the one that earns his approval.

  In that moment, she seemed more beautiful to him than ever. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and embrace her, to hold her close, to feel her warmth. But he knew in his heart that if he did so he would not be holding her just as a friend, but as something more, and so he stopped himself.

  Instead, he placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but just so you know, you already have my approval.”

  She reached up and placed her hand on his. No, you’re wrong. It means a great deal.

  When she looked up at him wi
th her large innocent eyes, he felt a desire swell up in his heart. He wanted to kiss her. By the gods, he wanted to kiss her so badly.

  “Calm down,” he thought to himself. “She’s probably just using her powers on you again.” Instinctively, he glanced over at her ta’atu, and realized that they were not glowing or moving. That meant that this was no trick or external force. The desire was coming from within him.

  That realization scared him enough that he backed away. He tried to laugh off the moment, but it didn’t work. She could see right thought him, and her disappointed expression cut him deeper than any insult ever could.

  “We’re almost at Orthianx, I was asked to bring you to the bridge.”

  Gerald turned around, his mind reeling. He knew two things: One, that he was falling for Cha’Rolette; and two, that he didn’t know how to stop himself from falling further.

  * * *

  The predominant color of Orthianx was purple. The atmosphere, heavily laced with altazine, was a light purple, the mountains were a medium purple, the oceans were a darker purple, but still purple.

  “Wow, did the gods only have one crayon when they made this place?” Zurra wondered aloud as they slipped into orbit.

  “You know, for an agricultural world, there sure are a lot of ships here,” Gerald said, pointing out the cluster of nearly fifty small craft.

  Cha’Rolette as she looked at them. Something’s not right.

  Ilrica brought up a schematic. “Weird, there’s no record of this class in the database, but their identity beacons show them as Alliance.”

  They were small little silver craft, shaped like a grain of rice with a hollow tip at one end, which housed a huge weapons bay normally reserved for craft dozens of times their size.

  “They keep ignoring my waves.” Zurra reported.

  They can’t respond, those are drone warships, Cha’Rolette explained.

  “Drone warships?”

  She nodded. Unmanned naval vessels. I’d seen design plans for them, but I didn’t know any had actually gone into production.

  “They’re awfully small to be called warships,” Gerald observed. They don’t look that much bigger than us.”

  All the girls looked at him harshly.

  “Did I say something stupid?”

  “Well, your lips were flapping,” Ilrica teased.

  Look, Gerald, most of a normal ship’s vulnerability comes from the need to keep the occupants alive. It has to be pressurized, it has to limit the inertial forces, it has to shield the passengers from radiation, it has to carry provisions, stuff like that. A drone warship is basically just engines with guns strapped to the front and covered in five layers of armor. It doesn’t have to be big; in fact, the smaller size works in its favor, as it is more agile and has less surface area to protect. Each of those little things carries the equivalent firepower of an average destroyer.

  “No way,” Zurra said, “They’re flying the old Bertulf Empire flag.”

  She enlarged the image for all to see.

  “What?” Ilrica asked, sitting up. “Bertulf don’t use starships. They never have.” She seemed genuinely surprised.

  Gerald turned to Cha’Rolette. “Duchess, why would Ssykes Industries be making drone warships for the Bertulf?”

  I have no idea. The development of drone warships was done under a contract with the Alliance military; there would be huge legal repercussions if they were sold to a third party. It wouldn’t make sense for my father. The reward could never balance out the risk.

  “So, why are they here?”

  Everyone looked at each other ominously.

  * * *

  Gerald struggled with his facemask as they walked away from the landing pad. There was no oxygen on this world. Ilrica and Cha’Rolette breathed nitrogen, so it wasn’t an issue for them, and Zurra didn’t breathe at all as far as he could tell, meaning that only he had to wear one of these embarrassingly huge face masks. He felt like an animal in a zoo as they walked down the simple dirt road, while children pointed and stared at the thing strapped to his face. At first he had hoped that it would make a cool sound like Darth Vader, but instead it made a wheezing hiss like an old person blowing through a kazoo.

  It felt like he was being inflated, and somehow it managed to trigger his drowning reflex, so even though he was breathing, it felt like he was drowning. He found that by carefully controlling his respiration, and focusing on the fact that his lungs were indeed expanding and contracting with air, he could manage the sensation, but it was extremely unpleasant. What’s worse, the mask did nothing to filter out the high amounts of methane in the air, meaning that he felt like he was constantly breathing in farts.

  The people seemed friendly enough for purple people. Zurra kept humming the tune for ‘One-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater’ as they walked, and the two of them shared a laugh at the inside joke.

  While the younger people stared at them through the windows of their mud huts, the older generation rushed out when they saw Ilrica, laying down bowls of food at her feet while prostrating themselves submissively on the ground.

  “It looks like the grandparents still remember how to treat a hunter,” Ilrica said, happily snatching up a few of the offered morsels.

  “That’s right, this place used to be part of the Bertulf Empire,” Zurra recalled.

  It’s overly generous to refer to it as an empire. No central government, no standardized currency, no legal system, no written constitution. Just three hundred fifteen planets living in fear of the hunting packs that would occasionally arrive, seeking tribute and fresh meat.

  “And yet, it was the greatest rival to the old Confederacy before the war,” Ilrica boasted as she wolfed down a piece of raw meat. “Just think what would have happened if they had actually been trying.”

  At the center of the dusty town, which they realized was actually the capital, an altar had been erected in the center of a cobblestone square, beneath a wooden and earthwork statue of the Emperor.

  Two delegations stood at the altar, and as Gerald drew closer, he remembered to put his translator back on. Even without it, he could tell that the discussion was becoming decidedly heated.

  Two massive female Bertulf stood guard on their side. Although they were a little more sleek and feminine than Liufr Ivaylo, they still shared much in common. They stood hunched over like a werewolves ready to strike, with long, lithe limbs covered in slabs of tight muscle. Their thick fur was braided in places with bones and bits of meat. They wore simple loincloths and tunics, and carried long spears finely carved from the bones of some massive creature. Their gray eyes were cold and predatory, with long muzzles and dripping, razor-sharp fangs. They were exactly what Gerald would have expected female Bertulf to look like; the confusing part was that they looked almost nothing like Ilrica.

  We apologize about the delay. We are the mediation team sent by Alliance Command.

  “You are quite late,” said the weasel of a man representing the Bertulf interests. “I am Klona, and we could wait no longer, so we began without you.”

  “Katalumbrah,” Ilrica waved in greeting to the Bertulf, who ignored her completely.

  “Thank goodness you have arrived,” the purple-skinned man said, shaking Cha’Rolette’s hand. “I am Mayor Tumn. I am the one who requested your intervention. I assume the rest of the fleet will be arriving shortly.”

  “No fleet, just us,” Ilrica explained.

  We were told this was a diplomatic issue.

  “It is, and we do not require your assistance,” Klona said, his whiskers twitching. “We were just about to put the final signatures on this treaty. Now, if you will allow us to proceed...”

  “No, we require military intervention,” Tumn explained, rubbing his massive belly nervously. The man seemed covered in sweat from head to toe. “These savages have filled our skies with warships in an effort to intimidate us into signing this blasted treaty of theirs.”

  “Your people voted just last ni
ght and accepted the terms,” Klona argued. Fifteen worlds have already signed similar treaties. “There is no reason to delay.”

  “They voted under threat of punishment! You’ve got naval grade particle cannons aimed down at us from the heavens!”

  Klona gave off a squeaky laugh, trying to release the tension. Cha’Rolette watched him closely, her keen eyes drinking in every movement, every inflection. Her focus on him was absolute. Gerald noted that it was the same way she looked when she took tests.

  “Please,” Klona tried to sound reassuring. “The senator is clearly exaggerating for effect. Alliance legal code clearly defines a warship as a craft displacing at least ten thousand metric taos. These ships are well under that threshold. At best they can be described as a heavy fighter, or an escort-class vessel, but not a warship. They do not meet the qualifications.”

  “That is an awfully technical distinction for a Bertulf delegation,” Zurra noted.

  Klona coughed into his paw. “I’ll ignore your racist remark in the name of goodwill. As we all know, pirate activity in the core world has become intolerable. Why, just last week a raiding party hit the south island and hurt a lot of people. Since the Alliance military is stretched so thin, smaller worlds like this one are basically unprotected. The Bertulf are a compassionate people, and they are willing to use their military might to keep the skies and shipping lanes safe. All they ask is a small token in return, a gesture of goodwill.”

  Tumn slammed his fist on the altar, sprinkling it with sweat. “That token is the exact same price they demanded of us when the Bertulf controlled this world. This treaty would put us in same state we were in before joining the Alliance!”

  Cha’Rolette put her hand out. May I see the treaty?

  “Of course,” Klona said, looking her body over lustfully as he handed over the tablet. After plugging in, it only took her half a second to study the hundreds of pages of text. When she was done, she looked up at one of the Bertulf towering over her.