Reawakened

by Dean C. Moore

  Her nanite-infused, sleek black leather gloves were quite capable of synthesizing a gun for her on command, or in this case, a cattle prod. She used the shaft to send just enough of an electrical charge at Rookman’s naked torso to assure him that this was not part of the turn-on experience. He leaped off his mount, screaming, and staggered up off the floor moments later. Cosmos waited for his vision to clear and for her image to come into better focus for him.

  “You’re under arrest, Rookman, for crimes against this galaxy, and a few others. You’ll stand trial at the universe level, assuming you’re not deported first to stand trial at the multiverse level.”

  “But if I lose at the supreme court I’ll be flushed into another universe entirely! It could take me hundreds of lifetimes to get a foothold.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it, Rookman. If it’s up to me, you’ll spend the rest of eternity in a pain pod—where you could only wish to be jettisoned out the ass of some black hole.”

  “Surely nothing I did could have been that bad.”

  The octopus entity had since moved on to service a few other male and female humanoids that had been sharing Rookman’s club car. They were of various species, so some had more orifices to plug than others; the octopus seemed able to simply sprout more limbs of various thicknesses as needed. It was turning into quite the carousel ride.

  Cosmos fought to keep her attention on Rookman even as her blood boiled; these people had no respect for the law and for the very things that permitted intergalactic social intercourse without it leading to all-out war.

  “You’re being charged with unlawful sex with a minor Jujubian.”

  “That infant was two hunded million years old!”

  “I’m sorry, but it was still an infant by their standards, and their queen insists on your head. It’s that or intergalactic war, and the CSA isn’t about to stand for that, for whatever it thinks of your little indiscretion.”

  “But I thought you guys don’t do sex crimes!”

  “We don’t, except for when they become intergalactic incidents, then we’re forced to slum it as you’re doing here.” Cosmos gestured to her club car. The robots inside poured out like one of those 1950s sci-fi movies entitled, “Spiders from Mars.” They glommed on to Rookman’s entire body, interlocking themselves until they had him inside a moving prison; he wasn’t going anywhere they weren’t going, and they were headed back to the police car, hovering just outside the theme room.

  She climbed in the car opposite him as the doors slid closed and the autonav whisked them away. “This won’t stand. You realize that. My people will get me out of this,” he hissed. “And you’ll rue the day they had to get involved.”

  Being royalty, Rookman was used to a certain level of protection from the law. But his world had only expanded to cover a couple of its moons and three of the five planets in its relatively small, backwards solar system. “They’ve been advised,” she said, “that if they make a move to intervene, your entire solar system will be blown off the map.”

  Rookman seethed. “Politics!” he spat. “Petty politics at that. It always comes down to that in the end. You should be ashamed of yourself, you with your high-toned morals.”

  He was right, of course. And the truth was, she was ashamed of herself. It had been a blight against her perfect record and a lifetime of arrests that secured international trade agreements and upheld the universal peace; she had never denigrated herself to bowing to political pressures before this day. Which was no doubt why she was being forced to relive it. Courtesy of the alien queen. The Fenquin, as the alien queen and her people were known across the cosmos—back when she had her own people—were a master race that lived to enslave others; no amount of worlds, solar systems and galaxies were too much for them to subjugate. It was another dark spot in Cosmos’ career; certain civilizations were beyond the reach even of the CSA; they were just too powerful.

  It was why the CSA had employed Cosmos in the first place. She was now one of many cosmic-grade wizards. The hope was that together with the cosmic-grade scientists even the likes of the Fenquin would no longer be beyond the reach of the CSA. It was a great idea in theory; so far theory didn’t match up with reality.

  Rookman pulled a Houdini—the expression supplied Cosmos by Naomi—slipping the bonds of his robot spiders and diving for the door. He ended up jumping through a portal courtesy of Cosmos’ magic and arriving back inside the agency car—as a 3D portrait hanging against the back wall, capturing his sense of outrage at being bagged yet again. At least this time he wasn’t going anywhere and she didn’t have to put up with his lip.

  The last time this scene played out, Rookman had gotten away, because she was too rule-abiding for her own good. Since Rookman didn’t use magic to make his escape, she figured he was subsequently the province of the CSA’s cosmic-grade scientists to figure out how to throw a noose around. It was a tragic example of poor judgement. The ensuing wake of crimes he would commit before finally being re-apprehended would leave an even bigger stain on her service record. But that didn’t compare to the ugly mark he’d left on her conscience.

  She smiled with satisfaction seeing his “portrait” hanging there. For the medicine to work, the Fenquin alien queen couldn’t just be doctoring Cosmos in the virtual reality of her mind. She had to grant access to an alternate timeline, a parallel universe in which Rookman was thwarted by Cosmos. So in at least one alternate reality, justice was served—the first time.

  Cosmos used the realization that such may have been the case even before the Fenquin queen got involved. After all, parallel universes were a fact of life. That meant that in any number of them, Cosmos had acted rightly the first time. But she also knew herself—and just how by-the-book she was. So the realization couldn’t free her from her sense of gratitude and indebtedness to the Fenquin queen; and from her willingness to surrender to her further. Still, the insight had popped into her head with the help of the Soren/beast dyad. And she understood why he’d intervened in her little drama; in the days ahead she was going to have to work hard not to let healing the wounds of her past lives ensnare her further in the Fenquin queen’s quicksand pits of time, from which she might well otherwise never escape. If she was to have a chance at all, she needed to remain conscious of all of the forces at play in a given situation, not just the ones the Fenquin queen wished to draw her attention to.

  Cosmos was bleeping out of this timeline. To her surprise the one that was moving her to the alternate timeline was Naomi. The bitch had found a link to Cosmos’ childhood based on her clinched clitoris over the thought of not putting Rookman behind bars—in every parallel universe.

  Interesting. Though fuming, Cosmos might just let this latest drama play out. It could work in Naomi’s favor, but it might well work in Cosmos’.

  THIRTY

  Cosmos expected to be taken back to her childhood. Instead she was drawn into yet another past life. One in which she’d been the captain of a space cruiser.

  She unstrapped herself from the captain’s chair, feeling the effects of whiplash along her neck, toward which her hand instinctively moved to massage out the pain. After a few chiropractic twists, her neck, and now her back, felt just as out of alignment as she stepped over bodies still unconscious on the command bridge.

  The humanoid species occupying the crew was mostly reptilian in nature, and that included her own body. Some of the other humanoids had been chosen for no better reason than the command bridge was designed to accommodate their bodies; many of the lifeforms were built into their stations, as extensions of the ship. The only mobility they knew involved sending their chip-enhanced minds through the neurons and networks of the ship’s artificial intelligence. Other octopus-related species were favored simply because they could manipulate many more touchpad controls and sensors built into their programmable displays than your basic bipedal humanoid.

  Emergency repairs were already underway. The ship that had pirated away whatever bount
y the bootleggers had come aboard for had left them largely defenseless and immobile. They’d be good for little more than parts recovery and could only pray some salvage ship would find them before the last of their life-support systems collapsed.

  The overhead lights blinked on and off. Dangling from the ceilings were frayed wires shooting sparks and liquid; the artificial intelligence that was the mind of the ship—occupying over eighty-percent of her hull—was hemorrhaging through the wounds; thus tending those lacerations was the top priority, explaining why engineers and repair crews ignored her as she navigated by them toward the elevator, headed for the lower decks. It also explained why they couldn’t be bothered with the unconscious crew on the floor—many wounded and dying—either. They were simply not the priority. If the ship’s brain died, then they were all dead anyway.

  Making her way to medbay, Cosmos, who didn’t bother to rifle through her mind to find out what her name was in this lifetime, tried to get a sense of what the pirates were after.

  It didn’t take her long to figure out the solution to the mystery. The children were gone. They were all gone. Infants had been ripped out of wombs—explaining most of the sickbay visits and the filled beds. Nursing newborns that were absconded with left mothers’ actively lactating breasts leaking. Some mothers were milking themselves just to relieve the pressure and to fill bottles, probably in denial about not getting their infants back, and determined to hold on to the milk for their inevitable return.

  The assault to the children’s psyches had hit Hatura—Cosmos’s name in this lifetime finally percolated to the surface of her brain—harder than the other crimes committed here today, whose impact would be no less felt for generations to come.

  Every time she turned, thinking she was hearing a screaming baby, it was just another mother grieving for the loss of her child. But the children, what of their malformed psyches?

  One of Hatura’s security officers approached her with a smart-screen, showing the image of one of the pirates that had boarded their ship. She had identified the humanoid lifeform in question and brought up the specs on their species. “They needed the children because they couldn’t have their own. The Reddians”—the name for these humanoids—“are incredibly advanced. Their sophistication with genetics allows them to uplift virtually any species they come in contact with. These children, ironically, will enjoy better lives than their own mothers could ever have given them.” Hatura glared at her security officer, a human that had been raised by another adoptive species on another world, and considered herself better for it. She was hardly an unbiased reporter on the subject, but Hatura couldn’t dismiss her perfectly valid viewpoint. Most of the top positons throughout the galaxies in this sector went to Reddians or their adopted children; no humanoid could hold a candle to them in virtually any job function. Artificial General Intelligences could do more, but they wouldn’t be interested in any functions for which bipedal or incarnate humanoids of any shape and variety were better suited for.

  The security officer’s eyes, almost alien in their intensity and their ability to convey intelligence and focus, combined with her mixed-heredity features, argued well for stirring things up early in life. And right now, Hatura hated her for it.

  Most of these mothers, when their grieving periods had come to an end, would likely end up agreeing with her security officer, happy that their children had been stolen away into a better life than they could have given them. In the end, the children, as nimble as they were, would likely not suffer the same psychic torment as the parents. But for all that, Hatura could never let go the sense of anger she felt at the defilement of the children.

  The answer to the question of why she responded the way she had then, and for that matter, why she still carried that strong determination to right injustices into this lifetime as Cosmos, where she served in the capacity of a CSA agent, would have to wait for another day. Naomi’s message was more about letting Cosmos know that if she truly wished to be free of her past, she was going to need Naomi’s cooperation, and that meant sharing power with her.

  Cosmos had to admit, it was a bold move on Naomi’s part, and well played. She would certainly give the matter more serious consideration after today. Cosmos was quite the blood hound when it came to chasing down leads and capturing the most wanted figures in the cosmos. For all that, she had to admit there were blind spots in her ability to investigate certain types of crimes, most notably the ones that required a less rule-bound mind to pursue the culprits, to really even comprehend their modus operandi. Allying with Naomi might well enhance her ability to track illusive criminals she had had to hand over to others. Cosmos was so good at working the system, she usually just waited for the hackers and pirates and super-smooth criminals who were equally adept at getting around the status quo to make a slipup. It only took one for her to find them. And everyone let their guard down sooner or later. Well, most everyone, explaining why her capture rate fell short of one hundred percent. Naomi might well allow her to close the holes in the net that were allowing the few fish to slip through.

  Again, Cosmos would give the matter greater consideration. If the girl was being rhetorical and manipulative in pleading her case, her thinking was not absent of logic.

  And there was the matter of the Fenquin alien queen’s psychic influence to shake off. The posse of wizards dogging her from earth would need to avoid succumbing to her influence. Just as importantly, they had to figure out how to get these Orcs and the species of the other worlds the Fenquin queen currently had her influence over to reclaim their own sense of self apart from her. Doing one of those things without full access to the oversoul would be hard enough for any of the rebel underdogs in Soren’s entourage, but Cosmos couldn’t imagine any of them pulling off both those things unless they all healed the wounds of their past. Perhaps this was true of her most of all.

  Oversoul access would mean a promotion for Cosmos in the CSA, as well, to Tier One. Those were the agents who went after the supersentient master species like the Fenquin that for the most part remained beyond the reach not just of the CSA but of the influence of the federation of planets. Many of the supersentients were at outright war with the federation; and without a means of checking the powers of these master races, the federation itself existed on borrowed time.

  And if Naomi could get so far inside Cosmos’s head with so little mind power of her own, she might do even better than Cosmos at turning the tables on the Fenquin queen. Certain Houdini types were good at getting out of impossible situations; it was an aptitude that relied less on super-genius and even super-powerful wizardry than one might think; an admission that Cosmos was only grudgingly willing to make after her little blast from the past.

  ***

  Naomi smiled; the crack she’d forged in Cosmos’ psyche was one she could continue to widen. One day soon Cosmos would have no choice but to share the stage of her mind with Naomi; as the beast had learned to do with Soren. Once again, Naomi couldn’t deny that her attraction to Soren was one that could only be understood across many dimensions—some as yet to reveal themselves to her—to both of them.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Oh, shit! What are we doing back in Egypt, staring at the pyramids?” Ramon, the instant he slipped off the battlefield littered with Orcs, was filled with excitement. Now, the same tsunami of feeling hitting him square across the chest washed all that from him. He was so disappointed that with the sudden drop in blood pressure, he was actually light-headed.

  “You mandala magicians are very excitable, you know that?” Stealy hit him with a cold, hard stare. “Calm your ass down. First off, this isn’t Earth, and those aren’t our pyramids. The scale is all off. That pyramid you’re staring at would best Olympus Mons on Mars for height—and Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in our solar system.”

  “Since when did you become Kim Stanley Robinson?” Ramon wanted to glare at her longer to hide his embarrassment behind a mask of anger, but now that she mentioned it, he
couldn’t get enough of those pyramids. That barometer of feelings was rising again, threatening to shoot the mercury straight out the top of his head.

  He put his hand on his noggin and whistled. His whistle was picked up by the winds scraping sand grains across one another, like the orchestra kicking in at the flick of a conductor’s wand. He swore he could pick out words from the now keening sounds.

  “You know what this means!” Ramon said. He jumped high into the air and did a frenzied-paced kata, moving through a succession of martial arts moves, ostensibly to fight off invisible attackers, but really just to help him channel his excitement before he jumped out of his skin.

  “It means that whoever sited those pyramids on Earth on the planet’s intersecting Ley lines, wasn’t just looking to screw with the local power spots—they were tying the Earth into a much bigger energy grid, that includes this planet and who knows how many more?”

  “Silence, you two!” Vima commanded. She wasn’t a girl of six anymore. She was a full grown woman oozing sensuality. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…who knew? Ramon gasped; he didn’t think he had any awe left in him after his revelation about pyramid power extending across the heavens. But she was that dazzling. The pupils of her eyes weren’t normal; instead of black spheres, they were deformed—in the shape of the fetus whose developmental stage she was stuck in for thousands of years, and the rest of her eyes—were the honeyed-amber of the prison that held her. Could the pupils and irises of her eyes actually reconfigure themselves depending on her states of consciousness? And did she use those portals they moved through in tandem with her womb magic to age herself how she wanted? He wanted to say, “Just to be clear, mandala magicians don’t take well to being ordered about; we consider ourselves the most impressive force in the universe.” But he was strangely unwilling to go against her.