by Jay Allan
* * *
Destra’s stomach leapt into her throat as she fell. Her long, dark hair whipped up around her ears, and she saw the ground rushing up beneath her feet. She had just enough time to suspect she’d been tricked into leaping to her doom before the grav field caught her and carried her to a soft landing atop a pile of leaves.
“Krakkin’ ride, huh?” Digger asked, beaming at her from the base of the pile of leaves.
Destra spat a piece of a red oakal leaf out of her mouth and shook her head. “Real krakking.”
They heard screaming then and looked up to see Lessie and Dean plummeting down the hole. Destra scrambled to her feet before they could land on top of her. They hit the leaf pile with a soft crunch, and Destra looked up through the hole they’d fallen through. Bits of dirt and leaves tumbled down after them only to hover to a near stop above their heads. Lessie and Dean stood up and picked the leaves out of their hair, while Digger walked to one side of the hollow chamber and opened a moss-covered panel in the rooty wall. He threw a lever and typed in a numbered code; then the hatch at the top of the chamber swung shut with a distant thud, plunging the ceiling into darkness. Now they could hear the dirt and leaves trickling down from the ceiling to pitter patter on the ground, and Destra realized that the grav field was off.
She turned to Digger then. “Please tell me this isn’t the extent of your lair.”
Digger let out a bark of laughter and half turned to her. “Ha ha ha!” he said, his eyes flashing manically. “No—” He walked to the other end of the dirty chamber. “Follow me,” he said, now shining his lantern over the root-invaded wall nearest to him. He peered intently at the wall, searching, while his lantern cast a shaky glow. Destra studied Digger’s shaking arm with a frown. His excuse had been the adrenaline, but it had been hours since their harrowing escape, so what was his excuse now?
Stims, Destra thought.
“This used to be an old rictan lair,” Digger mentioned, still scanning the wall.
Destra suppressed a shiver at that. Rictans were lithe, hairless creatures with six legs, barbed, whip-like tails, and a broad mouth full of dagger-sized teeth. Their long claws could just as easily dig through flesh and bone as they could through dirt and roots. “We had to smoke them out and then seed the entrance with gossam dung to keep them from digging a way back in,” Digger prattled on. “Then we had to do some digging of our own to make this place more livable.”
“Is that how you got the name Digger?” Destra asked, watching as he apparently found what he was looking for. His free hand shot out and disappeared up to the elbow in the dirty wall, and she realized a holofield was projected there to hide whatever he was reaching for. Destra heard a click and then there came a hiss of escaping air. A section of the dirt wall cracked open before them, and bright yellow light spilled out. As soon as their eyes adjusted to the brightness, they found themselves peering into a comfortable, modern living room. “There we are!” Digger said, and strode across the threshold to traipse dirt onto the polished duranium floors.
Destra waited on the other side, her hand hovering close by her sidearm. Her eyes were flicking around the space. It was lavish with comfortable black couches and thick red rugs. A gigantic holoscreen hung on a stone wall opposite the couches, and in the base of the wall an artificial fireplace flickered with blue flames licking over glittering glass logs. The roof of the lab was lined with what looked like thick red oakal beams, and to one side, raised above the level of the living room, lay a gleaming kitchen with all the most modern appliances. This was not the rathole stim lab Destra had been expecting; it was a well-appointed home.
Digger was still traipsing dirt into it. “Doc! Petra! I’m home!”
Destra waited for a reply before she stepped inside.
Then there came a scratching of claws scrambling for purchase on the shiny floors, accompanied by a vicious snarling and yipping which Destra recognized with a shiver of apprehension. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the sound and to a darkened hall leading away from the living room. There she spotted a trademark pair of red eyes glowing in the dark, bobbing as the creature ran toward them. Those eyes were immediately joined by another identical pair and more snarling.
Destra shrank away from the entrance to the stim lab. “Stay behind me!” she warned Lessie and Dean as she drew her plasma pistol and steadied her aim with both hands on a point between the first set of glowing red eyes.
Then that creature burst into the light, and Destra saw it for what it was—but she had already known what to expect.
It was a rictan, bounding toward them with slavering jaws already gaping in anticipation of the kill.
Chapter 4
—THE YEAR 10 AE—
Angel sat in the mess hall, eyeing the pair of strangers who had just sat down across the table from her. Her usually wide violet eyes were narrowed and flicking from side to side as she studied first one and then the other. They looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember their names.
The old man smiled wanly. His bony face made the smile look painful. “Sweetheart . . .” he said, but trailed off as if he couldn’t bring himself to broach the topic he had in mind.
Angel had plenty of experience with this. He was a reluctant client. Everyone had some sort of inhibitions fighting against their baser instincts, but some clients were stodgier than others and needed to be coaxed more gently. They were the goody goodies, the married men, and the shy virgins. They all had something holding them back, but Angel knew how to draw them out. Her gaze flicked sideways to the woman sitting beside the old man, and her elaborate rationalizations began to crumble. If this man was a client, she was dealing with a very open-minded couple.
“Hello, there,” she said, her eyes coming back to the man’s face. “What’s your name?”
He shook his head, his eyes growing moist. “You really don’t remember me?”
Angel watched the old woman sitting beside him reach out to squeeze his hand. Her eyes were moist, too. They were the same rare violet color as Angel’s own eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Angel purred. “You look familiar, but I don’t remember your names.” She reached across the table to touch the couple’s hands. “I might remember better in a more . . . intimate setting. What do you say we—”
“Stop!” the old man bellowed, his eyes flashing with hurt and something else—revulsion? Angel wondered. She noticed he looked angry now, and the woman beside him was affronted, too. Angel retracted her hand with a shrug. Maybe the man was putting on a show for his wife. Classic, she thought and picked up her fork to begin digging through a pile of pancakes covered in treacle. She had to remember not to eat too much. Clients didn’t want to be with a chubby girl.
“She doesn’t even remember us!” Angel heard the old woman whisper. She sounded hurt.
Well I can’t remember everyone, now can I? Angel thought, feeling defensive.
“The medic said this would happen,” The man replied. “We need to be patient. It’s just a temporary regression.”
Regression? Angel wondered. She looked up from her food with a frown. She was beginning to suspect these two weren’t clients at all, and if that were the case, then there was no point in her being polite with them. “You know I’m still here, right?” Angel said. “You don’t have to talk about me as though I were deaf.”
“Look,” the man began, his eyes hard now, “listen to me carefully. Your real name is Alara Vastra. You are our daughter, but you’ve been chipped, and now you think you’re a playgirl named Angel. You are not that person, Alara! You have to fight it!”
Angel went on frowning. If this was some type of elaborate role-play, it was a twisted one, and even she had her limits. “Aren’t you too old to be my parents?”
The man’s cadaverous face broke into a precarious smile. “We didn’t think we could have children. . . . until you surprised us.”
Alara wasn’t buying the story. “I’m going to go get some juice,” she said, setting down her fork and p
ushing her chair out on the retractable arm which bolted it to the deck. She hadn’t even touched her breakfast.
The old couple watched her leave the table with pained expressions, but they said nothing. Angel felt her irritation with them growing. They’d been with her all morning and they were still playing games. They were wasting her time! She reached the serving line and waited behind a tall man with thinning black hair and a slowly pulsing blue tattoo crawling down his left forearm. Angel absently studied that tattoo. The wavy lines of it were suggestive of blue flames leaping down from his sleeve. Now that she was paying attention, she saw that the tattoo wasn’t pulsing at all, it was slowly flickering, heightening the flame effect. Angel followed the tattoo up his arm until her eyes settled on his bulging biceps. Well, you’re a big boy, aren’t you? she thought with a lascivious grin. The man’s black pants were striped white, marking him a combat veteran, and his uniform jacket, which was slung over one shoulder, was gleaming with the four silver chevrons of a first lieutenant. Angel felt a warm stirring which she recognized as desire. Not every job had to be work. The difference, she realized, is whether or not you enjoy what you’re doing. . . .
Or who, she thought with a wry twist of her lips as she touched the man’s upper arm.
He turned to reveal a haggard face, grizzled with stubble and lined with age. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the wincing look on his face told her he was in some kind of pain. He was older than she’d expected, and his nose was crooked, but he had a certain animal charm to him.
“What?” he barked at her.
She made her bright violet eyes big and looked him up and down very slowly, so that he could see she was admiring him. “I haven’t seen you around here before,” she said, her voice purring.
“Likewise,” he replied, his expression softening somewhat.
She touched his arm again, this time to squeeze his bulging biceps. “Looks like I’ve been missing out. What’s your name?”
The man’s gaze turned speculative and a dark smile sprang to his face. “Ithicus Adari, or Firestarter if you prefer. What’s your name?”
“Angel.” She smiled. “Would you mind if I joined you for breakfast?”
Ithicus shook his head. “No, I could use some company.”
“Me too, why don’t we—hoi!” Angel felt hands on her shoulders, turning her roughly out of the serving line. She tried to slap those hands away. Then she saw the old couple who’d been sitting with her a moment ago, and her face screwed up in outrage. “What do you want? Leave me alone!”
“Alara!” the woman said. “You’re not well. Let us take you to the med bay.”
“I feel fine!” Angel insisted, and struggled to break free of the old man’s clammy hands.
“Hey, let the girl alone,” Ithicus interrupted, taking a step out of the line toward them.
“I’m sorry,” the old man said with a smile as he held up a shaking hand to stop Ithicus, “but this girl is not in her right mind. She’s been chipped and she isn’t who she thinks she is.”
Ithicus’s dark brown eyes widened, and he hesitated before taking another step. “Really? Who does she think she is?”
“She thinks she’s some sort of playgirl.”
“Hmmm, that’s a pity.” Ithicus gave Angel an up-and-down look like the one she’d given him a moment ago. “A real pity,” he drawled before turning back to the serving line.
Angel felt herself being pushed and dragged toward the exit of the mess hall. The old woman fussed by her side, offering reassurances.
“We’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry. This is just a temporary lapse.”
Alara’s gaze strayed over her shoulder to the rugged lieutenant, and then she turned back to the old man with a scowl. He led her out of the mess hall by her wrists, cutting off her circulation with his bony fingers. “Let me go,” she warned.
“Not yet,” he said.
With a quick twist of her wrists, she wriggled free. “Hoi!” she said. “What is wrong with you two? I had him right where I wanted him—putty in my hands! If you’re not going to do business, then at least let me find someone who is!”
The old man’s reply was soft, and he only said one word—“Reset.”—It was all he needed to say.
As soon as Angel’s ears caught that word and her brain connected it to meaning, she felt a dawning horror, accompanied by a sweaty rush of unreality. The very fabric of her being was stripped away, and suddenly she didn’t know who she was anymore. I’m Angel! She insisted to herself, but now she understood that that was a lie. She was Alara Vastra, and the old man and woman standing before her were . . . they were . . .
Her parents.
A dizzy wash of nausea swept through her. Alara’s knees buckled, and she sunk to the floor. She lay there for a moment, blinking slowly up at the ceiling. The room spun around her head at least a half dozen times before her parents’ faces hove into view. She smiled weakly up at them.
“Hoi . . .” she said, but her mind was already shutting down.
“Stay with us, honey!” her mother said, grabbing her hand.
But sleep felt so warm and peaceful. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a . . .” Alara trailed off as her eyelids fluttered, and she succumbed to sleep.
* * *
The morning after the identity change procedure, Ethan awoke to find himself in the overlord’s quarters—now his quarters. It was going to take some getting used to, but the spacious room, king-size bed, giant holoscreen, and the broad floor-to-ceiling viewport were luxuries that would make the adjustment a whole lot easier.
Being the overlord had its perks.
Ethan sat up, rubbed tired eyes, and scanned the rest of the room. A large bathroom lay to one side; the sliding doors were open, revealing a broad mirror and gleaming steel cabinetry offset by artfully recessed glow panels and black wall tiles; another desk like the one in the overlord’s office was arranged before the room’s viewport. Separated from the bedroom by a short half wall adorned with indigo-colored ferns, were a couch and some chairs along with a bar and a small kitchenette. Ten years ago this could have been a luxury studio apartment in any city on any planet anywhere in the galaxy. That was before the war. Now most living spaces Ethan had seen were half the size, and they were either in space or they lay underground to better shield them from the high levels of radiation in Dark Space—although the black holes ringing the region didn’t emit much radiation, the dying stars falling into them did.
It had been little more than a day since Ethan had left Dark Space, but he felt like it had been weeks. So much had happened since then. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his comm piece from the bedside table before standing up to stretch. As he did so, a flash of light drew his eyes to the viewport and the murky gray swirl of the Stormcloud Nebula beyond. As he watched, it flashed with another bright discharge of static, and Ethan could just see the dark outline of a station cast into stark relief by the burst of light. This was where they were hiding while they made repairs to the Defiant. They’d arrived at the Stormcloud Transfer Station in the middle of the night, and some unthoughtful kakard had promptly awoken him with the news. When his bedside communicator had begun trilling less than an hour after he’d lain down to sleep, Ethan’s first instinct had been to smash it—an impulse which he’d promptly acted upon—but his fist had hit the receive button by mistake and piped the comm officer’s transmission into his room at full volume, overwhelming Ethan’s sleep-clouded brain with noise. It had been all he could do not to give himself away before remembering that he was supposed to be the supreme overlord now and he couldn’t cuss out his crew for providing important updates.
Atton had told him to wear his holoskin at all times, just in case, but at least it was less obtrusive than the holoskin Brondi had made him wear. That one had been a skintight body suit made up of rare and expensive shielding and holo-sensitive fibers, while Ethan’s new holoskin projected his appearance from two thin holofie
ld generators around his ankles to two matching bands around his wrists and one around his neck. The new skin was made up of even more expensive materials than Brondi’s one—which Ethan supposed made sense. The overlord would be able to afford the best. The new skin would be much harder to detect, even if one were feeling around for it and knew where to look.
Ethan stood up from the bed and walked over to the bathroom. Seeing himself in the mirror was a shock. He looked like he’d aged a hundred years overnight. His face was thinner, with plenty of wrinkles, his cheeks were sunken, and his eyebrows were out of control—a bushy white which needed immediate trimming. His nose and ears were groomed at least, but Ethan could see the hair encroaching there already. The four days worth of white stubble on his face needed shaving. Besides being completely white, the pattern of facial hair Ethan saw was subtly different from what he was used to, and when he ran his hands over his cheeks, he could feel the discrepancies—a holoskin didn’t change tactile qualities. Opening the steel cabinet beneath the sink, Ethan found an expensive depilatory gel which would strip the hair off his face and keep it that way for six to eight months. Yet another luxury afforded to the supreme overlord. Ethan applied the gel and let it sit for the required thirty seconds before washing it off, along with all his stubble. After that, Ethan went for a quick vaccucleanse and then got dressed in his new uniform—the flashy white with gold trim of the supreme overlord. Just as Ethan fit his comm piece inside his ear, it began to beep with an incoming transmission, and then he heard a computerized voice say, “Lieutenant Adan Reese calling.”
Ethan touched his ear to receive the comm. “Hello?”
“You’re awake. Good.” It was not his son’s voice that Ethan heard, but rather that of the Lieutenant Adan Reese. Last night after the operation to switch identichips, they’d had to switch vocal synthesizers, too. “We need to meet,” Atton said. “I’ll be at your office in five. You can have breakfast sent up there for us.”
“Sure, see you soon,” Ethan replied, already on his way out. He passed through the doors a moment later and walked past the pair of security guards stationed there. The guards peeled off from the wall and followed him at a distance. They hadn’t actually been trained as sentinels, but rather they were low-ranking corpsmen who couldn’t serve any more useful roles aboard the Defiant.