“Got it,” John answered.
“I mean it, John,” Molon pressed. “You can’t fall asleep with it on a terminal where someone might walk in. You can’t discuss testing it with anyone. If you are going to keep poking away at this, you keep it away from anyone other than you, me, and Dub, no mistakes.”
“I said I got it,” John assured him. “I didn’t have to tell you, Molon, but I figured if I was going to keep a copy on this ship, you had a right to know.”
Molon nodded and gently grabbed John’s upper arm, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“I appreciate that, John. I take it from this discussion that you intend to stay aboard Star Wolf?”
“Until something better comes along,” John answered.
“Good to know. Now,” Molon pointed toward the door. “Would you two kindly get out of my quarters so someone can get some work done around here? Angel, you can use Twitch’s quarters until we get to Furi. Her cabin is just across from John’s. He can show you the way. From what John says she won’t be out of sickbay before then anyway.”
“Thank you, captain,” Angel replied.
John and Angel left Molon’s cabin. He locked the door behind them, sat down at his desk, and finally let the wave of sadness and frustration wash over him. No one on the crew had ever seen Molon shed a tear either from pain or emotion.
And they never would.
Lubanian tears were a private thing, disgraceful if seen by anyone, even other Lubanians. Molon had been raised by humans, but the reluctance was as much genetic as cultural. Yet here, locked in his room, overwhelmed by the grim outlook facing his closest friend, Molon cried.
Thirty – New Feelings and Old Friends
John walked side by side with the Angelicum agent eponymously dubbed “Angel”. Some part of him was having trouble controlling his twitching hands and wobbling legs. He’d known all his life that both the angels and the demons in the Bible had been discovered to be two branches of an alien race which the Creator had employed since the beginning of human history as messengers, protectors, and guides to the human race. But he had never expected to be walking beside one.
Much of the history of Angels was shrouded in mystery. They had never chosen to reveal to humans whether the Creator had made them a vast star empire from the beginning, or if they had developed alongside, if a few millennia ahead of, humanity. Whatever their history, this ancient and wide-spanning race had allied with the Theocracy after the Shattering. There had not been a great deal of direct interaction between the Angelicum Host and the Empire of Humaniti, but they had always been there, spinward and coreward of the human star empire.
Some speculated these beings were eternal and could never die. Others speculated that their physical forms were mere manifestations that could be destroyed, but their spirit essence would simply reform and recreate a different physical body elsewhere. John had so many questions, but he was certain he was no more likely to get any definite answers from Angel than thousands of other humans before him.
“So, John,” Angel finally said, breaking the silence. “You said there was another matter you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yes, but first, it feels so odd to just call you Angel. Do you have an actual name you would share with me?”
“Certainly. My name is Shamira. You may address me so, if you prefer.”
“Shamira, that means protector, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. So, you know Hebrew names, John?”
“Hebrew and Greek are required in Faithful schools. I wasn’t the best language student, but I knew a girl in medical school named Shamira.”
“And that’s why you know the meaning of my name?”
John’s face flushed red.
“To be honest, she was cute. Elena was jealous that Shamira was my lab partner for one class. I often teased Elena that the reason she agreed to marry me was that she couldn’t stand the idea of losing out to Shamira.”
Shamira giggled and gave John a smile. He was surprised how at ease he felt around her. It was almost like meeting a hero from a storybook come to life, yet there was no pretentiousness or superiority about her. She exuded a sense of peace. His mind flashed back to his odd emotional experiences around Mel and wondered if psionics played a part in his impression of Shamira.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” Shamira prompted when John, lost in thought, failed to continue to the reason he had wanted to talk to her.
“Oh, yeah,” John said, blushing. “It was about that thing you did, back on Revenge.”
“Which thing was that?” she asked, but the knowing look in her eyes gave John the impression she had already rifled through his thoughts and knew the answer.
“I mean when you put those guards to sleep,” he replied. “How did you do that?”
“I’m a Malak,” Shamira answered, “the highest racial caste of Angelicum. We all have fairly extensive psionic abilities. I simply planted the strong suggestion in their minds that they were exhausted and needed to sleep immediately.”
John’s brow wrinkled as he rubbed his chin.
“But it didn’t work on Simmons. Why not?”
“Good question,” she replied. “Simmons had augments implanted in his body. One of those apparently was psionically-shielded plating around his skull. I have been assigned to Simmons for years. I knew about his enhanced strength and a few other augments, but the psionic shielding is either something new or something he kept well hidden.”
John suddenly felt as if he were standing naked before her. If she could so easily enter the minds of humans, would he even know if she entered his. What secrets could there ever be around her. Then John got an idea.
“So, can you read minds and communicate telepathically?”
“Within limits. Why do you ask?” Shamira’s helpful smile faded slightly.
“I’m not trying to be nosy. I was just hoping you might help with one of the people we rescued from Ratuen.”
“I will help if I can, John,” Shamira replied, her smile returning. “What is wrong with him?”
“He’s not fully connected with our reality. I have no idea how long he was there or what they did to him, but I thought maybe you could see if the old guy is still rattling around inside that skull of his somewhere.”
“I will see what I can do,” Shamira replied.
“Great. He’s just up around the corner here, in my quarters.”
As they entered John’s quarters, he noticed the security officer assigned for this shift was none other than Bobby Lee “Cowboy” McGhehey. Bobby Lee was standing with a weapon trained on the former Dawnstar guard from Ratuen, the second rescuee. The other prisoner, the old man John had brought Angel to see, still sat on his bunk and stared aimlessly at the wall.
“Trouble, Bobby Lee?” John asked.
“Nah,” Cowboy said with a shake of his head. “This guy couldn’t give my grandma much trouble. He woke up a few minutes ago and started asking to speak to whoever was in charge. Voide told us not to take no chances with this one, so I called it in. Guess you beat Voide here.”
“I wish I had gotten here before you made that call,” John said, concerned at what the volatile security chief might do once she arrived. “He’s fairly stable, but if I know Voide she’ll have him tossed in the brig quick as a wink.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Doc,” Cowboy said with a snort. “Star Wolf ain’t got no brig.”
“Where do you keep prisoners?” John asked.
“Heck, long as I been here we ain’t ever had a real prisoner. Been a turncoat or two Voide spaced out an airlock. Other than that, she’s just got a couple of cages built into the middle deck security stations, mostly where drunk crewmen sleep it off.”
“Still,” John replied, repulsed at the idea of this man being tossed into a cramped cage. “That’s not a proper place for a patient.”
John stepped over to the reclining former guard.
“Careful, Doc,” Bobby Lee wa
rned. “He might try somethin’.”
“Unlikely. After the beating they gave him back on Ratuen, I doubt he’ll be up for so much as a pillow fight anytime soon.”
“You got that right,” the man said to John in a voice just above a weak whisper. “Name is Stellan Brannock.”
A look of recognition came into Brannock’s eyes as he stared at John’s face. It was quickly replaced by fear.
“I know you,” the man said. “You were a prisoner on Ratuen. You and that woman. You were brought in together. You’re the one who escaped and got me locked up.”
“You are correct,” John nodded. “I’m sorry that reclaiming my liberty caused you such inconvenience, but I had been brought there illegally, so…there we have it.”
“You weren’t the only prisoner,” the man replied.
“What do you mean?” John asked.
Something about the man’s tone suggested he wasn’t talking about the old man or Elena. The man’s eyes went glassy as he dropped his gaze from John’s face to the floor.
“Some of us weren’t in cages,” the man said in a warbling voice. “But I wish you had taken me with you when you left.”
What an odd thing to say. John wasn’t sure how best to respond, so his normal humor reflex kicked in.
“You being an enemy guard,” John said, raising an eyebrow, “you can see why that would hardly have been the captain’s first thought.”
The man’s face grew stoic as he raised his eyes to look into John’s once again.
“I might have been a guard, but I wasn’t an enemy.”
“You worked for Dawnstar,” John replied.
“Not willingly, I didn’t.”
John’s memory flashed back to his time on Ratuen. Pain and trauma blurred much of his memory from his time there, but he did recall one guard who had never seemed to share the sadistic pleasure of abusing the prisoners that the others did. John tried to recall if that face belonged to this man, but the faces all ran together in a stream of pain in his mind.
“Well, you weren’t being locked up and beaten either,” John said, choking back the memories of their ill treatment at the hands of Ratuen’s torturer-in-chief. “At least not when I left the first time. So how exactly were you being held against your will?”
“Before the Shattering,” Brannock explained, “I was just a regular army grunt. I was stationed at the big Imperial Army base on the mainworld in the Dehdhasop system, Hand sector, on the border of what is now the Rimward Demesne.”
“That’s part of the New Halberan Empire, not Dawnstar,” John replied.
“Yeah, I know,” Brannock answered. “After the Shattering, that system came under Phoebe Halberan’s control.”
“So, you were in an NHE unit under Phoebe, along Dawnstar’s rimward border?”
“Yes, sir,” Brannock replied. “We got deployed on a border raid not long after the Shattering. That subsector got split in half, with a huge number of military base systems in the rimward section that came under Phoebe’s control. Still, there were a couple of choice systems just across the border, one of which was the Biliimigi system.
“Biliimigi had major production facilities, a class B starbase, and an Imperial Scout base right there. It was too sweet a target so, given Phoebe’s military advantage in that subsector, she decided to reallocate Biliimigi and the adjacent system which Humaniti had given to the Dractauri to settle.”
“I take it things didn’t go as smoothly as planned?” John asked, suddenly much more engrossed in Brannock’s story than he had intended to be.
“You can say that again. I was part of the Biliimigi invasion forces, but Tubal somehow got word of the attack. He must have poured every ship and troop he had in the subsector into Biliimigi. I was in one of the first troop ships to assault the mainworld, but ninety percent of our invasion force was blown apart before we ever hit dirt. I was aboard the only lander that made it out of my transport ship before it got shredded.”
“Yet somehow you lived,” John said, eyeing his former guard with suspicion.
“A bunch of us did,” Brannock continued. “Other transports got most of their landers launched before being captured or destroyed. I guess Tubal knew how badly he was outnumbered and outgunned along his rimward border and didn’t want to waste a chance to levy new troops.
“We were given a choice to become loyal citizens of the Dawnstar Technocracy and support the Provisional Imperium, or to be executed as traitors for following the separatists.”
“Tough choice,” John said, rolling his eyes.
“No choice at all. Look, up until the Shattering, we were all on the same side. We were Empire soldiers. Ground pounders don’t care about politics, but what they told us about Phoebe and Seth trying to circumvent the rightful succession and maybe even being responsible for Emperor Halberan’s death seemed to make sense.”
“And you believed that propaganda?” John snapped.
“That was so soon after the Shattering that nobody knew what was what. By the time we heard about Dawnstar’s attacks on civilians and all the bad stuff Tubal and Zarsus had been into, I had already cycled through a dozen different postings. I wound up a prison guard on Ratuen for asking one too many questions.”
“And what do you plan to do now?” John asked. “Assuming you are not tried and sentenced by the captain, that is.”
The man swallowed hard. A desperation filled his face and made John regret being so cavalier about Brannock’s possible fate.
“Look,” Brannock replied. “I got no loyalty to Dawnstar. If you are leaving Dawnstar space and got a spot for an experienced soldier, I’d join a merc crew in a second. I was a decorated sergeant in the Imperial Army before the Shattering. Heck, truth be told I’d sign on as a latrine-scrubber on a garbage barque if it was headed out of Dawnstar space.”
John sensed sincerity in the man’s plea. He also sympathized with how helpless Ratuen could make one feel. He imagined that being outside the cage had saved the man from the physical abuse; but being stuck with a legion of sadistic torturers would be its own form of torture for a good man. But was Brannock a good man, or just a good liar? John dug deep and let his gambling instincts take over. At a card table, John could read a bluff as easily as reading a datapad. Could he read this man as well?
“I’ve been on the receiving end of Dawnstar’s treachery,” John said, flashing a suspicious look at Brannock. “Why should I believe you are not just looking for a way to get back into Dawnstar’s good graces by spying on us?”
Before the man could answer, Shamira spoke.
“He is telling the truth, John, at least as far as he knows it. He believes everything he has said to you.”
So much for testing his skills. Who needs intuition when you have psionics around?
“Who’s the swish?” the man asked eyeing Angel, using what John surmised was some military slang for an attractive female.
“Someone you should speak to very respectfully, if you enjoy living,” John answered.
Brannock suddenly found something much more interesting on the ceiling to stare at instead of Angel.
“Okay,” John added, satisfied the man had taken his warning concerning Shamira. “I’ll speak to the captain. He will be looking for crew replacements once we get to Furi. It’s his call. In the meantime, Bobby Lee, can you take this man to the extra convalescence beds we had set up outside the lift? You can keep an eye on him there as well as here. I need my quarters back, and health-wise he’s stable enough.”
“You got it, Doc. But what if Voide comes for him?”
John harrumphed.
“You tell her the chief medical officer said not to touch him, and if she has an issue with that, she can take it up with the captain.”
Bobby Lee whistled and shook his head.
“Man, Doc, I know I owe you my life, but you keep askin’ me to do stuff like that, you gonna get me killed anyway.”
“Nah, Bobby Lee. You’ve already been shot this
month. Surely Voide will give you a sympathy pass.”
Bobby Lee laughed.
“Have you met the Lieutenant Commander, Doc?” the security officer grimaced.
“Unfortunately,” John replied, giving Bobby Lee an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
As Bobby Lee helped the prisoner out of John’s quarters and down the hall toward the auxiliary area med-beds, Shamira turned her attention toward the old man, still staring, bleary-eyed, at nothing in particular. Suddenly an odd look came over her face.
“What is it, Shamira?” John asked.
“I know this man,” she said.
John’s brow furrowed. He cocked his head as he voiced his incredulity.
“This guy has been a prisoner on Ratuen since before the Shattering. How can you possibly know him?”
“Well,” Shamira replied, “it would be more accurate to say I know who he is.”
“Care to enlighten me?” John said.
“This is Falcion Nichols.”
John blinked as the name resonated through his memory. He squinted hard at the aged former prisoner but shook his head.
“Do you mean Abbot Falcion Nichols, former high abbot of Unified Church of the Faithful?”
“The very one.”
John reeled. High Abbot Nichols had disappeared shortly after the Shattering. He hadn’t been heard from since, and his body was never found. Some said he had been assassinated by agents of the Commission Against Destructive Supersition, Dawnstar’s anti-faith hit squad, in preparation for their planned attacks on Enoch’s territories.
“That can’t be,” John shook his head. “I heard CADS killed High Abbot Nichols shortly after the Shattering.”
“The rumor,” Shamira said, “was that CADS was behind his disappearance, but that doesn’t mean they killed him. They might have imprisoned him on Ratuen. Abbot Nichols had access to and personal knowledge of Enoch and many of his supporters when Enoch declared the Theocracy of the Faithful’s secession from the Provisional Imperium.”
Star Wolf (Shattered Galaxy) Page 44