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Orphaned on a backward planet, Lydia observes with inoculated indifference as the nearby Gaean Empire plans to crown its new Empress.
But on coronation day, someone tries to stop the ceremony. His investigation shows that Lydia is far more than just an ambassador's daughter. Her life goes haywire. Pursued across the galaxy, Lydia tries to discover why her fellow humans have taken a sudden dislike to her, and why her adopters are going to such lengths to protect her.
Going into hiding takes her deep into the seedy underground of New Athens - the Imperial capitol - where the secrets of her past lie, her parents' deaths no accident.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Inoculated
Scott Michael Decker
Copyright (C) 2015 Scott Michael Decker
Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter
Published 2019 by Next Chapter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.
A rough draft of this work appeared on Wattpad under the working title Protoplasm
Cover art background “Origins” by Elena E. Giorgi
Image used with permission and the Author's deepest gratitude
Cover art design Copyright 2015 Scott Michael Decker
Thanks to the following beta-readers:
Anne Potter Elise Abram
If you like this novel, please post a review on the website where you purchased it, and consider other novels from among these titles by Scott Michael Decker:
Science Fiction:
Cube Rube
Doorport
Drink the Water
Edifice Abandoned
Glad You're Born
Half-Breed
Inoculated
Legends of Lemuria
The Gael Gates
War Child
Fantasy:
Bandit and Heir (Series)
Gemstone Wyverns
Sword Scroll Stone
Look for these titles at your favorite e-book retailer.
Lydia brought the amoeba-class ship out of sub-ether above a cloud-shrouded planet in the Mnemosyne Constellation and threw a glance at her companion. “I swear, Xsirh, I don't know what those Homo sapiens are thinking. Look at her! Ugly as pondscum! Why does she get to become Empress?”
On the holo, a dainty tiara glittered in the human female's dishwater hair. Her skin was white and rough as plaster. Her lips were the color of rutabagas and poised in a perpetual pout. The nose was squished into the face, a wart the size of a snail perched on a cheekbone, the close-set eyes peering from beneath a unibrow. The holonet was alive with the upcoming coronation of the Homo sapiens Empress, and it didn't matter where Lydia surfed or what program she watched, the hype inundated all the media.
The blob of protoplasm in the copilot's chair, Xsirhglksvi Xlmhgzmgrmrwvh, nodded in agreement. “With your radiant beauty, you're far more deserving to be Empress,” Xsirh said. A series of slurps, burps, and chirps comprised the language of her companion, inviting inevitable comparisons to human flatulence. Xsirh's green exoderm mottled with laughter, cilia writhing around his face.
Detecting sarcasm, Lydia glanced at the upper portion of his physiognomy, where his optical organelles were located. “And you became an expert on human beauty when?” Reared by the Kziznvxrfn, she knew their language better than any other human, and sometimes better than they themselves did.
“When I met you, Lydia.” His coloration took on a blue shade, a sign he was blushing. “I knew you were special from the moment I saw you.”
Mollified, she smiled. “Thank you, Xsirh.” He was the father she'd never had, the mother she'd always wanted, and the brother she was always competing with, all in one. He gets maudlin at the oddest of times, she thought. Of all the Kziznvxrfn, he knew her the best. He'd reared her since she was four. The Paramecium way of life had been difficult for her to adapt to. Without his protection, she would have perished. He'd risked censure and ostracism to help her, relations between human and Kziznvxrfn tenuous at best.
She replaced the holo with a view of the planet below. Their destination outlined, the capital Helios occupied an archipelago on the water-bound planet. Lydia and Xsirh had come to negotiate a contract for its didinium exports, which the Kziznvxrfn considered a delicacy.
One of the few humans who understood the Kziznvxrfn's near-addictive craving for the unicellular protists, Lydia had started buying didinium harvested on human worlds for the Kziznvxrfn market and now was the number-one supplier, with a seventy-five percent market share and a fleet of cargo transports. Always on the lookout for new sources, she'd come to Mnemosyne with her adoptive father to scout out the quality of its product.
“Atmospheric entry in one minute,” the ship computer blurted. “Zgnlhksvirx vmgib rm gdl nrmfgvh,” it repeated in Kziznvxrz.
She checked her five-point and glanced at Xsirh.
A transparent shell dropped from the ceiling to cover him, his periplast far more permeable than her epidermis and his body lacking bones. In a multi-g descent, he'd ooze right through five-point restraints, even with anti-grav absorbing the brunt of the torsion forces.
The ship began to shudder and shake. Lydia concentrated on breathing deeply, atmospheric entry the worst part. Twenty-four years ago, during just such a descent, she'd been orphaned on Kziznvxrfn, her parents dying in the crash. She gripped the armrests with both hands, sweat breaking out on her brow, her stomach doing pirouettes up to her craw, her heart hammering in her ears.
Then the shudder ceased.
“Imperial Infection Control to inbound Paramecia vessel, please assume a holding pattern at fifty-thousand feet while your ship is being imaged.”
“Acknowledged,” Lydia said, barely finding her voice in time.
“Imaged?” Xsirh said, the shell retracting into the ceiling. “Why do they need to image our ship?”
“Contraband, probably.” She shrugged, frowning. She'd commed with a complete flight plan and had been cleared by the authorities. She couldn't imagine what the holdup was.
“Oh, I'll bet it's the coronation.”
Intuitively, she knew he was right, the hoopla reaching even Theogony on the galactic rim, a hoopla they couldn't avoid no matter how hard they tried.
“Infection Control requesting visual contact,” the ship computer said. “Rmuvxgrlm Xlmgilo ivjfvhgrmt erhfzo xlmgzxg.”
“On screen,” Lydia ordered.
“Commander Sarantos here, Imperial Infection Control. Lydia Procopio, I presume?” A smile lit up his face. “My, aren't you pretty!”
Prettier than that pondscum Empress of yours, she thought. “What's the hold-up, Commander? All the clearances are in the flight plan filed a week ago with Space Traffic Control.”
“We've had some changes in protocol due to the recent outbreaks, Ms. Procopio, clearances or not. We're detecting alien life aboard the ship. We'll need to sterilize the vessel.”
“Of course there's alien life aboard—my Kziznvxrfn companion, Xsirh.”
“Kzizn? You have a Kzizn aboard? We'll need to do a visual and the alien will have to be dealt with.”
“He's been inoculated per protocol, Commander. We've both been inoculated. It's all on file.” Humans everywhere were paranoid about infectious agents and invasive species. Recent infectious outbreaks had ratcheted up their paranoia to a persecutory fervor.
“Prepare to be boarded,” Commander Sarantos said. The screen winked out.
“I don't like the sound of this, Lydia,” Xsirh said.
Her stomach ground and heaved, and not from the rough atmospheric entry. “It's never been a problem before. We've been to how many worlds belonging to these supposed Sapiens?” She frowned at him, dreading the inspection. And what had the Commander meant by “the alien will have to be dealt with”? Lydia and Xsirh had learned how difficult relations could be, their first few attempts to establish trade contacts having failed spectacularly.
“Not very sapient, are they?” Xsirh said. “I'd better get into my envirosuit before they board.” His exoderm extended as his periplast retracted, protecting the attached cilia. He looked as if he were folding himself inside out. Xsirh slithered to the floor and squirmed toward his cabin on his exoderm, the mucousy periplast better suited to semi-aquatic environments.
The ship lurched violently to one side. “Tractor beam,” the amoeba said, its voice eerily calm. “Gizxgli yvzn.”
Thrown against her restraints, she wondered if Xsirh was all right. “Xsirh?” She tried to look over her shoulder. “Xsirh?” Unable to see him, she unbuckled herself. Bracing herself to keep from sliding down the slanted floor, she made her way into the corridor.
“Just a bruise,” he said, holding twenty tentacles to a mottled patch of his periplast.
“Nothing broken?” she asked.
He shook his head and laughed, his optical organelles meeting her gaze. He had no bones to break. “Right in the micronuclei, though,” he added, his organelles squinting in pain. His micronuclei were the equivalent of human gonads, one of four ways that Kziznvxrz reproduced.
I wish we'd been using the sub-ether drives, Lydia thought. They'd have put us beyond reach of any tractor beam.
“Unauthorized entry being attempted,” the ship said. “Fmzfgsliravw vmgib yvrmt zggvnkgvw.”
Infection Control, she thought. “Entry authorized. Let them in.” She turned to Xsirh. “Better that than they blow our hatches.”
“This won't be pretty.”
She knew that as well as he did. The amoeba-class vessel righted, and she stepped toward the hatch, which opened.
The face of Field Commander Sarantos was a mix of a leer and a wretch. “What's that stench?! Smells like a sewer!” His face settled on a wretch, his skin turning green.
“Kzizn atmosphere, Commander,” Lydia said. “In such a hurry to board, you can't wait for us to change the air? Hitting us with that tractor beam without warning injured my shipmate. If he requires medical care, you'll be getting the bill.”
His face turned from green to red. “Inspect the ship!” he barked over his shoulder. “And you stay right here.”
“Watch for Xsirh on the corridor floor,” she told the marines as they surged past. She turned to Sarantos. “The next time you visit Kzizn, I'd like to offer you a complimentary kick to the testicles. Like the one you gave him.”
A vein pulsed at his temple, his hand on his sidearm.
“Got the Kzizn, Commander!”
A blood-curdling squelch came from the back, Xsirh blatting in pain.
She whirled. “What are you doing to him?!”
Commander Sarantos slammed her to the bulkhead, his arm to her neck. “I said, `Stay'! Take the Kzizn aboard,” he said over his shoulder.
“You can't do that! He's done nothing wrong!” she choked out, trying to push his arm off her.
“R'ev wlmv mlgsrmt dilmt!” Xsirh said.
The Commander made another face. “What the hell was that noise? It sounded like really bad gas. Is that speech? What'd he say?”
“He said he's done nothing wrong!”
They'd wrapped Xsirh in a net and were hauling him onto the other ship.
Commander Sarantos let her go. “I'd advise you lay low for the next few days, Ms. Procopio. Whatever business you have can wait.”
“My first order of business will be to file a complaint with the embassy, and my second, to do whatever I can to get you bounced out on your incompetent backside!”
“It's just a Kzizn, Ms. Procopio.”
“That's my father, Commander!”
* * *
Lydia frowned at the line ahead of her. A queue of a couple hundred people snaked away from the Imperial Infection Control kiosk at the Helios spaceport, all of them awaiting clearance.
“What's the holdup?” she asked the person in front of her.
A rough-faced old man, his back bent from years of labor, gave her a look up and down. “Where you been livin', some backwater bayou? Outbreaks on Pyrgos Five and Cygnus Twenty, both planets under quarantine.” He shook his head at her. “Ought to surf the holonet more often.”
She blinked blankly at him and snorted. “Brain rot,” she said. Anxious already to get Xsirh out of custody, she was tempted to raise a stink just to get past the line. She was certainly going to file multiple complaints about the rough, unwarranted treatment they'd received. “Where are you coming from?”
“Neither of those places, thank the stars.”
She estimated how long she'd be standing in line, saw immediately she'd have to postpone her appointment with the CEO of Titanide Aquafoods. And who knew how long it'd take to get Xsirh released. Or if. She didn't have a lot of faith in human bureaucracy.
“Lydia.” She extended her hand to the half-bent old fart in front of her.
“Nick,” he said, shaking. “Short for Nikephoros. Pleased.”
“Mutual,” she replied. “What do you do here?”
“What else on a soupy planet like this? I fish—run a trawler for Titanide. Not much else to do either.”
Lydia saw a bureaucrat making his way through the line, asking quick questions of each person he passed. “Titanide? I'm here to see Orrin.”
“Runs a tight ship, he does. What's he gonna do with a pretty one like you?”
Lydia blushed and snorted. “Strictly business.”
The bureaucrat pulled a man aside and led him over to an arch, where a glowing biodetector sat, its bulk twice the man's height. The man walked under the arch, alarms sounded, the arch flashed red, and a squad of armed soldiers appeared from nowhere.
“But I've been inoculated!” the man said, his voice quailing with fear as they hauled him away.
“What'll they do with him?” Lydia asked.
“Sterilize him,” Nick told her with a shrug.
“Will he be able to reproduce after that?”
“Depends on whether or not it kills him.”
Lydia stared after the squad, the man in their midst struggling. “How long has it been like this?”
“Happens whenever there's an outbreak. And those quarantines may not be enough.” Nick shook his head.
Lydia had read up a little on immunology and disease prevention. Her father Dorian had been a Professor of Xenobiology before he died in the shipwreck, and among his effects had been some preliminary research. The fact that Imperial Infection Control was screening people after they made planetfall seemed to her to border on incompetence.
The bureaucrat was back at it, asking people questions, passing most of them by.
“What do you suppose he's asking?”
“Whether they've been to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year.”
Lydia frowned, having been to both planets multiple times on business. Pyrgos Five manufactured shipping containers, and Cygnus Twenty supplied packaging. “What's it like to fish on Theogony?”
“Terrible! Didinium are all over the place. They get in your boots, they get in the nets, they clog up the exhaust pipes, they swim up inside the sewers, and worst of all, they get mixed in with the catch. You ever see a didinium? Those slugs can grow to the size of your head.”
Lydia grinned and nodded. “On Kziznvxrz, they're ferocious little beasts.” In their early evolution on Xsirh's home planet, the Kziznvxrfn and Didinium had fought for preeminence across a million years, each devouring the other relentlessly, and only in the last five hundred thousand had the Kziznvxrfn waded onto dry land from the planet's primordial soup as the dominant species. And the Kziznvxrfn had never lost their liking for didinium, despite its being nearly extinct. “They're considered a delicacy. If you can catch them.”
“A delicacy? They taste awful! Who in their right minds would think they're a delicacy?”
Lydia shrugged at him. “I have relatives with some pretty strange tastes.”
The bureaucrat approached the old man. “Any travel to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year?”
Nick shook his head. “No, Sir, never been either place.”
The head moved slightly in Lydia's direction, the bureaucrat's eyes remaining fixed to his palmcom. “Any travel to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year?”
“Several times to both,” she said.
Nick instantly stepped back, as did several people around them.
“I've been inoculated,” she told them all, “if that's any help.” Lydia already knew nothing she could say would sway a bureaucrat, always gumming things up like didinium in the fishing nets.
“Inoculation didn't help five hundred million people on Cygnus Twenty,” the bureaucrat said. “Is that a rash?” he asked her.
“Huh?”
“Those spots on your arm, is that a rash?”
“Oh, that? I don't know,” Lydia said. “It's been itching off and on since I left Kziznvxrz.”
“I'll have to ask you to come with me, miss. What's your name?” The bureaucrat gestured toward the glowing biodetector.
“Lydia Procopio.” She followed him to the arch. Blue lights twinkled around its insides, the hum of its motors faintly audible. It soared over her, dwarfing her slight form.
“On my signal, just walk slowly through, Ms. Procopio. Don't make any sudden moves.” The lights began to blink. The hum went up two octaves. “Go ahead, please.”
She stepped slowly through the machine. When she reached the far side without setting off the alarms, Lydia turned to the bureaucrat. “I told you I've been inoculated.”
“Unlike Imperial Infection Control to revoke its clearances without warning,” Orrin Stamos told the fetching young woman across from him. “And I'm so sorry they treated your … father so badly. After her coronation, the Empress will be touring the outlying colonies. Based on the level of activity here, I'm guessing Theogony will be her first stop. I'm afraid an Imperial visit is going to complicate things.”
The CEO of Titanide Aquafoods hoped she hadn't heard his hesitation. His company was the largest exporter of fish on Theogony. Orrin frowned, distressed at the way she'd been treated, but having difficulty believing the alien was so important to her.
Now their deal was about to fall apart.
Her company was the biggest importer of didinium on Kzizn. Trawlers on Theogony dredged up didinium by the trillions, the creatures ubiquitous. A carnivorous unicellular ciliate protist, its gelatinous texture nauseated the human palate. The didinium preyed upon Titanide's main catch, so throwing them back wasn't an option, and disposing their carcasses into the sea had earned the company the castigation of local environmentalists. Selling the didinium to the Kzizn seemed like the perfect solution.
Orrin didn't want to lose the contract because of a diplomatic snafu.
When he'd met her at the spaceport, Orrin had seen how distressed she was, and she'd insisted on being taken immediately to the consulate. En route, she'd been furious and disconsolate by turns.
“How's Xsirh's detainment being received at home?” he asked hesitantly.
“I don't know yet,” Lydia replied, her gaze on the floor. “They probably won't release him any time soon, will they?”
“Difficult to say. Why do you ask?”
“My father's throwing a birthday party for me on Kziznvxrz three days from now.”
“Well, I hope you don't have to spend your birthday here.”
He could feel the contract slipping through his hands, as though coated in slime. He knew the creature who'd accompanied her to Theogony couldn't possibly be her biological father, but clearly, she regarded him highly. Her biographical information indicated she'd been reared by the Kzizn after being shipwrecked on the planet as a child. All right, Orrin asked himself, if I were visiting Kzizn with my father, and they detained him, how would I want to be treated?
“Look, why don't we go see him, make sure he's being treated all right?” Orrin knew he wouldn't be endearing himself to Immigration, but he was in exports, not tourism.
“Oh, could we?” she said, brightening immediately. “That'd be wonderful! They probably don't even know what to feed him. And he'll dehydrate within hours if he's not immersed. Oh, thank you, Orrin!”
She looks about to leap across the desk! he thought. Himself, he wouldn't mind, the young woman quite attractive, but his girlfriend certainly would. I'd better com her, he thought, I'll probably be late for our date.
Orrin had Lydia wait in the foyer while he made arrangements, having to reschedule two afternoon meetings with suppliers.
He wondered what he was getting himself into.
* * *
Carissa Minas, Warden at the Helios Immigration Detention Center, frowned at the uproar.
We're Immigration! she thought in disgust. We should be trained for this!
Instead of a calm and orderly detention, chaos had erupted from the moment the detainee had arrived, the Kzizn's odor causing revulsion and nausea. Carissa had nearly fainted when she'd entered the holding area.
Now, watching on holo, she struggled to keep her face impassive, her bowels grinding and heaving, just like everyone else's in the facility. The creature's stupefying smell pervaded the place, and the sights and sounds hovering above her desk made it worse.
The elliptical glob of shimmering muck squirmed and writhed on the cell floor, bright mucous green along most its length. The purple splotching on its midriff almost looked like bruises. And it emitted a constant stream of blurts, blats, phorts, and phlats, the sounds a human might make when undergoing extreme gastrointestinal ejection.
“Sounds like C-Diff in there,” said the man across from her, Lieutenant Simon Hatzis, her second in command. “Smells like it, too.”
“What? What's that?” Carissa asked, looking at him through the holo.
“Clostridium difficile,” he said immediately. “A bacteria in the human intestine which releases toxins that attack the intestinal lining. Causes projectile diarrhea, highly infectious.”
“It's infectious?!” she asked, pointing at the writhing creature. The recent infectious outbreaks on two nearby planets were causing considerable consternation.
“Well, not according to the ship's manifest,” Simon replied, looking at a hand-held holo, text swirling above it. “ `All passengers inoculated and assured to be free of infectious pathogens per interstellar protocols.' It's even signed off by Imperial Infection Control.” He extended the holo toward her.
“I don't need to see it, thank you.” She hated his manner, redolent of a teacher lecturing young boys on imitating bathroom sounds.
The holographic figure blatted sonorously.
“Oh, my! What I wouldn't give to have been able to emit such sounds in grade school!”
Her stomach cramped as if in sympathy, and she realized she had to pass gas.
No! she thought, not in front of Lieutenant Hatzis! She couldn't stop the flatulence, but thankfully, it was silent, and the cloud of miasma that seeped up around her head wasn't terribly different from the stench already pervading the facility.
It wasn't enough that Imperial Infection Control had issued a detain-all-aliens order for Theogony. Then that insufferable Field Commander, Sarantos, had foisted upon her a detainee that the facility was unprepared to care for, one who appeared to be in distress, perhaps injured. And then this idiot Lieutenant waltzes into my office and spews his discursive diffi-whatever dissertation! Carissa fumed, wondering what she'd done to deserve such a fate.
“Visitor to see the Kzizn, Warden,” her intercom blatted.
Maybe someone from the embassy to tell us how to care for the creature, she thought. Carissa had commed them immediately after the alien's arrival, needing a translator. She'd quickly realized she needed more than translation. “Thank you, Stan, and can you ask environmental services to do something about the smell?”
“Yes, Warden.” Stan's voice over the intercom was almost as unpleasant as the sounds from the cell, the equipment ancient.
“Shall we, Lieutenant?” She gestured him to go first. I'd do anything to get his officious ass out of my office! Carissa thought, carefully keeping her sentiments off her face.
He preceded her into the corridor and turned toward the foyer.
There, in the septic-smelling, antiseptic waiting room, they found not another Kzizn from the embassy but two humans, both of them looking distraught.
“I'm Orrin Stamos, CEO of Titanide Aquafoods,” the man said.
“Lydia Procopio,” the woman said. “I'm told my father is being detained here.”
Carissa shook both their hands, introducing herself. Even in her distress, the woman was stunning. “I'm afraid you must be mistaken, Ms. Procopio. Our only current detainee is an alien.”
“A Kziznvxrfn,” the woman said. “I know he's here.”
For a moment, Carissa was baffled. She'd never heard the full, non-diminutive name for the aliens spoken by someone fluent in the Kziznvxrfn language. Nonplussed by the bizarre sounds issuing from the beautiful woman's mouth, Carissa was befuddled by what she was trying to tell her. “Forgive me, a what?”
“A Kzizn.”
“Your father's a …” She coughed, taken aback. “Forgive me, but …”
“He adopted me when I was four. He's the only father I've ever known.”
Spoken with such simplicity, the words moved her. Further, the woman looked as if she'd been crying.
“I know he's here, Warden.”
A bit difficult to disguise that fact, Carissa thought sardonically. “Yes, the Kzizn is here. Uh, er, what's his name?”
“Xsirh.”
“ `Sure'?” Carissa repeated.
“Well, almost. It's short for Xsirhglksvi, spelled X-S-I-R-H.”
“Xsirh?” Carissa marveled that anyone could master such difficult sounds. She could see Lieutenant Hatzis suppressing his laughter. I'll pummel him later, she thought.
“Please, I have to see him. He was injured when Infection Control put a tractor beam on our ship. And he has to be immersed every few hours or he'll die from dehydration.”
“Of course, Ms. Procopio.” Even better than a translator from the embassy, Carissa thought. They didn't have a machine that could translate a language as difficult as Kziznvxrz. Even among human settlements across the galaxy, the proliferation of languages challenged even the most sophisticated translation equipment, despite the near ubiquity of Galactim, the lingua franca. “A few questions, first, if I may?” Carissa asked. “What was the purpose of your visit?”
“They were meeting with me to negotiate a didinium export contract,” the man said.
Orrin is his name, she reminded herself. “Thank you, Mr. Stamos.” She looked at the woman. “You mentioned injury, Ms. Procopio. How was he injured, and how severely?”
“He got up from his chair to get into an envirosuit after Infection Control said they were boarding our vessel. The tractor beam caused our ship to lurch, throwing him against the wall and bruising his micronuclei, the human equivalent of testicles.”
Carissa saw the two men squirm. “Sorry to hear he was injured, Ms. Procopio. You mentioned immersion?”
“Yes, Warden, preferably in salt water to maintain his electrolytes. Fresh water will work for a day or two, but will eventually cause delirium, seizures, coma, and respiratory arrest.”
“Lieutenant Hatzis, secure what he needs.”
“Huh?”
She whirled on him. “Get on it, man! He's in our care. His health is our responsibility.”
Hatzis hesitated again.
She stepped up to him, shoved her face into his, and ground her heel into his foot. “Now, please,” she said sweetly. Carissa turned to the woman as the Lieutenant limped away. “Ms. Procopio, we'll do everything we can to insure he's well. Typically, visitors aren't allowed, but given the circumstances, we'll make an exception. If you'll give us a few minutes, I'll escort you back myself.”
* * *
Wait for it! Erastus thought, wait for it!
He was Erastus Doukas, Agent Provocateur from the Imperial Bureau of Suspicion, and he watched the Immigration Detention Center like a hawk for anyone exiting.
He'd seen his target entering with an unknown man ten minutes ago.
Wait for it! he told himself yet again.
For the next two minutes, no one else entered or exited the building.
The detention center was isolated, sitting on the point, perched atop an escarpment overlooking the sea. Purposively so. No one got in or out without being observed. And there was only one bridge.
He surveilled the facility from across an estuary where rough seas surged. Erastus was somewhat dismayed at how close the facility was to the water. Not that anyone would dare try to escape into the roiling seas, waves battering rocks just a few feet below the facility's foundation. What do they do in a storm? he wondered.
But no matter. She'd gone in the facility, and hadn't come out.
And if everything went well, she never would. Not of her own volition.
He grinned, his mission nearly finished. “T-minus three minutes,” he said into his com.
Rarely did he complete such missions so fast, but this one had been unusual from the start. A month ago, he'd been contacted by agent control in a brightly-lit alley on Lucina IX.
A woman wearing a fedora and a long trench coat was slumped against the alley wall between two malodorous bins of refuse, glaring radon lamps high overhead throwing every object into sharp relief. “Agent Doukas,” she said, her eyes barely visible under the wide brim, her nose as perfect as an axe blade.
“If you're gonna do the cloak-and-dagger routine, you might consider a darker alley,” he told her.
“What concern of yours is that?” she snapped. “Besides, dark alleys are spooky.”
He could see the fine, classic lines of her face, the perfect nose, the luscious lips. “They don't find dead dames in bright alleys.”
“Precisely my point, Doukas,” she snarled, mispronouncing his name like a homophobic slur. “I've a special assignment for you. One which has the bouquet of a fine Metaxa.”
He immediately went on high alert. As exalted as it was rare, Metaxa was a distilled blend of brandy, spices, and wine from Pelopone VI. Nearly no one except the Imperial Family could afford it. Nearly no one but the Imperials drank it. He knew what she meant but he didn't say it: Orders from the Palace.
“You are to travel immediately to Erato IV in the Mnemosyne Constellation. The planet is locally known as Theogony. You're familiar?”
“Adjacent to the system of that alien species with the unpronounceable name, right? The Kzizn?”
“That's the one. In fact, that's your task. Secure the planet under the Bureau's auspices, capture all aliens and their human companions, and ship them back to Gaea for interrogation.”
“All of them?”
“Did I specify any exemptions?” Her tone was as sharp as her nose.
“What about indigenous species?”
“There's no intelligent life on Theogony!”
Taken aback, he realized the orders applied only to … “Ah, sentient aliens,” he said. Sentience was a characteristic ascribed to just a few elite forms of life in the galaxy, a category rumored to exclude Homo sapiens.
“Of course I mean `sentient,' idiot!”
Proving once again that an assumption on his part would have made an anatomical posterior of them both. She doesn't need my help in that regard, he thought. He suspected he didn't need hers, either. “How long do I have?”
“A month.”
At first, he thought to object, Theogony just a parsec from Kziznvxrz. But how do I know any Kzizn are even there? he wondered.
“Relations between the two species aren't spectacular,” the woman said, “so you might not have any difficulty at all.”
“Which means very few human companions, too,” he said, nodding. “What about the embassy?”
“Don't worry about it. Cleared by Immigration, and technically, not even Imperial Territory.”
And he and a crew of ten subordinates had come to Theogony and had scoured the planet for any sentient aliens, not just Kzizn. Within a week, they'd secured their removal to Gaea for interrogation.
Done, he commed agent control to say he'd finished early. “What do you mean, I gotta stay?” he objected to the shadowy, fedora-obscured woman.
The blade-nosed face in the holocom nearly leaped from the machine into his hotel room. “I told you a month, do you hear?!”
And the very next day, Emperor Zenon died, throwing the Empire into an uproar. Fortunately, Princess Hecuba stepped into the breach and declared herself Empress, a startling move for a young woman at the tender age of twenty-four.
Watching events on Gaea from the border planet Theogony, Erastus couldn't help but notice that in the background of every vid or still of the Empress-designate lurked the Dowager Empress, Narcissa Thanos, the Emperor's surviving second wife. The first wife had died in childbirth some thirty years ago.
Doukas wasn't a genius, but he wasn't ingenuous either. Rot in the rarified air of a palace smelled the same as that in brightly-lit alleys. And something smelled rotten in Denmark, wherever that was.
And then, that morning, a Kzizn ship had commed Helios Control for permission to land on Theogony. Aboard were a Kzizn and a human. Intuitively, he knew his bird had alighted.
Watching the building to assure for himself that not a soul emerged from the Immigration Detention Center, he lifted his com to his mouth. “All right, katáskopos, time to capture our bird. Go, go, go!”
Hovers and ground cars descended upon the facility like a swarm of bees. Instantly, the place was surrounded, and the ordnance aimed at it was enough to blast it off the precipice and into the sea.
Doukas and two subordinates brandishing sidearms blew into the waiting room, badges out. “IBS,” he intoned in his deepest voice, displaying his badge in one hand. With the other, he held his weapon at his shoulder, its point glowing and ready.
The stench was hideous, and he nearly gagged.
Behind partitioned glass, the receptionist quailed and slowly sank to the floor, his hands in the air.
Three agents surged in behind him, one going left, one going right, and one staying at the door. Three more entered behind them, all of them looking bilious.
Two agents on his heels, Doukas headed straight in, toward the holding tanks, already familiar with the layout. He opened his trake to the paging system, trying to contain his gag reflex.
“This is Agent Erastus Doukas of the Imperial Bureau of Suspicion.” His voice boomed back at him from overhead. “This facility is being commandeered by Imperial authority. All planetary Immigration officers are hereby deputized as IBS agents under my command. You will lower yourself to the floor immediately. You will be shot after the count of five if you are not on the floor. Five, four, three, two, one.”
Six agents reported all clear.
Doukas marched past wormwire-reinforced glasma panes toward a set of double doors.
A uniformed female burst through the doors. “What's the meaning of this!?”
“Hold your fire!” he told his agents, two guns trained on her. “Warden Minas, I hope. If you're not, you're dead.”
“Indeed. What the stars is going on?”
“Your detention center is now under my command by order of her Imperial Majesty. All your staff are now my staff, and all your prisoners are now my prisoners.”
“Fine by me. How are you going to care for the Kzizn?”
Doukas was taken aback, not quite the response he expected. “I'm not. It's to be transported to Gaea immediately for interrogation. And its companion, the woman it arrived with. Who's the man?” He strode through the next set of doors, the Warden on his heels.
“A business associate, a Theogony native.”
In the corridor beyond, the stench intensified. “The Kzizn's through this door?” Doukas stopped abruptly before going through.
“In the holding tank, yes,” Warden Minas said.
He signaled to the two agents with him, both of them female.
All three burst through the door.
Partitioned cells lined the walls, their shiny, carbo-nick alloy bars stretching from plascrete floor to plascrete ceiling. Bare loomglobes hung near the ceiling, bathing the scene in stark, surreal light.
A woman lay on the floor in front of the rear-most cage, her wide-eyed stare on the agents. Nearby lay a man, the Theogony native. Just beyond the bars lay a lump of green protoplasm, a large purple splotch in its middle.
The stench was overpowering, and Doukas nearly retched.
His two agents turned the same putrid green as the creature beyond the bars from the stench. They pounced upon the couple. His other two Kzizn detainees had worn envirosuits, the Theogony atmosphere eventually fatal to the Kzizn. None of them had had human companions.
“What's the meaning of this?” the woman asked, a plaster barrel to the base of her skull.
He saw she was exceptionally pretty, even face down on the floor. Doukas knelt where they could both see him. He flipped out his badge and repocketed it, so practiced at the maneuver that no one had time to peruse it. “Agent Erastus Doukas, Imperial Bureau of Suspicion. You're under arrest.”
“On what charges?!” the man demanded. “I want to speak with my lawyer!”
“He wants his lawyer,” Doukas mocked, his voice a high-pitch whine. “Sequester them,” he ordered. “No further contact between the prisoners until after interrogation. Put the female in isolation and take the male immediately to interrogation room two. I'll question him first.”
Other agents converged to assist, and as they hauled the female to isolation, Doukas was taken aback by her breath-taking beauty.
“My father needs help,” she protested as she was dragged away. “He'll die if he' not immersed within an hour!”
Father? Doukas wondered, bewildered for a moment. Then he realized she was talking about the Kzizn.
“R'oo yv zoo irtsg uli z grnv,” the alien inside the cage blatted.
Doukas cringed at the sound, as if to dodge projectile diarrhea. He stepped to the bars to look at the amorphous figure, its cilia writhing helplessly in the air. “Get a Kzizn envirosuit,” he told the agent beside him, Lieutenant Special Agent Jace Eliades.
“Why do you suppose she called it `Father'?” Eliades asked.
Doukas shrugged. “And then get me her dossier, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Warden Minas stepped up beside him. “How soon can you get them going to Gaea?”
“An hour maybe. Lieutenant Eliades, secure transport. We'll be ready by the time they get here.”
“Yes, Sir.” Eliades had his hand to his ear, his lips moving soundlessly as he issued a series of orders.
“I can't believe the smell,” Doukas said. “And she calls this thing her father?” he asked the Warden.
Minas shrugged. “Reared by the Kzizn since she was four, apparently.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the isolation cell where his agents had taken her, wondering what the palace wanted from her.
Erastus Doukas, Agent Provocateur from the Imperial Bureau of Suspicion, was convinced she was the reason he'd been sent to this backwater planet.
But why her? he wondered.
“Colonel,” the com squawked on her desk, “I've just received a request for a dossier on the subject.”
Colonel Melanctha Remes looked up from her desk at the back of the theater at IBS Command on Lucina IX. Atop the fine classical lines of her face was a nose as sharp as an axe blade, perfect for cutting through the red tape of Imperial bureaucracy. She peered through the glasma pane separating her from operations.
Beyond the glasma was a darkened room lit solely by the myriad of holo displays hovering above the staff. Five rings of desks encircled a central pit, where her immediate subordinate stood, directing the surveillance technicians around him like an orchestra conductor.
“I'll be there in a moment, Lieutenant-Colonel.” All squawk-box coms recorded, she wanted this information off-record, the mission to Theogony having that fine Metaxa bouquet.
Why the hell is the palace so interested in the Kzizn? she wondered, standing and making her way to the command theater center.
The entire Delta Quadrant under her surveillance, Colonel Remes was mystified by the sudden attention to an isolated planet on the outer Scutum-Centaurus Arm, where virtually nothing happened. Further, the focus on the Kzizn was downright enigmatic.
The Empire had somewhat recovered from the uproar over Emperor Athanasios Zenon's untimely demise three weeks ago, the initial shock throwing everything into chaos. Yesterday, Colonel Remes had floated an inquiry to IBS Command whether to abort the mission to Theogony.
The impersonal, imperious reply had been, “All current missions will be pursued in extreme vigor with all due diligence and dispatch.” An emphatic no, and cloaked within the message, the threat of dismissal should the mission fail, worded vaguely enough to slather the communiqué with a viscous layer of plausible deniability.
And then this morning, Doukas had commed about a new arrival.
The original mission had emphasized the detainment of all sentient alien life and any human companions. The proximity of Kziznvxrz to Theogony had suggested the emphasis on the Kzizn, but they were such a reclusive race, devoid of hegemonic ambitions, languishing on their septic, swampy world like limp, amorphous blobs of protoplasm, that Colonel Remes wondered what threat they could possibly pose. They were a race of peaceful if repulsive aliens, no threat to anyone.
Had they had any such ambition, they'd be formidable, their aspects repulsive. Further, their advanced technological development gave them a tactical advantage over their Homo sapiens neighbors, their interstellar ships diaphanous and difficult to track, their weaponry virtually unknown.
Diplomatic relations with the Kzizn had always been tenuous, their appearance, language, and aroma all so repulsive to humans that missions to Kziznvxrz had been brief and unproductive. Theogony was the only planet where the Kzizn maintained an embassy, their diplomats exchanged yearly, their human hosts as attractive to the Kzizn as they were to the humans. Further, the Theogony atmosphere was deleterious to Kzizn health.
Colonel Remes threaded her way up the aisle, nodding to subordinates, most the technicians at their desks so focused on their work they didn't even notice her. On one holo was a feed from Gaea, the capital, the pomp and pageantry of the upcoming Imperial Coronation glutting the media.
Lieutenant-Colonel Urian Nikitas saluted her as she stepped into the conductor's pit, a holographic image of the Delta Sector swirling above them, multiple points of attention highlighted to indicate threat level, the Theogony region outlined in red.
“All coms off?” she asked.
Lieutenant-Colonel Nikitas nodded.
“Who's requesting the dossier?”
“Agent Doukas, on Theogony,” Nikitas replied. “Damn it, Colonel, why him? Forgive me for asking, but he's as slimy as those Kzizn.”
“I know it. I had to scrub my backside raw just to rid myself of his stench. Deny his request for the dossier. Don't tell him why, not even that it's ultra-confidential. Tell him there is none, all right? That'd be best. There is none.” She questioned the wisdom of telling her trusted second-in-command what its status was, much less that it existed at all.
“Yes, Colonel,” he said, giving her a brief salute.
She stepped back to the pit edge, watching as he commed Agent Doukas in the field.
“One moment, Agent Doukas,” Nikitas said, turning to her. “Colonel, Agent Doukas says no transport's available for the two prisoners. He's asking for further instruction.”
“No transport, in this day and age? There must be hundreds of ships he can charter, and thousands he can commandeer!”
“I told him the same. He swears up and down there's not a single interstellar vessel in the Mnemosyne Constellation except the vessel the two prisoners arrived on. Something about security measures being taken in the sector, he says.”
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