“You have got to be the most breath-taking creature in this entire system,” David told Kristol, pouring her a glass of Timpole champagne smack in the middle Tarann Bay Restaurante, the most luxurious bistro in all of Param Eon.
Across from him, Kristol sat draped in an exquisite party dress, her elegant brown hair falling to her shoulders in thick, wide curls. A smile spread across her clear, smooth face as she accepted the drink. “I don’t know about that,” she said.
“Well, out of all the Handmen cadets, you are the finest, the most beautiful and there isn’t anyone else I want responsible for protecting my ass, than you.”
Kristol blushed and drank the champagne. David was quickly becoming a rising star within the banking guilds, a veritable wizard at off-system financing. From a long line of bankers, Kristol knew that money would never be a problem for them. Since they met, passed out in the same alley after a crazy party involving way too much imbobuoe liquor, she had always thought of the two of them as an ‘us’ or a ‘we.' Even though he hadn’t declared an engagement to her, she never worried and quietly made her way through the Handman academy, knowing full well he would eventually make the declaration. After that, they’d live in high society and she could do what she always wanted, become a Handman, at least until the children came along.
As she sipped her champagne, the thoughts of children made her warm inside and she smiled even more. At the restaurant all around them hundreds of upper crust socialites tinkled silverware, cut meat and slurped wines and liquors from around the galaxy. There almost seemed to be too many people for the time of night.
Then, on closer inspection, she noticed some of the people. Her friends Khloe, Samel, Ftekka and Patar from the academy. Her Uncle Bovie and Aunt Eller. Cousins. More aunts and uncles. Her grandmother, Eelise. And finally her parents, Toli and Krisime, perched at a table in the back. As she looked and noticed them, a stray feeling wriggled out of her brain, swam for her heart, making her tingly and began to well up in tears. Suddenly the entire restaurant grew silent and David stood up.
With hundreds standing around her, she sat and listened. “Krissy,” David said. “In front of all these witnesses, I am declaring my love for you and asking for your hand in engagement.” Her mind raced and swam with thoughts of the future, but her emotions welled up too much and she could no longer hem them in.
“Yes!” she said, crying and turning to see the whole place up and clapping.
The lights bounced off the ceiling of crystal and the tall windows, casting sparkles over everyone. Somewhere a band struck up an engagement theme. Kristol wept as everyone around her cheered and congratulated her. She couldn’t help but feel happy and think about a bright future with David.
But something twitched inside her brain – a sound that no one probably heard above the clapping and cheering, but she did, a faint tinkle of broken crystal and glass. Falling from above, tiny crystal shards sprinkled down on David’s hair. Then with a thunderous crash, a large thing – an Arman brute, by the likes of it – rose from the demolished table where her friends had just been crushed. Her senses hadn’t even taken in the shock of them lying shattered and bloody on the floor, they seamlessly went on instinct as she reached under her dress and quickly removed her hidden reignfire pistol.
As the creature approached, David turned around and said, “What do you think you are doing? Leave this establishment!”
At that moment they watched the brute suck in air and hold it, pushing out added muscle, upon muscle in his body. In four quick seconds he had tripled in size. David tried protecting her with his arm, but the brute grabbed him as Kristol began shooting, lighting up the brute with violet plasma blasts.
“Hallastaare sends a message,” The brute held David up in the air by his arms, then viciously tore him in half and tossed him aside. “No one refuses his offer.”
Again, Kristol saw her David torn in shambles on the floor, but emotions left her, her training took over now. She launched shot after shot at the brute, causing no damage.
“Pitiful technology,” the brute said. “You can't harm me.”
Kristol looked up to the high ceiling where a massive chandelier the size of a shuttle hung with dagger-like plates of glass. The brute made his way through the restaurant tossing people left and right, smashing tables of guests, decimating the entire place. When he stopped underneath the chandelier to grab a waiter, she took aim and shot out the support cable in the ceiling, sending a meteorite of glass and metal crashing on the brute’s head. Standing over the rubble, Kristol looked around at the carnage, her parents were missing, her friends were dead and David. Poor, David lied in pieces by their table.
Sadness wriggled into her then, her eyes tingled and she began to cry, baleful sweeping sobs that only stopped, when the brute reached out of the rubble and grabbed her by the neck.
That was the last thing she remembered about the incident. After, Hemmel Fjord, a Handman captain, told her they found her hanging from the ceiling of the Fenta sewer tunnels deep below Param Eon in thick chains. They were afraid she was dead, but she had been unharmed and they couldn't fathom, after what had just occurred, why she wasn’t killed. For the brute, it would have just taken a quick flick of his hand. But there they found her hanging by the chains, not a bruise across her entire body.
* * *
In her quarters aboard the G.S.A.S Scythe, Kristol stepped out from her cillin shower and stood wrapped in a large towel before a full body mirror mounted on the wall. She never understood her own attraction to seeing her scarred body. Standing there with the towel open, she looked herself up and down. Sometimes she no longer felt human. What she saw was from a different planet, a system of beings living on an incredibly hot planet, too close to its sun. But there, everyone had the scars. It was deemed normal. Perhaps that explained her odd fascination. Or perhaps, she needed to see this to understand the breadth of pain and suffering. By knowing that, she knew the borders her prey crossed, the borders she has to come so close to in order to have any chance bringing justice to people.
She wrapped back up and looked at the burn scars growing up her neck, wrapping around her lower jaw, her bottom lip pulled tight against artificial teeth. Lifting a smooth, nailless finger to her mouth, she touched the grafted lip: dry, taut, too smooth to be real. Then she gently brushed her fingertip across her full upper lip: unburned, plumped, full, with a smattering of the finest, imperceptible hair.
She lowered her hand, and tried to pucker her lips together for some fantastical kiss she knew would never come again in her lifetime. The top lip did its job, shriveled into a plump caterpillar, but the bottom lip didn’t move at all. At that moment a brief, wriggling pang sprung from her brain, attempting to get to her heart. She felt a long dead tingle at the corners of her eyes. It had been so long since she had felt it last, but she knew from where it came. Sadness.
Her quarter alarm went off, a fuzzy bell announcing a visitor. Wincing, she pushed back the sadness, back to a great pit in her mind and pushed it over the edge. Taking a deep breath, Kristol quickly wrapped the body towel around her again and lashed it shut with the tie.
At the door, she pressed her thumb against the lock and the door slid open to reveal Professor Deyston.
Having been a scholar all his life and a bit allergic to fraternization with females or any type of friend at all, he saw her in her towel and immediately looked away. “I can come back a bit later,” he said, more than a little embarrassed.
“No,” Kristol said. “It’s fine. We’re on a tight time table anyway. Were you able to complete it?”
For a briefest of moments, Deyston fixated on Kristol’s bare feet, the skin whorled and stretched, the absence of many of the toes, five to be exact, two on the left, three on the right. He followed the feet up to her calves, where her skin looked painted on with wide brushes, the bristly hairs clogged with skin paint and leaving lines and clumps. Sure he had been around her for some time now and had gotten used to seeing her neck and lower jaw, but she never talked to him about it. But after this, he had seen the top and bottom of her and using his imagination, painted the rest of the burns on her body. The image must have been too much for his constitution, because he shuddered briefly.
A shudder, Kristol had easily seen. The same shudder she had seen countless people succumb to when they saw her. “The report?” she asked coldly. A laugh caught her watching Deyston shake his head and come out of his fog.
He brought out a small datapad and and cleared his throat. “Okay, this is what I could find so far,” he said. “You must understand, my master─”
“Just give me the high level summary, Professor.”
“Okay,” he paused to take another breath. “We know through our own investigation on Draedus that the maopreta, or the ‘black hand’ as it is called, or the right-handed gauntlet piece to the Gardaan is possibly in the hands of Hallastaare, or at least about to be. Which is why we are heading to Tallon as we speak, correct?”
Kristol nodded to the affirmative.
“The laancaluca, or the ‘spear of light,’ the other gauntlet is also presumed to be in the hands of Hallastaare, per the oral recantations we discussed prior. The invencivvel, or the ‘shield of the gods’ is the breastplate and there are no known records that have been found that know of its existence. The lagartido, or the left boot, what early records call the ‘time wink,’ again, has no research behind it that reveals it’s possible whereabouts. The same can be said about the the jatigrotanno, or the ‘heaven strider,’ the right boot and probably the most powerful piece, the helm, or what was once called the fadacamente, or the ‘thought cutter.’ I’m afraid, that’s all I know. Again, pulled from the research of my master. Most of this information comes from myths, not credible sources.”
Kristol sat down on a hard cushioned chair, deep in thought. “Why is the helm considered the most powerful piece?” she asked.
Deyston scrolled down his datapad, then looked at her and said, “Um, the pieced together tales of the myth suggest that the helm commands the power mental fortitude, capable of mind control on a massive level.”
“Like a whole planet?” she asked.
Deyston shook his head and said, “I don’t know. Probably? I mean, if this ‘myth’ is actually true, if these artifacts were handed down by a divine creator, a god, then who knows what each piece of this armor is capable of.”
A smile glinted across Kristol’s face. “What do the other pieces do?”
Letting out a loud and noticeable sigh, Deyston scrolled through his datapad again and said, “Most of this was pieced together from crazed shaman tales and stories. The gauntlets possess control over the ‘light’ and the ‘darkness,’ whatever that symbolizes. The boots possess controls over gravity or flight of some kind perhaps and the other one seems simple, either time or speed. And the breastplate, possible immunities to harm.”
“Kind of like invincibility?”
Deyston nodded, “Sure. That could work.” He paused a bit and then continued. “The key here is that it seems like each piece commands a portion of a great god-like power, should all the pieces be brought together on any one person. As the myth goes, the last Gardaan, destroyed himself and the armor after his own harsh misuse of the power.”
“How’d he do that?”
“I’d imagine if you possessed the power of a god, you’d be able to go out in a pretty big bang.”
Amidst Deyston’s ramblings, Kristol had to admit that she saw what worried Withryn. But at the same time, she saw a greater worry and it started with herself.
As Deyston described the power behind each piece, she could feel herself getting excited, her blood pressure went up and she imagined herself wearing that helm, controlling an entire planet, an entire system perhaps. Somewhere within her a pool of animality had risen, eager to claim that helm and put it to use. Not only did the pieces weild great power, but their mere ideas seemed to wield a greater power of people.
She reminded herself to take a deep breath and not think about the helm and its control. Then she thought about her mission. Why had he sent her out here? She had thought to stop a great travesty – to keep the armor from falling into the wrong hands. But as she saw the mission in a new light, she saw herself the same as Hallastaare’s enforcer. They were both on the same mission, just for different sides.
Her thoughts swirled around Withryn’s abilities to communicate with people, see their needs, their cues and speak to them directly. That night in her apartment, when he asked her to do this – the pain in his eyes, the anguish, the fear of being on the wrong end of probably the greatest quest in the history of the galaxy, if it were true. Was that all a ruse? Was that him, using his deep relationship with her, to enter into this race? It chilled her to think he could have manipulated her so easily.
“Professor,” Kristol said. “Excuse me, but I must get dressed and onto the flight deck. We’ll be arriving at Tallon shortly.”
Suddenly, the COM stirred to life on the table by the wall. The holographic visage of Commander Gait Fensuithe appeared and said, “Captain Bantashe. Sorry to disrupt your report. I wanted to update you on a very serious incident that has occurred in the Cilbuper system. We got an anonymous tip within seconds of the occurrence of a man-made micro black hole within the atmosphere of the sixth planet. We have begun planetary evacuation protocols for the area, as well as the planet as the black hole grows and eventually consumes the planet.”
Kristol looked shocked and covered her mouth. “There has never been a successful test of any kind of technology that can induce and sustain a micro black hole,” she said. “How is this possible?”
Deyston stepped to her and pulled up the datapad, showing a rudimentary drawing of a glove that looked to be etched in ash by someone’s finger. “The maopreta,” he whispered. “The Black Hand.”
“I just wanted you to know, since you were nearby,” the Commander said. “We won’t need your help, but be on the look out for anything suspicious. The ship sending the transmission isn’t tracable through the COM, for whatever reason. So keep your eye open for a 'blank spot,' as they were probably the cause of this. Take care and good luck on your mission.”
The COM faded out and Kristol turned to Deyston and said, “A test?” “Perhaps,” Deyston said. “But if that was Halastaare, why would they have reported what happened?”
“To send up a sign perhaps? But that’s not Hallastaare’s style. He prefers to lurk, quickly strike and let the stories carry his message. I think whoever put on that gauntlet and tested it, didn’t intend for this to happen.”
“Maybe the piece fell into different hands?” Deyston said.
“Then,” Kristol said. “It will be interesting to see the activity report on Tallon as we approach.”
Dressed in her captain’s flight suit – a short, dark-gray jacket adorned with the Handman symbol worn over a tight-fitting black undersuit with dark-gray pants – Kristol pulled on her dark-gray gloves as she walked down the long corridor to the cabin. As much as the forced air from the ceiling and side vents helped create better artificial gravity within the ship, they too often gave her the shivers.
She relished these moments, though, the calm before the storm of directing an entire cabin of flight controllers, analysts and pilots, taking the chaos and pulling useful information out of it. She strode onto the flight deck in the cabin and said, “I want a scout report, what are we looking at?” She dusted past Professor Deyston like he didn’t exist.
In the analyst pits below, a nameless analyst worked furiously on an assessment of the Tallon system. Across the wide viewport a map of the system lit up, showing a colorful array of ship positions within the system.
“Well, everything is showing according to our forecasts,” the analyst said. “Mottled starship presence on the perimeter with a massive concentration at the interior.” A portion of the interior fleet map expanded and expanded again, showing a detached cluster within the overall interior fleet. “However, our scans indicate an unusual formation here in the interior.”
“As a percentage of their overall forces, that’s still an armada,” Kristol said. “They’re in a standard defense pattern, but that detached unit is an anomaly. There’s something going on. He’s sending a lot of resources to take care of something somewhere. I want pre-flight to try and get a read on where they’re going and begin replicating that flight plan for us.”
Standing nearby, Deyston asked, “You think our theory is right. He lost the piece, now he plans to reclaim it.”
“Precisely,” Kristol said and smiled out of the corner of her mouth, confident in the fact that she was getting closer, that even Hallastaare in all his crooked, deviant, deadly criminal power and resources wasn’t able to outsmart her.
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