Dead.
She had to be dead.
She had trained for this. Sharpened her instincts. Reactions timed, qualified, retried and re-timed over and over again until every action came involuntarily, until the mind clicked on its own, in its own time, in its own speed.
Ignore the pain.
Forget it searing through your skin, eating away at your spirit.
Focus. Recreate the scene. There were twelve of us Handmen, all Flanking Withryn. Protection detail. Her fourth real assignment since graduating through the academy. Withryn spoke – a meticulously crafted speech, no doubt labored over by seven different communications liasions. Large crowd. Perimeter guards were in place, keeping the peace. No protestors in sight. All clear. Watched Withryn speak. He plans and times his gestures perfectly, accentuating exactly what he needs to when he needs to like an operatic conductor. He was only missing the glowing baton.
Then movement. The first waves of light from a bright orange flash hit her eyes. Time stopped, or at least slowed down to her speed. Muscles were already firing, contracting and stretching.
Globular burst. Bright orange. Fiorgel. Arms reached out, pushed aside slower Handmen. Approximate timing to impact was 0.007 seconds.
Fiorgel. They banned it quite some time ago. Reaction to carbon-based life forms: immediate chemical reaction inducing excruciating burns, charring, scarring, 72% successful reconstruction possible.
Legs sprung. Body leapt at Withryn. Fiorgel impact in 0.002, 0.001, impact.
Searing hot whiteness.
Kristol remembered nothing after that having been put down in a mandate coma to begin repairing her burned body. Survivors of fiorgel wounds rarely survived and the pain involved in surviving often didn’t allow the victims to survive much long after. But she had been trained as a Handman. Pain existed only as a communication system, relaying messages from the extremeties to the brain, a glorified status report.
It took surgeons a whole year to repair her decimated body, rebuilding her bone and flesh from the inside out. A hard task to be sure. Once bone, sinew and muscle were fully repaired, they could begin the harder, more detailed work of repairing the delicate skin.
The easiest solution was to replace the damaged skin with artificial skin, however, in Kristol’s living will paperwork she did not consent to any artificial means of replacement, citing a strong desire to retain her humanity. So the surgeons had a tough task of regrowing and patching together a framework of skin for her to replace the large amount that no longer existed.
After the first graft, she was awoken to test her sensitivity to the repairs. Sealed in a hermetic plastic chamber and attached to several biomedical monitoring machines, her eyes opened for the first time since saving the Grand Minister. One would think after what she had last seen and done, she’d awaken to a scream. Which she did, but only in her mind. The pain registry in her brain lit up like a thousand points of light, yet she said nothing. She only took a deep breath through her breathing apparatus and turned her head to see the panel of doctors working on her and next to them stood the Grand Minister himself, a tear in his eye.
He had survived.
Her mind felt a little at ease.
Then the Grand Minister turned from her and addressed a pack of people outside her chamber. His hands were gesturing again – conducting an audience. Every once in a while a flash erupted from the pack. Photogs. Press. Kristol’s mind snapped back into investigative form. Withryn was turning the tragedy into a historic event. Kristol imagined Withryn’s telling of the tale – swooped up with heroism, grandeur and hyperbole – hitting the COM. Her name would be known across a thousand systems. Her story would live longer than she would.
Then a tragic thought hit her. Her life wouldn’t be the same again. Her dream of becoming a Handman came true, but she didn’t want a public life. She wanted to bust criminals, protect the innocent and go on with what she thought was a normal life: work, get paid, go on vacations, etc, etc. That was out of the question now. No longer would she be able to melt into the background, become just a piece of the government. She couldn’t imagine what her life would become now. It definitely wouldn't be under her control as much as she wanted it to be.
That night after the circus had long since left, Withryn ushered out the doctors and sat at the communication switch. After switching it on, she heard his voice through the speaker and it sounded tinnier than it normally did, less human. “My dear, Kristol,” he said. “My savior. My life. I’ll have you know that I have dispatched the finest reconstructive surgeons. They’re on their way here now. Before you know it, you’ll be back to normal.”
Kristol lifted her arm and head, Kristol waved him off. She tried saying “no” over the breathing tubes muffling her speech.
But Withryn, a master at the gesture also expertly picked up on them as well. She supposed he had to be. Part of speaking to people well, convincing them of things was in the way a person picked up on their signals or cues. Withryn looked pained, but agreed with Kristol. “I do as you please, my dear. I can only offer you the world, the galaxy at my fingertips for the service you provided me. I am completely indebted to you. I’ve even appointed you to a higher position as Prime Investigator and Minister Liasion and I’ve begun construction of a living suite at the top of Handman quarters atop the Amber D'Alsace Spire. And for those, I will not accept your decline. They are already done. End of story.”
He paused in mid thought, almost like he was thinking of other things to help repay her. “You know when I was younger, I had high ambitions. Nothing as high as this, though. I wanted to be a city administrator. Back then, I never realized my gifts, my abilities to see into people and understand what they needed. It can be burdensome at times. See, to focus so much on the immediate, allows little time to lament on the past or the future. But who am I talking to, surely you of all people understand this concept.”
She did, but not on his level of noticing people’s cues. Her’s was the ability to breakdown a situation in a fraction of a second and assess it for a solution. Not quite the same thing as reading a person’s facial expressions and gestures, but she understood what he meant.
“Not many people take the time of the present to absorb all the information they are getting and then, customizing speech and gesture immediately, respond with a compelling reaction. It requires a certain grace and an adamant focus on listening. And the communicating part. Once you have listened enough, responding is like being a musician, you simply need to find the right notes to please your listeners.”
Kristol tried to smile, pleased that her thoughts mirrored the Minster’s. She watched him speak. Confident. Empathetic. Strong.
He continued, “I don’t know if you know, but I get fed incalculable amounts of data. So much I grow weary at the mere mention of it. After a while, you can even pick up on the clues and gestures within this data – just like a conversation. I only mention it because it affects you and this new position I created for you.
“See my dataminers have shown my evidence that in the last three years, Hallastaare’s underworld has increased activity across the GSA. A mere observer would just see this as a barely perceptible blip on a radar screen, but when you read into it, you can see that something is happening. Oh, I shouldn’t trouble you with such twaddlespeak. You have healing to do. But I wanted to tell you at least that. I want you to head up any investigations into the underworld, specifically those centering around Hallastaare’s activities.” He stood up and straightened out his minister robes and finished, “We don’t want this blip growing outside our control, do we?”
Kristol watched his face. It showed different for that part of his speech. Darker. Controlling. Quashing. She watched him exit her room. One thing was clear, she thought amidst the drone of biomedical equipment around her, despite her initial feelings toward the subject, her new life now had few more prospects going for it.
* * *
On Draedus, the Solar homestead fluttered with activity. The plumes of smoke from the razing were long gone, replaced by the chilled morning air and the bustle of Handmen setting up evidence markers and perimeter scanners. Orchestrating it all, Kristol stood on the ramp to the Scythe, which was convertible to a temporary mission control center.
She watched Handmen on the roof of the home, scanning plasma burns and taking samples. To both sides, Handmen scoured the brush and trees surrounding the home. Others walked about taking scans of the ground. At a holographic display table, Kristol watched a map of the area bloom with evidence as the Handmen did their work. The map elements appeared green and across it were various evidence representations in both red and blue. Professor Deyston followed Kristol closely. He found the crime scene reconstruction technology to be very fascinating. “So they all do their thing and then the data is uploaded here and combined?” he asked.
Kristol reached into the holographic map display and interacted with it, changing the perspective of the map. “Exactly,” she told him. “See those red markings?”
Deyston nodded.
“Those are unidentified evidence trails.”
Deyston smiled and replied, “And the blue. Those are evidence trails left by you and your team?”
Kristol manipulated the map to remove all the blue traces. “Right again, Professor,” she said. “You catch on quick. See all Handmen DNA, fingerprints and equipment is profiled and entered into the system. When the scanners pick it up, it codes it blue. Anything not predefined in our initial profile is encoded red.”
“It’s amazing the way technology makes breaking the law and NOT getting caught almost impossible to do,” the professor said.
“Truly,” Kristol said. “Especially since the corporation that developed this tech was immediately purchased by the GSA, so we’re the only ones that have it and no one can find the work arounds…at least not yet.”
Kristol pointed at the house on the map and it immediately zoomed in and pulled up a schematic of the building. Isolating the security wiring in the building, she pointed to it and brought up security footage from the building cams. Scrolling through hundreds of files, she found the files associated with the time of the razing. She selected the file for the front exterior cam and wound it back to the time of the razing.
In the footage window on the display, it showed a bearded man dressed in archaic clothing and wearing a long green sash around his forehead. He seemed to be carrying something as he walked out the front of the building, but his body blocked the camera’s view of it. The man stopped amidst violent explosions of plasma all around him and off in the distance, above the tree tops, the faint image of the firing ship came into view.
“Got you,” Kristol said, pointing to the ship on the screen. By touching the ship image, the program immediately began a systemwide search, pulling up the make, model, portlog entries and fueling depot stops of the ship and registry images of the ship and owner. The picture of the owner popped up – a Podarian with a missing fourth eye. The picture of the ship looked like it’s captured version on the video, only the name came up as the Polished Teapot. “Interesting,” Kristol said.
“What is it?” asked Deyston.
“I’ve seen this combo before,” said Kristol. “It’s a fake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Often shady organizations misregister ships and owners to hide their trails. Usually they’re better than this. But I’ve seen this profile with a different name and a different style ship on a smuggling ring we busted a few months ago that smelled an awful lot like Hallastaare.”
Deyston backed away, a noticeable shudder coursed down his body. “Hallastaare?” he asked. “Really?”
Kristol nodded and a thought occurred in her head, but it hadn’t solidified yet. Quickly, she pointed to the security footage window and scanned through the video files looking for an internal view. She opened up a bunch and watched them simultaneously, until she saw the stream showing the victim, a young man and a young woman staring at a cube of laminate that contained a jewel-encrusted, golden gauntlet.
“Does that look like the gauntlet to an ancient suit of armor to you?” Kristol asked Deyston, hinting at the quest of the Gardaan, the reason she brought him along.
Deyston spotted it and nodded his head. “Yes. I would say that could be right.”
They both nodded at each other in silence for a few beats. Kristol’s face contorted into an angry, annoyed face.
Deyston was ignorant to it all. “What? Am I missing something?” Finally, Kristol turned and pointed to the gauntlet on the screen. “Gauntlet? Armor? Old armor that brings one ultimate power?”
Suddenly, Deyston got it and grew red in the face, then he turned and dashed into the ship. He returned moments later with a few older books and Reutian laserscroll, which he opened and turned the dials as he walked, looking for the answer Kristol wanted. But he obviously hadn’t found it yet.
Kristol switched the display view back to the outside of the house, then removed the blue trace and focused on the red trace. Footrpints of the participants were everywhere. She clicked on a few trails and looked at the data.
The main victim was human – DNA traces proved that. Who he was had yet to be discovered in the system searches.
She clicked another and the profile came up as Palo Solar with a registered photo of him. “Figured that. Good boy registering on the COM and all that,” Kristol said to herself, waiting to hear from Deyston.
To fill her time she clicked on a third evidence trail and it came up human, unidentified, but cellular trace detected cognizantia, a biomechanical coolant used in fusing tech with organic material.
“May have to check on registered orgs with over 50% tech replacement surgeries done,” she said to herself.
On to another trail. That one came in as not human, but as Saculian, unidentified. The thought she had earlier connected. The Saculian huntsmen. Why hadn’t she picked up on it before? Of course his papers checked out back in Param Eon, Hallastaare made it so. She couldn’t even count the amount of time the COM techs detected file corruption that hazily seemed to lead to Hallastaare. She started questioning the validity of the data in the COM.
Deep inside her mind, her instincts clicked on. Better keep a closer eye on things – who knows what is real or fake anymore? “Deyston,” Kristol shouted. “Anything in your books about Hallastaare being connected to all this?”
Deyston struggled, turning dials furiously on the laserscroll. My master had recorded oral stories written down about an Arman brute who may or may not have stolen a sacred, left-handed gauntlet from a tribal elder on Fharkenghulr.”
Kristol turned to meet Deyston, who stopped short in front of her, intimidated. “An Arman brute,” Kristol said. “Some of the intel I’ve heard about Hallastaare often hints at an enforcer of his – an Arman brute.”
She turned and reupped the video footage of Palo and his friends staring at the gauntlet in the cube of laminate, then pointed to it for Deyston’s viewing. “Is that the thing you’re talking about?”
Deyston squinted his eyes and looked at the small image and said, “No. My records indicate that he has the left one. That is a right-handed gauntlet.” If he picked up on the same thing Kristol had picked up on, he wasn’t showing it. For a professor, he surely took a long time getting to points. Kristol tapped her foot and said, “You’re not getting it yet? Hallastaare had someone steal this gauntlet and your records indicate he already has the left one. So he already has two pieces.”
Deyston still wasn’t up to speed and said, “I’m sorry. My master was the scholar on this. I haven’t actually spent a lot of time studying this. I can only search the records my master had on file.”
Kristol turned back to her display map, which sported a higher intelligence factor than her hand-picked expert. “Go back into the ship and get reading. I need to know how many pieces of armor this thing has. And please do not let it be three!”
Deyston grabbed his things and scurried off into the ship like a freshly whipped canedog.
Kristol studied the ever-growing map of the crime scene, amazed at its power. Then she thought about this Saculian’s connections to Hallastaare and the “loopholes” that relationship seems to find within the COM. Withryn mentioned something about theology and magic about this assignment, but couldn’t understand what it meant.
“Perhaps I too need to do a little reading,” she told herself.
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