The Last Gryphon

By F. James Kearns

The Last Gryphon is a Sci-fi action adventure set 1750 years in the future. Mankind has long since abandoned an ecologically wrecked and resource depleted planet Earth and spread out from their cradle world. This was accomplished through great and powerful mega-corporations. The discovery of space folding technology allows for near instantaneous travel and communication between settled star systems. Now, nearly two millennia later the corporation is everything. They control all aspects of life within humanity's settled territories using genetically engineered super soldiers known as gene-soldiers to repress any sign of dissent and to fight wars with rival corporations.
Marik, one of the two main characters in the story, is one of these gene-soldiers. He has been taken from line service after a lifetime of leading gene-soldier infantry and placed in an intelligence role. Marik is uncomfortable in this position, but he excels in the more violent aspects of the job. Lately he has become somewhat cynical as he has been exposed to the darker side of civilian life. Not every decision is as clear cut as it was on the battlefield.
The story opens with Marik detained on the backwater mining world of Hesperus IV. His cover role is that of a minor smuggler running contraband for a smuggling cartel that is headquartered in the Hesperus system asteroid ring. He was detained upon landing with a cargo hold full of illegal drugs. In order to maintain his cover he surrenders to the planetary peacekeepers, the local police force. It is at his initial arraignment for smuggling that he is able to overhear a conversation that leads him to believe that his cover is blown. He effects a violent escape from the courtroom, disappearing into the smog choked industrial streets of the Capital City of Hesperus IV.
While Marik is escaping from Peacekeeper custody, we meet Rhea, the other main character in the story. Rhea is a young girl, only eight years old. She has been the property of Psy

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098308285

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©2020 F. James Kearns. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses

permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 9781098308278 (print)

ISBN: 9781098308285 (ebook)

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

Aurelian Cortoss strode boldly through the broad marble corridor of the Confederated Systems senate building. He was a short, stocky older man. His head was balding, his belly expanding, and his face was lined with long decades of service. If one were to encounter him on a crowded street, he would not stand out. He was not particularly memorable, until one looked in his eyes that is. Those pale gray eyes radiated an inner fire that had unnerved more than one opponent in debate on the senate floor. Senator Cortoss won those debates much more frequently than he lost. Currently, the honorable senator was en route to a meeting of the Senate Armed Forces Provisional Committee. He was running late, but, as he was the chairman, the meeting could not begin until he called it to order.

As Senator Cortoss stalked the halls of power, staffers and menials hastily made way for the great man. The Senator’s burning gaze never wavered as he passed these inconsequentials. The occasional calls of ‘Good Afternoon, Senator’ went unacknowledged. The Senator was completely absorbed in his own lofty thoughts, until he passed a lowly janitorial menial hunched over a mop. Beyond an area marked off with ‘Wet Floor’ warning signs, the old man sloshed the mop back and forth desultorily.

A’agtak Cortoss melthass sha’lok tala, the janitor mumbled apparently to himself. Without breaking his stride, the Senator swerved into a nearby executive washroom, all thoughts of his meeting gone. The menial dunked his mop into the murky gray water of his bucket and steered his service cart in front of the rich heartwood door of the washroom and quietly stepped inside. Men, women, and ‘bots continued to flow past oblivious to the washroom on the business of the Confederated Systems government.

Senator Cortoss was bowed over the rich porcelain basins at the far end of the room, a trickle of water running from the gold tap. When the door clicked softly closed, he whirled around to face the menial. We are only to speak in their language! Anyone could have heard you, and you call me a fool? How dare you!

Most people would have withered under the Senator’s glare and harsh tone. The menial appeared to grow in stature. The hunched form straightened; the withered arms seemed to gain mass. The man’s watery, colorless eyes took on a silvery glow as the human features melted from his face, and for the briefest of instants, the sallow, almost maggot-like pallor of his skin darkened to a coal gray. It seemed to glisten oddly in the cool light of the washroom. A weirdly glowing rune flashed blindingly bright on the man’s right cheek. As quickly as these changes manifested, they disappeared, and the broken down menial again stood rooted in place facing the Senator. A’agtak! Fool! Yes. I call you a fool! I speak for the Council. Before their authority the power you weild over these evolved apes is insignificant! You will bow before me! The deep and powerful bass voice that issued from the throat of the old man did not belong to an aged and withered body, nor could it have come from a human throat at all. It echoed with command within the Senator’s mind.

The Senator fell prostrate at the feet of the old janitor. Had anyone happened to enter the washroom at that moment, he would have been stunned at the sight. Forgive me. What is your command, Emissary? The Senator’s voice quavered with fear.

The inhuman voice answered tersely, Get up. As Senator Cortoss slowly climbed to his feet, the janitor continued, "I require a full report of your activities. The Council has many concerns. They continue to progress at an alarming rate and spread like a stain across the galaxy. In less than a millennium, they have colonized and ruined hundreds of worlds. Their recent advances in self contained FTL drive technologies brings them closer to our frontier than ever before. I have been sent to oversee and provide … direction to your efforts among them. They must be stopped immediately."

The Senator had been staring at the ground between them until at these last words his head whipped up to glare at the other. For a mere second his eyes seemed to regain their inner fire. The anger was clear in his voice as he spoke. Direction? I was to be the lead for our initiatives here. I will not subject myself to a glorified mess—

Silence! the frail form appeared to swell again, and a powerful sense of menace was projected into Cortoss’ mind. It seems that you must learn your place, A’agtak. With those words, an invisible hand picked up the portly Senator and flung him across the room to slam him with bone shattering force against the far wall. He was held, pinned against the wall, the tips of his brightly polished shoes scraping against the cream-colored tile floor as he gasped futilely for air.

Senator Cortoss choked, his eyes as big as thrust nozzles as the menial casually crossed to the row of basins to wash his hands. The other worldly voice spoke calmly as he laved his hands. "You see, Senator, I am not without resources. You will report to me, and you will take my direction. The Council is less than pleased with your efforts here, and there is some concern that you may be, to borrow one of the ape’s pet phrases, ‘going native’. The janitor paused and with an almost negligent wave of his hand, he released the Senator to slide down the wall into a crumpled heap on the floor. Now, I am here to consolidate and reorganize our campaign. I will expect your report immediately. You will prepare a complete list of all ongoing activities and a complete list of human operatives for my review."

The Senator pressed his face to the washroom floor, the tiles cool against his fevered forehead. His voice was muffled as he spoke. Emissary, I was on my way to an important committee meeting. There are items up for discussion that affect ongoing operations. I must be there.

Cancel it, the other ordered tersely. This takes precedence. There are events in flux that could change everything. The seers have seen chaos, collapse, and invasion. This must be averted at all costs. Seconds passed after the Emissary stopped speaking, and Cortoss did not move. Well? Get moving! the old man snapped.

Cortoss shot to his feet as if electrified and bolted toward the door. As he jerked the door open, he turned back into the room abruptly asking, How will I contact y— his voice trailed off as he realized that the room was now empty. He blinked several times in stunned surprise and stared at himself in the gilt-edged mirror that covered the far wall above the row of basins.

The Emissary’s powerful voice smote the Senator’s mind, driving him to his knees with a cry. I will contact you, A’agtak. Now stop wasting precious time. Go! Do as you have been bidden.

The Senator fled the washroom, slamming into the abandoned janitorial cart in his haste to get away. This collision sent the cleaning supplies on the cart scattering in all directions. Men and women stopped in their hurry and stared at the powerful Senator as he fled down the corridor back in the direction of his office. He shoved a junior staffer out of his way in his haste and kicked a small courier drone into a potted plant.

A short time later. Locked in the sanctuary of his office, Senator Cortoss sat at his massive oaken desk (rumored to have been brought in one of the first corporate colony ships from the ruins of old Earth). The sumptuous furnishings and thick carpeting on the floor gave a sense of decadence to the room. A dry bar with Vross crystal decanters sitting atop it lined one wall. Opposite the dry bar was a grand bookcase filled with hundreds of ancient paper books, some of them the only copies left in existence. A giant holoframe hung behind the great desk above the Senator with an image of a ConFed heavy cruiser on display. The cruiser was christened the CFS Cortoss, the ConFed fleet’s newest commissioned warship.

The Senator sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose as he stared at the blank screen of his terminal. Curse that Emissary, and curse the Council too. For that matter curse the seer whose visions prompted the cursed Council to send the cursed Emissary to meddle in my existence. Now everything would change and not for the better. He heaved a second sigh and put his terminal on line.

Keying in a series of security codes, Senator Cortoss created a virtual data fortress. Then he pulled open the top left hand drawer of his desk and, sliding open the false bottom, withdrew a small black box. ConFed encryption was good, but the black device was better. It was not ConFed technology, and Senator Cortoss’ possession of such a device would have gotten him taken into custody for espionage and executed. That is, if the Central Security Agency cryptotechs could even figure out what it was.

The device created a narrow-band sub-space pulse in which large packets of data could be exchanged over great distances in real time while bypassing the extensive data security and scrutiny that all ConFed government systems were subjected to. The Senator placed the box next to his terminal and tapped the top of it. A red light blinked on then off and then back on again. Slowly the red light faded to amber still blinking, blinking with increasing rapidity until it was continuously lit. Cortoss tapped the box again and a second, green light flared to life.

Staring at the box, he thought briefly about ConFed Systems security. Like infants, humans were so proud of their simple toys yet no idea what real power looked like. Shrugging mentally, he began pulling up files from various sources within the Confederated Systems government data stacks, unauthorized copies of data from sources as widely varied as Fleet Intelligence, Colonial Armed Forces Special Forces, and multiple corporate data caches. The military files were headered with blaze orange, ultra secret labels and ConFed Systems use only. Each file was reviewed and stored in the data fortress. Lists of operations scrolled down the screen with location and mission tabs.

One of the last project files formatted into the data fortress for the Emissary’s evaluation was code-named Project Gryphon. Below the classification header was a flashing subheader in heavy bold text. It read: Terminate per evaluation: Segundus 26, 3816. The project name tripped something in the Senator’s memory, and the termination date was only a month ago. The project’s inception date was over thirty years ago. With a few keystrokes, Senator Cortoss was engrossed, reading the project notes with great interest.

Chapter 1

Get up! You got court.

As he heard these words, a bucket of stingingly cold water splashed across Marik’s supine frame. The water was accompanied by the harsh laughter of the two guards standing outside of the tiny windowless cell.

The featureless cube into which he had been thrust following his arrest for smuggling addictives did not allow him to stand his full two meter height, and Marik was forced to duck as he stepped out into the dim filthy light of the corridor. Two burly guards wearing the uniform of Hesperus IV peacekeepers stood smirking at him, silently daring him to try anything. The featureless, gray corridor that they stood in was lined with heavy steel cell doors at regular intervals. The pungent odor of disinfectants poorly covered the rank stench of vomit, blood, and urine. Marik’s heightened olfactory burned and his vision blurred uncomfortably as his senses adjusted to the dingy glare. There had been no light at all in his cell.

Move, one of the guards ordered, prodding him in the ribs with his stunstick. As soon as Marik took a step, the two guards bracketed him front and rear. He studied the lead guard as they moved through the jail complex. Marik was a good thirty centimeters taller than the man; but for all of his height advantage, the guard was half again as wide as he was with great slabs of muscle bulking him up. The fabric of the guard’s smog gray uniform stretched tight over his massive arms, and he walked with the confident swagger of a man who knew how to handle himself in a fight. Marik knew the type well, and he smiled grimly, as he thought back over the hundreds of times that same arrogant overconfidence had served him in the past.

Marik was a gene-soldier, one of the Confederated Systems elite custom crafted soldiers. He was a product of the finest medical and cybernetic technology that the Confederated Systems had to offer. His lean muscled frame hid an ultra-dense, reinforced skeletal structure, and his strength was biochemically and cybernetically enhanced. His reaction speed was boosted to superhuman levels. His cold, blue-gray eyes could see further into the spectrum than normal humans and were capable of up to 10 X magnification when needed. He had been designed and engineered to be the perfect stealth weapon. His bald head and his handsome, though tough unremarkable face encased a mind honed by a lifetime of combat and special operations experience. His relative lack of mass and quiet composure hid his combat capabilities well.

Marik’s current assignment was to determine the veracity of intelligence reports suggesting that Hesperus with its mineral rich star systems was in the process of building up forces with the intent of declaring independence from the Confederated Systems. Confederated Systems, or ConFed, was a corporate republic chartered in the early days of humanity’s diaspora from the ruins of old Earth and Sol following the discovery of space fold technology.

Space folding technology allowed the human race to explode out into the galaxy, leaving behind their exhausted and ecologically wrecked cradle world. That first leap into space led to the founding of dozens of colonies and brought forth revolutions in a number of scientific fields. The ConFed corporation was one of the first to take advantage of these advances as humanity explored their galaxy. This head start enabled them to expand rapidly and swallow up many of the smaller colonial charters. By the dawn of the third millennium, ConFed ruled over a vast stretch of space and consisted of numerous subsidiary corporations and small backwater systems. Governed by an oligarchic Senate which was led by a Consul elected from among the elite of that body, Confederated Systems used the might of its fleet and the brute force of its Colonial Armed Forces to enforce its will without mercy. In ConFed’s thousand year history there had been many small insurrections and revolts, but all of these were insignificant compared to the the threat of succession by Hesperus as the Hesperus system provided the bulk of the ConFed’s mineral and rare fuel resources.

Hesperus was the one of the largest and most powerful of the ConFed subordinate states. Composed of a dozen systems all within a twenty light year radius, the Hesperus Mining District provided the ConFed Fleet with the fuel and raw materials needed to maintain its stranglehold on power. The Mining District also provided an inordinate number of Fleet officers, and members of the Senate delegation from Hesperus chaired or served on many influential committees.

Hesperus was also a hotbed of graft, corruption, and smuggling. Many of those powerful Senators chafed under the controlling thumb of the office of the Consul. They longed for the autonomy that independence from ConFed would give them. Marik had eliminated two such corrupt Senators and a planetary governor in service to the mission thus far. The loose organization of the smugglers guild was being suborned by those in power to move materiel to staging areas in preparation for a declaration of secession. Marik’s cover as one of those smugglers had previously granted him free movement throughout the district until this most recent trip to the capital on Hesperus IV and his subsequent arrest. Marik’s thoughts whirled as the trail guard prodded him in the kidney with his stunstick, and they stepped out of the detention center.

The orange sun of the Hesperus system hung in a sickly looking yellowish sky. A lazy breeze stirred the powder-like dust that coated everything into miniature whirlwinds as Marik and his guards crossed the square toward the justice building. A cracked and dry fountain squatted in the center of the square. A line of peacekeeper cruisers were parked in front of the justice building. The justice building itself was as shabby and run down as the jail had been. The rough stone of the ugly, two-story building seemed to collect the grime and filth of the planet and its inhabitants. The lead guard yanked open one of the splintered double doors, and the trail guard shoved Marik through. A long central corridor dressed with cracked marblite bisected the interior of the building. Even within the confines of the building, the omnipresent dust of Hesperus IV intruded. It gathered in powdery drifts in the corners and settled in a fine dun colored layer on all of the décor. Doorways lined the hallway at uneven intervals, and civil servants rushed about at the business of the Mining District. Halfway down the hallway, the guards led Marik to a lift. When the doors parted, Marik was directed to enter. The doors slammed closed once the guards stepped into the car. With a creaking lurch, the car began to ascend.

When the lift doors opened on the second level, Marik was pushed out into the large antechamber of the courtroom. A long ironwood desk divided the room. On the far side, clerks bustled about. Large vidscreens lined the far wall. Planetary and ConFed news broadcasts flashed across several. The talking head on one spoke critically of a labor dispute ongoing at the primary smelting plant on the planet. Another showed a scene of chaotic violence as peacekeepers armed with riot shields and stunsticks waded into a mob of protesters. The screams of injured protesters mingled with the hollow thump of grenade launchers peppering the seething mass with gas canisters. Billious yellow smoke began to drift up to be carried on the breeze. Thick bodied foundry workers surged against the wall of transparent riot shields. The scene abruptly shifted back to the news room after an overzealous peacekeeper laid into a worker with his stunstick, shattering the man’s jaw and spraying teeth upward like a scattering of marbles thrown skyward by a petulant child.

Marik’s eyes lingered on the news broadcast as the detention guards herded him into a line of prisoners waiting before a closed door which led to the courtroom proper. The door opened and an aging, fat bailiff stepped through. The detention center guards, their task completed, nodded lazily at the bailiff and departed. The bailiff scanned the line of prisoners, and his deep set, pig-like eyes settled on Marik. The guard squinted as he sized up Marik and rocked back on his heels. You ain’t gon’ give me no kinda trouble now, are ya boy? he drawled.

Marik studied the man briefly. He held a stunstick loosely in his right hand, resting the shockprod on the ground. A well worn garn hide leather holster on his right hip held a heavy antique slug thrower pistol. The man’s labored breath and the massive belly that strained the buttons on his sweat-stained uniform and hung over his weapon belt indicated a poor level of fitness. Marik had no doubt that he could indeed ‘give the man trouble’. Instead he smiled ingratiatingly and replied, Sir, I jes’ wanna pay my fine and blast.

The fat bailiff grunted an inarticulate response and led him and the other prisoners through the door into the courtroom. A partitioned off gallery to the right of the door awaited the line of pathetic petty criminals. Across the small courtroom, a raised dais held a massive desk. A small dock for prisoners to stand and receive their sentences stood at the base of the dais holding the justiciar’s bench. The wall on the left held a row of huge floor-to-ceiling windows beyond which the busy sounds of the capital could be heard. A barely functional ceiling fan clacked an irregular tempo as it struggled to die. Partially obscured by the justiciar’s bench, a small doorway was visible to Marik. The door to the justiciar’s inner chamber was closed, but Marik’s augmented hearing could clearly make out a hushed conversation taking place within.

... all minor offences. I can hardly hand them all over to you. None of these merit more than a hefty fine. You’ll just have to—

A second emotionless voice interrupted, "I will simply have to do nothing. You will hand them over to me. You have already received your payment, and yet you hesitate to deliver? It would be most unfortunate for you if my superiors found your ... patriotism lacking."

Very well, the first voice sighed. I will deliver what you want, however ..." At this point Marik stopped listening and resumed his observation of the courtroom. One of the other prisoners emitted a phlegmy cough before puking on the floor. The others edged away from the sick man and crowded crowded into Marik, who sat at the end of the bench. The bailiff stood half a meter to Marik’s right on the far side of the door and ignored them all. Sagging lazily against the wall, his breath wheezed through his open mouth. Despite the relatively minor heat, sweat darkened his uniform and ran down the man’s porcine face. The rumble of vehicle traffic could be heard from the street below the windows. Weak sunlight filtered through the grime on those windows, granting a sickly cast to the flesh of the line of prisoners crowded next to Marik.

Sickly would be about accurate, too, thought Marik as he studied them. The man who had vomited was hiccuping and spitting bile on the floor at his feet; another wept silently while rocking slowly back and forth while picking at a weeping sore on the side of her face. Most of them looked malnourished at best, their skin covered in lesions and sores and stretched tight over jutting bones. The crimes of these pathetic losers were most likely limited to drug abuse or petty theft at worst. The Mining District had a remarkably low crime rate, discounting corruption of course, since major crimes were sentenced to serve in the penal battalions.

A sentence in one of the penal battalions was, more often than not, a death sentence. Conflict with the lawless territories of the Outer Rim was a constant fact of life, and penal troops were always used on the most brutal of battlefields of these operations. Company officers and NCOs, who were not convicts, kept their troops in line with shock collars fitted with micro-explosives. A convict soldier fought or he died. All too often he fought and died. Even a sentence as short as an old Terran year was a deadly prospect.

Marik had served alongside penal troops in the past. They were often an unreliable lot. Their training was inconsistent to nonexistent, and they often broke at crucial moments. Their leaders were a sadistic and twisted lot, the absolute power of life and death over so many, damaging their psyches.

Marik’s grim reflections were interrupted by the entrance of the justiciar. The justiciar was a small man, almost mousy in appearance. He had a florid, grandfatherly looking face. Old age bent his stature. The remains of his wispy hair, along with his neatly trimmed beard, had long ago faded to a snowy white. He shuffled slowly up to the bench on his dais and eased himself into his chair. Almost on his heels, a second figure emerged from the chambers behind the dais.

Absalom!

Marik’s thoughts raced. The second voice from the snippet of overheard conversation was a gaunt-faced little man in the uniform of a captain in the Hesperus militia and was the final target on his list. The man’s pristine uniform and shining silver rank pips appeared to twinkle tauntingly at Marik. Captain Absalom was the ‘recruiter’ for the penal battalions. It was his job to collect the dregs of society from the worlds of the Mining District and transport them to the penal battalion training facilities. Intelligence reports showing a disturbing increase in activity at these facilities had been part of the briefing for Marik’s current mission.

Studying the pathetic row of shivering prisoners anew, Marik wondered at the Captain’s presence in the courtroom this morning. Watching snot roll down the face of the puker, Marik shook his head ruefully. Surely, none of them could have offenses serious enough to merit a penal battalion sentence. Most of these guys wouldn’t even survive initial training. Then he recalled the snippet of conversation he had overheard from the justiciar’s chamber. The justiciar was going to turn them all over! Signed and paid for. Absalom must be struggling to meet his quota this quarter to be leaning so hard on this particular lot. They were a pretty damn sorry bunch. Then Marik looked at the Captain again. Their eyes met, and a ghost of a smile curved the death mask of Absalom’s face.

No! It’s me! He knows me! I’m blown! These losers are all going down because of me. Marik realized with painful certainty that he had not just been sold a bad spaceport clearance. The whole operation was fragged. I’m not just getting out of here with a fine, he thought. If Absalom, a target, knew where he was, and more importantly, who he was, then there was no way he was getting out of there with just a fine and hefty bribe. Which meant his contacts were all in danger as well. He began to survey the courtroom anew, weighing his options. It was time to figure out an alternative egress.

Benjamin Alexander? the voice of the justiciar calling the name of his cover alias cut through Marik’s calculations like a laser. He was out of time. Rising slowly to his feet, Marik approached the dock. The justiciar glared down at him, all signs of grandfatherliness vanished from his face, replaced by an angry flush. Mr. Alexander, when you landed at Hesperus IV spaceport, port authority officials found approximately two hundred liters of Glo, a class six addictive substance, in your cargo hold. He paused and drew in a shaky breath. The transport of addictives within Mining District space is a very serious crime, he continued. Do you have anything to say in your defense before I pass sentence?

Well, uhhh, sir, Marik stammered, desperately trying to buy time while calculating his escape route. I signed for industrial lubricants, sir. I had no idea that there was drugs in them containers. My cargo manifest should clearly show—

I don’t care what your manifest shows! You brought poisons to my planet, the justiciar roared, working himself into a self-righteous lather. In light of the seriousness of your crime and the overwhelming evidence against you, you are hereby remanded to Penal Battalion One-Oh-One for a period not to exceed five Terran years. As he concluded his thundering recital, he glanced sidelong at the Captain, and the not so subtle nod by the Captain confirmed Marik’s worst fear. A smile that failed to touch the old man’s eyes creased the corners of his mouth. I believe they are about to ship to Grimm’s star for the acquisition action there . Enjoy your sentence, Mr. Alexander. Appearing to deflate under the withering glare of the justiciar, Marik turned and stepped down from the dock.

As the justiciar called the next name on the morning docket, Marik crossed back toward the gallery. He pasted a glazed look of terror and abject despair on his face as he stumbled several times on his way to the gallery. Just as he was about to take his seat, he tumbled into the bailiff.

Hey! Get— Before the fat man could finish his complaint, Marik grabbed the stunstick from his hand and jammed it into the thick folds of his neck. The man danced wildly as the electrical impulses from the shockprod shorted his nervous system. A wet stain spread across the man’s trousers and the pungent smell of urine flooded the courtroom. As he began to collapse, Marik drew the bailiff’s sidearm and dived behind the partition separating the prisoners’ gallery from the rest of the courtroom.

The other prisoners scattered in panic, and the justiciar began shouting for additional security; Marik figured he had mere moments to act. Popping his head up to take a quick glance at the situation, he could see the justiciar, red-faced and screaming, standing behind his desk. Where was...? Ahh, there’s Absalom creeping toward the door to the justiciar’s chamber, Marik thought quickly. The old fool was obscuring a clear shot. Too bad for him.

Marik pumped a controlled pair into the chest of the justiciar. As the old man crumpled to the ground, Marik quickly readjusted his aim and snapped off two more shots just as Absalom dropped behind the huge desk. The slugs pulverized the wall behind the justiciar’s bench, throwing a heavy white haze of plaster dust into the air to be stirred about by the decrepit ceiling fan. Screaming klaxons of weapons discharge alarms cut through the air. Marik fired a volley of shots into one of the big floor-to-ceiling windows shattering one with a resounding crash. Firing off the remainder of the rounds in the weapon indiscriminately in the general direction of the bench to keep Captain Absalom’s head down, Marik jumped up and sprinted for the shattered window. Pausing just a second to clear his jump, he leaped out into the dusty morning. Landing heavily on the tarpaulin-covered crates in the open bed of a passing heavy cargo hauler, he quickly rolled down into the shadowy gap between the crates and disappeared from sight. The truck trundled into the morning, the driver oblivious of his fugitive passenger.

Rhea had been struggling for weeks in vain trying to defeat the hated collar. The thin, dull silvery band somehow -disconnected- the part of her mind that housed her power. It felt as though half of her brain was missing. Whenever she tried to tap into her power, the collar would give her a painful shock. The shock was meant to dissuade trainees from any unauthorized use of power. For most trainees it worked, but Rhea was too stubborn. She just doggedly kept at it.

The name plate outside her cell named her Subject 13-A. To them she was an Alpha Level trainee with incredible psychic potential. For them the skinny eight-year-old girl with the shaven head was nothing more than a weapon that needed refining. At eight years of age, her power was just beginning to fully manifest. They knew that the surface had barely been scratched on the deep pool that was the power that resided within the girl’s frail body.

They were Psy Corp. Psy Corp was a ConFed government-sponsored private enterprise initiative created to develop or engineer soldiers gifted with psyonic abilities. As well, the Psy Corp sought to enhance those rare individuals naturally gifted with the power who were appearing across the ConFed in increasing frequency. Unlike other subsidiaries of the ConFed government, Psy Corp controlled no systems, held no planets. Instead, they had offices and training facilities in nearly every sector of ConFed space. Planetary governors were eager to work with Psy Corp since having a Psy soldier on their staff was a huge advantage. Psy soldiers served in the fleet and crack line units in the Colonial Armed Forces. Even though the mutations within the human genome that enabled psychic ability were a recent phenomenon, the billions of credits that had been poured into Psy Corp had done wonders to advance the science involved. In the span of less than a century, the tiny handful of Psy-soldiers who were initially trained in the first classes had multiplied significantly.

Most psy sensitives didn’t manifest any sign of power until they reached puberty. Rhea was unique in that her power began to manifest at the early age of five. A Psy Corp. sniffer had been called by the matron to one of the many government sponsored orphanages on Hesperus IV. The heavy industries of the Mining District were hazardous work, and with no shortage of manpower, worker safety was a relatively low priority. The parentless children were dumped into orphanages that eventually funneled them back into heavy industrial trades. Rhea was one of these ghost children.

Rhea had initially been overjoyed to escape the orphanage. The Psy Corp man had been kind to her. Many of the other children in the orphanage had not been so kind. She had been singled out by them as ‘weird.’ Rhea was mute; it seemed to be a trade off for her power that she lacked any vocal capacity. The other orphans quickly learned that the strange silent girl had no way to tell on them for the cruel and abusive pranks that they pulled on her. Her few friends were unable or unwilling to stick up for her and risk being beaten up themselves by the bullies in the orphanage.

The Psy Corp man gave her chocolate and took her away from the mean boys and girls. He even gave Rhea a pretty silvery necklace to wear while he explained to her how special she was. The ride in a Psy Corp ground car to the training facility was a short but exciting one. Upon their arrival however, very