Lucid Reality, page 11
“Incredible!” the professor whispered in awe.
“Billy Joe,” Doctor Junker said softly as if speaking too loud would cause the design to fall apart. “Hold these in this alignment, then touch your square.” Billy Joe did as he was asked, and the whole pattern began to glow a dim red. Doctor Junker clutched her brother’s hand with a triumphant squeal.
“Now, Winston, authorize the message,” she begged.
Winston placed his thumb on the other square.
Nothing.
They all let out a defeated sigh.
Like a ghostly Will o’ the Wisp, words materialized in the air above the paper.
“Your most important finger.”
They stared at the phrase, astonished.
“A nanoscopic holoprojector? Incredible!” Lady Amanda gasped.
“This reference is beyond me,” Commodore Roberts leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. “But this is nahq exciting.”
“What’s the most important finger, Hoss?” Billy Joe asked, keeping contact with the square.
“I would guess my index finger on my right hand?” Winston pressed again with that finger.
The words changed.
“YOUR most important finger. One try left.”
“What the purg?” Winston cried out in frustration. “Eight choices but only one’s right, and if I blow it, what? Some sort of self-destruct?”
“Calm down, Winston,” Doctor Junker instructed. “This is specific to you. Someone sent this who knows that one finger on one of your hands is more important than your thumb or trigger finger. What could that possibly mean to you?”
Winston froze, his face draining of color. Only two people knew what this could have meant. One was sitting beside him, powering this self-immolating holoprojector, and the other was Mother.
He gulped down the last of his highball, and slowly stretched out his left hand. With a deep breath, he pressed the tip of his ring finger to the authenticator. The circuit pattern went from red to cool green, the glow intensifying as it drew more power with activation.
A miniature image of Mother appeared between Winston and Billy Joe’s hands.
“Commodore Roberts, Baroness Junker, Winston, Billy Joe,” the little avatar message greeted her assumed audience. Mother’s voice caused the paper to quake like a speaker, making it tinny and distorted. “I am sorry to have left you in such a situation, but I had to reintegrate with my prime self without delay. If I calculated our situation correctly there will not be much time for me to act. Considering the events of our recent escapade, you are most likely receiving this message due to my untimely destruction.”
“No,” Winston gasped.
Lady Amanda’s hand flew to her mouth in horror.
The commodore blew out a cloud of smoke, giving the hologram a touch of fairy fire.
“No doubt I have run so far afoul with Xiao that he will take action against me as my gambit, which you were a small part of, has failed. Since it is my fault to have put you in such precarious straits, I have chosen to do everything I could to protect you and make amends. Hopefully, this will preserve what is yours, so you can start over.”
“I assume you are viewing this with Commodore Roberts. To him, I would ask for his favor to be given to you in case you restart your life here. If he agrees, a token of my thanks will be provided to him through the Baroness.”
“He shall have it if he asks,” the commodore said to the recording.
“To the Baroness Junker, I ask her to remain your patroness and give you both a new home in the Lumina Reaches.”
Lady Amanda nodded, agreeing to the wish.
“I shall also be sending you a gift in connection to this request,” Mother continued. “Winston, Billy Joe, it will be of great benefit to you. There is a strong probability you can use it with the professor for whom much was unknowingly sacrificed. May you all do something great with it.
“I am transferring all funds you have on my corporate books to your Curre-Gram account. Here is the express code: 19g13 66D61 006#0 328X4 q6691 2&030 6051a.”
The code burned into the top copy of the paper.
“This will allow you to cash out your account in hard currency from any Curre-Gram affiliated office. Do not transfer the money electronically. Take physical delivery only.”
“Once you have the physical currency, purchase as much precious metal, gems, or rare earths as you can get for it as soon as you can, no matter the market price. Preferably do this before you leave the same place you pick up your cash. Money can be tracked. Even physical cash. I know you’re not used to thinking this way, but trust me. This will break the financial chain of custody and you will be safe from any financial tracking.” Mother nervously rubbed her hands together, her sad frown desperate.
“She’s not wrong there,” the commodore confirmed. “I believe we can aid you on this too.”
“Do not try to contact me. If I survived, I will get in touch with you as soon as I can. You do not want what is coming for me to start hunting you. You will have to sacrifice the Sierra Madre. Xiao and Bonavitae are certainly both searching for it. With the funds above, you will have the money for a new vessel to continue your trade. Name her well.”
The worried little icon of Mother clasped her hands together, almost pleading.
“Follow this plan, Winston. Stay hidden with Doctor Junker, and hope that my suspicions of what is about to happen to me are wrong. It’s not often I feel a connection with a human like yourself and it has been a pleasure working with you. I hope we get the chance to do so again in the future.”
With that, she vanished in a dusting of flickering green pixels followed briefly by a signature: MotherRoad.
“I don’t believe it!” The commodore slapped his free hand against the table. “That dataoid’s been around since the arrival of the Dream! It’s massive! I never knew it was sentient!” He laughed and slapped the table again. “I’ve pillaged so many of her transports and warehouses over the years I’ve lost count, and now she drops her favorites into my very lap, with my good friends? And gives me gifts? Doesn’t this beat all? Now, this is a story for the ages!”
He leaned back and laughed at the ceiling.
Winston didn’t feel quite the same ironic gaiety that the pirate king did. It was clear that neither Billy Joe nor Lady Amanda did as well.
Noticing the silence, Roberts looked at his guests. “Why the glum faces?”
“Mother… or MotherRoad is gone. Xiao killed her,” Billy Joe said.
“Balderdash,” the commodore declared, waving a hand in dismissal. He sat puffing his cigar in contemplation of the news, then leaned toward them intently. The glowing tip of his cigar gave his face a devilish cast in the dim light of the Nova Tortuga dusk. “To quote an old pirate homily, we pirates are never more dangerous than when we’re dead.And let me tell you something else that’s true. Baron and Lady, Captain and Loadmaster… MotherRoad was a pirate to her core. You shall see.”
# # #
Interlude: Xiao Snaps the Reigns
1.
“Enough!” Marshal Dynne barked to his bridge crew. “Move in and let’s do our duty. Let these traitors know we’re coming, pilot.”
“Hail Xiao,” came the enthusiastic response from the bridge crew. The pilot fired up the grav fans to full blast. It took less than a minute for the warjet to make the jaunt from its listening post to the 18th hole of the Baqqan Club golf course.
Marshal Dynne’s pilot timed it perfectly. The thunderclap did not destroy property but would scare the purg out of those nearby. They were enforcing imperial law, not performing a military operation. Wanton destruction was not warranted.
The hot sky above the elite resort of the Baqqan Club rattled with the imperial warjet’s arrival. Startled eyes looked up to see the dark arrowhead of Xiao’s navy coasting to a stop over the 18th green. Nervous faces peeked from the clubhouse windows. Staffers ran for shelter in the basement security bunker leaving panicked guests to fend for themselves.
Below, the Marquis of Yevgenni, the High Judge of Gaxsony, his corporate guests and a substantial security entourage could only stare, exposed and helpless at the brutal symbol of Xiao’s power. Hands flashed for holsters and into jackets to draw their sidearms. Instantly, anti-personnel turrets on the warjet pointed at those who dared reach for their weapons.
“Stand down, mench!” the High Judge, Marquis of Yevgenni ordered. They reluctantly obeyed.
Marshal Dynne smirked as he watched the marquis try to look the peaceful innocent.
The airship slid sideways around the party in a low looping circle, guns tracking true, and set down between the clubhouse and the green. Crackling fans bathed everyone in their hot ionized exhaust before shutting down.
“Security detail, on me,” Marshal Dynne snapped, getting up from his command chair and donning his helmet. “Let’s make some arrests.”
The bow cargo ramp dropped open like a gaping maw. A quartet of waroids jogged out, muskets and I-ray scribblers up, their deep blue corundumite armor glinting in the sun. Marshal Dynne descended the ramp with long, gallant strides. More troopers followed in his wake.
The High Judge of Gaxsony lifted his jaw a hair and using his putter as a cane, rested his right hand on the tip of the grip as the marshal approached. Marshal Dynne’s hands flashed up into the imperial salute, his stern gaze peeking through his splayed fingers that mimicked the Eye of the Eternal One.
“Hail Xiao! Source of all truth and justice!” Marshal Dynne challenged all in the entourage.
Slowly, all hands of those on the golf outing went up to return the salute. “Hail Xiao!” they repeated.
Marshal Dynne’s smile hardened at their tepid obedience and lack of fervor.
“Lord High Judge, Marquis of Yevgenni, I have come to place you and your party under arrest. Comply and may Xiao’s justice fall gently upon you,” Marshal Dynne said. He always loved adding that last phrase. It gave the prisoners false hope. The imperial torturers may not like it, because their subjects fought harder, but that was not his concern.
“On what grounds?” complained one of the corporate guests. His superior, Monsieur Fahn Dangalde, Executive Vice President of Bonavitae Pharmaceuticals spun in his flight harness. He gave the complainer a withering look.
“You worthless jackal!” he rebuked. His secretary turned on the one who spoke and, gave him a chop to the back of the neck, then swept his knees bringing the man to the ground. Marshal Dynne blinked in surprise as the secretary knelt on the neck of the other. She looked up, awaiting her boss’s orders.
Monsieur Dangalde floated between the sudden attack he ordered and the marshal’s hard gaze. “Forgive us, Marshal. This one forgot his place. Hail Xiao.” The bloated man gave a strange floating bow. “Shall I have him dispatched for such insolence toward the Eternal One?”
Dangalde’s eyes focused past the marshal to see the waroid rifles locked on them.
With a squint of the eyes, Marshal Dynne turned to the High Judge of Saxony. “I do not have time to deal with this foolishness. Your fates will be sorted out in Xiao’s courts. Take them to the holding cells,” he ordered his troops.
There was loud complaining as every member of the entourage was seized. The waroids forced them at gunpoint up the ramp into the airship. Marshal Dynne with his bodyguards and the High Judge stayed on the green, unwavering, like two arrogant gunslingers, certain in their righteous cause.
“You know who I am,” the Marquis of Yevgenni stated flatly.
“I do,” Marshal Dynne said. The fool, he thought. He believes there is some way out for him. Does he smell the scent of corruption on me? How pathetic.
“Then you know by Xiao’s law, as a Courtier of the Eighth Array, you cannot lay hands on me. Not without known sufficient cause,” the high judge said. His voice was firm, but not strident, in the knowledge of his rights and privileges.
The pin flag snapped and fluttered in the hand of the petrified golf caddy. From the clubhouse, a gallery of members and servants had come out of hiding to the luncheon patio to witness the arrest.
“You wish a public listing of your charges against the Emperor?” Marshal Dynne said boldly, casting an eye over his shoulder at the throng of witnesses. The whispering crowd eagerly awaited to hear the scandalous reasons for the arrest of a high judge.
“I will be found innocent of every charge,” the marquis proclaimed.
Marshal Dynne’s chilly smile seemed to not affect the jurist.
“As you wish,” he agreed. He loved it when they demanded a public reading of their crimes. “You are hereby charged with conspiracy and rebellion against the Empire. Furthermore, you are charged with lending aid and comfort to rebel forces and criminals, accepting and paying bribery and colluding with other enterprises to defraud the legal system and cover up crimes committed in secret against the Eternal One. These crimes are equivalent to high treason against Xiao the Eternal, and carry the punishment of death by public execution in a manner he deems the most… appropriate… to the Empire’s needs.”
The Marquis of Yevgenni was too well-bred and practiced to show more than a flicker of worry on his face. That flicker gave a little thrill to Marshal Dynne’s spirit.
“If,” the marshal warned, “you resist arrest it will be considered proof of your guilt, and I will have the privilege of executing you here and now.” He slipped his sidearm out from his holster.
A bead of sweat rolled down the high judge’s nose and dangled from its tip, clinging to it while growing more ponderous only to be wiped away by the high judge the instant before it fell. It took all of Marshal Dynne’s resolve to not smile.
“I am at your disposal, Marshal,” the high judge agreed, his eyes dropping from the lawman.
“Hail Xiao,” came Marshal Dynne’s smug mutter. With a jerk of his head, a pair of his bodyguards cuffed the High Judge of Gaxsony and escorted him up the ramp to the holding cells.
Marshal Dynne took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. His smile grew as it ended. With a crisp turn to the petrified Baqqan Club caddy, he gave a very slight bow. “Enjoy your day, denizen.”
The caddy flinched but did not flee. “Ha-hail Xiao,” came the stuttering reply.
Marshal Dynne strode up the ramp of his warjet in long confident strides, and they lifted off, vanishing from sight with the sound of thunder.
2.
In the harem garden, floating meditation bowls rang softly on pristine blue pools. Ripples of light danced among colorful silk banners hundreds of feet long. They vanished into the tower above, gently swirling in the jasmine-scented air. Thrust up from among the secluded nooks stood diamond-shaped, artistically-broken pillars like giant styli that mirrored the rays of the imperial crest.
In private hidden sanctuaries were beds and couches perfect for intimate tête-à-têts. The harem was replete with exotic women of the most astounding beauty. Unique in every flavor of femininity save for one unifying feature: a startling imperial blue left eye that shone like lightning and sapphires. The feature was bestowed upon them as a gift and brand from their lover, the Emperor, Xiao the Eternal.
A woman of regal bearing lay under the covers of a bed of satin and fur. Compared to the exotic beauties that inhabited the harem, she was almost plain, like a jade statuette in a pile of perfect gems, beautiful but incongruous.
Her skin was radiant with the afterglow of lovemaking, but her lips were pinched tight. The rendezvous tainted her mind with a residue of shame. She consoled herself with her noble sacrifice, but that only deepened her self-loathing. Despite her lover’s rumored reputation, he had been kind, thoughtful and responsive to her needs. He knew precisely how to drive her to ecstasy. It was an experience she knew she would cherish and hate for the rest of her life, which made her despise him all the more.
Emperor Xiao had demanded her for one day and one night as tribute from her husband’s duchy, proof that anything he possessed could be taken by Emperor Xiao’s whim. The consequences to his people would have been catastrophic if she refused. Her husband had been ready to pay the price for his pride and her honor, but she would not hear of it. Her body became a shield for the innocent. With this act of obedience, the Emperor would not blast her husband’s duchy and their people would not be enslaved.
Her lover, Xiao the Eternal knelt above her on one knee. He curled up the ends of his mustache and stroked his thin soul patch. His fingers drifted down to stroke her cheek tenderly.
“My eye,” the noblewoman moaned as she stirred in her musings. “It itches.”
“Of course it does,” Xiao said. “All women who know my touch receive the gift.”
She looked up at him. Tears welled up but she remained silent.
“It is not so bad, my pet,” Xiao said tenderly. “In nine months, you will serve the second part of your tribute to me.”
The noblewoman was paralyzed by his words, eyes glittering as if her tears had frozen.
“My flower already grows for my seed has taken hold.” His finger traced around her eye in a strange pattern. “I shall gather my harvest in thirteen years when you present my child to me. Then, I will take him into my household, and you can return to the way you were.”
Xiao stood up and, adjusting his sword and pistol, gave a self-satisfied sigh.
“Now I must attend to affairs of the court, as must you,” the Emperor said, walking away. As soon as Xiao was gone, she scrambled on her hands and knees off the sumptuous mattress to the water’s edge and gazed into her reflection. The electric sapphire blue of her left eye stared back.
As she watched, a tattoo grew around her eye. A line drawing of an exotic flower encircled the socket and made her look even more exotic. The design grew painlessly, turning into a long winding stem with ornate flower buds and leaves that coiled around her neck like a collar, then coursed down between the valley of her breasts and to her navel, marking where Xiao had planted his seed.
