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Second Chances - An Earth & Beyond Emulator Novel, Ch.V


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Second Chances - An Earth & Beyond Emulator Novel, Ch. V
by Pakkrat

V. It was pitch black of night as Risco Moon faced away from Gallina's primary, forcing Pakkrateus to fly by radar assistance. Using his com-link connection to Reacher, he soon found the Defender. His ship was parked at one of the ruined colony towers on a tall, prominent rock near-center to the dead valley. Debris of the destroyed colony littered the canyon floor as the tower stood an eternal deathwatch. The Defender's ship was docked with the decaying structure. Pakkrateus did not want to meet Reacher face-to-face uninvited so he merely pulled up to the tower and set the Maze Runner to hover and maintain position.

It was Reacher's calm and meditative voice that spoke though the Privateer's vambrace again, "The Sabine never meant to let us live, Progen."

Pakkrateus bristled, "Yeah, I gathered that."

"Do you have any idea where this grave robber may have taken the Tormentor?" asked the patronizing Jenquai.

"None, unless our courier here can remember something useful." Pakkrateus swung his chair about to face Siobhan.

"I can't remember anything but a few months, the job and up to when I supposedly ejected my gene-map at Fenris Observatory," admitted Siobhan. "Maybe Rex and his Reclaimers did something to me, y'know...to block or keep me from freaking out after answering the Call Forward."

"So his name is Rex, huh?" noted Pakkrateus. "Now we have a name at least. What else can you remember?"

Siobhan remembered the short months of her career as a Centuriata courier, leading up to being hired by Tervanus Rex. She relayed her memories to the Privateer and the Jenquai Defender on the com-link. Beyond those memories was the Iteration Haze, a side effect of being re-iterated so quickly via the Call Forward. She then told the two men that she what Rex had done to her, calling her a Sabura and then seeing for herself the changes Vinda's new compound had wrote upon her. It was emotionally difficult, admitting that last part, to come to call herself a Sabura now. No longer was she Centuriata. However, Siobhan would not show any emotional weakness.

Pakkrateus was about to offer some verbal comfort or solace but had yet to form words when Reacher spoke up over the com-link.

"I think I know of a way to help us," he offered in a zen-like calm.

The Privateer thought of Reacher in some archetypical fashion gleaned from his perusal of ancient Earth stories of the Oriental ninja assassins. He imagined Reacher sitting in some meditative pose inside the tower, speaking to him and Siobhan.

"How do you mean?" asked Pakkrateus.

"It will take her consent and an opened mind, Progen," said Reacher, "but I may be able to unlock her memories."

Siobhan got up and walked over to Pakkrateus and spoke to his vambrace while looking out the view port to the ruined tower outside. "How?" she asked. "My gene-map is now defunct. Useless. I have only what I can now recall."

"Progen always seem to think on physical terms," said Reacher.

"If you can do something to give us a clue to where Rex escaped with the gene-map-" Pakkrateus was cut off by Siobhan leaning in to speak again.

"Do it," she said. "I need to remember."

"Are you sure, Sabura?" Reacher asked. "Some may value your opportunity to forget things they have experienced, seen, or done. To them, ignorance is bliss."

Siobhan appeared to consider the words for a few seconds. Then she nodded to herself, thinking inwardly. Somewhere inside her may be a clue to tracking down Tervanus Rex.

"I consent," she said to the Jenquai on the com-link. "What must I do?"

Reacher's voice became even calmer, "Sit down and mentally welcome me into your mind."

Pakkrateus had a question then, "Have you done this before, Jenquai?"

"No, though I have been trained by the masters and we have no time to ride the line."

Reacher was suggesting using his Jenquai psionic disciplines upon Siobhan, delving into her and somehow either unblocking her vaulted memories or probing her depths even deeper. Pakkrateus had heard stories of various specialties, but this one went beyond some ancient black-garbed assassins of Earth.

* * *

Siobhan the Sabura sat back down in her chair and tried a Warrior's trance, the Combat Trance. From what she could remember of it, the trance allowed her to open her senses both outer and inner. With its focus, the trance could give her clarity to put her attention on this Jenquai Reacher and permit him whatever entry he espoused to be capable.

There. She felt it. Felt him. It was imagined as a shadowed male Jenquai at the door to her home domicile back...back in another life. She mentally imagined reaching for the sliding door and opening it for him. Though the Iteration Haze made details of Reacher's entry fuzzy and difficult to make out, she stepped back and beckoned him inside from the unformed mists of her conscious mind.

Reacher stepped into her area of focus, this apartment in which she felt at home, the most peaceful He looked around once. How she knew he smiled gently, she doubted she could say later. There were no words passed between the two. This was a realm beyond need for speech.

Siobhan gestured around her, indicating a wall of data-tablets, electronic books, holo-photos and even paintings. They, to her eyes represented what memories she could muster. Reacher nodded in acknowledgement. He pointed to a comfy chair that had been Siobhan the Centuriata's favorite. She sat down. Kneeling before her and closer than she normally would have allowed, Reacher looked with his shadowed eyes deeply into hers.

Within this conscious realm, the elderly Jenquai reached deeper inside the Sabura. He probed with what felt like dreamlike and warm hands. As he worked, she caught a realization in this dream venture. The doors to their connected minds swung both ways. As he delved into her unconscious mind and Akashic records, she found she could see through the link to his.

Just as Reacher began unlocking partitions and opening doors of her past, Siobhan saw his past. A family at Jove City, recruitment into the nameless warrior elite of the Jenquai, battling Progen during the Gate War, vainly trying to draw out the Progen ships one by one in deadly space combat. Destruction, chaos, and war played out before her from Reacher's past. Vengeance and resentment were written everywhere even as he tried to make up for his past as a Shinwa Defender and Sev Tushnim, We Who Serve in Silence. Siobhan saw the ruination of Jove City through his eyes. She cried tears that he could not that day, so stoic and disciplined was he. When the halls of his past became too painful for her undisciplined mind, she backed down the way she came in disgust and horror. Reacher had sublimated all that pain, shielded off by duty, service, and salved by unconditional love for all life after the Gate War. It was his catharsis and she saw the wounds re-opened with the news of the possible return of Dahaka Khan the Tormentor of Jove City. Underlying his nexus of being was the brewing emotional cauldron of anger. It was lidded tightly by his psionic control. The Sabura turned and ran down the way she had come.

Metaphysically exiting the two-way connection back to her apartment, the Sabura warrior was once again in her comfy chair curled in a gathered ball even as she stared still into the eyes of the Jenquai Defender in her mind. Slowly his left hand gathered her right hand at the same time his right hand's index finger slowly rose to her forehead just above and between her eyes. When the index touched her, he twisted his finger, as one might try to pick a mechanical lock of a door. Then he moved away slowly and still smiling gently. The Defender then stood up. Holding up the extended fingers of both hands, he began wordlessly counting down by folding finger after finger.....9..8..7. Siobhan saw him backing out the sliding door of her domicile. His retreating mental image faded as the unformed mists of her concentration started to obscure him....4..3..2.....

One. Siobhan woke with a nightmarish scream and howled into the cockpit bridge of the Maze Runner. Memories flooded in upon her. She could now put words to what Reacher had done. He had performed some form of Jenquai hypnotic past-lives regression, psychically Summoning her Akashic record directly from all of her lives as a Progen alpha-caste citizen of the Republic. Wave upon wave of forgotten or vaulted memories crashed upon Siobhan the Sabura. All emptied their contents into her conscious mind. She strove to keep afloat by pushing as many as she could back into some semblance of storage where she could examine them at will, not this forced onslaught.

"Progen! Progen! See to the warrior! She is awake."

The Pakkrateus came up to the helm of the cockpit from below. He grasped her and held her trembling form. She fought like a tiger on adrenaline as she surfed the waves to some semblance of stable shore. Crashing upon her own coherent thoughts once more she calmed a bit and regained control of her body. The Privateer released her.

"Siobhan?" he asked trying to reach to her attention.

She remembered him now. She knew not how, as she distinctly remembered ejecting her gene-map before ever entering the bar that night. He, the Pakkrateus had been there. He was staring at her with interest. She was frustrated by the communications interference. She saw his interest in her, the only other person left in the establishment at that hour. She had frowned in her technical denial and had given him her Not A Chance, Boy look. Then she had tried to get up to leave. Then all had gone black as she hit the deck. An acrid aroma was her last sensory input. Finally, she had awoken to a new life as a Sabura before Tervanus Rex.

The Iteration Haze was lifted by Reacher's psionics and so much more. Whatever was deeper, more subtle than could be contained in a gene-map had remembered. She remembered the Pakkrateus.

Siobhan stood up from the chair. Twisting her torso and snatching up the nearby Athanor heavy pistol, she pointed it square at his head. Cocking its hammer back, she spoke.

"You were there that night," she recalled verbally. "Is this the gun you killed me with Pakkrateus? Is it?" Her warrior's adrenaline rushing and still under the effects of the Centuriata Combat Trance, she kept the barrel of the weapon deathly steady.

The Pakkrateus was caught completely unaware by the speed of her motion. The first thing he could register was that the barrel of the Athanor was at his head. She had moved with a speed he never knew. It took a mental instant replay to translate her movement. That replay was the hesitation that most Centuriata took advantage in combat. The Privateer was pinned by the weapon and had to speak slowly.

"I swear by Artemis Jericho and Vita Theodora, Siobhan that I did not kill you." His hands rose slowly and were empty. "Please believe me," he pleaded. "That night in the bar, I too must have passed out because the next thing I remembered was waking up in a rented room at the Observatory and finding your body dead in bed beside me."

The Pakkrateus went on to recount his tale, omitting nothing. He even went so far as to spill his emotional responses to her deathwatch log, how Siobhan the Centuriata looked and how her smile had touched him. By the time he was done with his confession, fear of death had paralyzed even his tongue. He swallowed hard and dryly.

"The Pakkrateus speaks the truth, Sabura," said Reacher who had by now returned to his Defender craft. The Jenquai's psionic discipline was now known to her. He even knew how she mentally addressed the Privateer. The Shinwa then went on to supplement his involvement with the Pakkrateus' tale.

Lives upon lives then dumped their shares of guilt and remorse upon Siobhan the Sabura. She set down the heavy pistol and collapsed in to the Pakkrateus' arms. Then she unleashed her emotions in the mother of all nervous breakdowns. She cried, sobbed, sniffed and repeated the cycle for each life that was too painful to go on recalling. Yet recall them she did. He held her the entire time, letting her cry it all out.

"I am so very sorry," she choked up, "so very sorry......"

Memories of her lives as a genetically engineered Centuriata Warrior in space evidenced. Later, she was renewed as a war-bred Dog Soldier at the siege of Jove City under Dahaka Khan. She was present and took part in the atrocity, the occupation, and recalled the fleeing DG Fleet being pursued by the Jenquai Mordane from Jove City. She was re-iterated after being slain by the Primarch's personal guard, reformed and re-trained as a new Centuriata to serve the Republic, until finally as Siobhan the Centuriata courier, her previous life just before Siobhan the Sabura.

And now, due to Vinda's Sabura Project, the treachery of Tervanus Rex' heretical use of the Call Forward, Siobhan could never go back. Re-iterated to the beta-caste, into the Sabura, there could be no more glory as a Centuriata for her. He had branded her for the rest of this life and any to come. She hated him. In her crying, she also seethed with fury at him. She saw places, peoples and events like one looks at a card catalogue and is able, with clarity, to select any memory of all those lives and look at it independently for all its happiness or utter pain and the spectrum between. She recalled everything perfectly anew in that moment of weakness.

"I know where he went," she finally spoke up through her drying tears.

"You know?" asked the Pakkrateus.

"Rex wants to resurrect the warlord general Dahaka Khan," she declared through gritted teeth. "He almost admitted it directly to me. Money means nothing to Tervanus. This is about power and the glory of self-actualization. He thinks that Dahaka Khan is his chessboard pawn to it." More memories hit her.

Breathing faster with a rage, Siobhan said, "Since he won't use the Sabura Compound now, will be denied Arx Spartoi, the Place of Life and cannot use Arx Prima, the Place of Death; he must seek another route." The Sabura woman looked into the eyes of the Pakkrateus' eyes with animalistic rage. "He will take the gene-map to the only facility left forgotten by history. Rex will Call the Khan Forward at Arx Ymir, the home of the Dog Soldiers. I know that place. I was, in a previous life, one of them."

With the Privateer's help she stood up, anger building in her heart. "But Rex is making a critical mistake," she said. "Even if he gets that aging facility working again after the Dog Soldier program was ended, the being that steps from the slab will not truly be Dahaka Khan the Tormentor of Jove City. It will be worse. Much worse."

Reacher spoke next out of the silence that followed, "I saw the Dog Soldiers of Jove City as I helped escort Primarch Tyr into the docking bay, Progen. She speaks the truth. They are little more than savage animals."

"I know the history, Jenquai," said the Pakkrateus. The Collegiate finished for the Defender, "They slaughtered mercilessly, hunted repeatedly, tortured, and even ate the citizens of Jove City."

"Their ghosts wail to this day, Progen," finished Reacher.

"Khan will answer the Call Forward," said Siobhan. "Failure is not in his vocabulary nor mindset, even if he has a human mind after being Called Forward to Arx Ymir's Dog Soldier systems. Vita Theodora, Pakkrateus! Khan may not think the Gate War is history. He could re-kindle its holocaust!"

"To Jotunheim then," said a grim Pakkrateus as he turned to fire up his ship's engines. The two ships fell into a formation and shot into space over Risco Moon.
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