Chapter 22: Heavy Metal Contract — Part 3

Baron Thomson and Baron Johnson had http://book1.shadowandmist.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=178already signed the treaty, and Esteban studied it closely, the five-paragraph treaty left little open to question. True to his passion, Esteban signed the treaties with his own blood. After dinner, Johnson and Thomson left Esteban’s world, and Esteban began implementing the plans of their discussion. Within a week the Triple Union had established research facilities, an industrial center, and an establishment of military affairs. Mines were scattered across boundaries of the Triple Union, each with a computer chip smart enough to detect hostile forces and eliminate them without endangering trade ships. Fighters were deployed for planetary defense, small but deadly. Twisted space cruisers, heavily armed and armored, patrolled the edges of the Union. Esteban’s planet was kept well stocked with food, the wastes collected and returned to their respective worlds, and in turn the resources of his planet formed the arms, armor, and ships for a military force vastly more powerful than they could have formed as individual planetary leaders. The Triple Union had become, in a very short number of years, a stable national entity with three leaders, ten Satraps, and the blossoming of democracy at all social levels.

Joni and Trina grew sickly and weak, the symbiont assaulting their bodies with more savagery than Susan had expected. All in the name of survival, the symbiont would change them a thousand fold, making them stronger, lighter, and faster than any human being, and yet not better than any other human. Such was the humility of it all. Through telepathy, Susan’s people had become almost unconsciously democratic. In protecting itself, the symbiont, after all, would encourage in its host a sense of community. And for those new to their powers, and unable to tap them fully, there would be those within their family with centuries of experience, and the power earned by that experience, to protect them. Joni and Trina, youngest on all of Antans, were Susan’s to protect.

The children will survive. This thought was from Devon. They’re adapting perfectly. A’joshi’s been waiting two days for you to return with him to the Antansi Village and speak with C’rona. I think you’ve neglected your duties too long. I’ll watch our newest immigrants and see to it that they stay safe.

Stop being pushy. I know my duties better than you. Susan said gruffly, leaving just the same.

When she reached the boat, she found A’joshi waiting patiently for her, at the helm. Susan mounted the boat, dropped her stick, and took a steady pace to the Village of Silken Orbs, as the Human Tribe had started to call it. Such romantic notions stood far from the operands of Susan’s rigidly disciplined mind. Susan blamed such frivolity of word on the revival of creative talent rising within her people, a way to keep sane after centuries in the mist. In truth she was a little jealous because her own talents seemed so limited when compared to the true artists among her people. Her need to appreciate things slowed Susan down from her usual chaotic transit. She didn’t speed across the waterway at a bone-wrecking pace, wanting to try to see the world for the first time, wanting to see it the way her counterparts, the artists, saw things. While she took her time, her mind drifted until she found herself almost exclusively thinking about C’rona’s summons. A’joshi, patient with her now as he had been irritable with her when she sped across the waterways, helped Susan from the boat. Half aware of her surroundings, Susan found herself standing in the door to C’rona’s house, half expecting to wait for several hours before she gained admittance, after taking so long to respond. A’joshi had left her without disturbing her thoughts with a ‘good-bye.’

“Come in.” C’rona said. Bad news lurked in shadows around her. “I know you’ve been busy, but perhaps it was an inner intuition that has kept you away. There are two matters that bring us incredible concern. The first deals with Earth, the second is a local issue. No ships have left Earth and none are returning to it. The spaceports are all currently either controlled by resistance forces, or have been destroyed. Transmissions are still leaving the surface, however. We have received one such transmission, and fully understand its intent. In order to help restore its power, the political force you call The Authority is issuing genetic cleansing orders. An order to destroy the MacAnderly genetic lineage went out to all allied planets. I found this strange, until I researched the history behind the command. Though the family has survived within the Cynosure, it has been at ends with the Council throughout Cynosure history, and with the uprising they decided to eliminate all families that might pose an immediate threat. A second message encoded in the same fashion as the first told us what we feared most. Your bloodline, or at least the line unfortunate enough to remain on Earth, has been eradicated. You’re the last known member of your own hereditary lineage, and that gives you certain undeniable responsibilities.”