By comparison, her mothers had a couple extra decades of life-choices on their consciences; the law of averages dictated they had more things to regret and atone for. They also had calmer natures than either the exuberant Fyfer or his phlegmatic stepbrother. A corner of Ia"s mind considered this one part of a proof-of-concept experiment, since the Wreath of Pain was meant to thoroughly punish only those who thoroughly deserved it. The rest of her waited tensely, uncomfortable with making her beloved parent suffer.
Tears gathered in Aurelia"s eyes. They didn"t spill until she blinked and lifted her hands, removing the heavy, crystalline ring from her head. Sniffing, she held it out to Ia without a word. Ia accepted it, and settled the Wreath of Hope on her mother"s dark hair...then reached over and placed the Wreath of Pain on her biomother"s curly brown locks. Amelia stiffened, eyes wide and sightless. Aurelia sagged, eyes shut and fluttering as she strained to process the new images.
Experiments on her brothers had shown her that the images being seen would be the ones most crucial for Ia"s purposes. Truths would be shown about how certain tasks needed to be undertaken, and the consequences of both success and failure. That part was necessary. It wasn"t what the wreaths showed that concerned her now, but rather their intensity.
Amelia finished before Aurelia. She reached up and pushed the ring of crysium from her head. Ia stooped and plucked it from the sofa before it could flop over and land on her other mother. Her experiments had also proven it wasn"t wise to mix the two; the chaos of the dual effects had given Fyfer a painful migraine for a few hours. When Aurelia opened her eyes, sniffing hard, Ia transferred the Wreath of Hope to her biological mother and waited. And waited. Finally, Amelia opened her eyes as well, tipping her head forward so Ia could remove the device.
Aurelia sniffed again, then nodded. "Alright. I see now what you mean. I mean, I"ve seen some of your visions; you"ve showed me things in the past, but this...This is..."
"This is what we can do about it," Amelia finished, finding and squeezing her gynowife"s hand. Aurelia glanced at her and nodded. Together, they looked at Ia. Looked to her for guidance. For approval.
For the first time, she sensed her parents were finally looking at her as a fellow adult. More than that, they were looking at her as the Prophet. The little girl deep inside of Ia, the one who just wanted to curl up on their laps and let them stroke her hair, wanted to cry at this last loss of her childhood. Instead, that little girl curled up and faded into the shadows of her past. It hurt. Ia acknowledged silently that it hurt...and she set it aside.
"I"m glad," she murmured, "because I really do need you. In fact, I"m going to put these rings into your hands. Yours, and my brothers" hands," she amended. Ia set them on the coffee table, two clacks. Molded though they were, the peach gold rings were still very much a hard, unyielding crystal. "Use your contacts within the community. Figure out who you think can be trusted with exposure to these."
"What if...what if we choose wrong?" Amelia asked her. "And some Church sympathizer gets hold of one?"
Ia lifted her chin. "I"ve already considered that. If they"re really Church agents, or Church sympathizers...or anyone who is bound to betray us to them...well, they"ll just get a dose of the Fire Girl Prophecy. A rather large dose."
Aurelia snorted. "That should be enough to send "em running for the leafer-hills."
Twisting her mouth in a wry smile, Ia nodded at the rings. "I"ll be taking them out later this afternoon, once Thorne gets back from college. There"s one more person who needs to experience them before I leave, to make sure they"re working properly. We"ll be back at least two hours before I have to leave for the s.p.a.ceport, don"t worry." She paused for a yawn, and scrubbed at her face with both hands. "Ugh. I got up way too early. At least my ship is already docked at Gateway Station, busy with unloading cargo for the colony and arranging for exports to the rest of the known galaxy. I can sleep as soon as I"ve been shown to my berth."
"Do you want breakfast?" Aurelia asked, leaning forward to pick up her forgotten caf" mug.
Ia stooped and picked up her own. "Not yet. I need to go for a run, first." Swallowing half of the still warm liquid, she set it back down again. "The Naval Academy will be putting us through regimen training, and they"ll be expecting me to wear my weight suit, so I need to stay in shape. But I"ll cut it down to half an hour this morning, so you can make me a really nice going-away breakfast."
Rising, Aurelia lifted onto her toes and kissed Ia on her cheek. "It"ll be hot and waiting."
"Mm, good, I can go back to sleep, then," Amelia murmured. She closed her eyes and snuggled into the corner of the sofa.
Her wife leaned down and slapped her lightly on one bathrobe-covered thigh. "Oh, no you don"t, meioa-e! You"re a far better chef than I am, and you know it. Get into that kitchen and start cooking, love."
Amelia grumbled something uncomplimentary in Greek, added an Irish expletive for color, raspberried her wife half-heartedly, and hauled herself upright. Relieved that her parents hadn"t changed that much in the wake of the wreaths, Ia headed for the door to the stairs. Rain or shine, s.p.a.ce or ground, she had to keep herself in shape.
Edwin V"Sa.s.selli lived in one of the apartment complexes built during the TerranDlmvla tensions. In fact, he lived in one of the bas.e.m.e.nt-level apartments, formerly a series of storage rooms and janitorial facilities converted into living quarters. As a result, he had at the back of his spare bedroom an access door which led down into the escape tunnels for the Terran bunkers.
Of course, all such doors were supposed to be sealed with Terran military-grade locks, to reduce the chance of the colonists pilfering or vandalizing Terran military equipment. Edwin V"Sa.s.selli had taken great pains to neutralize and remove those locks. He had taken even greater pains to make sure that the path to the door was kept clear, and the door itself hidden by a rather large, showy rug which he had hung up like a tapestry.
He never mentioned the existence of the door to anyone, never mentioned that it was unlocked, and only used it infrequently at best. So when Ia and Thorne opened the door from within the dusty, musty tunnels and slipped into that spare bedroom, set up as his office, he had no clue that anyone else knew of it, let alone intended to use it as the means for committing illegalities. Then again, Edwin V"Sa.s.selli was something of an expert on committing illegalities, himself.
Thorne might have protested at this act of breaking and entering, save for the facts she had given him when explaining the necessity of this one particular home invasion. When he had heard those facts, when she had sworn they were true with her Prophetic Stamp, he had agreed to accompany her. Coming here on her own would have defeated the purpose of this little visit, after all.
This was something Ia was not allowed to do for her brother. All she could do was a.s.sist him just a little bit. Thorne was the one who had to carry it through.
The plexcrete floor under the carpeting was old, but not yet old enough to squeak under the compression of her footsteps. Padding quietly into the living room, Ia held up her hand. Startled by her sudden appearance in his home, the short, balding, wiry Edwin rose from his couch where he had been quietly watching the evening news. Grabbing him telekinetically, Ia held him in place, half crouched, half erect, and unable to move. At least, unable to move his limbs; she hadn"t done anything about his mouth.
"What the-! How dare you!" he snapped, struggling in little twitches. "Let me go! I"ll call the Peacekeepers for this!"
"I think you"ll find that impossible, as I have cut power to the emergency pickups in your apartment," Ia returned calmly. "Just like you yourself have done, time and again."
Glancing at her brother, she nodded. He swallowed, nodded back, and shifted the backpack he was carrying, swinging it around on one shoulder so that he could open the main compartment. Fishing out the thorn-themed ring tucked inside, he lifted it in one hand.
"Edwin V"Sa.s.selli...by the authority invested in me by the Free World Colony...the paperwork for which is still being processed by the Alliance courts," Thorne stated, clearing his throat, "I hereby charge you with the murders of Vanessa Smythe, Erika Johnston, and Clattica Jjoll, among others."
Edwin twitched at those names, eyes widening. "I don"t know what you"re talking about. What is that thing? What are you going to do with it?"
"What, this?" Thorne asked, his voice deepening. He lifted the Wreath of Pain above the smaller man"s head, but didn"t place it yet. "This is Justice. And it, not I, will deliver your sentence and your punishment."
Setting it squarely on the man"s head, Thorne stepped back. Edwin sucked in a sharp breath, eyes first rolling up, then squeezing shut. Ia eased his half-bent body back onto the cushions of the couch. She loosened some of her mental grip on him, grateful to be relieved of his weight, but still kept some of it in place. It was a good thing, too; he opened his mouth in a hissing, near-silent scream, and started thrashing, trying to beat at his chest. Or rather, trying to beat something away from his chest.
Thorne started to move toward him.
"No," Ia countered sharply, firmly. "He must endure this until he himself takes off the wreath."
"He"s trying to thrash it off his head," Thorne grumbled, voice deepening in his distress. "Isn"t that a form of trying to take it off, himself?"
Sighing, Ia stepped around the padded corner of the coffee table. Reaching up, she pinned the coronet-like wreath in place and sunk her gifts into the material, altering its shape slightly. Not just altering the physical suggestion of thorns, but the interior striations of pink-tinged gold, where her blood had been fused to the faintly luminescent stone.
Edwin"s thrashings quieted. She removed her touch. He still twitched, but his head lolled back against the cushions of the sofa, the makeshift crown of crysium still lodged firmly on his balding head. His mouth still opened and shut, but it did so with eerie silence.
"The experience has now been intensified internally, not externally. He won"t throw it off. Nor will the others-don"t stop watching him, Thorne," she warned her brother. "You have to watch it. Everyone has to watch this happening with the future criminals you will find. It will become one of the requirements for ascending to adult status in the coming years. You, I know, will have the fort.i.tude to apply the Wreath of Pain to criminals. Fyfer won"t do it more than twice at most, and Rabbit"s too softhearted to do it even once, herself, though she must watch at the very least. Your mother might drop it on some-one"s head-Aurelia has always been the tougher of the pair-but we both know my mother won"t.
"You won"t have the facilities to incarcerate criminals," Ia reminded him, ignoring the way V"Sa.s.selli continued to twitch and spasm on the sofa. "Not in the long term. You won"t have the resources to spare to build long-term prisons, let alone maintain and guard them. You also won"t have the means to chain your criminals to a topado patch like the Terrans do, either. Instead, you will have to use this technique. Together, the Wreaths of Pain and Hope will be your greatest tools for dealing with criminals. Those who are redeemable, they will work to redeem themselves."
"And if they"re not?" Thorne challenged her as Edwin V"Sa.s.selli continued to grimace and twitch. "What if being caught up in a postcognitive loop of the victims" sufferings from their point of view isn"t enough to convince them to rehabilitate themselves?"
"One of three things will happen. If they have a conscience, they will work hard to make reparations. If they are beyond redemption, they will most likely end their own lives. And if they are fated to continue...they will continue. After that point," she acknowledged, not even flinching at the hard look her half brother gave her, "if they break the law again and you catch them, you will put them through the Wreath of Pain a second time. If they choose to break it a third time-and I haven"t written any precognitive missives countermanding it-then you will execute them.
"I believe the term back on pre-interstellar Earth was "three strikes and you"re out,"" she added dryly, dispa.s.sionately watching the man on the couch twitching and suffering in breath-huffing quiet. "Once Edwin here removes this Ring of Truth, if he doesn"t head straight for the kitchen and the nearest knife...his favorite knife...then you will put the Wreath of Hope on his head. There"s a roughly thirty percent chance he will kill himself straight away, just from the Wreath of Pain. After the Wreath of Hope...it jumps to forty percent.
"However," she cautioned her brother, "if he chooses to rehabilitate himself by swearing to follow you and me...you will use him. Remember, Thorne, your resources will be severely limited when the civil war hits. You will need men and women like Edwin, here. Murderers who will become a.s.sa.s.sins, thieves who will become infiltration artists and security specialists. Spies who will become counterspies and double-agents."
"You told me," he muttered, slowly shaking his head. "You told me, but I didn"t believe it..."
"The criminal element must become a part of the Free World Colony"s government. You will need every trick of their trades to counter every trick the Church will try to throw at you," Ia reminded him, word for word. "Cities can be attacked, tunnels can be collapsed, food and water and even clean air may sometimes be in short supply, but your greatest resource will always be the people you command. Use. Them. Wisely." She returned her gaze to the man on the couch. "Even if, personally, you think serial killer skut like this piece of slag should be thrown into the ocean."
Thorne snorted at that. "What, and poison the devilfish? Ironic as that might be, not even those things deserve to choke on a murderer"s flesh."
"If he doesn"t kill himself, you"ll get five, maybe six good years out of him," Ia told her brother. "He"ll itch to kill, so you may need to find targets...but in five to six years, he"ll break loose and try to freelance. At that point, don"t hesitate; just kill him, quickly and cleanly. Your alternative option, whether or not this one cracks and goes under now or later, is outlined in the time-sensitive files. You"ll encounter him about a year from now-one way or another, you will need to remove a couple of key players in the Church"s inner circle, in a year and a half, and you"ll need the help of someone, ah...eminently qualified, shall we say?"
That made him wrinkle his nose. "I am not comfortable contemplating the cold-blooded a.s.sa.s.sination of anyone. Even a fanatical Church member."
"I know." She softened her tone with a touch of pity, compa.s.sion, and understanding. "Believe me, I do know. No one"s life should have to be wasted...but if it"s a choice between shooting down a rabid stubbie or letting the dog bite everyone in sight, shoot that one dog quickly and cleanly, and spare everyone else. If it helps, you can always put on the Wreath of Hope and remind yourself why we"re doing all of this."
"Oh, I do know. You made me and Fyfer wear the d.a.m.ned things repeatedly over the last three weeks," he grumbled. "I feel like I could almost write a couple of prophesies myself."
Ia rolled her eyes. "Do try to refrain. Oh, and crack down hard and fast on anyone who tries to forge my prophecies," she added. "G.o.d knows the Church will try, but so will some of the less stable elements on the Free World Colony"s side. I"ll be leaving a definitive list with both you and the Afaso Order, so you"ll know exactly which ones are real and which ones are being faked."
"Any other last-minute directives, O Prophet?" Thorne asked her dryly.
Unlike her mothers, she didn"t expect him to stop treating her like his sister. They were as close as any set of twins born from the same mother, though they only shared the same absent father. He knew she was an adult, and knew she was the Prophet of a Thousand Years, but unlike their parents, Thorne had agreed to help carry out her plans years ago.
"Yeah, I do. Remember me. Me, I mean. Your sister," Ia explained. "The woman, and not just the Prophet. I need you to obey me as the Prophet...but I need someone who"ll remember me."
"What, you think Fyfer will start worshipping you?" he asked, snickering briefly at the thought.
"More like he"ll get so wrapped up in his own life, he won"t think much about me. The original me," she clarified.
Edwin spasmed, gasping. He panted for air, eyes almost opening...then they rolled up into his head again, fluttering shut.
"Uhh...how long will he be like this?" her brother asked her.
"Approximately forty more minutes, give or take a few," Ia estimated, skimming the timestreams with a brief close of her eyes. "Then either he"ll run and kill himself, or you can drop the second ring on his head. Then we get to wait another twenty minutes to see if he"ll be willing to live and cooperate with us. It"s all about free will, Thorne. It"s always about free will, and about taking responsibility for our actions-or not-and about making our own choices once we know what"s at stake. Even for skut v"shakk like this. He does have a choice, once the wreath is done with him."
Thorne snorted. He covered his nose hastily, broad shoulders shaking. "Ow. Please don"t combine those two slang words again. Owww...They do not go together. I almost turned my nose inside out! You"re lucky I wasn"t drinking anything."
"Awww," Ia mock-sympathized. Hands clasped behind her back, she returned to watching Edwin V"Sa.s.selli suffering through first-person perspectives of each of his brutalized victims. "Remember, if he goes for the kitchen, don"t stop him, just head for the bedroom exit. I"ll do a sweep for any stray bits of DNA on the way out. If he doesn"t head for the kitchen, drop the next wreath on his head."
This really was the most humane way she could think of to deal with someone like Edwin V"Sa.s.selli, given the ethics of the situation. She knew he was a serial killer, yet she knew her brother needed someone with that exact set of skills on his side. Normal on the outside, psychotic on the inside, and fully capable of killing just about anyone, given the right opportunity. Edwin would be a dangerous tool at best, but one which her brother had to learn how to use. This tool, or the next.
If she hadn"t needed Edwin V"Sa.s.selli, if she didn"t believe even someone him like had a right to life, so long as that life didn"t adversely affect the future...her personal preference would have been to kill him. Quickly, cleanly, and mercifully. It was far more humane than what he had done to his own victims, and far more than he deserved. It was also why she was willing to risk him committing suicide after undergoing this...treatment.
Her next psychic ethics review was bound to be an interesting one, having to explain and justify this to Leona and the others.
Skin crawling, gifts twitching, Ia hugged her mothers long and hard anyway. This was her last chance to do so for another three years. If everything went right, that was. If it didn"t...She hugged her mothers a little bit longer before turning to Fyfer. They mock-tussled a moment, her knuckles rubbing over his dark curls and his fingers trying to pinch her vulnerable points, then they hugged. Patting her on the back, Fyfer let her go to the open arms of her half-twin.
"I"m still not happy that you made me do all that, earlier," Thorne muttered into her ear, hugging her tight enough to make her ribs ache.
Ia hugged him back just as hard. "It could"ve been worse. Keep an eye on him. Use him. Above all, give him no cause to doubt that your hand and mine are one."
"And give none of the others cause for doubt, either," he recited under his breath. Dropping his cheek on her forehead, Thorne hugged his sister. "Mizzu "reddy."
"Gonna mizzu, tu," she agreed. One final squeeze and Thorne let her go. Ia stepped back, relieved her gifts hadn"t triggered while hugging him. Looking at the four members of her immediate family, she gave them a wistful smile. "I will miss you...but you are never far from my thoughts. I love you all very much. Remember that."
Aurelia waggled one naturally tan finger at her daughter. "I am not Jewish, meioa-e; you are not allowed to make me verklempt."
"Go on, Sis," Thorne added, lifting his chin at the modest-sized s.p.a.ceport terminal. "That shuttle won"t wait forever."
Nodding, Ia picked up her kitbag and turned away from her family. She heard Fyfer opening the ground car"s doors for their mothers, before the rumbling of a shuttle lifting off in the distance covered up any further noise. Crossing the road from the parking garage to the terminal, Ia entered the building. She did not look back. Instead, she looked forward, dipping briefly into her future to make sure everything would be on track.
Three years, and counting...Oh, G.o.d, she thought, wincing. It looks like I am going to get stuck next to that chatty grandmother type who will want to tell me all about her current medical ailments. I swear, the Creator has a bowl of popcorn as big as a leafer beast nestled at Her side, tonight...
CHAPTER 6.
Why did I enter the Naval Academy, instead of entering a Marine Academy, after my Field Commission? Obviously because I needed to be able to both command a group of soldiers larger than a Squad or a Platoon, and pilot a fair-sized starship. Short-range starfighters, interorbital shuttle craft, and other various forms of troop transport, all of these things can be piloted by a noncommissioned soldier, all under the guise of the yeoman cla.s.s pilot programs.
Heck, getting a job as an insystem shuttle pilot is one of the biggest and best-paying employment opportunities out there, and the military will actually pay you to learn how to do it. Whether it"s cargo, or people, or whatever, so long as it"s a small vessel with a short range in a noncombat zone, employers are going to want the disciplined mind-set of a former yeoman on their freight team.
Piloting an actual starship, however, requires a far greater level of responsibility. Anything with a crew compliment larger than five requires the lead crewmeioa to be a duly trained officer. Particularly if it"s intended to be used in combat in a way that puts more than just a single pilot and his or her gunners" lives at risk. The military is not in the habit of wasting lives and resources...and the Terran United Planets s.p.a.ce Force in particular is too huge an ent.i.ty to allow its members to "make things up" as they go along.
Every single soldier, whatever their Branch, goes through Basic Training. In the case of medical and religious personnel, it might be a modified version of Basic Training, with less emphasis on the physical aspects of military life, but they undertake the same mental, emotional, intellectual, and logistics training as everyone else, so that everyone is on the same page.
Whether you"re running with a crew of twenty or a crew of two thousand, it"s a whole new level of command, and a whole new level of responsibility. The military needs to make sure each of its officers understands what that means, and follows the same procedures as everyone else. Precognitive or not, that included me.
~Ia AUGUST 24, 2492 T.S.
SINES, PORTUGAL, WESTERN EUROPROVINCE.
EARTH.
A stiff wind was blowing off the Atlantic when the hovertaxi descended to ground level and glided up to the gates of the Academia de Marinha Estrelas. The driver patiently parked it in the entry arch, holding out his wrist unit for scanning. Seated in the front, Ia had to first unsnap the cuff of her Dress Brown jacket, then reach across her body with her left arm to poke her unit out the pa.s.senger window, allowing the guards to hand-scan it.
The sensors built into the entry arch were capable of scanning the identification bracelets from a distance, but since she and the driver were new to the campus, they had to be visually identified by the guards, their faces matched to the ident files on the guards" handheld scanner pads. Thankfully, it didn"t take long to confirm their ident.i.ties, nor for the car to be cleared to proceed. Pulling forward, the driver followed her directions to the administration building.
Though the materials were modern, most of the buildings on the Academy campus had been built with a medieval flavor, echoing the region"s strong, ancient, maritime history. The administrative center was no exception. Its crenellated roofline and square, flanking towers evoked comparisons to an era a thousand years before, when the natives of this region had dared to leave their stone castles in order to explore the planet"s waters in ancient wooden ships.
Locally, it was considered fitting that the TUPSF-Navy had one of its top Academies here, in the region given as a feudal fiefdom to the explorer Vasco da Gama. They even had a bust of him over the main entryway. Personally, Ia thought it was ironic; the man had committed various acts of brutality against foreigners, that which would have pleased only someone like V"Sa.s.selli back on Sanctuary. At home, a hero; abroad, a villain. At least I know the instructors here at the Academia do have a sense of perspective, and don"t whitewash him into a saint.
Offering her bracer-sized arm unit to the driver, Ia paid the cab fare and exited the vehicle. The wind immediately tugged at the brown and black dress cap on her head. Yanking it down firmly, Ia ducked the front of it low, facing into the wind.
Leaving the cabbie to extract her kitbag from the trunk, she hauled out the heavy, wheeled case taking up most of the backseat. Totaling one hundred seventy-three kilos, not including the extra weight of the case itself, the contents were a familiar burden. It contained her exercise weight suit, a webwork of tile-weighted straps that would cover her body from head to foot in order to simulate the strain of heavy gravity.
Technology could create gravity weaves under the floor plates on s.p.a.ceships, s.p.a.ce stations, and even the dome colonies found on asteroids, planetoids, and moons, permitting people a semblance of normal life while traveling and living in s.p.a.ce. Gravity weaves could warp the effects of a natural gravity well, giving a lightworlder some respite from the constant drag on their frames. But gravity weaves couldn"t add weight, and gravity deckplates were too expensive to be used casually. Certainly, it would have been ridiculous to expect the Human Motherworld to pave its sidewalks and streets with excess gravity just for her.