Delicacy

by Jeff C. Carter

Customs Officer Brantry tapped the switch on the conveyor belt to roll the next package into the screener.  Dros, the grizzled smuggler following the crate, gave him a conspiratorial nod.

“Organic goods.  Soft scan only, please,” Dros said.

Brantry slapped a yellow button on the side of the screener and pinged the crate with a brief burst of radiation.

A grainy hologram of large clustered spheres appeared in front of Brantry but he waved it out of existence before anyone else saw.  Live insect eggs were contraband on Avenir, but the aristocracy had an endless appetite for such delicacies.  It took Brantry three approachings of tedious work to earn as much as he did letting a package slip through.  He might not ever be able to afford a high class life aboard the Avenir, but he was determined to retire to Zirconia in style.

“Your shipment has been sterilized and entered into the quarantine queue.  We’ll notify you when it’s ready,” Brantry said, loud enough for anyone who might be listening.

He flipped up the lid of the crate to lay the falsified quarantine seal upon the cargo.  The light struck the aerogel packing around the insect eggs and a disturbing shadow caught his eye.  These weren’t typical Honey Beetle eggs.  They were larger, with too many legs radiating from their dim silhouettes. 

Brantry slammed down the lid of the crate and hissed at the smuggler. “Are you insane?  I can’t let this through!”

Dros glared at the customs officer but dared not call attention to himself.

Brantry punched the red button to initiate deep sterilization.  The machine did not respond.

A low voice from behind Brantry sent a chill racing up his back. “Is there a problem, officer?”

Brantry turned to see a well dressed man standing in the restricted area of customs.  This was undoubtedly the aristocrat seeking the egg sacs. “I’m sorry.  There has been a mistake -- these are… spiders,” Brantry whispered.

There was no hint of surprise in the aristocrat’s expression, and now Brantry recognized his face.  Lancet Palmar VIII, scion of the Palmar dynasty.  Was this the latest status symbol, consuming the rarest, most dangerous and most expensive eggs?

“My fee has tripled,” Brantry said, a small tremor in his voice.

The aristocrat casually nodded and walked away. 

Brantry let the conveyor belt whisk the crate through customs.  He licked his lips, wondering how sweet the spider eggs must taste.

The Sickening Plunge Part 4

by Jeff C. Carter

When Lancet opened his eyes the morgue was empty.  He was completely alone.  Even his constant companion, his smart sword, was gone.

"Hello, Lancet."

A tall, older man in an archaic gray wool suit appeared.  He was bald, with creases around his eyes and mouth but an upright posture that made his age hard to guess.  He smiled reassuringly, yet Lancet saw something calculating and not quite human behind his eyes.

Lancet felt trapped and defenseless.  He involuntarily groped for his missing weapon.

"Ah, one moment," the old man smiled.

There was a tingling in Lancet’s head and suddenly his sword was back, nuzzled against his body. He could feel every part of it, as if the sword had truly become an extension of him at last.

"Are you Beebe?" Lancet asked the stranger.

The old man put a hand on Lancet's shoulder and gave him a grandfatherly squeeze. "I am.  It is so good to see you, lad."

"Are you... a Dreamer?"

Beebe smiled cryptically. "I've certainly dreamed of this moment.  I've known your family for a very long time.  I've watched you grow, seen you become the kind of man who could change the course of history, as your ancestors once did.  I knew I could trust you to step forward now, to do what must be done."

Lancet had waited his entire life to hear those words.  His heart filled with pride but his stomach clenched in uneasy anticipation.  He could feel that he was no longer in control of his life.  He was rapidly being swept away by the tide of fate.

One by one, Moab, Anansi, and the doctor blinked into visibility, looking shaken and confused.  The wizard Pavlovon appeared in several places at once.  Was this her ‘distributed intelligence’?

"Hello again, everyone.  This is an encrypted simulation space.  We are now in direct mental contact via your new implants.  In case you haven't guessed, I am Beebe.  I am pleased to report that no one was compromised by alien influence, and that each of you has my complete trust and undying gratitude.

"Here is what we know:  the aliens have infiltrated society with their followers, dupes, and parasite infested thralls.  They believe that Eclectia is doomed.  They want to accelerate this apocalypse, and with access to our technology they might very well succeed.

"I did not choose you to root out the infestation or declare a pointless war.  I gathered you for your talent, your leadership and your vision.  You believe, as I do, that humanity is destined for more.  This alien threat has the potential to rock our stagnated society to its foundation.  We are the ones who shall decide which pieces remain and how they fit together,” Beebe said.   

"So we're going to use these Rahab maniacs to light a fire under their butts?" Moab stroked his mustache approvingly.

Beebe gave him a knowing smile. "Never let a crisis go to waste."

The Sickening Plunge Part 3

by Jeff C. Carter

Everyone in the morgue was struck silent by Beebe’s announcement.  Lancet’s heart skipped a beat and he felt a fleeting kinship with the dead body laid out nearby.

“If the angels did cause the riots they must have used those spinal parasites to boost their psychic signals,” Anansi stated confidently, “Is that why you brought us inside Sheba?  Their signals can’t reach here?”

Lancet frowned.  He was irked that Anansi was putting things together faster than he was.

“That is correct,” the wizard finally sparked to life, “Although we have taken other precautions as well.  We cannot assume Sheba is secure, merely furthest from the signals.  We know a good deal about this thanks to the late Mr. Jon Valljon.”

She indicated the body on the slab.  Dr. Kes peeled back the side of Valljon’s head and exposed a cratered brain, filled with tangles of gleaming circuitry and the oily tendrils of a dead parasite. “Luckily for us he had a standard servant control implant in his head long before he was infected.  Not only was the chip ultimately able to override the parasite’s control, but we were able to pull memories of the alien transmissions directly from his brain.”

“Control implants allow me to monitor the hostile aliens in secret.  They will also protect you from coming under their control.  Pavlovon will fit you each with such a device,” Beebe said.

The wizard hefted a sinister gun with a long drill bit and smiled obligingly.

“You can’t be serious?” Councilman Moab gasped.

Lancet thought about the agonized look on Valljon’s face as the implant shut down his brain.  Everyone took a step back from the wizard.  Even Anansi’s smile was replaced by shock.

“I’m sorry, but this is not a request.  Any one of you could already be under alien influence.  Until we know for certain I cannot allow any of you to leave Sheba,” Beebe said.

Lancet knew this was just a step towards Beebe’s master plan.  He knew that they would have to fill this morgue a thousand times over to make it a reality.  If he was going to commit himself to this cause then he must be willing to start with his own body if necessary. “I’ll go first.”

Pavlovon lifted the drill and aimed it at Lancet's right eyeball. The wizard's face was blank again, her thick black goggles staring somewhere else entirely.

As the drill bit veered closer to his eye Lancet saw a cluster of needles jutting out, as thin as the woman's own silvery hair.

"Try not to move,” she mumbled.

The drill plunged forward with a sickening crunch.

The Sickening Plunge Part 2

by Jeff C. Carter

Lancet immediately recognized the body on the slab.  It was his old ‘servant’, Valljon, the man who had tried to kill him.  He didn’t know the skinny man in the rubber smock.  He appeared to be some sort of doctor.  He understood now why they were meeting in the damp gray morgue, but not why they had been made to travel to a morgue on the dark side of Sheba.

“Welcome.”

The soothing voice came from a speaker in the ceiling.  Lancet recognized the voice – it belonged to Beebe, the mysterious man who had been his long-distance mentor for most of his life.  They had never met face to face, and he was beginning to doubt that they ever would.  He was even beginning to doubt if Beebe had a face at all.

“Please allow me to make a few introductions.  Councilman Dresden Moab you surely know.  He is a long serving and distinguished member of the Peace Council,” Beebe said.

Beebe didn’t introduce himself, which indicated that everyone there knew him well enough that they would travel to Sheba without asking why.  It was a small group and introductions didn’t take long.  

Lancet began to understand what role each person was there to play. 

Anansi Tolliver, the stylish dark skinned man with the big smile.  Confidence man.  Smooth operator.  Trickster.

Pavlovon Neumann, the pale woman in the goggles staring off at something no one else could see.  Distributed intelligence engineer.  Lancet knew better than to think he understood what wizards did or what they were capable of.

The one in the smock was Dr. Kes.  Beebe had brought him up from Zirconia because he had made some important discovery.

Dr. Kes asked everyone to come closer to Valljon’s corpse on the gurney. “A short while ago I performed a detailed scan on a smuggler named Almer Croix. There was something unusual with his nervous system that a lot of physicians would have missed.  I was able to refine the image and find a separate life form.  The patient’s immune system was ravaged and failing and this life form was to blame.  It was actually a highly evolved alien parasite that had taken root in the poor man’s spinal cord.  

Lancet couldn’t see what a sick Zirco had to do with the St. Christina’s Riot and the Rahab murders that had precipitated this secret meeting.

“Dr. Kes graciously agreed to perform the autopsies on the inmates of St. Christina’s clinic.  They all shared the same parasitic infestation, which I believe is linked to the recent wave of criminal insanity,” Beebe said.

Dr. Kes proudly held up a pair of tongs and dangled a long, oily ribbon of flesh.

Councilman Moab cleared his throat.  He awkwardly looked at the speaker on the ceiling, unused to addressing someone he could not hold in his glare. “Are you saying that the riots happened without a leader?  There was no agenda?”

“Quite the opposite, Councilman.  I have uncovered patterns of association between individuals on Avenir and Zirconia that suggest a loose organization.  When combined with the parasite cases an unmistakable network emerges.  There has been almost no communication between these individuals, however.  All of which leads me to believe that this network is coordinated through psychic transmissions,” Beebe said.

Lancet’s stomach dropped.  Was there going to be a war with the aliens?  Had it already begun?

The Sickening Plunge Part 1

by Jeff C. Carter

Lancet watched the other people in the bleak bare elevator with him.  Councilman Moab he already knew quite well.  The well dressed man with the dark skin and the easy smile looked familiar, but Lancet couldn’t place him.  He didn’t buy the vapid smile; not when he could feel the dark eyes above it assessing him in return.  The pale woman with the slack face framed by thick goggles and wild gray hair he had never seen before, yet he recognized her as a wizard all the same.

The elevator squealed open at a dim sub-floor below the Sheba Forced Labor Penal Colony.  The wizard wandered off without a word down a poorly lit hallway.  They did their best to follow but the passage was choked with mounds of battered old equipment.   The wizard stared at her feet as she walked through the claustrophobic maze, yet she managed to skirt every obstacle.

Lancet looked around and noticed deep gouges and dents on every surface of the hallway.  The wizard stopped at a row of pipes along the wall.

“Hang on,” she murmured.

Suddenly, gravity quit.  Lancet and the others quickly joined the wizard at the pipes.  The equipment in the hallway drifted and smashed into the ceiling.  Soon it was spinning out of control, careening off walls and colliding into each other. 

Lancet and the others bobbed for a moment in silence.  A hefty piece of machinery pitched towards them and Lancet gave it a sharp kick down the hall.  The recoil nearly scattered them into the chaos. There was a sickening plunge in Lancet’s stomach, which he knew from experience meant that artificial gravity was about to resume.  They landed amid a deafening thunder as heavy equipment crashed to the ground.

The wizard wandered onward, effortlessly dodging the machines as they bounced and tumbled into their new places. The well dressed man flashed a wide grin and sauntered after her.  Moab gave Lancet one of his infamous ‘unamused’ looks and followed.

They reached the end of the corridor and came to a single door. A small sign marked it as the prison morgue.  It was a fitting place to meet, Lancet mused, for they were there to plan treason.  Worse, in fact.  Much, much worse. 

Perhaps in time they would end up back where it all began.

Swordplay

by Jeff C. Carter

Councilman Moab placed a sheet over two bodies.  The third, a bloody man in a hospital gown, he left exposed.

Lancet held a gel pack to his bruised face and neck. “Is it over?”
 

“My men haven’t reported any other attacks.  We’ll have to review the vids and body counts before we know for sure,” Moab sighed.  “Two good men, dead for nothing.  What a waste.”

“And my family’s koto,” Lancet added.  He knelt down and picked through the wreckage of a shattered musical instrument on the floor of his chamber.

“Let me see the telemetry from your sword,” Moab said.

Lancet stood and slipped off a black silk sash, a priceless creation from the nanoforges of Avenir.  It snapped into the shape of a long blade.  Lancet turned it downward and a crisp holographic display mushroomed up from the butt of the sword’s handle.

In the floating movie, a scaled down version of Lancet darted down a hallway and severed an attacker’s arm. “Notice how he felt no pain,” Lancet said. The other man continued to lunge and swing.  A blur of information speckled the hologram as facial recognition software and DNA analysis overlapped.

A file photo of the man appeared along with his I.D. and personal history. “This says he was a patient at St. Christina’s Clinic for the Neuro-Atypical,” Lancet read. With a twist of the sword’s grip the playback streaked forward through Lancet’s other battles, completing a grid of I.D. photos in the air. 

“All from the clinic,” Lancet said.

“Do you think it was some kind of mass psychosis?” Moab wondered.

Lancet pulled his shirt taut, revealing a bloody handprint with smeared fingers that the killer had imprinted there. “No.  They seemed too orchestrated.  They rallied around this symbol.  The mark of Rahab.”

Moab nodded. “I saw that on the walls.  They had a battle cry, too.  ‘Rahab is death’.  It seems too organized to be psychosis but too sloppy for proper terrorism.  Perhaps they belonged to a cult?”  

Lancet pulled the sword to his chest and it slithered back into a sash and fastened around his ribs.  He walked over to the uncovered body. “This one claimed to have been a former servant of mine.  He had just killed my guard when your man arrived and put a round in the back of his head.  I thought it was over, but somehow he managed to get back up and kill your man, too.”

Moab rolled the body over with his boot and peered into the deep gunshot wound. “It sounds like he was unstoppable.  So then…why did he stop?”

Lancet grinned. “His old control chip kicked in.  A servant cannot kill his master.”

Moab walked to the transparent wall and peered into space. “What a senseless act.  And two good men, dead.  What a waste,” Moab sighed. He looked down at the broken instrument at their feet. “And your koto as well, of course. I know you wanted to pass that on to your heirs.”

Lancet scowled down at the barren, hostile planet below. “The only thing I want to give my heirs is a world worth having.”

Opportunity

by Jeff C. Carter -

Nosey ran through the hall ways of Avenir singing and screaming and crying tears of joy.  She had never felt so free from fear or guilt or obligation.  She painted the walls, marking them as she explored the wide open spaces outside St. Christina’s Clinic.

She heard shouting up ahead and saw a bloody handprint on the wall.  The mark of Rahab.  She sprinted around the corner and found herself in an enormous ball room with a high vaulted ceiling.  On any other day she would have shriveled in panic to find herself in such a large space, but not today.  With Rahab working through her she was fearless.

Her little friend Bruzzy was nearby, clinging onto a rich lady’s back and roaring into her ear.

“Rahab is death!”

He sank his small teeth into her neck.

Nosey giggled and snatched a broken bottle from the floor.  Sweat and blood flew from her hair and hospital gown as she danced and whirled, painting people red like roses and sunsets and fire. 

A sound like a dozen corks popping echoed off the ceiling.  Bruzzy and the rich lady both fell down in the most gorgeous spray of scarlet and cherry red. 

“Stand down!”

A big fancy old man with gray hair and a mustache swung a pistol towards her.  He was surrounded by piles of bodies, some in hospital gowns, and some in satin and lace. 

“I just want to help you, Mister.  Once I open you up you can feel the wide open space!” Nosey whined.

The big fancy man pulled the trigger but nothing happened.  He cursed. 

Nosey giggled.  She darted forward, the bottle in her hand shining crystal green and crimson.

The big fancy man pulled a glass off a table and splashed its bronze liquid into her face.  Eyes stinging, Nosey slashed at the air blindly.  No fair!  She wanted to see what was inside of him! 

The big fancy man slapped her to the ground with a meaty hand.  Nosey rolled over and rubbed her eyes.   There was a shiny blur in the big fancy man’s hand, and when it opened it produced a beautiful red glow.

“Rahab…” Nosey squealed.

The big fancy man dropped the lighter onto the girl and she was instantly wrapped in flames. 

“Councilman Moab, you’re alive.”

The big fancy man turned from the fire to see Lancet Palmar VIII panting in the doorway, holding a bloody sword.

“You’re here.  Good.  What do we know?” the big fancy man asked.

“Too soon to say for sure.  Terrorists, perhaps?” Lancet said.

“Perhaps.  Any idea who or what this ‘Rahab’ might be?”

Their faces were both illuminated by the crackling flames.

“Yes,” Lancet said, “an opportunity.”

Kill-Switch

by Jeff C. Carter -

Lancet lay there stunned and surrounded by dead men. There was the bloody security guard, the man with the broken neck, and the old man standing over him laughing.

He had seen the old man take a shot to the back of the head. He didn’t know how the man got back up, or even who he was. He only knew that this man wanted to kill him.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? A brainless body to follow you around?” the lunatic said.

“Who are you?”

The old man smeared some of the blood from his face and wiped it onto his hospital gown.

“You don’t recognize me? It’s your faithful servant, Valljon.”

“I never had a…”

Valljon leaped onto Lancet and straddled his legs. “That’s right! You never had a Valljon! When you had them put the chip in my head…” He pointed a finger to his temple like a drill. “Bzzzzz! They made an awful mess. So sorry, puppet broken. Every word the old man spoke carried an overpowering stench of rot.

“What do you want?” Lancet said.

Lancet tried to keep his assailant focused while he thought of a way to turn the tables. He could hear the rattle of his smart sword straining against its charge unit in the other room. He knew it wouldn’t get free in time. He slowly searched the wreckage beneath him with his hands.

“You tried to turn me into one of them remote controlled butlers. When it didn’t work I was tossed out like garbage.”

A string of drool slid onto Lancet’s cheek but he tried not to turn his head. His fingers found a jagged shard of beetle shell.

Valljon rubbed his hand across his scalp and held it up, palm slick with blood. “It’s okay. Once I put the mark of Rahab upon you all will be forgiven.” He pressed his hand against Lancet’s shirt. His fingers began to slide towards Lancet’s throat.

“Valljon, look at me. I want you to see that I am truly sorry.”

“All are equal in death,” Valljon cooed.

Lancet thrust the shard into Valljon’s ribs as the bloody hand clamped around his throat. Lancet struggled to drive the blade in again and again but blackness was swarming across his senses.

Suddenly the pressure was gone.

“Error! Forbidden! Safety protocol…,” Valljon sputtered. The old man clutched his head and pulled at his gray hair.

Lancet gasped for air.

A savage look of hatred blazed in Valljon’s eyes as he fought the machinery in his head. “Rahab is death!” he bellowed. 

He curled his bloody fingers into talons and reached again for Lancet’s neck. “Neural Kill Switch engage,” Valljon droned. He flopped to the ground, face slack. Puppet broken.

Lancet rubbed his throat and called up to the ceiling. “Open a line to Moab.” 

There was a soft chime. “Moab, pick up. It’s Lancet. Some lunatic just tried to kill me.”

A cacophony of screams and grunts echoed through the speakers, followed by a gravely voice. “You’re not the only one! There’s a bloody riot going on!”