Harry's Sacrifice (6 page)

“The key to what?”

“To returning emotion to the Brotherhood.”

“You can’t be serious. The Council would never—”

“I’m not proposing to seek Council approval,” Ronin broke in. “If I could get a supply of the drug, I would make it available on a voluntary basis to the Brotherhood. You know how many would take the chance to feel—as you did. I propose to give them the choice.”

“Ronin…that’s a big step.” Bill seemed to be considering the idea, but there was a tremor of uncertainty in his voice.

“They should have the choice.” Ronin spoke in a low, persuasive tone. “It’s only fair. Don’t you agree?”

Bill hesitated. “I suppose, but there is no guarantee Jaci would agree to help you. She was exposed accidentally in the course of her duties. Though things turned out well for her in the end, I do not know her feelings on the subject of making the treatment available to others. She may object.”

“As is her right,” Ronin agreed. “But I would like to at least ask her. When will you be back in your home facility and can you communicate securely from there?”

“Travel will take approximately half a day, and yes, we have a secure crystal at our installation.”

“Only half a day?” Ronin was surprised.

“The human military equipped these facilities with all kinds of surprises.”

Ronin noted Bill’s lack of explanation but did not pursue the topic. Bill had a right to keep the humans’ secrets. He was living among them now and with his capacity for emotion, probably felt more of a bond with them than with his former Alvian Brethren.

“Will you contact me upon your return so I may speak with your friend and present my request?”

“I will, Patriarch. But it will be her decision. I will not try to influence her either way.”

“Understood.”

Days later, Ronin had a very satisfactory discussion with Jaci. She readily agreed to prepare the dosages if Ronin could get the materials she’d need to her. Ronin dispatched his operatives to covertly gather the samples, reagents and equipment she needed.

It was delivered to a neutral spot in the forest. Ronin wished he could’ve gone to meet the young lab tech, but he had to maintain the public appearance of going about his normal routine so as to keep the Council unaware of his behind-the-scenes machinations. This project was critical. Perhaps the most important thing he’d done yet. It could not fail. And discovery by the Council would be disastrous. So Ronin allowed his operatives to deliver the precious lab equipment and ingredients that would hopefully turn into the promise of a new existence for those of his Brotherhood who chose to take the ultimate chance.

A week later, the skin patches holding doses of the experimental agent were ready. Delivery was accomplished by one of the winged Brethren. Bill arranged to meet the winged soldier and transfer the precious cargo. With any luck, this would be the first shipment of many.

Ronin decided to offer the skin patches to the Alvian Brethren without wings first. The winged
Zxerah
were under constant monitoring by the top geneticist, Mara Prime, so it would be hard to hide the alterations the drug would make in large numbers of those men. Still, Ronin wanted them to have the chance.

But there were only so many skin patches in this first batch. He offered them to the
Zxerah
who weren’t under constant genetic scrutiny—those without the experimental wings who served in support functions. Many chose to try the treatment and the human adoptees into the clan volunteered to help their Alvian Brethren cope as emotions began to surface. With such a strong support system in place, Ronin had high hopes for the outcome.

Eve, a human member of the
Zxerah
clan who had a very strong gift of foresight, visited Ronin the night the skin patches were delivered. It wasn’t uncommon for Eve to seek him out when she’d had a particularly powerful vision, but it also wasn’t something that happened every day. Ronin made time to see her, having learned early on that her counsel and guidance were valuable.

“Change has arrived, I see.” Eve nodded to the unremarkable brown leather bag that sat on Ronin’s desk.

“Possibly.” Ronin offered her refreshment as she took a seat, but she declined. He’d learned it was best to let Eve talk while he listened.

“Oh, most definitely.” She smiled at him. “This is just the beginning. As more of your people take the treatment and gain emotion, the status quo will be drastically altered. Change will be inevitable from the moment you offer the drug to your people.”

Ronin hadn’t told anyone what was in the bag—not even the operative who’d been sent to pick it up from Bill. Eve had foreseen it, truly.

“What else have you seen?”

“A quiet clerk in a windowless office.” Eve’s eyes clouded as she talked of her vision. “She needs one of those. Desperately. And she doesn’t even know it. She’s going on a journey. A quest. To a very cold place with two very hot men.” Eve’s mouth curled in a smile. “She needs to be able to interact with them. She needs to feel. You have to give her that option. She’ll think about it for a day or two, but she’ll take the chance. She doesn’t even know how brave she really is yet, but she’ll find out.” Eve refocused on him as her vision cleared. “You have to give a couple of those to Roshin.”

“Are you certain?” The thought would never have occurred to him, but in a way, it made sense.

Eve rose to her feet. “Absolutely. She needs them. As soon as possible.”

Ronin Prime made a trip to the city the next day. Those who were tasked with watching his movements and reporting back to the Council were allowed to observe him in his travels, even if they had no idea why he was really going to the city.

Ostensibly, he was going to meet with the High Council. In truth, the more important meeting was a private one with a very special person none would ever suspect. A clerk, Roshin 72 had been assigned to the private staff of the newest Council member, Markus Prime.

Councilor Markus represented those in the clerical trades and had been selected to replace the disgraced Troyan, who had ordered the assassination attempt on Chief Engineer Davin’s life. When his involvement was revealed, Troyan had been ousted from the Council and a replacement had been chosen in short order.

Markus wasn’t as politically savvy as Troyan had been. He was also considerably younger. In fact, he was the youngest member of the Council and had most likely been chosen because he was perceived as no threat to the other members of the Council. He went along with most of their plans with little or no argument, deferring to the older, more experienced members at nearly every turn. Just as they wanted.

Markus had been assigned a staff to help keep his office in order. He’d chosen several people he’d worked with before and several others were assigned based on their areas of expertise. Roshin 72 was one of the latter.

In fact, she had been carefully positioned for just such an opportunity by Ronin himself. Though raised almost entirely outside the confines of the Alvian city infrastructure and trained to excel in her work as a legal clerk, Roshin was secretly a member of the
Zxerah
Brotherhood. She wasn’t much of a fighter and had never been trained as an operative—even the highly secretive
Zxerah
needed clerks—but she had been assigned to a role that made her very valuable indeed.

They met in secret, which was not easy to accomplish in a city filled with possible watchers, but Ronin had people everywhere. He let it be known he needed a few minutes off the grid and his operatives at all levels of Alvian society sprang into action to help divert attention away from him for a short while.

“We must talk quickly. I will be missed.” Ronin ducked into Roshin’s private apartment where she’d been waiting for him. “It’s good to see you again, little one.”

“Good to see you too, Patriarch.” Roshin ushered him inside and invited him to sit with a gesture even as she made her report. “Markus is easily led by the rest of the Council, as you suspected. Gildereth is the one who speaks most to Markus when persuasion is needed. He holds more influence over the Council than I had expected. For a soldier, he wields a lot of power over his supposed superiors.”

“I long suspected that was the case,” Ronin agreed. “What of Orin? Does he truly rule the Council or is he just a figurehead?”

“As best I can tell, he exerts his leadership sparingly. Unless the topic under discussion is one of interest to him or his constituents in the medical community, he is content to let the others have their way.”

“I bring a warning to you from Eve, our seer.”

“A warning?” Like most Alvians, Roshin didn’t display true emotion, merely a vague sort of interest in words that would have inspired real fear in any of Ronin’s human clan members.

“You will be traveling in the near future on a great quest of some sort.”

“What must I do?”

“When the opportunity arises to go on this quest, do not argue. Accept that it is your fate. You are needed on the journey.”

She looked skeptical but nodded. “Yes, Patriarch.”

“There’s one more thing.” Ronin reached into an inner pocket of his robe and palmed the precious skin patches he’d brought with him. “This is a dose of an experimental drug that will alter your DNA on a molecular level. It is your choice to take it or not, but Eve insisted you be given the choice.”

She took the skin patch with mild interest. “Is this what Mara 12 has given her group of test subjects?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I have been included in some of the Council meetings regarding that project as part of Councilor Markus’s staff. The drug appears to be working quite well and the subjects are progressing better than anyone had expected.”

Ronin was pleased she seemed to have such an intimate acquaintance with the concept. He just hoped her knowledge would lead her to make the right decision.

“Eve foresaw that you would need this treatment in order to accomplish your mission. You and another must take the treatment, but it was unclear in her vision who the other was. I suspect the identity of that person will become clear in time.”

“I have never understood her ability of foresight, nor trusted it completely, but I will give your words and wishes due consideration, Patriarch.”

“That is all I ask, child.” Ronin stood and headed for the door. “Believe that you are the right person in the right place at the right time, little Rose.” He used the name he’d given her when she was much younger and he’d first discovered the Earth flower whose name sounded so similar to hers.

“I hope you are right, Patriarch.”

“I’ve come for what’s mine, Mother.” Harry faced down the woman who had birthed him but never been up to the emotional task of nurturing a child.

Mara 12 shot to her feet. She was a tall woman, but Harry stood head and shoulders above her now, fully adult. In the intervening years since the Alvians had bombarded the Earth with their crystal seeds, changing it forever, the planet had healed and regenerated into something new. The few humans who’d survived the initial attack only to be penned up for study by the emotionless Alvian scientists had suffered badly, but were now on the road to recognition as sentient beings worthy of respect.

Harry’s father, Justin O’Hara, along with Caleb, Mick, and their wife Jane, had been at the forefront of the battle. Harry’s half-sister and her mates, Davin and Rick, were doing their part as well, as were the Alvians who’d taken the emotion-restoring gene therapy. Now it was Harry’s turn. His time had finally come.

All along, his precognitive gift had told him he had a bigger role to play. It was difficult to see—and especially to interpret—visions about his own future, but Harry had always known he’d been born for a higher purpose. The one and only half-Alvian, half-human hybrid currently in existence, Harry’s psychic gifts were stronger than any of his human half-siblings.

Now it was his turn to play a part in securing humanity’s future and changing the Alvian race forever. Whether they liked it or not.

“You have no right to demand anything of me, Hara. I am your progenitor. It is my role to demand compliance of you. Not the other way around.” Mara’s tone was calm as ever, her words measured as her eyes dissected his actions. She was so damned unemotional, it was difficult to be around her, but Harry had learned how to deal with his mother over the years. Now, however, all bets were off. He was through being the compliant little lab rat for his scientist mother. His time had come.

She’d dodged his requests to see her all week and avoided him at every opportunity. She had to know something was up when her son requested an appointment to see her. He never did. It was usually the other way around. His patience was at an end and he’d cornered her in her own lair—her office. She couldn’t refuse to see him if he didn’t ask.

“I have every right to demand the return of an artifact handed down through my paternal line, given to you for safekeeping while I was a child. I am adult now by every measure of reckoning—human and Alvian—and I expect the return of the property left for me.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for!” Finally, a spark of emotion, faint as it was, but it was something. It made Harry hope that not all was lost for his mother. She might yet be saved.

“I know full well what was left by the first Hara to my ancestor generations ago. The seed of Home Crystal was his mark of power and now it is mine. I am Hara reborn and I will take my rightful place in Alvian society. I’m through being studied.”

“That is not for you to decide.”

“On the contrary.” Harry placed a data crystal on the desk between them—his trump card. “According to Alvian law, I am well within my rights.”

“You are not Alvian.”

“Perhaps not completely, but if you’ll read the second document I’ve loaded onto that crystal, you’ll be reminded that according to ancient Alvian law, citizenship rights are conferred by DNA. My DNA is over sixty-eight percent Alvian between the Mara and Hara strains. Your own studies—which you probably know by heart—confirmed long ago that more than eighty-nine percent of my Alvian DNA is Hara. Not Mara, though you are closer to me in relationship than my long-gone ancestor. The Hara DNA is stronger than your Mara line. It also takes precedence in the new hierarchy of Alvian government since the genetic breeding program went into effect five generations ago. By both the ancient laws and newer ones, my genetics make me superior to you in every way. By rights, I am Hara Prime, as the only Hara on-planet with more than fifty percent Hara DNA, though my father and uncles come damned close. Hara bred true in all of them, though they are many generations separated from him. You know all this, so do not pretend surprise with me, Mother. I’ve come for the crystal that is rightfully mine, given into your custody by Justin O’Hara, rightful owner and direct descendant of the last Hara Prime to set foot on this planet.”