Mandate

Wren takes care of those around her, but will a bunch of Guardians be more than she can keep in fighting shape?

Wren has been a caretaker for all her adult life. The offer to take up a new life in the stars comes as part of her career comes to a sad end.

They ask her to change her DNA, she does. They ask her to engage in combat training, she does. They ask her to channel the new talent that roars through her bloodstream, she focuses. If they had asked her if she was willing to mate with a stranger, she would have considered it.

Drovin has been waiting for the day when his mate would arrive on his world. He knows what she looks like and who she is, but her personality is a mystery. Binding them together before she arrived was his idea, but it might have been an incorrect impulse when she can find all of his weaknesses in an instant.

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Mandate

Copyright © 2014 Viola Grace

ISBN: 978-1-4874-0059-0

Cover art by Martine Jardin

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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Mandate

Terran Times Second Wave

By

Viola Grace

Wren Silverberg waited as the final shovel of dirt landed on the coffin of her former patient. Emily Thacker Smithwick was gone and Wren had been missing her for a week.

“Ms. Silverberg, you should leave now. I will meet you in the transport momentarily.” Recruiter Norz smiled at her and showed the deadly teeth that didn’t disturb her as much as it first had a month ago.

She nodded and headed for the transport with the glares of the Smithwick family following her.

They had hired her to care for Emily but seemed to think that hiring a caregiver would impart immortality to the woman who had passed the century mark. All Wren had been able to do was keep Emily fed and entertained. She had done her utmost to make Emily’s life happy, and the moment that she passed, her family had kicked Wren out of the house and stopped payment on her final paycheck.

It was simply Emily’s own devious planning that had given Wren the possibility of a new life elsewhere. Now, she waited for the man who had participated in her extrication to stop making the Smithwicks turn green, so that she could take her shuttle to the moon for training.

* * * *

Norz narrowed his eyes at the pasty and unpleasant Smithwicks. “Emily was an amazing woman, and she deserves better than the greedy, grasping gathering of offspring that stands before me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Her eldest son, Jonathon, spluttered at the comment.

Norz handed them a disk. “Here. Watch this and tell me what you think of the woman you have derided, degraded and who gave Emily bright and lively last days. She gave her all to her and you responded by ignoring her own grief and ejecting her from her home of the last five years.”

Norz turned and left them to stare at the disk while he accompanied his bodyguards to the vehicle that held his newest recruit.

* * * *

The Smithwicks gathered around the screen and watched the video of Wren dealing with Emily’s temper with good humour, reading her stories, helping her with her email and keeping her in touch with her friends.

Jonathon scowled, this was not what he expected to see based on the consistent lack of funds in his mother’s wallet.

They watched clips of weeks of attendance and then came a quick pause when Jonathon Junior came in to speak to his mother.

Jonathon looked at his son, and his fifty-year-old son was looking uncomfortable.

The family watched as Wren left the room and Jonathon Junior immediately went to his grandmother’s wallet to withdraw all the cash. He tucked it into his own wallet, roused his grandmother from a nap and pretended he had just arrived.

As the family watched the withdrawal of money and drugs repeated with four other family members, Wren simply kept purchasing the groceries with her own funds and didn’t stress Emily out with the knowledge that her family was stealing from her.

After all of the displays, the screen flickered to black and then came back on with Emily’s smiling face front and center.

“Hello all. If you are seeing this, then you were bigger jackasses than I had ever imagined. I asked Recruiter Norz to give the recordings to you only if you went after Wren. If you did, I am disgusted. Junior, I have known about you pilfering my wallet for years. Missy, Leonora, Deborah and Jonny, you are all idiots and my will has taken that into account.

“You may wonder how this recording appeared, and to put it succinctly, I knew that you would not greet my passing with grace and I wanted Wren taken care of. She has brought life and joy back into my life while making me as comfortable as possible.

“I had the Volunteer Project put scanners and monitors into my home to assess Wren, and they came up with the same judgement that I have. She is literally too good for this world. She needs to be appreciated somewhere and as far away from you as possible because you poison what you touch.

“For better or worse, you are my legacy to the world, but let me go with grace. I have lived my life and several others as well. I have laughed, loved and lived enough for my lifetime and I need a break.

“Oh, and my will is registered in nine states; don’t try to break it. Anyone who contests it will end up with absolutely nothing. It is airtight and this recording is in the hands of every lawyer I have engaged. They can and will press elder abuse charges on you if you so much as chirp, Junior.”

Emily Smithwick grinned and waved farewell before the room erupted into shouting.

* * * *

“How do you think they are handling it?” Wren smiled as she tugged her bag more firmly onto her shoulder.

Norz shrugged. “I do not care. Emily’s soul is in the stone that we have given you, as per her directions. She will head to the Citadel after two years and join a psychometric reference program. She has a lot of wisdom to give, and it will be fun to hear of her interaction with races she had never imagined.”

Wren laughed. “She imagined them. The stories I read to her were science fiction romances. Her mind was filled with images she wanted to verify.”

She watched the Ontex blink in surprise.

“Well, in that case, you are clear on what you need to do?”

Wren nodded. “Check in, head to medical and get the process underway. They will give me the language flash when I get there, and then, they drop me into the tank to start my enhancement.”

He smiled and then asked. “You are still all right with the alterations to your DNA?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I am not doing anything interesting with it anyway.”

“Excellent. We have sent another female to the same world, but she doesn’t have your enhancements. Her talents lie in another area, and she was sent there directly after her basic training.”

Wren nodded. “And my training begins when I get out of the tank.”

“Correct. That is the point when you will need to gain control and that is where they will help you.” He sighed in relief. “Well, it has been a pleasure observing and meeting you. I wish you well and much success in this new step of your life.”

Wren smiled. “Thank you for all your help.”

“Thank Emily. She was a strong supporter of the Volunteer Program when we first arrived here. Her mind was keen even in her last weeks of life. Here she is.”

Wren took the box with Emily’s soul stone in it. Her friend had worn it for the last six weeks, and it embodied a copy of her mind and a portion of her soul. It was an amazing item and her family was never to know about it. Emily was coming with Wren on her adventure for the first two years of her new experience, and then, she was going to boss folks around in an educational program.

She waved a final farewell to Norz and headed to the shuttle. She smiled at a few other Terrans on the shuttle and sat back in her seat. Her heart pounded as they left Earth and her old life fell away beneath her. It was a new start with a new set of possibilities, and her life as a caretaker was about to take on a completely new dimension.

The enhancement to her mind and body was going to be achieved via genetic alteration and alien DNA. Her system would be tailored to her new environment and the job that she would be doing.

It was a daunting thought, but when they arrived, she followed the signs to medical and checked herself in, ignoring the looks from the other Volunteers as she diverted herself down a corridor.

The doctor smiled. “Miss Silverberg?”

She nodded. “Call me Wren.”

“Wren then. Are you aware of the details of this procedure?”

“I will be injected and then placed in a tank while my body and mind go through a transformation process. The species I am being blended with is a good match for me, so there should be minimal side effects beyond the intensity of the change itself.”

He smiled. “Correct. The W’lyn are a blended race, but both species have relationships with your own. We just need to give you the language flash and an educational link and we can begin.”

She nodded and took the flat screen from him, tapping it to begin the download of languages into her mind. The educational link was a bit more involved, and when it had been inserted into her skull, she lay for the initial scans and the baselines for her pre-alteration records.

It was time to get the party started.

A month in the tank passed quickly. With oxygenated fluid in her lungs, Wren bobbed and used her implant to send the monitor near her tank flicking from one file to the next.

Wren was now used to the greyish-pearl cast that her skin had taken on. Her hair had unfortunately fallen out during the procedure and the soft fuzz that was growing in was a slightly darker grey than her skin. The mirror that they held up to her on a daily basis was showing the differences in her appearance, but when she was able to bring the mirror up in front of her without using her hands, they appeared both excited and nervous.

From her position in the tank, Wren moved small objects around the medical bay and returned them to their original places. Her enhancement was kicking in.

On her monitor, she looked into the W’lyn government, procedures and etiquette. She tried to find the donor for the alterations that were coursing through her blood, but she was told that they were simply due to the blood coming from a member of the W’lyn Guardians and it was left at that.

The amount of access to information that they had given her was amazing. She was even more surprised at her ability to absorb it. Never in her life had she been much of a reader, but now, she could not get enough information on the Terran working as an analyst on W’lyn. The fixation bordered on obsession, and an instinct, she was surprised to discover, pushed her search for information to midwifery and cross-species breeding.

Every now and then, a doctor or tech would analyze her data preferences, and when they spotted her looking into medical information, they would offer her complementary monographs that she would not have found otherwise. The tank was a very nurturing environment for her.

While floating, she forgot the harsh moments after Emily had passed away, and she began to turn her mind to a future where alien races passed her in hallways and checked on her tank temperature. The day that her decanting came, she was on the edge of panic at the thought of leaving her safe little haven.

She wasn’t given a choice and was hoisted from the tank and left to throw up the liquid in her lungs, coughing violently as the air rushed in, harsh and dry.

“Easy, Wren. Breathe slowly and we will put you on a med bed for your new scans.”

She nodded and worked at inhaling and exhaling before another coughing fit grabbed her and squeezed her lungs, ejecting more fluid.