Mindguard
Authors: Andrei Cherascu
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Technothrillers, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Galactic Empire, #Thrillers
Mindguard
by Andrei Cherascu
Copyright © 2014 by Andrei Cherascu
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.
Cover Image by Andrei Cherascu
Cover Design by Andrei Cherascu
This is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to actual persons, places or events is entirely coincidental.
For Ioana,
Because our minds are one.
4th, 2049
The
human mind is unpredictable. Had it not been this way, humanity would have died
in its infancy.
Kinsey
Ayers,
A New History of Old Earth
Doctor and Mrs.
Whitman Caine were having tea on their porch. It was the first Sunday of April.
After an unseasonably cold month of March, the warm weather and cloudless sky
proposed an evening of lazy outdoor leisure.
Had they known
then, that they were about to change the course of human history, they would
still have had tea on the porch, because it was five o’clock and it was Sunday.
These moments of quality time together were of a sanctity that could not be
unsettled, even by the end of the world as they knew it.
“Would you like
to try again?” Dr. Caine asked, noticing that his wife had just finished her
tea and placed the empty cup on the wrought iron table.
It’s such a
lovely day,” she answered. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it happened
today?”
“Well, there’s
one way to find out.”
Excited, the
scientist got up and went inside to fetch Carly her sketch board. It contained
every single drawing she had made since the start of the project. He handed it
to her and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“I’m going to be
in the dining room,” he said, winking.
“The dining
room,” she replied, biting her lower lip like she always did when she was
intrigued.
After he left,
she made herself comfortable in her rocking chair, tightly tucking in the
blanket that covered her legs. “The dining room,” she quietly repeated. She
closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly. Then, she
focused her gaze on the blank page in front of her.
Meanwhile, Dr.
Caine was sitting at the dining room table. He had already picked out the
object and was intensely staring at it. It was a mug they had gotten from the
Christmas Market in Vienna, more than seven years ago. He was trying to focus
on the object’s every detail: its shape, color, its weight, the way it felt in
his hand.
He concentrated
on it as if his whole life had been reduced to that single moment, his entire
world contained within that one fragile object. Not even the tiniest detail
could be allowed to go unnoticed. After ten minutes, he had to stop. He felt
physically tired, as if he had been running all that time. When he heard his
wife enter the room, he set the mug aside and said a short, silent prayer. He
turned towards her. He smiled when she handed him the sketch. She returned his
smile and shrugged, like a teenager handing her crush a valentine.
“Well?” she
asked.
It took a few
moments for her husband to find his words.
Two great
discoveries have shaped the course of human history more than any others before
them. One must be continuously developed and supported, its potential
harvested, for it can become the culmination of all human endeavors. The other
must be discontinued and outlawed, before it becomes humanity’s undoing.
President Manmohan
Mukerjee at the inaugural summit of the
Interstellar Federation of Common
Origin,
2110
Faint flashes of
lightning, followed by an almost imperceptible drone, announced a
Muench-Henriksen gateway, somewhere above the sky of Aanadya. A few seconds
later, the spacecraft made its spectacular appearance through the thick,
gray-brown clouds, like an ancient god descending from primeval heavens.
Tamisa was in
awe. She had never seen an Enforcement Unit vessel before. It was much smaller
than the enormous Mylonas cargo crafts, but no less impressive. Its
unusual design made it look like some sort of flying container, as if it had
not been meant to carry human passengers, but toxic waste. The enforcers were
not known for their aesthetic sensibility.
Crouched in her
hiding place, an empty wooden crate behind one of the hangars, Tamisa could
only see part of the proceedings. She was fifteen now, too old and too big to
get a clear vantage point and, at the same time, remain safely concealed. She
was starting to become too old for many things, and yet she felt even older.
She looked at
Kaye Wright. From her position, she could only see the back of his head. He
towered over the rest of his staff. The welcoming committee consisted of
representatives of the Union of Workers, a few members of what passed for press
in the city of Tuson, and a number of guards.
As the ship
slowly descended towards its landing spot, Wright seemed more and more
agitated. He was pacing, constantly looking around, as if he feared an ambush,
turning from time to time to yell at his staff. She hoped he wouldn’t turn
around one hundred and eighty degrees, or she would risk being seen; that would
mean certain death.
She had entered
the spaceport through her ‘secret door’, a hole in the fence she had discovered
a few years earlier, while roaming the hills close to her home. Now she barely
fit through it. Because climbing the barbed wire fence was not an option, the
spaceport would soon become off limits, robbing her of one of her only forms of
entertainment: observing the ships that left this wretched planet and
daydreaming of one day leaving in one of them.
Trespassing was
prohibited; many men had died for less. But it was Tamisa’s only link to her
dream, and she felt her dream was worth risking even her life. She had escaped
death once before, but it could not be avoided forever. Not on a planet like
Aanadya.
She thought of
her father’s ridiculous ‘accident’. She knew all along that it had been
Wright’s men. They didn’t try very hard to hide their gruesome murder. As a
scientist dispatched to the Institute for Genetic Research in Tuson, her father
had been branded an ‘outsider’ by the Union of Workers, and had immediately
triggered the paranoia of Kaye Wright.
In lieu of an
actual government, the Union was the reigning political power. Aanadya was just
on the verge of the Taut Desert, not yet integrated within the Interstellar
Federation of Common Origin. Kaye Wright, the Union’s Lead Representative, was
the most dangerous man on the planet, an unpredictable psychopath prone to fits
of violent rage. He made no secret of the fate that awaited people who opposed
him in any way. It was common knowledge in Tuson, that if you ever ventured
into the Gupa hills, you would be hard pressed to find a spot of ground that
did not serve as a final resting place for one of his detractors. To Tamisa, he
was the quintessence of evil and the personification of life on this barbaric
planet. Since her father’s death, she had but one thought that consumed her
every moment: escape.
As a biologist,
working in genetic architecture - a field regarded with suspicion since the
Great Mindwar - her father had always been an outsider, both on Aanadya and
elsewhere. A man with few friends, he had always found company in books,
a trait which Tamisa had inherited. She had read about other planets, places
with lush jungles full of colorful forms of plant life, or barren wastelands of
quiet solitude, which offered some of the most beautiful sunsets to ever have
inspired painters. She had read about ice worlds, whose skies presented
lightshows that rivaled in beauty the Aurora Borealis of Old Earth. By
comparison, Aanadya was a complete piece of
shit
.
It was a barren
wasteland without the beautiful sunsets; the high pollution was to blame for
the thick clouds that covered the sky almost all the time. Sometimes there were
lightshows caused by the toxic smoke rising from the factories, but they were
creepy and ended in thunderstorms. There was little plant life on the inhabited
part of the planet, and the only wildlife around were skinrats and a species of
dog that you couldn`t even pet because it was covered with a disgusting
exoskeleton.
The population
consisted mostly of miners and factory workers, ruthless and dangerous brutes
with little regard for anything but their physiological needs. For any young
woman, the place was a prison, a dangerous dungeon that held the promise of a
future lost in drug addiction and rape. For Tamisa it was hell, plain and
simple.
In this pit of
devils, her father had been the only angel. Since his death, Tamisa decided
that she would rather join him than face the prospect of a future on Aanadya.
She needed to find a way off this planet, though travel was extremely difficult
for unmarried women and impossible for people under the legal age of nineteen.
However, she was determined to find a way, even if she had to hide on a Mylonas
cargo craft.
She was
frustrated that her stepmother, Melody, did not share her enthusiasm for
leaving. Since her husband’s death, Melody had been in a state of severe
depression. The subsequent years of alcohol and substance abuse made it very
hard for Tamisa to get through to her. Much of the time she was unresponsive,
and when she was sober, she was very apathetic. Tamisa realized early on that she
was on her own.
On this day,
however, hidden among her enemies, she felt a glimmer of hope. The Enforcement
Unit was scheduled for an official visit in Tuson. It seemed that Commander
Anderson himself had requested a meeting with the Union of Workers, much to the
concern of Kaye Wright.
Rumor had it
that the enforcers were planning a military intervention on Aanadya, in order
to install an interim government on the planet in preparation for the next
enlargement-wave. Talk of integrating Aanadya into the IFCO had been going back
almost a decade. The establishment of the institute where her father had
worked, as well as the Taut Desert Observatory, had been intended as the first
steps toward this supposed integration, but it never happened. From time to time,
rumors of an Enforcement Unit intervention would pop up only to prove false, so
Tamisa was prepared to be disappointed.
A few months
before her father’s death, there had been talk of the enforcers wanting to
build one of their Academies near Tuson, complete with physical training
grounds. The plans never materialized and people were saying that Kaye Wright
tried everything in his power to prevent it from happening. The mere presence
on Aanadya of an outfit under the command of Thomas Liam Anderson would have
seriously crippled Wright’s power.
Anderson was a
decorated war hero, High Commander of the most efficient and well organized
military in the history of mankind. A skilful strategist, his razor-sharp
intellect and dedication to maintaining peace were the only reasons that the
IFCO was not falling apart, consumed by petty conflicts instigated by people
like Wright.
Tamisa had read
a lot about the commander. Her father had been a great supporter of the
Enforcement Unit, and he had greatly admired Anderson. For that reason, she too
felt a special affection for the man, though she had only ever seen him in
pictures. She held a secret hope that the enforcers would show up and just open
fire on Kaye Wright and his posse, punishing them for their many heinous
crimes, though she knew it was just wishful thinking.
As the doors to
the ship opened, Tamisa held her breath. She couldn’t wait to catch a glimpse
of the commander. A threatening growl startled her. She almost let out a
scream, revealing her position. One of the dogs that roamed the grounds of the
spaceport had just discovered her. It must have been scavenging for dead
skinrats. When it noticed Tamisa, it raised its muzzle in the air and bore its
teeth.
Tamisa was not
afraid of the mutt; they almost never attacked people. She was, however,
terrified that the growl would attract the attention of one of the guards, and
that she would be discovered. Her deafening heartbeat almost covered up the
creature’s grumble.
Sure enough, one
of the guards turned around and noticed the dog. Tamisa closed her eyes and
held her breath, hoping that it would somehow magically turn her invisible. She
heard the guard yell at the dog to scram. The animal obeyed. Tamisa could hear
its footsteps backing away from her.
Though her eyes
were closed, the girl had a clear picture in her head: the guard would see her.
He would come over, grab her by the arm, drag her through the dirt and throw
her at the feet of the man who had given the order to kill her father.
None of that happened.
When she dared open her eyes a few seconds later, she saw everyone, including
the guard in question, staring at the enormous doors of the ship. They had
opened to reveal Thomas Anderson himself, joined by a handful of his men.
Tamisa had a clear
view of the famous commander. She had until now seen only a few images of
him. He was unchanged from news articles a generation old - a testament to
the extensive life-prolonging genome interventions he received on a regular
basis. It was known that Anderson and a select few of his men were some of the
very few privileged citizens who could benefit from such procedures. Their
experience and knowledge were considered fundamental to the well-being of the
IFCO.
Though almost
three centuries old, the man appeared no older than sixty, and he seemed to be
in damned good shape even for sixty. He had been in command of the Enforcement
Unit ever since its creation.
He was now
hurriedly approaching Kaye Wright, who had placed himself in front of a
microphone to speak.
“Greetings,”
Wright said cautiously. “I would hereby like…”
Tamisa never got
to hear the rest of his speech. Her clear view of the back of Wright’s head
suddenly became an equally clear view of his surprised face, when Anderson
twisted his neck, killing him on the spot. It had all happened so suddenly, and
Anderson had approached Wright so quickly, that the Leader of the Union never
had a chance to even take a step back. His inert body hit the ground with a
thud that had the effect of snapping everyone out of the shock of the moment.
“No way!” Tamisa
said in disbelief.
Before Wright’s
guards could react, the enforcers activated their respective neurostunners,
sending Wright’s men falling to the ground like so many flies - not dead but
far from comfortable. Anderson calmly took the microphone.
“By order of the
Council of Presidents of the Interstellar Federation of Common Origin there has
been a change in administration on planet ST1.4077DYA, informally known as
Aanadya.” His voice was calm and pleasant, the voice of a grandfather reading
bedtime stories.
“Kaye Wright’s
rule has been declared unlawful. Upon close investigation of his criminal
activities, he has been sentenced to death by the Council of Presidents. His
associates will be appropriately prosecuted. The planet will be placed
temporarily under the administration of a regent proposed by the Enforcement
Unit, until the Federation forms a government that will prepare Aanadya for
IFCO membership, as part of the upcoming enlargement wave. This is good news,
people. I will address the press, as well as the people of Aanadya’s capital
city of Tuson, in forty-eight hours in Marken Square for more information.
Until then, we ask for your patience and cooperation.”
As Anderson
spoke, his men just calmly and systematically disarmed the paralyzed guards. An
enormous land vehicle appeared from the spacecraft and the Enforcers proceeded
to board it.
“Forty-eight
hours,” Tamisa thought. That was how long she had to somehow try and make
contact with Anderson’s Enforcers. This was her window of opportunity to leave
Aanadya and never come back. Unseen, she darted from her hiding place and ran
for home as fast as she could.