Troy Reeves walked purposefully across the deck of the hangar bay, carefully composing himself. The crew must not see any shred of weakness or a lack of decorum. He straightened his jacket and set his cap. Talking with Stukov disturbed him. He was the last person he had expected to see here, or again, and one of the people he would want to least want to see ever. It had made him perversely happy to see his old rival disfigured and tainted by the race he had closely studied, but disturbing to learn that he now wielded their power. Stopping in the hallway, he pressed the button to call for a lift. Groups of soldiers, captains, and crew walked past him, their loud talking amplified by alcohol. Reeves tipped his hat to them and gave them a grit-teethed smiled. As he got in, a young ensign followed blithely behind him. Once he realized who he had boarded the elevator with, he clearly had tried to turn heel to walk out, but stopped, realizing it was too late. Reeves smiled at him. At least he registers my authority.
"I won't bite, ensign. What floor do you need?"
"S-seven, sir."
"Seven? Crew quarters?"
"Yes, sir. Not one for parties, sir."
"Good boy. Neither am I."
The ensign stepped off the elevator and Reeves continued to the bridge. When he got there, it was empty; they had celebrated briefly earlier, and he had given them the night off. He walked into his office. All was silent.
Silence. He enjoyed it. Too much of his job was either loud with the sounds of war or with the sounds of mass humanity. Reeves took his meals in his office or in his quarters. With the end of their first battle and after dealing with Stukov, he needed the solitude—and he also needed to compose a message to Henri, his husband. He didn't want to seem upset, especially when he had good news. He was alive, one, and they had taken Tarsonis. Of course, if Henri registered he was upset, he couldn't tell him about Stukov—he couldn't tell anyone. If Stukov's true fate was widely known, he couldn't imagine the fear that it would engender that someone as distinguished (it wasn't the word he wanted to use, but he couldn't think of another) as Stukov had been overtaken by the zerg. It would demonstrate just how dangerous the zerg were.
He had to stop thinking about it. Reeves sat at his desk and turned on his console, positioning himself in front of the screen so that he was in range of the video feed. But then he saw he already had a message from Henri. There was no way for them to speak in real time. They would be passing each other endlessly for the entirety of the conflict. It would be an ongoing call and response conversation. Henri had gotten the first word in. Reeves opened the message. In the study of their home in Charleston, Henri sat, his arms draped over his cello on a leather chaise lounge. He was wearing the silk shirt Reeves had gifted him for his birthday last year.
"Troy, honey, hello! I hope this gets to you before you get into Tarsonis. If not, well, you know me… Always fashionably late. Sometimes even missing the party!"
Reeves snorted with laughter. He had missed the "party."
"I don't know what to say. I miss you? I'm definitely afraid for you, and I pray for you, even though I know it won't do any good. Since I'm at a loss for words and I'm pretty sure we're being monitored by whatever censors are on this channel, I thought I'd play you something… Here goes…"
Henri began to play, his long arms languidly crossing his cello. Reeves had always been captivated by the sensuous way he moved. As the tune began, he recognized it. It was one that he had played before but not often. It was faster than much of the music that he played and darker. He searched for the name of it, but only came up with the composter—Stravinsky. A Russian. Reeves anger suddenly returned.
Reeves's XO, Commander Gorman, appeared at his door. Reeves turned off the recording. Gorman took a step back, reading the anger on his commander's face. Reeves demurred.
"Come in, what is it?"
"There's been an… incident… in the brig. We've had to restrain one of the prisoners."
"Which one?"
"A ghost? Did you know about this?"
Reeves stood up so quickly his chair fell over backwards. Gorman jumped at the sound.
"Was he harmed?"
"No, but he took out all the electronic equipment on the cell block and even some above and below. Some sort of telekinesis."
"Was it an escape attempt?"
"If it was, it wasn't a good one. He could've walked out, but he's still down there. We put an external psi dampener on him but…" Gorman handed Reeves a datapad. "There are some irregularities in his file… I thought you might want to take a look. Why was he being held? I didn't see…" Reeves interrupted him.
"Gorman, don't stick your nose into this. From this point forward, I alone deal with this ghost. Any inquiries go straight to me. I want no one to speak of him. There's no ghost in our brig, and there never was. Is that clear?"
Gorman went white. Reeves knew he understood. He generally allowed him more freedom than others of his staff—he had known him the longest of any of the crew—but because of this Gorman also knew how quickly Reeves could turn on someone. And when he turned, the relationship was soured forever.
"O-of course, Admiral."
"Dismissed."
Gorman left quickly. Reeves read through Gregory Stukov's file at his desk. He was young—22 biologically but 27 chronologically—and had entered the UED's ghost program late either because he had been shielded by someone or because he was a late bloomer. His psi index was midrange and he had no reason to have been brain panned—no covert missions or erratic behavior. This appeared to be his first major mission.
On brain-panning, Reeves aligned more with the Terran Dominion's view of the practice than with his own government. Degenerates with psionic powers, he felt, needed to be tightly controlled. Brain-panning, he believed, made them docile. They knew no better than to follow orders and could do nothing for themselves if the practice was used judiciously. It had been standard operating procedure until around the time when Reeves had just begun maturing into his military career. Reeves's first choice of posting had been a ghost "academy" in Montreal. He had already begun living there, and it was where he had met Henri. But the door to that opportunity had suddenly slammed shut. The same year a paper had been put before the UPL Council written by a group of anonymous military officers. It was titled "The Treatment of 'Degenerate' Psionic Assets in Training and Combat: An Analysis of Statistics and Subsequent Recommendations." In it was a scathing deconstruction of many of the academy's training methods and processes, the most notable of which their usage of "brain-panning" or memory erasure. Common wisdom was that eliminating an agent's past made them more loyal. This paper, with statistics, case studies, and even some experiments, seemed to prove that it didn't. One rhetorical question always stuck out to him, and it was the one that was his career's undoing: "How can soldiers be loyal to a country they don't remember?" Of all the arguments—that soldiers who were brain-panned could not relate to their commanders, that not being able to remember their families made them unable to form familial bonds among their comrades, and that making them unable to care for themselves in any practical sense put them at a disadvantage in survival situations—the question was the one that shut down the academies temporarily until they could be reformed. Reeves had sided against the paper and the revisions it would make. But the paper's ideas had just enough patriotic spin on them. The regime changed and was out. And he was out with it.
Years later, a few months before the Expeditionary Fleet was about to leave, a memo was forwarded to him by a friend who had survived the change in leadership. It was from Vice Admiral Stukov. His friend had written a note with it saying, "Notice anything?" In his memo, Stukov had sent along Admiral DuGalle's call for the number of ghosts that they needed to accompany them to the Koprulu sector. With it, he had sent his own qualifiers since they would be directly under his command. He "under no circumstances" wanted any ghost that had been brain-panned for any reason—and he explained why. In his explanation, there were several sentences that were worded in almost exactly the same way as the paper that had made its way to the UPL Council years ago. Either Stukov kept a copy around or he had written at least part of it. Reeves looked up the paper and read it again. Sure enough, in the passages where the language was the most heated and blunt, there he recognized Stukov's voice. He had sidetracked Reeves's career from afar—and it hadn't been the first time.
But now, as he read Gregory's file, he wondered how Stukov had been so prescient. How had he known his son—who wouldn't have shown signs before Stukov left—would be a degenerate? Unless his father was. Wouldn't that be the icing on the cake, Reeves thought. The bad egg. The spoiled apple. DuGalle's pet a psionic. Gorman had been right about there being something fishy about the file. His psi index was rated at 5.5—too low for telekinesis and for the damage done to the brig. There were ghosts that were exceptions, but not many. His other scores were above average but not exceptional—as if he had been purposefully lowballing his tests or someone had changed his scores keep attention away from him. He would make some discrete inquiries to see who might be the culprit, but some of the information he was hoping the boy himself would divulge. A high psi index, holding back his powers, being too connected, or behaving erratically—all of these circumstances could potentially warrant brain-panning if presented the right way.
A brain-panned son would be just what Stukov deserved. Gregory needed it, he thought, all ghosts needed it. But if Gregory had any loyalty to his father—and if he had been trying to escape—it would be necessary regardless of how he felt about Stukov. He couldn't lose him, and the look on Stukov's face when he realized his son no longer knew who he was would balance the ledger that Reeves had been tallying of his misdeeds.
Reeves looked up the name of the chief ghost wrangler and trainer on board. He had seen several messages about a "missing ghost" from him but he had been ignoring them. He found his name—Special Ops Chief Shin. Shin picked up immediately when Reeves called. A weathered man appeared on the screen with close-cropped silver hair and one eye that was all white. In another place, he would have a prosthetic, but in the UED, such things weren't allowed.
"Shin!" He said curtly as a greeting. Reeves didn't like that.
"Chief Shin, this is Admiral Reeves…" He said, waiting for his authority over him to sink in. It never did.
"Yes? What do you need?"
"I have a recalcitrant ghost that needs to be re-educated."
"You mean brain-panned? A drastic measure. I would need to evaluate them."
"That will not be necessary."
"Yes, it will. Is this about my missing ghost?"
"That is not your concern."
"Like hell it isn't. Where is he?"
"If you don't have that machine ready in an hour, you'll be in the same hole I put him in."
"What? This is out—"
Reeves cut him off. He knew what he had to do, but he wanted to speak with the boy first.
The lights had been restored in the brig by the time Reeves entered. A tech was still working on the guard's surveillance terminal, her head in an access port under the desk. The guard looked on, standing nearby, bored and helpless. An ensign was still sweeping up the glass in the hallway of the cell block. The guard quickly stood at attention when Reeves entered. The tech hit her head on the desk, but also stood at attention. Reeves barely acknowledged them.
"I want both of you to still be here when I come back out. Talk to no one, let no one leave, and send anyone who comes in away. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir!"
Reeves skulked into the cell block, gripping the datapad Gorman had given him in his hand. He stopped at Gregory's cell and looked in at him. When Gregory saw him, he quickly stood, his large green eyes meeting his fleetingly and then darting away. There was a thick, white metal collar around his neck—the external dampener they had fitted him with. Most ghosts had a failsafe surgically implanted in their brains, but they were calibrated to the psi index in their files. If he had one, it would be incorrectly fitted if his file was wrong. As he looked at him, Reeves saw little of his father in him. Maybe the eye shape and the body type, but the rest was his mother, whom Reeves had met infrequently but vividly remembered. That made it easier to talk to him. If he'd looked like Stukov, he thought, it would have been a lot harder not to kill him there in the hangar. But it would be harder to brain-pan him, and, if it came to it, kill him later, When his father inevitably pisses me off.
He briefly thought about how hilarious it would be if it turned out Gregory wasn't actually his son, and his wife had already been halfway out the door that long before their divorce. But he knew that wasn't possible. The mandatory DNA screening most children went through to predict psionic ability would also have established paternity. Gregory had avoided testing—officer's family privilege—until he most likely began to show signs of what the UED saw as an affliction. That was the first of many oddities of his file, which he would discuss with him.
Reeves held up the datapad for Gregory to see. "I have your dossier right here, Gregory…" Gregory's eyes followed it nervously. "There are a few items I think you'd better explain."
"Okay…" Gregory murmured.
"First, your file says not a thing about you being a teek. That's a little odd, don't you think?" He said, his voice raising with the question."
"I… guess?"
"You guess? Any idea why that pertinent information was kept out of your file?"
Gregory was silent for a moment.
"Clerical error?" He finally said. Reeves's eyes narrowed. He saw more of his father in him now. That was exactly the kind of flippant remark his father would make.
"Are you trying to be funny, son?"
"No, sir," he said quickly. Reeves watched his face. He was obviously afraid of him. The remark had been guileless if a bit stupid.
"It also says your psi index is five and a half—and we both know that can't possibly be right."
"Why not?"
"Don't play coy with me. We both know a human must have at least a PI of at least eight to be telekinetic. Tell me what your real number is."
Gregory was silent again, looking away.
"Boy, if you don't tell me, I'll have it beaten out of you."
"Eight point two," he said wearily, "What does it matter?"
"Because one of my most powerful ghosts is exhibiting 'erratic behavior,' and may need some more permanent restraint than that psi dampener." Gregory took a step back, the back of his leg hitting the bench behind him, causing him to lose his footing and fall against the wall.
"No, that's not necessary…"
"You tried to escape."
"I didn't!"
"That's enough!" A voice said from down the hallway. Dressed in a greying, threadbare ghost's uniform covered by a long, black duster, Shin marched towards Reeves. Gregory stood up when he saw him. Shin ignored Reeves. "Finally, I found you. I thought you'd gone AWOL. But that wasn't right."
"I'm sorry. I've been in here since we got here…"
"Don't apologize. What have I told you about that?"
"I'm sor… I mean…"
"How did you get in here?" Reeves said, blustering.
"I'm a ghost? How else? You're not hard to find. All I did was ask the computer where you were. You really should have your whereabouts clearance-locked." Reeves fumed. "They didn't hurt you, did they?" he said, turning back to Gregory.
"No, but he put a gun to my head."
Shin turned quickly to Reeves, "You what?"
From down the hallway, another prisoner had woken, hearing the three of them talking. He began banging on the wall.
"Hello? Who's there? I am a Terran Republic citizen, damn it. I demand due process and a lawyer." It was Marcos Marinakis. Reeves had almost forgotten about him, but he needed him later.
"Shut up!" he yelled at him. Reeves's rage was about to get the best of him. He turned back to Gregory.
"I sense your anger, Reeves," Shin said calmly, "But this boy is not his father." Reeves became irater at the imposition of Shin on his thoughts. He had accessed what amounted to classified data. Shin had not been privy to any briefings on Stukov and his appearance in the Koprulu sector.
"That thing is not my father!"
"What?" Reeves said, taken aback.
"It is a zerg-infested zombie and an abomination." Reeves never considered that Gregory would not see Stukov as his father anymore. It hadn't even occurred to him that Stukov may not be Stukov but instead a reanimated version of him. But the way Stukov had spoken to him, the stunt he had pulled—he had been more vicious than usual, but it wasn't out of character. He had been his same, sardonic self. It had to have been the real Stukov; he felt it. His body may have been tainted by the zerg, but his mind was still there. Gregory had not been able to speak to him. He had only seen what he had done and had to believe that he had not betrayed and abandoned them all those years ago. Reeves realized that brain-panning would be a kindness to Gregory and to his father. He would not use it on him—not yet anyway. Down the hallway, Marinakis began making noise again.
"You can't do this! I am a presidential candidate!
"You're right, Shin. He's not his father. His father is dead. We should be more respectful of that. Of course that thing we're allied with is an abomination… But we must play along, right?"
Gregory nodded slowly, suspicious.
"There's no reason to punish him, Reeves," Shin said quietly.
"No, there isn't. But he'll have to stay here for his own safety…"
"Fine. As long as we don't have need for the operation room…" Shin began. Marinakis bellowed in the background.
"Hold that thought, Shin. I think I still have use for your machine…"
Note: The Stravinsky piece is the cello version of Suite Italienne: "II. Serenata" if anyone cares lol.
